Macau - 25th Feb 2006

For those of you who were expecting the next update from Vietnam, the following will explain the change of plan.

Whilst sitting in the hotel lobby on Friday night, Alison decided to start reading up on Vietnam.
The first page that she turned to happen to mention that you need a visa before you enter - Oops !!
Not only didn't we have a visa for Vietnam, but as far as the Hong Kong government were concerned we were leaving the country the next day.

For all of you who questioned why I took my laptop, well this more than justified it.
We sat on the internet in the lobby until 3am the next morning, reading up on the visa process for Vietnam, finding where the embassy is located in Hong Kong, finding another country who would take us without a visa and finally using Skype to phone United Airlines to make a change to our flights.

Hence the change of plan to Macau.
We intend to stay here until Monday, when we will travel back to Hong Kong and try to get our visa sorted out.

Well we fell on our feet with this slip up, as Macau is one place that you wouldn't want to miss.
Its an ex Portuguese country, which like Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese.
The difference is that it hasn't been runind by sky scrapers, with much of the old Portuguese buildings still intact and in the main areas most have also been restored.

Its a strange combination, seeing Chinese and Portuguese culture mixed together but it works quite well from a tourist point of view.
You get all the quirky aspects of Chinese culture set out in really nice styled buildings.

A couple of photos taken from around the main square in Macau.







Even in the backstreets the buildings have been restored, although the insides of the shops look no different to the ones in China.


This is a sharks fin, which for some strange reason is a real delicacy over here.
The sad fact is that they dont use any other part of the shark, so it is thrown back in the sea to die.

Hong Kong - 22nd Feb

Hong Kong is nothing like we had imagined.
It felt more like Singapore, with huge great big sky scrapers everywhere.
It was a real challenge to find some of the old traditional Chinese ways of life, as everything is completely westernised.

There's actually nothing wrong with Hong Kong, especially if we hadn't have been to China first. I think that we have seen much more interesting sights and expected the same here.
We did however manage to find a street market selling all different fruits and veg as well as live fish and all sorts of meat bits.

How about some nice pork !!
Old Chinese proverb - "It is said that you are what you eat"


Fish head seems to be very popular here as it is mentioned on nearly all their menus.
I will normally try most things, but I just cant work out where the meat is on a head.


This was one of the most interesting areas of Hong Kong that we visited.
It's the Chinese house boats located in Aberdeen.
There are still people who live on these boats, although a Chinese person on our boat trip explained that only the old people are now left as their children have all moved into flats.




This has to be the smallest estate agent shop that we have ever seen.
You cant see from the photo, but there is actually someone working inside.


The photo was taken on Honk Kong island looking back to Kowloon.

Shanghai to Hong Kong Journey

In the normal manor for us two, we left booking our journey to Hong Kong until the last minute. This left us with only two options

1/ Pay a huge sum of money for a last minute flight which would have got us to Hong Kong in just over an hour.

2/ Take the cheaper train journey, but the downside would be the time it would take to get to Hong Kong.
We convinced ourselves that theres no fun in flying, so booked our one way seats to Hong Kong. We then checked the times on the tickets to find that the total journey would take a monster 27 hours !!!

We decided to travel by style to the train station, so we splashed out on a taxi rather than catch the bus.
On reaching the station, all you could see was a mass of people all dragging those giant sized asylum seeker bags ( The plastic zip sacks with blue, red and white stripes running through them ).

We had already purchased our tickets the day before, so we headed straight for the sign stating Soft Sleeper.
We were quickley stopped at the entrance by two ladies in uniform who couldn't speak any English, but were not going to let us through no matter how hard we tried.
After 10 minutes of hand signals and help from other people who had now joined a very long queue, we realised that we were trying to gain access to the waiting room for journeys within China - Silly me, I thought that we had given Hong Kong back !!
It seems that Hong Kong is a special administrative region, which seems to mean that it belongs to China, but you still need to go through a passport control as its treated as another country.

Going through the various security checks was a real scream, as there were very little signs in English. We adopted the approach of walking in the directions that we could understand and wait to be shouted at.
It seemed to work, and none of the guards went overboard when we would turn around to see where they were pointing to.

The train journey itself wasn't that bad.
We had two small single beds and a table, which is as good as your going to get on the best of trains in the UK.
The downside was the lack of a toilet, which meant having to share. This wasn't too bad for me, but Alison did have to agree that its a lot less bother when you dont have to hover !!!

Once the train got going, we only had to wait a couple of hours before dinner was being served.
It wasn't the best food that we have tasted since being in China, but it was OK and used up another hour of the journey.

After dinner Alison put her nose in a book, which left me to watch one of the B rate movies which I purchased whilst in Shanghai.
The only drawback was the fact that my laptop battery only lasted 30 minutes, and there was no power in the room.
I managed to find one in the walkway of the train, so made myself comfortable and carried on watching my film.
I had the odd interuption when the lady selling drinks would come past, as I needed to stand up and squeeze in to let her through.

After a reasonable nights sleep, we were woken up by the sun shining into the carriage.
We haven't seen much sun over the last few months, so this was a rather nice wake up call.

On looking out of the window of the train, all we could see were farmers in fields all wearing straw looking hats, with most still wearing the old style blue jackets.
All their farming still seems to be carried out by hand other than plowing the fields which they still use Ox for.

After a few of hours of watching Chinese life in the country, we arrived in Hong Kong feeling reasonably fresh although I am not sure that everyone else would have agreed !

Shanghai Update

The last couple of photos taken from Shanghai, but I thought that they were wrth including.

After a day of just walking around the city, we came across this small park where out door exercise equipment had been installed.

Its not that clear, but the person to the right of the picture is actually an old man who was abe to lift his leg onto a bar above waist height !!



As the old saying goes "When In Rome"



The last two pictures show Chinese scaffolding.
Check out the thickness of the bamboo !!



How about being the worker who has to walk along the top of this !!

Shanghai 14th Feb 2006

We arrived in Shanghai and checked into the Jiu Long hotel, which is aimed more towards Chinese business men than English tourists.
Its also quite a way out of the main city centre, which at first was a bit of a bind as we had to get cabs everywhere.
We have since found that we can walk into the city centre which takes quite some time, but does mean that we get to see loads of back street shops which we would have missed in a taxi.

The photos below are taken from the city centre.
Shanghai seems to have out done Tokyo with neon lights





If you look hard enough, you can get an idea of just how many people there are on the street at any one time.









A couple of photos from above taken during the day.
The city definitely looks better at night.






Some photos taken from the old part of Shanghai



The truck on the right is China Post.
All the parcels were being loaded from the truck and onto the bikes for delivery.













Whilst walking around the old city, we came across a day market housed in old buildings that had all been restored.














On the way out of the old city, we came across this police man who was handing out a ticket.
We think that it must be to do with over loading !!

Yangtze River - 9th Feb 2006

We booked the trip down the river Yangtze over the internet, using a company that we had never heard of and didn’t take credit cards !!
We were some what worried about the outcome of our payment via paypal, but we must have touched one too many “Good Luck” charms whilst in China as our tickets arrived at the hotel as advertised !

This is the one big problem with China, that e-commerce is still in its infancy.
All the local companies advertise via the web, but they actually operate in the old way of cash and triplicate copies of paperwork.
This often means that once you think that you have paid for something on the web, actually its just a wish to allow them to continue in the background where they do all the deals in person by cash.

Buying tickets for a train or plane is the same, where you enter the final details on the web site only to hit the enter button and receive a statement that the price quoted may change when they go in person and buy your tickets.
The other odd thing, is that they often don’t know what the delivery costs are going to be as they don’t know who it will be doing the delivery or what they will charge.
In the end, you just have to take a gamble and hope for the best !!

Well we were picked up from our hotel at 2pm on the dot by a guide who was meant to be taking us to the cruise boat.
It immediately materialised that he had plans to take us to loads of attractions that would involve us being marched around stores until we had parted with enough money to make the guide his quota for the day.

Having been there and seen that trick before, we both made it loud and clear that we were not going to be taken anywhere where they were selling items to tourists, and that we only wanted to see attractions where there was some real history or interest.

Well the guide only managed to find one that we hadn’t already seen, so to get his own back on us he decided to take us straight to the boat six hours earlier than required !!!

After the first ten minutes on board, we were both suffering from cabin fever and started to doubt our decision on taking a cruise.
This was soon changed though as soon as the other guests started to turn up and the boat started to fill with life.

The photo below shows the city view taken from on board the boat



The following morning, we were woken up early by a tannoy reminding everyone that breakfast started at 8am !!
The dining room had been split into two sections, as the boat was only a quarter full.
On one side there was a large party from Denmark whilst on the other side were two tables.
One had a family from China whilst the other which we were on had a couple from Japan and three people from the states.

The couple from Japan didn’t speak much English, so must have had a quite a dull trip.
Everyone else on our table spoke English, so it was a real treat to have people to chat with other than ourselves.
Thing were made more interesting by the fact that we had all been travelling the same tourist route whilst in China, so we all had something in common to talk about.

The trip down the Yangtze river was broken up with guided talks whilst the boat made its way down the river and a stop each day to visit a tourist site on route.

The following photos were taken whilst the boat was making its way down the river.
The photos are all quite hazy, which is a combination of bad weather and heavy pollution.
All the way down the river, there are coal and cement works with chimneys that belch out thick white smoke.
The guide did explain that the visibility gets a lot better in the summer although I guess that you would need to see that to believe it.










The following photos were taken at Fengdu, where we visited a temple of goasts !

These guys were playing cards whilst taking a lunch break.



Fruit and veg seller - Check out the old type scales in the right hand basket.



Entrance to the Temple of Goast.





I am not sure if the following statues are to ward off sprits, or resemble spirits, but they do look scary !!
Check out the one with yellow boots !!






I am not sure what they had to talk about, but it seemed to be a realy in depth chat



Yet another Budha



The guide told us that this was a statue of a goast.
I think that we have other names for this type of behaviour !!!




One of the main reasons for booking the cruise, was to see the Three Gorges before the Three Gorges dam is completed.
All the way along the Yangtze river, there was evidence of the increase in water lever.
By 2009 the water will have reached its final level which will have added 175 meters in depth to the worst effected areas.
The result is the complete loss of homes and farm land for 1.3 million Chinese people living in the area.

The photo below shows farmland and buildings that will be under water by 2009.
This is a tipical view along the river banks as you get close to the dam, and gives some indication to the impact that this dam will have on the local people.

On the upside, the government has built loads of new building to cater for the displaced people.
It seems that they have been given a choise depending on how they have been effected.
Some get new homes and farm land further up the mountains, whilst other can chose to move to the cities.

One of our guides was very positive about the whole thing, as she now owns a three bedroom apartment and has a good job showing the tourists around.
Her parents are less impressed, as they have been moved to a higher location on the mountain and will have to start all over again.



The Three Gorges dam will be the largest in the world when complete.
The dam itselft is over 1.5 miles wide !!

The photo below shows the lock gates that will take boats up and down the river.
Because of the change in depth from one side to the other, it takes 5 lock gates and 3 hours to pass through.
Due to the poor visability when taken, it is hard to get a true feeling of size which when seen up close is just amazing.



One of the advantages of the dam, has been the increased water levels in areas that were previously non negociable by large boats.
The photos below are from the Lesser Gorges which can now be visited by boat.
Previosly, the water level was only just over a meter deep !
Because boats were not able to navigate these gorges, they have not been effected by heavy industry which allows you to see what the main Yangtze river must have looked like years ago.














The last photo is of the cruise boat.
The bridge in front of the boat is the entrance to the Lesser Gorges.