Been around the world and I, I, I

So here we have it, the final blog. Apologies for it's tardiness, in main it is the Chinese government's fault with their slightly over zealous Internet restrictions. As it has been a while since the previous blog this one may be fairly long I'm afraid, but as I said this is the last one and if you are still reading this then I thank you and I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

We landed back in the UK last Sunday (16th), eight months to the day since our departure. In the 243 days we were away we went to 11 countries and had a truly amazing time. A common question seems to be 'so what was your favourite country?'. That's like asking David Beckham what the square root of 4 is -it's simply not going to happen. After looking pensive for a few moments I will usually come back with an answer of 'hmm, hard to say' and follow that up with 'it's between New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and China'.

As we were unable to blog from China I kept a written blog as we went. As a result it may not entirely make sense but nevermind, I'm sure you'll get the gist of it. Had we been able to post it would have looked something like this:


The Orient Express

So China is pretty big. 9.5 million square kilometres in fact. With only 21 days to see Hong Kong, Beijing and a few things along the way we need to get our skates on. After buying a guide book in Laos we set about the task of planning our route across China. We devised 2 plans, 'Plan E' and 'Plan M' before merging them to form the master plan 'Plan China Travel Super'. Due to the time constraints we have decided on only 4 or 5 stops including Hong Kong and Beijing.

Hong Kong Phooey
We arrived in the pulsating city of Hong Kong on Monday. To call it a city is somewhat misleading as it is in fact comprised of some 235 islands with HK island only accounting for 7% of the total land mass. Whilst the built up areas are incredibly developed, I was surprised by how much open space there was to be found.
We spent the first night on HK island but moved to neighbouring Kowloon for the other 2 nights in order to get away from the exorbitant prices. On Wednesday we headed out into the New Territories in search of a walled village in Kam Tin. However, as we failed to take the guidebook with us the village proved elusive. All was not lost though, as we enjoyed a pleasant walk back over Tai Mo Shan (HK's highest peak) and through the Shing Mun country park.
Yesterday we rode the peak tram up Victoria Peak to enjoy the panoramic views back down across HK city before catching a train over to the Chinese mainland in time for the night bus to Yanhshou.

Yangshwow
We arrived in the mountain 'village' of Yangshou at 7 AM, the shadowy mountains still shrouded in the pale mist of morning. After 6 months of perpetual warmth the chill in the air struck us like a cannon-ball of ice. It was time to dig out the warm clothes. Some good hard bargaining secured us a cheap room for 4 nights close to the centre of town.
The 3 full days we spent in Yangshou were all about the scenery. 2 of the days we hired mountain bikes and cycled between the somnolent limestone peaks and along rivers, stopping for the odd photo and to climb 'moon hill' -a rocky pinnacle with a moon shaped hole giving panoramic views of the surrounding limestone peaks. Yangshou is surrounded by a plethora of rock faces just begging to be climbed, so on the middle day we did just that.
It is amazing how much building work is taking place in China. Yangshou, popn 300 000, is called a village and on the south-eastern edge of town there are numerous high-rise residential buildings pushing relentlessly towards the sky. One cannot be sure but I would suggest that these may well be to accommodate some of the 2 million people being displaced by the construction of the three gorges dam which is set to flood an area the size of Singapore as it backs the Yangzi river up 550km.
p.s apologies for the extensive use of the words limestone, peaks and mountains in recent postings but since I have been surrounded by mountainous limestone peaks there really isn't much I can do about it!

Ooodles of noodles
Um, wow. I didn't think I would go somewhere with natural beauty to so easily surpass Yangshou for a long time. Well, I was wrong.
Wullingyuan scenic zone is home to 243 majestic peaks rising from the misty sub-tropical rainforest with over 3000 karst outcrops creating a truly unique landscape and one of the most (if not the most) beautiful places I have ever been. A dusting of snow the day before our visit followed by 2 days of clear sunny skies created just about perfect conditions for enjoying this natural playground. Our journey here didn't exactly go smoothly and infact we're not even staying where we intended to -trying to communicate in China is at times as a Chinaman might say 'yuanmu qiuyu' - Like climbing a tree to catch a fish (a waste of time). All came good in the end though and we have had 2 days of walking in the park enjoying scenes such as 'The supernatural hawk guarding the whip', 'The god of longevity welcoming guest', 'Latent celestial bridge' and etc.

The day we caught the train
We decided to make Wullingyuan our last stop before Beijing so last Saturday we caught a sleeper train all the way from Zhanjiajie to Beijing (24hrs) and booked ourselves into a youth hostel in the snowy capitol city.
Beijing has been nice -very cold, but nice. We've had a week of clear weather and have done the normal touristy sites here- The Great Wall which was er... great, Tienamen square which is er... a rectangle actually!, the forbidden city which is now infact bidden and the summer palace complete with it's snow and frozen lake. Not much else to say about Beijing really, although I should mention that a 600ml bottle of beer only costs about 18p! -cheap cheap!

And there you have it, we left Beijing for heathrow midday last Sunday. Since returning I stopped off in Birmingham for a Uni reunion and I'm now back up in Carlisle with the family for Christmas. Now its time to find me a job and set about putting on the stone I lost on my travels -bring on the Christmas food!

I would highly recommend traveling to anyone and everyone, it has been a fantastic experience.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a thoroughly happy new year and hope to see you soon. xx Matt xx