China Blog

A new blog

jamie_mcdonald_photo — Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:29:00 GMT

Thanks for my followers on here - I've now got my new blog updated Rice and Rock Concerts

My website will be completely up to date by days end - Jamie McDonald Photography

Yangshuo to Dali, China

jamie_mcdonald_photo — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:57:00 GMT

Five days without an update, and that must surely have more to do with the dreadful internet speed over here in China than it does to do with my work ethic!

I’m sitting in a bar in Dali, Yunnan. A peek over my right shoulder and I can see that for the first time in the two days that we’ve been here the rain has stopped. At approximately 3000m above sea level it should have come as no shock that it is wet and cold, but in a country known for blistering heat as we hit summer it was still quite a surprise.

We had a truly fantastic time in Yangshuo and it was very hard to leave. The rock climbing on the Karst Limestone peaks never happened as we just don’t have enough time to stay in one town for long enough. An afternoon on bikes was a great substitute; fifteen minutes of riding and we were out of the city of 300,000 surrounded by rice fields dwarfed by the limestone peaks and completely alone bar touts yelling from the side of the roads. Lonely Planet wrote that riding a bike near Yangshuo is often the highlight for travellers to China, and whilst we had a fantastic time I still hope the best is yet to come.

Genuinely losing track of time and days is a great feeling, and it is with that in mind that some of my days might be out! Yangshuo was good to us; food was excellent, the beer was cheap, our accommodation was perfect, and our hosts at Bamboo Cafe were exceptional. Just as the journey to Guilin by bus had begun we came across a bus on the back of a tow truck on the highway that had been involved in a pretty serious accident; pretty sobering and a reminder that we can just cross our fingers and travel by train wherever possible.

We had a pretty flawless transfer from bus drop to jumping on the train in Guilin and before we knew it we had begun our twenty hour journey to Kunming. Filling a 4 berth soft sleeper with friends is a luxury and we filled the time with a few drinks and card games - fast forward a dozen or so hours and we found ourselves in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province.

As has happened at every single arrival and departure it was raining...and Kunming kind of smelt. We also couldn’t find any accommodation we wanted, nor did we find any of the sites appealing, so we grabbed some train tickets for departure that night to the beautiful old town of Dali. Not so lucky as our earlier train trip we were spread over two hard sleeper cabins. I discovered many things on this journey, 1) grumpy Chinese women sometimes get a bit cheeky and take the bottom bunk in cabins that aren’t even theirs, 2) they can get replaced by their rightful owners, two lovely doctors from Dali, 3) the doctor’s bought an entire pig’s leg when they were in Kunming and I spent most of my awake hours staring at its trotter, 4) I don’t fit in a hard sleeper!

Now this might not come as a shock to those that have travelled by train more than me, but I don’t fit in one of these bunks. I don’t know if it is a bit of a joke by interior designers, but if there is nowhere to put your daypack, and the bed is only 6ft long, with 1ft of headroom, and there isn’t room to lie flat it shouldn’t be called a sleeper.

Our arrival in Dali was greeted again by rain and when we couldn’t find the right bus to get us to the old town our roommate doctor couple came to the rescue and found the bus for us and a couple of other followers. I bade the trotter farewell and boarded the bus (30 minute ride, 1.5RMB (27c AUD)) and then walked around in the rain hunting for our guesthouse.

As the room wasn’t ready we went and found a breakfast as it was only around 7am - travelling with vegetarians has granted little pieces of amusement not normally found by travelling carnivores. Like the vegetarian dish on the train - steamed cabbage with rice. Not dissimilar to the dish that Jane and James scored for breakfast in Dali, boiled cabbage with noodles. As Sally and I slurped our beef, chilli and shallot noodle soup I couldn’t help but laugh.

In Dali I have taken to wearing my goosedown jacket to cut out the rain and the chill - the fact that I look around 120kg has given everyone something to laugh at. After enduring a stench that could only be described as sewerage meets something worse for hours I donned my jacket, camo cargo pants and my recently shaved head and confronted reception. Whilst the jacket did most of the talking I did manage to score us a new room. Score currently reads Jacket 1, the World 0.

An accommodation change this morning, the consumption of both sweet and savoury baba (local speciality - naan like bread stuffed with greatness), a few beer lao’s, attempting to setup a new blog, editing photos and the afternoon is nearly complete. A peek over the same shoulder as before and some blue sky has appeared, so here’s hoping that the msn.com weather forecast is wrong and we’ll be able to leave the bar tomorrow and take a look at this town!

By the time I depart China for Vietnam I will have lost several days of my journey in transit waiting for the next leg. So far it was 8 hours in Guanghzhou bus station waiting for our 8 hour bus trip to Yangshuo, followed by a 2 hour bus ride to Guilin train station where we waited 2 hours for our 20 hour train trip to Kunming; we then had to wait 14 hours before we could board our train for the 8 hour journey to Dali. China is a big country and even with some decent individual journeys we’ve still got a long, long way to go to get around this place.

New photos are online at www.jamiemcdonald.com and yes, I’m behind, as it is only a Macau update, but I’ll be back up to date soon!

Yangshuo, China

jamie_mcdonald_photo — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:26:00 GMT

The same widget that cruelly counted down so slowly to my departure date is still ticking over on the mac and it now tells me that I’ve been on the road for ten days and fourteen hours. Why is it that time away goes so quickly compared to time at home?

I’m in Yangshuo in Guanxi province - a city of 300,000 but the tourist area down on the Li River is a smattering of hostels, guesthouses, hotels and cafe’s where touts for all of the above converge on the tourists wandering down the quaint pedestrian only streets. It’s a world away from the concrete jungle that we left behind in Hong Kong and Guangzhou and though it is a town that is loaded with tourists it still has a charm similar to that of Hoi An in Vietnam.

A departure from excruciatingly high accommodation prices has also given Yangshuo the thumbs up from me and my travelling companions. A clean 3 star double room with ensuite for 80 Yuan ($15) would bring a smile to even the grouchiest traveller in China.

The trip here was amazingly painless - after 8 hours sitting in the bus terminal in Guangzhou to get on a bus there was the fear that the bus would be full, uncomfortable, filled with smokers, or most likely, all of the above. Fortunately the bus was almost empty, there was leg room aplenty, no smoking on board, and the seats were more akin to business class airline seats than the seats on the school bus I’d expected.

I slept, the others didn’t. A wry smile worked its way onto my face when I awoke to hear three men snoring and I wondered if the others on the bus were grateful that my waking had reduced the snoring numbers by a quarter?

Our sense of adventure is still strong but rather than tackle rafting or rock climbing we’ve so far stuck with the massages, beer swilling (cheapest in a bar yet 10 Yuan ($2) for Tsing Tao long necks), and doing my darndest to beat the girl behind the bar at Havana at pool. For the record - 3-0, her way. Good player, poor hustler! I think I might go back tonight to exact some revenge, or more likely, lose my dignity completely.

And coffee. What the hell is going on in this country? A sign at one of the cafe’s on West Street proudly announces to those passing by that they don’t serve Starbucks Coffee, they serve ‘good’ coffee. If I had more courage and a chalk stick I’d write under ‘but we charge even more than their extortionist rates.’ You can get a coffee in this town for between $5 to $10, or a couple of bucks less than our room for a night...

I haven’t edited my pics from Macau but once I do I’ll get them onto www.jamiemcdonald.com

Off now to eat and win that damn game of pool.

A new blog - China

jamie_mcdonald_photo — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:40:00 GMT

This is going to be the temporary address for my blog whilst in China as wordpress is blocked...

I can’t remember exactly where I left the blog and I can’t check because I can’t log into wordpress at the moment...so I’m typing this out on the word processor and when I get some better access I’ll update it.

Macau was on the agenda for Wednesday, but after walking out of the Tsim Sha Tsiu MTR station in Kowloon I remembered that passports would be a handy little item if one wanted to leave Hong Kong and enter another ‘country.’ Passports were in the drawer back at Bec and Ryan’s, and the thought of catching the train back to Central to then catch two cabs to the Peak and back before jumping on the train to get back to Tsim Sha Tsiu to then catch the ferry was at least one step too far.

Given that we’d planned a full day in Macau we found ourselves searching for something to do in Hong Kong instead - enter SoHo and a couple of buckets (that passed themselves off as glasses) of Hoegarden. In a week in Hong Kong I didn’t once find a bar that served a beer at prices comparable to Australia; happy hour is far from it, more like a couple of hours of a $1 off the already inflated price.

Thursday we were back to normal with a bit of a battle plan and we went out for Dim Sum for lunch - I can rate the pork belly steamed bun with red bean sauce extremely highly. I’ll dig up the address and name of the place so that others can enjoy the hospitality of the white-coated waiters and company of local diners that are bound to be sharing your table.

I had a meeting with an agency that afternoon and was spoilt with views of Hong Kong and Kowloon from their office on the 62nd floor of Central Plaza in Wan Chai. In a city which I spent a week straining my neck looking up it was a privilege to actually look down for a change. I discovered that another world exists in Hong Kong with rooftop pools, gardens, playgrounds and tennis courts, at least for those that can afford these luxuries.

Later that night we treated ourselves to a glimpse of glamour when we went to the races at Happy Valley Racecourse. As someone who normally watches the nags at Morphetville, Flemington or Moonee Valley it was incredible to be literally on top of the action; looking down at the races rather than across to the track. A fantastic buffet coupled with wait staff who never let my beer glass get empty was the perfect complement to winning on the last couple of races. I’m sure the Jockey Club cringes every time Number 8 in Race 8 gets up and I’m sure there was wincing Thursday night as it all came into place.

We’re in Guangzhou at the moment, but I’ll update the blog with stories and photos from our time in Macau (yes, with passports we made it!) once we’re in Yangshuo as we intend on spending a few days there.

In the meantime www.jamiemcdonald.com has been updated with some new pics from Hong Kong.