Our travel tales

Hong Kong

ross_vic — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMT

Flew from Chengdu to Shenzen and got the bus into Hong Kong. Couldn't believe how much it was like England. The Queen's head is still on some coins, made us a bit home sick haha.

Stayed on Nathan Road in Chunking Mansions, definately wasn't a mansion. I thought it was raining until I looked up and realised all the air con units were dripping on me. We were staying on the top floor in the smallest room we've seen. The shower in the bathroom was over the toilet and the sink almost touched your chest as you sat on the loo. You could have a shit, shower and shave at the same time! Rossy was ready in about a minute!

Did the usual sites again-Star Ferry over to Hong Kong central then got the tram up to Victoria Peak. What an amazing view. We found a Forrest Gump restaurant at the top of the peak so stopped off for lunch. Had mashed potato for the first time since leaving England yum!

Stopped off for a beer on HK island, Ross got talking to a bloke from Boro typical!

Had possibly the most expensive pints of Guiness, it cost us over a tenner for 2 pints. Turned out to be our tea after the sweet and sour pork we'd ordered was like dog food.

We decided to book flights to Vietnam to save some time but totally messed up with our visa dates. Got to the airport on the day we were meant to fly only to realise our visa didn't start until the following day, so we couldn't get into Vietnam. The next flight to Vietnam wasn't available until 4 days later. So we thought sod it and booked ourselves into a nice hotel on HK island for a few nights. It was bliss having our own bathroom, hot water and not having to wear flip flops in the shower.

China

ross_vic — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 22:42:00 GMT

We're so far behind writing this journal that we're just going to summarise what we've done.

We were blown away with China. It was so clean. Such a change from Delhi.

Arrived in China on 1st October National Holiday. The place was heaving for about a week. Every tourist attraction was over-run with Chinese tourists. Managed to get to all the attractions:

Tiannamen Square
Forbidden City
Lamma Temple-Buddhist Temple. Lots of incense.
Olympic Village- Ross was in his element and kept getting asked for photos. He reckons the Chinese think he's Beckham haha!
Great Wall of China (Mutianyu)-Amazing but got taken to every jade factory along the way.Tobbogen slide down was great fun.
Temple of Heaven-Bit templed out by this point.
Summer Palace
Dongyue Temple- Taoist Temple.

We also had fantastic Roast Duck minus the head-phew. Couldn't face the other options on the menu- Pigs fallopian tube, Bulls penis and Shark fin soup to name a few.

After Beijing we went to Xi'an to see the Terracota Warriors, which were fantastic. Can't help think that some may have been re-created. There's some factories along the way with great replicas outside. The Muslim quarter in Xi'an was amazing. Ross bought some kites from there. 90 metres long! We also went to a vegetarian restaurant where they make the food look like meat. It's hard to work out if it's real or not.

We were going to head to Shanghai next but decided to skip it and go to Chengdu. We stayed in a fab hostel and met loads of great people. Had our first DVD day. The hostel had DVD players in the room and DVDs for free. So we chilled out all day. Went to see the Pandas in Chengdu who were sooo cute and surprisingly a lot smaller than we thought. Also went to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha, it's about 80 metres tall!

Went for Spicy Hot Pot one night with some other travellers from the hostel. Great fun. The pot is split in two. It's mild on one side and really spicy on the other. It's placed on a burning stove in the middle of the table and you dip the raw meat and veg into the pot which then cooks. Very tasty but very very spicy.

Tried some steamed dumplings too...yum!

India

ross_vic — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:12:00 GMT

We started our journey in India on 26th August 2008. We arrived in Delhi and oh my god! what a shock. The place we had booked on the internet looked nothing like it was supposed to. There was a construction site opposite. We headed to Connaught Place and we were followed by some random guy, thought Ross was going to have a fight. We got pestered at every opportunity and by the time the day was over we'd already had enough of Delhi.

We met up with Ankita (my friend from Orange in India) who took us to the Lotus Temple and the Iskon (Hare Krishna) Temple. After about 10 minutes Ross asked 'When can we go?..I'm starving haha'. Luckily Ankita took us to her house for tea. Her Mum is a fantastic cook and we were so grateful for some real food. We'd been eating MacDonalds since we arrived.

The next night we met up with Ritu and her husband (another friend from work). They took us into Old Delhi for something to eat. We stopped off at this little roadside place to sample the 'best dessert in Delhi' according to Ami (Ritu's husband). They brought out this dish filled with cold sweet cottage cheese dessert in a warm milk liquid. Ross bawlked his way through it but managed to finish it. My excuse was that it was too sweet, like most desserts in India. Hats off to Rossy though haha.

For tea we went to a little shop front where a guy was butchering a chicken outside. Apparently they did great chappatis. We sat down in the 'restaurant' which was more like a garage. We were given army style metal plates, which were wiped clean with a dirty grey floor cloth. We looked at each other in panic and could only imagine we'd be spending the next day in the hotel room with delhi belly. But it's the best thing we could've done as we were fine after that. No more MacDonalds yey!

Sick of being pestered for Tuk Tuks and everything else going we quickly moved out of Delhi and headed to Goa, desperate for some sun and sand. Stayed in Goa for just over 2 weeks then headed down to a place called Varkala in Kerala. Goa was not the idyllic paradise we expected. It was out of season so not all the guesthouses and restaurants were open. The beaches were also quite dirty. There were touts pestering you as you sunbathed, cows on the beach and dogs everywhere. Ross reckons even the dogs were touts! Random guys were sneaking up on us whilst we were sunbathing to get a look at our skin. We've kept getting asked for photos. Everyone thought I had a skin disorder because of my freckles. Some women were coming up to me and touching my arms saying 'Lady, you look very white, are these (freckles) because of the sun...he doesn't have it as bad as you...'haha!

Had a our first cockroach experience in Goa. Checked into what we thought was an cheap but clean hotel. When we got into bed on the evening Ross found some bugs crawling on him. We lifted back the sheets to find the matress was crawling, so quickly put it back. We were watching TV for a while when a cockroach fell from the ceiling fan, onto the bed and scurried into the corner of the room. Both being total wimps when it comes to bugs, spent the night in a right panic looking at the fan to make sure no more fell onto us. Needless to say we checked out at 5am the next day! I was seriously having thoughts whether I was cut out for backpacking!

It took us 18 hours on the train to get there and was well worth it. Varkala was really pretty, all the hotels and restaurants are set along the cliff edge so you look out to sea.

It took us 48 hours on the train to get back to Delhi from Kerala-what a killer! There's only so many times you can play cards...and we only know how to play snap!

We went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal after getting back from Kerala. Stayed in a very expensive hotel close to the train station so we could catch the train to Agra early. When we finally got to Agra we jumped in a taxi and headed over to the Taj. The taxi driver was going on at us that the Taj was closed as it was Friday. We thought it was just another scam so still went. Got into the grounds and we were told by every Rickshaw driver that the Taj definately was closed. Trust us to come on the one day the Taj is closed! We hopped on a Rickshaw and went round the back of the Taj, got some piccies. I told Ross it looked better from the back anyway but he was having none of it. Saw a few other disappointed travellers at the rooftop restaurants looking at the Taj. Guess they'd not spotted, in the Lonely Planet that it was closed either.

Got back to Delhi, only stayed a few days before our flight to Beijing. We were pleased to get out of Delhi as the bombings were going off whilst we were there. Great food though.