Category — China

6 Things we found out about China:-

1. The Chinese people are incredibly friendly and will go out of their way to help you;
2. The Beijing subway is the cleanest, most organised subway I’ve ever been in;
3. You have to put your bags thru an xray machine at every subway and attraction in Beijing;
4. Facebook does not work;
5. You can have ox’s penis in a hotpot(!);
6. There are 77 McDonald’s stores in Beijing city.

Favourite thing we did:-

Paul – The Wall
Amanda – The Wall
Caitlin – Terracotta Warriors, Xi’an
Georgie – The Great Wall
Ashlea – Bamboo rafting on the Yulong River, Yangshuo
Michael – The Great Wall

Favourite food:-

Paul – Double cooked pork at Sims & Stuffed green peppers at Yangshuo
Amanda – Best Chinese food was everything at Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel, Chengdu - consistently brilliant (Pizza Hut was also refreshingly nice)
Caitlin – The Saddle Mexican Cantina, Beijing & Pizza Hut
Georgie – Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel & Pizza Hut
Ashlea – The Saddle & Pizza Hut
Michael – The Saddle & Pizza Hut

Favourite Place:-

Paul – Beijing
Amanda – Beijing
Caitlin – Beijing
Georgie – Yangshuo
Ashlea – Beijing
Michael – Beijing

Thing disliked the most:-

Paul -  Multiple admission fees to almost every sight in Beijing
Amanda – smokers on the train and in restaurants
Caitlin – public spitting
Georgie – spitting
Ashlea – public toilets at Xingping
Michael – cruise on the Li River

Due to the way our round the world ticket works, we had to work out the dates for all our flights in advance before we left Australia.  We can change them but with a penalty of $80 per person – which obviously when you times that by 6 becomes kinda costly.  So the best we could do was estimate the amount of time we wanted to spend between flights and go with it.

We ended up with way more time in Beijing than we needed and so we were left cooling our heels, waiting for our flight day.  Not such a bad thing though, gave us plenty of time to investigate the sights we wanted to see at a leisurely pace (or not) and also spend a couple of days doing nothing but reading a book or for the kids – the dreaded fractions and grammar!!

We also worked on our French, which we’re learning as a family and generally sat around waiting for our clothes to dry (one of the disadvantages of having one set of warm clothes!!)

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We have continued working our way around the sites of the capital, including Wangfujing pedestrian mall (including the snacks in the night market – think starfish, seahorse or scorpion kebabs… ) and still attempting to order dinner at the largely non-English speaking Chinese restaurants. 

 Tonight we found a menu that consisted of lamb spines, whole pigs head in a pot and deep fried cow’s intestines.  If nothing else it could be developed into a good weight loss program…? [Read more →]

It would be an understatement to say that I wasn’t looking forward to taking the sleeper train from Xi’an to Beijing!  On the bright side, this time it was only 11-12 hours rather than 15, so if we were to suffer, at least it would be a shorter sentence.

It turned out to be no problem.  This is such a well worn route that there are numerous trains to Beijing every hour and most of the soft sleepers are taken up by foreigners who obey the non-smoking signs.  What a relief.. [Read more →]

Xi’an is the ancient capital of China and it’s sort of what you expect from the tourist brochures, with lots of beautiful old buildings with the ornamental Chinese roof decorations etc.  It also has plenty of multistorey apartment buildings, office blocks and mega shopping malls to service the teeney weeney population of 8 million!

Unfortunately we had to cut short our intended stay due to the lack of train tickets to Beijing if we didn’t go earlier.  We saw most of the highlights though, which are mostly clustered around the centre of town – the Bell Tower, Drum Tower, the ancient city wall and of course the premier event – the Museum of the Terra-cotta Warriors & Horses.

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We had our first Chinese train trip from Chengdu to Xi’an (pron. She Ahn) and we had to do our best just to survive with sanity intact.  Firstly, we had to brave the ticket office the day before just to get tickets on the sleeper.  We lined up at the counter marked “foreigners” but funnily enough the clerk there did not speak anything but Chinese! 

The ticket office is a full on expedition in itself (it’s in a separate building and the queues are massive but really it’s nothing compared to the actual station itself). [Read more →]

We had the choice of taking the train from Guilin to Chengdu, which would have meant a 23 hour journey – or we could pay $10 extra and fly, which would take an hour and a half.  Wasn’t much of a decision, we were off to the airport!

Chinese airports are no different to Australian ones.  They’re all run by a corporation who owns all the restaurants which are rediculously expensive – one difference here though, the food was very good.

Anyway, we boarded our tiny little plane emblazoned with China South-Western Airlines and prayed that they had a better safety record than Garuda!  No problems there though – we touched down in Chengdu 5 minutes before schedule and were off to find our way into the city.

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The one night we stayed in Guilin, we had to venture out to find some dinner.  We soon discovered that not only do the restaurants keep giant fish tanks so you can choose your fresh fishy dinner, you can also choose your duck or chicken from a cage out the front.  One near our hotel had a pheasant as well. 

We all quite like the cute little duckies who live in the lake near our home in South Perth and every spring, parade their ducklings through everyone’s gardens, so it wasn’t particularly nice to see a couple of them locked up in a tiny cage, quacking away, knowing they were only another menu order away from the barbeque!  We have seen the photos of the duck dishes – they come basically whole (just chopped into bits) with the head and beak still on the plate – it’s really gross! [Read more →]

Yangshuo is a big town by Australian standards and then in the middle of it, there is a tourist precinct which is pedestrianised (thank goodness) based around West Street.  This whole area consists of lots of cobbled streets and alleys with old style buildings, lots of shops and craft stalls and restaurants. 

 It is apparently one of the favourite Chinese tourist destinations and caters mainly for this market.  We got a hotel right in the middle of West St and stayed there for almost a week.  We could find our way around really easily and after a while started to feel right at home. 

We met an American family from Salt Lake City who had 4 children as well, so we caught up with them a few times and they took us to a restaurant they had found.  The 8 kids sat at one table and the four adults at another and naturally it wasn’t long before we started to attract attention.  We were sitting outside and lots of people were walking past and starting taking photos of the kids.  Three of the Isom kids are adopted from China so they have been learning Chinese as a family.  As a result, when the paparazzi gets a bit over the top, their family joke has been to ask for money from the snappers – this usually puts them off and gets rid of them. 

On this occasion, it started to get a bit out of hand, as the restaurant was becoming surrounded by people with cameras – there was even a lady who set up a tripod!  The kids were starting to get a bit over it and so Bella, the eldest of the Isom kids, started calling out “yi kwai”! “yi kwai”!  which means one yuan (our equivalent of about 20 cents) for a photo.  A lot of the Chinese snappers laughed and immediately started to move on – the tripod lady carried on setting up her perfect snaps but didn’t want to hand over the dough – for some reason she didn’t think it was funny, although all the kids thought it was hilarious – as did most of the Chinese tourists.  One man who had come and asked us if it was ok to take photos (most never do this, they just go right ahead) suddenly whipped out his wallet and handed each of the kids a one yuan note.  They were in raptures by this stage and all thanked him profusely. 

After dinner we all went to a craft shop in the main street where the Isom kids had spotted some glassware earlier.  While the girls were all shopping, it didn’t take long for Michael to be surrounded by tourists.  He immediately whipped out his yuan note and started waving it and yelling “Yi kwai”!  They obviously thought he was very cute as they were all laughing and stuffing money into his hands while posing for photos with him.  One man gave him a 10 yuan note.  I tried to give it back to him and make him understand that I thought it was too much but he shook his head and walked off into the crowd, refusing to take it back.  Michael was loving it and suddenly the boy who hated to have his photo taken was posing sweetly!

We went to a little toyshop so he could see what he could spend his money on and suddenly a group of girls came over and indicated to us that they wanted to get their photos taken with the kids and held out their yuan notes.  We realised they must have been amongst the crowd in the main street, and thought they had to pay!  By the end of the night, Michael had accrued 21 yuan and thought he had found his entrepreneurial niche!

The bus trip from Nanning to Guilin was a short one of only 4 hours.  Luckily the bus station (and most of Nanning) has signs written in both Chinese script and English, so we were able to find out which gate our bus left from easily enough.  

Guilin is a lot smaller than Nanning and probably more like what China was like before it’s economic boom.  There were no English signs (or romanic characters) and very few people speak English.  This makes life very interesting to say the least, as trying to follow a map or ask directions is really hard. 

The staff in our hotel spoke no English beyond “passport”.  We have become quite good a charades as we always have to ask for extra pillows and towels – although Caitlin has declared she will never go ask for extra toilet paper!!  [Read more →]