Hong Kong

I'm now finally in Hong Kong after staying in a hotel in Wu Yi Shan for a few days due to infrequent flights here. Though the flight on the way over here was only about an hour and a half it was without a doubt the worst flight I have ever had. For starters the flight was delayed for two hours due to Typhoon Neoguri in nearby Hainan. For some reason the staff started handing out Chinese pot noodles, trying to appease the passengers I suppose. During the flight the plane experienced a lot of turbulence. It didn't help that during the strong turbulence when the plane would suddenly drop or raise dramatically everybody on the plane had to sound it out. The first time it tried to land it had to abort, pull up and circle round again due to the winds being too strong. This manoeuver caused many people to throw up, so I went from being stuck in a cramped, noisy plane to being stuck in a cramped, noisy and smelly plane. Second time round it did land thankfully and I was glad to be off the plane. Hong Kong International Airport is probably the most confusing airport I've been to so far, but I got rewarded for being patient with the flight as my luggage was the first one off the carousel.

Next up was a taxi ride from the aiport across the Tsing Ma Bridge to Kowloon where I'm staying. The differences between mainland China and Hong Kong were immediately apparent, even in the wet and windy taxi ride. You can still see the British influence over here, from the road signs to older currency still in circulation bearing Queen Elizabeth's head on it. The towering skyscrapers loom over the neon-lit streets below. I seem to be drawn to neon like a moth to light, I love the masses of neon lights in asia. It's a shame they've not taken off in Europe.

Unfortunately my first full day in Hong Kong was a Sunday so many places were closed but I still managed to go exploring and I've found that much like China, you will never starve in Hong Kong. In mainland China almost literally ever other shop sold food of some sort and the streets come alive with street vendors selling all sorts of food to eat. One small car park I had walked past during the day even transformed into a makeshift restaurant at night with garden chairs and tables laid out. Hong Kong is much the same, except instead of stalls they have proper shops and a lot of places are brand names instead of run by individuals. The problem is all of it tastes so good it's really easy to overeat here and you have to reign yourself in a lot.

One type of food I have managed to escape on my journey so far is fast food. Though I took a picture of McDonald's in Moscow, I never went in. McDonald's does not exist in Mongolia and where I went in China it was too rural to have a McDonald's. There is one thing worse than fast food back home, though, and that's Chinese fast food. There is a Chinese fast food chain called dico's that only serves chicken but is more like McDonald's than KFC. The food there is absolutely awful and I don't reccomend it over the abundant better tasting street food. The mayonnaisse tastes funky and they use the worst reconstructed chicken possible. I did give in in Hong Kong though and had a McDonald's for lunch on the first day. There's not really any difference between in and English McD's except you can get asian style seasonings for your chips, such as seaweed. After sitting down to eat my McDonald's some Chinese person sat down opposite at the table next to me and began shouting off in the distance about something or other in Cantonese. He didn't bother trying to talk to me since it was obvious I didn't understand him and nobody was looking at him either, but that didn't seem to deter him, he kept ranting on and on about something. It seems the place to incite revolution in Hong Kong is fast food restaurants. He was still mouthing off after I finished up and left.

Hong Kong has easily become one of my favourite places in the world so far and I've chosen to extend my stay here so I can see more of it. Where I go next from here I don't know, yet, but I shall have to decide soon.

Mongolian and Chinese countryside

Up until this point I haven't been able to access an Internet cafe with a decent enough connection to upload pictures, but now I'm here I have the chance to post some pictures of the stunning scenery in Mongolia and China.

Mongolia

Mongolia is a country the size of western Europe with just under 3 million residents, around half of which live in the capital Ulaan Bataar. Thus most of Mongolia is virtually completely unspoilt and to really see Mongolia you need to get out into the countryside. It is an amazingly quiet and relaxed place as you watch the clouds gently roll over the bare mountains stretched as far as the eye can see, under which herd animals graze in total freedom around the unimposing gers sparesly littered across the landscape. I have never known total peace as I have in Mongolia.



















China

Unfortunately I've only managed to snap a very small percentage of all I have seen but China has some of the most amazing scenery I have seen in the world. Fujian province is a relatively undeveloped province too, so there is a lot of unspoilt countryside.











Not countryside, but the local town, Taining. Even regular buildings are distinctly Chinese.

In love with China

Due to a change in plans I've had to cut my stay in Taining short and I'm currently in WuYiShan today, staying in a hotel tonight before flying off to Hong Kong tomorrow. It is a shame in a way because I have absolutely fell in love with China. Just walking down the street today exploring it hit me how much I love this place. It is such a unique country, it is almost like another world. Communicating with the people is always an interesting experience because everything is so different out here. Even something as simple as counting to 10 using your fingers that you would probably take for granted is different out here. One to five is as normal but 6 to 10 are completely different. Chinese used to foreigners would understand using your other hand for 6-10 but I am not in a part of China that gets many foreign visitors at all. In fact, myself and another academy student here named Isaac are the only foreigners I have seen my entire time being here, as compared to even somewhere like Mongolia when I saw a handful.

The scenery out here is amazing, I have never seen anything like it before, even the flora out here is unique. Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to take too many pictures while I'm out here, but I have at least tried to snap some.

I'm not entirely sure what I am doing once I am in Hong Kong. Whether I fly off to somewhere else in asia or fly home I haven't decided yet, but I have decided this will be the first of many travelling adventures to come.

Funniest weekend of my life

I am just recovering from what is probably the funniest and most bizarre weekend of my life. Before I get to that I should provide a quick overview of my week.

I'm staying in a Martial Arts Academy in Fujian province and learning kung fu. There are about 15 students and most of them are studying Shaolin kung fu. Two others and I are studying what's known as 'internal' martial arts rather than Shaolin external. It's less physically demanding and much more mentally demanding. It involves getting into really painful and awkward stances and flowing movements. The idea behind it is that power comes from the inside and you cause a lot of damage with minimal physical exertion. We're learning a mix of Bagwa, Tai Chi and Sun Shi in the mornings and in the afternoons we learn weapons training, my weapon of choice being the trident. Our teacher, Dong, is absolutely high on chi. He is NEVER without a smile on his face and is always laughing. He is also incredibly strong despite having never worked out a day in his life. He has taken numerous roundhouse kicks to the stomach and just laughed at it. He's also managed to bruise a student's arm all over just by practing blocking techniques with her. He has built up such a legendary status among us students that he's seen almost as some sort of deity. He's an amazing dancer, too.

Anyway, to start with my weekend. On Friday all the students move from the academy to the local town, stay in a hotel for the weekend and get incredibly drunk. It was one of the students birthday as well, so there was a huge party at the local bar that night. I didn't stay there long unfortunately as I was shattered and I paid the price; I have a nice shaven bald spot on the back of my head now for being the first to fall asleep.

Saturday was the most bizarre day I have ever experienced. Around lunch time a bunch of us headed out to a local fast food restaraunt to get something to eat. This place is quite off the beaten tourist track and apparently the students at the academy are the only westeners these people have seen so we thought we'd leave them with a good impression of what English people are like, show them our customs and traditions and such. So somehow it was decided in the middle of a fast food restaurant we should all take our shirts off and a couple even stripped to their boxers. We collected our food topless and began to eat it before we decided to have a spontaneous seance in the middle of the meal, so about 7 topless westerners just started holding hands, heads bowed and hummed for about 20 seconds before slamming our hands back down on the table. The staff were giving us some strange looks at this point so we tried to get them involved and convince them this was what all westerners did so we asked them to bring us plenty of black pepper sachets and just opened them and started rubbing them into each others hands, pretending it was a good luck custom back home. We weren't allowed to put food in our own mouths either, so we either had to feed the person next to us or try and throw food across the table into someone's mouth. It was custom to wave at anybody who passed by, of course. Next we all got up from the table at the same time, lined up against a wall at the opposite side of the restaurant and just stood there for 10 seconds before sitting back down at our table but in different places. At one point we nearly convinced one of the staff members to join us, we got him to sit down with us and he started unbuttoning his shirt before he got scared and ran back behind the counter. We did get his hat though, so we passed that back and forth between us. This whole thing lasted about an hour and if the Chinese didn't find western customs strange before they bloody well did now. Looking back at it I can't imagine what the hell the staff were thinking. A bunch of white people come in to their restaurant, start taking their clothes off and throw food around while humming and rubbing pepper into each other's hands.

The stupidity wasn't over yet, so after saying goodbye to the staff in the restuarant we put our clothes back on and decided to head to the local bar, owned by the academy owner who was interviewing 4 Chinese girls for waitressing jobs. We thought we'd show them our western customs so we came in, sat down, took our shirts off and ordered a beer. Bearing in mind this is only about midday. We made a big ceremony about removing our left shoe and placing it in the corner of the room before sitting back down. I had a picture of a camel on my phone and we tried to convince the girls it was our god, so we started bowing to it and I played some Mongolian music I'd picked up that we hummed and prayed to. We then stood up, held hands and started swaying for some reason. It was pretty obvious 3 of the girls were weirded out by it all, one even ran off. The fourth one though was well up for it and started joining in with all the stupid things we were doing, though at this point she was probably very drunk.

We put our shirts back on and decided to go to the local massage parlour for an afternoon. The fourth girl even decided to follow us for some reason, so we just started taking the piss completely and kept asking her 'why' in Chinese all the time. This eventually extended to everyone else so we just started shouting 'why' to everyone we passed and nodded like we thought it meant hello or something. The madness didn't stop in the massage parlour but it was a really relaxing massage and we managed to have some basic conversations with our masseuses and even picked up some more Chinese from them. After messing about with the staff in their we all calmed down a bit, went for a meal at the steak house and finally hit the bar that night. Didn't _completely_ calm down though, because at some point in the night everyone was dancing to Thriller topless and some locals even joined in. I'd brought along a Mandarin phrasebook which got passed around the bar as people just picked out the most random phrases possible to tell locals. I remember at one point about 3 students just wondered around the bar shouting 'I HAVE AN INJURY' in Chinese for absolutely no reason.

It was a bloody madcap weekend and the same wil probably happen next week, but right now I need to go and pick up some supplies before we all head back to the academy.

The Middle Kingdom

I'm quickly stopping in an Internet cafe for an hour or so, so I've just enough time for a quick update, but no pictures this time. A lot also happened since my last post in Mongolia I shall have to recap some other time with pictures.

Essentially though I came down with what I suspect to be food poisoning while staying in the hotel in Mongolia. I was only supposed to be there overnight and I was to catch the last leg of the Trans-Siberian the next day; however I was far too sick to so I ended up staying in that hotel the rest of the day and the next (not eating any of the food, of course). I replaced the last leg of the train journey with a plane trip. It's now just after 6pm and I'm back on track. I've been up since 4am and essentially spent the entire day flying. I caught a plane from Ulan Bator to Beijing, the a plane from Beijing to Xiamen and then a plane from Xiamen to Wuyishan, where I am posting from now.

The Mongolian airport (named after Genghis Khan, of course) was pretty damn small but everything went well. I don't regret missing the last leg of the plane journey, because not only is the border crossing and customs on it a pain (I was warned of over 4 hour waits, much like the Mongolian-Russian border crossing) but I got to see the Great Wall of China from the sky in all its long, winding glory. I want to come back some day and actually walk along it rather than just observe from afar.

Anyway, landing in Beijing immigration took forever and left me with just under an hour to claim my luggage, get to where I needed to be for my next flight, check in and board the plane. My flight itinerary was in my backpack which I didn't fancy stopping to open up and check, but I knew I'd seen 'Terminal 1' printed a lot on it so I took a chance and headed for terminal 1. I soon found a tunnel with a sign on it, "10 minutes to Terminal 1" so after running down that I look around and can't find my flight number. I decided to finally take out my flight itinerary to check my flight number and make sure I'm where I'm supposed to be. So naturally I open up the itinerary and see every single flight I have leaves or enters from a 'Terminal 1' EXECPT the one I needed then, which left from Terminal 2. Where's Terminal 2? Oh wait, back at the start of that tunnel I just spent 10 minutes running down? Ugh.

Xiamen to Wuyishan was an uneventful flight but it was only 40 minutes anyway so nothing much was to be expected. However, when I described Genghis Khan Airport as small earlier I clearly didn't know about Wuyishan airport. It's definetely the most...rustic aiport I've ever flown into (and will fly out of) and definetely the new smallest. It has one runway, space for docking maybe 3 planes at once max and the baggage collection and airport exit are within the same 15m length hall.

After that though, I was finally in China proper instead of just ferrying about airports all day and this place is amazing, it's unlike anywhere else I've ever seen before. I've seen a man carrying around cagefuls of bunnies, a man cycling down the road with a kid facing him in the front basket (must be distracting), people sitting around tables outside shops playing Mah Jong, lots and lots of signs and posters I can't read...yup, I'm definetely in China. Almost immediately after getting out the taxi, I was greeted by a friendly 'Hello' and wave from some random Chinese stranger, so China's off to a good start in my books. Also a lot of staring from locals wandering around town, what with being caucasian and all but I quite like being the centre of attention here.

Right now I am just killing time with my guide in an Internet cafe waiting for a flight to come in at 10:30pm with 5 other Brits before a 4 hour car ride to Tanaing or something where I am going to be for the next 3 months. Hopefully I'll be able to update soon with stories and pictures or what I got up to between my last Mongolian update and now, but I don't know exactly when that will be. I just know right now I'd love a shower and sleep.

Genghis Khan Land

I arrived in Mongolia earlier today, around 8am local time after a day on the Trans-Siberian from Irkutsk. It was a more interesting train journey this time, because not only was the carriage full of Mongolian traders but also a fair amount of foreigners. Along with the 3 Brits and I there was a Finnish man, a Swiss woman, a couple Canadian women and a couple Dutch guys. We all got along well and it was nice to be able to have full conversations in English in contrast to the limited English the locals speak, though the Mongolian traders were entertaining. They were extremely busy during the day, ferrying about all sorts of boxes and bags full of random products. Since there was only myself and one trader in my sleeper, it soon became full of stock. When we reached the Russia-Mongolia border and the customs officials came on board either end it soon became apparent pretty much everyone on board (besides the foreigners) was in on the deal. Even the provodniks were helping the traders cheat their way through customs, they were seen carrying around wads of cash after the officials left. It was quite funny.

The border crossing itself was a pain, though. We had to fill in about 3 seperate forms and about 5 customs forms, which was confusing enough because neither side labelled whether they were customs forms for Russia or Mongolia. The Russians then took our passports for 4 hours, in which time the toilets were locked and the restaurant carriage was taken off the train so it was very boring waiting around for so long. After finally getting our passports back it wasn't long before we had to do the same at the Mongolian side of the border around midnight, though they thankfully were a bit quicker than the Russians.

There was some amazing scenery during the train journey but unfortunately I've no pictures or video footage; I took one picture but the windows were so dirty it was hard to see out of. The Mongolians were definetely friendly enough people as were the westerners so it was a good journey overall.

Arriving in Mongolia after shower and a trip to an Asian bathhouse I was taken around the sites of Ulan Bataar by my guide. The man that existed 800-900 years ago is still worshipped over here, he has a whole building specially built for him:

The first picture is a close up of the middle statue of Gengis Khan.


This memorial in front of Genghi's Khan's building is to the leader of the 1921 People's Revolutionary Army.

I was next taken to the Gandan Monestary. Mongolia is 95% Buddhist so it's got a very special significance over here.


Pigeons over here, instead of being seen as pests and vermin, are fed seeds as they are beleived to be good for the soul or some such.


The stone beds in front of the temple are for people to lay on and pray.

Going in to the temple it was interesting to walk around with the air heavy in incense as Buddhist monks chanted and hit drums. You must always walk clockwise around Buddhist temples and photos are prohibited inside, unfortunately.


The next temple I was taken to is the biggest in Mongolia I believe, called the Eyes Wisdom temple and housed a huge 27m statue. Walking clockwise round this you can spin prayer wheels for good fortune, as many people did. The statue was surrounded by 6,000 smaller Buddha statues, which are believed to protect the large statue. At the altar at the front was burning incense and a framed picture of the Dalai Lama. He is a very respected man over here and seen as a great inspiration to people.

Unfortunately this entry has been a bit rushed since I am next off to the Mongolian countryside for a few days to live in a ger homestay. I'll be back in Ulan Bataar for one more day after that before boarding the final Trans-Siberian train bound for China and I'll probably be able to update then.

Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

Day 1

Early morning my train arrived at my destination, Irkutsk. After a transfer to Listvyanka village I was introduced to Olga, a friendly Siberian women who I will be stayed with for 3 days. She lives with her husband and son, though I never met them. The house is a traditional Siberian 'Izba', best described as a log cabin. At the centre of the household is a square brick structure that doesn't quite reach the roof. This is the heating structure and all the rooms are built around this to keep the house warm. It's kinda of hard to describe so I took a picture.


I was expecting only very basic amenities for a log cabin in the middle of Siberia. These expectations were reinforced when I was driven down the road off of which the house is located and saw what would best be compared to a ghetto back home. To my pleasant surprise, however, it was very comfortable and cosy. They have satellite TV,
a computer and everything much the same as you would expect from somewhere in the city. The toilet is an outhouse which is simply a house in the ground so that left something to be desired and they were missing one other basic amenity but apart from that it's a very nice place, somewhere you could certainly call home.

Russian cuisine left me with something to be desired. I ate street cendor foods, hotel buffets and on the train but nothing stood out as distinctely Russian; all I ate was rather bland and generic. Thus it was especially nice to be greeted in my Siberian homestay with a homecooked meal. Breakfast was a homemade spongecake with something like a sweet rhubarb relish, along with bread and cheese.

After breakfast a local guide took me to the Limnological museum, which is very popular with Russian students judging by the amount of tour groups that showed up throughout the day. The museum was all about the local lake, Lake Baikal, the biggest freshwater lake in the world and home to thousands of species of animals, over 75% of which are unique to the lake. It is in extremely clean lake too; water can be drank straight from it without filtration and the museum was keen to point out that some bottles of Baikal water it had bottled in 1992 were still drinkable to this day.

My guide next took me on a hike up the steep mountain overlooking the Angara river and Lake Baikal, which offers some amazing views of port Baikal.


It is distinctly clear where frozen Lake Baikal ends and the Anagara river begins. Apparently the Angara river never freezes because it is too shallow.


Siberia, far from being a frozen wasteland, offers some truly beautiful scenery.


This is the Shaman Rock. Shamanism is very popular around here, in fact the word Shaman comes from a local native language. Each of the lakes 363 (or there abouts) outlets was considered to be a living god. All were male bar one. Old man Baikal wanted Angara to marry one of the feeble tributaries but she ignored him and ran off with the mighty Yenisey river, the biggest in Russia. Old man Baikal was so angry he hurled a rock at her, but she managed to escape. There the rock remains.

Back home for lunch after cabbage soup with sour cream I had fried Omul, one of the fish indigenous to Lake Baikal, found only here and in one other lake in the world. It had a light batter and was very tasty. It didn't have a very strong flavour but it's definetely unlike fish I've tried before. If anyone ever visits Lake Baikal I reccomend it.

The other missing amenity I mentioned earlier is any sort of bath or shower to wash with. Instead, what I got to experience was a Russian 'banya', sort of like a sauna but the Russians feel theirs is superior as there is no steam, only dry heat. A furnace sits in the corner with a tap coming out of it housing hot water. You can increase the heat by opening a vent in the furnace and pouring water over the stones inside, though it can get VERY hot. A unique experience, but I'll stick to a shower.

Dinner was like raviolli but filled with potato and salad which, judging by the allotment outside, was homegrown.

Day 2
There's only one way to get across the frozen lake.


The snowmobile and my instructor, whose instructions were, in whole, "Right accelerator, left brake. Distance 10 metre'. Simple enough.

We drove out on to the lake, which was a mix of ice with intermittent snow mounds. Between the bigger gaps of snow mounds where there was nothing but pure ice you could feel the back end swaying every now and then, so I thought I would be cocky and try to ride sideways. I did eventually do it, though admittedly I spun out the first couple times. After those spin outs, I was fairly far behind my instructor
so I had no choice but to go faster to catch up  The experience of the cold air rushing against your face as you shoot across the frozen ice and snow at 50mph is one I will not soon forget. Hitting some snow mounds I even managed to get a small amount of air.

I spun out once more right near the end of the journey, when my instructor chose to stop on a particularly slippery path of ice. I managed to hold it, though, and did a perfect 360 spin without stopping. To anyone watching, I did it on purpose.



On the way back my instructor took me through a small clearing along a dirt road through the forest to some huts that looked more like the log cabins I was expecting.



Here we stopped for tea before heading back.

Day 3

I lied above, there is one other decent way to get across the lake.



Experiences and excursions in Siberia are unlike what we have back home. There's something to be said for the lack of health and safety regulations. Yesterday I was expecting to have to sit on the back of a snowmobile as my instructor drove it, but instead I got to ride my own. Likewise today I was expecting to be in the seat but instead that was where my instructor sat; I had to stand at the back and take the reigns. My instructions were even simpler than yesterday: hold on.

The dogs move a hell of a lot faster than expected and as the sled went over the first snow mound it threw my feet off and so I ended up running/skiing (ice) along with the dogs. They don't stop in Siberia, of course, so I had to keep up before I could jump back on. I was a lot more careful with my footing afterwards, especially when going over/through snow mounds.

Later that afternoon I met up again with the 3 Brits I'd met on the train. They're also coincidentally taking the same Ulan Bataar bound train as I am, in the same carriage no less. We took a walk across the lake, which involved a few precarious spots. The day before part of the lake had thawed out and there was a circle of water acround the outer perimeter of the lake. Considering it had been snowing that night and all of today, it had froze back over again but only a very thin layer. In reality we were in no real danger as there was another layer of much thicker ice below it. You try teling that to us as we hear of stories of cars plunging through the ice and myself even bearing witness to the rescue operation of some vehicle below the ice and feel our feet slightly sinking into the lake. I knew there was really no danger though as I'd seen all sorts of vehicles cross the ice and had been across it on a snowmobile and dog sled myself, but it was funny to see the 3 of them worry incessantly.

We soon found a lakeside bar and stopped for a pint of beer, where we discovered out paths met again. They also confirmed my suspicions about the restaurant carriage of the Trans-Siberian. The Russian carriages are all privately owned so they can be anything from horrible to amazing. We simply had a bad one on the way here, the one the 3 of them got from Ekaterinburg was apparently better.

I also learnt Russians do not like giving change, as when we tried to pay the 200 rouble bill for the beer with a 500 rouble note we were denied and had to go back and make it up with smaller notes. I guess you can be 'too rich' in Russia.

Day 4

Right now I'm in Irkutsk proper and staying with a host family in a Soviet style apartment for the night, before I board my train bound for Mongolia at a ridiculous hour of 5am. I shall probably meet the 3 Brits once more on the station and have in fact just now ran into a Brit from Kent in this Internet cafe,
who is trying to travel the world without boarding a plane. It's amazing the people and stories you run into while travelling. The next time I'll be able to update will probably be in Ulan Baatar, which will be perhaps 2-3 days.