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.