China

Well it's been a while but we are now in China and our blog site is blocked!! Also, Hong Kong has a distinct lack of internet cafes as the place as an over-abundance of wi-fi. Nice.

So we are here, in the big red, having a great time. We arrived, very late, after a very long bus ride, in Guilin. A place that is coveted by the Chinese people as the most beautiful place in the country, and it was really close! We arrived late so we didn't get anything done until the next day inehich we had a good chance to explore. The scenery here is amazing, limestone peaks rising from valleys and the Li River winding through it all. We had a lovely day exploring and topped it all of with visit to the acrobats show - despite the rudeness of locals, a great show.



The following day we headed down the river by bamboo raft, a wonderful experience, weaving through the unbelievable landscape towards Yang Shuo, a small town, supposedly even more beautiful. And it really was! On the banks of the river, seperated from itsaelf from huge pinnacles of rock, with nothing to do but admire them and wander around. We spent our 1st full day here hiking the pinnacles for amazing views and enjoying the scenery. Day 2 brought bike riding out to "Dragon Bridge", 10km away. We rented our bike and got on it, only to find the road turn to track, turn to bare rocks 5km out! It was quite the trek there but the whole ride was littered with amazing natural sights. The bridge itself is 500 years old and quite spectacular. From the bridge we started our ride back, which became very eventful as we the track got smaller and smaller until we were pushing the bikes through orchards! Eventually we ended up on a raft to cross the river again before we the short, finally smooth, ride back to town.

We left that evening on another terrible night bus for Shenzen, to finally get us to Hong Kong. We arrived in the morning and after a little wander with our new Japenese freind in the wrong direction (his fault!) we were in a cab to the border. We finally made it into HK and to Kowloon, just across from HK Island, and our hotel - a very dingy little place that still cost us US$25 a night! So we decided to make the most of it and hit the town right away. We had to get our Russian Visas here and had no idea how long it would take and we still had not recieved our package from teh Russian travel agency.... so all we had was time.



We explored the area we were in and visited both the HK Culture Museum and the Science Museum, both very nice and different to what we had seen before, lots of VERY old Chinese artifacts. We finished our day with more wandering and a financial saving by going to see "The Hangover" instead of visiting one of the many expensive bars! HK is a very expensive place for day to day living!

For our 2nd day we decided to head over to Hong Kong Island and explore that side. With lots of Shopping Malls and Western commodities on offer we decidedd to head to The Peak for a view over the bay to Kowloon. The tram up was fun but the view was smoggy! So we headed back down to start the evening with a beer or two. Somehow we managed to find a great little bar that had both Sierra Nevada and Anderson Valley beers!! Crazy!

We finally got our Visa support so we went to the Russian Embassy to find out that we were able to get it in just a day! It cost us a lot but was worth it! So we spent our day essentially wasting time, wandering around Central and the rest of Hong kong Island. Returning triumphantly with our visas in hand... Trans-Mongolian, here we come!

For our last full day in HK we decided to visit a blast from the past for us...... Disneyland! So we spent a long, hot day cruising the rides and having a childish time, enjoying every minute!

We left the following day on a 20 hr train to Shanghai, where we would get back into the swing of things again!

More soon!!