China part two - Yichang to Hong Kong.

Yichang is pretty but there is nothing there really it was just a stopover before we got on our boat that would take us up through the three gorges area. We had eagerly awaited the boat as the scenery was meat to be beautiful, but more importanty we had been promised thet there woud be on-board kareoke or 'Kariboaty!' as it was christened (in a strong northern accent). When we first got on the boat it was very exciting and the foyer has a chandelier and carpet and was very nice. And then we saw our cabins which were HORRIBLE! Being used to budget travel we have previously stayed in worse places, but the plush hotels of the tour had spoiled us and the cabins were dirty (and we diddnt even look behind the furniture) and smelled sooo bad. We were jeaous of Sara and Orissa's room because they had a toilet seat, but on the other hand our toilet door stayed shut. We all dealt with this by congregating on deck and getting drunk on various Chinese spirits. Our luxury cruise took us through the gigantic Three Gorges Dam through a series of locks that were over a hundred feet tall each. It was all very impressive.

The next day we were woken up at some ungodly hour to get on a smaller boat, to get on another even smaller boat so we could explore further up into one of the smaller rivers. The whoe area is very beautiful, the mountains are green, the cliffs are high and we even saw monkeys. But heavy drinking on the boat the night before meant half of us felt terrible, and it was very hard going. The views afforded to us by the boat were very cool and at night when we were all hungover we all snugged up in Spiv and Cath's cabin and watched a film with the window behind the TV screen and we could see all the twinkling lights on the hills and on the other ferrys on the water.

After the boat there was a bus/overnight train/bus sandwich that seemed to go on forever (we were al sick of eating instant noodles on trains) but at the end of that we were rewarded with Yangshuo. Whenever you see anything promoting tourism to China it will have pictures of the region around Yangshuo, the land in the area is pretty flat but dotted around are these big mountains shaped like upside down cups. The prettiest part is the stretch of the Li river starting at Xingping (which is on the back of the 20 yuan note) and we did a cruise on a bamboo raft down the river, which was awesome. The next day we went off as a group cycling to an area of the river with smaller bamboo rafts. Before you get on them, tiny old ladies with dentures made completely from silver metal sell you water pistols fashioned from bits of pipe for 30p so that when you are going down the river, rather than a tranquil paddle its an extended waterfight across a group of rafts. It was a lot of fun, the handmade water pistols were very effective and everyone was absolutely soaked, including some groups of Chinese tourists that managed to cross our paths. Don't think that we were rowdy British tourists though, the Chinese gave as good as they got!

And the frightening woman we brought the water pistols off. Don't be fooled - she was about 4ft tall but she had a grill like Jaws straight 'outta 'The spy who loved me'.

Another great part of Yangshuo is that as a touristy place lots more people spoke English. Which was good for us as hard as we tried to mumble words in Chinese, we were just terrible - the pronunciation of words for us with our limited reptoire of sounds made it difficult for people to understand what the hell we were tying to say anyway so it was nice to be able to chat with the locals - something we had been unable to do before. (Except Lois of course, who 'released' all the infomation we needed including such questions as 'Why dont the babies in China wear nappies' which they don't and there is a very interesting reason why...) Another thing that was very helpful to know was the kind of sign language they had for different numbers in China, it made haggling a lot easier.

The view from our holel in Yangshuo.

After Yangshuo it was off on our very last overnight train to Hong Kong, where we had our last meal as a group and then wandered onto the bay (Which was another beautiful city view, like the Bund in Shanghai) to watch the Light show which is made up by all the different buildings flashing their lights to music accompanied by lazers pointing up into the sky. We went out with the intention of going to a kareoke bar (which we had all talked about non stop since we got to China) but after one failed attempt where we ended up in a strip club we brought beers (5% strength beers in HK thank you!) and utiised the hotel common room instead, where we had an emotional goodbye drink with Lois. The next day was sad as we said goodbye to Rob and Kate to continue their honeymoon at a much more romantic location in Thailand and Orissa who was off to Cambodia.

We had grown quite attached to the rest so we planned to meet up the next day, but dragged Cath, Spiv and Thomas off with us to our next hotel as we just couldn't bear to leave them. It was in Chungking Mansions which is famed for being a wreched hive of scum and villainy, but our guesthouse though teeny was clean, safe and had an awesome view over the city. Over the next couple of days we went to museums, took the Star ferry, rode up the Mid-level escalators (a bunch of escalators) and shopped at various markets. We met up with Sara, Jamie, Cordy Klaus, Louisa and Marco one last time for a picnic at the top of Victoria Peak which looks out over Hong Kong Central just as the sun went down.

The bay.

The Big Bhudda on Lantau Sadie and Thomas Tawn went to see. Huge!

The next day we said goodbye to Cath and Spiv who we made promise would come to see us when we got back as we had told them all abouts the delights of Birmingham and now they cannot wait to see the sights!. After that we all explored different parts of Hong Kong, Sadie went to Lantau with Thomas Tawn (sweetcorn) to see the Big Bhudda and soak up some rays on the beach, Rich took advantage of the uptown hotels swimming faciities with Sara and I went off up the peninsula to Sai Kung to meet up with the lovely June who looked after me just like I was back at home and took me out for the best thai food in HK!

And then all of a sudden our time in Hong Kong was over, and i'm sorry to say we diddnt try much food there (sorry Kwok!) as it had amazing western food (Hardys wine!!) and everything else was very expensive. We did shop our asses off though, the markets and malls in HK are wonderful. So it was a sad goodbye to Sara and Thomas Tawn (face of a prawn) and off up to Shenzhen where we discovered the horrors of overnight sleeper busses on our way back to Yangshuo. We planned to go there for a few reasons firstly being that it has great climbing and secondly because as I said earlier, people speak English there so we could get by without Lois there to guide us.