Travel Update

Now in Nanjing. Made it this far with my lonely planet and my limited Chinese. And some had little faith in me!

Got ferry from Dalian to Yantai 9shandonhg0 and managed to find ourselves a lovely dingy place for 50 kunai for the room 95 euro). Nothing too special to Yantai, so we jumped in a minibus to Qingdao. Some of you may have heard of Qingdao (written on the bottle as Tsingtao) beer. This is where the stuff comes from. Met an interesting Chinese lady on the bus who taught engine repair for BMW in Nanjing and was also a professional debt collector1 she knew one or two places in Qingdao, which was cool1

Qingdao has an old town and a new part. The old part has all the colonial style and new copy-of-colonial style buildings. It has a nice pier and some churches. The new part is more typical of modern china. Lego concrete, with little charm or character. A little like Dalian except richer.

We took an overnight train to Suzhou that evening. It was my first time on a Chinese train. It was cool. WE got a hard sleeper, which was a sort of room with no door with 6 bunks. The train wasn't that busy so it was just us and a Chinese guy, who didn't say anything.

Service was really good on the train. There were people serving food and drink and people to refill your hot water flask. The train was clean and the beds were fine. It was good just kicking back and having a laugh and watching China roll by!

We were originally going to go to Nanjing and book tickets there for our final leg from Nanjing to Beijing for the following week. We reckoned with Chinese New Year, it would be nigh on impossible to get tickets the following week. The train guy told us we could get the Nanjing to Beijing tickets in Suzhou, so we changed our ticket. Arrived in rainy Suzhou. The soft rain reminded me of Ireland!

There is a blurb which goes like “Above there is Heaven and below there is Hang Zhou and Suzhou”. Suzhou is famous for its gardens and lovely women, according to the Lonely Planet guide book! The gardens were pretty cool. Didn’t see that many beautiful women though! Suzhou was definitely rich. Around the city centre anyway. Very westernized and nicer than Dalian. Everyone whizzed around on electric bikes and electric scooters, which was cool! WE lost a lot of time the first day looking for hotels and finding train tickets. The second day, we rented some old 1-gear bikes and hit for the gardens in the mist! Yeah, pretty nice (the Humble Administrator’s Garden), but I think the Garden of the Master of the Nets was nicer. Maybe it was cos we did it at 8am the next day, where there was nobody there and the sun had shown its face. The silence was broken, however, when a mob of Japanese tourists overran the place. Time to make our exit to Hang Zhou!
The ticket situation has worked out better than I thought. Train stations have been mayhem but queues have sort of worked contrary to what I have heard about queuing not existing in China! The only problem was getting tickets from Nanjing to Beijing. I ended up getting a flight, which was cheaper than the lads’ train tickets, and they could only get a train ticket from Suzhou to Beijing!

Each city we visited seemed to be richer than the last. Hang Zhou is famous for its West Lake, which has been written about by countless Chinese poets. The West Lake we saw was nothing like the China of those guys’ times! The lakeshore was littered with Mediterranean-style cafes, bars and restaurants as well as designer shops! There was even a Ferrari and Porsche dealership! The lakeshore was nice though and the view across the lake to the hills was beautiful.

We opted for “mountain bikes” as our mode of transport. Each of us had our own particular bike problem. My gears didn’t work and the front wheel kept losing alignment with the handlebars. Rob’s saddle kept going down, which was quite amusing for us. Ben’s brakes didn’t work too well. We cycled around the lake and scaled one of the hills for a breathtaking panoramic view. We then hit for tea country. They have a Tea Village. Pretty much a place set up to tout tea to tourists. On the bus up there a woman started talking to us and invited us to drink (buy) tea in her house. The lads wanted to go to the tea museum down the way first. She didn’t want to take no for an answer. We fecked off down the hill and went for a lovely walk in the quiet countryside, surrounded by tea plantations, took in the museum and then went back to the village where another woman took us in. She said she was a tea picker and we chatted to her and tasted her tea, which was quite nice.

We ended off the evening in a local restaurant where we had a fantastic Chicken dish, where they wrap a whole chicken in big leaves and bake it. It was yummy! We tended to go for the cheaper, local places rather than going to the tourist traps. They always seem to be surprised to see a couple of foreign lads come in!

We got to Nanjing today. We have just wandered around the town and tomorrow we will take in some sights. There is a lot of history in this city, which is also quite modern and rich!

This trip has been great fun. The Chinese I have learned has really made a difference to the trip. I can chat to local people and get more out of the while experience1 Chinese people we have met have been really friendly and generous and helpful! This is the life…