Crouching Tiger Leaping Poons!

Kathmandu to Hong Kong was yet another shock to the system - from the cool mountain air at 1100m, to a sticky humid megalopolis at sea-level, stepping back into the 1st world was somewhat disconcerting, despite the obvious remnants of British rule still lingering in the air. From road signs to plug sockets to Marks and Spencers, it was clear this was one of the last few pieces of foreign land we had clung onto for so long, eventually taking back our flag and giving in to the natives... I guess we should follow the new example of Chinese colonialism and just claim countries bordering us - oh yeah, we already did :)

Back to 1st world prices meant we could barely afford the shoebox of our 14th-floor hotel room (2m x 3m! - bigger than the first one we saw, which was literally only big enough for a bed and the door to swing open), however there were plenty of excellent attractions for free - our most memorable one was the science museum...

Beth braves the bed of nails

We enjoyed the hectic city life for 4 days while we waited to get our Chinese visas, wandering around the island hills - over 80% of Hong Kong is tropical forest would you believe. The rest is skyscrapers.

Views across the harbour were also particularly impressive, however the world's largest light-show, the 'Symphony of Light', was the worst thing since un-toasted bread. Imagine a handful of drunkards playing with those laser-pens from the top of a couple of buildings, and you get the idea. Despite the lack of 'wow' factor we made the most of it with a rare find in Asia - cider! Plus front row seats across the harbour watching the city come to life at night.

After finally collecting our visas from the super-aircon icebox of a visa office (with it's no-nonsense approach on elevator queues - see signs) we set off into Mainland China - crossing the border meant the end of any signs translated into English, in fact the end of signs even vaguely translatable thanks to their highly-stylised characters. In the places in China where signs were translated we found often hilarious examples of "Chinglish" - e.g. 'please not put feet on my face' for a keep-off-the-grass sign.

Immediately the scale of the country is apparent - our 3-hour bus from Hong Kong to Guangzhou never once went through anything approaching countryside once we had crossed the border - the Shenzhen skyscrapers stretch as far as the eye can see. Booking a train ticket in Guangzhou again gave us the feeling of being ants, as thousands upon thousands of people jostle past you clutching their ubiquitous pot-noodles (30p for one the size of a bucket!) for the immense journeys about to commence.
Our train to Chengdu in the Sichuan province took an interesting 32-hours - passing through misty rice-paddies, mountainous landscapes and, of course, building projects everywhere on a scale that make the Severn bridge look like a plank across a stream.




Booking the tickets at the last minute meant the best we could get were top bunks on the hard sleeper carriage - you may envision planks of wood up the wall but hard sleeper is actually pretty comfy:

We came to Chengdu to see a friend Katy who we'd met up with last in Laos, the very night I took on a glass door in fact. She's teaching English there and lives with her boyfriend Phil and another couple, and made us feel really welcome in their top-floor apartment for 9 days - they have the top-storey along with the entire rooftop of the apartment block - an excellent party venue if you don't mind the roof crumbling occasionally (the place is not that old but Chinese wisdom is to build as cheaply as possible then tear the whole thing down 10 years later when it starts to crumble).

They invited us to enjoy the local specialty - the Sichuan hot-pot, a bubbling vat of oil in the centre of the table, flavoured with plenty of fiery Sichuan peppercorns that leave your tongue with a strange numb sensation. You take (pretty much any kind of) food and cook it in the oil, before hooking it out and dipping it into your bowl which is also full of oil, with garlic and other seasoning, before eating it. Incredibly oily but a very sociable way to eat, with the meal often lasting for hours - we were there 4 hours! A bit too oily for us, but the Sichuan pepper is definitely a flavour that grows on you, numbing your mouth as it does. Topping off the meal was a bottle of Bai-jo, the Chinese equivalent of Sake and a lot stronger to boot. Also an acquired taste!

Chengdu was one of the hottest and most humid places we had been to for ages, not to mention being infested by damn mosquitoes...

Looking manly in the cheapest net we could find which was this rather frilly number

Living in a house was a great change from the hundreds of bare hotel rooms before. In exchange for a place to sleep I kept the fridge stocked with beer and Beth made good use of her cooking skills - we made many a trip to the local Carrefour (Jialefu if pronounced by the Chinese) to be able to enjoy cooking our own meals again :)

I also tried to eat my body-weight in toast.



Downstairs in Carrefour we found the equivalent of their fish-counter - rows and rows of tanks full of (mostly) live fish ready to be caught by you, the consumer.

Outside of the restaurants, China has it's fair share of lazy pet cats

Chengdu is also home to China's largest Panda Breeding Centre, which is not much more than a glorified zoo/prison. True, they encourage the pandas to breed and have had some success, but with the amount of roamable panda territory disappearing by the day it's hard to see the species will have a future outside places like this.

A funky-looking fully-grown red panda

We had some great nights out with Katy and friends, a memorable one being a meal at the all-you-can-eat-and-drink (£12!) Japanese restaurant where the table soon disappeared under sushi and sashimi plates, beer bottles and sake cups. Another great thing about China is no tipping; you are never expected to tip anywhere, in fact if you try you may cause them to lose face - they could be offended that you think they need your charity.

Our time in Chengdu ended with a house-warming party for Katy's place, as they had only moved in recently. The theme was sensibly decreed as "70s porno fancy dress", which was thankfully nice and easy to adapt our larger-than-life hair styles to...

Back on the road again we took a train south through epic scenery - train tracks carved into the narrowest of gorges, going through tunnels for so long that I started to get sleepy, until the occasional bright flash of daylight jolted me awake.

In need of some rest after hectic city-life we took a trip out to a spa and (in only one of the pools thankfully) had our feet and legs nibbled at by "cleansing" fish. Not for the ticklish.

Another 9-hours north (a Chinese "short-hop") we arrived at Lijiang, a quaint Chinese village steeped in history, with an old town that it's easy to lose yourself in.

Beth found herself yet another little friend, just a few weeks old, wandering around our hostel room.

Like every other decent place in China, the town is often jam-packed with Chinese tourists, so of course needs to cater to local tastebuds...

Crickets, grasshoppers and dragon-flies (not so dainty anymore!)

The real reason we came here, however, was the legendary Tiger Leaping Gorge, a short trek through a steep narrow gorge overshadowed by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (real name).

An 8-9 hour walk seemed like a breeze to us after a month in Nepal, so we initially planned a couple of days but then met a great group of people and found a hostel with a stunning roof terrace, so we stayed an extra night and got the group hooked on canasta.

World's best toilet view!

Mountain goats are absolutely everywhere here - and seem completely oblivious to you even at close range.

In the Tiger Leaping spirit we took up an idea our friend Phil gave us - the Crouching Tiger Leaping Poons!

Beth's birthday, thanks to our extra lazing around on the trek, turned out to be a travelling day so we postponed it for a few days later back in Lijiang. It ended up as a mostly gastronomic celebration, as we munched our way through (almost) every kind of street-food on offer throughout the day. As it was her birthday I agreed to go tea-tasting (one must make sacrifices), despite the fact they all tasted exactly the same to me (even the leaves from the special £5000 box), however the ceremony of tea-preparation and pouring was an interesting sight - honed through centuries of tradition to an elaborate, if messy, ritual.

Time was pushing on, and Beth had another massage course booked in Thailand so we made a swift exit south into Laos, crossing the north of the country in one day in battered old buses we had almost forgotten about (as the bruises had long since disappeared), stopping at the Thai/Laos border in the same guesthouse where 5 months previous I had taken on a glass door and lost. We arrived just in time to watch an epic monsoon storm rage across the Mekong in front of us - a small taster of what's to come.

A few classics for all you sign-lovers...

Outside the lift doors

Please care for the grass?