Bells, drums & a bear that wants to be left to die

So Xi'an was the second stop of our trip through China and the city our tour guide Bing had chosen to make his home; if I'm honest I can't entirely see why. It's a fairly average, not particularly attractive city and was the first occasion we have really seen high levels of smog.

We arrived very early in the morning, but were gratefully able to book straight into our hotel, a blessing when you spent the entire previous night unable to sleep on the train. We headed into breakfast in the hotel and quickly regretted our choice, so much so that five minutes later we were sitting in Starbucks, drinking coffee and eating pastries; nearly three months had passed and we had finally succumbed to eating in western restaurants!

In the city of Xi'an the only thing to really do was visit the Bell Tower and Drum Tower and the names kind of give away what awaits you inside. Siobhán & Kirsty were in far better moods than my good self, so gave the drums a good beating whilst I looked on. The most interesting area in town was the Muslim quarter, with huge numbers of Middle Eastern restaurants and a large market where Siobhán started to practice her bartering skills, which I have to say were pretty impressive.

The real reason to be here of course was to visit the Terracotta Warriors which are situated near by. The museum, if we can call it that, is split into three main buildings, but in my opinion they take you through them the wrong way round, as the first and main building houses vast numbers of pretty intact warriors giving a very impressive impact, whilst the second two are far smaller and would work better in build up . . . Chinese Tourist Board take heed! I'm sure they'll be reading our blog ;)

After just a couple of days in Xi'an we were back on a train and heading for Chengdu. This was the mother of all train journeys, being as it was 17 hours in length and to be honest the first train seemed like luxury in comparison to this one. We helped numb the pain by spending several hours in the restaurant car drinking and playing "guess what we've ordered" as the trains are one of the few places where no one seems to speak English and the menus are solely in Mandarin.

The reason for our visit to Chengdu was to visit a Panda reserve. Now don't get me wrong, they're quite cute, particularly the half dozen babies that had not long been born, but we really should be accepting the bloody obvious, that being as a species Pandas are neither meant to or indeed seem to want to survive!

Let's look at the facts, they are biologically carniverous, but can't be arsed to eat anything other than certain kinds of bamboo, a plant to nutritionally void that they have to consume it in vast quantities. Secondly they don't like sex and even for those that can be coaxed into having a go have the unfortunate hinderance of the males being so poorly endowed that they often can't quite make it . . . definitely not a species that would be comfortable showering down the gym!
Let's not blame it all on the poor men though, the women are so unaccustomed to child birth that when they do have a child (generally by means of artificial insemination) they freak out and frequently kill the cub.

I think it's time that we let evolution prove it's worth and take this unfortunately cute species the way of so many before it . . . maybe I'll setup a new group on Facebook "We the undersigned want the Panda to die!" and wait for the death threats to start rolling in!

Anyway, rant over, next stop Mount Emei.

The Beginning of the End

I can't honestly say I wasn't looking forward to China, my idea of a pleasant end to our travels involved more time lying on deserted beaches in a remote part of Thailand, but Siobhán had been adamant that she wanted to travel through China and so it was we touched down in Beijing, not entirely sure what we were to be expecting on the other side of the plane doors.

Well, initial impressions were definitely good, no queues to speak of, shiny new airport and probably the most efficient customs checks to date; every customs officer even had a little pad with four buttons in front of them so that you could rate their performance, can you imagine the uproar by unions in the UK if such a scheme were to be implemented? Anyway, we gave our customs man a top rating, not just because he was quick, but also because we were slightly concerned he'd be dragged away by the authorities if we didn't ;)

As we left the airport we joined our first queue, that for a taxi, and we quickly discovered that queueing in China isn't quite the same as back in dear old Blighty. Indeed walking straight to the front of the queue if you can't be bothered waiting seems to be the order of the day. Despite this very un-English behaviour before too long we were ushered toward a taxi and our first challenge. The tour company we were using had provided us with details of which hotel we were to be checking into, but only in English! A twenty minute muddle of confusion ensued, with us trying to make ourselves understood, speaking to his friend on the phone who was trying their best to translate and me heading back to the taxi queue to ask for assistance, all failing to get us any the nearer to our driver understanding the destination. Finally, I had a brainwave and called the hotel we were going to, explained our situation to the English speaking receptionist and handed over the phone to the driver to receive instructions . . . first hurdle overcome and we were on our way.

The hotel was a pleasant surprise, it wasn't exactly the Ritz, but neither was it the slum I was expecting. Our first day in Beijing was our own and first order of the day, breakfast! We walked around in something of a daze as the confusion of being immersed in a culture with a different alphabet became all too apparent. We finally chose a restaurant at random, only to discover they specialised in curry. We were not about to let this change our minds, as we weren't entirely sure we would fare any better in any other establishment, so we set about enjoying a chinese curry as our first meal in the far east.

The remainder of the day we spent wandering around Beijing and visiting the Temple of Heaven, where we became aware of how many people there really are in this country. It was not possible to get a photo without their being hundreds of others in the shot and a school trip to the temple seemed to consist of more children than I think exist in the UK!

Our first evening meant meeting up with our tour guide and the rest of our travelling companions. The group turned out to be very small and consisted of a 21 year old blonde girl form England, a 70+ aged couple from California and Bing our tour guide. The following two days consisted of a walk along a 30 tower section of the Great Wall, trips to the Summer Palace and Forbidden City and a visit to a charitable project the tour company supports, which helps educate and employ mentally handicapped people from poor homes.

The walk on the wall would probably be the pick of the activities and we ended it by deciding to take a trip down a zip wire over a river. This all seemed like good fun until we reached the top of the queue. Now those of you who know me will realise I am not the most svelt of individuals, but whilst being strapped into the harness and being told "No, No" with a shake of the head I was thinking I would have to trudge down the path in embarassment rather than take the zip wire. Not at all, despite being told (or so I thought) that it did not seem like a good (and by good I mean safe) idea for me to go, due to the size of the harness compared to me, the lady in charge seemed to forget her earlier warnings and simply pushed me over the edge.

I will admit following our earlier exchanges I may have held on a little tighter than I would in other circumstances, but fortunately her terminal predicitions failed to materialise and 30 seconds later I was safe and sound at the bottom of the wire with the rest of the gang.

You can see a video of Siobhán and Kirsty (who were made to go together because Kirsty is so small) heading down the zip wire below.

We ended our three day stay in Beijing, by taking a mini-bus to the train station to take what was to be the first of four overnight train journeys. We were stoping in what is known as hard sleeper class, which basically consists of a doorless cabin the size of a postage stamp with six bunks, three on either side. I will spare the joyous details of one of these journeys for a later post and so it was we were headed for our second stop in China, Xi'an.

The Wizard of Oz

It's true to say that we were more than a little concerned about our trip down under.

First note of concern was the length of time we'd be travelling. We firstly headed from Rio to Santiago in Chile; this flight was only about four hours but was last thing at night so we didn't end up getting to our hotel until the wee small hours of the following morning, although it was fortunately placed. being as it was directly outside the arrivals exit!

The following day we put our luggage into storage and got a taxi into town. We spent a glorious day in Santiago, wandering round, eating fresh fish in the market and drinking (big shock I know) some nice wine. We also got chance to visit a museum where there was a special exhibition on allowing you to watch the artists at work, plus some slightly bizarre neon and fluorescent heads and little bodies all covered in pins.

We made our way back to the airport at the end of what was a lovely, but quite long day, we thought very early to make sure we got good seats for the dreaded plane to Oz. Imagine our surprise when the rest of the plane already appeared to be in line before us. It slowly dawned on us that the reason was that the airline is notorious for over subscribing this particular flight (although we're not sure why everyone is so keen to leave the continent!) and so it was we were asked if we would mind switching flights to the following day if we were put up over night and given some travel vouchers. A quick confab later and we had agreed not to give up our seats for anything less than an upgrade to business class. Unfortunately this was also over subscribed the following day and so it was that their pleas fell on our deaf ears and we headed for departures.

The flight to Australia via Auckland was not too heinous, most flights tend not to be as long as work does not lie at the destination, although we wouldn't be particularly recommending the airline LAN to any of you. Siobhán made a new friend on the flight, a four year old Kiwi boy with an Argentinean mother, from where they were returned following a visit to Grandma and Grandad. Siobhán finally seemed to have found her intellectual equal as she set about entertaining him for the length of the flight (or was it the other way round?) but she was finally beaten when her new friend wanted to play hangman in Spanish . . . he seemed rather confused as to why Siobhán was not more able to help him!

Melbourne finally reared it's head, following a transfer from Sydney and we set about deciphering Aisling's directions. We did not actually have a house number, rather a description, which she later claimed was a mistake, but I wander whether she really wanted us to visit . . . ;)

Now, those of you who know me will realise that I am already enamoured with Australia from an earlier trip to Sydney and the East Coast, with their beautiful weather and friendly people even managing to out weigh their rather irritating ability to beat us a pretty much any sport you would care to name and Melbourne did not lesson this. It was a stunning city, easily navigable by foot from side to side thanks largely to its flatness and friendliness towards pedestrians. Siobhán and I spent many a pleasant hour wandering round the city, suburbs and Vic market, an even more impressive food market than our dear own Borough.

The highlight of our travels to Melbourne was obviously catching up with our old friend (no comment on her age I promise) Aisling, who has taken up this fine city as her current abode. It is here that lay the root of our second fear for our trip to Australia. The issue was, that when Aisling was living in London she was rather insatiable from a socialising point of view and many were the night that Siobhán and I would have to retire, tale between our legs, as Aisling and her more energetic friends would continue on to yet another club or bar in the early (or sometimes even late) hours of the morning. We were fearful therefore of not being able to keep up and being rightfully chastised for our lethargy.

Little should we have feared as it turned out as Aisling would seem to be broken! No more is the non-stop party goer, she is now one of us! Happy to end the night with the date the same when she returned as when she began and even (on rare occasion) requiring a night off!

Joking aside, whilst the nights were not filled with loud music and clubs as we had feared, we had some great evenings out dining on fine food and wine and meeting up with all of Aisling’s lovely new friends, including Joe a very amiable and generous Canadian who even welcomed Siobhán and I onto his birthday dinner.

One of the more memorable nights had to be the evening we had arranged to meet up with Rachel, a girl Siobhán used to work with at JP and who is now good friends with Aisling. The night in question was to a show in the Spiegeltent (http://www.spiegeltent.net/) where we endured, and I'm afraid that is the only way to describe the show itself, a small white man giving a performance as Grace Jones, the famous Amazonianly statuesque black woman . . . it was bizarre to say the least! That being said we did have a fantastic night getting to meet up with a large group of Aisling’s new friends and partying away into the early hours of the morning.

The highlight of the trip, was without doubt the road trip the three of us enjoyed down the Great Ocean Road. We had hired a car and stocked up with fabulous food and drink form the Vic market and spent three days driving down and back to visit the 12 Apostles (some big rocks in the sea) and spending the nights in holiday camps, where for a change copious quantities of wine were consumed and the two girls lost themselves in 8 year old versions of themselves on a large inflatable pillow!

There is a nasty rumour circulating that I myself succumbed to the guilty pleasures of jumping on a large cushion of air, but I'm afraid such scandalous rumours will not be tolerated on this site, particularly without photographic evidence!

Anyway, no sooner had our time in Oz begun than it was over and we caught our penultimate flight of the journey, as we headed into the unknown that is China . . .

We're back, baby!

Ok, I appreciate that this may be a little out of sequence as the blog doesn't yet cover Australia or any of China but hey, we were too busy enjoying ourselves!

We got back in from Hong Kong at 05:15 on Friday morning, to be met by my parents who had got up at 03:00 in the morning to fetch us from Heathrow; fairly impressive considering my previous slanderous comments about my fathers age, I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyway, Siobhán is back to work on Monday, but as I am now officially part of the Great Unwashed, I will be endeavouring to finish off the blog for our own reminiscence, so if you are interested and would like to see how we finished our travels please do pop back over the next week or two as I keep myself entertained by putting in the final entries. If you no longer care, tough, it'll be here anyway.

The Wedding Crashers

Ok, well maybe it wasn’t a wedding, but we do seem to have got pretty good at getting involved in peoples honeymoons. Indeed Parity seems to be a fairly popular destination for honeymooners from various countries, with two newly wed couples staying at our Pousada and several more with whom we ended up spending time.

Before I go any further, I must thank Mendel with whom I used t work at BarCap, as it is he who suggested we spend time in Parity and it is a truly beautiful spot. The Pousada where we were lodging was the top recommendation from Trip Advisor (the travellers Bible) and it turned out to be a beautifully constructed boutique hotel owned by an American former network engineer (maybe that could be a career for me, when it turns out our impromptu travels have destroyed my once promising career!) and his artist wife, who couldn’t do enough to recommend places to go, lend a bike to get around on, or provide maps and recommendations for days out.

We managed to fit in a couple of dives, a jeep tour through the jungle where Siobhán froze under a waterfall, and afternoons and evenings, trawling around the stunning old town, one of which we spent in the company of another Brazilian lady and her American husband at the grandly (if perhaps slightly suspectly) named Academy of Food and Other Pleasures. This entailed three other couples (all newly wed and rather tragically nearly all in Investment Banking), plus ourselves spending an evening in the hosts beautiful home, being taught how to make a risotto and drinking as much red wine as you could handle. It turned out that the chef (the lady of the host couple) has also just written a cookery book, at the request of a publisher and as we speak should be embarking upon a world wide publicity tour for it.

It was on our last day in Parity that we had the good fortune to meet another newly-wed couple who were staying at our Pousada, Ian and Lorraine. Ian an actor and carpenter and Lorraine who is the spitting image of Thandi Newton were given the same advise as ourselves by the Pousada proprietor, of a beach side restaurant and bar that would be a good place to spend the afternoon. We arrived a little after them at the beach and sheepishly introduced ourselves, as we recognised them from the hotel. Within about five minutes we were alll sitting around a table, drinking the strongest passion fruit Caiprinhas you have ever seen in your life and that is where we remained for the following six or seven hours, covered from what had become an unfortunately rain drenched afternoon, but which bearly registered on us as we chatted away like old friends, getting more and more drunk!

The following day we had to head off to catch a bus to Rio, but not before we had exchanged contact details and agreed to meet up in Rio on our final day, when Ian and Lorraine would also be in town. The final bus journey to Rio was again rather arduous, but none the less we finally made it to our hotel, dropped off our bags and headed to reception to ask for a map of the area so we could go and get some dinner. At this point, you may have thought we had just suggested to the receptionist that we would like to take a stroll around Baghdad wearing “I Love Bush!” T-Shirts, such was his apparent dread at what we had proposed. Liking to think we are careful about such things, we heeded the gentlemans advice and took a taxi to a restaurant he booked for us, deciding we would decide during day light hours if Rio was quite as inhospitable as he was attempting to suggest.

By the gleam of daylight (and plenty of rain) it is fair to say, that Rio did not quite match the pictures we had in our heads of tanned beauties and muscle bound show-offs, strutting around Copacabana beach, but at the same time nor did it turn out to be Beirut on a bad day!

We slowly built up our courage over the next few days through visiting the usual sights such as Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain and had decided that our final evening in Rio was to be spent in Lapa (what is considered perhaps the worst part of town), sampling the local nightlife and Samba clubs, when as luck would have it we received an email from Ian and Lorraine who had arrived in Rio early due to non-stop rain in Parity since we had left. We called them up and arranged to meet in Santa Theresa for drinks . . . well it didn’t take long for us to get back in the swing of things and four hours later we persuaded the perhaps dubious Ian to accompany us down into Lapa at some time approaching midnight.

Four more drink fueled hours swept by and we all got to experience the dubious pleasure of spending time in what can only be desribed as the OAP Samba club in town, getting to watch distinctly old people (even older than my father!) strut, gyrate and grind into positions and poses that may be forever indelibly printed to my rather delicate mind!

Anyway, with that it was time to leave Brazil and embark on what we had both been dreading, the several day journey to the Land of Oz and a visit to Ms. Aisling Twomey!

Brazil by Bus

We caught the first if our four buses from the national bus terminal in Foz do Iguazu following a late dinner at a restaurant describing itself as Modern Brazilian . . . from the brief exposure we had thus far experienced, this meant little more than more expensive, with the fare on offer not being dis-similar to our previous meals in Brazil, largely consisting of copious quantities of cooked meats in various guises. Indeed the salad that pre cursed Siobháns meal would constitute a considerable sized meal in any restaurant London may have to offer.

To be fair, I was pleasantly surprised by the bus on which we had booked. Front row, airline style seats, plenty of leg room and no fear of annoying passengers behind when reclining. Unfortunately even the most luxurious of bus cannot turn an 11 hour, overnight journey into something one could actually describe as a wonderful experience and so we were more than happy, when upon arrival in Curitiba at 7 o’clock in the morning that our hotel was a mere five minute walk away and they were happy for us to check in immediately.

The hotel, like the town itself was no great shakes, but we did manage to visit an Oscar Niemeyer designed building, he is the architect responsible for large portions of Brasilia, as well as make a trip to the local cinema, where the usual hapless American hero managed to save the world (by which I mean the American version of it) from an evil computer, hell bent on a logically baffling US genocide!

Just one night in Curitiba and we caught our second bus on to Sao Paolo, the financial centre of Brazil and home to the worlds largest Japanese population outside of Japan, apparently. Whilst nothing spectacular to look at, we spent three pleasant days in Sao Paolo, even managing to find a delicatessen that sold fabulous cured meats and French cheese, the kind of food we have been rather missing since we embarked upon our little sojourn and spent a lovely evening in our little apart-hotel devouring our spoils and washing them down with liberal quantities of wine!

A third, very winding, bus journey took us to our penultimate Brazilian destination of Parity, but that can wait for the next installment (I bet you can’t wait!)

Wet Again

We left Buenos Aires after far too short a period of time and took what was going to be the final of our flights before leaving South America, as we planned to travel by land through Brazil, to Iguazu.

There is only one reason to visit Iguazu and that is the absolutely stunning waterfalls. You can visit the falls from both Argentina and Brazil, as they straddle the border between the two countries. We were flying into Puerto Iguazu first on the Argentinian side and from there were to travel to Foz do Iguazu in Brazil, to see which side offered the best view.

A friendly local called John, who owned a small B&B, had helped organise accommodation for us from Buenos Aires (as his was booked out) and upon our arrival we were met by a taxi driver he had organised for us, someone we were going to become all too familiar with as he took it upon himself to by our designated chauffeur for the subsequent three days.

The accommodation he had organised was not what could be described as the best experience, with an odour somewhat akin to the underside of a compost heap and an air conditioning unit that made my beloved wife fear she was going to contract legionaires disease. This however, was not my cause for complaint, but more that we had unwittingly been booked into a hotel that specialised as a holiday venue for German tourists. We weren’t so much battling them for deck chairs as the usual stereotype would infer, but they did seem to annex the breakfast buffet each morning.

That being said, John was still a more than accommodating host, even though we weren’t stopping at his establishment, inviting us round and plying us with copious quantities of Caiprinhas and introducing us to his guests who we enjoyed a pleasant evening with.

In terms of the two Iguazus there was not much to rave about in either town, although if forced to chose I would say the Argentinian town is nicer. It would be somewhat more difficult to chose between the visit to the falls on each side, with Brazil arguably offering the best views, whilst Argentina offers a better feeling of them as it is from there you can walk directly over them. Having said that unless you’re American you don’t really need to chose as it is easy to get between the two. Our unfortunate trans-Atlantic cousins however, have to pay $120 per person for the privilege of passing into Brazil, which could be a little rich for a different angle of the falls.

On our first visit there on the Argentinian side, we took a boat under the falls, which whilst tremendous fun, did leave us soaked to proportions not seen since biblical times (or our trip to Columbia). Fortunately on this attempt we had seen the likelihood coming and had taken the necessary precautions, so no more electrical equipment needed to suffer an untimely demise. The one thing we hadn’t considered was just how cold it was going to be going under the falls, a phrase involving brass monkeys leaps to mind.

From Brazil, we decided a second ride under the falls may be a little over the top, so instead went white water rafting just downstream of the falls. It wasn’t the most thrilling of white knuckle rides, but fun was definitely had by all, especially Siobhán who went for a little swim in the icy cold river. I’m afraid I have no pictures to enhance this image as taking a camera would not have done it the world of good and the company charged about £40 for the privilege, which we figured was a little on the steep side.

That pretty much covers our time in Iguazu, take a look at the photo gallery if you haven’t already, as there are some fairly stunning photos of the falls for you all to become envious over, as well as hundreds of butterflys that literally flocked together on the Argentinian side and a few little monkeys. Our next stop would take us into the final country of our South American voyage, this time by bus to Curitiba, a journey of ten hours overnight that I think it is fair to say I was not looking forward to. Anyway, I’ll leave the gory details for the next post.