This wasn't part of the plan

I'm in China, in a place called Yangshuo which is an overnight bus journey from Hong Kong - I know this because I had the misfortune of doing it. The bus got me here but the state of Chinese roads leave a lot to be desired - I imagine being put in a tumble dryer for 12 hours would achieve a similar effect to how I felt when I finally got off the bus. Oh well, I shouldn't complain too much because the bus was actually quite comfortable with beds that were almost flat so you could lie down in them - although I didn't sleep a wink because of the state of the roads and the drivers tendency to blast the horn every 10 seconds or so. I'm pretty sure the horn was facing the wrong way back into the bus and it was all part of some bizarre Chinese joke that was cracking the driver up every time he hit the horn and we all hit the ceiling.

Anyway, it was worth the white-knuckle ride because the scenery in Yangshuo is quite superb. You can check it out here if you're interested: http://www.yangers.com. I spent a couple of days wandering around the town and taking in the scenery and things - there are quite a lot of western people here (in fact, I got the bus over with a couple who are here teaching English) so I've had a chance to hook up with some other travelers and find out what they've been up to and places to go to in China. I sampled the local western food outlets which aren't great but better than some of the other things I've smelt and I've taken plenty of pictures too (A selection of them will be going up here at some point: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorontour).

I found a hostel which offered me a nice double room with TV and en-suite bathroom for the sum of 5 pounds a night so I decided to splash out rather than go for the 1 pound a night dorm - which later turned out to be a good decision. I also made plans to go for a bike ride around the surrounding area on the Wednesday with a guy I met and also to go on a boat trip and a hike with a few other people but then on the Wednesday morning I woke up and had been stuck down with an unpleasant bout of food poisoning. I guessed that riding a bike over some rough terrain wouldn't be the best cure for it so I spent the day equally split between lying in bed feeling sorry for myself and in the bathroom - I'll say no more than that. I was quite lucky in some ways because I'd rather be in my own room with an adjoining bathroom than in a dorm and also the China Open Snooker Championships were on TV for a lot of the day so I could just chill out and watch that

It was a bit noisy in the street outside - Yangshuo is probably the most Western town in China and is full of tourists and people selling various items of junk and tat - I imagine it's the Chinese equivalent of Blackpool (if you can imagine that). There was some character wandering up and down the street playing his Chinese flute and generally winding me up. Then some guy joined in with a fiddle except he was doing excerpts from The King and I and the theme from Titanic. I started dreaming up more and more elaborate ways to wipe them from the planet - a man with a lot of free time is a dangerous man. Then in the evening the club along the street started up for the night - my goodness what a noise. I think they were testing just how loud their sound system would go and I can report that it is very loud indeed - if you imagine the sound system from Wembley or somewhere, somehow jammed into your bathroom and cranked up to number 11, no, number 12 then that's how it felt to me. I put my earplugs in (Thanks John) and managed to get to sleep and to be fair to them they did turn it off at 7:30 am so it wasn't too bad

I reckoned I'd be over my food poisoning by the next day and could go and do my boat trip. Unfortunately I wasn't any better the next day and by the Thursday morning when I woke up at 5am I was in such a state that I took myself up to the hospital to see what they thought. I was actually considering jumping on a plane to Hong Kong because I was pretty sure the standard of medical care was going to be pretty poor. I had visions of some crazed Chinese doctor cutting open my stomach and trying to scoop out the virus with his grubby hands and my views weren't moderated when I got the hospital and there were cigarette ends on the floor next to a pool of vomit
and a doctor diagnosing a child whilst smoking a cigarette. If my bowels would have held I would have ran straight out of there but I figured that it wouldn't hurt to at least see what he had to say. He didn't speak any English so after a little game of charades and the use of the international sign for vomiting and diarrhea (you don't see that on Give Us a Clue do you?) I was taken to another doctor in a different wing which was much cleaner and he spoke a bit of English. He had a book called something like "Conversations Between Doctors and Patients in Chinese and English" and together we managed to communicate - the though did occur to me though that he might not quite understand what I was saying and chop my leg off or something. He told me that I would stay in the hospital and they'd put me on a drip - something I wasn't altogether happy with, in fact I was quite concerned about staying there. But before I had a chance to think about it and do a runner the nurse appeared and took me to my room. I started to relax a bit because the room was pretty clean and the drip and everything came from a new sterile packet - no rusty old needles for me thank you very much.

After a while another doctor came in and in good English introduced himself as Doctor Dong from Hong Kong. I supressed a laugh and he told me that I'd have to stay in hospital for a few days while they gave me some rehydation fluid and antibiotics. I protested a bit and he came back and told me that I could go back to the hostel later that day as long as I came back again for more fluid and drugs which sounded like a good deal to me. I stayed in hospital for the rest of the day, went to the hostel and then went back again the next day - thankfully I was already starting to feel a lot better.

On the Friday I shared a hospital room with a Canadian guy called Jimmy who was an English teacher in Yangshuo and who was into his 5th day of food poisoning. Some of his students came to visit and I got the impression that Jimmy hadn't been teaching them English in the classical textbook way. Each sentence from them was decorated with one or two instances of a particular Anglo-Saxon word and whilst it added colour and flourish to whatever they had to say it probably wasn't going to get them too far in the tourist industry which was where they were hoping to work. Seemily innocent sentences such as "Who are you?", "What time is it?", "Ten-thirty", "Would
you like a banana" took on a slightly different vibe to what you might expect. Jimmy just laughed and told me that he wasn't a typical English teacher and that they weren't typical students. It all made for a fun-filled, but crude, few hours and we took some photos of us in our death beds.

Saturday I was feeling much better so went out for a walk with the intention of climbing one of hills nearby - this was thwarted when I couldn't find the path leading up it and that's probably just as well because when I got back the hostel I fell into bed exhausted. Perhaps I had tried to do too much too soon. That evening I went to see a pretty amazing light show on the river where they light up the hills nearby and have loads of singers and dancers jumping about. I haven't a clue what was going on despite being assured by the tour guide that I didn't need to speak Mandarin. The fun was dampened a bit because from start to finish it absolutely poured with rain. The lightening added a new dimension but I'm reasonably sure it wasn't part of the show. It looked fantastic though - you can see some of the pictures here (not mine): http://www.yangers.com/Yangshuo/Liu_Sanjie.htm

So it's not been a fantastic few days for me and I've not seen as much of Yangshuo as I wanted to but I'm a bit sick of it now - the food posioning incident kind of robbed me of my momentum and now I just want to get moving onto somewhere else so I can start again. So I've booked a train ticket for Tuesday when I go to Yichang on the Yangtzee river and next to the massive 3 Gorges Dam construction project. I hope to get a hydrofoil through the dam (I assume there is a lock and we don't need to jump it) and down the river to Chongqing where I'll decide where to go next.

Again, thanks for the emails and keep them coming- I'm not fantastic at replying to them straight away but will get around to it eventually and it's great to hear from you all while I'm away.

All the best,
Gregor

"Schumacher doesn't tolerate fools"

Hello! Well, I've made it to Hong Kong and more amazingly Ive managed to organised myself enough to be able to update my blog. I've not quite managed to update my google map though because the terminal I'm using (free internet access in my hostel - a fine stroke of luck) is using the Cantonese language so I'm navigating the menus and such like by memory. Unfortunately my memory doesn't stretch far enough to remember how to change the language in IE so some websites (namely blogger) appear entirely in Cantonese, rendering them useless. Well, useless for me - I suppose someone somewhere might speak it...

So, I'm sure you've all had restless nights wondering what I've been up to so allow me to put your upset minds to rest:

Cath gave me a lift to the airport on Monday and I departed by pinching her cheeks and giving her a manly punch in the arm before heading to departures. That may not be entirely what happened but I wouldn't want to cloud your opinion of me by describing the blubbering wreck that I became so we'll just leave it there right???

The flight was uneventful but a bit too long. Being a bit of a cheapskate traveller type, I bought the cheapest flight I could which went via Bahrain and Bangkok. This sounded like a good idea at the time when I was booking it but I started to get sick of it pretty soon. The first guy I sat next to on the plane was an ex-KPMG management consultant so I shared a few PA secrets with him in exchange for some of his peanuts. The second guy offered to arrange my trip to New Zealand for me because he was a travel agent and the third guy lived in Hong Kong and told me all the places that I should go to, so that was rather handy. I also saw Jenson Button at Bahrain airport so I gave him a few driving tips (free of charge) following his poor 4th place in the Bahrain Grand Prix the day before. I think he was grateful but I couldn't really hear what he was screaming at me as the security guards bundled me away.

When I finally fell off the plane I had the joy of queueing for 30 minutes to clear immigration before I got the bus (it was the cheapest - I'm 'unemployed' now remember??) to my hostel. Then I spent another 30 minutes walking up and down various streets until I discovered I was pretty much right outside my hostel. I collapsed on the bed for a bit before going out to explore the place and get a bite to eat.

Well I must say, I thought that London was busy but compared to Hong Kong and especially the area I was staying in (Mong Kok - it made me laugh too) it's like a nice rural villiage. It took me a few days to get used to it and to get into the way of pushing old ladies out of your way and into the path of cars and taxis and things. After a while I started to enjoy it and positively went fishing for old people to thrust under the nearest thundering double-decker.

When I finally got to bed in Hong Kong I'd been awake for around 30 hours apart from an hour of 'airline sleep' which doesn't really count.

The next couple of days were spent exploring the place - quite nice but a bit too busy and claustrophobic for my liking (although I may be whistling a different tune after I experience the mainland) sorting out my Chinese visa, and spending money that I probably shouldn't have been spending but I really really really need a battery and memory card for my camera, and the price is just so cheap anyway!! I got a tram ride to the top of The Peak on Hong Kong Island which was a good opportunity for photos except for it being very smoggy, and I went to see a laser light show from Kowloon which was rather cool if a little boring after 10 minutes. To be honest, most of the time has been spent wandering around and exploring shops and things. They like their shops here, especially clothes shops and there are a lot of fashion victims wandering the streets pouting and mincing and stuff. I've been
firing off many a disdainful look at various mullets and streaks - it's something you can do when you occupy my lofty position in world fashion. And don't get me started on the music. Imagine a non-stop eurovision song contest but without the humour and the talent and you're possibly starting to scrape the surface. It's beyond awful and someway beyond that too! As if to enforce my words, Westlife have just appeared on the television behind me. Luckily I found a sofa to throw through the TV and it appears to have stopped.

No doubt you're wondering what the food is like and I must admit that I am too. I've made the decision that I'll have plenty of chances to experience real chinese food when I'm on the mainland and don't have any other choice so I'll make the most of the access to Western food while I can. I know it's blasphemous to other travellers but the food doesn't really matter to me when I'm visiting other countries so I'll just eat whatever. Oh, stop being so judgemental!! Hands up those that haven't had a McDonalds or a Starbucks or something when they've been abroad?? See? Honestly

Anyway, I picked up my Chinese visa today and I've booked my ticket out of Hong Kong. Tomorrow evening I'm getting an overnight bus to Guilin or Yangshou (I haven't decided - probably the latter) so I'll let you know what it's like. I've heard that there's a really good place there for burgers and stuff so it sounds like my kind of town. Also, I'll fill you in on whatever I've forgotten about Hong Kong.

Missing you all and hope you're all well. I'm appreciating the emails so
keep them coming.

All the best,
Gregor

PS. There's a shop in Kowloon called Wanko. That made me laugh - I took a
photo so we can all share in the fun.

PPS. If you're wondering about the title of this blog - it's something that
ex-KPMG man said to me during our flight (imagine it being said in a very
posh English accent). I had a serious struggle to keep myself from bursting
out laughing right in front of him.