Gregor on Tour

The Last Bit - Part 3

2006-12-26T15:36:00.000Z

Hello! So, the last part of my trip then. How exciting. Are you excited? I am.

So, read and savour because this is the last bit and I don't suppose you'd be interested in articles that tell you about how I got up in the morning and got the train to work and then came home again and did the same thing again for the rest of my life.

Anyway...................

We made it to the South Island which was now pitch black and drove around trying to find somewhere relatively scenic to park our van. Not an easy thing to do in the dark but we managed a spot that seemed to overlook the Sound so we settled for that. When we woke up we found out that we had almost chosen a good spot in that we were overlooking the Sound but we were also overlooking some kind of logging factory so it wasn't quite as scenic as we'd hoped. But we went for a short drive to take in the view anyway which eventually lasted a couple of hours because the scenery was just so fantastic and weather was really nice - not exactly hot but nice and clear giving us a great view over the water. We stopped at the Tennyson Inlet and went for a walk. I was too busy playing with my camera to notice that Cath had wandered off and when I found her again she was soaking her feet in the water. It looked like a good idea so I decided to join her and then quickly changed my mind after dipping a toe in the ice-cold water. Luckily no one else was around to hear my girly screams.

We drove back into Picton to get some lunch and then had a game of crazy golf. Before I tell you the result, I should point out that I was tired and the visibility on the course wasn't quite as good as it could have been and also I think there was something wrong with my club. And probably my golf ball as well. And the atmospheric pressure was a bit unpredictable too. Anyway, the upshot is that Cath won her first ever game of crazy golf and I showed my good character at losing and went in a sulk for the rest of the day.

That afternoon we drove to Blenheim which is in the heart of the New Zealand wine country so we went on a tour of a vineyard where they explained the complex processes they go through to make wine. They told us about how the weather can affect the taste and things so it was all quite interesting.

We planned to drive a little bit to find somewhere to spend the night but everywhere we came across just didn't seem like a good option so we ended up driving for quite a while until we hit a major town called Nelson and we splashed out on a caravan park with unheard of luxuries like showers and electricity. Apart from sharing the park with what appeared to be a rabble of kids on a school trip we enjoyed the peace and quiet and were glad of the rest after the long drive.

The next day we went for our customary walk along the beach before jumping back into the van and driving to our next destination. Nelson Lakes sounds like it should be quite close to Nelson but it was a good long drive away. The journey was worth it though because the scenery was fantastic and the weather was great too - very cold (as I confirmed when I went to the outside toilet at the visitor centre) but crisp and clear. We parked at the Department of Conservation campsite which had electricity but no showers or hot water and went for a walk in the forests around the lake. Cath gave me a lesson about the forest and the birds and why certain types of birds live in the forest and can't be found anywhere else (due to the types of trees that are found there if I remember correctly) and she also told me about the conservation efforts that are going on there. I was impressed, both with Cath's knowledge and also by the hard work that was going on to keep species of birds and trees and fungi going so as to maintain the balance of the forests. If you visit NZ then it's worth knowing this stuff because it makes the trip more interesting. Anyway, we saw parrots called Kaka and there was also a really cool songbird whose name escapes me (either a Tui or a Bellbird) but who sang unlike any other bird I've ever heard.

That night was very cold, and the morning when I got up to the loo was very cold too. The puddles in the car park had all iced up and it was a serious struggle to get out of bed that morning. But once Cath got up and cooked my breakfast whilst I issued executive instructions from the warmth of my bed it was better and we went for another walk in the forest and round the lake. It really was beautiful and we had it pretty much all to ourselves. The cold wasn't fantastic but the fact that there were much fewer visitors in the NZ wintertime really made the trip much more pleasant.

After our walk we drove to Lake Rotoroa for another walk, this time through the forest and up to a pretty waterfall. We saw (heard) more singing birds but no Kaka this time. Cath was disappointed not to see any Kea (another type of parrot I think) since they were also meant to be in the forest. We did however stumble across a Possum - usually they are wary of people but this one seemed to be less scared as we crept up on it and looked at us for a while before scurrying into the bushes. Then it was down to Lake Rotoroa for some lunch and despite the cold weather we still had to contend with blackfly trying to eat us alive - I can't imagine what it must be like in the summertime but the visitors book bore testament to some harrowing stories. Well, 'harrowing' is probably too strong a word given that all that really happened was that some people had been bitten by a fly but in the absence of the killer crocs and stuff that you get in Australia then your sense of perspective changes.

Anyway, we escape with our lives and drove on to Westport stopping at the Buller Gorge for a play on the wire which spans the river. Basically you sit on a chair that's attached to a wire that goes over the river, then they throw you off one side and you hurtle towards the other side, all the while figuring out how you're going to stop before you crash into the rocks that seem to be coming towards you awfully quickly. But somehow you stop and a man stands there with a camera to record the whole awful nightmarish event on film for you.

Once again we found ourselves arriving in the dark at our campsite. I can't actually remember it but I remember the drive seemed to take ages - it was on say, the equivalent of the M4 in the UK but some corners were so tight that the poor old camper van was wobbling round them at 40km/h and some of the hills were so steep that we could barely get up them.

The next morning we drove to a lovely welcoming place called Cape Foulwind (it even sounds lovely) and had breakfast by the cliffs. The weather wasn't great and the waves were starting to crash in but it made for some great photos. We were also pestered by a bird (called a Weka I think) that was very bold and kept creeping up to the van to try and get some food from us. I can't imagine why it might think we had anything to give it but the sight of Cath throwing vast quantities of our limited food stash to the "He's cute!!!" bird did raise an eyebrow or two.

We moved on to the seal colony where seals (New Zealand Fur Seals, to be precise) came in for some shelter from the mighty Pacific Ocean. Looking at the ocean and the massive waves that were crashing into the inlet today, I could see why they wanted to get to dry land. I did have a good chuckle when some huge waves came crashing in and splashed over the seals that were lying on the rocks. Call me childish if you wish - everyone else probably thought it as I pointed and guffawed whilst Cath tried to surreptitiously blend into the background.

After the mornings amusement we had a fantastic drive down the West Coast through some fabulous scenery and sun even came out giving us the chance for some memorable pictures. I had fun blasting my horn at a camper van full of Germans that was holding us up and steadfastly refused to get out of our way. As we passed I indicated to them that there were two of us in the van and I instantly felt better.

We pulled up at a place called Pancake Rocks. I don't know how it got its name but it was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Essentially it was a few strange rock formations out into the sea and as the waves roll in you sometimes get splashes of water coming up through the cracks in the rocks. This simple concept kept Cath and I riveted for 3 hours (even though we only planned on spending 30 minutes there) since the waves and their power was truly mesmerising and the sight of water whooshing up into the air was breathtaking. My words don't do it justice and nor do the multitude of pictures and video that we took but it was fabulous to watch. The only problem is that it's a bit temperamental so you have to be there at the right tide time and you have to be watching the right bit. So Cath would come dashing over to tell me that I just missed a massive eruption and I'd dash back to where she'd been just as a chorus of gasps and oohs and aahs emanated from where I'd been. But I saw enough to leave very happy.

Can you guess what happened next? Generally something to do with it being dark and us driving into some little town somewhere to camp up for the night? Yes, that's right so I won't bore you with any details except to say that it was at the charmless purpose built tourist resort of Franz Joseph.

We got up early the next morning because it was our plan to somehow find somewhere that had a helicopter ride up onto the nearby Franz Joseph Glacier. Our chances of success were low since it depended on the weather being good enough for a helicopter to fly up the glacier and back down (preferably in a controlled manner rather than in a ball of fire) and for there to actually be any spaces on any said helicopter flights. We were lucky however, since we managed to get a ride that was leaving in the next hour and before we knew it we were in a helicopter being ferried up the mountain by our skillful pilot (who was Scottish) and landing on the snow to be met by our guide (apparently attractive but I didn't see it and nor did I pay any attention to his legs which the girls, including my darling girlfriend breathlessly told me were "lovely").

Anyway, this clown fitted us with crampons and then walked us around the glacier which was quite frankly incredible. The glacier is constantly moving (Franz Joseph being one of the few which is actually advancing rather than retreating) so there are always new and interesting ice caves and structures to wander in and squeeze through. It was fantastic and I was glad our moronic guide with his stupid legs was there because I would have been completely lost since it all looked so similar. We even saw some of the massive blocks of ice breaking free and crashing down the mountain. Apparently we were unlikely to get squashed but it was quite scary since these blocks were 20, 30, 40 feet high and it'd probably sting a bit if you were squashed underneath it.

Before long it was time to jump back into the helicopter and fly back to the village. After Pancake rocks the day before it was a real sweet spot of our trip and whilst expensive it was a truly wonderful thing to have done. The only worrying part was when the helicopter pilot lifted us up over a peak and then plunged the helicopter down the other side, leaving our stomachs and a variety of piercing screams far up in the air where we'd just been. If he hadn't been flying the helicopter I'd have strangled him with his headphones.

After a well earned lunch we drove to Gilespies Beach where I managed to completely soak my walking boots and most of my walking trousers after a slightly misguided and misjudged photo attempt on a huge wave as it crashed onto the beach. With my dignity slightly dented we left the beach and drove to Lake Mathieson for a walk (a slightly squelchy walk in my case) around the lake before it got dark. After a brief detour to the Fox Glacier to see the face of a Glacier (and the huge cliffs that it created when it gouged a route through the mountain) and an unsuccessful attempt to help a fellow camper van driver that had managed to reverse off the side of a small drop and beach their van on the side of the road, we drove off once again into the night in search of a place to stay. After we'd exhausted all attempts to find a nice place on the coast we settled on a simple camp site in a place called Haast.

The next day we woke up to some extremely cold and rainy weather, the first bad weather we'd really had on the trip. We drove down to the beach since it was possible to see penguins at certain times of the year but it wasn't to be and so we traced our route back and drove for most of the day in the miserable rain and cold. We stopped for lunch in the memorable setting of a car park and with rain streaming down the windows we cooked our soup and looked out at the sodden landscape. It was like a British camping holiday. We were slightly dreading the rest of the drive because there were signs warning of the Haast Pass and the guide book suggested that it was a tricky route but in fact we passed the Pass so to speak, without noticing it so I like to think that my sublime driving skills made the journey that much more pleasurable.

We arrived in Wanaka and stopped at a place called Puzzling World. I don't quite know how to explain this place but it was basically full of weird illusions and holograms and things. One room was built on a big slope so that you could have strange illusions like pool balls rolling back down the table at you and water draining upwards and things. It was lots of fun and nice to get out of the rain for a bit although it did mean that we couldn't do the outdoor maze (but I did get a good laugh at those that had tried it and were then lost out in the rain). There wasn't much else in Wanaka so we drove on to Queenstown. The signs pointed us in one direction but the map showed us that there was a quicker way if we drove over the hills. In the end it wasn't much quicker but it was certainly much more exciting as we drove up into the clouds and then hurtled down the other side of the hill on the narrow road, skidding round hairpin bends and asking everything of the brakes. Cath frequently screamed but I think it was just from the sheer fun she was having and nothing to do with the fear that was etched into her face (or the fingernail marks that were gouged into the dashboard). Oh how we laughed. Once back on solid ground we drove into a very rainy Queenstown and decided to spend the night somewhere that wasn't a camper van since we were planning to go ski-ing the next day (if the weather was any good) and didn't want to come back to a cold camper van after a days ski-ing.

After much searching and sighing we found a youth hostel that was OK but the weather report for the next day wasn't looking great. We went to get some dinner and decided that we'd wait and see what the weather was like the next day before making a decision. When we woke up it was sunny which was great but almost as quickly the cloud came in and the rain started again so we ended up walking around the town trying to find things to do. Queenstown is the adrenalin capital of the world so there are loads of things to do, but they generally rely on good weather so we were a bit stuck. The jet boat wasn't running because the water level was too high (I didn't quite understand that myself) but a girl gave us some tickets for the gondola so we went up the hill for lovely views into the cloud over Queenstown. We could have got the luge down the hill but that too was closed because of the weather.

However, at the bottom of the hill was our saviour for a few hours because we found an indoor Crazy Golf venue. Now I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses once more but I'm certain that the weather was playing havoc with my usually serene golf skills and I think Cath might have given me a dodgy golf club because once more I was beaten by a girl at crazy golf. I took it well though and after smashing a few windows I was fine and ready to move on.

Thankfully the weather had finally turned and the rain had stopped. The jet boat was running again so we booked ourselves on that. It was lots of fun - I decided that I'd quite like one for myself although I'm not sure where I could zoom around in Reading with it. Lots of people got soaked on the boat but I seemed to have a fairly good spot where I could point and laugh but remain dry. The ski report for the next day was looking good as well so moved into a nicer apartment and got our stuff ready.

The next day was sunnyish but the hills looked very cloudy. We'd made our mind up though so we picked up our ski-ing gear, drove up the mountain stopping half way up to figure out how to put our snow chains on and then progressed up the mountain at walking speed, much to the annoyance of the train of cars behind us. I would have pulled over but the I might not have got going again. Once there I dived out of the van and ran to the slopes, giggling like a giddy 9-year old at Christmas whilst Cath struggled to walk in her ski-ing boots carrying her skis and poles.

We had a good day ski-ing in the clear sky with no injuries and the snow was pretty good too. The NZ approach to pistes is different to Europe. The ski map just seems to be a suggestion and in reality people just ski all over the mountain as they see fit. I joined in and could hear the obscenities from Cath as I went hurtling down some difficult drop (often face first) with no means of escape, expecting Cath to obediently follow. But follow she did and fun we did have.

When we got back to the van my heart sank as I realised I'd left the lights on and the battery was flat. For a moment I thought I might be able to swing the van out from its spot and then roll down the hill but if I got it wrong then I would be blocking the only road out of the resort so I thought better of it and went to find someone to help. I was a bit worried because I didn't have a clue where the battery was to jump start it but some young kid that worked at the resort turned up with jump leads, pulled the battery out from under the seat and got us going in under 5 minutes.

That evening we had dinner in the same restaurant we dined in on the first night because it was so good and the next day we drove to the Bungy jump centre in town. Cath wasn't so sure but she was delighted when I stomped in and booked a jump for an hours time. That way she didn't have to time to think about it and the time she spent hitting me and calling me a stupid boy was kept to a minimum too.

When we arrived at the bungy site I was quite excited and I was excited all the way up until I stood on the ledge and suddenly felt like this was a bad idea. But then I felt a hand on my back ushering us both to the river below and then I remember screaming like a girl. I was quite proud though because I screamed from the top to the bottom whereas Cath screamed from the top, paused for a breath and then continued screaming as we plunged to the rapids below. Thankfully the rope held and we were rescued by two men in a dinghy that I presume worked for the bungy company. Once back in the van we agreed what fun it had been and I spent the next 8 hours reminding Cath that it had been my idea and wasn't I great, to which she heartily agreed and looked at me with dreamy eyes and deep admiration. That's what I remember anyway.

After the bungy jump and a minor detour when I turned left instead of right and got lost for half an hour we drove up to Lake Pukaki in the hope of seeing a nice view of Mount Cook. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great so all we saw was a load of cloud and then a load of cloud reflected in the lake. It was nice to get out of the van and have a walk around the lake though. We continued driving up to Lake Tekapo but the weather was getting worse and soon it started to snow. We stopped at the lake and because we were a bit worried about continuing along the road and through Burkes Pass in the poor weather we ended up staying the night in a camp site at the lake. It was fun though - the snow was quite thick so we went for a walk and threw some snowballs, then came back to the van and built a snowman. We christened him Mr Ernest Hackett. Ernest because we wanted a distinguished name to reflect his distinguished stature and Hackett in homage to the man that invented the bungy jump in Queenstown.

We had a very cold night. By morning, the water tank in the van had frozen and the door that gave us access to the gas had frozen as well. So whilst Cath laid in the warmth of bed I fought my way through the snow and polar bears to the kitchen to get some water and wrestled open the van door to switch the gas on and get a cup of tea. Once we'd finally got sorted I drove the van over to one of the lodges to get some water to fill up the water tank but then I managed to get bogged down in the snow. No matter how hard we tried or in what gear, the van didn't want to go forward. I had a brainwave though and stuck the van in reverse and zoomed back as fast as possible to get up the hill. It worked a treat and it was great fun too. I only crashed into a couple of other caravans as well.

The roads were still icy and slippy but the view was great and the sun was out as well. In a happy frame of mind we drove to Tamaru to get the van repaired since we'd managed to blow a fuse in the water pump trying to get the frozen water out. Once it was fixed we stopped for a bit to go to an aviary and also for me to play on the childrens climbing frame just outside. I managed to get to the top of the kids frame and I reckon Cath was deeply impressed with just how great I was. We drove back to the coast for some lunch next to the sea and I did my customary thing of trying to photograph waves and naturally got my feet wet in the process.

After lunch we drove on to Geraldine (or Monica or whatever other female name I attached to it - I kept getting confused and I'm not very good with names) and then on to Peel Forest where we saw a big tree. It was more exciting than it sounds but there's only so much you can say about a tree so I'm not going to try and convince you. It was good though. There was a tree there that was really big. After the drama and excitment of the big tree we arrived in Methven and spent the night in a camp site. Tragedy struck though when our fan heater packed up and we had to face the thought of a freezing night without heating. Rescue came in the form of the camp site owner though who loaned us one of his heaters and we didn't perish in the cold of the Southern winter.

The next day we were up early to hire more ski gear and go up to the ski resort. Instead of driving this time we took the bus and it was a good move because the road was a bit dodgy in places and I suspect our little van would have struggled to get up the hill. All was going well until the second run of the day when I had a silly little fall but managed to sprain my ankle. It was jolly sore and I came over all dizzy and sweaty so we stopped for lunch early while I moaned and complained a lot. After lunch Cath insisted that we get back on the slopes despite my near fatal injury and we started on the nursery slopes just to see how I was. It was very painful but I could manage OK so we went on the chairlift up to one of the harder runs.

All was going well until I came to get off the lift. I stood up and slid away from the chair but then felt my rucksack pulling me back and I fell on my bum. I'd snagged my rucksack on the chair somehow and it was dragging me round and back down the other side of the lift. I wasn't too worried since I was sure the lift operator would stop the lift but it started to dawn on me that the lift was still going and I couldn't undo my rucksack. I looked at the lift operator and he was reading what must have been a fascinating book whilst I was getting dragged to the drop on the other side of the lift. I shouted a 'Hoi!' at him and saw his face change as he registered that I was going to be strangled by my bag and he was going to be sacked. Luckily he stopped it before I started to dangle off the chair by my neck and dashed over to release me. He told me he would have come earlier if I'd screamed like a girl so I'll bear that in mind. Apparently my "Hoi" was too relaxed for his liking. Anyway, no harm done except I was a bit grumpy and was miffed at Cath for pointing and laughing at me as I was dragged to my doom. I'm sure I saw her trying to find the camera but I'll say no more...

We did a few more runs and I stoically coped with the pain before we headed back down into the town. When I took my boots off my ankle had swollen up a lot and I couldn't walk very well so I hobbled to the doctor to see if they could give me anything for it but the queue was too long. I went to the chemist instead and they gave me some cream to help it heal and told me to relax for a bit. I couldn't drive so Cath drove us to Akoroa which turned out to be a scary drive up darkened mountains in the ice. She did a great job though and I managed to not complain too much about her driving. Once in Akarora we found a lovely hotel and we had dinner in a fantastic restaurant (which was expensive but was the only place open in town and was well worth the money). We didn't really fit in what with me hobbling in and the two of us in our ski-ing gear with windswept hair but they were very polite to us (except for the cheeky waiter who said that I looked about 35 years old!) and the food was superb.

The next day we went on to our final destination: Christchurch, and it was a bit of a shock to the system for both of us. It was our first time in a city for 3 weeks and quite a change from our little van. To be honest we both didn't really want to be there and would quite happily have flown back to the UK but we made the most of it but going to a couple of restaurants and the museum (which was pretty good actually) and taking a boat trip from Lyttleton Harbour out to see some dolphins in the Pacific. My foot was a bit better so I stood out on the front of the boat to watch them and periodically got drenched by the odd freak wave. The dolphins were very cool - they were called Hectors Dolphins and are the smallest type of dolphin with less of a pointy fin and a fin more like Mickey Mouse's ear. They swam alongside the boat jumping in the air and generally just showing off. I have a very shaky video of them as I tried to film them with one hand while the other hand held onto the rail in an attempt to stop me getting thrown overboard.

And that's it really. We flew back from Christchurch to Sydney and then Sydney to London via Singapore. The flight was dreadful since it seemed to go on forever. At one point I woke up, sure that I was over France or somewhere but was disappointed to find out that we were over the Middle East. I woke Cath up from her deep sleep to tell her and she was disappointed too, especially since she couldn't get back to sleep again.

So, my trip is over. What can I say? It was great and if you get the chance to do something similar then jump at it. It wasn't always great fun (a certain Chinese hospital springs to mind) but (and at the risk of dredging out a tired cliche) the memories are fantastic.

There will be another blog post because there are a few mistakes in some of the articles and there are plenty of things that I've missed out so I'll need to tidy them up. But that's it for now. Hope you've enjoyed it!

Gregor

The Last Bit - Part 2

2006-10-11T12:22:00.000Z

Hello!

I have a little secret to confess - I'm not actually in New Zealand anymore. Currently I'm sitting at my computer in the UK trying to remember where I went when I was in New Zealand so the remaining entries of this blog will be written by pulling memories out of that leaky sieve I like to call my memory.

But you can get off the edge of your seats now because I'm happy to report that our plane landed in New Zealand as planned and we didn't plummet to our doom during the flight. Whew! In fact, we landed in Auckland late that same evening and after a brief detour when they took my hiking boots away to clean them in case I'd brought some contaminated soil into the country (they apparently have a very fragile eco-system) we pulled up to our hotel, marvelling at the lovely rain and wind that we'd flown into and wondering whether our plan to hire a camper van in a New Zealand winter was going to turn out to be as stupid as it sounded. The hotel was fine apart from a few luxuries such as heating, insulation and post-1960s decor but it was cheap and handy for both the airport and the van-hire place.

The next morning we were up early to pick up our van and it was an absolute triumph of space-management and ergonomics. It was a small Toyota Hiache but it had space for 3 people sleeping (as long as the 3rd was about 2 inches tall), a cooker, fridge, sink, decent storage and things like kettles and frying pans. I was impressed and set off into the rain in a good frame of mind. My calm demeanour was tested a little bit by the noise of the cutlery crashing around whenever we went around a corner at more than 2mph and it took another dent when it took us about an hour to finally find our way out of the industrial estate to find the motorway. We were going to Hot Water Beach at Coromandel which is a beach (surprisingly enough) where you can dig a hole in the sand at low tide and if you dig it in the right place then you come across water that's been heated by a thermal spring (or something - I tuned out while Cath explained the details since my mind was busy designing the giant sand-castle I was going to construct). Finally we made it to the motorway and by thrashing the life out of our poor camper van to push it up to the NZ speed limit (62mph) we managed to get there just as the tide was coming in.

We quickly dashed down the beach and I feverishly started digging a hole with my hands but to no avail. Then we realised that we wanted to be further up the beach where there were some people milling around looking puzzled. When we got there I tried digging another hole but once again to no avail. There was an old French man in immodestly short swimming trunks wandering around trying to find the spring but the tide was coming in quickly and it looked like we weren't going to find the right spot. Suddenly, with a gallic shout of triumph our Frenchman pointed to where he was standing and beckoned us over - the tide was up to his knees but when we stood in the same spot the water almost burnt my feet because it was so hot. Showing my gratitude and keen to practice my French I thanked him ("Petit pois, jambon le maison") and we made our way back to the van with burnt feet and wet clothes.

We had lunch and then drove until it got dark when we found somewhere to park up - a place called Whakatane. We parked in a car park on the coast and started arranging the van to get the bed and cooker and everything else all sorted out. It was a tad cramped but we managed to cook a decent meal and get quite comfortable and then drifted off to sleep with the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach outside the window.

The next day we made our way to Rotorua, a spa town that has loads of thermal baths and tourist stuff for people that are into that sort of thing. The first thing that you notice is the strong smell of sulphur in the air but it does mean that there are some pretty cool sights around the town. We visited a park, much like a smaller Hyde Park but which had lots of sulphurus lakes dotted around and the odd hole filled with bubbling mud. New holes keep appearing as the ground gives way and there are lots of dead trees and plants around that have succumbed to the constant attack of boiling water and whatever else the ground decides to chuck up. In fact, the park is so active that some of the drains on the road have steam pouring out from them. If you ask me, it's not the greatest place to live with the constant stench of sulphur and the risk of your house disappearing into a boiling pit of mud at any moment, but the town has made the most of it with lots of thermal-based attractions and the park had a couple of thermal pools where you could sit on the side and soak your feet in the pleasantly warm water. I spent a pleasant 30 minutes doing just that and Cath had 30 minutes of torment as I constantly splashed her with water and threatened to chuck her in the water. Ahh, what fun!

After the park we drove to the Whakarewarewa Thermal Valley to see a few geysers and more thermal activity. It was good to see but we were a little misled because we though we would watch a hole in the ground and then at some unexpected moment - probably when I was at the toilet or looking the other way or something - the geyser would gush force in a violent display and we would all 'ooh' and 'aah' at the appropriate moment. So when we got there, we looked over a barrier at what were apparently 4 geysers - some of which were constantly throwing up water and others which were apparently going to exhibit the behaviour described previously. Since we couldn't really distinguish any of the 4 geysers from each other we stood watching waiting for the giant crash of the main geyser throwing water tens of metres into the air but after about 30 minutes of not very much happenin, one of the guided tours rolled up and the guy explained that the main geyser was running constantly at the moment and wouldn't be doing anything dramatic. I thanked him for his explanation, told him that it would have been nice to have known this before we invested 30 minutes of our time looking at the ground, threw him in a boiling mud pool and moved on.

It was time to find a home for the night and this time we chose a camp site since we needed to charge the batteries in the van and hook up to a mains supply. We found a nice campsite on the edge of Lake Rotorua that had it's own thermal pool that we took advantage of (although we had to have a shower first so that the pool remained clean - running down from the showers to the pool in the freezing cold was somewhat bracing) and it even had heated tent sites due to the thermal activity going on beneath the ground. Of course you run the risk of waking up boiled in a pool of sulphurus water but at least you'd be nice and warm.

The next day we drove to Waitomo Caves. Those David Attenborough fans amongst you might recognise it from Life in the Undergrowth because he went there to film a piece on glow worms. The caves are deep underground and have lots of stalegtites and cool rock formations and stuff. There is also a stream/river running through it and you can do a variety of different tours such as having a nice walking tour through the caves looking at glow worms and stuff or you can stick a wetsuit on, sit in a big rubber ring and float down the river. We opted for walking since we'd had enough of getting wet and plus it looked a bit manic at points on the rubber rings which would have ended no doubt ended with me drowning. It was very cool though because they'd rigged up lots of colourful lights which looked really good when they were lighting up the rock formations in the cave. When they turned all of the lights out you could walk for a bit and see the glow worms shining in the gloom. It was ruined a bit by some monstrously awful American family who frankly looked liked they all might be related in slightly unnatural ways and who managed to irritate me in every way. From the fat son who snorted loudly and frequently through his nose in an attempt to dislodge something that didn't want to be dislodged to the other brother/cousin/both who answered every rhetorical question that the guide asked. Add in the mother who liked to repeat the obvious ("That's a glow worm right there. There it is. That's a glow worm. Yep, it's right there. The glow worm.") and I would have gladly mown them down with a large gun. As it was I just stomped around at the back sighing whenever they got into my eyeline.

That night we drove for a while trying to find a nice spot to park up but there didn't appear to be anywhere so we pulled into a small town that had a camping area behind a shop. We parked up but then the smell of fish and chips and general nastiness of the place prompted us to move on and we found a much nicer caravan park next to the ocean and where they had a rather peculiar beach where the sand was black. We were the only people in the park which was nice and once again we drifted off the sleep with the sound of the ocean crashing onto the beach behind us.

The next day we were up early to drive to New Plymouth where one of Cath's friends had moved to. We were looking forward to spending the night in a house that had a shower and heating and other luxuries. We met up with Derek and drove into town where I treated myself to a new rucksack (having managed to wear out Cath's rucksack during the previous few months) and finally replace my camera. I started looking at small pocket cameras but when the shop assistant brought out a big camera with lots of buttons then she knew the sale was in the bag. I spent the rest of my day playing with my new toy and irritating Cath and Derek with flashing lights and beeps and dull statistics. They loved it really. That everning we had a huge roast dinner and I spent the rest of the evening sprawled on the sofa - not unlike a beached whale whilst Cath and Derek caught up and traded dull chemistry stories.

Saturday was my birthday but we spent most of the day in the van because we were driving to Wellington to get the ferry to the South Island. We weren't bothered about seeing the city so we just drove straight to the terminal and while we waited in the car park for the ferry Cath showed me the birthday cake she'd bought earlier when we stopped for some junk food for the van. She even had some candles and so we put 23 of them on the cake to reflect my youthful age, devoured the cake and waited for the ferry.

And that's about it for the North Island. You'll have to wait and see if we managed to reach Picton on the South Island or whether our ferry sank, taking it's passengers to the freezing murky depths of the sea.

So, from London, all the best.
Gregor

The Last Bit - Part 1

2006-08-27T15:53:00.000Z

Hello!

As you may have noticed, I've not updated this for a while and I don't have a very good excuse beyond being too lazy to do it. But I'm being punished because I now have to write loads in order to bring this thing up to date and so I'll be sitting at a keyboard for a while. I'm being sensible though and splitting it into separate posts so that I can do it in installments and write something manageable rather than an epic novel.

However, I have just updates my flickr site although the observant amongst you will see that it only consists of New Zealand and no Australia. The reason for that is that I managed to lose my camera just before I stepped onto the plane to New Zealand and unfortunately I lost all my pictures from Australia as well. I contacted all the places I thought it could be but to no avail so I can only assume that some dishonest Aussie has found it and kept it for themselves. As you can imagine, I wasn't in the best mood for a few days after that but I treated myself to a new camera which is bigger and has more buttons so that cheered me up.

Blimey, where do I start? Well, last time I blogged I was about to go to Adelaide so that sounds like a sensible place to start. It's a pretty cool place to visit. It's quite a small city but it has lots of nice parks and it's a great city to just wander around. I was a bit geeky too and walked some of the old Formula 1 track (Adelaide held a race in the streets until 1996 when Melbourne pinched it - I walked the Melbourne track too, but now I'm painting myself in a bad light so I'll stop there!). Having said that, there's not too much to do there so I only spent a couple of days there before flying to Alice Springs and booking myself onto a tour to see Uluru (or Ayers Rock as it used to be known).

I was a little apprehensive because I didn't expect to be overly impressed by what is essentially a big rock, but it was actually very impressive and we spent ages wandering around it and examining it from different angles. A few facts, courtesy of the Lonely Planet (just about everything I know about Australia comes from Bill Bryson or the Lonely Planet): it is 3.6km long, 348m high (and it is thought that 2/3 of the rock remains underground) and a walk around the circumference of the rock is 10km long. So yes, it's a big rock but it's a fantastic sight and well worth seeing. There is the option to climb the rock but I didn't do it because the Aborigines consider it to be a sacred site and don't want tourists running about all over it. That didn't stop a couple of people in my group climbing it so I fired suitably scathing looks in their direction when they got off the bus and had a good chuckle at the woman who could barely climb the first few metres without falling over. I was hoping that she would comically roll down the hill cartoon-like but I was bitterly disappointed.

After travelling around the rock, we hung around and had a BBQ while we waited for the sun to go down since the rock is meant to change colour as the sun slowly descends in the evening. And it did - it was very cool. Not quite the spiritual experience that you'd be led to believe it is from speaking to some people but definitely worth seeing and there were a few "Wow" moments as we saw the rock from different angles.

Once the sun had gone down we headed back to Alice Springs (a mere 400km away) and I was back by midnight - but very tired since they picked me up at a very chilly 7am that morning. It was strange because the days were baking hot but as soon as the sun went down it was freezing cold - especially in my accommodation which was reminiscent of one of the pre-fabricated huts that passed for my classroom when I was 8 years old. There wasn't much else to see in Alice Springs - it's a pretty nasty tourist town with no charm or character and which seemed to consist of tourists, people employed by the tourist industry or some seriously beaten up aborigine people. I won't even try to explain anything about the Australian Aborigine situation (and no least because I know next to nothing about it) except that to say that it's a big problem. While I was visiting an Adelaide church I was talking with a gentle elderly man who worked in the gift shop and his entire demeanor changed and frosted over when I mentioned I was going to Alice Springs. He told me that the Aborigines were a massive problem there and they like to take money from Australians but like to live by their own rules. It was an experience almost spookily identical to one that Bill Bryson had in "Down Under". On the other hand, you're told not to judge Aborigines by the ones you see in Alice Springs or Darwin who generally have drink problems. To be honest, I didn't see enough to even form an opinion except that the ones in Alice Springs could benefit from a good wash now and again...

Anyway, I visited the Royal Flying Doctor museum which was quite interesting, a kangaroo rescue centre where I held a few baby kangaroos and also visited the Alice Spring reptile centre which was extremely scary. There really are far too many innocuous looking but lethal animals in Australia and most of them were on show here (thankfully behind glass windows). There were newspaper cutouts of men missing various crucial and significant limbs thanks to spiders biting them or stumbling over a small wormlike snake or something. I vowed to keep to the pavement at all times from that moment onwards.

After exhausting the 3 things worth seeing in Alice Springs I decided, in some misguided attempt at "seeing the real Australia" that the best way to go to Darwin (for that was my next destination) would be to travel by bus for 21 hours through miles and miles of desert and road. Clearly I'd been out in the sun too long but the man at the bus station gladly sold me a ticket and I climbed onto the bus. 21 hours later I emerged only slightly deranged and found a hostel right next to the bus station which had a pool and which sounded nice and lively. As I was checking in I noticed a party of Irishmen who'd clearly been sitting next to the pool all day liberally pouring vast quantities of Aussie beer down their throats. I then observed (somewhat wide-eyed) them pounce on a frail young backpacker who had the misfortune of passing them at the wrong time be picked up fully clothed and launched into the pool to the accompaniment of cheers and shouts. Not wishing to suffer the same fate I tanked it past them to my room before they even had a chance to notice I was there. When I left the hostel for dinner that night it all seemed to be getting a bit out of hand so I was glad to be out of it. A few days later I saw a couple of the same lads being loaded into the back of a police van outside a pub on the main street so I had a good laugh at them.

Darwin had loads to do and was totally geared for the tourist but it was just totally full of English, Irish and German kids (well, about 18 or 19 or something) and I felt a bit out of place really. They'd obviously just parked themselves in Darwin for the summer and it's what I would imagine a Southern Hemisphere Ibiza to be like. But I'd come to Darwin for a reason and that was to go on the jumping crocodile tour!

A guy in Melbourne had told me about this and it basically consists of taking a boat trip down a crocodile infested river and hanging a bit of meat out over the side for the croc to come and eat. Except the piece of meat is hung quite high up on a stick and the croc has to jump out of the water to get it. What's more is that there is a guy holding the stick and he lifts it up just as the croc jumps for it, much like teasing a dog so that the croc has to jump a couple of times to get it. But crocs can be quick when they want and frequently they would snatch the meat before the guy had a chance to react. It was fantastic to see - these crocs were ridiculously big and absolutely terrifying to look at and they were launching themselves out of the water and tearing the meat apart. You could hear the bones being crunched by the crocs and you realised that you had pretty much no chance if they got their mouth round you. The tour also included a trip to a crocodile farm where they bred crocs for meat and skin (I declined the crocodile meat in the cafe) but you could get up close to the crocs and try to stare them out. I wanted to wrestle a few of them because I reckoned I could take them all on but the people who owned the place wouldn't let me, obviously fearful for the lives of their crocs... Party-poopers.

I also visited a wildlife park which was set in hectares of open bushland and which you could wander around pretty freely. It was massive and took all of the morning to get around but was well worth it as you could go see the kangaroos, visit the nocturnal house, aviary, aquarium and see a bird of prey show (although that finished early as they were scared that some of the smaller birds might get eaten by some wild birds that were flying around). Wandering around the bush, I was a bit worried about getting eaten by a wild snake or a spider and my jumpy mood wasn't helped by thousands of blackfly buzzing around me. At one point a butterfly flew towards me and not quite able to tell what it was I started frantically waving my hands around, much like someone having a fight with fresh air before I realised what it was. After regaining my composure and nervously checking that no one had seen me I went back to swatting blackfly. I was quite glad when I got back to the bus without any obvious snake-inflicted injuries.

After visiting a fantastic museum (which detailed a typhoon that virtually tore the town apart in the 70's) I was done with Darwin and ready to head back to Sydney to meet Cath who was flying out to see me. After my experience with the bus journey I decided to fly to Sydney since air travel is pretty cheap in Oz and the distances are too great for any sane person to consider driving. However my only option was to fly from Darwin at 1am via Brisbane, getting to Sydney at 6am that morning. For some bizarre reason all the flights from Darwin seemed to leave at some obscene hour and so it was that I was sitting in Brisbane airport amongst screaming kids and irritating Aussies at 4am trying to convince myself that this was fun and that I was enjoying myself.

Back in Sydney I found a hostel and had a couple of hours sleep which perked me up a bit before heading out for a wander in Sydney. It was nice to be back in a city that I knew and I just spent some time poking around the shops since I was too tired and the afternoon was too short to do any serious activities. The next day it was pouring with rain so I went to the Maritime museum which was excellent and then to the Powerhouse museum which is probably my most favourite museum ever. The Australians certainly know how to make a good museum and I spent a very cultured day poking around and playing with the exhibits, turfing annoying schoolkids off the toys that I wanted to play with - little brats.

Finally Cath arrived, no thanks to a last minute slight panic due to a typhoon in Hong Kong cancelling her flight from London. Despite her jetlag we climbed Sydney Harbour Bridge (on an organised tour of course - not just by jumping up there or anything). It was a tad pricey but it was totally worth it and definitely something to remember. We were pretty lucky with the weather too so the views were good. Sadly you're not allowed to take cameras or anything but you get a photo as part of the cost so it's not too bad. That evening we went to Sydney aquarium where Cath educated me on loads of animals about which I didn't have a clue. I confidently educated her on the crocodile that was there before reading the sign and realising that it was a totally different type of crocodile. Ah well, I've found that as long as you can be confident in what you say then it often doesn't matter if you're right or wrong - I commend this approach to you all...

And that was pretty much all of Australia. We left the hotel and went to the airport and at some point I carelessly lost my camera. Too late to do anything we boarded the flight to New Zealand as planned and you'll have to wait until the next installment of this blog to find out if we landed in one piece or if we crashed as a gigantic fireball into the ocean.

Until the next time.....be good.

From Scotland to Australia

2006-07-21T07:59:00.000Z

Hello from Melbourne!!!

As the perceptive amongst you will have noticed, I am no longer in the UK and I'm currently enjoying an Antipodean winter down under. I hear that you're all basking in a heatwave in the UK which must be very nice for you but please spare a thought for me all wrapped up in my fleece and stuff because it's a little bit chilly here. Having said that, it's nothing like a UK winter since I'm enjoying nice blue skies instead of biting wind and rain and it's about 12 degrees or so rather than hovering around freezing.

So, I know you've been religiously checking my blog desperately searching for updates and so I am happy to furnish you with my activities of the last week.

I first flew into Sydney and being the organised chap that I am, I had a hostel all organised and even had a bus waiting to take me there. The jet lag so far has been dreadful - even after a week I'm currently going to bed around 2am and waking up anywhere between 8am and 12pm. To be frank, Frank, my body clock is just completely screwed up and I don't know whether I'm coming or going. It's a bit strange because when I went to Hong Kong I had one uncomfortable night of staring at the ceiling and then I was fine, but for some reason coming to Oz has been much more difficult even though the time difference is only an extra hour. Oh well, I think I'm starting to adjust but it's not helped by people snoring and talking and stuff in my dorm room. I've managed to stop myself yelling at them though so I'm rather proud of my new found restrait.

I'm enjoying being a tourist in a country where they speak English (or a variant thereof) and that makes life much easier than trying to communicate through hand signals or whatever else I had to resort to when I was in China. It's just much easier being here since everything is pretty familiar and the place is totally set up for brain-dead tourists much like myself.

So, I had 4 days in Sydney and did all the tourist stuff - looked at the opera house and the harbour bridge and went for a poke around the city. I had a nice walk down the coast from Bondi Beach to a place called Coogee - the waves were amazing, and I also brushed off my cultural side and went to a museum and stuff. I wouldn't say I was bowled over by Sydney but it was nice to see it and to spend some time there.

After that, it was off to Melbourne on the train. I thought I'd get the train because you get to see the scenery pass you by but it was very repetitive after about an hour so I just slept most of the 11 hours. I was stuck in a carriage with a bunch of very smelly students and their tragic dress sense so sleeping was a form of escape for me. The Australians have a bit of a penchant for skin-tight jeans circa 1984 which didn't even look good then so throw in a few dodgy mullets and it's a bit of a laugh people-watching in town. Anyway, I drew into Melbourne at 6pm and in another triumph of organisation on my part I only had a brief 5 minute walk to the hostel (or in fact it could have been a long 5 minute walk - it was 5 minutes regardless and so the addition of the word 'brief' or 'long' is totally unnecessary). Anyway, I had a walk that lasted 5 minutes and depending on your viewpoint, that may be considered brief, long or average. The fact of the matter is that I didn't really have to walk that far to get to the hostel because my planning had been exquisite.

Melbourne seems a little bit more laid back than Sydney and it's a bit more diverse as well since there's a large Chinatown area and a big Greek area too. It doesn't have the memorable view that Sydney has but it seems to be a better town for shopping (my selection of clothes was limited and getting a bit tired after being dragged around China so I had a cull and bought a load of new stuff) and there seems to be a bit more to do as well. I visited the Melbourne museum which was very cool and also included a set from Neighbours which was a very moving experience for me...

Hmm, reading back it doesn't sound like I've done very much at all, but I promise you that I have! I've just spent most of my time walking around and taking the place in. There are lots of different little streets and things to go off an explore and you totally fill your day just poking around.

Anyway, I'm off to Adelaide tomorrow evening on the overnight bus which will be a bundle of laughs. I'll have a few days there and then head off to Uluru (or Ayres Rock). I have to be back in Sydney at the start of August to meet Cath who's coming out to enjoy the trip with me (and she will naturally enjoy it very much since she gets to spend all of her time with yours truly - as will I enjoy it very much since I get to spend all my time with yours truly too...) and then we head off to New Zealand which is somewhere that we think is very close to Australia but is actually 10 billion miles away from it or something as every New Zealander will be quick to tell you...

Right, this is a quick one because internet access is much more expensive in Australia compared to China - dreadfully unfair if you ask me!

I'll try and get some more pictures up soon.

All the best,
Gregor

From Warsaw to Scotland

2006-07-01T19:33:00.000Z

Hello from Scotland!! Or as they say here: Pick a windae ye bamheid.

Yes, it's been a while and for that I offer most profuse apologies but you I have a very good excuse: I couldn't really be bothered writing any more and that's why I didn't update it. As you may have guessed from the subject, I'm back in the UK now so I've been pampering myself with good bread, fresh milk and edible chocolate and thus haven't found the time to update my blog. But then I had a pang of conscience and felt very guilty about neglecting my dear readers and so that's why you find another entry about my adventures.

So, last time I wrote I was in Warsaw and enjoying being back in Europe. Cath came out to visit me the very next day so I was out at the airport ready to meet her and it was fantastic to see her after almost 3 months away. We spent another day in Warsaw doing all the tourist stuff before getting a train that evening to Krakow where we were going to be staying with a friend of mine for a few days.

Krakow was gorgeous - a great size for walking around and with a lovely (slightly touristy) square in the middle with lots of cafes and stuff. It wasn't too busy except for what seemed to be thousands of school parties getting under my feet and in my way. But I took it in my happy-go-lucky way and only slapped a few of them - little brats that they were. So we did the tourist stuff - went to the Jewish quarter, went up the big bell tower-type thing for views over the city and went down to the castle and cathedral which were jolly impressive. We spent a day in the salt mines which were incredible - I'd love to recount all the facts and figures we were told on the tour but I've forgotten them so you'll just have to believe me when I say that it was pretty old, really big and quite cool - there was a giant cathedral carved out deep in the mine which I'm sure you'll agree is impressive.

We also went to the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. There are lots of exhibitions and things detailing all the awful things that went on there but as you walk about you really can't imagine what it was like. A lot of the buildings and things remain but it doesn't look like an awful place - it's just a number of buildings after all - and I found it quite difficult to comprehend that all these terrible things had gone on in the place I was walking around. It's a bit strange being inside this sort of industrial looking room and finding out that they gassed and burned thousands upon thousands of living human beings right where you were standing. I'm not really too sure what I thought as I came away from the place but it's definitely worth a visit to see and experience for yourself, if only for the educational value of the exhibitions.

The only other thing of note is when Thecla's (for indeed she is the friend I was referring to) neighbour somehow managed to lock us all in Thecla's apartment. I'm not entirely clear on why we were locked in but if you knew Thecla then these things tend to happen to her so you learn not to ask questions. Anyway, the only way out was for someone (me) to leap off her balcony to the ground below and then go round and open the front door. Rising the challenge, I lept off her balcony, landed on my feet, staggered around for approximately 20 seconds in the manner of Oliver Reed after a particularly heavy night out before crashing to the ground gracefully, taking out a young tree in the process and managing to cover my lovely Trans-Siberian T-Shirt in some kind of moss. Not my finest hour as a hero but as a comedian I've never managed as many laughs. But I managed to release the hostages so well done me.

After Krakow we caught an overnight train to Budapest. Cath really suffered with her hay fever on the train and was finding it difficult to breathe which was quite worrying but thankfully it cleared itself up enough that she was able to sleep a bit. Our border guards didn't help much by waking us up at 3am and 6am to check our passports but I was very well behaved and polite to them despite them waking me from my precious slumber.

Once we got to Budapest then it was straight to the hotel and on with the sightseeing. Budapest was much much bigger than both Warsaw and Krakow but it was still very picturesque and with lots of impressive buildings and sights for us to take in. Cath was starting to discover that my approach to sightseeing generally involved finding somewhere to eat, having a good meal and a rest, quickly perusing a few sights and then going back to the hotel for a little afternoon nap before heading out for dinner in the evening. Sadly this didn't really fit in with her idea of a holiday so we saw lots of Budapest while I sulked around clutching my stomach in the style of a 5-year old child who wanted a McDonalds, so we saw lots of the sights of Budapest such as the Royal Palace and the fantastic gothic parliament building as well as lots of buildings that I missed the names of because I was too malnourished to focus.

We also had a fantastic time at the thermal baths which were full of all sorts of people of all sorts of shapes and sizes and wearing all sorts of inappropriate clothing. I put them all to shame with my chiselled figure as I relaxed in the baths and noted the look of envy in the men and lust in the women. There was a very cool thing that I'll struggle to describe but it was basically a circular wall that you could swim around and which also had it's own current which propelled you round. It was great fun but Cath had an altercation with some fat Hungarians and crashed into the wall managing to damage her knee in the process - thankfully it wasn't too major so we were able to continue scoping out lots of new restaurants.

After Hungary it was back to the UK and a life of laziness (for me at least - every other sucker had to go to work - ho ho ho!). We arrived in Heathrow and I took the wheel of Cath's car for the first time in 3 months. Within the first 5 minutes I'd almost managed to crash so it was pretty much back to life as normal although I was about 10 miles down the M4 before I'd remembered to put my seatbelt on - perhaps more of China had rubbed off onto me than I'd thought.

The Saturday after I got back I had to get all dressed up for my friend Andy's wedding because I was the best man. I wore my pink cravat without a hint of irony and delivered a best man speech full of dreadful jokes which people were polite enough to laugh at - I can't imagine what it would have been like if no-one had laughed. After another week of laziness (which I could SERIOUSLY get used to) I came to Scotland to visit the family and do a spot of hill-walking which brings me to today, sitting at my parents computer with two very sore legs from my exertions.

What next then, I hear you all cry? Well, I'm back in England (hopefully minus all those stupid England flags everywhere now that they're no longer in the World Cup) next week and then on the 11th I head off to Sydney which is in a place called Australia where everything is upside down and they all speak like Rolf Harris. Sounds like fun!

So, that's all from me for the time being - hopefully my next blog update will be carried out in a more timely manner.

Anyway, ripper mate, stone the flamin crows.

Gregor

From Beijing to Warsaw

2006-06-03T12:30:00.000Z

Hello from Poland!! Or as they say here: wylcoz cazoyoyakz zakukokayzzc.

So, it's been a while - did you miss me? I missed you too. But you'll be glad to know that's it been a fun filled couple of weeks and I took another few million pictures to bore you with when I get back.

So, as you may have guessed, I've made it back to Europe and I must say that it feels like something of a homecoming. When I went to China I didn't think it was really THAT different to Europe but now that I'm back in Europe I can see that it's actually totally different. But it's good to be back - the air is fresher, the people are better looking and the food is more to my taste. You can cross the road without fear of being mown down by a lunatic scooter rider and you don't have to dodge flying saliva when you walk down the street. The whole noise level had been taken down a notch and it's generally a more pleasant place to be. Not that I'm saying that I didn't enjoy China - I actually really enjoyed it and looking back at the last few months I've pretty much achieved everything that I wanted to do (except for Nepal - grrrr!) when - but I found it a tiring place to be for a long period of time, so after two months I'm pleased that I'm somewhere different.

And Warsaw in particular is absolutely beautiful. Perhaps it's because I've been away but the architecture in the Old Town is really lovely and just wandering around the place is really pleasant. They also have a fantastic building in the centre of the city that was apparently a gift from Stalin. If you were friends with Stalin and he gave you a skyscraper as a present then I'd expect it look exactly like the skyscraper he gave to Warsaw: Click here for a picture

So, I suppose you're all sitting at work pretending to be working but really you're desperate to know what I've been up to for the last week? Yes, No, Maybe? Well I'm going to tell you anyway.

On the Tuesday (23rd May) I was up at some absurdly early hour to get to Beijing Railway Station to catch the Trans-Siberian to Ulaan Bator. I was sharing a cabin with three other people who were also going to Mongolia: a girl called Anna who was to be my only travelling companion for the next week or so - much to Cath's delight - and an English couple called Dave and Sarah who were getting off a couple of stops early to go camel-trekking in the Gobi desert and then spending a further 9 days in Mongolia. The journey itself was pretty uneventful - I took the opportunity to eat loads of junk food and to spread myself liberally around the cabin so that I could have a comfortable snooze.

As we came into Inner Mongolia the scenery changed quite quickly and the lush green fields gave way to monotonous desert as far as the eye could see. The sun was quickly blotted out by sandstorms and even inside the carriage with the windows shut you could taste the dust in the air. The day went quite quickly and as darkness fell we drew up to the Mongolian border where we were going to have to wait for a few hours while the customs officials did their thing and also while they changed the wheels on the carriages to fit the narrower gauge line that they use in Mongolia and Russia, so we took the opportunity to get off the train and stretch our legs.

By the time we got back on the train it was 2am Mongolian time (they are on Beijing time but they also observe summer time so we were in the strange position of travelling west but putting the clocks forward an hour) and we were all knackered from our strenuous day of sitting and eating so we went straight to bed.

We drew into Ulaan Bator (minus the English couple who'd got off earlier) in the afternoon and were met by our guide at the station. She had a piece of paper with our names on which made me feel very special and gave us a quick tour of the city - it was very Russian and for the first time in a couple of months I finally felt like I wasn't in China. After we'd seen the city she took us out to our home for the next couple of days at a Ger camp outside the city.

There wasn't much to do except read and go for the odd walk and horse ride and I found it really relaxing. The scenery was fabulous and our Ger camp was very comfortable with good heating and good food served in the restaurant. There were even hot showers in a separate block although some of the visiting Americans were whinging that the water pressure wasn't strong enough for them. Quite what they expected I don't know but I was very pleasantly surprised by just how comfortable the whole set-up was.

On the Friday it was back on the train for 4 nights until we got to Moscow. I was in a cabin with Anna, another English girl called Belinda and a German girl called Susan. Cath was delighted to hear that I was locked in a carriage with 3 girls for 4 nights but I was very honest and at the risk of mental breakdowns and suicide threats I very quickly told the other girls that I had a girlfriend and to their credit they took it very well. I also gave them a daily run-down of how many days it would be until I met up with Cath in Poland which obviously wasn't annoying for them in the slightest.

In actual fact, I didn't speak with Susan very much at all because she was a nutter. Her method of introduction involved taking an almighty Germanic strop at us all for leaving a bag temporarily on her bunk as we were trying to find somewhere to put all our luggage after we'd arrived in the cabin. Not the best way to make friends with the other people you'll be sharing a small space with for 4 days. So after her little outburst at us, we pretty much ignored her for the rest of the trip which was a bit harsh on her but in our defence she was a complete fruitcake. For example: at the Mongolian border crossing into Europe she refused to answer the (very angry looking) border guard's question about why her passport was ripped, then attempted to make a joke about finding her passport on the ground in the street and then as a manic finale made some throwaway comment about having a bomb. She also took a massive strop at another passenger who she claimed grabbed her - although this could be true cos he looked well dodgy, and on another occasion she was screaming at our conductor (or provodnitsa as they're called) that she hadn't given her an immigration form. You can see why we tried to distance ourselves from her.

Anyway, the rest of the journey was quite quiet and I spent most of my time reading, sleeping, eating, daydreaming, doing Sudoko or making preparations to eat and sleep. Simple tasks took on monumental importance and minor decisions were weighed up with every pro and con considered. It sounds dull, but it was a great trip and really exciting to be crossing an entire continent by train.

We had a bunch of Mongolian traders on our train who had loads of junk that they tried to sell at some of the stations along the route. It were fantastic to watch as these crazy traders dashed off the train with some of the most awful clothes you could imagine and tried to force them onto the people that had come to the station to buy this junk. Now, I was told that Russia was full of beautiful women but this couldn't have been any further from the truth. Some of the people I saw looked like they'd been attacked repeatedly by the ugly tree rather than falling out of it. I had to applaud just how ugly some of these people were because it must have taken a serious amount of concerted effort. Then to complete the ensemble they bought some of the most incredible clothing - purple velour tracksuits and lime green quilted jackets and such like. I don't know what on earth was going on but I watched with detached, bemused, horrified enjoyment. Put in the context of how little was going on each day, every stop became a little bit of theatre that you prepared yourself for in advance.

And so, before long (seriously - the time went quite quickly) we drew into Moscow where another man was waiting for us (this time without our names on a piece of paper - amateur!) and took Anna and myself off to our hotel while Belinda was taken away by her tour group rep. I'm not sure what became of Susan - I imagine a group of Russian policemen were getting an ear bashing from her and then baton-charged her but I can't be sure.

Our hotel was very nice and I had a very well deserved and very welcome (and not just by me) shower before crashing out after my exhausting few days of sleeping and eating. In all seriousness though, I was really tired and I don't know why. I slept like a log all of the time on the train so I'm putting it down to some strange sort of jet-lag and culture shock. All three of us felt a bit out of sorts in Moscow which meant that our attempts at sight-seeing involved maybe an hour of wandering around and they going for a coffee and food somewhere before going back to the hotel. I didn't really see much of Moscow and the rain and wind was a bit off-putting too - it sounds lazy but I've done so much sight-seeing the last couple of months that I think I was a little jaded. Plus the locals didn't seem to be massively friendly and I personally just wanted to get to Poland.

But it was good to see Moscow - I got lots of pictures, went to see Lenin (who was looking a bit grey and off-colour but not bad for someone who's been dead for 80 years) and it was nice to be back in Europe.

And now, after an overnight journey from Moscow and a slightly early stop where they kicked us all off the train outside the city I'm in Warsaw. I guess this'll be my last blog entry until I get back to the UK (albeit temporarily - I still have another 3 months off work you know?) for my friends wedding so hopefully I'll get to catch up with some of you while I'm back.

And so that's it from me for the time-being. When I'm back in the UK I'll update my Flickr site with some more of my pictures and I might even be able to tell you what I'm planning for the rest of my trip.

Until then - all the best!

Gregor

Bye bye China

2006-05-22T05:34:00.000Z

So, amazingly it's my last day in China today. It's been 9 weeks since I left the UK and I get the Trans-Siberian (or more accurately the Trans-Mongolian) tomorrow to go to Russia, via a 2 night stop-over in Ulan-Bator.

Scary stuff really - in some ways the time has gone very quickly but in other ways it feels like a long time since I was back in the UK. It feels like ages since I saw Cath so I'm really looking forward to seeing her in Poland in a week or so.

Anyway, last time I wrote I was in Kunming which turned out to probably be my favourite city in China. There were lots of parks and trees and it wasn't as crowded or as manic as everywhere else that I've been, plus the climate was quite nice - not too hot and not cold, although it did pour with rain for a couple of days while I was there. There wasn't anything specifically outstanding to go and visit but it was a nice place to spend a bit of time wandering around the city and visiting the parks and things.

After Kunming I flew up to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. Xi'an was massive - much bigger than I expected (although I should have expected it to be large since it was the capital of China at one time) and it was really very hot indeed - too hot for me.

I took the chance to visit my friend Marc who is currently lecturing at a university outside Xi'an (somehow he's been made an Associate Professor!) and he showed me around Yangling and then his wife cooked us a very nice dinner. It was good to catch up with him and I think he enjoyed the chance to speak with another westerner since there are only around 10 westerners in the town in total!

The Terracotta Warriors were great although our tour did spend around 4 hours there which was a bit too long and I ended up being a bit bored - I think maybe an hour or two would have been enough time. It was great to see them though and although I was a bit worried that I might be disappointed when I finally saw them in the flesh I shouldn't have worried. Perhaps they could have made a bit more effort to make them presentable so that you could get up close to see them but it's basically an archeological dig site that's still in progress so I won't complain too much!

There wasn't really too much else to see in Xi'an so I took the overnight train to Beijing which was going to be my last stop in China before I set off back to Europe.

It was good to be back somewhere I was familiar with but I still had a few places that I wanted to visit. I went to the Great Hall of the People which I suppose is the Chinese parliament building. It looked very grand from the outside but inside it was a bit underwhelming with frayed carpets and generally a tired feel to it. It was nice, but there was nothing grand or impressive about it. I suppose the Chinese Communist Party make all their decisions in darkened, smoky rooms so they have no real need for a parliament building...

The next day I went to the Military Museum and spent a fantastic few hours looking at tanks and missiles and rifles and things. It was great. They had missiles cut in half so you could see how they worked and they also had a massive selection of handguns and machine guns and revolvers and basically all the kinds of toys that you wanted when you were a kid. The rest of the museum was dedicated to Chinese conflicts of the past but it was all in Chinese so I didn't have much of a clue what was going on. I had a brief sortie around the place looking at the pictures but after all the weapons and stuff it was a bit dull. I totally recommend a visit though if you're a big kid.

I finally got around to seeing the Great Wall as well. I'd been meaning to see it ever since I first landed in Beijing in mid-April but somehow never got around to it so yesterday I joined a tour out to one of the restored sections of the wall. I was expecting to be disappointed but I absolutely wasn't. It's just so impressive and the scale of the achievement of building it is there to see. It must have been a massive undertaking.

We took a cable car up the hill (about 1000 metres up - we could have walked but our guide told us we were short of time) and at the top you could see hills into the far distance and the wall perched along the top of them. The pictures don't do it justice (and nor do they show the steepness of the bit that I climbed - I was mildly out of breath by the time I got to the top - thank goodness for my Olympian fitness). I was glad that I'd finally seen it and I should get another chance tomorrow since the Trans-Siberian goes under the wall before we reach Mongolia.

And so that's China for me!

I'm not sure when I'll next get the chance to post - probably when I'm back in the UK so I hope you'll all manage to keep a meaningful life going in the interim.

All the best,
Gregor

More photos

2006-05-13T07:53:00.000Z

Just a quick note to say that I've updated my photo site with the pictures I took in Tibet. They're available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorontour

From Tibet to Kunming

2006-05-12T02:54:00.000Z

Hello!

This is getting to be a bit of a habit us bumping into each other like this. So how have you been?

Me?? Well, as you know I'm faffing around in China and generally poking my nose into other people's business. I was in Tibet last week you know? Yes, it was quite nice but pretty different to China.

In fact, whilst it's part of China officially it's really quite different culturally, even after over 50 years of Chinese rule. Seeing the Chinese flag flying seems to be awfully out of place because the people look different, they still use their own language (despite Chinese efforts to wipe it out) alongside mandarin and their culture seems to be a million miles removed from the Chinese. Having said that, it's not all good. The hygiene there is even worth than in China and they seem to be completely averse to washing. Some of the people in Tibet, especially outside Lhasa haven't washed for ages (I think I read somewhere that they take a bath once a year) and so they have a particular fragrance that isn't overly nice. It's not totally surprising though because in my week there I didn't manage to have one hot shower. I had plenty of cold showers but considering that they don't seem to have heating either then it was a fairly uncomfortable week.

Anyway, when I was in Chengdu my airport taxi guy picked up two other people from other hostels on their way to Tibet - once was a English woman who'd started travelling after her partner had died and had been on the road for 8 months and the other was an American/South Korean guy who lived in Tokyo. We got chatting and when we arrived in Tibet we decided to hire a 4x4 and driver to take us to Everest Base Camp in Tibet (there are two base camps - one for the north face in Tibet and one for the south face in Nepal - I was meant to be trekking to the Nepalese one but of course it was cancelled). So we paid our money, met our driver who spoke no English and checked out our Land Cruiser which had no seatbelts and had 4 tyres that may have once had tread but certainly didn't now. Our driver was happy enough to drive us there and most of the other Land Cruisers looked pretty similar so I decided that we wouldn't get a much better option.

I spent the rest of the day at the Potala Palace which I found pretty dull but I'm not a Buddhist and so didn't have a clue what it was all about, and walking around generally experiencing Lhasa. It's quite a place. They have no issues whatsoever about begging for anything so they're always pestering you and there were loads of pilgrims prostrating themselves in front of the Potala Palace and while walking round the Jodphur Temple. It's a very holy site for Buddhists and they believe that if you walk clockwise round it a number of times then you'll be healed of some of your ills or you'll increasing your chance of reaching nirvana or something- I didn't really understand it. But they were well into it with their prayer wheels and chanting and sliding along the ground and stuff. I'm not making fun of it but it did seem a little odd. However, the whole reason for me to go travelling is to see how other people live and experience their culture (and not just to get 6 months off work - although that's nice too).

I had a headache from the altitude (Lhasa is around 3700m) but by the time the driver picked us up at 7:30am the next day it'd gone. We set off for a place called Shigatse where we would stop for lunch. The drive was very pleasant along a nice smooth road with some fantastic hills and glacial rivers although it was a bit cloudy and we were a bit worried that it would be like this all the way to base camp (or EBC as I'm now going to call it). EBC looked like the same distance again from Shigatse and I couldn't quite understand why it would take 4 days to get there and back on such a smooth road when we were making so much time but I was soon to find out.

We had lunch and jumped back in the car to go to a place called Latse where we scheduled to spend the night. The road was a little bit worse but nothing major and we got there around 5pm. Eager to make as much time as possible, our driver asked if we wanted to spend the night in Tingri which would make the journey quicker the next day. Apparently it would take 2 hours so after checking the maps and things we decided that we would since there didn't look like there was much in Latse.

At this point the road appeared to cease to exist and we spent two hours driving through what can only be described as a muddy building site and quarry where they seemed to be doing constant work on the 'road' which was just a track that had been flattened through the mud. At one point there was a traffic jam behind a lorry which had left the road and got stuck in a muddy ditch, blocking the road. Somehow we managed to squeeze past and be on our way but a little further down there was another lorry which had completely left the road and rolled over onto it's roof. There was nobody around so it must have happened a while ago and the cab looked intact so I guess everyone was OK. Still, I fastened my imaginary seatbelt and felt much safer.

The road was like this all the way to the Qomolangma National Park (Qomolangma is the Tibetan name for Mount Everest) where we reached 5200m and continued like this until we descended to around 4200m and to Latse.

When we got to our appointed hotel (which didn't happen to be in Tingri but in a place called Shegar - long story but we were basically misled by our crafty driver) we were taken to this room which could really only be described as filthy. I had no doubt that we would be sharing the room with various other rabid and diseased occupants and while I would have stayed there if we had no other choice, we left to find another hotel. We found one that was happy to rip us off since they were basically the only other deal in town. But it was OK, if rather cold (in fact it was freezing cold) and I slept in my clothes that night. Of course, there was no heating or hot water - oh how glad I was to experience the authentic Tibeten way of living.

The next day we paid an extortionate sum for our breakfast and then set off to EBC. The weather was fantastic and the sky as clear as could be. The road itself was spectacular. We basically drove up a never ending series of hairpin bends until we reached the top of this hill, again around 5200m and as we drove round the corner at the summit we saw Everest majestically towering over all the other mountains in the vicinity. It was dramatic and it was breathtaking - what a fantastic view and what an exceptional mountain. It had the familiar stream of snow blowing from the summit (apparently because the summit just manages to peak into the jetstream) and was surrounded by other snowcapped peaks (including the 4th and 7th largest mountains in the world). Of course, I went camera crazy and shot loads of pictures and a little video too. The fact that you just drive round a corner after being surrounded by brown dusty hills and are then faced with this incredible view makes it all the more spectacular. We jumped back in the car exhilarated and keen to get to EBC.

Unfortunately our driver somehow managed to get into some kind of race with one of the other Land Cruisers and took off down the mountain in pursuit of the guy. He managed to overtake him on one of the bends but then the other guy came off the road and tanked straight down the hill, missing out the road for a bit. Our driver found this to be an excellent idea and followed suit as his passengers all explored the upper-range of their voices with various involuntary squeaks and screams - much to his amusement.

In all honesty, it was great fun and I didn't feel that scared - he was actually a very good driver and tyre tread wouldn't have been much use on this terrain anyway since it was just a dusty track. All the same, I was quite glad when we stopped for the loo and the other guy got away.

The bad side of the trip was that it was a bit of a tourist trap and they used as many ways to get as much money out of you as possible. From the inflated hotel prices to having to buy a permit to leave Lhasa, a permit enter the park, a permit for a vehicle to enter the park and then having to take a bus instead of your car to the Rongbhuk Monastery (the highest monastery in the world, just 6km from EBC and where there was a guest house where we would be spending the night) - it was all designed to get as much money out of tourists as possible.

Anyway, we piled on the tourist bus for the 45 minute drive to the monastery but by this time the cloud had come in and view wasn't so great and it was getting pretty cold. When we arrived we got a room at the guest house (which, if I may be so bold, was a dump and exceptionally cold) and dumped our stuff. The guesthouse was clean but draughty and the lights came on and went off whenever the owner decided - much like in a prison. Of course there were no showers and there was no heating either. By the way, Michael Palin in his book 'Himalaya' said that the toilets at the guest house were the worst he's ever used and while I don't have the experience he does, I'd have to agree with him. Let me just say that you had to be careful where you stepped and I'll leave it at that.

Getting to base camp was yet another way of getting money from us since you could walk it (not a great idea when you've just arrived at 4900m but not impossible - I was actually quite keen but my partners weren't) or you could get a donkey cart (the so-called 'Eco Bus') for a fiver. We chose the latter and my goodness if it wasn't the most painful thing I've done in China. The cart jarred and bumped its way up the road sending the contours of the road up my spine - I tried not to scream but I couldn't be sure as my body was starting to shut down with the pain. I took it like a man though and didn't cry. I was very glad when we arrived at base camp though.

Now, everybody told me that base camp was a dump and they were spot on. Base camp is a dump. I didn't exactly expect hotels with swimming pools and restaurants and stuff - in fact I expected it to be barren with just a few tents, but it was full of souvenir sellers and stupid little tea houses in big tents and stuff. A little further on were the small tents of the various expeditions that were either planning to tackle the mountain or were on it at the moment. It wasn't a let down, since we got a fantastic view of a (cloudy) Everest but I was distracted every now and again as I had to slap a few touts trying to sell me junk.

It was great to be there though, even if I did cheat by driving there but after a while we were ready to go down so we got back into our donkey pain device and made our way back (although we jumped out before the end and walked the last 2km because it was just too painful!).

At bedtime I put on all the clothes I had, strategically wrapped myself in all the blankets I could find and prepared for a very very cold night. In the end it wasn't too bad at all except that I needed the toilet during the night but couldn't unravel myself enough to get up and couldn't summon the motivation to get out into the cold so I just waited until morning.

The next morning I woke up with a cracking headache - presumably from the altitude and general tiredness but once I was up and had drunk loads of water it started to disappear - just as well because I felt pretty dreadful. I was up early though to see the sun rising on Everest and what a sight it was. The monastery had a fantastic view of the mountain so I took a walk and took loads of photos - aren't digital cameras great???

It was time to leave though, so we waited for the bus and when it arrived we were herded on cattle along with the other tourists back to our waiting Land Cruiser and driver (and let me just say what an impressive vehicle the Land Cruiser is - it took so much punishment and didn't miss a beat at all).

Once back in the car our driver took off again and we made out way back to Shigatse where we were due to spend the night. At one point we encountered a Land Cruiser that had crashed into a lorry (at low speed) and was blocking the road. On one side was a cliff going up and on the other was a cliff going a long long way down to the river below. At the side of the road were some concrete blocks stuck into the ground to stop traffic plummeting to their doom. If it was a normal country then they'd just move the vehicles, perhaps taking a few photos but of course in China/Tibet it's never simple and they had to wait for the police to arrive (which would take hours since we were seriously in the middle of nowhere).

However, our clever drivers (and by this time there was a tailback of Land Cruisers) decided that if they demolished the concrete blocks then they could squeeze by so they set to work with tyre irons breaking the blocks to pieces. Our driver would be the first to try and get by so I surrepitiously liberated my passport and essentials from the car so that if he plunged to his death I would still have my passport and might even get a few exciting pictures too!

Unbelievably though, once they'd demolished the concrete blocks (an impressive achievement) the lorry driver jumped in and reversed his lorry out of the way and they pushed the Land Cruiser out of the way too. Don't ask me where the logic was because I don't have a clue. We were very very perplexed. I think they just wanted to break some stuff up and that was a good excuse for them to do it. Who knows?

The rest of our journey to Shigatse was uneventful and I had a lovely cold shower in a lovely cold room in an extremely cold town. But I felt clean and even managed to have a cold shave so I looked a bit more human.

The next day was on the nice smooth road back to Lhasa where I got a room in a youth hostel with no hot water and no heating. I'd started to get used to it by this point so it was no great hardship. I was ready to come back to China though so the day after I booked my flight to Kunming and did my souvenir shopping - buying all sorts of weird stuff.

So my impressions of Tibet? Well, Lhasa isn't really very Tibetan - there's a massive Chinese influence there but the Barkhor area, around the Jodphur temple is still quite Tibetan, even if it is a tourist trap. The rest of it is a bit of a ghastly Chinese import so best avoided. As for the rest of Tibet that I saw, it's very beautiful and less touched by the interfering Chinese (take a look here for more info on Tibet and the Chinese http://www.atc.org.au/ - naturally the site is banned in China). The scenery is incredible although there isn't much greenery. Hygiene isn't at the top of their list of priorities so you see absolutely filthy people but the country is so dusty and hot water so scarce that it's not great surprise that they've given up on washing. Also, the country is just so tough to live in with extreme weather and difficult farming that they're a very very tough and hardy people.

Anyway, I'm in Kunming now which seems really very nice - probably the nicest city I've been to in China. It's very green, not too big and not to crowded and with lots of comforts for me! I'm here for a few more days and then off to Xi'an.

Hope you're all well and keep the emails coming - it's great to hear what you're all up to.

All the best,
Gregor

From Beijing to Tibet

2006-05-03T11:54:00.000Z

Hello!

I arrived in Tibet today so thought I should update you on what I've been up to the last couple of weeks.

After I got back from North Korea I had a few days to spend until my pre-booked flight to Nepal so I did all the Beijing touristy things. I missed the sandstorm on the Monday (shame - it sounded quite impressive) but the city was still covered with a light layer of it when I arrived back on Tuesday. I sorted out my accomodation for the next few days and was staying in one of Beijing's many Hutons which was fun but a bit chaotic when you had cars and bikes trying to squeeze down the narrow lanes. I then spent a bit of time sorting out all of my North Korean purchases, catching up with some of the North Korean tour group in Beijing and generally just winding down after a busy week in the DPRK.

The next day I visited Tiananmen Square (it's very very big) and the Forbidden City (a bit of an anti-climax since it's all pretty much the same inside) and went to see my second embalmed corpse of the week when I went to see Chairman Mao. Interestingly, for someone who was responsible for the death of tens of millions, he still manages to command lots of respect and there were many people from all generations bowing at his statue and queueing to see his body.

One day I hired a bicycle which must have been about 300 years old and weighed about 10 tonnes and went off on a cycle around Beijing - not a task to be taken lightly considering the volume and quality of Beijing traffic. But it was actually lots of fun - bicycles have right of way so the cars have to swerve to avoid your erratic moves - and I took a trip up to the Lama Temple in the northern part of the city. It was pretty much like any other temple but it was good to see it and tick it off the list. That evening I went to see the Chinese Acrobatic Troupe who were really good - extremely talented but some of the girls were quite awfully ugly which ruined it a bit...

Another day I made an attempt to go to the Summer Palace but I was feeling a bit off colour that day so I abandoned it and just went back to the hostel to relax (plus I couldn't find the bus to take me there!). In the back of my mind was the Nepal trip and the would it/wouldn't it happen scenario. The tour company were to decide whether to cancel or not the day before I was supposed to fly to Chengdu (and then on to Kathmandu) so it was a bit of a nervous time. In the end they decided to abandon it which was probably the best move but I decided I would go to Chengdu anyway and perhaps go to Tibet or somewhere.

I ran out of time to do all the Beijing stuff so I still have to do the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. I get back to Beijing a few days early so that I can do the Trans-Siberian so I'll squeeze them in then.

Unfortunately the next day I woke up and didn't feel at all well. I had what turned out to be a bladder infection which wasn't very pleasant and I wasn't too keen on flying. But I decided to go anyway and once I'd go to Chengdu and found a place to stay, I took a couple of days to sweat it out (and sweat I did - it was quite disgusting). I thought it'd gone but it hadn't so I've started to take the antibiotics that I have with me and they seem to be doing the job.

Chengdu was a pretty decent place to just relax for a while and the hostel was quite easy going. It was very very hot though - around the 32-35C mark so I was forced to dig out my shorts and scare the locals. I met up with a friend of Cath's who was living nearby and looking after rescued bears - she was pretty sick of Chengdu though and counting the days until she could leave. I can understand that though - the Chinese could quite easily wear you down so we spent and evening complaining about all of the bad things in China.

I also visited the Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre and took lots of pictures of Giant Pandas chilling around and eating bamboo and stuff. It was quite cool and if you wanted you could get your picture taken with a panda but they wanted 50 quid so I didn't bother.

And so today I arrived in Tibet. I was up at 4:30am to get the flight and arrived here at 10:30am. I'm already sunburned and have a headache from the altitude but it's not too bad so I'm quite relieved really. I've met up with some people and we've booked a trip to Tibetan Everest Base Camp which might make up for the disappointment of not making it to the Nepalese Base Camp.

Tibet seems really nice but Lhasa is a bit of a mix. Parts of it (the Barkor area) are just like I expected Tibet to be and other parts are just like China, which is very sad because the Chinese are just forcing their culture upon the Tibetans. It was sad to see the Potala Palace with a Chinese Flag flying on top but that's just the way it is at the moment and nobody at government level seems to be too concerned about the Chinese attitude to Tibet.

Anyway, I'll let you know more about Tibet as I find it - I'm away for 4 days while I do base camp so don't cry if I don't respond to your emails!

All the best,
Gregor

North Korea - Part 2

2006-04-28T09:57:00.000Z

The next day we were taken to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang which is the mausoleum of the president Kim Il Sung. I don't know the history of the building - whether it was constructed specifically to hold his corpse or whether it was his residence and was converted after he died, but it was a vast marble-lined palace - effectively empty except for his body and a room detailing his awards and gifts from other countries. There were hoards of people outside, barely speaking and all dressed in their best clothes (I even had to buy a shirt and tie in Beijing before I left).

When we entered we stepped onto a travelator which carried us at a pre-determined speed through the palace to give us time to contemplate that great acts of the great man. It's easy to joke about it but to the North Korean people this man commands deep respect and it would extremely rude to joke around just because you think he's a vile murdering egomaniac, so we politely kept quiet and did what was expected of us - we could save our comments about him for when we got to China.

As we got deeper into the building, rousing fanfare music playing on a continuous loop got louder and louder and we entered a room with a massive portrait of the president. The whole atmosphere was of deep reverence and as strange as it sounds you did get carried along with it a bit. We were led into the room with his body - the light was low and he was lying in a glass case, covered with a sheet from below the shoulders. We walked round the body in groups of four and were expected to bow four times, at the head, each side and his feet before we were led out.

We were given a portable audio player which told of his last days and which bordered on the ludicrous. I don't remember the exact words but it was something like the citizen's tears formed rivers which carried him to heaven or some such nonsense. It was delivered by an Englishman who was either deranged or just a comical genius - I couldn't decide. The same speech was given in Korean by female guides and many of the Koreans in the room were in tears.

This last point was very interesting to me because I remember in 1994 when Kim Il Sung died, the news reports showed pictures of throngs of people weeping in the streets, and not just a few tears either - they were really getting stuck in and collapsing and screaming and everything. The reporter said that it was unclear if it was staged or not but it was pretty clear to me that it must have been because it's just not a typical reaction you see to the death of a world leader. But, as I saw these women crying over 10 years after the event I did start to wonder whether that outpouring of grief in 1994 was actually genuine after all. I'm not saying it's normal but if you're brought up to believe the guy is immortal (and apparently they used to start every day asking for the eternal life of the leader) then I guess you'll be a bit miffed if he went and died. Of course, you could say that the tears in the mausoleum were staged as well and I'll never know but from a personal point of view I don't think they were and what's more is that I don't think I saw very much at all during my trip that had been staged. The Korean people we saw just didn't seem to have much interest in us - so they'd have a look at us and note that we were Western but unless you made an attempt to interact with them by waving then they'd just carry on as normal.

Anyway, that's what I think so there we go!

After the mausoleum we went outside to wait and found ourselves in the middle of a Korean military display. I don't know how many troops there were but there must have been a good few thousand that marched past us, all of them singing and I must commend them on their tunefulness - if they fight as well as they sing then they'll go far. Unfortunately our guides weren't happy with us taking pictures up close but I do have some from a distance and they make quite an impressive sight.

Afterwards we left Pyongyang to go to a farm in a place called Wonsan on the east coast. The drive was fun since one of the buses broke down (we were split into two groups) and we had to hang around for 2 hours until they caught up. It did give us an opportunity to go off and wander and take the opportunity to make our guides very nervous. We enjoyed waving at passing army trucks and cars as if it was quite normal to encounter a bunch of western guys strolling along the road miles from nowhere in a country that is supposedly closed to foreigners. Then when we got back on the road it was getting dark and we discovered that the bus had no heating. We were frozen as we got to the hotel and were looking forward to our dinner but as we got to the restaurant it had no heating either. Then they served us some mildly warm fish and some cold cucumber. But of course nobody dreamed of complaining because we were dining like kings while people were starving in this country.

The farm itself wasn't hugely interesting - basically they were trying to show us how the country can survive on its own without any help from the outside (an assertion which is complete drivel) but we enjoyed having a look around a town that wasn't Pyongyang. We even saw a cruise liner that our guides told us was used to ferry Japanese passengers to North Korea for them to meet family members (presumably left over from the Japanese occupation) but it's rumoured that it's not allowed to leave port because it's used for North Korean drug running. Tut tut!

The drive back was far less entertaining and thankfully it was still light when we arrived in Pyongyang - after the long drive through the fields and general nothingness of the North Korean countryside, Pyongyang was quite the little thriving metropolis and all the statues, towers and grand buildings were floodlit giving the city a very pleasant look. It was certainly a different look to the place when we first arrived because most of the city was in darkness - probably in the midst of yet another blackout. It can't be denied though that Pyongyang at night is a sight worth seeing - and with barely any traffic and no McDonalds or Starbucks then you have to see its attractions.

The next day was one of the largest events in the North Korean calendar - the birthday of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. Quite what was going to take place today nobody seemed to know but Pyongyang was in celebratory mood. As usual we woke up to revolutionary songs at 7am blasting across the entire city (call me picky but if that happened where I live I'd be out there in the middle of the night with a sledgehammer demolishing those speakers) and we set off to do some sight seeing around Pyongyang. First stop was the Juche tower - Juche being the principle of 'self-reliance' developed by yes, you've guessed it, the big Kim I-S coming atcha. We got the lift to the top and then I saw perhaps one of the scariest things I've ever seen. You see, we had a cameraman following us around all the time in the hope that he could sell us a DVD at the, shall we say ambitious cost of 40 Euro each after the tour. He was quite a character and could generally be seen in his black head to toe outfit racing ahead of us to capture us walking, or standing, or his particular favourite: walking over a bridge. He often complained that he was very hot which was unsurprising because he was always running somewhere in search of his next cinematographic (now there's a word!) masterpiece and he often embellished it by hiding behind some flowers so you would get a sort of out of focus flutter flower in the foreground. Kim Jong Il (a renowned movie buff, even if he has dire tastes) would have approved of this talented individual. Anyway, at the top of the Juche tower he decided that his best angle was to be found from clambering onto the 6 inch wide wall and crouching down to the height that he would have been had he been standing up. Ignoring the 150 foot drop, he climbed onto the wall one handed, camera in the other hand, in a style reminiscent of a drunk man trying to tie his showlaces and shot his two seconds of footage - footage of 10 very pale westerners with jaws agape wondering if they were about to see our cameraman die for his profession. In anticipation of 250 quid from "You've Been Framed" I whipped out my camera but alas he survived.

We spent the rest of the morning going to various statues and stuff that celebrated Kim and his triumphs and great acts and all the rest of it before heading to a park for a stroll. The park was full of North Koreans who it appeared had spent the day celebrating and who were now rather jolly and quite frankly completely hammered. They were all dancing and having a great time (apart from the unconscious ones) and they all seemed incredibly relaxed. They received us warmly and before long those of us that didn't have their wits about them were dragged into the dancing - much to the amusement of the locals, since we didn't have a clue how to dance and were making prize fools out of ourselves (not me of course - for a start I managed to avoid the boozed up 150 year old women that were prowling around and secondly I am a formidable dancer). It was a special experience - everybody on the tour felt the same and it was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me.

We went to see a Mass Dance in Kim Il Sung square but I'm not sure if it materialised or not. We definitely saw about 20,000 people dancing but we were told that this was a rehearsal so we went into the art gallery to look at some revolutionary paintings about Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. All around the city were photos of the pair of them in a school or in a factory or a hospital or something. And usually it said something about them offering 'On the spot guidance' which was a term that we came to love. The fact that they could just turn up and tell some scientists how to do their job was ridiculous but if you can do no wrong then you can say what you want. When we came out the rehearsal was still going so we went off for dinner and then went back to the hotel.

Our last day we were all pretty tired from the hectic week we'd had - the schedule was pretty tiring but very fulfilling and after the day we'd had yesterday then it would take a lot to beat that. We started by visiting the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery which is where Korean War Heros are buried (including the wife of Kim Il Sung who apparently did some ambiguous heroic task during the war). It was very nice though - perched up upon a hill overlooking the city, each grave had a bronze bust of the hero in question with the facial features as close to the individual as possible.

Afterwards we went off to see an old temple but I wasn't really too interested by this point - I wanted revolutionary propaganda and weirdness!!! Finally we went to see the birthplace of Kim Il Sung which looked like it had been built from new and had lots of pristine tools and things. I don't think many people believed it was genuine but we politely listened.

And that was our last full day in Pyongyang. The next day was an early start to get the train to China. The journey was interesting because you got a glimpse of what North Korea is really truly like behind the mask. There were apartment blocks that were completely run down and barely any roads, just muddy tracks - even as a main street. Obviously we didn't see much but it looked like tough living, and in winter it must be unbearable.

Before long we were at the border and after a speedy 2 hour customs check of the train we were into China. The difference between the countries couldn't have been more stark - as we crossed the river into Dandong (a city that sells its tourism based on its proximity to DPRK) we could see glitzy neon lights and high rise buildings. As we looked back into DPRK we could see muddy fields and darkness.

I've missed out a few things that we did - mainly because I forgot what day we did it on. We visited the USS Pueblo which is an American ship the DPRK captured while it was spying on them. Naughty Americans. The sailors were released after an apology from the US but not before they were tortured (not that we were told this last part during the tour). We also visited the Philatelic Bureau and bought lots of revolutionary stamps with drawings of Americans being crushed and things. The Korean War museum gave the North Korean side of the story basically accusing the Americans of being aggressors and it also displayed lots of captured American military hardware.

Well, this was quite the epic blog entry but there was so much to tell and I really wanted to try and give you a picture of the place. Like I say, if you can visit then do because it's not your typical tourist destination and it's an experience to be cherished.

North Korea - Part 1

2006-04-25T19:50:00.000Z

Hello!! Or as we say in China: Bonjour s'il vous plait.

Well, I'm happy to announce that I'm not writing this blog from a North Korean jail or death camp - for a start they don't have web access there and secondly I managed to enter and leave the country without being kidnapped or arrested or anything else.

So, I don't want to be too smug but I think there should be a significant amount of humble pie being eaten now. "No tact", some people said. "He'll create an international incident for sure", some other people said. "They'll kidnap him because he's suave and sophisticated and what's more he's got a great sense of humour, blessed with fantastic looks and quite frankly the best bottom I've ever seen", everybody agreed. But no, I managed to visit the place without any hassle and I like to think I gave them a taste of the kind of happy-go-lucky-good-looking-witty-charming-etc-etc guy that they might find on the outside.

Being serious for a moment, I don't think I'll manage to really get across what the place is like. It's not that it's so massively different to what you expect or that it's so mindblowing that it can't be comprehended, it's just that we did so much in that one week that I could write for a fortnight and still only give a brief idea of what it's like. All I'd say is that if you want to visit then just do it. You won't be disappointed and regardless of what your expectations are you'll still be surprised in so many ways. It's incredibly easy to visit (as long as you're not South Korean, American or Israeli) and while it's not cheap it's definitely worth it. Also, it's probably not going to stay the same for ever so best see it while it's still around. I travelled with these guys: Koryo Tours who are pretty much the main people in the UK to visit North Korea with.

One other thing is that the North Korea I saw isn't really the real North Korea. I had glimpses of it - not least on the train back to China, but essentially I was only shown what their government wanted me to see because they're trying to show themselves in the best possible light. It's no coincidence we spent most of our time in Pyongyang because that's the showcase capital and where most of the money has been spent. People are picked to live there so they're generally quite happy and they realise that they're lucky compared to the rest of the country. They need a permit to leave Pyongyang and I suppose (although I don't know) that those from outside the capital need a permit to go there.

Another thing is that I'm not a North Korea expert by the longest stretch of the imagination. I know a little bit about it and I know some of the rumours about their current leader Kim Jong Il but because so little news filters out from the country then I don't know what's true and what's not and I also know very little about the history of the country and some of the major events, especially in the last 50 years or so. So if I come across as a little naive or if some of the stuff I'm saying is just plain wrong then don't bite my head off! I just wanted to see the country for myself.

Anyway, we flew out from Beijing on the Tuesday morning with Koryo Air - the national North Korea airline (which is banned from European airspace apparently because their safety record is so bad). We got an in-flight meal which was pretty good but I quickly lost my appetite when the stewardess came on the intercom to say that the flight was going very well and it was because the president was in charge of the flight. Just to set the picture - the North Korean president has been dead since 1994 although he still fills the role of president, just with a little less enthusiasm.
I was quite glad when we landed with all of my limbs intact and still attached to my body but will admit to a few nerves as we rolled up to Pyongyang airport and went through DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea) customs. In the event it all went nice and smoothly and we were ushered to our bus where our driver and two guides (Mr Lee and Mrs Lee (no relation)) were waiting for us. Our guides were there to show us around but they were also there to make sure we didn't take pictures of things we shouldn't be taking pictures of. Apparently in the past guides have lost their jobs and worse has happened to them because of tourists taking unauthorised pictures so we were told in Beijing to ask before taking pictures and to give some thought to the consequences to the guides if we thought about snapping a few secret shots from the bus. Clearly it's not a country to fool around in so we were all on best behaviour as we got on the bus and we were immediately whisked away to a school to see what was basically their school show.

Well, this was surprise #1 (of many) on the trip. These kids were really very talented indeed and we were treated to dancing and music of a very high standard - much more than I've seen any any school production in the UK - not that I make a habit of hanging around schools before you ask. The thought came to me that back in the UK these kids would be nicking cars and beating up pensioners and yet here they were in this repressive country working really hard to excel at something. Comparing what I saw in DPRK to what I knew in the UK became a pretty common theme thoughout the trip and in the end left me pretty confused. I suppose food shortages (and I mean serious food shortages - famine conditions in some parts of the country apparently) focus the mind somewhat .

After the show we were taken to a massive bronze statue of Kim Il Sung - the Eternal President and the Great Leader. My history is shaky but I think he was installed by the Russians as the leader of North Korea once the Japanese ended their occupation during the second world war and he was also responsible for starting the Korean War (although DPRK claim it was the Americans). When the war finished (or at least, when the armistice was signed) then he set about rebuilding the country, closing it off from the rest of the world and developing a serious personality cult. So, as you travel around you see lots of statues and massive pictures of him and his son Kim Jong Il. By the end of the trip I was getting sick of looking at him, and what's more is that he has one of those faces that you wouldn't tire of thumping. I didn't voice this opinion at the time though...

We were all expected to bow before the statue and lay some flowers. As the guys in Beijing said, "Go along to get along" and since it would be a massive loss of face to our guides if we didn't lower our heads then we were happy enough to do so. It's quite hard to get across just how much the North Koreans love him. They're brought up with stories about him and all the good he's done for the country, and conversely they're brought up to believe that the Amercians are evil and that all the problems that DPRK faces is because of them. For sure the Americans have a lot to answer for (especially for forcing Tom Cruise upon us) but there is a lot of anti-American propaganda that isn't 100% true. As a tourist I picked up lots of books detailing the crimes of the Americans (or the American Imperialist Aggressors as they're referred to) and lots of stamps of big angry Koreans crushing little American soldiers. It was quite odd but quite entertaining too.

After the statue we were taken to the Arc of Triumph which was constructed to celebrate the North Korean 'victory' in the Korean war. It's a little bit weird seeing these massive glorious constructions when you know that the country is really struggling and where power cuts are common but I suppose that's what comes with having a nutter for a leader.

After the statue it was getting dark and we were taken to our hotel. I was a little concerned about this because I didn't know what to expect but I was very pleasantly surprised. It had about 70 stories and a revolving restaurant at the top and was placed on an island so that we couldn't go wandering off. I expected it to be dead but it was actually very busy because there was a friendship festival on which meant it was filled with Russian dancers and musicians and also with lots of strange communist-Kim-Il-Sung-wannabees from around the world. If you were looking for a definition of the word surreal then this hotel provided it. All week I was trying to avoid mulletted Russian men with crop tops, spandex tights, shirts that were undone revealing just too much chest for any civilised country, sideburns that had been shaved off on a straight line above the ear and women with make up that was applied in the dark with a paintbrush. Imagine Eurovision circa 1987 and you're getting there. The other entertainment was provided by the lift system which juddered and shook its way to the 73rd floor and stopped at whichever floor it wanted to stop at, regardless of which buttons you frantically pressed. In the spirit of adventure I once chose to avoid the lift and took the stairs and ended up in the hotel kitchen, but they kindly let me walk through so that I could get my dinner with everyone else.

The hotel room was really nice - probably the nicest room I've been in on this trip with a great view over Pyongyang and it even had BBC World on the TV (although this got cut off a few days later - possibly because they were discussing DPRK and their nuclear ambitions).

The next day we were up early to go to the border with South Korea and the De-Militarised Zone (or the DMZ as they like to call it). I was looking forward to this because I'd seen Michael Palin visit South Korea and look over to DPRK so I was hoping that I would see some Americans and could shout obscenities and make rude signs at them. Not because I have any view on the Korean issue (although you have to have a bit of a soft spot for a country that's banned Americans) - just that I wanted to shout "Yankee go home!" and see what they did. In the event though there were no Americans to see and not even any South Koreans. I did officially step into South Korea though. There are a series of huts where negotiations took place to try to resolve some of the issues between the North and the South and the demarcation line runs through the middle of the huts. The North Koreans have a door on one side and the South Koreans have a door on the other so because I wandered to the other end of the hut I can say that I have visited South Korea, and for the record it looks exactly like North Korea.

The DMZ has lots of oneupmanship going on - the South Koreans built a flagpole so the North Koreans built a bigger one (which turned out the be the biggest in the world and the flag has to get taken down if it gets too windy in case it breaks the pole). Also the North Korean building that looks into South Korea is something like 6 inches bigger than the opposite South Korean building. Finally we were given a propaganda tour of the 'concrete wall' that the US built in the 70s to stop any attempted invasion but there was no mention of the electric fence that the North Koreans built to keep South Koreans out

I took loads of pictures of course and even got my picture taken with a North Korean General and a Colonel. It was interesting that the Colonel was asking who had been to South Korea and what it was like there. They were quite inquisitive and even our guides were interested in what our home life was like. I found it strange that they could be aware that there was a different world out there that is more luxurious and that is effectively hidden from them but still be happy in DPRK. I suppose they resolve it themselves by blaming all their hardships on the Americans and they wouldn't consider putting any blame on the leadership.

We visited a town called Kaesong, close to the DMZ and which also had a grand statue of Kim Il Sung but which couldn't be called the real DPRK either. We had lunch there and then made our way back to Pyongyang. The drive was interesting though because we were seeing those people that weren't permitted to live in Pyongyang working in the fields and cleaning the roads and things. People in DPRK are split into the Intellectuals, the Workers and the Peasants and we were seeing what I assume were the peasants working in the fields and cleaning the roads. Generally the roads were pretty poor but the road to the DMZ was probably the best road in the country. It was reasonably smooth and pretty much went in a straight line from Pyongyang to the DMZ - through tunnels and over bridges and things - yet another display of North Korean pride.

Well, this entry is getting pretty long and I'm only on day 2 so I'll quit here and add some more at another date!

Poo!

2006-04-25T11:32:00.000Z

Oh well, no Everest trek for me then! They've postponed it until the 7th May but I can't make that date because I'm doing the Trans-Siberian a few weeks after.

But I suppose that it's better to miss out now and do it some other time rather than getting stuck in Nepal. Apparently the guy from the tour company who went out there to see the situation couldn't get a flight back home.

So, I'm in Chengdu now and trying to figure out what to do next. Tibet is a short hop away so I think I'll head there but I need to get permits and things organised. Chine beauocracy at it's best!

Also, I've been writing up my North Korea trip but it's turning into an epic and I'm only on day two, so I'll post what I've done so far and then add to it in subsequent posts.

Just a quickie

2006-04-24T07:24:00.000Z

Two things:

First up - my photos have been updated here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorontour so feel free to swing by and see what I've been seeing.

Secondly - this blog might not be updated for a while since I'm meant to be going to Nepal tomorrow to do my trek to Everest Base Camp and I doubt I'll get any internet access there. However, it's probably quite likely that I won't get to go because the Foreign Office are advising against non-essential travel due to all the troubles that are taking place there and my tour company are to decide today whether to go or not.

So, if you don't hear from me then I'm in Nepal and if you do hear from me then I might be a bit grumpy.

Gregor

From Chongqing to Beijing

2006-04-18T07:17:00.000Z

Last time, we heard that our hero had arrived in Chongqing and our readers were left on the edge of their seats whilst he checked into a hotel. Let's see how the drama is unfolding...

Hello!

I'm in Beijing now after going to Shanghai, Beijing, North Korea and back to Beijing again (just arrived this morning). I'm falling further and further behind in updating my blog but I have a few spare hours now so can catch up on the housekeeping.

After the dodgy hostel in Yichang and the boat trip I decided that I needed a bit of luxury so I pushed the boat out and checked into a more expensive hotel than usual and had a ridiculously extravagant shower and a well deserved lie in. The next day I went out to see Chongqing and was surprised by just how big the place is. I'd never really heard of it before but it has a population of around 3 million people (or 15 million people if you believe this site http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Population/population-cities.html - Chongqing is a bit of an anomaly in China so different people measure the population in different ways). I heard a statistic the other day that the UK has 5 cities with over 1 million people and China has 94 cities with over 1 million people.

Anyway, it was a nice place to chill out for a bit and while I was still pretty much the only western person there (apart from an old, seriously lost looking European couple) I didn't seem to attract quite as much attention as I had in some of the other places I'd been to so it was a bit more relaxing. Because I was pampering myself for the day I went to Pizza Hut for the first time on this trip and stuffed my face with pizza and ice cream. It was great!

I rolled out of the restaurant and went to book my plane ticket to Shanghai. I was going to go to Xi'an but decided that I'd go to Shanghai and try to sort out my Russian visa at the embassy there and then head up to Beijing for my North Korea trip. I managed to get a flight the next morning at 7:30am so I did some of the sights of Chongqing, one of which included a cable car ride across the Yangzi river - although the pollution was so bad that you couldn't make much out and then I had an early night so that I could get a taxi early in the morning. I wasn't sure if there would be any around but I could worry about that later.

Just as I was going off to sleep the phone in my room rang and a strange Chinese woman was on the line. I'd heard about this before and assumed it was a prostitute offering her services so I just unplugged the phone and tried to get to sleep. Then the phone in the toilet rang so I had to get up to unplug that as well - I double locked the door too just in case she burst in and forced herself upon me as most women tend to do when they see me.

My alarm went off at 5am and I went downstairs to check out and try and find a taxi. There was no one at reception but the security guard went off and came back with a woman in a hotel outfit with her pajamas protruding from underneath her suit so I guess I must have got her out of bed. She didn't seem too pleased but I was lucky enough to not really care less.

As it happens, I got a taxi really easily but as we got to the airport I could see that the lights were off and there was no one around except for one or two people hanging around outside. For a moment I thought that he'd brought me to the wrong airport and I wondered whether to even get out of the taxi but I guessed that the airport was just shut so I got out and waited. Eventually the doors opened so we piled in but it was quite strange sitting around while the airport woke up around us with lights flickering on and departure boards coming to life.

The flight was pretty uneventful and I got into Shanghai easily but a combination of a woefully inadequate Lonely Planet map and my stupidity meant that I wandered around Shanghai for 45 minutes until I managed to find somewhere to stay. In the end I was quite lucky since I got a reasonably cheap dorm room which was empty for all but one of the nights of my stay and it had a TV with Star Movies that was showing a James Bond movie marathon type thing each evening so I could catch a movie before I went to sleep.

Shanghai seemed pretty cool. I expected it to be like Hong Kong but it wasn't quite as manic and was a lot more spacious. My hostel wasn't far from the main shopping/tourist street that led down to the 'Bund' that consisted of a load of colonial buildings built on the waterfront in the 20s and 30s and in a variety of styles from Europe and America. Then over the other side of the water is the typical Shanghai skyline that has only really appeared in the last ten or fifteen years. As I got the bus from the airport to the town I was amazed at just how many skyscrapers there were and I wasn't surprised to hear that Shanghai is one of the fastest growing cities in the world.

Walking down the main tourist street was quite nice because it was pedestrianised but it was a bit of a pain because every couple of minutes a tout would come up trying to sell you either DVD's, a watch bag or a suit. It was funny for about 10 seconds and then it started to get annoying so I put on my "I'm really grumpy" face which usually works well in the UK. It didn't work so well in Shanghai so I was forced to deliver the odd flying kick to the sternum to ward them off. I found this a bit tiring though so I just ignored them and they ended up getting bored and leaving me alone. In the evening though, the things on offer changed from watches and DVD's to massages, women and sex. For some reason this totally wound me up and I was a getting a bit angry and curt with them so I started to avoid this street at night.

There were loads of tourists in Shanghai and it was quite a change from the last week. If I'm honest I sort of missed the minor-celebrity status I had in the other places but on the other hand it made Shanghai a nice and easy place to spend a few days so I visited a couple of museums and went to the Oriental Pearl tower (essentially a big tower that defines the Shanghai skyline) as well as going to the Shanghai Library to use the internet and look at some UK newspapers. I'm now an official member of the Shanghai Library! There was a restaurant across the road the library called the Brasil Steak House that did a great buffet lunch consisting of giant slabs of various types of meat and potatoes. It was heaven and I was so full up when I left that I didn't need to get any dinner that evening.

After speaking with Cath and the hassle it was going to be to sort out a Russian Visa for the two of us (the bureaucracy in Russia is crippling- especially if you're trying to sort it out from China) we decided that I'd get a firm in Beijing to sort out the Trans-Siberian for me and we would meet in Poland instead. I didn't have much else left to do in Shanghai so I booked my train to Beijing (which involved a lot of pushing and shoving and elbows in the ribs at the train station - it was quite the mass of humanity) and I also booked my flight to Nepal as well since I've got a trek booked there on the 27th April.

One thing that I should mention about Shanghai is the traffic. Quite frankly I've never seen such a shambles (and I've been to Rome) and crossing the road was quite the adventure as well. Traffic lights appeared to be there for decoration and it didn't seem to be too clear what side of the road you were meant to drive on. Pavements were frequently just as dangerous as cycles and scooters came tearing down next to you with inches to spare and you were often accompanied across a zebra crossing with motorbikes and carts. It was incredible and even more incredible was that I never saw any accidents. At one point, on a road where scooters and bikes had been banned there was a traffic jam on the pavement. They were just sitting there blasting their horns at each other and not moving and I couldn't get past, so I climbed over a few bikes and scooters - scraping them with my rucksack as I went. I didn't look back and for all I know they're still there.

The only other noteworthy thing that will stick in the mind about Shanghai was the man sitting at the side of a very busy road having a dump on the pavement. I would have enjoyed kicking him in the face as he squatted but I was too stunned and walked away not quite believing my eyes.

After that it was on to Beijing on a very plush overnight train. I only had two nights there before I headed off to North Korea and most of it was spent getting some shopping for the trip, sorting out currency, getting my camera fixed after it had developed a fault and generally getting myself organised.

I'd love to write about North Korea here but I've only just got back this morning and haven't quite managed to get my head around the place. It's a crazy place, that's for sure but I was surprised to find lots of very happy people and parts of the city to be really really pretty. It'll take me a while to write about everything I saw there so I'll save that for another day.

Until then - all the best!

Gregor

From Yangshuo to Chongqing

2006-04-05T03:27:00.000Z

Hello!

I'm in Shanghai now. I arrived on Saturday (although I thought it was Friday - how your mind plays tricks on you when you don't have a routine anymore) and I think I'll probably move on up to Beijing tomorrow night or Friday night. I'll take the overnight train because I feel I've been getting a bit too much sleep lately and deserve a night in a cramped bunk with a train that stops and starts every 10 minutes with a jolt and bang. I can't wait.

Anywho, the last week or so has been quite an experience and I've been checking out some of the real China and not the Chinese Great Yarmouth equivalent of Yangshuo - not that I'm bitter about the place putting me in the hospital or anything, but it's aimed very much at western tourists so everything there is nice and easy and you're not really seeing much of what China is really like.

So, I left Yangshuo on the bus to go to a place called Luizhou where I was going to get an overnight train to Yichang on the Yangzi river which is the site of the Three Gorges Dam project. From Yichang I was planning on getting a hydrofoil up the Yangzi river to Chongqing and from there I was going to fly to Shanghai.

The bus journey was interesting because along with the usual constant blasting of the horn and various diversions through fields and rivers to avoid wayward cyclists we also had the joy of a Chinese karaoke video, presented at an ear-splitting volume and featuring the Chinese equivalents of Cliff Richard and Gareth Gates. I quickly lost the will to live within 5 minutes but luckily I managed to punch myself unconscious so the journey passed without incident. Actually, the last bit was a mild exaggeration and I spent the journey looking out of the window at some of the rural little towns we passed through. People just sat and stared at the bus as it went passed - one or two people noticed me on the bus and started at me instead. The little towns were these dusty communist little towns with massive TV towers and bizarrely one of them, which only consisted of a street or two had a giant Space Needle thing like in Seattle.

Once we arrived in Luizhou the driver claimed we were at the train station and told us to get off. We (a German couple on the bus and myself) were pretty sure we weren't at the train station but the guy didn't speak English and was adamant that we were there so we got off, figuring we could get a taxi if we couldn't find it.

As soon as we stepped off the bus people from across the street started shouting and laughing and pointing and taxi drivers were tooting their horns at us and things. My mind recalled a sentence in my guidebook saying that foreigners were a novelty in Luizhou and it looked like we were the main event for the evening. It was quite unsettling but I just tried to enjoy it and gave them a wave and a smile. We set off to find the station (passing shops selling roasted dog - lovely) but there was no sign of it - I tried some of my fluent Mandarin on someone but that got us nothing except a puzzled look from him so we jumped into a taxi and the driver took us to the train station which was actually a good 3 or 4 miles away. Pah - next time I see that bus driver I'll register my extreme displeasure with him using the international sign of a short sharp kick to the goolies...

I was relieved to find that the station was huge because my train wasn't leaving until 11:30pm and I had visions of sitting in a dark hut somewhere in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around except the local rapist and some curious rats. Luckily the waiting room was full of people staring at us, including the guy next to us who sat for about 30 minutes with his head turned to face me and refusing to look away regardless of what I did. I gave a nod, and then a smile, and then I tried to ignore him, then I gave him a stern look and he only finally looked away when I delivered a piercing blow from my elbow to his adams apple. What a strange country.

I also got my first introduction to the delightful national pastime of spitting. It's quite extraordinary to be sitting next to some little old lady who then lets out a dramtic "hhrrrrruuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhh" hacking sound and then spits the contents on the floor of the train station. To be honest, I was expecting much worse but it takes a bit of getting used to and I find it really minging. Whenever I see someone spitting I'm always tempted to go and spit on their feet or something and see how they react but I've managed to resist the temptation so far. Thankfully the Chinese government are trying to stamp it out and quite often you see people spitting into a tissue or something which is a good first step I suppose, but it'll take a while to get people to quit completely. Much like smoking, which must be the other national pastime in China since just about every man seems to smoke like a chimney. I wonder if the two facts are related?

Anyway, the train appeared and I plonked myself in my bed which was on the top bunk and out of the way of people staring at me. I was glad of the rest and slept OK until we got to Yichang 19 hours later.

When I got there, I went to what I thought was the hostel but was in fact some dodgy old hotel and I got a room there for the night which didn't have a bath or shower (which I desperately needed after a night on the train) and the toilet was just a festering hole in the ground. Not my idea of luxury, but when in China etc...

By this time it was getting dark and I wanted to get my boat ticket so I went down to the ferry terminal but it was shut so I went to get some dinner instead. It was quite a change from Yichang because nobody spoke English, despite this being a city of over 3 million people and also because people just stared at you as you walked past. Some brave ones shouted "Hello" or something at you and then giggled as you replied but most people just stared as if your fly was undone or something (and believe me - I checked. Many times!). I was starving because I hadn't managed to get any dinner last night since the train station didn't have a restaurant and I'd had to survive on Pringles and fruit for the day so I found a decent restaurant and had a bite to eat (which was very nice actually, plus they cooked it at your table and it only cost about 1 pound). Then I found an internet cafe so I fired off a few emails because I was feeling like I was on the moon or something and was feeling a very very long was from home.

When I got back to the hostel I called room service to come and fluff my pillows and tuck me in, then I ordered the continental breakfast and finally set my alarm for 7am so that I could get out of that dump as quickly as possible and sort out my boat trip.

The next morning, the town was more appealing in the hazy morning sunshine. The railway station overlooked the whole town and it looked like some old Soviet city from the 1980s. I found it quite attractive in a strange way with their old concrete buildings and long straight roads and I set off to CITS, the chinese travel people - run by the government I think - to sort out my boat trip. Initially they tried to sell me a 4 day cruise up the river to Chongqing but I didn't fancy that so I managed to book myself on a hydrofoil leaving to go to Wuzhou at 12am where I could "easily" get a bus to Chongqing. I should have known when they gave me seat number "0" that it wasn't going to be easy...

I had a couple of hours to kill so I found a bakery and devoured some cakes for breakfast and then went back to devour some more because I was still hungry. I took a wander down to the river and there were lots of old people playing badminton in the park and doing Ti Chi and stuff. I'd seen pictures of people doing this but didn't realise that they did it all over China. I was tempted to join in but all I could really do were a few moves from the Karate Kid and I didn't want to scare them so I just walked past, sharing a knowing look with some of them who realised that I was a deadly machine and had spared them.

When I got back to the travel agents they herded us onto a bus to get the hydrofoil. I thought they were going to drive us to the ferry terminal but in fact they drove us up past the dam so that we wouldn't have to go through the 10 locks to get to the correct river level. I was gutted - I really wanted to see the dam but I only got a quick glimpse as we drove past it. Mind you, that was quite enough for me to realise just how big it is - I mean, I knew it was big but the sheer scale of it took my by surprise. It's absolutely vast - a bit like standing at the bottom of the Empire State Building and looking up but it's wide as well. Very impressive. Unfortunately, it's environment impact is massive and some experts are predicting that the dam won't be strong enough to hold back the river and it'll collapse at some point. If it does, then Yichang and it's 3 million inhabitants will be washed away within 30 minutes, so I got to the front of the bus and asked the driver to put his foot down a bit.

However, if I was disappointed that I didn't get to see the dam properly then I was exhilarated with the actual trip on the river itself. I'd wanted to do this trip ever since I saw Michael Palin do it in "Full Circle" and in fact the boat trip was the initial basis for me doing this trip because I wanted to see the Three Gorges before they were flooded by the dam. The first stage of flooding took place in 2004 and the next stage is due to take place in July. The scenery was quite stunning though - the guide book said that people have found it a bit boring because they expected mile high gorges either side of them. That wasn't what we got but the scenery was really dramatic, the gorges closed in quite close on either side and it was exactly how I remember it from "Full Circle". It was fantastic and the 6 hours just flew by as I stood by the door shooting picture after picture. Of course, seat "0" didn't exist, but that's no great shock.

What was more worrying though was that there appeared to be no buses in Wuhzhou to take me to Chongqing. A friendly taxi driver pretended to take me to a bus but as we arrived at his clapped out heap of junk doing a poor impression of being a car then I shook my head and walked away. Then a bunch of about 10 or 20 taxi drivers started screaming and yelling at me - I was getting a tad concerned at this point but when I looked at them they were all laughing and giggling so it was just a bit of a joke. I thought - I mentally revised my Karate Kid moves in my head just in case. I walked past a couple of policemen and asked them were the bus was to Chongqing and they told me I'd have to walk about 5 miles into town. At this point a gaggle of Chinese taxi drivers had surrounded us and were taking part in our little conference so the policemen took me to one of the taxis and we all jumped in for a merry little excursion to the bus station.

The thought occurred to me that they could be taking me to some warehouse for their friends to give me a good doing and nick my stuff but as we pulled up to the bus station, the policemen paid the taxi driver, absolutely refused to take any money from me and pointed me to the bus station. What a nice guy! I felt a bit bad really, since I'm pretty sure he would earn a pittance and yet he was still quite happy to pay for a taxi for the "rich westerner" as I'm sure we're thought of. It's often said that the people with the least give the most and he was a prime example.

I bought my bus ticket and sat in the bus station for a couple of hours. I used my best Mandarin to ask the guy next to me where the toilet was and he seemed to understand me so we got into a little discussion where I told him that I was from the UK and that I'd come from Yichang on the boat, that the boat was very ice-cream and that the dog headphones flew from Shanghai. My Mandarin is a bit rusty.

Once I'd got to Chongqing it was getting past midnight, I was tired, very smelly and just needed to get a hotel and a bed but unfortunately I had to get a taxi from the bus station to the centre of town. I had a hotel in mind so I spoke with a taxi driver who didn't know where it was and wanted to take me to his mates place. I did what any good British person does when abroad and repeated what I wanted but louder and slower. This didn't do any good so I stabbed at the map with my finger and basically yelled at him (I'm not great when I'm tired). Incredibly this seemed to work and after what I can say with 100% certainty was the scariest taxi journey of my life, we pulled up to the hotel with smoking brakes, melted tyres, a few slow moving pensioners splattered across the bonnet and a little puddle of something wet in the passenger seat.

Well, this is turning out to be quite the epic so I'll stop here I think. Once I'm in Beijing then I'll fill you in on what I've been up to there and also in Shanghai and Chongqing.

I'm going to go and rest my weary fingers now.

Cheers,
Gregor

This wasn't part of the plan

2006-03-26T04:57:00.000Z

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"

2006-03-17T11:56:00.000Z

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.

This is where it all goes

2006-01-03T20:04:00.000Z

This is where you'll find out all about my 2006 trip. I'm not in a creative mood at the moment so I'm not going to write any more, but watch this space!