Gone for good

Greetings Brothers and Sisters (very communist greeting - we love a bit of communism!!)

We have been in China for over a week now and seriously, South East Asia feels like years ago. Everything is so very different including the weather which I believe we have already mentioned once or twice before.

We spent a lovely two days in Yangshuo. It is a haven that feels a little purpose built for backpackers but it was beautiful albeit freezing! We hired bikes and headed out of the city for a day. The scenery was amazing and the road was reasonably challenging - well for me anyway, I don`t have a great track record on bikes!! It was rocky and muddy and potholed which was hilarious. At least our bikes had brakes which turned out to be essential. We reluctantly left Yangshuo to head to the Yangtze River.

When you travel in China we believe it is a rite of passage to do two overnight trains in a row. We caught a bus from Yangshuo to Guilin and then an overnight train to Guiyang. There a few different classes of travel. Apart from the sitting and standing tickets there are soft and hard sleepers. The soft sleepers are in enclosed cabins of four. The hard sleepers are in open compartments of six. Because there were no hard sleepers available we had to rough it in the soft sleepers. It turned out that we had the whole cabin to ourselves . . . And we still couldn`t sleep . . . Go figure!!!

We arrived in Guiyang absolutely exhausted and not ready for the scenes that awaited us. The train station was packed with people waiting in what looked too be random queues. We needed to buy tickets for the next leg but had no idea where to start. We checked our bags into a nice hotel - pity we didn`t check in with them - and went to brave the crowds. It was like a refugee camp quite seriously. We were very freaked out.

After looking useless for quite a while we asked a policemen who then tracked down a dude for us who then proceeded to make us do a queue jump of mammoth proportions. He dragged us past about 200 people and booked us hard sleepers for that night. Nice one . . . . . . We then had about 12 hours to kill in Guiyang which nearly killed us. We spent the whole day trying to find somewhere to sit down and everyone else spent their whole day staring at us. The word for foreigner is Laowai (sounds like Cow Eye). Everyone just yells it out and then points at us. We are going to get T-shirts made up saying I`m with the Laowai. Or Yes, I`m a Laowai, tell your friends!! It started to wear really thin when we were trying to sleep on the train and would wake up intermittently with three of four people just watching us. That`s right team, Laowai`s sleep as well, who would`ve thought? Adam has started yelling to me `Hey look, it`s a Chinese person!`. Because no-one speaks English we feel like we are constantly in the cone of silence. I have embraced this concept more readily than Adam and I say what I like when I like. It is great but will catch us out if we happen to accidently stumble upon an Eyez. Eyez`s are the nickname we have given to Earnest Young English Speakers. Tim Moore (an Australian travel writer) came up with the description and says that they are like Born Again Christians but worship English instead of Jesus. He was so right . . They are always neat, young, well dressed individuals who are incredibly helpful. We met one Eyez called Johanna who actually travelled on the bus with us and walked us to the railway station. We were the first Laowai`s she had ever spoken to.

Anyway, we arrived in Chongqing with a few hours of watched sleep under our belts but in desperate need of showers and beds nonetheless. We arrived in the centre of town looking for somewhere to stay and with taxi drivers stalking us. We had four on the go at one stage and they were nearly running in to each other. So funny. Anyway, the short version of the story is that we found somewhere to stay, tried to find the port to book boat tickets, got hopelessly lost, walked about 10km, found the port, ended up booking tickets through our hotel because it was cheaper, and then finally got a few hours sleep. We headed out for dinner and found a fabulous restaurant with awesome food that only cost us under $2 for both of us too eat. Tried to find a bar but the bar culture that we are looking for is seriously lacking in China.

Anyway, we are hitting the boat tonight and will be on it for three nights arriving in Yi Chang on the 15th. From there we are going to catch another overnight train to Shanghai. Should be a grand adventure for these Laowais!!!