Harrow Three Gorges!

26th April - Chong Qing - Hot Pots and Cute Pandas!

We arrived off our third night train into Chong Qing (actually pronounced Chong Ching) at about 10amish. We had a fairly hectic few days of travel ahead. We taxi'd to a hotel where we would leave our bags for a few hours before getting a 4.5hr bus journey that evening to our boat for our 2 day cruise (I'm taking some poetic license using the word "cruise" ...more later!). At first we thought this could be a bit of a drag, but then one word made all those worries go away...PANDA'S!! Yes Chong Qing Zoo is home to a few pandas and we would have time to go there and see them!

Off we popped like giddy school-children with a spring in our step, and got a taxi to the zoo. It was an absolutely gorgeous sunny day, just to make things even better. We arrived at the zoo and made our way straight to the Panda enclosure. At first we didn't know what to expect, perhaps thinking the pandas would be behind screens or just on view at certain hours etc. but then we turned a corner and just couldn't believe our eyes. There, perched on a bench, happlily munching his way through a mass of eucalyptus (or so I'm assuming) was a panda! Well I grabbed my camera as quickly as a papparazzo about to get a crotch shot of Katie Price, and started getting a few shots.





We couldn't believe how close we were able to get, and even happier to discover there was more than one panda in the zoo. However, when we strolled around to see the other pandas, they were more sedate and kept in the shade so it was hard to get a good view. Still, we were ecstatic wtih our pictures of the first panda so nothing could have wrecked our buzz.







We were on a bit of a tight schedule so after a quick look around some of the other animals in the zoo, we grabbed a taxi back through the centre of Chong Qing to our hotel. Earlier on in the trip, Xu had mentioned the possibility of trying a local speciality dish on our trip - a Hot Pot. He did stress though, that if you didn't like spice, then pack up and stay at home ;)

Me of course, afraid to miss out, was like "sign me up buddy!", and here in Chong Qing was a restaurant highly recommended for its Hotpot. Joining me an Xu, the other foodies that braved the Hotpot challenge were my fellow dumpling banqueters - Emma and Bethany, and for the hotpot, fellow Geordie Niki came along too.

To explain how it works, a massive bowl of oil with chillis, chillis and more chillis floating and marinating in it is placed over a flame in the centre of the table. You then choose from the menu the various items you'd like to have "hotpot'ed" shall we say. Xu knew we were a fairly easy going bunch so he just went hell for leather and ordered loads of stuff. We had everything from fish, meatballs, quails eggs, tofu strips, mushrooms and many more items that I just can't remember! Basically you tip in the dish of raw meatballs / mushrooms etc, and wait for them to rise to the top of the bubbling bowl of spicy hot goodness. When this happens you know they're ready to eat.

All I can say is thank jaysus we'd been using chopsticks for a while now coz can you imagine trying to pick up a tiny quails egg, with chopsticks from a boiling bowl of oil... WITH CHOPSTICKS. Tellin ya, it was like a challenge from the Krypton Factor. But you know yourself, when there's food involved - when there's a will there's a way!
Holy god was it hot. I mean our skin was sweating, our noses were running, even our eyes were sweating!! If there was any hint of a blocked nose, or a clogged pore amongst us, it was long gone by the time this meal was over! But the food was amazing. Once you got over the initial "ohmygodI'vecrematedmytastebuds" feeling, the spice tasted great - that's the one thing I have to admit about the food in China so far, I love how they pack the flavour in! After the h-h-hotpot lunch, the 5 of us strolled back to the hotel, core body temperature slowly returning to normal. Along the way Xu dropped into conversation, that we may not be feeling so great later, if our stomachs weren't used to the oil and heat. We were like "ah here Xu thanks for letting us know NOW!!!". Nothing we could do then, so we all just gave each other a hopeful look, and returned to meet the others.

When we re-convened with the group, we all made the back-breaking 20min walk to our bus depot, where we would take a 4.5hour bus journey with other chinese holiday makers to a boat which would sail us down the Yangtze River, through the famous 3 Gorges. The air-con on the bus was a welcome relief, and all in all the journey wasn't so bad.

We emerged from the bus a little tired, but excited to see what this "boat" would be like. Well you know what, we weren't disappointed! We all checked into our rooms, each of which was like a small hotel room with an en suite. A lot better than we expected! Also on the top of the boat we saw to our delight there was a huge deck area. After a hectic few days travelling on buses and overnight trains we all made a plan to grab some deck chairs and do a whole lot of nothing on that deck, the following day!
27th April - Club Feckin' Tropicana

We awoke completely refreshed and energised on Friday the 27th April. Xu had told us the night before that we would be entering the first of the three gorges at approx. 10.45am so we all made our way to the top deck to have a goo. It was absolutely beautiful, if you happen to see or have any 10 Yuan notes, the first gorge of the three gorges is on the back of this note.

Gorge 1 of the 3 Gorges

After we sailed past the gorge, we all went to the dining room on the boat and had lunch. The lunch was buffet style, so as much as you'd like. Lots of traditional chinese dishes on offer and salady stuff and some potatos - which I attacked with the kind of enthusiasm usually displayed by a child at a birthday party. Delish they were.

Once suitably stuffed, we donned our beach attire and hit the deck like it was poolside as the Beverley Hills Hotel. Lucky for us, all of our fellow passengers were gone on some boring sounding day trip so we had the boat to ourselves, and more importantly the deck and all its recliners to ourselves. Whacked on the factor 20 and laid out to bake. Heaven.

I'm the white one

That evening we went down to the bar to see the "local entertainment" Xu had promised us. Oh entertaining it was. The entertainement consisted of a few locals getting their Celine Dion on, on the Karaoke machine. It was absolutely hilarious. I had to get a video of one guy, it was priceless. His whole song (all in Mandarin of course), seemed to consist of high notes, which Celine Dion himself decided to pitch just slightly off key - it was carnage. Wildly entertaining though! After a couple of beers, I took my slightly less albino'd skin to bed.

28th April - On the road again...

Well this day pretty much consisted of travel, travel and more travel. We left the boat at 7.30am where we got a 1.5hour bus to some town. The only thing of interest that happened along the way is we passed the 3 Gorges Dam. It's a huge 30km long dam. But lets face it, at 8am in the morning, a dam's a feckin dam. I took one obligatory blurry photo and let Morrissey sing me back to sleep on the bus.

We arrived in some town in the arsehole of nowhere about 10am. We got some food in the Walmart and boarded another 4.5 hour bus to Wuhan. In Wuhan we would be boarding our next night train. We had some time to kill so grabbed some steamed dumplings for dinner, and got aboard. Boarded the train about 7ish bound for Guilin.


Harrow Shanghai

20th April - Arrive Shanghai

So we arrived in off the night train at 10.20 on the 20th April. Apart from us all being in dire need for a shower we were all feeling surprisingly refreshed! So we got taxi's from the train station to the hotel, The Jinjiang Inn. This hotel even nicer, really bright and spacious rooms. Again I would be sharing with Miri and we would stay like this for the whole trip - suited us both fine! After freshening up we met Xu for our orientation walk of Shanghai. First impression...A LOT more cosmopolitan than Beijing. The people, although staring, didn't stare QUITE as much, and when we reached the main shopping street, Nanjing Street there were lots of familiar stores` and a MASSIVE apple store. Although for anyone visiting, Xu has told us it's definitely cheaper "to buy ipad" in Hong Kong. Not that that was on my shopping list anywhoo ;) We walked down Nanjing Street until we reached the Bund, the main river that runs through Shanghai. On the far side of the river there are a lot of interestingly shaped sky scrapers that adorn most of the Shanghai postcards. The tallest building looks like a massive bottle opener (well to me anyway!). Xu told us that most Shanghai-ians (my word) aren't the biggest fans of this building as it was financed by the Japanese and cost about a billion dollars, so in typical Chinese style they're in the process of building a slightly taller building just beside it, like they can't be shown up like that!!

After walking along the bund for a while we reached this massive bazaar. It was amazeballs. The buildings were all typically what we'd call "chinesey" in their style, and there were lots of local crafts and the typical touristy shizzle on sale there. The bartering in China is honestly a skill in itself. You really have to be ruthless. From talking to the Australian guy in the Beijing hostel, he had told us he'd been told from the starting price they give you, you usually end up paying about 10%-15% of that. Like there's no logic to it at all!! It's not like say New York, where you kinda offer 50% of their price, and then barter back up, but it's just the way it's done. For example at this bazaar, I wanted to pick up some postcards and a magnet (did somebody say TOURIST!) So for a pack of 12 postcards and a typical magnet, the lady said 180Yuan, about €22 - like ridiculous! The final price I ended up getting it for... 20Y, less than €2.50. Xu looked a mixture between horrified and impressed when I told him what I finally paid. I think he was a bit scared...I had to start assuring him that I wasn't some ruthless Del-Boy!!

After we got back from the market, we chilled for a bit then we met Xu and he brought us to an Acrobatics show. It was, to coin a phrase not quite as popular in China yet, "TOTES AMAZE"! No joke it was seriously impressive. The "acrobats", i.e. children and teenagers doing everything from swinging between massive ropes without any harnesses, to amazing gymnastic type displays to fitting 8/9 people on one rickity bicycle, to tight-rope walking. The final display was the "Bikes of Doom" or something, basically you remember those wheels of death type displays you'd see at fun fairs at home sometimes. Where 2/3 motorbikes spin round and round this circular structure. Well this was a massive enclosed caged sphere, and they fit 5 of them in there zooming around after each other, really impressive!

After the show, we decided to get a taxi back down to the Bund to get a view of the skyscrapers with all their lights on in the dark, it was cool...uuuuuntil it started to lash from the heavens and we got absolutely soaked! After a few token pictures we squelched home and just had a few beers in the room.

21st April - Explore Shanghai...Eat, Shop...Karaoke.

The bazaar we visited on our first day in Shanghai had a famous "Steamed Bun" Restaurant - to explain, these "steamed buns", look like what we would call dumplings to be honest. Xu had told us about these before we got to Shanghai, but when we saw the MASSIVE queue of people waiting to get their steamed buns we knew he must not have been exagerrating about how good they were. As much as I wanted to get them then, we were waaay to hungry to queue for an hour, so we grabbed something handy. We decided it was worth the queue so we headed back early on day 2 in Shanghai. When we got to the bazaar, hoping "the early bird catches the ...steamed bun" theory might save us some queuing time we were greeted by an even longer queue than the day previous, but screw it, steamed buns we wanted and steamed buns we were gonna get. We joined the queue and enjoyed the "interesting" aromas that greeted us from the top of the queue ha ha! When we got to the top, we ordered the international way - i.e. lots of pointing and making the "1" indication. When we received our little tray of steamed buns, we did like the locals and poured some vinegar over them and moved out of the way to find somewhere to enjoy them away from the hustle and bustle. Well they were definitely worth the hype - inside there was a mixture of minced meat (ignorance is bliss) and crab meat, and with the vinegar there was a lovely tangey taste to them. I know I'm not really selling them here, but trust me they were delish!

After our steamed bun brekkie I was on a mission to buy a camera. I had watched an informative documentary on Channel 4 (ok ok ...Gok Wan's "Made in China" programme, maybe not quite the discovery channel) about these massive electronics emporiums that are around Shanghai, so I googled any specific camera-related ones. I found one, got the address and nearest subway station and set off on a mission. I was joined by Emma and Kim who were just up for a bit of an adventure. We made it through the three jam packed subway rides to reach our final destination, however once there, we were really flying by the seat of our pants to try and find the actual buildings, as surprisingly our 5 days in Shanghai hadn't quite yet given us mandarin sign reading capabilities!! We decided to just head down in one direction, and hope for the best! After a few gestures from locals we finally found what looked like the correct place and headed in. I knew what camera I was looking for a Panasonic Lumix DMC..something something so upon entering I avoided the Nikon and Sony shops. However after a quick look round the ground floor, there seemed to ONLY be Nikon and Sony shops. Aah, second floor it must be, I thought. Well 4 floors later and all we were greeted by was empty shop units and the odd camera bag shop and it looked like our camera shopping adventure was looking like one big failure, and I felt like quite the dope. So as we left the "emporium" with my tail between my legs, we looked around for a taxi, not wanting to face the crazy busy subway again, we walked up the street...what did we see on the OTHER side of the building we were in... a massive building with a MASSIVE camera sign on the building...I mean what could have given it away!!! DELIGHTED, we headed in...ground floor...BAM, a Panasonic store, FILLED with Lumix cameras! Found the camera I was looking for, unleashed some of my master bartering skills and walked out, camera in hand, and a good deal gotten. Smug as fuck, we got a taxi back to the pub beside our hotel for a couple of celebratory beers.

We couldn't stay beering in the local for too long, as we had a major night ahead. Oh yes, a major night indeed. We planned a Saturday night out Shanghai Styleeee...that meant one thing...Karaoke! We met up at 6pm and grabbed some food nearby, then at 9 on the button, we hit up the Karaoke place, and it was hoppin! Xu had told us that Karaoke was pretty popular amoungst the young Chinese folk so we had to go and do like the locals and give it a bash. We had done a few vocal exercises (i.e. gone to the pub for a few vocal chord loosening beers) and were ready to go. Frankly, when Xu saw our enthusiasm he looked a little scared! We choose plenty of songs, got a round of beers in (12 bottles of Tiger beer for 102Yuan, i.e. €12 and cracked out the tunes. We all gave it a bash (Blur's Song 2 and Labrinth's Earthquake being my two tunes of choice) and went all out. As fantastic as everyone was, I think we would all concede that the highlight of the night was our Danish couple Marianna and Kim's version of Barbie Girl that stole the show. To put this into context, Kim (guy by the way, supposedly a normal guy's name in Denmark) is a total rocker and a musician as a living, so to here him doing "Come on baahbie lets go paaahty" in the exact accent of the guy from Aqua had us all on the floor laughing! Brill fun!

Three hours passed, and copious rounds of Tiger beer later we had come to the end of our Karaoke time. Unwilling to let the night end there, we head back to our local bar beside the hotel and continued the party! After showing yet another barmaid how to make baby guinness we continued to party until the early hours.

22nd April - Hangover + 17 Hour Train Journey = The Fear.

Well suffice to say drinking Shanghai dry of beer led to a rather subdued group on our last day in lovely Shanghai. After waking up, showering and attempting to pack, we got a taxi to the train station. The taxi drivers in Shanghai are MENTAL. I mean there is actually no sense the driving rules in Shanghai, or even China in general from our experiences so far. I mean it's ever car/bike/pedestrian/tuktuk for themselves. They just drive where they want to drive beeping all the time just to let people know that they're there and they're not going to stop for anyone! I mean there were so many incidences when we were all just shutting our eyes and shouting out "ohmyfuckinggod" we lost count!

Well we finally made it to the train station, and boarded our train before 4pm. Once we got on the train, after lugging our massive backpacks with us, we all just crashed out. We were absolutely wiped from the night before. I think for about 2 hours nobody was even able to form sentences. After a few hours I decide to relieve the boredom and fear of "god what did we get up to last night" thoughts by watching some of Alan Carr's stand-up comedy on my laptop. Well this did the job perfectly, and after a couple of hours, "the fear" relieved and we slept off the hangover. Next stop - Xi'an!