Week One - Hong Kong and Guanxi Province, Southern China

Day 1
So i arrived in Hong Kong on my super comfortable BA flight from London. As predicted, the new Terminal 5 problems in Heathrow insued yet again and my bag never arrived off my flight. I decided not to panic just yet as the nice people in the airport seemed to have it all under control and go find Lisa and Aoife in our Hostel. Hong Kong, at this time of the year is like walking around in a swimming pool, fully clothed. It's pretty gross and from the minute i stepped of the plane i resigned myself that i was going to rememble a very pale Tina Turner for the next few days. As our hostel room resembled a cell, we immediately left and got on a boat to check out the amazing Hong Kong skyline at night. There's an hourly light show on the hour and it's pretty spectacular. First day holiday cocktails by the pier then back to the cell for some kip. Bag arrived by taxi in one piece, panic over. Phew.

Day 2
As we are now spending most of our time trying to tame our hair in the humidity, we thought we might as well take it a step further and get a tram up to the highest point in Hong Kong. When we got there, we were in a cloud. Got some pretty cool photos of us inside the cloud, which i have to say i really enjoyed, i'd never been in one before. Couldn't really see much of Hong Kong though. We spent the rest of the day getting trams across the city. The skyscrapers dominate most of the waterfront with dingy, grotty alley ways of Old Hong Kong right in between. There's a stark difference between rich and poor. Consumerism is just shoved in your face in the most extravagant ways. There are massive shopping centres everywhere, with designer shops that i've only seen before in Frame magazine. I'm in my element. Everything is made really accessible, most likely as practically everyone i encountered spoke perfect English. Eating and drinking is quite expensive so we naturally did lots of that. Got a reflexology foot massage.....just cos. It was massive.

Day 3

We got a slow ferry across to Lantau, the biggest but least inhabited of the Hong Kong islands. Following a what we thought at the time was a fairly hairy bus trip (we've since then had, much, much worse in China) we got up to a Buddhist monastery in the hills. There they have the biggest free-standing Buddha in the world. Here he is......http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Buddha Following a tasty veggie meal we climbed the steps up to his feet. Zen, cloud, rain, thunder, lighting, zen gone. As it's now Friday we head on out. After a few ropey bars full of sleazy English men cheating on their wives, (and i have the authority to say this as we got a front row view of a really awkward interaction between an English Expat, his visiting wife and his local barmaid 'friend' )we stumble across a deadly place that's playing music we like! The girls end up going to a deadly underground electro club that was still going strong at 9 in the morning. You took an elevator down to the basement and the doors opened right into the club. Deadly.

Day 4

Leave Hong Kong in a drunken mess and get a train to Guangshuo to catch our sleeper train to Guilin in the Quangxi Province. Here was our first taste of real China. I had my only meltdown so far, here, trying to find the metro station in Guangsho. My bag, which will now be referred to as The Beast, turned out to be pretty heavy. As my dad had galantly carted it around dublin Airport and it got a taxi by itself to my hostel in Hong Kong, this was my first experience having to carry it 17.7kgs. Such an idiot. If i'd had any sense, i would have practiced carrying my bag in a sauna for about an hour and then eliminated the doubles of everything i do not need. Sleep like a baby on the train and wake up bright and early in Guilin.

Day 5

Get shovelled onto a bus to a small town called Yangshou where we're spending the next few days. It's probably a good time to mention the extreme hard-sell tactics the locals have towards stupid white westerners. It was non-stop from the moment we arrive. For instance when we get off our bus, we're brought to a cafe by a guy who claims to work for our hostel. We buy breakfast in his restuarant, allow him to sell us tours for the next two days then realise he's the most annoying person we've ever met in our lives. We're booked in for a trip down the river on a bamboo raft later that day so head along. After getting passed over between about 5 different people we finaly get to our boat in a town who's only income i reckon are those boat trips. The region is dominated by these really sharp limestone karst peaks, the scenery is extraordinary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangshuo I'll have my photos up as soon as i can find a computer with English settings. Everything here is stupidly cheap, which is making up for the massive amount of money we spent in Hong Kong. The food is great, the eat alot of brazed dog here. I'm not sure what the name of the dog is but they are yellow and sort of resemble a husky. I've taken a few photos of some puppies but, bear in mind, those happy little chappies are probably going to be on somebody's plate by now. We came across a guy with a basket of kittens and pups on the back of his bike.....he didn't strike me as an animal lover....or a travelling pet shop. Also popular to eat is fried turtle, eel, snake and Pupa. I haven't tried anything yet.....I'm holding out for a cocker spaniel.

Day 6

We ditch our annoying tour guide and hire some bikes by ourselves to explore the country side. We explore 9 km's in the wrong direction and end up in a really provincial town, completely lost. As you'd imagine, everyone cycles here, but a slow and steady pace. The rules of road appear to be there are no rules. They honk their horns instead of indicating. Infact, they honk their horns to say thanks, get out of the way and how's it going. It's hard to tell the difference. Our intention was to visit some local mud caves, looking completely lost we're approached by a sweet Chinese lady and her old dear of a mother......They seem to know what direction we should be going in so we follow them. They bring us to a small village about 3 km away by the edge of the river. The roads are getting narrower and we seem to have fallen off our map. The nice lady, it appears, is a shrewd entrepenuer!! And her mam is a total hag! Realising the only way out of the village for the stupid lost white people is on one of their excessively overpriced bamboo rafts, we decide we can do this by ourselves. We leave the hagglers and continue, thinking we can follow a bike trail along the river, getting directions of two old men on which way to go..... We meet a dead end in the middle of a paddy field and have to go back. And what do you know, the hag and her daughter are waiting for us along the way, casually eating fruit and having a good ol'sneer! It then transpires the whole town was in on the deal. Practically chased out of the town with the haggling,the wagons in us are having none of this so we cycle the whole 12km back in the direction we came. We then continued on to find the caves for the second episode of the day. We're tired by now, and getting increasingly wary of people trying to help us. Finally finding the caves, our guide is waiting patiently for us. We're under some impression we're going to see Aliwee caves or something. Here's what i'll be telling my mother what happened. 'Went to see some caves today, pretty amazing, lots of staligtites and staligmites in all sorts of formations' (there was some that looked like boobs, i took photos for all the boys) .......And here's what really happened. We went pot-holing, with no harnasses, in dresses and flip flops. We did have some rather fetching hard hats, With a girl taking pictures of our every move, no doubt to sell them to us after.After about 4 hours of cycling in the heat, we weren't prepared for this. We had to wade through water pools and squeeze in through tiny dangerous gaps.It took about and hour but i have to say i really enjoyed every second of it! But it was so dangerous. When we get back out and take a look at the photos, we realise the hilarity of the whole situation and practically wet ourselves laughing. We buy the whole cd of snaps! Such toursits! They have the whole deal sewn up here. After some showers, we head out for some food and some beers on our last night. What a great day.