Hong Kong Highlights

Gearoid didn’t leave as soon as he got to Hong Kong, he was with us for a few days sightseeing first - which in Hong Kong mainly consists of staring in awe at the height of the buildings. There is nature to be found too though. In fact, surprisingly, 80% of Hong Kong Island is greenery, with plenty of hiking opportunities. I was happy enough to stay in the urban areas though - with the experience of Everest base camp still quite fresh in my mind, hiking on the comparatively tiny hills here would be like taking part in a go-kart race after winning a grand prix.



Happy Valley Racecourse was the most impressive of the sights seen in those first two days. Not for the racecourse itself, which is pretty standard as far as racecourses go (not that I’m any kind of expert on racecourse design), but for it’s location. On the side of the hill where a large proportion of the city’s buildings reside, it’s completely surrounded by skyscrapers. From the outside you wouldn’t know it was there. Inside the grounds I noticed a picture of the racecourse as it looked when it was recently built in the 19th century. With featureless hillside grassland surrounding it, I got an idea of the incredible changes that have happened to the landscape on this little island, from a few small fishing villages to metropolitan behemoth during 155 years of British rule.



As impressive as the skyscrapers are during the day, at night the city is transformed. The famous Hong Kong skyline known worldwide is located on Hong Kong Island, where we were also based, meaning we were unable to get the panoramic view. It wasn’t until our fourth day here, when we traversed the bay to Kowloon on the mainland (which is still part of Hong Kong territory), that we were able to see it with out own eyes. I can still remember the spine-tingling moment - it’s such an impressive sight that I won’t say any more about it, except to go and see it for yourself if you get the opportunity.



The previous day, while Gearoid was busy sorting out his transport to Shanghai, John and I were busy seeing other parts of the territory. By my reckoning, Hong Kong has more escalators than any other part of the world, and seeing that a lot of the city is located on the side of a hill, the world’s longest escalator was built so that people wouldn’t have to work up a sweat going to work. It takes a good 20-25 minutes from bottom to top, and it works quite well. If only they had built a slide to go back down.



Gladly they hadn’t built an escalator all the way up to Victoria Peak, but they had built the Peak Tram Line, which was also an experience in itself. It’s a tram that travels straight as an arrow up to the peak, with the journey steep enough to warrant carriages with specially angled seats so that you sit level while the rest of the tram is at a steep angle.



The view from the top wasn’t bad either.

And Then There Were Two

I knew it would happen at some stage, I just thought I would be the first to do it. No matter how strong they are, travelling together puts a demand on friendships greater than marriage (would). In each other’s pockets twenty four hours a day, sleeping in the same room, eating together, drinking together - it can be tough.

However, the first exodus from the trio was not the result of a massive bust-up, as I’m sure some people back home were expecting. It was because of a woman. Gearoid was returning to Shnaghai to see Kaisa again. After three days exploring a horrendously humid Hong Kong, he cheesed it, leaving just John and myself.

Bread and Lucozade

Just about half-way through the planned six months, Hong Kong was perfect for a half-time break. The city is a mish-mash of eastern and western values, but it has enough of the western elements to feel somewhat closer to home than, say, Beijing.



Lucozade, a drink to which I have a mild addiction, is one such just-like-home comforting treat available. So too is decent bread (impossible to find in India, Nepal and China). In the plethora of supermarkets dotted all over Hong Kong many other items could be found that I had not seen since leaving Irish soil.



I was surprised at just how delighted I felt at seeing these little links to home. I didn’t feel particularly homesick before Hong Kong, but now there was a tingle of that feeling inside me. I had read that three months is often the time when most travellers hit a homesickness barrier, when they start to reconnect with their own cultural values after the novelty of new ones wear off. Seeing links to the life I left behind sparked this in me. Funnily enough, having these western comforts around also helped reduce the homesickness, the cause also being a good cure. This is why I (and maybe John too - John fill us in with a comment) ended up staying in budget-damaging Hong Kong longer than initially planned - a week’s break from alien cultures.

There’s A Shenzhen East?

Our break from big cities didn’t last very long - after Luotiancun our next destination was a little bigger: Hong Kong. Once again though, getting to the place was not a simple matter. Travelling over land, the gateway to Hong Kong in China is Shenzhen (a city that is mostly noted for getting incredibly rich incredibly fast in recent times). Seeing as Hong Kong is not completely part of China yet (it remains a “Special Administrative Region” until 2047), a border control and customs must be passed through to reach the territory.

Seeing as we were getting an overnight train to Shenzhen, we were pleased to learn that the border crossing is adjacent to Shenzhen train station, saving us a bit of bother. What we didn’t know was that our train was to Shenzhen East, which was actually about 25km east of the main station. After our arrival we had some difficulty working out how to get to the Hong Kong border. It came down to a choice between paying too much to some hard-nosed taxi drivers (who frustratingly refused to lower their extortionate quoted prices) and taking our chances with public transport. Typical of the Chinese, there was one young woman who saw our predicament and decided to help. With her basic English, she guided us to the correct bus. In the end it was easy, the bus conductor letting us know exactly which stop to depart for our metro connection - the metro here being like the other metro systems in China, efficient and easy to follow.



After breezing through customs, the differences between Hong Kong and her (step) motherland were noticeable, though obviously not as pronounced as the differences between China and Nepal. Stopping for a quick coffee, I was able to browse through an English language newspaper, something of a specialty item pre-border crossing. The different currency was the most noticeable difference, though it was an easy adjustment, dividing by 100 (rather than by 10 in China) to convert from the Hong Kong Dollar to Euro.



With the border now linked to the city’s metro system, we were able to travel all the way to our Hong Kong Island-located hostel in amazingly quick time for somewhere as densely populated and urbanized as this. More differences were apparent after we resurfaced from our metro journey. Compared to Chinese cities, here seemed less chaotic, better organized, and certainly more developed. Some Chinese cities can seem like they’ve been rapidly thrown together quite recently, and are still adjusting to this new, faster pace - whereas for Hong Kong life in the fast lane is all it’s known for quite some time.

The Village

While I was in college, the buildup to the all important end-of-year exams was a hectic period, with huge amounts of last minute cramming - this was when I was at my most focused. At the climax you sit down and write for three hours and then - nothing. All the pressure, anxiety and sobriety disappears once the final answer of the final exam has been written - and in the days that immediately follow I found it very hard switch to idle mode - restless, I always felt I should be doing something.

Switching from big-city China (too much to see with not enough time) to miniscule Luotiancun (too little to see with too much time) had a similar effect. I had to slow my brain down to the pace of life I found myself in. After we had sorted our accommodation, we went for a stroll around the village.

After an hour of curious observation, both from us and the locals we came across, we had seen everything there was to see. Freed from the sightseeing pressure that we had grown accustomed to, there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy the snail’s pace.

The scenery surrounding the village was a much needed break from concrete and glass, though the most memorable things about our time here were interacting with the locals whilst living the same way and doing the everyday things just like they did. Our toilet was communal, shared with numerous other households in our vicinity, and consisted of no more than a small shed with a narrow gap in the concrete floor to squat over. Only a few days before, I encountered the most advanced toilet I had ever seen - toilets providing excellent evidence of the huge contrast between city and rural life in China.

Having a shower was the most fun though, with the following routine:

1. Go to shower room to collect bucket.
2. Bring bucket to village well to fill with water.
3. Return to shower room with bucket.
4. Use bucket to wash yourself.

With the well and the shower room a couple of minutes walk from each other, it was definitely the most unique shower routine of my trip.



By the third day I’m certain the whole village had a name for each of us. We were different, but never felt like outsiders, being greeted with smiles wherever we wandered. I grew up in a small town, so perhaps this is one reason why I felt so at home here, so at ease.

Our host, who someone soon nicknamed “hostel mama” (I can’t remember who came up with that), cooked us a delicious dinner on a couple of occasions, but we also tried out the local restaurants. Some of the most memorable interactions with the locals were had here, where, with no menu to speak of, and no common language, ordering ended up with visits to the kitchen to point at ingredients.



With my charades experience finally proving useful, we had to mime how we wanted it cooked too - although at times it proved near impossible to convey to them that we wanted our noodles fried. At one meal Kaisa even supervised the whole cooking process, to make sure they cooked it the way we (she) wanted - though being a passionate fan of cooking herself, I think this was more for her own enjoyment. She cracked the whip quite well, as the subsequent meal was the best we had in our time in the village.

Of course, with the five of us together, there were many many games of bullshit and many beers had too. Somehow it always ended up with Fred and myself retrieving the beer, and we stayed loyal to a single shop for most of our brew supply. The kindly woman that owned the establishment sold more beer in three days than she probably had sold in the previous year - having to restock numerous times, she probably installed a new kitchen in her house after our visit.



Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the picture above is from the very last game of bullshit. Our plans too divergent, we would have to split back into the groups of two and three that we were before that night in Shanghai. We had made the first truly great friends of the trip.



The possibility of meeting Fred again in Vietnam was there, so that made it easier, though we didn’t know if we’d ever see Kaisa again. Such is life on the road. This was more difficult for Gearoid, for whom romance had sprung up with Kaisa. Would they ever see each other again? To find out, you’ll just have to keep reading.

Half the Fun

What do Chengdu, Xian, Beijing, Qingdao, Nanjing, Suzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou all have in common? Answer: they’re all huge (Qingdao is by far the smallest of that set, but still has a population of 1.6 million). We knew there had to be more to China then concrete blocks and swathing masses, so I was tasked with finding somewhere more rural for our next destination.

And that I did. Luotiancun is a 1120-year-old village in the middle of nowhere northwest of Nanchang. It gets a passing mention in Lonely Planet as a possible day trip if you’re in Nanchang, which itself isn’t worth visiting (due to it’s staunchly communist past, and the fact there‘s nothing of note in the city). Once we arrived by train in Nanchang, bar the five of us, there was nary a westerner in sight.

An unpleasant walk through industrial and traffic-clogged streets took us to the bus station, where we played the ‘match the Chinese symbols’ game (there was no English anywhere) to board a bus to Anyi, a provincial town and a link on our journey to the village. With the help of some bemused locals, we eventually found the bus station for local destinations. Now we had to get to a place named Shibi, and from there it was a simple matter of hiring a sanlunche (three-wheeled motorbike) to the village. Easy!



All eyes were on the out-of-place whiteys as we marched with our backpacks into this most rustic of bus stations. Every attempt to point out our destination (in Chinese characters) in our guide book ended with a local browsing through most of the book with a look of fascination on their face. After a few minutes, where not one word of English was understood by the locals, and not one word of Mandarin was understood by us, we were herded onto a rickety old bus. As is common across Asia, the bus didn’t leave until it was filled - with weathered-faced farmers, various agricultural produce/equipment, the five of us, and our backpacks.

Our bus journey into the unknown terminated in a remote village square. I made the natural assumption that this was Shibi, and that somehow we had to find and arrange a lift to Luotiancun. Empty stomachs meant one of the pair of restaurants bordering the village square would have to be frequented.



We ordered using the “point and shout” method. I pointed at the uncooked leg of a pig that was dangling next to the vegetables - some pork would fill me up nicely I thought. After an interminable wait for our food (in which every Chinese diner, even those that arrived after us, were taken care of first), the food began to arrive. What I got was the pig’s leg - sliced up into large chunks, hair, claws and all. There was no meat to speak of, just bone and hog-fat. A step too far in the strange food scale for me (and everyone else). At least Fred and John enjoyed their eel and fried frog respectively.

Luckily the Chinese meal custom means everything is shared, so I didn’t go too hungry. Now it was time to somehow get to our destination. Asking a few different groups of locals, none of them seemed to understand what it was we wanted to do. We cursed our lack of Mandarin. After running around in circles, the penny dropped. What each local had been trying to tell us is that we were already in Luotiancun. We had bypassed Shibi somehow. Great! Now we had to find a place to stay.



Pointing to the word for ‘accommodation’ in my phrasebook, the first local I asked took us to a friendly woman in a small shop. We followed her as gestured, wandering down narrow little village laneways past numerous ancient yards and homes - eventually making our way to this woman’s house.



The two rooms were basic, but we could hardly expect anything else given where we were - this wasn’t a hostel, it was someone’s home.

And Then There Were Five

Shanghai was a city where we saw a lot of amazing things and had a lot of fun - but our traveling momentum meant it was impossible to stay any longer. This time leaving a place was different, as our group had grown to include Kaisa and Fred.

Kaisa and Fred had been traveling together in China for a while before we met them, but they themselves had only met for the first time on their travels. These kinds of friendships crop up all the time when traveling, especially with solo travellers.

Fred’s decision to join us in heading to Hangzhou, only a couple of hundred kilometers south-west of Shanghai, was made close to the last minute, meaning he had to take a later train. Kaisa, John, Gearoid and I had no problem in getting a taxi and finding our hostel, but poor Fred made a brave attempt to use local buses and ended up having to take two taxies (the first one had no idea where the hostel was).



The hostel itself was one of the highlights of our time here, a serene place away from the tourist hustle and bustle with a Chinese garden and communal area combined adjacent to the dorms. But the highlight of Hangzhou is undoubtedly West Lake (Xi Hu).



Almost all the time spent outside the hostel was spent on the shores of this picturesque tranquil reservoir. You couldn’t help but lower your heart rate strolling around it’s edge, in direct opposite to the Shanghai effect. I could see why it was so popular with Chinese tourists, although I can’t imagine it being quite as tranquil when they arrive in their hordes (all Chinese have their holidays on the same days of the year - meaning that on those days the entire country is a swirling mess of holidaymakers - we were to experience it ourselves soon).



Slowly making our way back to the hostel, down a street awash with money (with upmarket clubs/bars, as well as Ferrari, Porshe, Maserati and Aston Martin dealerships, no less), we came across a vendor cooking the best street food I had in China. Watching the noodles, vegetables and egg being expertly fried together in the wok right in front of me was a pleasure in itself, though nothing compared to the actual eating.



The new five-member group dynamic was working well - so well in fact that we spent the entire next day just hanging out together in the hostel. We had plans to go out in Hangzhou that night, but it started to rain, so we just played bullshit instead. Not exactly top blogging subject matter, but for me this day was memorable just for the fact that all day we did nothing yet had so much fun.



The next day wasn’t exactly the most active of our trip either, thanks to the inevitable post-bullshit hangover. Kaisa, Gearoid and myself did make a new culinary discovery though - Taiwanese food is amazing. We found a tiny food place not too far from our hostel. Unbeknownst to us, the cook (and his son - both pictured above) were from Taiwan, and they cooked food from their island. A post-meal chat revealed their friendliness and gave a glowing endorsement to Taiwanese people. In my head I added Taiwan to the list of places I want to travel to.

Complications involving extending Kaisa and Fred’s visas meant the following day was spent wondering/worrying whether they would be able to continue travelling in China with us, while at the same time finally getting our arses in gear to walk around the lake and see the far side (which we hadn’t managed yet). When we returned to the hostel the news was good - they were able to get their visas extended. All of us were getting sick of big Chinese cities, so for our next destination we decided for a change of scenery.