The Vans Travel...

Thursday, 17 December 2009

China

We started our Chinese adventure in Hong Kong where we spent a week while our visas came through. Greg’s friend Richard lives in HK so he showed us around and even got us invited to a Thanksgiving dinner on a roof terrace of one of the tallest buildings in the HK. The views were unreal – we had a awesome night but had “trouble” finding our way back to our hotel room at 4am. Rich also introduced us to Chinese food by taking us to some interesting restaurants – the food is really good! HK is a really diverse city and probably a good starting point for China. Every evening at 8pm the city puts on a light show which involves lights/lasers/beams etc going off from all the skyscrapers to music which you watch from the other side of the bay.

I have never been to Vegas so we went to Macau which is the Vegas of the East (but bigger) where we spent time in the Wynn, Venetian, Hard Rock trying to win big to extent our trip but no such luck.

Finally after a good last night watching Rich’s girlfriend in a show to celebrate MINT nightclubs 3rd birthday we left HK on an overnight train to Guilin on mainland China. From Guilin we caught the bus to Yangshuo where we spent the next week exploring the Guangxi province of South China. We stayed at a brilliant place called Yangshuo Outside Inn which was a farmhouse in the countryside amongst all the karst outcrops that Yangshuo is so famous for. Here we rode bikes through farms, country roads, off roads, everywhere, spent a day kayaking down the Li River, went hiking. The weather was really cold in China now so we spent the evenings by the fire eating amazing Chinese food – no dog on the menu which we were very pleased about!! The highlight of our stay though was this show we went and watched choreographed by the people who did the opening of the Beijing Olympics it was kind of like an opera/light show put on at night on the Li River with about 600 performers – it was so brilliant we could have gone every night. I tried to take photos but because it was so dark you couldn’t. Yangshuo is really poor and mainly consists of old people farming but its like stepping back 100 years with all old fashion farming methods but we found it so peaceful especially because the cities are so crowded (1.3 billion people is hard to comprehend until you are here!)

From Yangshuo we headed to Longji rice terraces, its not really the right time of year because they have just harvested but it was nice to see and we had a couple beers at the top overlooking all the terraces before the cold made us go back indoors. We may actually have been the only tourists staying there as it was dead quiet at night.

From Longji it was a 24hr train ride to Shanghai (Kim/Baz our trains in Thailand were luxurious compared to these). Thought I would stop here to tell you how much we enjoyed China. It is so culturally different we are permanently being surprised (although we soon got used to the burping, farting, spitting).English is not really spoken at all and we have had people (kids mainly) following us, run away from us and always people staring. It keeps us amused though.

After our arrival in Shanghai, I got ill so we had to take the days slowly exploring the city. We happened upon a cool market the one day. Away from the tourist areas China is ridiculously cheap, Greg and I joke that its almost like everything is for free. Backpacks are full though so we didn’t do much shopping. We also did a day on the Bund (Modern Shanghai), rode the Maglev train at 430km/hr and went to a acrobatic show – similar to Cirque du Soleil but on a smaller scale. In the meantime, I recovered and our Indian visas came through so it was time to move on again. We headed out west to Xi’an where we took a trip round the Terracotta Warriors – amazing that someone would actually build all these warriors and then just bury them. There are over 6,000 warriors but only half are currently uncovered. Xi’an is an ancient city so the following day we hired a tandem bike and rode on top of the wall around the ancient city.

Our time in China was now running out so we raced to Beijing – Beijing has benefited hugely from the Olympics. I had heard it was a dirty, chaotic, overcrowded city. What we found was actually slightly different. Beijing was the most organized, much less crowded city that we went to in China. It still has air pollution – I don’t think clean air exists in China though but the city works well and we really enjoyed it. We did a walk around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square became famous in 1989 when students demonstrated against Communism and where soon opened fire on by the government – now days China seems to have adopted a democratic economy but still communist politics. The next day we just strolled around the park and Dong Chong area which was lovely. On our last day we did an 8km climb on the Great Wall. It was about -6 degrees at the start so we appreciated the strenuous hike to warm us up. The scenery was beautiful and we got to zip line off the wall and over a lake at the end of the hike.

That was China – the best way to describe our thoughts on China is that its really fascinating (in a good way). We would love to come back, in Summer, and do more of the country because its so big.

Now we are headed to Vietnam and more exciting is that we finally meeting up with friends from London, Al, V and Clydo. Al and V we will be traveling with for the rest of our trip along with other friends along the way which we are super excited about….

Thursday, 19 November 2009

Photos - Tokyo

Working that camera

Asahi beer head office - like a beer!

Quite a busy city

Emperors palace

You buy everything from a vending machine

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Tokyo

The land of the million mini-mes, Tokyo. What a hectic city and our 2 day short stay combined with their impossible to work metro was a whirlwind tour but think we managed to get the just of what the city is about.

From the heated toilet seats to the warm friendly people we felt welcome almost immediately which is important especially when you literally stick out like a sore thumb.

We arrived late on our first night and soon made our way out for a beer after settling into our room which consisted of bunk beds and just enough floor space for our backpacks and us standing in the doorway - we are not your average size person here!

We cruised around the city, checked out 5 floors of new sony products and gadgets - awesome, pity about the backpackers budget, got hopelessly lost and finished off with a rickshaw ride around of the most beautiful historic districts of Tokyo.

Check out the photos.

Monday, 9 November 2009

Photos - California

San Francisco

Sea Lions in San Francisco bay

Yosemite

The Mystery Spot

Pebble Beach

Driving along HWY 1

Santa Barbara

Spied the US Navy sending a submarine out

We went to the San Diego zoo which is voted best zoo in the world

Downtown LA

Baywatch on Venice Beach

Look at the size of the hedge..you can only imagine the size of the house

Viggo Mortensen

California

The first thing you notice about California is it feels as if you have been here before (in Greg's case this is true!) because so many movies are set here it feels so familiar. We started the California road trip in San Francisco - this is a really cool city with absolutely everything you need in a city and it has such beautiful parks (even bigger than Central Park). SF is pretty big so we spent 3 days exploring it. We did the usual sights like Golden Gate Bridge, rode the trams, Union Square, China town etc.

From San Francisco we picked up the car and headed to Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is beautiful, so much more than I imagined. The beauty was not the only thing to take us by surprise. We woke up on the first morning to the temperature being a full zero degrees - we have been living in flip flops and shorts for 5 months so this took a bit of adjusting to! (i.e we quickly found a shop that sold gloves and hot tea). Anyway we did some spectacular hikes which also helped to warm the bones. If anyone ever goes to Yosemite I highly recommend staying in the Yosemite Bug - an eco-resort which has an awesome restaurant only serving organic home grown food (very Californian) but having fresh food by the fire in a log cabin each evening after a long days hiking goes very well with the Yosemite experience.

After Yosemite we were back on the coast to start the Highway 1 drive south. First stop Santa Cruz...mmmm..what to say about Santa Cruz. There is a nice part with some lovely houses on the beach but while we were doing our laundry at the laundromat is probably the most scared I have been the whole trip....Santa Cruz is just filled with a lot of people who might have had one too many... Before leaving Santa Cruz we did go the Mystery Spot which is a strange place that has all these weriod things to boggle your mind (see photos).

The next day we left early for the drive through 17 mile drive, Pepple Beach and further south. Another thing you notice about California is the obscene wealth – I thought the UK had its fair share of billionaires but California makes Buckingham Palace look average. We drove along the coast stopping at the look out points along the way and at Pepple Beach Golf Club to watch a few people come down the 18th hole - Greg was drooling.

After a night spent in a town we can't remember the name of we headed to Santa Barbara. This is the kind place you can imagine living - not too big or small, GREAT huge beaches (freezing water). We got to live the typical Californian lifestyle here for a few days. Sunshine, beach, food, drink and very little work (wealthest place I have ever been, least amount of work going on).

After Santa Barbara we hit LA - everyone I know who has been here hates it so I wasn't expecting too much. I actually like LA - its nothing special but its nice. We found a cool hotel on Sunset in Hollywood and were lucky enough to get tickets to Viggo Mortenson and Charlize Theron's movie premier of The Road. Yip we got to see them both, Charlize actually watched the movie sitting behind us and Viggo gave a little talk before the start of the movie. Greg and I still can't believe that the one celeb we see in LA is the only South African one.

We left LA on Thursday for San Diego for 3 days. We got tickets to watch a football game which was cool; cheerleaders, dancers, marching band and all. Totally OTT.

Sunday was my birthday and goodbye to my 20s (SOB) we left SD and stopped in Laguna Beach for a nice lunch and then headed back to LA. We spent the next 2 days driving around Beverly Hills and shopping....and that was California.

Even with all the hybrid driving, vegan eating, low fat soya, extra shot, no sprinkles coffee drinking "I'm in the movie business" people, California is no doubt really beautiful and you can see why nearly 1/4 of the population live here.

Tomorrow we fly to Tokyo, Japan for 2 days and then Hong Kong and mainland China for a month. We no longer have our US mobile number but hopefully our UK ones will work in Asia.

See you on the other side of the world.....

P.S thank you everyone for the birthday messages and sorry I haven't had time to respond to them all XXX