Rice, noodles and boiled godmothers

We arrived in Guilin after a few hours waiting and another few on the bus. There is no direct bus between Xingping and Guilin, so you have to go via Yangshuo first. The buses go quite often, so it was just a minor inconvenience. It was almost dark already, so we skipped the sightseeing and walked around for a few minutes just to stretch our legs after the bus. Guilin proved to be as expected: most touristy place we've seen so far. It is full of bars, restaurants, shops, tour agencies and people who try to sell you everything that you will never need.

On our first night we were lucky enough to meet a group of four travellers, two German girls, an English girl and a French guy. Most of them study in China, and were on a short holiday. They asked if we would like to join them on a tour to the Dragons Backbone rice terraces, which is one of the highlights of the region: huge hills full of cultivated terraces with farmers from nearby minority villages. Because the tour was ok priced, and they needed 6 people to arrange it, we took the offer. We had planned to go there, after all. We agreed to go the next morning. A Canadian girl, travelling in China for a few weeks already, also showed up for the tour.

It was a bumpy ride for 3 hours in a tiny van (clearly not designed to carry taller westerners) until we got the first sight of the terraces. Unlucky for us, the rice had just been harvested so it was not the best timing because the amazing colors were gone and the visibility was not great that day. Nevertheless it was very impressive. We hiked up and down, stopping for food, drink, toilet or photos, whichever seemed the best excuse at the time to have a short break from the sweaty climate and way too big amount of stairs. After all, we had had enough of stairs after climbing up and down the hill in Xingping a few times already. In the evening we went to a local restaurant together, ordered a table full of food and tasted different local dishes. First (and last?) time with chicken feet for Ben! On these occasions Anni is quite happy being vegetarian and sticking to the not always so tasty, but usually not so creepy tofu. It also seemed like a good idea at the time to try another local specialty, a bottle on which the only non-Chinese thing was the number 52. We still know nothing else about this drink than that it is pretty heavy stuff and has a weird taste. It seemed to be more of a success among the guys than the girls.

 

The next day, happy not having lost our eyesight because of the local booze, we enjoyed having a day just to chill out while our new friends were exploring Xingping and Yangshuo. Also a bit of planning too, as usual on the quiet days. We had no idea where to go after Guilin. Everything interesting seemed either far away or up in the mountains, for which we had no proper clothing anymore. So we had to figure something out. Eventually we did. We had a plan again. Two things that we did NOT figure out though: what on earth is crispy boil godmother and is it actually better not knowing?

 

The forbidden post

The day before we were supposed to leave Hong Kong it was time to go back to the Chinese visa centre to find out if we were going to travel through China. We paid the fee of 200 HK$ each and got our passports back. A quick glance through the pages showed us a new glued in visa! China was now only a day away! For this night we had planned to visit "the peak", a place on a hill south of Hong Kong island, reachable by tram, from where one has superb views all over the city, harbour and surrounding hills. We wanted to go on this Monday because the one week Chinese holiday ended on Sunday and the over-2hrs-queue at the tram station from last week would hopefully be a lot shorter. It was. No queue. In no time we were on the hill but somehow trapped in this building and had to buy an extra ticket to go all the way up to the terrace and, wow, it was well worth the money! We got on the tram just before sunset and reached the top in total darkness and with thousands of colourful lights below us. What a great finish for this crazy but amazing city.

 

After checking out our opportunities to reach the mainland we decided to take the ferry from Hong Kong to Shenzen and from there on a bus straight into Yangshuo, our first stop in China. After all it would've been easier to take a train from Hong Kong to Shenzen, but we wanted to combine our departure with a harbour cruise, which ended up in thick smog. We didn't see shit. At the harbour in Shenzen we made our way to the brand new subway station to get a train to the bus terminal which lies in the city centre, about 20 kms away from where we arrived. We got there for slightly over 50 cents each.

At the bus terminal we found timetables for the buses, in Chinese letters only. The info office said that there's no bus to Yangshuo. Wrong terminal. We ended up following a guy who approached us on the street, first wary not to get ripped of he turned out to be a quite ok and we had ourselves tickets to Yangshuo in a overnight bus (way overprized as we found out later...) That bus didn't leave from the terminal, would've been too easy. We walked/ran behind a dude from the company through half Shenzen just to wait for the bus in a random, dark street. The bus, as it finally arrived, was better than most we had for more money in South America and it was almost empty! Anni got the back seat-row for herself and I slept on 3 seats across the aisle.

 

As we arrived in Yangshuo, it was still dark and we were tired, so without thinking we took the offer of a guy at the bus stop and followed him to his hotel, which turned out to be quite decent. Just he wasn't, offering free beer for breakfast (that wasn't the bad part) and not leaving us a free minute without talking about his bloody trips, that he wanted to sell us. The next day we bought ourselves a trip with a "bamboo" as they call it, a plastic raft that's supposed to look like bamboo. In around 3 hrs we went downstream the Li river to a town called Fuli, which was nice but packed with tourists. Then further on to a cave and a look out point. The whole time we had the camera ready and shot an immense amount of photos (I even had to delete older photos to get more space on my memory card). The area is one of the most beautiful we've ever seen, if not our new number one. And on the way back upstream everything again! Also very well worth the effort is the hill inside the town, a short climb up the stairs and you get rewarded with a breathtaking, 360 degrees view of Yangshuo and the karst peaks. We also found out that many websites are blocked by the government of China, much more than we thought, including this site where we post our blogs. Without any knowledge of how to get around these kind of "government precaution measures" it took us 10 minutes to download a VPN app for the iPad and here we blog again!

The last night we went to "Impression", a show directed by the same man who did the Beijing olympics opening ceremony. They use the Li river as stage and the surrounding karst peaks get lit up and act as a stunning background. 600 people are involved, including local fishermen. It was highly recommended to us by an older Norwegian couple who said we can't leave Yangshuo without having seen this show and that it's better than any opera they've seen. It is also called "Human's masterpiece cooperated with god".You can't miss that, can you? With high expactations we waited with around 2000 other, mostly Chinese visitors for the show to start. And from there on we started to notice certain differences between European and Chinese audiences. Europeans know how much money they paid for the ticket and it's absolutely quiet during the whole thing. Chinese talk. And laugh. And surf in the internet. And make phone calls. Throughout the whole show. This is pretty annoying when you're used to the European system and the whole story only gets told by light and music, so we moved to an empty sector and had our peace back. All the songs were in Chinese only but I think we still understood big parts of it and it was indeed fantastic! Just a bit too short in our opinion.

Then it was time for some relaxation. We chose the town of Xingping, of the planned 3 nights soon became 6 and we mostly just read books and planned trips ahead. Xingping is much smaller than Yangshuo but almost as touristy though the tourist herds that suddenly appear disappear after a couple of hours and the town is quiet again. Most people just live their normal life and tourists normally stay out of the small streets which makes it easy to escape the crowds. Short walks along the river with its wildlife, dragonflies, beautiful birds (and a water snake!) kept us awake (especially the run away from the attacking water buffalos that somehow seemed disturbed by Annis new pink shirt) and we climbed the peak next to our hostel twice, the second time because the visibility was much better this day. We saw how the setting sun turned all this peaks first in yellow, then red and purple in the end. Just breathtaking. We also ate the best pizzas we've ever had on this trip in the hostel, and in their cafe I started to fall in love with tofu. All of this and the very friendly locals made us feel a bit sad when we left on a bus to Guilin, the tourist capital from where we want to visit some stunning rice fields, but that's another story...

 

Change of scenery

Ahead of us was an early morning flight from Santa Marta to Bogota, where we would have to wait for 12 hours before we could actually get on the plane towards Hong Kong. Buying the cheapest possible flights (around 1000 euros) meant that we would have to change flights twice, first in Houston Texas and finally in Chicago to get to the 14-hour one towards the final destination. While Ben was still recovering from the food poisoning he caught in Taganga, it wasn't the best time for this sort of travelling, but what made it even worse was that Anni caught the same thing the evening before the first flight. Great 40-something hours ahead of us then.


Thanks to the medicines we stocked up on before leaving (pain relievers, diarhhea medicine, antibiotics and everything else you could possibly need if stranded on an island somewhere or lost in the jungle), the worst of the worst, sitting on the toilet all day, could be avoided and we were able to pack our things and get on the plane. It wasn't fun though. Let's just say that we spent very little money on food during the time of travelling.

Somehow with very little sleep and very little food we made it to Hong Kong International Airport alive, even feeling a little bit better. Thinking that we deserved it, we took a cab instead of trying to figure out the metro system. It was way past sunset after all. After a stunning 30-minute drive through the shiny, colourfully lit high rise buildings we arrived at Chungking Mansions, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. We had booked the cheapest place, the prices of accommodation in Hong Kong being incredibly high compared to anything in South America. With 19 euros per person you can easily get a double room anywhere in South America, possibly even for two nights. In Hong Kong you are lucky to find a dorm. So a dorm it was then. Chungking Mansions is a chaotic mix of hostels, little shops selling everything from dildos to shoes, Indian food, dripping water, weird smells and slowest elevators on the planet. Just navigating through the ground floor and finding the right block took us a while.

Our first goal in Hong Kong was to apply for a Chinese visa. We really wanted to travel South China. Why not, since we already are in Hong Kong. You can apply for the visa independently or use an agency. Because the agencies charge for this service, we were obviously ready to queue for a while to get it done cheaper. We thought that the process would take 2-3 days with the express service we were willing to take, but when we gave our applications at the counter, we were told that it would take 4 working days, so we wouldn't be able to get the visas until monday. Suddenly we had a week in Hong Kong instead of the planned 4 days.

Neither of us is really a big fan of huge cities. They just get a bit boring after a while. You see a few and after that they all feel the same. They are expensive, noisy, busy and it is just hard to find something to do if you don't want to explore every museum or waste your money in sitting in cafe's and going out. We were very worried that after a few days we would be absolutely sick of Hong Kong and the amount of people and in addition way over our budget.

The budget thing was right. It is expensive here. Everything else we were wrong in. This city is really well designed to hold the amount of people. It is modern, well planned, and it just works somehow. The public transport is amazing - navigating trough the city is simple and cheap. It is chaotic and busy but in a nice way. What makes the city alive are two things: the waterfront and the parks. We spent a lot of time wandering along the piers, staring into the Hong Kong island skyline in the evenings. The parks are beautiful, green and perfect places when you need to calm down and relax. Kowloon park's turtle and fish pond area quickly became our favourite place for breakfast. Hong Kong island's Botanical Garden & zoo is also a fun way to spend an afternoon if you happen to be around the area, especially because it's for free!

There is a lot more fun stuff to do in Hong Kong than we thought. But we also had boring stuff to do. We needed to pick up Ben's underwater camera and Anni's scuba diving certification cards and insurance card from the main post office, which offers a poste restante service. We also needed to send the last set of warm clothes home. We had still needed our fleeces and jeans in Bogota, but from now on there should be absolutely no need for this kind of clothes. Anyone who has ever been backpacking knows how frustrating it is to carry things you don't need. Tsim Sha Tsui post office proved to be fast and kind of cheap when we dropped off a few kilos of unwanted clothes. And here started a new task: shopping. We had sent about a half or more of the clothes in our backpack home. We had very little clothes for hot and humid climate. Also, we had been travelling for 5 months. At some point wearing the same stuff every day just gets annoying. Anni's shoes were falling apart and wouldn't last more than a few days. Many tops had lost shape and colour due to constant washing. We decided to spend some money to make us feel comfortable again. It was kind of a new beginning after all.

On the first glance the shopping in Hong Kong seems impossible for normal people. Yes, the malls are huge and they are everywhere. Problem is that instead of the H&M you find everywhere back home, here the trend seems to be more Gucci and Prada. Not exactly our budget. We were sure that you can find cheap places somewhere. We were lucky to meet a nice local lady, sitting at the next table in a restaurant, who gave us a hint of a market in a place called Stanley on Hong Kong island. She also gave us compliments on our skills with the chopsticks, which was a relief after being confused with the cutlery and the different ways you can hold the chopsticks. We were sure we looked ridiculous. (We probably did and she was just trying to be nice and encouraging. We decided to take it as a compliment anyway.)

So we followed the advice to Stanley, and sure enough we found a market. With the help of our most trusted travel guide, the internet, we were able to locate a few more cheap districts around the city. We also found brand outlet stores just next to Kowloon park. The good thing with the shopping was that it gave us motivation to visit different ares of the city, most of which we would have skipped for sure if we had not been on a mission. We visited Mong Kok, Causeway Bay, Stanley and many other places thanks to this. And we were able to find the much needed H&M.

Almost without noticing the week had almost gone and it would be time to find out if we got the visas to China or not.