Scotts Blog

Photos of Beijing can be seen here

Arriving in Beijing was a relief although I had no idea which of the 12 bus stations I was at and at 5am it is hard to find someone who speaks English to help you out! I jumped on a bus and managed to get someone to tell me to get off where a subway station was (after 20 mins and going through about 8 people). The subway is a relief because the station names are in English and Chinese. My target destination was my friends station Wudaokou as I was staying at his house. I managed to get there by about 7:30 which was good, grabbed some breaky then gave him a call.

As we were leaving on Friday at midday and it was Tuesday it was straight into the sightseeing. After lunch i decided to go the Tiananmen square and the forbidden city. They are both huge, imagine a corridor about 700m wide about about 2km long and it is like that with Tiananmen Square in the south and the forbidden city taking up about 1.5km to the north. Check this map out. This is the center of Beijing and where most of the historic buildings from the Mao Dynasty are. Tiananmen square is bustling, there were people milling around everywhere pretty much all tourists because the only buildings around there are government buildings.

The forbidden city is a must when you visit Beijing it is a real highlight although they were restoring parts of it for the Olympic games. The forbidden city is a massive palace complex, but very different to European palaces, it is very grand but basic inside at the same time. So there is a lot of effort put into the buildings but It the contents were quite elegant and simple. This is much like other sights I have visited in Asia it is really quite minimalist in terms of possessions but the encasing is exquisite.

I walked in under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao through the gate of heavenly peace. I always have a smirk at he lovely names they have for monuments, highways and border crossings. I thought that this was the entrance but this is the outer gate and you have to walk through about three to get into ‘The Forbidden City’. The restorations took away from some of the grandeur with scaffolding encasing most of the high towers, however the buildings were still breathtaking. The attention to detail is amazing for something so big. Being on a tight schedule I wanted to climb a hill outside the north gate so that I could look over the city for sunset. This was well worth it and the view although hazy was amazing.

That night back at Weh’s place his flatmate was cooking some dinner, this was just what I needed a home cooked meal and the first one in a long long long time. Being from Israel he cooked some great Israeli food which really hit the spot. The next day it was off to the great wall so so what better way to prepare than on a full stomach.

Photos of Qingdao 

Well my flight to Qingdao was great, soo fast compared to some of the long trips I have been doing. The taxi from the airport was easy once I managed to get out a street name in Chinese for him to follow. I ended up getting to the hotel about 1am and straight to sleep.

The next day I woke to a haze of drizzle, which was a little frustrating but never the less not totally debilitating. I went for a walk around the city, there was not a lot going on, because of the weather. I looked the the forecast and this was due to continue for several days, so I decided to book a ticket to Beijing that night. The train station was closed due to an upgrade so I had to bus it.

It turns out Qingdao is the place where they are doing all the Olympic sailing events and on a sunny day it is meant to be magic. Today I was not so lucky between the drizzle and rain I did not get to see much as most of the attractions are outside. This being the city of beer in China I was noticing every little stall on the street had a few empty kegs outside. I only managed to buy one beer before my bus but what a beer.

They sell it by weight straight into a plastic bag for you to take home. I only got a kilo and only have a few mouth fulls before the bus but it did taste good. you are meant to pour it into something to drink from, but with a lack of cups I had a go from the bag. An absolute winner.

Check out my photos of Qingdao

Shanghai Photos 

Well arriving at Shanghai its enormity really hits you quickly it is absolutely huge. 22 Million People!! Everywhere you look are massive buildings. I boarded the metro to go to Nanjing road, one of the main roads coming off the river. It was hard at first to find out directions because the street signs can be quite confusing. When a sign is on a street it ofter names the next street in a certain direction instead of the actual street the sign is on.

I eventually found the hostel I camped out at for a few days, and met an English guy Alun who was good value. The first day it was raining so I didn’t do a lot, walked around had some dumplings checked out the area around the hostel. That night I had an early night after not a lot of sleep on the train the previous night.

The next day Alun took me to a market with some of the cheapest shopping around, it was crazy the stuff there was almost free. I am going to Tibet and Nepal where it will be really cold so I decided to get a gortex jacket. The one I chose had another jacket for the lining and a pair of pants for about $45, in Australia it would easily be $500.

In Shanghai I mainly rested I had been on the road for a long time, so I didn’t do to much which was a welcome change. I ended up staying at a friends place later in the week for three nights. At one point we did not leave his apartment for 48 hours, punched out 6 movies slept and relaxed.

Some of the Shanghai highlights were riding around the city and the Urban planning centre, this was absolutely amazing. Shanghai is an absolutely huge city and it is just a place where you can watching things go by instead of feeling that you have to see a huge amount. Another thing that hampered some of the sightseeing was there was a Hurricane that drenched the city with rain for most of the time that I was there. The urban planning centre has scale models of everything they have planned for the next 15 years, including all the transport improvements for the city, airports, new apartments etc. Something that I thought would be so boring turned out to be really great.

After the rest I was re-energised and ready to take on the rest of my trip. I organised to stay at my friends place in Beijing and then travel with him for a week after that. I stayed there for 8 days and then caught a plane to Qingdao to check out the home of Chinese beer.

The rest of the photos can be seen here Shanghai Photos

Well I landed in Hong Kong about 2pm on Hong Kong Island and decided I wanted to stay in Kowloon on another island in a backpackers area. I quickly found out a heap of things I never knew about Hong Kong, 80% is forest and there are four main Islands on one of the four main islands that make up Hong Kong.

I caught the MTR (has to be the best subway system in the world that I have seen) and was lucky enough to find a place with my own room for $80 HKD a night. I was quickly finding out how expensive Hong Kong is compared to China, it is pretty hard to find any bargains at all. Just getting there I decided it was time for a walk around Kowloon, and down to watch the nightly laser show over the harbour. One thing that really catches your eye is what I coined ’the urban canopy’ where every shop and business has a sign out over the street and they are everywhere. It gets so dense at points that it is hard to see the sky.

The laser show was pretty good, there are something like 25 buildings participating and they have lots of lights and lasers lighting up the sky and buildings to music. There number of buildings on Hong Kong Island outweighed the Kowloon area so definitely watch it from Kowloon. With beers being about $8-10AUS I managed to find an American tourist to have a few cans with while watching the show.

The next day it was time to explore Hong Kong Island, so I jumped on the subway and found the Western market and jumped on a tram to check out some of the Island. The tram was a good way to see what was going on and took me to the end of Hong Kong Island where I caught the subway back to central. One highlight of the walk was going through a eastern medicine and dried seafood market. It was crazy some of the stuff they had, with one shop offering to buy gallstones.

That night I went on what is arguably the biggest tourist attraction in Hong Kong, the tram up to the top of Victoria Peak. This was pretty good ride up but a total tourist mecca. Upon arrival you are greeted by hundreds of shops and cafes overlooking the city and the harbour. I watched the laser show from here before walking back down and took the ferry across the harbour.

Day three (14th) was time to see some of the famous Hong Kong shopping so I went to the Mong Kok area where they have markets that are huge, go for around 4-5 blocks with solid stalls. The problem I was having looking at all the different things that I could buy was that I didn’t need anything and couldn’t really carry it anyway. Anything electronic is a fraction of the price that it is in Australia, so many things that I could buy but I resisted.

Right near by was a Fish market and a bird market. The fish market was insane everything you could imagine was for sale. They had hundreds of fish in bags hanging on the wall ready for sale. The bird market contained every kind of bird imagineable but they were mostly obsessed with little finches.

Nearby there was meant to be a beautiful nunnery and garden, they were really something you have to see. The Nunnery had traditional Chinese style buildings around courtyards with a great backdrop of green mountains. Across the road was a manicured garden which was amazing, it was meticulously planned with a huge center pond filled with Carp that would have to be at least two feet long. The whole surrounds were very relaxing and a great contrast to western gardens and culture.

Around this time I started reading Annapurna Circuit by Andrew Stevenson and it was such a great read it inspired me to do the Annapurna Circuit instead of Everest base camp in Nepal. Give it a read if you are thinking about heading to Nepal any time soon.

On the way back from the nunnery I went to the railway station to try and find a ticket to Shanghai which was the next step. It turned out there was only one on the 16th so I had to stay another night. That night when I arrived back at the hostel I met some English guys who were heading out so we went out for a feed. The night turned out to be an absolutely massive night ending up in a Karaoke bar at about 3am (not a good thing if you have heard me sing).

Not having felt a hangover like that in a few years was quite a shock to the system. Then looking around I didn’t have my phone either which was really annoying as it had all my music on it as well. That day I felt pretty average all day so it was a little annoying but on the other hand the perfect day for watching a movie like Evan Almighty. 

The day of the train became quite a rush, I woke around 11 and needed to be at the station at about 2, so I packed then went to get some breakfast. I needed to get some other things as well as the train was going to take 24 hours. I was lucky to have a sleeper which was pretty comfortable. I picked up some bread and finger buns which were pretty tasty. I have never been on a sleeper train before but it turned out to be pretty good apart from not saying a single thing for the whole time. Reading a copy of Newsweek cover to cover went down pretty well and I also started reading ’The Great Gatsby’ which I quite liked after a slow start.  

Hong  Kong Photos 

Scott