China

After spending a fair amount of time being very British and moaning about the weather to anyone who would listen in Korea, we were looking forward to visting warmer climates again. As you can imagine, we were unbelievably thrilled to find snow on the ground when we arrived in the Chinese port town of Tianjin! Needless to say we didn't hang around too long, and took what is currently the worlds fastest commuter train outa there, and to Beijing (which actually turned out to be further north - missing the whole planning aspect yet again me thinks!).

I remember previously mentioning that India was "big", and it is very big indeed. However, we were soon to discover that China is India and a lot more. I am led to believe that Mahoooosive is the technical term. We soon realised that we would never get to see much in the little time we had - especially as train tickets are like gold dust over the lunar new year. A word of warning to anyone planning to visit China; avoid travelling over the new year! Competing with literally billings of people for train tickets (there is only one government run train company - surprise) is a mission of the highest order. Travel agents have no chance to help as tickets go on sale exactly 5 days in advance of the journey, and often run out in hours. Visiting the train station was like visiting a camp site as loads of people decided to await ticket sales time. We enjoyed a fair bit of luck, and a lot of eye-spy, acquiring our ticket from Beijing to Shanghai. But hey at least we joined in the with locals!

England has a few things in common with China asides for the weather. The biggest (apart from the Olympics) is that we both built big walls to keep out the riff-raff from up north :-) Both were eventual failures, but the Chinese version is certainly a more impressive exhibit that your average garden wall - some might even call it Great! We decided to explore said wall by hiking 10km of its length, and we did so with just two other Brit's a German and a local guide (don't put it past us to get lost following a single wall, hence the guide) . So much for the term "The Great Wall of Tourists"; for most of the journey we were the only people in sight! That is apart from the odd sentry or local selling your postcards or beer; the latter which we appreciated more. 10km is not really that far, but once you factor in the insane amount of stairs... therefore the beer :-D) To see why the wall was so effective in deterring attacks, I have uploaded some photographs ->

You should also find some photo's of the Forbidden city, and Tiananmen square where a man once famously stood in front of a tank (which was attacking those who stood up against the communist regime). Interestingly we discovered that the tank division in question then set up defensive positions in the city, worried that other divisions of the Chinese army might seek revenge for the massacre.

Utilising our well earned train tickets we next visited Shanghai - the most hi-tech city I have ever seen. It would not be too extreme to suggest that this may be the worlds number 1 economic hub in our lifetime. The plans for the city are rather ambitious, but the worlds biggest air and sea ports are already in their 2nd phase of construction. Asides from the obvious question 'where is all the money coming from?', I see nothing to stop Shanghai reaching its goal. Best of all for us - it's still cheap at the moment; 50p for a very large bottle of local German created beer, making this one of the best party cities around.

I write this from the Hong Kong hussel and bussel, where the Chinese New Year has just been welcomed in. Realising time is not on our side, we have booked an Air Asia (Asian equivalent of Easyjet) flight to Bangkok tomorrow. We will then travel to the forgotten land of Laos, where I have been well informed that jumping in a tyre tube and floating down a rivers is the best way to get around. Sounds great to me...! So I'll be leaving you for now; till the next time xx

(p.s. don't forget to check the latest photo's).

… Continued as promised! - South Korea

The reason for our visit to Seoul (a place not usually visited on a tour of south-east Asia; mainly because of its north-eastern location), was that our good friend Nora and her family were celebrating New Years in this the “second largest urban agglomeration on the planet” (or in my words; huge city!). In order to be sure of making it there on time, we booked a flight from Vietnam on Boxing Day - but thanks to our previous extended boating adventure in Malaysia/Thailand, we still needed to boogie and get a shuffle on!

So we briefly visited Bangkok; where we accidentally walked into a political rally some sort, drove a golf buggy with some shopping centre staff to a red carpet event, and took a long walk through the slums (we weren’t lost – honest), before jumping on a train to the border with Cambodia. I’m going to fast forward the story here to save you wasting your whole lives reading, but suffice to say we had a long but fun trip through Cambodia to Saigon, Vietnam. Cambodia was I suppose similar to India, except that they drove on the wrong site of the road. Anyhow, against all odds we did make it to Saigon for Christmas, even with a slight visa related delay which briefly left us stuck in Phnom Penh - Cambodia’s capital.

Saigon was a crazy place to spend Christmas. You can keep yourself entertained for hours on end just by tying to cross the road. Top Gear recently described the roads here as “unorganised chaos”, and they are spot on. There is never a gap in the traffic, and so the only option is just to walk out into the flow. Once you get the hang of dogging in between bikes/cars/busses it’s not so bad really – but going back to waiting for the little green man seems alien elsewhere. I plan to return to North Vietnam in a few weeks, and you never know someone might sell me a bike (...some top gear copycatting on the cards maybe!?!) :-)

Flying into South Korea we made another slight error, in that we forgot to check the weather – arriving in t-shirt and shorts (Conor in Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops), we were shocked to find out it was -6 outside... once again oops! Arming myself with a strange piece of attire called a ‘scarf’ we spent a chilli New Year in Seoul. It was great to catch up with Nora and her family, and the street party as we welcomed in the New Year was not half bad; awesome in fact!

We then spent an extra week than intended in Seoul as we waited for China to accept that we are not American spies. So we moved into Bong Hostel – perhaps one of the best party hostels in the world. Bong (the owner) took everyone for Korean BBQ and beers most nights, as well as taking us to lots of special pre-opening nights in his soon-to-be-open new bar. The hostel was full of travellers, students and teachers, mainly from Australia, Canada, Finland, oh and Korea. Best of all, hanging around Seoul gave us the opportunity to explore some other places close by...
On one such trip we visited the demilitarised zone; the no-man’s-land between North (so ronery) and South Korea. A strange place to witness, it was particularly interesting to walk though some of the many ‘infiltration’ tunnels built by North Korea in preparation to send troops southwards. I also finally got to see a Tiger! Okay, it was in Korea’s biggest theme park, not quite the wild... but I did also get to see a monkey ride a pig and a sea lion play basket ball. Oh and travel on a rollercoaster that puts England’s attempts to shame.

Anyhow the Chinese have now accepted that we are not spies and so we jumped on a bumpy ferry and began the exploration of a new land. Beijing and the Great Wall here we come.... xxx

Quick update from Seoul, South Korea

I hope you all had a very Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year! :- I am sorry it’s been a while since I last confirmed that I still exist – but well I have been having fun, and being lazy. I last updated you from Thailand, and we have since had flying visits to Cambodia and Vietnam (with a view to return to both shortly), as well as an extended adventure in Seoul which is where I write this now!

Our recent travels have utilised most types of transport imaginable; from boat, bus, tuk-tuk, taxi, tube, monorail, train, plane, scooter, and even a golf buggy in the middle of Bangkok. Best of all we have reunited with old friends, and met many new fascinating people.

I had this great plan to write a full update, but unfortunately will miss my boat to China if I do. Therefore I will have to love you and leave you for now, but will write again soon. Take care and enjoy the New Year all. x