In which exhaustion sets in, I drink a good cup of coffee, and the end is nigh

*This post was originally sent as an email on the 5th of August

*Pictures to come- soon

Hey all,

This is gonna be a long one, so buckle in.

 Where did I leave you? I can't even remember- a quick trip to the archives is necessary. Oh my, first night in Yangshuo. Well, here goes.

Yangshuo is without a doubt the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It's karst mountains spring seemingly out of the very streets, and rise vertically hundreds of metres above the town. The Li River alongside slaloms through the karst flags distributing jungle greenery along its banks. We need to do a ski camp here. The place is so beautiful, it is featured on the back of China's 20 yuan note.

This beauty comes at a price: it is very touristy (or to use the word on every mainland europeans' lips "touristic"). Not a bad kind of touristy though, it feels like a backpacker resort town, not a cultural tourist trap like Lijiang did and like Huangshan (toward the end of this story) will. The shopping is actually quite varied and you can bargain to a reasonable price. Things can be bought there which I haven't seen elsewhere, such as rice win in artfully painted bamboo vessels, and shirts and communist paraphernalia that teeter on the edge of being subversive. Subversiveness is not generally tolerated in mainland China, but the unusually high concentration of foreigners here seem to give it some slide.

Yangshuo was my rest before heading to Hong Kong, and all that craziness, yet I managed to get very little. The first night I got to sleep super late after writing my last missive, and then woke early. The next day I took a bus far up the Li River, and did the 20km hike along the river banks to get to the bottom loading point. Though I was almost the only person doing the walk (I passed one other group, going the other direction), I had constant company from the constant flotilla of bamboo rafts that clogged the river, bearing beaming sightseers downriver. Perhaps they had the right idea: it was boiling hot, and doing the hike added a good 2 1/2 hours onto the time I spent in the sun. By the time I returned to Yangshuo, I was beat, and thirsty, and hungry.

I rested up for some hours, watching movies in the air-conditioned lounge of my awesome hostel (11 Hostel), but didn't manage to stay idle long, as I became involved in a series of chess games against an Israeli that lasted the rest of my stay. Chess turned into drinks, two people turned into eight (or so), and by the end of the night myself, the Israeli guy, and two Danish sisters had made plans for the next few days that included rock climbing, cycling, and a cooking course. The defining factor for all these activities was the heat, which made the rock climbing a sweaty and exhausting (though enjoyable) affair, made jumping into the river off of Dragon Bridge (I have pictures; only about 6m) a highlight, and made the cooking class in an air-conditioned kitchen a welcome and refreshing relief. For the cooking class we learned to make three meals: Gong Bao Chicken, Vegetable Dumplings, and Pan-fried Eggplant.

In all: Yangshuo = good times. But I was still eager to be off to Hong Kong, where I was meeting my friend Julia (Hi Julia) and her friend Ina, who lives in Hong Kong, and would be showing us around. I was particularly looking forward to having a week of not having to do my own planning, of not needing to be constantly worrying where to go next, or how to get there. Which is perhaps how we ended up in Vietnam. The story goes like this: Ina is a flight attendant with United Airlines, and through her we were able to get cheap standby flights to the nearby places United services (Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Cambodia?). It was decided that 7 days in Hong Kong with the rest of SE Asia so close by would be a waste of an opportunity, especially since Julia will soon be leaving Korea, :(, and she thought it unlikely she would have another chance to get to Vietnam. And so we lined up for standby seats on a plane too large to be servicing Ho Chi Minh City, Ina knew everyone, and with a whisk and a sniff, we were up in 1st class, drinking French wine and fully reclining on lie flat seats. We even got real cutlery, and a meal I would pay for in a restaurant.

But this was all after hong Kong, so let's remember that first. In three days in Hong Kong we discovered: it's very expensive to live in Hong Kong; they're still very English (driving on the left; all the hotels serve High tea with Devonshire clotted cream; people speak English; their older money still has the Queen on it); they have fantastic food, like meat pies and fish and chips, also Mexican food and just about every food you can think of; other things that escape me... We watched the light show from the top of Hong Kong island, rode many ferries, drank some margeritas (with real limes), and smoked a hookah (not as bad as it sounds, ma).

And then off to Vietnam. We made friends with a 10-year old street hawker, who was about the most bizarrely adorable child ever met. He would make Fagan's urchins look drab and boring, in mid-song. We took a tour out to the Cu Chi tunnels, used by the Viet Cong to evade American troops, and got far too close to some AK-47s being fired. And we shopped. Normally I would have abstained, but... there were some beautiful things on sale, for criminally low prices. I spent nearly as much on shipping things home as I did on actually buying the items. At the end of the day my shopping list came to:

1. 1 Lacquerware panel, with eggshell, showing a fisherman poling by midnight (700,000 VND)
2. 4-piece Lacquerware panel, yellow cherry blossoms on a field of black (720,000 VND)
3. A rip-off Deuter 45l backpack, at time of writing broken in 4 places (300,000 VND) as an aside, I can't see VND without thinking "venereal disease". In actual fact it stands for Vietnamese Dong. I'm not sure if that's better.
4. A Tin tin in Vietnam shirt (70,000 VND). I'm not sure if there ever was a Tin Tin in Vietnam book, but I've since added to it Tin Tin and the Blue Lotus, and Tin Tin in Tibet, which do exist.
5. A mother-of-pearl inlaid chess set (250,000 VND). Since damaged slightly by a surly customs agent who dropped it on the floor, and chipped the enamel on two corners.

I think that was it, I hope that was it. I'm moderately proud of my purchases, however. All of them should last, none are throw-away or single-use. I'll have all of them (except the backpack, and maybe the shirt) in 50 years time (life willing).

We had planned to fly back to Hong Kong on Friday morning (5am flight) so we could spend Friday there, do some last things, and then get Julia to her flight back to Korea on Saturday morning. So we went to sleep around 1:30 Friday morning, alarm set, and woke at 6, having missed the plane. Kind of a catastrophe. Ah, well, the less said the better. We managed to push all our plans back a day, and had an extra day of cheap drinks and hookah in Ho Chi Minh, and then got back to Hong Kong. Our last day in Hong Kong was pretty busy as we toured Lantau Island, seeing the Big Buddha (hint: it's big), looking at a traditional fishing village, and finally stopping at a South African restaurant! Frikking A. I had been excited for this. It didn't have quite the range I was hoping for: I was excited about koeksisters and melktert, which they didn't have, but my tomato bredie was superb, Ina's ostrich steak magnificent, and Julia's braaied chicken delectable. Perhaps best of all, the restaurant was on the beach, and from our table we could watch the sun go down while drinking a cold beer (fortunately not South African). I felt like I was back on Clifton or Camps Bay, the place was that beautiful. Also, I think we can count on at least two extra Americans in SA sometime in the future.

Wow, am I still in Hong Kong? good grief, ok. Next up, Shanghai.

I flew from Hong Kong to Shanghai, because, at that point, I was beat. I spent a good day sleeping in Shanghai, too, and only really explored on my last day there. Still, I saw the Bund, which was magnificent, all old Colonial architecture on one side of the river, and massive skyscrapers on the other. I spent a few hours in the Shanghai museum of history, attended a tea-tasting (damn good tea, but expensive), and went up to the highest observation platform in the world, on top of the world's third highest building, the Shanghai World Financial Centre.

I'm rushing a bit now, because this chair doesn't have a back, and I've been writing for a good long time.

I then took a bus to Mount Huangshan, China's most famous mountain, supposed to be amazingly beautiful, and was underwhelmed. I think I went at a bad time, because the place was heaving with tourists. It was just crazy up there. I blame the two cablecars and numerous 5-star hotels on the top for encouraging them. I don't like sharing the top of the mountain with geriatrics on walkers or three year olds whose parents insist they climb every step of the mountain by themselves, blocking the whole path. I miss my mountain. Also, the entry fee didn't agree with me. For 230Y, I expect the mountain to be made out of Swarovski Crystal. Also, cloud was covering the peak the whole day, blocking my view. Not that I could see the peak for all the people. Finally, the very helpful hotelier at the bottom who gave me advice about climbing the mountain insisted I would have difficulty getting up and down the mountain in one day. I said I'll try anyway, and was up and down in 2 1/2 hours. Bah humbug, listen to me grumble.

Getting off the mountain I showered and changed, then caught an afternoon bus, 4 hours, to Hefei, nearby. From there I had an actually very pleasant train station experience purchasing my ticket to Xian. The queue moved, few people pushed in, and there were some seats left on the train I needed. Only hard seat though. On a 17 hour journey. Anyway, 17 very restless hours later, I arrived at Xian, where I am now. That was today! Hey, I'm nearly done. I love Xian, it's so relaxed and laid back. Tons of people speak English. The hostel I'm in is really nice as well, though I have to move to another one tomorrow. The best thing though is the food. Xian loves street food, and so do I. After eating nothing on my train ride, I stuffed myself today with all manner of things bought from a stall, occasionally stopping to pull out the piece of blatantly raw meat from the morass.

Tomorrow I will get up (at some time, I suspect late), and go to see the Terracotta warriors. After that, I fear I'm running out of time to get to Tibet. I asked today, and I have to wait 3/4 working days to get my permit, which means I can't have it before the 10th/11th. My visa expires on the 16th. Add to which I still have to get to Beijing, and all there is to do there, and then leave the country, and that I'm savagely over-budget... I don't think I'm going to make it. Tomorrow, though: tomorrow is another day. A day in which I need to book an onward train to somewhere, and start to look at getting back to Korea.

Ah well, all things end,

Anthony