Ok picture this.  You land in a city.  You don’t know anyone (uni-friend aside) and you decide you like it so much you might want to stay here for a few months.

That’s me, and Beijing.

Beijing’s buzz made me want to stay here – the difficulty was working out how to get started and settled, and not really speaking the language.

I initially stayed in a hostel – a friend advised this was the best way to meet other English speakers (which is true) – called the King’s Joy near Tiannanmen Sq.  It wasn’t so much hostel as hotel in which the rooms had been converted into dormitories – but OK nonetheless.  It was there I met an Isreali and two Italians (separately) who told me about Homestays in Beijing through a site called tourboarding, and “couch-surfing”.  The two are different but similar concepts.  A homestay in China is basically a transactional arrangement.  You get to stay with a middle class Chinese family, for free (with your own room usually) in return for teaching their children English for a couple of hours a week.  Not a bad gig.  Couch-surfing is like social networking for people who don’t want to pay for hotels/ hostels.  You set up a profile, advertise that you’re in a place, and people with profiles who live there can decide whether to let you stay on their couch/ spare room.  Pretty sweet if you’re staying somewhere for a short period of time.  More on this later.

The Chinese Cough Syndrome (see previous post) and a couple of annoyed dorm-buddies made me decide to move to a single room in another hostel – the Happy Dragon in Dongsi.  This definitely had more of a hostel feel, and where I began my search for somewhere to stay, a part time job for spending money, and all other life accoutrements to help me get on in the city.

But before I tell you about that, let me tell you about healthcare in China.  I was “advised” to go to hospital for my cough.  There was a local hospital nearby.   So off I trodded. 

Hello, I have a cough (broken Chinese).  It’s very bad, and I can’t stop coughing. 

My Chinese Medicine

OK.  Pay us some money to process the paperwork.  You can see a doctor in two hours.

45 minutes later, and increasingly frustrated.  Can I see an English speaking doctor? (refer to the Chinese in phrase book).  Went to see said doctor, not much English – advised to go to the pharmacy.

Went to pharmacy.  Pharmacy staff say go to another hospital.  Go back to hostel to ask their advice.  They say go back to hospital.

Went to other hospital.  Got directed to “international medical centre”.  Found English speaking doctor.  Filled out lots of forms.  Paid again for admin.  Told to go to room 5.

Someone had shit themselves and was waiting outside room 5, so it smelled badly, along with 5 other Chinese people with at least 3-4 family members each. Chaos.  Basically had to push an ill woman out the way to see the doctor. 

Saw the doctor.  2 courses of anti-biotics, and some traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) drink for cough. Collect prescription.  Leave.  Drink takes like buffalo urine (for the record, I have not tried aforementioned liquid, although that is what I imagine it to be like).

(More on TCM in a later post).

And there ends the (perhaps not very interesting) bard of the cough.

Back to homestays.  After applying for a few on tourboarding.com I came across Jessica.  She had a young kid who wanted to learn English and was offering a pretty sweet room near Wudaoko (North Beijing where a lot of students and ex-pats live).  I had to send a picture, my CV and arrange a time to meet.

In the meantime, my search for a flat continued. 

I generally (but mistakenly) assume that the east of any city is where the artists and poor (money) creative types live, and therefore cool.  To some extent, this is true for Beijing, but the apartment I visited in east Beijing, whilst nice, was not in a cool area.

My knight in shining armour came in the form of an email from a German-Chinese girl who told me about an apartment near the centre of town – YongheGong (Llama temple).  That was Friday – I was supposed to see Jessica the next day.

Llama Temple - view from my window

I went.  I liked.  I accepted.  A room in a 3 bedroomed apartment with all mod cons (and air conditioning!!!).  All for the equivalent of £120 a month. 

“Sorry Jessica.  Can’t make it tomorrow.  I’ve found a nice apartment and I have accepted.”  It would have been interesting to have done the homestay experience – although I was advised by someone that it’s like being a 14 year old again, as you’re told when to be in for and you can’t exactly have friends back.

It never rains, it pours.  Within a week of moving into the apartment (I moved in the next day). The following happened.

I met my housemates (obviously).  Dion is a Finnish Australian party organizer.  Lived in Japan for 3 years, great friends.  Laura is a German singer who had studied Chinese in Beijing for 4 months and had decided to take some time out to find a band to sing with.

Job offers came in.  I now have a part time job teaching English privately to middle class Chinese school students for a company.  I have my own students who I am teaching privately also (on Skype) to practice for their exams.

I am also working with a Chinese company as a consultant to help “internationalise” their business for Western markets – started with some internal training on how to deal with Western businesses.  Will be travelling to their offices around China.  Exciting.

My bike

I applied for voice over work for various films and adverts (waiting to hear back on that).

Got a bike (see picture).  A Chinese bank account (this is both easier and harder than you expect –easier as you don’t need to pass credit checks, harder because explaining this in my (limited) Chinese is very difficult.  Thank you phrase book.)

Signed up for Chinese language lessons – 3 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Hopefully this should help with my pretty crap language skills.  Got a language partner – Lulu - who practices her English with me in return for me practicing my Chinese with her every Sunday.

A word on this.  And someone (perhaps me) should write a good, lengthy article about this. 

One of your largest assets if you’re white and a native English speaker is, well, exactly that.  The currency of the English language in China is very strong.  You can teach, teach privately, help translate.   So many Chinese families want their children to speak good English as they see it as the key to the gateway to a better life.  They want their kids to go to Oxbridge and Ivy League universities – so another selling point (to train them) if you have. And you are paid much more than Chinese natives with the same skills. 

White, because in China if you’re white you are a curiosity.  You’re taller, and (totally unfairly) thought of as better looking, more affluent and probably more successful.   Modelling and film work is offered.  You can get gigs to just “be around” when there is an important business meeting, or reception, to help make the event or business look more “international”.

The fact that I have business experience in the UK and the US is also a selling point.  Chinese businesses are successful, and the domestic market here is huge.  But growth means looking outwards, and there are tonnes of Chinese businesses who haven’t had experience of dealing with Western businesses.  Plenty of Chinese business executives who haven’t experienced dealing with non-Chinese business people.

In the West, this counts for very little. But for an ambitious economy like China’s, it counts for a lot. 

Back to the apartment.  Yong he Gong – the area where I live – is so centrally located it’s ridiculous.  It’s a short bike ride to San Li Tun – the upmarket expats area.  A stone’s throw from Nan Lou Gu Xiang (NLGX) – a popular and trendy area for natives, expats and tourists alike (and Bei Lou Gu Xiang – BLGX - the same).  Although the Australian Beattles tribute band in a bar on NLGX was a little bit weird for my liking.  It has one of Beijing’s more famous temples – Llama temple.  Although slightly annoying is the incense ash which blows from the temple into my bedroom.  There is a French restaurant (which serves vegetarian food – yeah I know!), a vegan restaurant, lots of hip boutique coffee and tea shops, some pretty cool bars and a caretaker for our block, who every time I ride past tries to get me to drink beer with him.  Someday soon I will, mister, someday soon.

A little story. I needed a haircut, desperately.  My housemate told me about his Japanese friend who does haircuts for fashion shows.  Great.  He speaks only Japanese and Chinese, so I needed Dion to translate my hair requirements.  I’m quite fussy about my hair, largely because it’s crap.  So I turned up to meet them.  He had forgotten the keys to his studio.  So we tried a local studio in Chouwai Soho (everywhere in Beijing is called “something” Soho).  They weren’t buying it.  So we went outside, where the suggestion was made that I have my haircut on the lawn outside the shopping mall.  See pictures below.  A small crowd of Chinese gathered to watch and commentate on the haircut, offering advice to my Japanese stylist.  All in all, a good experience.  

Exercise area in the apartment block...

CCTV headquarters, Beijing

My favourite person in China

Beijing - the first few days (and Observations #3)

My desert

I’ll start out by saying first up, that after spending a whole two days here, Beijing is both an awesome and at the same time difficult city.  Awesome as the city has so much to offer – history, culture, size and scale, markets, bars, clubs, shops and a lifestyle to match London.  Difficult as you are generally the only westerner around, sometimes Beijingers can be a little like Londoners – brusque, sometimes verging on rude.

However, two days in, and I love the city.

I arrived on the sleeper train from Chengdu (here’s comes the transport geek bit) which is perhaps the most impressive bit of train service I have ever been on – certainly beats British transport – comfortable, clean and fast. 

After waiting an hour for a taxi at the train station I got chatting to 5 Ugandan girls who were teaching in China and visiting Beijing.  To be honest it was nice to speak English to someone after negotiating a 15 hour train ride with my broken Mandarin.  8:30am check in.  10am Tiananmen Square – which is where I was staying.

That day I went to the Square after first trying to visit Mao’s Mausoleum (which is closed in the afternoon).  It’s bloody huge.  Like probably half a mile wide and long (being a square, of course).  In the centre are two massively long TV screens which play out calming music and pictures of the picturesque Chinese countryside.  Being impressed with their size, I took a photo.  A few moments after, two Chinese women dressed in pink dresses who spoke suspiciously good English came over and engaged in friendly conversation.  They were very charming.  What I realised whilst walking away from the conversation was that they had, through the course of our chat, managed to find out every detail about me, my trip, where I was staying, what I was doing in China, where I came from in England, whether I intended to drink a lot (!), unwittingly to me.  When I asked for one of their e-mail addresses, they said they didn’t have an e-mail address.  Hmmm.  Interesting.  I feel like I was being a paranoid Westerner, and I hope they were speaking to me to practice their English!

The giant TV screen that got me into trouble

I also went to the National Museum of China – which houses a lot of ancient artefacts and art – it was cool and a huge building – although most of it was empty.

That night I met an old university friend – Matt – in Hulou area for a meal down a really cool Hutong.  Matt has been living in Beijing for a couple of years and speaks perfect Mandarin – which was pretty impressive.  Hutongs are like side streets, and Beijing is full of them.  A part of Beijing (and indeed China’s history) which has been kept perfectly alive.  Most hutongs have great restaurants, street food and shops, and much of what is cool and great to see in Beijing is down the Hutongs. 

Here I discovered a new, and palatable side to Beijing cuisine – the dumpling.  All varieties of dumpling.  And a great thing which was essentially a stuffed tofu pancake – it was so delicious I want to remember the name of it so I can order it again.

I would highly recommend a bar called Mao Mao Zhong (think I’ve spelled it right) for good cocktails and a friendly crowd.  It was here that me, Matt and an American friend discussed the merits of methods in Neil Strauss’s “The Game” for pulling (a book I had read only a few weeks before).  A very bizarre and strangely cerebral conversation.  (Sufficed to say the consensus was that the methods worked.)

p.s. I have discovered a new medical condition.  I have named it “China cough syndrome”.  It is basically this – a very dry cough that aggravates the throat due to the dry heat, pollution and lack of moisture in the air in China – largely in summer.  I have it, it has lasted for a week, and it is a bugger to get rid of as your lungs basically have to become used to the dry conditions.  (Note to self - Ju Hua Cha (a type of flower tea) is very useful for alleviating the aggravated throat.) 

The next day I went to lunch with an old client’s daughter who he had put me in touch with before I left the UK (Madeleine, and her partner Martin) around San Li Tun area.  San Li Tun is easily one of Beijing’s cool quarters.  A very modern and very international upmarket area of Beijing with lots of amazing restaurants, bars, clubs and shops.  Think New Bond Street meets Shoreditch.  Kind of. 

We ate at an upmarket dumpling restaurant, (who’s sister restaurant was apparently rated as one of the best in the world for dumplings) which had, probably, some of the best food I had ever tasted.  A word on dumplings.  Dumplings, like Chinese people, come in all different shapes and sizes.  Usually a wet, kind of pasta like coating, filled with different sort of meats and fillings.  We had crab and pork, one with beef and soup at the bottom, and an amazing array of dips.  (see pic of my desert above) I was very pleased. 

I was also introduced to “Bookworm” which is a great book shop and café (complete with free Wi-Fi: yay!) selling English speaking books and magazines.  If you stay in Beijing for longer than 3 days, I also have to recommend “An insider’s guide to Beijing” which is written by the same people who produce “The Beijinger” an expats magazine which has come in invaluable.

Later that day we went to Chaoyang Park.  I didn’t realise Beijing had parks.  And this one was so big and well kept it easily bettered some of London’s green spaces.  It’s a pretty upmarket area, near to San Li Tun.  What I did find a little curious was the amusement park, by the lake (one of four which are interconnected in the park) and the space centre (which looked more like a space shed) smacked right at the south gate of the park. 

That night I decided to head out to a few bars around San Li Tun (on my own) to meet some new people.  Alas, t’interweb failed me and the night that I wanted to go to was not on at the bar it said, so I was left roaming the streets until I bumped into a group of guys whom I asked for directions, and who invited me to join their group for a drink.  Bonza.  Plan executed successfully.  A few drinks and a club later (Beijing clubs are mad) I headed home.

First impressions of China – Observations volume 3.

1. Public toilets – are everywhere.  Some Beijingers (and indeed other Chinese) who live in Houtongs don’t have a toilet – so they use public toilets. The thing is, some of the public toilets just have rows of holes in the ground (“Chinese style toilets”) with no cubicles and no dividers.  Makes for an awkward experience.
2. There are no black people in China - apart from Nigerians.  They usually greet me in the street with (Hey dude) and try to offer me various substances.  Not cool.
3. Car registration lottery – you can only have one car in China.  And get this; the number at the end of your licence plate denotes which day (usually 2 days of the week) you can drive in Beijing.  Kind of like a weird congestion charge. 
4. One property rule – like the one child policy, you can only own one property.  This, apparently, is to stop property prices in cities like Beijing from rocketing
5. 24 hour food – you can buy cooked food anywhere and anytime in most places in Beijing.  From street stalls to restaurants on “ghost street” near where I live in Yong He Gong.
6. Vegetarianism – is tolerated.  Which is weird as the Chinese put meat (“rou”) into everything.  Strange thing is – there was a huge veggie section on the menu of the local French restaurant (Café de la Post).  And here I was thinking the French saw it as an immoral life choice. 
7. No traffic etiquette – I bought a bike.  And I can do whatever I want on the roads.  I don’t, because I want to live, but there is no traffic etiquette in this city.






8. Hot cola with ginger for throat – here I was thinking traditional Chinese medicine was all about rare flowers from mountains in Mongolia.  Apparently one of the best offerings to cure a cough is heated Coca Cola with ginger.  I had it.  It tasted so nice.  And it kinda worked.
9. Scrap waste guys who pay for waste - kinda like a gypsy with a horse and cart, except they come round to your apartment to collect empty plastic and glass bottles, and any other manner of waste you have.  And they pay you for it.
10. Beijingers are generally polite on the subway - everyone gives up seats for oldies and youngies.  I won’t be giving up my seat for a child, they can learn to stand. 

(Some pictures of touristy Beijing below)

space shed 

First impressions of China – Observations volume 2.

1. Men bearing their stomachs – when it’s hot (all the time here) men of all ages and sizes pull their t-shirts up to their nipples, rest it there, and walk around with their stomachs out.  Anywhere, anytime. 
2. Lack of queuing – It’s not so much that there’s a lack of ability to queue, it’s just that the queue is usually determined by who can push in front the first – a kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest principle
3. Never wear white whilst eating – Many of the dishes have a lot of soup/ suace and when you’re eating noodles with chopsticks, most of it seems to go on your top
4. The Chinese are a lot more scared of you than you are of them – scared is the wrong word, but a white guy in China piques people’s interest and curiosity, although a child did start running away from me screaming when she saw me the other day
5. Video games – are everywhere, and there are shops with battery farms of pc video games terminals where people of all ages pay to play
6. Chinese people are a lot taller than expected – I am taller than most Chinese people, but there are a lot of Chinese people who are significantly taller than me.  Does not make me feel good about myself!
7. Dry heat – a combination of the dry heat, lack of moisture in the atmosphere, pollution and the sand blowing in from the Gobi desert makes for an annoying cough, which apparently goes away after a week or two.  (Fingers crossed!)
8. Money – the Chinese (individually) are very careful with their money.  They always make you pay on time and will never forget any money you owe them. 
9. Electric bicycles – they are f***ing annoying and everywhere.  They don’t make a sound, creep up behind you and nearly knock you over.  Having said that, I still want one!
10. Beijing is a very cool city – cosmopolitan and diverse, it has a lot to offer and I’m really enjoying it!

Chengdu (Sichuan): Pandas, opera, peppercorns and phones (sorry, bad alliteration

Jake persuaded me to come to Chengdu which is the capital of the Sichuan province, sort of central China.

Sichuan is famed for its cuisine – spicy, very spicy – and generally delicious.  Apart from these evil peppercorn like things they put in the dishes which are so spicy they numb your mouth and taste a bit like soap.  I ate too many and couldn’t speak properly for a few minutes – a bit like the feeling you have after dental work.

Chengdu is a big city – apparently in the country’s top 10 largest.  I have to take a moment to recommend the guesthouse where we stayed – Sims Cozy guesthouse, which although was outside the main city centre, was an urban oasis, complete with Chinese garden, friendly staff and great guests and strangely enough, a lot of them on their way to Nepal or Tibet.

China attracts a different sort of traveller and tourist.  Slightly older, and more mature, there is a different sort of hedonism with them.  Less about drinking and partying (although there is lots of that) more about mad experiences (think bungee jumping off a river gorge in Nepal) and a bit more culture.  There’s a mix of old and young, European, Isreali and strangely a lot of Americans. 

That night we got to sample to Sichuan barbeque, which was awesome and cheap.  Although the guesthouses choice of film for the open air movie screening (Drive Angry with “actor” Nicholas Cage) was an ill-advised one (read – don’t EVER watch this movie).

An early start the next day to visit Chengdu’s panda centre.  Most of the tourists come to the city to see the pandas – Sichuan is famous for them and the city is blazened with panda mottos.

I’ve never seen a real life panda before.  It was pretty awesome and we arrived just in time for feeding.  My observations about pandas (see below pictures):

1. Pandas eat a LOT of bamboo – and usually only bamboo , which is strange as it’s not that tasty nor that nutritious
2. Pandas are VERY lazy – they mainly eat and sit down.  Apparently this is to conserve their energy as the bamboo doesn’t give them much
3. Pandas are big, although their babies are tiny – like the size of a large finger nail and the young grow very fast
4. The Chinese are very proud of their pandas.  Apparently one of the pandas was the global ambassador for Earth hour – our group thought she had slept her way to the top, rather than deserved it by merit.
5. China loans pandas to other countries, although if a baby panda is born outside China, they take it back for incubation
6. There are two types of pandas – the giant panda which is black and white and the more vigorous and a lot smaller red panda which is apparently related to the racoon – and looked a lot like one

At the end of the tour we were greeted by a board with pictures of visiting foreign dignitaries.  I was as surprised as any other to see John Prescott’s picture alongside one of Bill Clinton.  I think the centre’s staff must have mistaken him for a visiting panda.

That night we went to a “Sichuan Opera”.  My mum made me watch a film called “Farewell my Concubine” when I was too young to care which is essentially a Chinese opera, so I thought I had some sort of grounding in the art.  Whilst there was little opera – it was more of a variety show, the performances were pretty impressive.  Hand shadow puppetry, clever puppets that could sign and breath fire, ornate dresses, an impressive performance by a man that played what looked like an upturned large violin, and mask changing.  Mask changing is an art form where the performer’s mask changes in a split second by one move of their body.  The video below demonstrates - I was pretty impressed anyway.

(That night we headed to a Chinese club.  Note to self – don’t go to a Chinese club as they always seem to have some sort of cabaret performance which is genuinely awful.)

Another one of China’s idiosyncrasies, which I hadn’t before appreciated, is Karaoke.

KTV (essentially a chain of bars with private Karaoke booths) pepper China like a Wetherspoons, where hordes of young Chinese sing their hearts out till the wee hours of the morning.  So, obviously, with a group from the hostel, we had to go. 

The KTV bars have a good selection of western pop tunes and a compendium of Chinese tunes, which dominated the first half of the evening. A George Michael, Shakira, Blue and “Come on Eileen” later, and the Westerners had taken over.  The difference being that the Chinese take their singing seriously and sing in tune.  Westerners shout to reach the notes, and bang the provided for tambourine out of sync with the music.  And then home I headed.

A little random excursion the next day to the mobile phone store.  I’m a massive technology geek and have always wanted an iPhone- I’m in China for a while so I figured it would be worth getting one here.  As soon as I walked into the shop, out was ushered the obligatory English (or “Chinglish”) speaking store assistant to deal with me.  Whilst very nice and proficient in English, asking about “data caps”, “3G” and “pay plans” was not, understandably in her vocabulary.  But that doesn’t stop the Chinese.  Out came her laptop and “Google Translate” – which has become as invaluable to me in China as my right arm – to negotiate mobile phone language. 

After 2 hours of automatic translation and a lot of hand signal sign language (I can’t remember what my hand sign language was for data cap, but it was pretty inventive), I came out the shop with a brand new iPhone.  All configured in Chinese.  An hour later and the world was mine.  P.s. Google Translate is a very useful tool in China as it prints the Mandarin script which you can then hold up to the native speaker so they understand what I’m trying *(emphasise trying) to say.  “Do you speak English” – Nui hui Jiang yingyou ma? – and “Do you think my friend is sexy” have been wheeled out on numerous occasions.

Later that night, with iPhone in hand, we headed out where we met a Chinese guy and girl who were insistent that we hang out with them for the night.  You always have to be a bit over cautious in China as whilst the people are very friendly, there are some who employ these sort of tactics to get you into a scam.  Nonetheless they were both very nice and one of them fancied my friend – so proving the use of Google translator ;)

First impressions of China – Observations volume 1.

1. Everything is in Chinese
2. There are a lot of Chinese people 
3. Spitting – or “hawking” as they seem to call it, in the street is OK 
4. Shitting – yes people, shitting.  Literally babies with crotch less trousers – yes BABIES, with CROTCH LESS trousers, being held by their mothers in the street as they pooped out their dinner
5. Dogs – both as pets and as food 
6. Taxis are just as hard to get as in London – and taxi drivers are reluctant to pick up white people (ironic)
7. Staring – being stared at in the street by all manner of people
8. English – there’s not much of it, apart from the lovely little girl who, on the train to Beijing said to me “Hello.  Welcome to China” in near perfect English
9. Modern – not all Hutongs and quaint little villages, but skyscrapers, long streets and up market shopping centres
10. Not being able to cross the road, ever.  Traffic can turn corners even when the light is green
11. Hairstyles – because everyone has black hair, you get all manner of died hair colours – ginger, yellow, red – to differentiate themselves
12. And finally – Chinese is a very, very hard language to speak, and get right.  Asking for the toilet “ceszuo zai nar” has become an epic trial in itself

Hong Kong, a beach with a coal fired power station, picture menus and monkeys

Having landed in Hong Kong on the 25th two things struck me.  The first was how western the place was.  The only way I can describe HK island for anyone who hasn't been is like a giant canary wharf meets up-market shopping mall meets china town.  All in a good way.  

The second thing was how modern the place was.  More skyscrapers than I remember from manhattan, much much cleaner than Bangkok.  Everyone is polite and practically everyone speaks a little bit of English.  


It was here I met an old colleague, Jake.  We both made the decision to go travelling around the same time, although completely separately.  He had been to India for a few months and had been in China for 2 – visiting Hong Kong for the visa run. 

Meeting someone on the road is always helpful as they give you the tips and advice that the travel guides just can't.  As we traded stories about our travels and  the experiences we had I had a small revelation.  It dawned on me why a lot of people go travelling.  It's not hat they're unhappy with their lot, or at least generally anyway, it's more that they, we, need a new challenge and to broaden our horizons. And going to a new environment gives that.  China would certainly be that for me.

Having landed in the evening and still a little dozy from the Valium (I'm not a good flyer and the stuff helps me ge through what would otherwise be an uncomfortable ordeal) we decided to head out, to taste my first proper chinese cuisine.  

The thing that Jake had said, and that I soon learned, was that picture menus and the art of pointing soon become invaluable in China.  Long (or so I thought) the preserve of Brits and Germans in restaurants abroad, the picture menu has now become invaluable, along with its sketchy “Chinglish” translations  (I’ll be compiling compendium for the UK market).  The difference in China is that the menus have no pretension of photoshopping the pictures, what you get is what you see.  The rest of the island’s cuisine is quite varied and there are lots of upmarket European restaurants for the well heeled expats.

Hong Kong has a lot of sights to see for what is essentially a working city, which can probably be done over a day or two.  The next day we headed to the zoological and botanical gardens (I was very much more interested in the “zoo” bit than the “bot” bit) which housed an impressive array on monkeys and gibbons (which I thought was a bird) and was set fairly high up on HK island.  It is a short journey to the tram which takes you to the famous Victoria park at the summit of the island, with it's stunning views. 

Being the massive geek I am, I decided to visit an exhibition on the redevelopment of HK docks (I was the only person in there and all three staff followed me round like I was some sort of visiting foreign dignitary).  Apparently Hong Kongers (if that’s what they call themselves) were up in arms about over development and used the Harbour redevelopment as a locus of their fury.  All very interesting stuff – and HK is very compact.

That night we headed to Kowloon which is technically (at least geographically) in mainland China – although administered by HK.  The views of the island’s skyscrapers lit up by night is just absolutely stunning (and quite possibly breathtaking).  There was a tower which looked like it had been taken straight out of the film Tron and a plethora of super tall buildings dominating the skyline.  I think the pictures do it justice. 

Kowloon is an interesting place – much more hectic than HK island and, I dare say, a little dirtier.  Another day, another trek trying to find a temple.  Failed.  We then decided to head to the famous markets – a silk market – a fakes market – a ladies market (ladies clothes, rather than ladies) and a goldfish market (literally shops with goldfish – a whole road of them).  Getting new release DVDs was interesting as we were beckoned into a backroom in a store which sold “ladies DVD” (yes, ladies this time) although after haggling we decided it was against our better judgement.

A quiet night with the new Pirates of the Caribbean film and then off to bed.

The next day we headed to Llama island which is one of the recommended main islands off Hong Kong Island.  It couldn’t be more different to Hong Kong and had an almost European feel.  We ate in a vegan hippy café which had signs on the wall of a “make love not war” hue.  Llama island’s main beach deserves special attention.  It is a fairly good beach and its nice to actually see sand after concrete jungle.  Except the beach was right next to a coal fired power station, complete with signs saying “when windy, do not swim in water” –presumably because the stations fumes would blow in your face.

All was not lost, as there was another beach on the other side of the island.  Except, what the map didn’t tell you what that it was a trek over the mountain, down the mountain, through steep jungle and via a “youth hostel” which didn’t seem to exist.  And so we trekked, for hours, and hours, to find the mysterious beach.  The highest point has to be being greeted by a Chinese graveyard at the top of one hill, and a misleading sign which lead up trekking through some jungle.  3 hours and 3 pints of sweat later, we decided to cut our losses and head back to the port.  Nonetheless, would recommend going to the island – and if anyone does find that beach, well, you’re a more lucky man than me.

The Hong Kong crowd, which we sampled the next evening, was a relatively young and vibrant mixture of expats and natives, all blending together in the island’s many bars and clubs.  There are some good bars in HK, although a little pricey, are not too busy and serve good drinks – rather than the crap you sometimes get when travelling (think “fake” alcohol – like fake Louis Vuitton – looks the same, whole different evening to be honest). 

And that was Hong Kong.  Of all the places I’ve visited I can certainly say I could live and work there for a little while.  It has a certain glitz and charm about it which is attractive.

Off to mainland China…

(Some pictures from HK)

"Scaffolding" - from Bamboo

No chance of finding her then...