Made in China... broken then?

Hope you're well. Time for me to write my first messij in about a month, I hope it does the trick.

The past fortnight has seen us change our plans more often than we've changed underwear (completely true). We had a few lazy days in the south of Hainan island, sleeping on beaches and generally trying to forget about the existence of coats. Drinking from cocunuts is a great way to accompany this, but also our hostel had a little store 10m away where a 660ml bottle of beer set us back 25p so drinking was very much back on the agenda!

NYE saw us drink lots with other travelllers, then run down onto the beach to get excited about some awful fireworks, before heading to an even worse club. Sanya, the city we were in, wasn't really what we imagined for a tropical beach resort. It is a huge (by european standards), concrete, toxic city with someone beeping their car horn every second you're outside. The Chinese have a habit of beeping the horn as soon as anything steps within 20m infront of their slow moving vehicle, and we needed the beach time every day just to forget about this, let alone just to relax!

We left Sanya on New Years day, after ditching our plan to rent a scooter due to ridiculous hangovers (well, L aside), and headed into the tropical rainforest in the mountains on the island. We had a day exploring here, where I introduced Lauren to the art of getting lost in the jungle and just bashing your way through the plants down the mountain till you find a road. However, we probably would have prefered the jungle and the mosquitos to the road as every few seconds a motorbike would roll past with staring Chinese ppl and their mandatory hellos. After a few minutes this lost all novelty...

Leaving the mountains, we found ourselves on a 5 bus ride to Haikou in the north, that turned into a hell ride due to the insanely awful cheesy chinese music blazing above our seats the whole way. Couple this with needing the toilet the whole way as well I think its a miracle that there wasn't a massacre that day. With some more difficulties in Haikou, we decided that maybe China was becoming a bit much.
So we have decided on going to Laos instead at the end of our 30 day visa, and not extend our stay. The thought of constant warmth and less crowds is amazing!

So, with 10 days left on our visas, we voyaged to Yangshuo where there is some amazing scenery (although we were back to the cold again...). The whole area is covered in huge rocky lumpy mountains that just sit on flat plains, like someone's just dropped them there. The first day we went to see what was billed by everyone as an 'awesome light show' set on the river with lot and lots of local 'actors'. After what we thought was some hard bargainaing, we got tickets for about 8GBP each on the other side of the river, 'its for locals, the view's just as good' Turns out we were miles away from the action, and had to really strain to see anything :(

The next day we cycled round the area along the Yulong river and through rice field paths definately not designed for bikes (our falls can vouch for that!). It was incredible to feel we were 'away from it all', until a huge cycle tour group passed us the other way. After 4 hours cycling, we went on to climb one of these lumpy peaks, and were thoroughly knackered. That night we went round a hostel's bar, and got our arses thoroughly kicked in beer pong.

Next we went onto Dragon's backbone rice terraces, which are an amazing collection of rice terraces built into the side of the mountain like steps. We only had a day here, but it was really peaceful and everything was covered in a layer of ice, including every individual tree leaf, due to the night fog and the cooooold. Finding a hotel there with electric blankets we snapped it up almost instantly, and due to absolutely no heating we got the weird sensation of a burning back and a freezing front when we woke up.

Another long train journey (which only took 1.5 hours of queuing to get the tickets), brought us to Kunming in Yunnan where we pretty much did nothing for a day. From here, L and I are having a holiday from each other and exploring different places. I'm gutted that I'm not getting any of Lauren's leftovers when we eat now, but hopefully a week apart will stop us merging into the same disguisting person (and not just from the traveling sweats)

Are you still there?!

Cool

Stay in touch everyone, and a belated happy 2011 to you all!

Lots of love

H+L
XXXXXXX

PS Just booked our flights to Seoul having discovered Air Asia (Asia's Ryan Air) and it is confirmed, we have 30 days to spend in Laos and Cambodia, and then a couple of days stopover in Kuala Lumpur, leaving us just enough time to arrive to arrive 9pm the night before our first training day in Seoul!

written by  harripix on January 10, 2011 from Lijiang, China
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
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