A trip down the Yangtze

We spent the last few days on a small chinese cruise ship (don't get any illusions about luxury though!) sailing down the Three Gorges to the new hydro-electric damn on the Yangtze. Here are some photos from the trip.

Steven helping the driver fix his bus before we set off for the port:







Sinead and Steven become minor celebrities on board as one of only 4 westerners. There was an official photographer on board that people bought a package of 10 photographs (of them infront of various parts of the river) from. Some people insisted on having us in the photos with them! This poor girl doesn't look entirely happy about her mother wanting a photo of her with the celebs:











We disembarked onto smaller wooden boats at one point to sail down the Little Three Gorges which was beautiful:



The water level of the river backed up behind the damn for 550 kilometres has already risen by 145 metres, displacing whole cities of people. A massive 1.3 million people have been re-located as a result of the project.

The damn will be finished in 2009, which is when the water level will rise another 30 metres to 175 metres. All along the river are markers indicating what will soon be underwater, such as this family's small farm:







The amount of construction in this area is incredible. Here is a new bridge being built to replace one that will soon be submerged. It is gigantic, and one of many massive building projects.



We are off to Guilin today which is meant to be stunning, so I can't wait.

Some lovely food, incredible sights and giant scary dogs...

Well I still have a fancy birthday meal credit to use up, but last night in Xian we went to the Islamic food market and ate sooooo much tasty food. It is chinese food with an islamic influence, so tastes quite different to what we think of as chinese food - more spicy barbeque flavours. We had things like barbequed lamb kebabs, rice cakes, flat breads, skewered squid, little sweet potato cakes with figs, squished nut things - I have no idea what anything was called, but it was delicious.

We visited the terracotta warrior museums in the afternoon which was incredible. What amazed me is that the warriors are so lifelike, with individual expressions, and differences in their costumes and stances. And in one excavated pit there are an estimated 6,000 of them! I have an added appreciation because I went to evening pottery classes a few years ago and it took me about 3 weeks to make a pot with a handle.

Anyway, here are some little photos of our trip in China so far.

The forbidden city in Beijing:



Some chinese tourists on the move:



Steven's new favourite food:



At the bird's nest stadium, which is almost finished apparently:



Getting dumplings made for us in a food court:



Us at the Great Wall!









A guy hoisting part of a business sign onto the top of a building in Beijing:



Steven got his haircut and I 'read' a magazine whilst I was waiting. Interesting to see a very western format featuring the latest beauty products that we would recognise at home - folic acid etc, and then a recommendation to use lamb's placenta in the middle of it all.



I have yet to see a normal looking dog in China (er..I won't comment on why that might be actually!) since all the dogs we see are toy varieties and look completely ridiculous. The whole Paris Hilton carrying your dog around in a handbag craze has hit China big time, and dogs are all tiny, sometimes very cute, sometimes able to walk on their own, always vicious!



"Sinead, how did you get that terrible wound? Were you bitten by a huge scary animal?"
"Um... yes.. it was a big scary dog that I couldn't fight off. Really... big.. and scary..."



Steven and small dog stare eachother out. The small dog won.



A girl we were chatting to on the train who has a very rare ticket to the opening ceremony of the olympic games on 08/08/08. Her dad has connections it seems...



In the above image note the 2 tiny seats this girl is sitting on (the guy on the seat next to her was standing up when the photo was taken). The sleeper seats - beds on the train - were sold out, so me and Steven spent 11 hours overnight sitting on these hard little seats attempting but failing to get any sleep. The picture below was taken the next day at the terracotta warrior site in Xian (hence my facial expression!)




Detail of a warrior with his horse - these were made over 2,000 years ago, incredible:



And the Islamic food market!







Talking of food... I must be off. Thanks for all your messages! xxx

Peking Duck

I was so excited about going out for a fancy meal for my birthday last night! We spent the day in the forbidden city, but got back to the hostel quite late.

After showering, getting dressed up, and locating the fancy restaurant on the map, we finally got there about 9.30pm. It turns out the fancy restaurant shut at 8.30pm. Hmm. So we were stood on the street wondering what to do when a friendly waitress from the closed restaurant offered to show us the way to another fancy restaurant serving Peking duck. Lucky us! On the way we were chatting and she explained that actually she was taking us to another branch of the same 'chain'. Like KFC she said. Ok, we thought, thats fine, its just a chain of really fancy peking duck restaurants where our going-out clothes will fit right in and we'll be served like kings on my birthday.

Not so. When we arrived at fancy restaurant no. 2, it seemed as if KFC had just moved out, leaving only the flourescent lighting, sticky tables and tacky decor, and the Peking duck company had just moved in. The menu arrived, and when we saw that our meal was going to cost us 70 pounds for the two of us, we decided to leave. The man behind Steven chucking his cigarettes on the floor just helped us along. I've been to plenty of tacky restaurants before, but not really spent more than a fiver in general.

Anyway, since it was late (10pm by the time we left) and all the restaurants in the area were shut, we stopped in a side street near our hostel and ate fried duck noodles for 70p each! Here is a picture of me with my noodles. Mum, thats my new handbag! Although its a wide angle lens so I'm not that small in real life.

My Birthday!!!

How exciting! Its morning here in Beijing and we were meant to be getting up very early to visit the Great Wall, but when the alarm went off we convinced ourselves that it was going to rain today and we were better off sleeping in and trying tomorrow. Now that we are up its not raining of course. Infact from my position in the hostel lobby here I can see people outside with sun umbrellas. Its almost too bright to look without sunglasses. Anyway, its nice to have a lie in on your birthday.

So, I've reached the grand old age of 29. Which feels great, especially since at the moment I'm still bumming around china and I don't have a proper job, or even a house or a car come to think of it! My present from Steven was a special carved wooden stamp which stamps my name in Mandarin. I had no idea he managed to get one for me! It is sooooo cool. At some point in the future I want to make a chinese style embroidery/painting, and now I can stamp my own name in red ink at the bottom.

Instead of visiting the Great Wall today, we are going to walk around the Forbidden City. Then this evening we are going out for a fancy peking duck meal. Life is pretty good. Plus in just over 2 weeks we are going to be in Hong Kong, which is like Mecca for camera people. I am almost drooling already.

Oh, thank you for your comments below! I'm going to try and upload a video later, although until the hostel instal Steven's new electrical system they have the occasional power cut, so I'll see how I go.

29!!

EDIT: I believe my blog runs on GMT, so I haven't forgotten, my birthday is actually the 15th :)

Travels in Mongolia/6 tourists crossing the Gobi desert in a russian van

Well I think the title says it all. As you can see from my post below we arrived in Mongolia just in time to arrange visas for China (it turns out we could apply for chinese visas in Ulaanbaatur although it took 2 days to cobble together the application, lots of dead ends and lots of supressed internal screaming) and then arrange a tour of the Gobi desert. Travelling Mongolia solo seems to be something that only very hardened travellers attempt in order to impress the folks back home. So instead of catching local transport to see the Gobi (a 6 seater indestructable russian mini-van packed with 14 people and a goat) we chose to see the country on an organised tour (a 6 seater indestructable russian mini van with 6 tourists, a translator and some bottled water) . Here we are at the start of the 2 week trip, very excited to be leaving one of the less inspiring cities in Asia and heading off into the open spaces of the desert.

From left to right: Steven (New Zealander!); Boloroo (Mongolian - our guide and translator); Gaelle (French); Ogi (hostel owner); Sinead (Welsh); John (Irish); Mario (Argentinian/Italian/Spanish); Orta (driver - I spelt his name wrong but it is pronounced Orllta and you can say that if you are welsh!); and Ali (American).



Here we all are after a few hours of driving, or maybe a day or two. The back seat passengers bear the brunt of the bumpy road. The other day Ali was asking how she could possibly describe in her diary the incredible amount of time we spent crushed in this van, clinging onto the windows and the roof.... I have no idea. I guess at least we were only 6 people rather than 14. The distances we travelled seemed even more massive because we averaged about 25 miles an hour once we left Mongolia's only few sealed roads :



Stopping for lunch on the way:



A vulture looking for stray tourists:





Mario attempting to eat his lunch en-route.



Almost everyone outside of Ulaanbaatur lives in a Ger, which is like a Yurt. We mostly stayed with herding families in the nights, and here is a Ger that we slept in. Thats my towel hanging off the side ruining the photo by the way :) In the south of the country, people keep goats, horses and camels, and in the centre and north, goats, sheep, cows, yaks, and even further north reindeer.



A rainstorm in the Gobi. I have never experienced rain like it - you can drive along, pass under a raincloud and get heavily rained on for about 60 seconds, then come through the other side into the sunlight - amazing!





Ali waiting for the longdrop toilet. She'll be delighted I used this photo on my blog:



Checking out a newly finished Ger:



An animal that stayed still long enough for us to snap it!









We had a small fly problem when we hit the greener pastures and steppe north of the Gobi. It was more unpleasant than a hot day in the van, and each person was constantly surrounded by their own swarm. The only way to be rid of them was to drive as fast as possible in the van with all the windows open.



Walking up a hill the van couldn't quite manage with all of us fatties inside:



A game of rounders in the evening:



Um, this was the 7th member of our team, a football we named wilson (after the ball in the Castaway film...) Wilson kept us company until he finally gave up the ghost on the last night of our trip. Here he is with some dead animal bones in the sand where we left him. Somehow this all seemed normal in the middle of the desert....



A waterfall in a ravine west of Ulaanbaatur:



A dog with yoghurt on his head outside a ger in the hills, central Mongolia:



This spot would have been blissful if it hadn't been crawling with flies!!



When Wilson was out of action we were forced to entertain ourselves. With the aid of a herder's gun here are John and Mario posing as a Mongolian freedom fighter and one of Osama's henchmen. Just a little bit troubling how realistic they appear...





Fun with some very cute kids on the way:











Our driver was incredible. Here he is one evening in the Gobi helping another driver remove the entire back axle of a van, repair it, and replace it ready to go in the morning for another 180 kilometres. They only stopped to drive off around the various Gers in the area looking for spare parts. Another night he lit a fire using cow dung to solder together more van parts.



A baby goat!!!!!



Every night we were entertained by gorgeous sunsets, and then a sky packed full of stars and the milky way.



We met some lovely people on the way, another van going the same way as us for a lot of the trip, were welcomed by very friendly mongolian families, and saw some beautiful places. Of course I'm not going to try and describe a 15 day journey in one blog post, so I will just list my favourite parts of the last 2 weeks on the road:

Getting out of the van each day and discovering a new place; trying to herd goats around the desert and getting upstaged by a 6 year old; drinking hot tea with yaks milk, fermented horse milk, yak 'vodka', and the cheap russian stuff; playing games in the Ger and discussing the important issues of the day; jumping in a freezing river after 3 days without washing; finding the same joke hilarious even on day 14; trying to pronounce mongolian sounds; camping in the mountains; camel riding on the sand dunes, galloping with horses on the steppe; watching the sunset in a vast empty sky; getting drunk and looking at the stars; playing volleyball, football and rounders; chasing strange insects; running down sand dunes; sneaking out food to the dogs; getting the best seat in the van; getting away from the flies; not having to think about anything but what we'll get for dinner that night; taking photos on Steven's camera; talking about photography; eating, drinking, driving and sleeping (although more sleeping and less driving would have been even better!).

Now I can't wait to get to China (we leave tomorrow evening) so I can stuff myself with chinese food. We managed to get a visa for 18 days, so that will be the next stage of our trip. How exciting!

Tonight we are going to an all you can eat mongolian barbeque, where I'm going to eat...... all I can!