TravelStream™ news feed for member mattislost on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/mattislost en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:55:51 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1209801000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1209801000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1209801000/tpod.html Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:55:51 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Hey Dudes and Dudettes.
I am still in Byron Bay driving the minibus at the moment. I had to work six 14 hour days in a row last week as the other bus driver went a.w.o.l!
The weather has turned nice again which is awesome, although it is freezing at night.
I have officially given up writing my diary as I am two weeks behind. Also, this is going to be my last blog as I really can't be bothered to type this crap up any more.

This is the blog for my first days in Australia. I didn't do or see much in Sydney as I was constantly hungover and feeling like crap because of my cold.

Tuesday 29th April
We landed at Sydney Kingston Airport just after 11am. Getting through the security checks took well over an hour. It was even worse than England and New York. I couldn't remember if I had booked a free transfer to my hostel or not, so I hung around for a while just to see if anyone turned up. Nobody did, so I got the train to Kings Cross station, just down the road from the Wood Duck Inn which I booked before I left England. Buying the train ticket made me realise how expensive Australia was going to be after my two months in Asia. At the hostel I got my room key and went to check out my 6 bed dorm. Everyone was out and the room was an absolute crap hole. It was really dirty and people's stuff was all over the place. The room had three ricketty looking bunk beds in it and that was it. I left my bag and then went out to see a little bit of Sydney. I got some food and went to sit in Hyde Park, which was just up the road from the hostel, until the sun went behind the high-rise buildings. I decided to head to the Sydney Opera House, via the Royal Botanical Gardens, as the sun was still shining down there. The Opera House was a spectacular sight. From there you can also see Sydney Harbour Bridge and groups of people walking up it. Once the sun ducked behind the bridge it good bloody freezing so I headed back to the hostel to meet my room mates. I met an English couple, Adam and Louise, two French guys, DJ and Sebastian, and a hot German girl, Sarah. Soon after I arrived Adam, Lou and the French dudes left to go out so I sat and chatted with Sarah for a few hours. It was her last night in Australia after 8 months of travelling and working so she invited me out with her and Timo, a Dutch guy who worked at the reception of the hostel. We went to an amazing pie shop on the way - my first pie of many in Sydney - and then to a really cool bar where they served cocktails in a teapot. You order what cocktail you want and however many shot glasses you want and then you just pour the shot from the teapot! Me and Sarah managed to get about 8 shots each out of one. Timo could get free pints of beer as he worked in the hostel so he was constantly going to the bar to get more for all of us. Towards the end of the night every time we got a beer we got a Jaeger Bomb as well. At 3am Timo was going to meet his friend in another bar. Sarah was occupied chatting to two German guys, so I decided to go with him. By the time we had had a pint and chatted outside it was 4.30 so I went back to the hostel for some sleep. Sarah's flight was at 8am so she had set an alarm for 5am. Just after 5 she came back, made a lot of noise, grabbed her bag and went straight to the airport!

Wednesday 30th April
I woke up at 11.30 feeling hungover so I decided to head over to the Botanical Gardens to chill out for the day. I wandered around and sat writing my diary until 4, when it got really cloudy and cold. Back at the hostel I found out that it was Adam's last night in Australia so everyone was going out to party. We went down to the pub below the hostel a couple of hours later. Everyone from the room was there as well as a group of English guys and girls from other rooms in the hostel - Gaz, Hayley, George, Jonny, Maz and a really pissed guy, Phil, later nicknamed Philly Savage due to his uncanny, but unfortunate, resemblence to Paul O'Grady! Every five minutes or so he would come up to me and say: "What's your name? Are you staying at this hostel?". This happened at least 5 times! After a couple of hours we went to another bar, which was just as dead as the last one, before heading to a club called Side Bar. The DJ was awesome so we stayed until it closed. I have no idea what time that was though! The slow walk home took us via a pie shop - my second of the day!

Thursday 1st May
I woke up feeling terrible for the second day in a row. Not only was I hungover, I had a stinking cold which I managed to catch in Beijing. I ended up lounging around the hostel most of the day as the weather wasn't that great. The only time I ventured from the building was to go to an internet place. When I came out of it it was absolutely chucking it down and I was in my shorts and t-shirt which probably didn't do my cold any good! I spent most of the evening trying to cheer up Lou as she was upset that Adam had left. A Danish girl, Freya, arrived in the evening along with her hippy friend Wally. Tonight was the first night in two months of travelling, where I hadn't been travelling overnight or sick, and not had a beer! That's pretty impressive!

Friday 2nd May
I actually managed to drag myself out of bed at 8am to go and claim my free breakfast up on the roof. I met up with Maz and Hayley and as it was a sunny day we decided to do the walk from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach. It was a really nice walk that ended up taking us 3 hours to do as we were constantly faffing around. We walked along 5 beaches, stopping at one (i'm not sure which) for a swim in the salt water pool which was bloody freezing! We stopped for a meal at a bar overlooking Bondi before getting the bus back to the hostel as it suddenly got really cold. I spent my last night in Sydney playing drinking games on the roof with Lou, Wally, his girlfriend, Hayley, George, Jonny, Casey, Freya and Phil, who was completely hammered again. We played a really simple drinking game which I won't go into details with due to the ridiculous amount of the word f**k that is needed to describe it! Phil had everyone laughing all night as he just couldn't get it. He kept saying "This game's f**king stupid. It doesn't make any sense". By the end of the night we were all drinking every time someone messed up!


Sorry, that one was crap. It is the least amount of effort that I have put in to any of my blogs so far!
Anyway, friends, family and fans, i'm glad that you have enjoyed the blogs. It has been fun doing them, but it has become a bit of a chore to be honest, as has writing my diary. You can still email me at mattislost@hotmail.co.uk if you want.
See you all in September.

Mattislost signing out.
xxx
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Beijing, Beijing, China

Hiya family, friends and travelpod fans,
First I should probably let you all know that you won't be seeing me back in England on the 6th July now. I have extended my trip and I will now be returning on Thursday 25th September! If I don't run out of money before then! I am currently working at a hostel in Byron Bay driving the minibus from the hostel to the bus stop. I get free accomodation for doing this so that is cool.
Sorry about my slackness in updating the blogs. I have a lot of sitting around now because of the bus driving job so hopefully I should be able to bring you up to date soon.
Anyways, this is my blog for my last 5 days in China and Asia before I left for Australia. It's going to be a big one as a lot happened in the 5 days that I was there (apart from the one hungover day!).

Thursday 24th April
We pulled into Beijing Zi train station at 7:30am. One problem I have with Chinese people is that they have no concept of queuing to get in/out of anywhere - they will just barge past you - so a few thousand people trying to get out of three gates at the station exit was a bit of a free-for-all! After shouting at a man for pushing a woman with a tiny baby and holding him back so she could get out the gate I sat down to evaluate where I needed to be going. I hadn't realised until this point quite how massive Beijing is. I decided to jump right in at the deep end and get on the Metro underground train at a time which would be rush hour in London! After stopping for some food from a street stall which was noodles and onion in a pancake - a bizarre but delicious combination - I jumped on the subway train. One trip cost the equivalent of 14p. A bit cheaper than London then! After two trains I started to walk along the road on the map that lead to my hostel. It was only a centimetre on the map but it took me 20 minutes to get there. I arrived at the place on the map where my chosen hostel, Red Lantern House, was but there was a slight problem ... It wasn't there! After half an hour of wandering around confused as hell I ended up back at the main road where I found a big map of the area which actually had English on it. It turns out that the alley that my hostel was on was actually a few hundred metres up the road. Crappy Rough Guide book! I eventually found the place and enquired about the price of a single room. It turned out it was more than I had paid for a really nice hotel in Xi'an. I was just about to opt for a bed in a dorm when an Austrian guy standing next to me, Gerd, said that his friend had just checked out and asked if I wanted to go halves on room with him. He seemed like a nice guy so I agreed. I sat down for a coffee with him and it turns out that he has visited almost every country in the world. After China he was going to North Korea and then Pakistan! I then set out to explore the city. First I went to Beihai Park. Again, it looked like a short distance on the map, but it turned out to be a couple of kilometres away. As my Rough Guide pages were photocopied it meant that I couldn't see the scale on the map! The park was really nice. It was strange to find such peaceful place in such a huge city. I went in throught the North Gate and walked through an area with loads of bridges crossing over ponds that had hundreds of goldfish in that you could feed. When you dropped in some food it was an absolute frenzy, with fish leaping out of the water on top of each other to get the food! I have a video. After walking through a maze of boring Pagoda buildings I reached the huge lake which covers about 70% of the park. I read in my book that the lake was completely man-made and that rather than removing all of the excavated earth they just piled it up in the middle to make an island and then built a temple on it. I walked down the west side of the lake and then around the outside of the Forbidden City until I reached Tian'anmen Square which is a truely spectacular sight. I crossed over the road where the Chinese student in the 1980's stood in front of the line of tanks and stopped them. It isn't actually a square anyway. It's blatently a rectangle shape. But that's just me being a Maths nerd! On the north edge of the square is the Forbidden City, on the east is the Museum of Chinese History & the Museum of the Revolution (both were closed in preparation for the Olympics), on the south is Zhenyangmen (the South Gate), on the west is the huge Great Hall of the People and right in the centre is the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall which displays the pickled corpse of Mao Zedong. Apparently Mao actually wanted to be cremated but his successor decided to go against his wishes and put his body on display to state his authority. At the South Gate two Chinese guys called out to me and started chatting. I was a bit suspicious at first but it turns out that they were just two nice guys who wanted to practice their English. Dongfi was studying English at University and Mi was studying Chinese history. I told them that I was on my way to the Forbidden City so they walked with me the whole way, showed me where to buy a ticket, waited for me and then walked me to the entrance. Mi was telling me facts the entire way. The most impressive being that the Emporers that lived inside the City had almost 10,000 concubines (mistresses) to choose from! Whenever he was feeling a bit randy he would choose one by picking a tablet bearing their name from a pile on a silver tray. Just outside the ticket office a Chinese guy came over with a sign that said something like: 'Watch out for people posing as students from Beijing University. They will take you to a tea house and charge you a lot of money'. The two guys got really offended and started shouting at the man in Chinese! The City itself is absolutely massive - 100 hectares, which I think is 1,000,000 square metres. It was cool to be in a place where 500 years worth of Emporers lived, and rarely left, but I got bored really quickly. It is a maze of 800 buildings that all look pretty similar - red with gold trim and a fancy multicoloured roof - and have names like the Palace of Heavenly Purity, Palace of Earthly Tranquility, Palace of Eternal Spring, etc. They all contain various artifacts such as paintings, jewels and ornaments. After a couple of hours of pottering around it suddenly started hammering it down and I was in my shorts and had no coat! I managed to weave my way through the complex - walking under ledges and cutting through buildings - without getting too wet though. I had been walking around all day and by the time I eventually trudged back into the hostel my legs were knackered! I sat with Gerd and a big 50-something year old Polish guy and had some beers and a pizza for a few hours before heading out to explore the bars around Houhai Lake. At about 11pm I left and soon reached the lake. The lake was lined with neon-lit bars, similar to Bar Street in Xi'an. I got dragged into one place on the far side of the lake by a woman who was standing outisde it on the street. I sat down at a table and ordered a drink. A few minutes later I was joined by a stunning, huge-breasted Chinese woman. I thought it was a little bit too good to be true ... and I was right! Basically I had been dragged into a brothel of sorts. The women in there expect you to buy them drinks and then they offer you sex for money! I quickly made my excuses and left. I realised on the way back around that most of the bars around the lake are so-called 'lady bars'. I walked back to the Red Lantern wondering if Gerd knew about the bars in this area before I left and neglected to tell me!

Friday 25th April
I heard Gerd leave the room at 7am before I had the chance to find out if he had stitched me up the night before by sending me to the lady bars. I immediately fell back to sleep and woke up again at 11.30. I packed up my things and moved into one of the dorm rooms. After a late breakfast I set out to find the Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube (the swimming pool). I swear the woman at reception told me that the bus number was 49 but at the bus stops I couldn't find that one, only 409. I decided to chance it and jump on that one. I had no idea how far away the stadium was though. After 10 minutes or so I caught a glimpse of the top of the Birds Nest (the stadiums nickname). It looked amazing. The bus then turned and started heading away from it so I jumped off and started walking towards it. After 20 minutes I managed to get pretty close. I asked a Chinese guy if he could take a picture of me in front of it and it turns out he spoke English. The pictures weren't that great though as there was six lanes of motorway traffic between me and the stadium! I asked Alan (the Chinese guy) and his brother how I could get closer and they told me I could tag along with them. To get closer you had to walk quite a distance down a path parallel to the motorway, cross over it on a bridge (where you got a good view of the hockey stadium) and then walk down the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway! I heard that you were able to go inside but when we got there it turned out that you couldn't. We got some good photos of the stadium, pool and Olympic village. Alan invited me to join them on a trip to the Summer Palace but I decided to try to get a better view of the stadium from the other side. I managed to get some better pictures from the front entrance as you could get a lot nearer, but the security guards stopped you from getting any closer. Back at the hostel I got chatting to a couple of Danish guys, Mads and Severin, and met my two room mates. One was the big Polish guy that I met the day before and the other was a German guy that had no interest in chatting at all. I had a brief chat with the Polish guy and told him about my adventures in the lady bar the night before and he asked me where it was! The Danish guys booked onto the same tour to the Great Wall at Mutianyu as me in the morning. We got some food and beer and sat around chatting before heading to the other Red Lantern building as they had sofas and a huge flatscreen TV. Inside we got chatting to a big group of Architecture students from Oslo University who were on a trip. They went to bed pretty early so we watched 'There Will Be Blood' before heading back.

Saturday 26th April
In the hostel we met an English guy, Jose, who was staying in the third Red Lantern building, and an 50ish year old German lady, Heike. They were both coming with us on our trip to Mutianyu. Before we left at 8am the Polish guy in my room told me that he had gone to the lady bar that I had told him about! On the minibus we met two American brothers, Eric and Kevin, and a Canadian couple whose names I can't remember. The trip to the wall ended up taking 3 hours thanks to a major traffic jam that we got stuck in on our way out of the centre of Beijing. The wall was ridiculously touristy. The path up to the entrance was lined with stalls selling tacky souvenirs. We had the option of taking the cable car up but we decided that we would walk up. The view from the first tower was amazing as you could see the whole of the reconstucted section which was a few kilometres long. You could also see some ruins of the original wall running up the mountains in the surrounding area. I was disappointed to find out though that the reconstructed section of the wall was completed in 1986, using new materials, so I was actually older than the section of wall that we were walking on. It was still an incredible sight. We started at tower 10 and made our way along to tower 20, which was a few kilometres along the wall. It was a difficult walk as the wall stays at a consistent we height as it stretches along the mountains, meaning that you are constantly going down and uphill. We reached tower 20 after an hour and a half which is the heighest part of the reconstructed wall. The views were even better than before. We had to walk back down for 10 minutes or so before having the choice of going back down on the chairlift or (you won't believe this)... a massive winding slide on a cart! Obviously, us 6 guys chose the slide whilst our guide, Alice, took the chairlift. The carts were awesome fun but I had a woman and her 10 year old kid directly in front of me. At one point the woman stopped her cart to take a picture of her kid, which meant that I had to slam on my brake so that I didn't go into the back of him. Jose, however, did not see me stop because of the blind corner and flew into the back of me at full speed which hurt his foot and my back. Towards the bottom the f***ing stupid woman slammed on her brake for no reason. Her kid flew into the back of her, I hit the kid and Jose piled into the back of me! Mads reached the bottom before us and took an amazing photo a split second before impact. If you zoomed in you could see the look on my face - bracing myself for impact! After the ride we had lunch before heading back. The return journey was even longer thanks to a few car accidents on the motorway. Back at the hostel we drank for a few hours whilst planning our boys night out. We met another English guy, Tom, in the hostel and invited him along with us. Heike really got on everyone's nerves as she kept on talking over everyone when we were in the middle of a conversation. We decided to try a place called 'The Boat' which, funnily enough, was on a boat in the river in the Sanlitun area of Beijing. We got the receptionist to write down the name and address of the bar in Chinese and we drew a picture of a boat next to it. We handed the piece of paper to the taxi driver but he still had no idea where he was going. I tried Koen's tactic of repeating 'Sanlitun Lu' (the name of the street) in as many different tones as possible but the taxi driver looked at me with a confused look on his face each time. We eventually got out and decided to walk and ask directions on the way. The bar was pretty cool but it was expensive and full of Westerners. There was a bar upstairs and a nightclub downstairs. We stayed for a couple of drinks and the decided to walk down Sanlitun Lu which was very similar to Houhai Lake with the neon-signed bars, but without the hookers. We got chatting to three Norwegian girls who took us to a cool bar with cheap beer. We stayed for a couple of hours and then Tom went home (because he had an early flight in the morning) and the remaining four of us jumped in a cab to a club called Babyface. It was a really cool club with good music but the dance floor was tiny. There was a super hot, but ridiculously drunk, Chinese girl that kept on coming over to dance with us even though she could barely stand up. Every now and again a big guy, that we reckon was her brother, would come over and carry her away and sit her on a stall! The next time I was at the bar a Chinese girl invited me over to sit at her table with her friends. She was the only one who could speak English but all of her male friends were really happy and enthusiastic and shook my hand. After 20 minutes Mads, Severin and Jose decided that they wanted to go so they dragged me away into a taxi to another club, Mix. It was actually a lot better. The dance floor was huge, the drinks were cheaper and the music was better. Mads was really drunk and turned up on the dancing with a fully bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky that he had found on a table on the edge of the dance floor! We ended up just passing it around between us and drinking it straight from the bottle. At around 4am, in a very drunken state, I went to find the toilets but somehow ended up outside. As soon as the air hit me I felt completely hammered so I headed back inside to tell the guys that I was leaving. Jose was asleep on one of the sofas and the Danes were dancing still so I went to get a taxi by myself. I remember showing the card for the hostel to a few drivers and being turned away, but I don't remember getting in one! The next thing I knew I was standing outside the hostel and it was light outside!!!

Sunday 27th April
I woke up at 11am feeling like I was close to death and in desperate need of the toilet. As I climbed down the ladder from my bunk bed with my eyes still half closed I heard someone shout "Good morning Matt". As I turned around I was greeted by the beautiful sight of the fat Polish guy sitting on his bed using his laptop in a tiny pair of underpants! That's not what I needed to see when I was already trying not to be sick! I ended up going back to bed for a couple of hours. When I got up again Heike was sitting in the courtyard and I had to endure an hour of her banging on about this, that and the other before I was saved when Mads eventually got out of bed. We had breakfast, I changed rooms and then we had a sluggish walk around the east side of Beihai Park. We kicked the feather for a bit (I don't really know how to explain this thing. I brought it in Vietnam. It is basically a spring with plastic bits and feather coming out of the top of it which you can do keepy-uppies with) until I bruised my bare foot with it and then decided that we both wanted a Pizza Hut. It was a great idea in theory. The problem was that it was a 4km walk away and we both had stonking hangovers. The walk took us past the hostel again so we went back in to wake Severin up. It was 5pm at this point! He wasn't up for it so we went alone. The pizza was amazing but the walk back was even more of a struggle! Mads went to meet Severin and I went back to our building as Gerd was coming back and I was supposed to be sharing a room with him. We shared our stories from the last couple of days and I quizzed him to see if he had known about the lady bars around Houhai Lake. He said he hadn't and looked quite shocked so I guessed he was telling the truth. After our catch up I went to meet the guys in the other building to watch some films. A few beers helped get rid of the hangover and we ended up watching three films back to back - 'This Is England', 'Cloverfield' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2' with an American guy that was doing a bit of work for the website of the hostel. He worked 10 hours a week teaching English and said that he earned enough money to pay for his appartment, University course and live comfortably. I think I might be moving to Beijing!

Monday 28th April
As it was my last day in China before I flew to Australia I had to get up early to pack my things and check out of the hostel. I still had a few places I wanted to see so I got a bus to the Temple of Heaven. The temple buildings we scattered around an absolutely massive, peaceful park. I wasn't particularly bothered about the buildings as they looked exactly the same as the other hundred that I had seen all over Asia, but the park was really nice just to sit and chill out in. I was hugely amused by a story I read in my 'Rough Guide' book about the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests - one of the temple buildings in the park: "The original building was destroyed by lightning in 1889. The official explanation for this appalling omen was that it was divine punishment meted out on a sacreligious caterpillar, which was on the point of reaching the golden ball on the hall's apex when the lightning struck. Thirty-two court dignitaries were executed for allow this to happen"! I explored the area for a couple of hours before heading to the metro to get a train to the Summer Palace. On the way to the station I bumped into Chris and Liam in a tiny hutong (alley) just south of Tian'anmen Square, which is crazy seeing as how Beijing is bloody massive! By the time I got to the Summer Palace, which is just a huge park with various temple buildings in it like the Temple of Heaven, I only had an hour to look around which was nowhere near enough time. The place is huge. There are hills, landscaped gardens and so many paths that you could walk around for 10 minutes without seeing another person. Back at the hostel I said goodbye to the Mads and Severin before getting a taxi to the airport. I flew from the new terminal built for the Olympics which was a spectacular sight as we approached it in the dark. I only got there an hour or so before the flights so I didn't have to wait long before we boarded the plane. I watched a couple of films before trying to sleep.
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Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

Sunday 20th April
I woke up at 5.30am so I decided that I'd better get up as the time on my alarm clock was faded, meaning that the batteries were about to run out, and I was afraid that my 6am alarm wouldn't go off! The bus for Panzihuha left at 7am and took 8 hours to reach our destination. It is not actually that far in distance from Lijiang (150km I think), but as there are a hell of a lot of mountains and no tunnels it means that you are constantly winding up and down them. The driver was going like a bat out of hell down some of the hills but strangely I was never worried as he seemed to be in perfect control the entire time. After a quick snack at the bus station I jumped into a taxi to the train station, 30 minutes away, which was painless thanks to Hsiaoping's instructions which I just handed to the taxi driver. I arrived at 3.30 to find that the train to Xi'an wasn't leaving until 11.30pm and there were no sleeper carriages left, only hard seats. On top of that, it would take 29 hours. Sod that! I asked around to find out if anyone knew if there was an airport nearby but everyone just looked at me confused, even after I added some arm actions! I wandered around looking for somewhere to use the internet but I got the same reaction again, even with my typing hand actions! I couldn't even find a telephone to call the Mother to get her to go on the internet for me. After my fruitless search I headed back to the train station ticket hall and sat with my head in my hands debating what to do and cursing my luck. After a couple of minutes I saw a old white couple so I decided to say hello. I struck up a conversation and told them my plight. They suggested that I get on the 6pm train to Chengdu (which is the place that was pretty much at the centre of the massive earthquake today - 13th May), which I knew had an airport from one of my conversations with Hsiaoping. I managed to get the last hard sleeper bed which was pretty lucky. To be honest there much difference between the hard sleeper carriages and the soft sleeper ones. In the soft sleeper carriages you get two bunk beds in a cabin with a door that you can close. In the hard sleeper carriages there are two bunk beds, but they are three beds high and you have no door on your cabin. The hard sleepers were actually a lot more fun than the soft sleepers as they are more sociable. Everyone just sits on the chairs in the corridor eating, drinking and playing cards. I was on the top bed of the three which proved to be a bit of a mission to get up to. The train left at 6.30pm and I sat writing my diary, with an audience most of the time, until 10pm when they turned the lights off and everyone went to bed.

Monday 21st April
The train pulled into Chengdu train station at 6.30am. I slept pretty much the whole time from 10pm. After finding out that the next train to Xi'an wasn't until 11.30am, which would have been the same one that I could have got in Panzihuha, meaning that there would still be 17 hours to go, I jumped into a cab to the airport. After the 30 minute cab ride I had been travelling for 24 hours - the most so far! Of course, nobody had any clue what I was talking about when I was trying to buy a plane ticket. I decided to see if I could buy one from the internet but I had no luck thanks to the crappy airport computers reluctancy to open any of the pages that I wanted. I eventually found a girl that spoke enough English to sell me a ticket to Xi'an leaving at 3pm - 7 hours away, but at least it only involved one hour of sitting down rather than 17. After storing my bag and faffing around for ages I found another internet cafe that gave you unlimited internet (and free green tea) for 2 quid. At 1.30 I was allowed through passport control, which was a lot less traumatic then last time, to wait by my gate. I arrived at the gate at 2.30 to board the plane but when I looked out the window there was no plane by our gate! 50 minutes and three toilet breaks later (it must have been the green tea!) I was sitting on the plane with my eyes closed, gripping the arm rests as tight as I could and bracing myself for take off. We eventually took off at 4pm and an hour later we touched down in Xi'an to find that it was 8 degrees and absolutely slashing it down! I stood in the baggage claim in my shorts and t-shirt freezing my arse off until my backpack came around and I made a quick dash to the toilet to layer up. I jumped on a bus outside the airport that dropped everyone off outside the Melody Hotel in the centre of Downtown Xi'an. As soon as I stepped off the bus an English speaking Chinese lady dragged me into the hotel's tourist information room and before I knew it I had been signed up for 2 nights at a nearby hotel and a tour for the following morning! 30 minutes later I was finally at my destination at the May First Hotel. My first room seemed ok until I realised that it was next to the elavator which rattled the entire room every time it moved! After complaining I was moved to a room along the corridor. By the time I had settled in it was 7pm - 36 hours after I had left Lijiang. I looked like death and smelt even worse! After a well needed shower I set out to search for the appropriately named Bar Street for a well deserved beer. I found it suprisingly easily even without a map. Must be my sixth sense! Bar Street was a small road lined with neon-lit bars with people on the pavements outside hollering at you to go in their bar. I heard live music coming from one so I decided to go in there. I listened to an acoustic guitar playing singer who had the most amazing voice. There were only two other groups of people in there. One was a group of Chinese men who were playing a noisy card game and another group were chatting loudly. I was the only one that clapped at the end of each song and I got an apprecative nod of the head as he walked past at the end. I left soon after.

Tuesday 22nd April
As I was being picked up for my tour at 9am I got up early to find somewhere to do my laundry as my hotel was charging extortionate prices to get it done there. After breakfast I headed back to my room to wait for my phonecall to tell me to come downstairs. The pick-up time on my ticket said 9-9.30 so when it got to 9.30 I went downstairs to check if anyone had come to look for me. They hadn't. At 9.50 our English speaking guide turned up and drove me to a nearby hostel to wait for the other people from my group. After a short wait we were taken outside where some people were put on a minibus and I was put in a car with two really nice ladies who were friends from work in England, English Nina, who was in her 60's and Polish Nina, who was in her 50's, and our guide. I wasn't expecting to be in a car as I had opted for the 45yuan tour, where you had to pay for the food and entry fees, rather than the 320yuan tour, where everything is included. The first stop was the Banpo Museum I think. It was basically a couple of thousand years old village that was discovered in 1973 and then unearthed between 1974-1977. In 1978 they built a roof over it and turned it into a museum. The next stop was not on the itinerary. It was a workshop that made replicas of the Terracotta Army. The tour company must get commission for taking people there as just after the workshop was an almighty gift shop selling warriors of all sizes! There was a full-size replica outside with a missing head so you could stand behind it and have your picture taken so it looks like you are a warrior! That thoroughly amused me, especially the one I had taken whilst posing with a wooden sword that looked like I had decapitated it! From there we went to Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum. He was the Emporer that ordered the construction of the mausoleum and the Terracotta Army which he believed would help protect him in the afterlife. It wasn't actually the proper mausoleum - it was a replica of the coffin chamber but on a smaller scale. It was here that we found out that the 700,000 people that it took to build the 2.3 square kilometre mausoleum were forcibly removed from their families to construct it. It was completed just in time for the Emporers death in 210 BC and the labourers that were still alive when the Emporer died were then buried alive with him so that they wouldn't be able to reveal the Emporer's secrets. After being dragged around in about 15 minutes we were crammed back into the car and driven down the road to the Terracotta Warriors complex. We went to an amazing buffet restaurant and inside the driver of our car, also the owner of the tour company, tried to get me to pay 40yuan for the entrance of the previous place. I had seen the prices when we were there and it only cost 15yuan so I argued it. He told me that I was paying extra because of the guide. I had asked the lady when I booked the tour what I had to pay for and she said entrance fees and food. After 10 minutes of arguing with this guy and refusing to pay extra I found out that I wasn't even supposed to be on this tour. The woman who sold me the ticket had written the pick up time as 9-9:30 when it was actually supposed to be 8-8:30 At that time I was out getting my laundry done. After the guy realised that it was his company's fault he agreed to let me pay only the entrance fees. After the meal we met our guide for the Warriors, Bruce. He didn't really guide us at all actually. He walked us along the path to the entrance and then told us to meet him back there in only an hours time. There were three buildings containing the Terracotta Warriors. The first was absolutely massive and was an awe-inspiring sight. The second building was smaller but still contained a lot of Warriors and the third was left as it was originally found with some of the statues partially destroyed but most completely annihilated when the original roof collapsed on them. After we had finished looking around we went to watch a film about them in the circular theatre but Bruce came in and told us that we had to leave as he had to meet another group. We told him that we could quite easily follow the exit signs by ourselves in 5 minutes time, after the film had finished, and then meet him outside. He said that he needed to show us where to go and made us leave. He stormed off staight away and just outside the exit he jumped on an motorised cart and sped off leaving us to find our own way anyway. None of us could believe it! When we finally found him I was absolutely furious and he didn't speak to me for the rest of the day because I swore at him! We then went to the Hot Springs Palace which some of the old Communist Party leaders used to stay at. It had three natural hot springs within it which were used for baths and to heat the rooms. I was back at my room by 6pm so I decided to head to the train station to book my ticket to Beijing for the following evening. It should have been a simple task but I somehow managed to get completely lost on the simple journey. I wasn't helped by the fact that I forgot my map! After 2 hours of wandering around I finally found the station, got my ticket with the help of a Chinese girl who could speak English and headed back to get changed for my last night of partying in Xi'an. I had spent almost all of my money buying the ticket so I stopped to get some money out on the way back. The problem that I have had in Asia however, is that hardly any of the ATMs accept Maestro cards so you need to go to the right one. After trying 8 different ones I temporarily abandoned the search to spend my last 20yuan on a McDonalds. Inside I got chatting to a French guy who told me that there was an HSBC bank about 20 minutes down the road. I headed down there but even my own bank's ATM wouldn't let me take money out. I used the phone inside to call the customer service number but the lady couldn't help me as I wasn't a Chinese account holder and she wouldn't transfer me to the UK as I wasn't a f***ing Premium account holder, which pissed me off even more. I went back to the hotel and explained my situation to the receptionists who wouldn't let me use their internet or phone! I managed to scrape together 2yuan from my room which was enough for an hour on the internet at a place down the road. I tried to find a freephone overseas number but I had no luck. With the help of Hannah (cheers!) I managed to get the Mother on messenger and got her to ring the bank for me. After about 40 minutes they finally agreed to accept a reverse charge call - all I needed to do was call the International Operator of China. I went back to the hotel to see if the receptionist would let me use their phone now that it wouldn't cost them anything. They still wouldn't, but said that I could use the phone in my room to call them which completely contradicted the sticker on the phone saying: "No outside calls"! The moron of a receptionist had no idea what what I was talking about when I asked for the number of the operator so I had to pay for the call anyway. After getting the helpdesk to call me back they told me that they had put a block on my card as there had been a lot of activity on my card in China, mostly failed transactions. I said: "That's because i'm in bloody China and nowhere takes your stupid card"! By the time I had got it unblocked it was 1:30am and I had been fannying around trying to get money for 5 hours covering about 10km in the process! My last night was pretty much ruined so I went to bed.

Wednesday 23rd April
I woke up at 11:30 to find I had slept through both my alarm clocks so I had a frantic 30 minutes to pack my bag and check out of the hotel. It all went in suprisingly easily which was when I realised that almost all of my clothes were still at the laundry! By the time I had collected it, repacked in the hotel lobby, stored my bag and went for food it was 2pm. I realised that I didn't have enough time to do anything that I wanted to do that day, such as renting a bicycle to ride along the city walls, as my train left at 6pm. I wandered around for a couple of hours before heading to Starbucks to sit outside in the sun with my coffee. After a couple of minutes a Chinese girl, Lisa, who had been living in Canada for the last 6 years started chatting to me. It was handy having someone around who could speak Chinese when I was being harrassed by beggars and street sellers as she could tell them to go away! We were chatting for ages and when I checked my watch it was already 5:10pm so I had to make a quick dash back to the hotel to collect my bag before trying to hail a cab. Why is it that you can never find one when you urgently need one?! Luckily a guy on a motorbike offered to take me for 20yuan. The train left on time and this time I got the bottom bunk which meant that I actually had enough headroom to sit up at the table to write my diary. After a couple of hours I had drunk the cans of beer that I had bought at the station so I had to mission through 10 packed carriages to get to the bar and then back again. The lights went off at 10pm and I was nowhere near ready for sleep as i'd only been awake for 10.5 hours so I headed back to the restaurant carriage for a few hours to write my diary until I was suitably merry and ready for bed.

Phew, that was a long one! Hope it wasn't too boring. They are going to start to get a bit boring after the next one (Beijing) as I am in Australia now and all I have been doing is chilling on the beach getting lovely tan. There will be a bit of entertainment in there as well though.

Hope everyone is well.
Love Matt
xxx
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1209974940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1209974940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1209974940/tpod.html Mon, 12 May 2008 04:16:58 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Qiaotou, China

This is a second attempt. I got all the way to the end a couple of days ago and then the bloody computer crashed just as I was saving it!

Thursday 17th April
I got up and waited outside the front of Frosty Morning at 8.45 like I was told. Guess what? The bloody minibus didn't turn up! I waited until 9.45 before I gave up and left. By this point I had already missed the two morning buses to Qiaotou from the main bus station. I went for breakfast just around the corner at an Italian restaurant, Bon Appetite, run by a gorgeous Chinese lady. Just after I had ordered Hsiaoping walked past so I shouted out to her. She rang Mama to find out what had happened. It turns out that no-one from her guesthouse had wanted to go to Qiaotou that day so she had decided to cancel the bus and forgot to tell Hsiaoping! The owner of Bon Appetite rang the bus station for me and found out that I could get a bus heading to Zhongdien in the afternoon and it would drop me off on the way. The minibus palava meant that I wouldn't be able to start walking until the following morning which really put a strain on my already tight schedule for my remaining 11 days in China. I managed to get on a bus at 12.40 thanks to the lady who wrote what ticket I wanted to buy in Chinese for me. I was sat next to a lady who kept on offering me food. No matter how many times I said: "No thank you", she still held it out in her hand until I took it! There were a few squeaky bum moments (to use a footballing term!) as we hurtled down some winding mountain roads which had no barriers to stop us falling at least 500ft to our deaths. A bone-rattling 3 hours later I arrived in Qiaotou. A couple of minutes up the road was Jane's Guesthouse where I decided to base myself for the night. I got a single room for 2 pounds that only had a double bed in it - nothing else! After an hour of lounging around on the sofa upstairs two girls arrived who had been hiking the gorge. After a couple minutes of debating whether I knew them or not I realised that I had seen them in the Hump in Kunming. They had arrived late on our second day there and were standing looking lost so I showed them where to check in. That had been our only interaction though. After saying hello they told me that they had recognised me from the Hump as well. They were Felicia and Sofia from Sweden. I ended up dinner with them and then chatting and drinking beer until midnight which would later prove to be a mistake!

Friday 18th April
The girls came to wake me up at 8am and I immediately regretted how much I had drank last night! After eating my breakfast and putting my bag in the storage room I set off to start my hike with a stonking hangover at 9am. The first two hours weren't too hard going and the path took me to the Naxi Family Guesthouse. I was greeted by a Chinese lady who ushered me to a table covered with food, drinks and a big bag labled 'Ganja Marijuana'. After buying a Snickers bar - my first chocolate since Bangkok - and explaining to the lady that getting stoned probably wouldn't help me complete the toughest part of the walk, which was coming up next, I set off to tackle the 28 Bends. It took me an hour to get up the brutal, steep winding path to the highest part of the trek - 2670m above sea level. At the top I was greeted by a crazy, singing Chinese man who took me to the viewpoint where he positioned me all over the place so that he could take some pictures with my camera for me. It was an amazing sight but I was crapping myself the entire time due to the sheer one mile drop down into the Yangtze river below all around me. After decending for half an hour I stopped at the Tea Horse Guesthouse for a drink. It seemed like a nice place to stay for the night but as it was only 12.30 I figured that I would probably get bored really quickly so I decided to carry on walking. The rest of the walk was not too strenuous. I kept finding myself stopping and saying 'wow' because of the amazing views. I had a couple of ropey moments where I slipped and almost fell to my death, but at 4.40pm after 7 hours and 40 minutes of walking with a hangover I got to the end of the high path and stopped for a drink and some food. Another 30 minutes of walking took me to Walnut Grove and Sean's Guesthouse where I decided to stay for the night. I sat down on the terrace to have a well deserved beer, had a shower and at 7pm decided to lay on my bed to watch TV. I must have only been watching TV for a couple of minutes before I fell asleep!

Saturday 19th April
I woke up at 8.30 and went for breakfast which I ate whilst being harrassed by the guesthouse cat, which wouldn't get off my lap, and small puppy, which kept on biting my toes! I packed up my things and about an hour later I flagged down a minivan to give me a lift back to Jane's. The hour long journey was the most scared I have ever been. The entire road was covered with landslides from the mountains which most of the time just left us enough room to squeeze through with a few inches to spare. Quite often the minivan would slide out on the landslides leaving us perilously close to falling a mile off the cliff into the river. I arrived back at 11.15 to find that the buses back to Lijiang left at 11.30 and 2.30 so I quickly grabbed my bag and ran to the bus stop. I made it in time thanks to a convoy of 39 Chinese troop carrier vehicles that were driving along the main road, holding all the other vehicles up. The bus ride back was pretty bumpy and at one point I flew at least a foot off my seat! I got back to Lijiang at about 3pm and got a taxi straight to Frosty Morning to let them all know that I had gone through with it... in one day... with a hangover! Hsiaoping helped me plan my travel to Xi'an for the following day by writing me a series of notes in Chinese that would help me buy my bus and train tickets and explain where I needed to go to the taxi driver. I was there for about an hour chatting and eating some of Hsiaoping's amazing food when who should walk in? Koen and Tom! Unbelieveable! They were as suprised to see me as I was to see them. They assumed that I would have left to hike the Gorge. I explained that I had done it already. I ended up staying until midnight playing pool and darts with the guys and a couple of annoying English guys, James and Chris and a nice Mauritian couple, Angelique and Dimitri, with a brief interuption to go to find somewhere to live for the night. I ended up back at the same place that I had stayed before.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1208331960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1208331960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1208331960/tpod.html Mon, 05 May 2008 04:08:31 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Lijiang, Yunnan, China

Monday 14th April
My bus left at 9.50am from MCA. The bus was only a 20 seater, completely full of Chinese people apart from me. It was a bit of a squeeze for me as the bus was obviously built for smaller people, but I managed to get comfortable by sitting sideways. It took 3.5 hours to drive the 150km to Lijiang and was actually quite a pleasant journey apart from a 20 minute stint where my iPod was drowned out by some Chinese folk music that was being blasted out of the radio. As I got outside the bus station in Lijiang a woman pulled up and asked me where I was going. I told her MCA, and she told me to get in. When I asked her how much it would cost (as I thought she was a taxi driver) she said it was free as she had a guesthouse nearby that she was going to. Her name was Mimi, which I guess wasn't her real Chinese name! Her guesthouse was half the price of mine, but I had a reservation with MCA and I didn't want to lose my deposit, but I took her card anyway. At the hostel I got shown to my room whilst Mimi scouted out the competition. The room was pretty much the same as the hostel in Dali. I ordered some food in the restaurant and while it was being cooked I went to use the internet, which didn't work. The food was disgusting as well! I then went to my room to find that the flush on the toilet didn't work. A guy came to fix it and after completely flooding my bathroom he told me it was fixed and walked off. I decided to test it before I actually used the toilet. It worked once before breaking again. I went to reception and told them that I wanted a room with a working toilet. They gave me a key to another room which had no window and was really dirty so I asked for my money back and left. That's guesthouse number three that I've pissed off! As I wandered around looking for Mimi's guesthouse I spotted an English pub, Frosty Morning, so I thought it would be rude not to go in for a beer! The owners were an English guy, Phil, and his Chinese wife, Hsiaoping. I also met two Austalians that had just moved to Lijiang, Danny and Anna, and were helping out in the bar. Phil was really cool and Hsiaoping is probably the nicest lady you're ever likely to meet. After a beer Hsiaoping gave me directions to Mimi's guesthouse and I set off on my way. After about 20 minutes of following a really dodgy map on the back of her card I eventually found it. She was suprised to see me and immediately offered me a coffee after I dropped my bag in the room. I paid for the room, had a chat then went for a well needed toilet break. Guess what? Bloody squat toilet! Bugger! I had been so busy chatting that I completely forgot to look at the bathroom. As she had been so nice to me I decided to stay one night anyway. By the time I left to explore the Old Town part of Lijiang, where I was staying, it was 5pm and bloody freezing. My first impression of the Old Town was that it was tacky and touristy and didn't look old at all! All the buildings are wooden and look exactly the same. They are either a shop selling paintings, jewellery, carvings, t-shirts, etc, or a restaurant. I really didn't like it. I ended up in the New Town and somehow found myself back at Frosty Morning so I stopped for dinner and a few beers. I trundled back through Sifang Square, which is just as busy at night as it is in the day, and back along the maze of alleys to the guesthouse. I was on the bottom floor of the building and whenever the two small Chinese girls in the room above walked around on the wooden floor it sounded like an herd of elephants was up there!

Tuesday 15th April
I woke up around 9am and packed up my things ready to move on again. I explained to Mimi that I wanted somewhere with a western-style toilet and she was still really nice and offered me a coffee and recommended a couple of guesthouses. I was going to go where she said but as I walked up the street some people were hosing down the street with an almighty powerhose, meaning that I had to walk in the other direction! I ended up at a place called the Tea Horse Naxi Family Guesthouse. Every morning they give you a big flask of boiled water so that you can have green tea which was a nice touch. I went back to Frosty Morning for an awesome full English breakfast that I had been eyeing up on the menu the previous night before walking out of the north of Lijiang to work it off. A couple of hours later I ended up back in the Old Town. My second impression was that it was horrible and tacky! I ended up walking all the way through and out the other side. The whole place just looks exactly the same as there are only about 5 different types of shops just repeating! After walking back through I stopped for a beer and the cheesiest pizza I have ever eaten. I love cheese but this was ridiculous. The layer of cheese was almost as thick as the base! I bought a couple of beers from the shop before going to chill in my room and watch a bit of Chinese TV. The problem is that there is only one channel in English, CCTV9, which shows boring, out-of-date documentaries. I watched one about the railway system in Myanmar which must have been made in the 1980's!

Wednesday 16th April
As my backpack is only tiny I got up early to buy a new one so that I could fit three days worth of stuff in it for my three day hiking mission at Tiger Leaping Gorge. After dropping it back at the guesthouse I went to hire a bicycle so that I could get away from the monstrosity that is the Lijiang Old Town. I cycled through a nearby village and then onto the main dual carriageway out of the city and towards Snow Mountain. I tootled along quite slowly admiring the beautiful countryside and conserving my energy for the way back. I stopped a couple of times to take pictures and to sit on the grass by the side of the road. Only a handful of cars drove past me for the first 8km. I stopped just off of the dual carriageway by a horse farm and there were a group of six Chinese people taking photographs. Whilst I was sweating my arse off and I thinking that I had collapsed both of my lungs one of them came over and asked if I would be in some of their pictures. I was a little confused as to why they would want me in any but I agreed anyway. I had a couple taken with a man and a woman (bike included!) and a couple with a super cute girl who was holding the silver lighting disk thing before saying goodbye and cycling up the road a bit further. I soon realised that the road wasn't going anywhere of interest but I carried on up the hill anyway so I could fly back down it! A couple of kilometres back down the dual carriageway a white minivan suddenly cut in front of me and stopped and the slide door flew open. I was expecting a group of big blokes to grab me and drag me into the van and kill me, but it turns out it was the photo gang who wanted me to join them for lunch. I accepted their invitation thinking that we would be going to a place 1km down the road that I had seen on the way up. I thought wrong! I ended up hacking it downhill following this minivan for about 4km until we reached the outskirts of Lijiang! When we sat down for food I found out that four of them were working for a photography company and they were taking wedding photos for the man and woman that I had a picture taken with! One of the girls spoke very good English so she was having to do a lot of translating. The food was really good but it was a bit of a feast. The cooks just kept bringing out more and more bowls of food, and my new Chinese friends kept on filling up my bowl. I could barely move at the end! I arranged to meet up with them in the evening and then set off to chill out in the park which, for the first time that I had seen in China, was actually a proper park with grass and trees. I sat in the sun by the side of the lake for a couple of hours before returning my bike. I went to Frosty Morning for a few hours and chatted to Phil, Hsiaoping, Danny and Anna about Tiger Leaping Gorge which was my next destination. Hsiaoping knew Mama from Mama's Guesthouse and booked me on her minibus to TLG for 9am in the morning. After a quick dash back for a shower I met the two girls, Juan - the assistant photographer - and Shan Shan - the cute makeup artist. We went to meet the newlyweds at a bar in the Old Town, which was about as big as my bedroom at home, to watch a really good singer and guitar player. I didn't stay out too late as I had a long walk ahead of me the following day.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1210663440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1210663440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1210663440/tpod.html Fri, 02 May 2008 04:06:11 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Dali, Yunnan, China

So it's been a while since I last did one of these. I am currently in Sydney, Australia, which is bloody expensive after you have been travelling Asia for 2 months!
Is anyone still actually reading these? I am almost a month behind with the travel blogs and 6 days behind with my diary and it is becoming a bit of a chore to do. To be honest, I really can't be arsed to do them any more!

Ok, this one is for Dali, China. Just to set the scene I was previously in Kunming and suffering with what I thought was a hangover.

Thursday 10th April
I woke up at 7am feeling as bad as I did the day before. That's when I realised that it probably wasn't a hangover that I had. I got a taxi to the bus station and then spent a horrible 6 hours on the bus trying not to be sick. In Dali I got into a taxi with the first person that showed me a card for a guesthouse. I ended up at a place called MCA, which was nice with rooms set around a big courtyard area. The girl from the reception showed me to my room and as soon as she left I was sick. I decided to go straight to bed. It was 3pm!

Friday 11th April
I woke up at 7am and still felt terrible. I was really disorientated and I couldn't get my eyes or my mind to focus on one particular thing so I decided to go back to bed for a couple of hours. I woke up feeling a bit better, but not much. I hung around the guesthouse for a few hours before heading out to explore Dali. The town was really nice and chilled out apart from the large Chinese tour groups that you encountered every now and again. The town is basically one main road running north to south within the city walls with a few streets running off of it. No cars are allowed within the walls. One of the streets, Huong Lu, was full of cafes serving Western food so I decided that I should probably try to eat my first meal in two and a half days. I managed to force down two pieces of bread and a bowl of soup before going back to the room to watch Chinese tv. I was actually contemplating bypassing the whole of China and going straight up to Beijing so I could get my flight to Australia early, as I had lost so much weight in the previous ten days that you could see my ribs!

Saturday 12th April
I woke up at 8.30 feeling like a new person. Thank God! I went and ate the buffet breakfast downstairs before using the internet for an hour or so. I tried to email Koen and Tom but it wouldn't send as the emails were being sent back saying that the address didn't exist. As soon as I had finished on the computer I was hungry again, which was definitely a good sign after not having any appetite for ages. I then set off to explore the town a bit more than I had the day before. I walked all the way along the main street until I reached the north gate. I soon realised that there was bugger all outside the walls and headed back inside. Just inside the gate a bicycle came skidding to a halt in front of me. It was Koen! I arranged to meet him and Tom at a cafe in the evening. It turns out that he draws 1's that look like 7's which is why the email address didn't work! I then went to a place called Cafe de Jack and sat in the sun eating some lunch. I went back to the guesthouse to chill out for a couple of hours before going back out to meet the Cardoen brothers. We sat around for a couple of hours drinking and eating and chatting to an old French guy, Charles, about the joy of downloading music before heading to a street full of bars for another drink. Me and Tom were chatting about the comedy genius of 'Dude, Where's My Car?' and how great it would be to stay in the Hooters Hotel in Vegas (which I thoroughly intend to do) whilst Koen was stuck in meaningful conversation with Charles about the sorry state of the world etc! When I asked if anyone wanted another beer Koen suggested we try somewhere else. Me and the brothers ended up on the roof of a place called Bad Monkey which had no barriers to stop from falling three stories onto the street below! It turns out Koen suggested somewhere else because he was bored of talking to Charles! I had purchased a bus ticket to Lijiang for the following morning but the guys persuaded me to hang around for one more day. We stayed for an hour or so before heading back to our guesthouses. When I got back the gates were locked and I had to wait bloody ages for someone to get up to let me in!

Sunday 13th April
I got up early to try to change the date of my bus ticket and my reservation with the MCA guesthouse in Lijiang, which the girl at reception managed to do for me. I had exhausted my entire supply of clothes a couple of days before so after collecting them I had to completely repack my bag, which seems to be getting harder and harder to do each time even though I am not buying anything! I decided to move to the same guesthouse as the brothers as theirs was half the price of mine - 50 yuan. That's ₤3.50! They didn't have a room when I got there but they said they would in a couple of hours so I gave them the deposit and room rate in advance so that they would save it for me. As it was 10am I knocked on the brothers door but they were still in bed so I went for breakfast at Jack's by myself. As I was walking back I heard Koen whistling out the window to me so I went and sat in their room until mine was ready. For $7 I got three seperate rooms - all decent sizes - a bathroom, a bedroom with double bed and a living room with a leather sofa and a tv. Amazing! After a clean I met Koen to explore the town more. Apparently you could walk along the entire town walls so we headed to the south gate. The first stop was a mediocre temple on top of the gate that we didn't even bother to go in. We then started our trek. The idea of walking and getting a great view of the town was short-lived though as it turns out you can only walk about 400m along it! We then headed to the park just off of the main street. The Chinese's idea of a park is definitely not the same as mine. It was pretty much just concrete paths with about 3 trees and a couple of ponds. I then spent a frustrating two hours re-sizing and uploading some of my photos from a CD onto the travel blog for your viewing pleasure. I bumped into Tom inside so we went for food at Jack's for the third time in two days. It wasn't very nice, but the milkshakes were amazing! After going back to chill on my sofa for a couple of hours I went downstairs in the guesthouse and saw Koen and Tom sitting out on the terrace loaded up with 640ml bottles of Dali beer that they had bought for 3.5 yuan (25p) down the road. I decided to get in on the action and paid the shop a visit. As usual Koen went to bed first leaving me to teach Tom how to play Speed. I actually won!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207736160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207736160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207736160/tpod.html Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:18:46 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Kunming, China

Sorry about the dodgy song lyric title again!!!

Monday 7th April
I got up early for a shower before I got a motorbike ride to the Chinese border. There was a small window (and by window, I mean a hole in the wall - no glass) in the bathroom and when I was standing there showering I saw something out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. I turned around and completely busted a woman watching me from the balcony of the building next door!!! She quickly turned around and walked off. At the border I got through the Vietnamese departures within a couple of minutes, but the Chinese arrivals proved to be more of a problem. The guy at passport control just didn't believe that it was me in the picture! It is quite understandable as I was only 16 when the picture was taken. Anyone who has seen the picture will know why there was a problem. After holding up the so-called 'quick queue' for well over 10 minutes, and after inspecting my passport with a magnifying glass and getting other people to come and have a look, he eventually waved me through. I then had to put my bag through the x-ray machine. When it came out the other side the guy asked me if I had any books. The bloody things were right at the bottom so I had to empty the whole damn thing to get to them. Everytime I pulled one out he would ask "any more?". I was pretty baffled at this point why he would want to see my books, although I later found out the they were confiscating any books that mentioned Taiwan or Tibet as "propaganda"! Luckily I failed to mention the 100 or so pages of photocopied 'Rough Guide to China' that I had hidden away! In China hardly anyone speaks English, and all of the street signs were written in Chinese symbols, so finding the bus station proved to be rather difficult. After a lot of talking loudly and hand signs I found out that it was only 100m away from the border point! The bus that I had booked in Sa Pa was supposed to be leaving at 10.30am, but the ticket that I collected in Lao Cai earlier in the day said 12.30. Then, when I finally found the bus station they told me that my bus had broken down and I would have to wait until 1pm! At the bus station I got chatting to a couple of Belgian brothers, Tom and Koen Cardoen, who were going to Kunming like me. The bus ride was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Kunming at 11.30pm. So much for getting to Kunming early! We decided to head to a hostel called The Hump Over the Himalayas, which is based over a complex of about 10 bars and clubs. Prime location then! It took a little longer (a by little, I mean a lot) than expected to find it, but by 1.30am we were in our triple room. The hostel was amazing. It had a restaurant, bar, common room with a TV and DVD library, free pool, free internet, table football and ping pong! Amazing! We decided to go downstairs to an Irish bar for a beer before bed. This turned into a few! It was run by an absolutely insane, massively drunken German guy. Every time that we finished a beer he grabbed the bottle and hurled it out the door onto the street so that it smashed! I think we ended up heading back at around 3.30.

Tuesday 8th April
After our "one drink" had ended up with us drinking 4 640ml bottles of beer we all dragged ourselves out of bed for a full English breakfast. After eating we all went our seperate ways to explore the city. I found out that the Cardoens do their own thing during the day so that they are still talking to each other in the evening! My first destination was the disappointing Western Pagoda, which was a couple of hundred metres around the corner from the hostel. When you got there you could turn around and then 300m or so along an alley you could see the equally unimpressive Eastern Pagoda. I decided not to go and look at it and just zoomed in my camera for a picture! I then headed to the Bird & Flower market, which has a pretty deceiving name as most of the stalls just sell nik-naks apart from one which had an impressive collection of swords for sale! Kunming certainly lived up to its reputation of being the most relaxed city in China, as I walked around for 20 minutes without being harrassed once. In the pets section they had birds in cages, lizards, and there was a box full with about 20 miniature rabbits all cuddled up together that were really cute. You would have loved it Becky! I then set off to find the park which was a bit of a mission as the street names were all in Chinese symbols and my map had them all in English. After an hour I found my way there after walking quite a long way in the wrong direction. I was suprised to find that the park wasn't actually a park at all. It was a big lake with a collection of concrete islands and bridges linking them together. I spent a couple of hours wandering around listening to the groups of old Chinese men playing traditional music and watching a group of Chinese women doing American style line-dancing. That was pretty bizarre! One of the groups were really good apart from their dreadful woman singer. They played a type of music that sounded like British folk music and a couple of songs in they started playing 'Jingle Bells'. Weird! Back at the hostel I bumped into Koen and we went for food. I don't know if I have mentioned this before or not, but the one thing that I have struggled with in Asia is the constant spitting that everyone seems to do. It is not just a normal spit, but they have to properly announce it first by hocking it up and then spitting wherever they are. Even the women do it! As we were eating our food in the restaurant, one young Chinese guy next to us kept hocking up all this phlegm and the proceeded to spit it into the bin on the floor! Nice! We headed back to the hostel at 5pm for a beer, which proved to be a vital mistake! We drank outside on the terrace until 1am with Tom when we went inside to play pool. We ended up playing 'Killer' with two English guys, Nick and Tom, and a Dutch guy, Kristoff. See, I can remember names sometimes!!! At 4am most people were so plastered that they could barely stand up and I was left chatting to a Chinese girl, Gillian. At 6.30 we went for coffee across the road at McDonalds which was quite difficult getting to baring in mind I had been drinking draught beer for the last 13 hours! We sat at a table with a little homeless Chinese boy and played with his minature rabbit like I had seen at the market earlier. I eventually crawled into bed at 8am!

Wednesday 9th April
I woke up at midday feeling like crap. I managed to force down a fried breakfast but it didn't make me feel any better. Whilst I was eating I saw Nick, who was also looking a bit worse for wear! When I woke up I saw 'Salvadores 7pm' scrawled across my forearm. I vaguely remember telling Gillian and her friend that I would meet them there for food. I spent the whole afternoon propped up in a chair on the terrace before trudging off to Salvadores at about 6. I had managed to lose my map during the drinking madness of the night before so I had to memorise Koen's map before I left. I found my way to the park okay, but then I got a bit lost! I then had an amazing stroke of luck. I stopped the first white guy that I had seen in ages and asked if he spoke English. He was an American journalist called Austin who was also looking for Salvadores! He had the name and address written in Chinese and also spoke Chinese himself which helped when we needed directions. After 10 minutes we found our destination and met up with Gillian. Her friend wasn't with her. I later realised that this was supposed to be a date of sorts, which suprised me considering there had been absolutely no flirting whatsoever the night before and I didn't fancy her at all!!! We ended up going to a Korean place for food although I couldn't eat anything inside as I thought I was going to be sick! After a brief walk which ended up at the park I managed to get away and headed back to the hostel. I thought the old 'hair of the dog' trick might cure my sickness, but after a couple of sips I realised that it wasn't going down to well and went to bed early!

Phew. That was hard work! If I can find somewhere with internet when I am in Tiger Leaping Gorge I will do my blog for my time in Dali.

Love you.
xxx
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207474740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207474740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207474740/tpod.html Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:15:38 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Sapa, Vietnam

Hey doods and dudettes.
Once again, sorry for the backlog of blog entries but it's hard to keep on top of things when you are constantly high on Opium. That was a joke by the way Mum! I am currently on my fifth day of feeling well, which has been the most days in a couple of weeks. I am off on a 3 day hiking mission across Tiger Leaping Gorge in the morning (it is 5.43pm now) so I may not be able to do another blog for a few days. It depends whether they have internet in the middle of nowhere!
Apologies also for the dodgy blog title. I was running low on song lyrics that fitted in with the place where this blog is for!
Anyways...

Saturday 5th April
At Lao Cai station I was met by a guy holding a sign with Waller James written on it. I guess the guy at the City Gate Hotel must have gotten confused by my drivers license! He shepherded me onto a nearby bus which would take me to Sa Pa, which is 1800m above sea level I think. It took an hour to drive the 32km up the winding mountain roads. There were some beautiful views on the way up. I chatted to an old Thai dude and a nice Australian couple, Euan and I can't remember the woman's name (I think it began with a B). When we arrived at the Mountain View Hotel at 7am I was told that my trek started at 9am but my room wasn't ready yet as the people in it hadn't checked out yet. I went with the Aussies to eat breakfast on the terrace. When the mist cleared there were some amazing views of the mountains, villages and terraced rice fields below. As we were so high you could even see the tops of the clouds below us. At 8.30 I was told that my room was ready, so I had half an hour to sort myself out and be ready to go. My trekking group consisted of me and two Belgian girls, Anina and I can't remember the other one's name, and our weird looking little guide, a girl from the Hmong mountain village, Mai. For a girl that lived in a village that didn't even have one toilet, she had a wicked sense of humour and her English was really good! The trek was 15km and was constantly uphill and downhill, never flat, and took us through some of the isolated villages in the valleys (I have some amazing photos. I'll put them up when I find somewhere with a CD drive!). It was the most exercise that I had done in quite a while so my legs were screwed by the end of it! We got back mid-afternoon and I spent the rest of it chilling out on the restaurant terrace until I met the girls for dinner at 7. They went to bed at about 8.30, due to an early train back to Hanoi, leaving me to wander the town looking for some entertainment. That was when I realised that there was absolutely bugger all to do in Sa Pa other than trekking! I ended up buying a couple of beers from the shop and went to sit on my balcony listening to my iPod until I went to bed bored at 10.30pm!

Sunday 6th April
The checkout time for the hotel was 9am, and guess what??? I forgot to set an alarm and woke up exactly 9 with my stuff spread all over the room. After a frantic 10 minutes I rushed downstairs to put my bag in the storage room. I had a choice of two options for going to Kunming, China: get the bus at 5pm and arrive at 3am the next morning, or get the bus to Lao Cai, wait until the morning and get the 10.30am bus which arrived in Kunming at 8.30pm. I decided that I would rather not be wandering the streets at 3 in the morning after a 10 hour bus ride and decided on the latter of the two (This proved to be a mistake. Read the next blog!). I spent the morning sitting by the lake and in the afternoon I reached a stage of boredom so bad that I ended up waiting in a photo place for half an hour so they could put my photos from my camera onto a CD. I then pottered around the market for a couple of hours, being harrassed by everyone with a stall. Most of their English wasn't great so most of the time I would be greeted with "Oi (or a whistle)! Buy something". My minibus to Lao Cai left at 6pm and by the time I got to Lao Cai I had a bad stomach ache so I went to the first guesthouse I could find. After I had settled in all I wanted to do was to find an internet place with a CD drive so I could upload my photos. Do you think I could find anywhere with a working CD drive? NO! To make matters worse, none of the ATM's in the town accepted Maestro cards. The only one that did was 3km away! I decided to give up and go back to the room to find that the TV only had four channels. And they were all in Vietnamese! Great!!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207363860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207363860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207363860/tpod.html Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:30:08 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Hanoi, Vietnam

Hellooooooo Boys and Girls.
Sorry I have been slack of late with the blog updates. The best week of my trip was swiftly followed by the worst 10 days, during most of which I was ill! I am currently in Lijiang, China, and four blogs behind!

Most of you are probably confused by the blog title, but any Jay Z fans would have got it. This blog is for Hanoi, home and resting place of Ho Chi Minh.

Tuesday 1st April (Cont.)
In Hanoi we consulted the Lonely Planet guide and wandered off to find the City Gate Hotel. When we arrived we found out it was $25 a night so went to find somewhere a bit cheaper. The next place seemed alright at first glance, but after half an hour we realised that the bathroom was filthy, the floors were covered in dirt, there were massive cobwebs on the walls and the sheets were covered with hair and stains. We ended up leaving and going back to the City Gate! In the evening we headed out for food and a couple of beers before heading back at 9.30ish as Kirsty had to get up at 6am because of her flight to Bangkok. The plans of an early night were scuppered though when we realised that there was beer in the fridge in our room! One beer turned into a few and bedtime ended up being about 2.30am!

Wednesday 2nd April
I got up at 6.30 to say goodby to Kirsty. I was pretty gutted to see her go as the last week had been a lot of fun. After she had left I sat around for a while wondering what to do next! It was the first time in Vietnam that I had been by myself. I decided that more sleep would be good. I woke up a few hours later and went downstairs to use the internet only to find out that checkout time for the room was 11am, and it was 10.30 already! After a quick dash upstairs to pack I set out to find a cheaper place to stay. I ended up a couple of hundred metres away at one place which seemed ok. As they needed to clean the room still I headed out to a French cafe around the corner for a late breakfast and to play catch-up writing my diary before heading back. By the time I got back I wasn't feeling very well. I had my jeans and hoody on, but was still cold, and I had a headache and stomach ache. I had a shower and turned on the TV to find that it didn't work and air-con sounded like a jumbo jet was taking off in my room! To make matters worse, there must have been loads of termites or something in the door and frame, because as I was laying down trying to sleep, all I could hear were the little buggers chewing away at it. I decided enough was enough, packed up my things and told them I was leaving. As I had checked in a few of hours previously they tried to get me to pay for a whole night, but I wasn't having any of that so I gave them a couple of dollars and left. I had handed in a massive bag of laundry earlier so I was pretty worried that they might conveniently 'lose' it when I went to collect it, as they were pretty angry when I left! I ended up moving to the Van Xuan Hotel along the road. The room was $18 dollars a night, but it had a TV, air-con, free internet, free breakfast and carpet in the room, so it was well worth it. As soon as I got in the room I fell asleep, waking up four hours later. I still wasn't feeling great but I decided to go and eat anyway. I decided to ring the Mother as well as I hadn't spoken to her since Bangkok. I completely mis-read the price list at the phone place. I thought it said 10,000 dong per minute, so I hung up after 17 minutes thinking that I was going to have to pay about $10, only to be told that the price was 1000 dong p/m, meaning that the whole call only cost 50p!

Thursday 3rd April
I got up at 9.30 to go and claim my free breakfast only to be told by the woman on reception that I was too late Luckily the waitress took pity on me and gave it to me anyway! I wasn't feeling too great but I decided to venture a bit further out than the day before. I walked to Hoan Kiem Lake and sat there for a couple of hours writing in my diary. A few Vietnamese people were facinated by what I was doing and I turned around a couple of times to find that I had a small audience standing behind me! On two occasions a random Vietnamese guy came and sat next to me and started chatting. The first one seemed nice and was chatting away, but after 30 minutes I realised that he was just trying to butter me up so that I would buy some books and postcards which, until that point, he had kept hidden away. He soon left after I told him I did not want to buy anything! I was a bit more wary when the second guy turned up a bit later, but it turns out he was just a nice guy who wanted to chat about English football, specifically his love for Arsenal! After that I headed out for food and coffee. I wasn't really hungry, but after losing about a stone already I thought I'd better force something down. I went for a walk and found the main shopping streets in Hanoi and wandered around there for a bit before heading back to the hotel for a marathon 3.5 hour session updating my travel blogs! I had dinner, spoke to Mum again, and tried to ring Natt (damn answerphones!) before having an early one.

Friday 4th April
I woke up, still not feeling 100%, in time for my free breakfast. I then packed up my stuff and left my backpack at the City Gate Hotel, where I had booked a trekking trip to Sa Pa. As I had been in Hanoi for a few days, but hadn't really seen any of the sights I thought I'd better go out exploring armed with my camera. I got a bit lost before eventually finding the Citadel walls, which I followed to where I wanted to be. After a coffee breaks at a little cafe with tiny plastic chairs I started walking. I was approached by a very persuasive motorbike driver (motorbike number one, so he told me!). He offered to drive me to all of the main sights so that I could take pictures for $2 an hour. I got taken to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, where his embalmed body is kept on display. I couldn't go inside as I had missed the short opening hours which meant that I couldn't go and pay my respects to 'Uncle Ho'. I also had photo's by the Presidential Palace, the Tren Quoc Pagoda and the B-52 memorial, before walking around the Hoa Lo Prison, Chua Quan Su (another pagoda) and the Military Army Museum. I then got the guy to drop me off at a restaurant on a boat that I had seen earlier by the West Lake. By this time I had been on the bike for 2.5 hours. As I got off I handed him 100,000 dong ($6) by the cheeky git said "No, no. 500,000" That is $30!!! I told him where to go and he lowered the price by 50,000 dong each time until he got to 150,000. By this point I was really furious and told him: "Take the 100,000 and f*** off or you'll get nothing"! With that the ugly bastard grabbed the money and sped off. Motorbike driver number one my arse! As I hadn't slept very well on most of the transport in Vietnam so far I decided that the best way to sleep would be to have a few drinks before I got on the night train. Later I got my motorbike lift to the station, which was pretty uncomfortable with my massive backpack on, especially after a few drinks. I got shown to my cabin, which contained two bunk beds, and I had another can or two of beer before trying to sleep. I fell asleep before the train left the station at 9.15pm, waking up 5 hours later desperate for the loo! After a brief wander around the train I went back to sleep, waking up as the train pulled into the station at Lao Cai. Mission successful!!!


I'll try and do another couple of blogs later today or tomorrow. I have to leave now as I only have enough money for exactly 2 hours of internet on me!
Check out my old blogs again as I have added some pictures for you to look at.

Miss you all.
xxxxxx
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207053300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207053300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mattislost/1/1207053300/tpod.html Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:28:45 -0400 Matt is lost somewhere in the world

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Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

WARNING: This is going to be a long one...

Sunday 30th March
We arrived in Central Hanoi at about 7.30am. After consulting the Rough Guide book we discovered that the best place to get a bus to Ha Long City was from Gia Lam bus station, a couple of kilometres away, so we jumped in a taxi. After a breakfast stop we bought tickets for a large minibus that could hold about 20 people. When we got on it there were only 5 people on it but it left the bus station anyway. The next 3.5 hours were probably the most frustrating I have ever experienced! The bus tootled down the dual carriageway at no more than 20km/h with one guy standing at the door touting for passengers. Every now and then the bus would slow down, not stop, and the guy would drag the running passengers onto the bus. It didn't even stop to let people off again. The door operator would open the door, grab the passenger under the armpit, wait for the bus to slow down and then basically shove them out the door! Then after 3.5 hours the bus driver decided to change his driving style from old lady to boy racer! All of a sudden he just floored it, driving like a complete lunatic - overtaking on corners, flying through tiny streets and generally scaring the crap out of me! One of the songs on the radio sounded remarkably like the Kahzakstani national anthem from the Borat movie, which meant that I had the bloody thing stuck in my head for the rest of the day! "Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium. Other countries have inferior potassium"!!! Haha. Go here if you don't know it: http://digg.com/comedy/National_Anthem_of_Kazakhstan_From_Borat_Movie_Films.
We arrived, in one piece, at the bus station where we jumped in a taxi to the centre of Bai Chay - the Western half of Ha Long City - to find somewhere to stay. We had originally planned to get a boat tour in the evening, but we decided to spend the night and leave in the morning. We were well in need of showers after our epic 23 hour journey from Hoi An so we went with the first person to tout us a room. We stayed in the originally named Hotel 3, which funnily enough was the 3rd hotel in a line of four! After rejuvinating showers we headed out for food and then internet. I had been trying to persuade Kirsty to hang around in Vietnam a bit longer so she could come to Sa Pa with me, but she found out that she couldn't change her flight date from Hanoi as she had booked her's and Simon's flights together. We then went out for some 4000 dong beers and played cards. After realising that most of the games that I knew didn't work with only two people it was time to learn some new ones. I think the first one was called All 2's. I'm not sure. Well to be honest, I didn't have a clue what the hell was going on the entire game, but somehow I managed to completely whoop her at it! Game two was the most hectic, and most fun, game ever -Speed. Basically it is Patience, except you play it against each other. I didn't win a game though. I will be challenging you all when I get back! We went for a wander and ended up at a bar full of Vietnamese people. At 11pm the staff suddenly left, leaving the two of us to drink our beers outside with massive rain storm kicking off and a bit of thunder and lightning thrown in for effect. We then ended up at a street restaurant where we drank a really warm, nasty bottle of beer whilst sitting under a tarpaulin sheet. Then probably the funniest thing I have ever seen happened (Elle: possibly the guy falling out of his shoes was funnier)! As I asked the old woman who was working there for the bill she was eating a big bamboo stick filled with something. Rather than finishing her mouthful, or gesturing with her fingers, she proceeded to push out all of the food in her mouth with her tongue which dribbled onto the floor, and told us the price! She completely took advantage of how drunk and amused we were and completely ripped us off, although we didn't realise until we were walking back! Then, as we were still laughing about the woman, I threw my beer into a wheely bin and an almighty rat leapt out, scaring the shit out of me and amusing Kirsty even more!!!

Monday 31st March
We were being picked up from our hotel at 11.30am so we got up early to have breakfast. We went to a little restaurant around the corner and both ordered the 'Bacon Omletter Bread', which we assumed would be a bacon omlette with a baguette. It turns out it was just a piece of cooked ham, two fried eggs and a baguette! It was nice anyway. Kirsty wasn't feeling well, and I thought that she might not come on the trip, but she troopered on anyway. We got to the tourist wharf and it was absolute chaos! There were tens of boats and hundreds of tourists all wondering what the hell was going on. Eventually we got on our boat and headed up to the top deck to watch the mayhem of boats crashing past each other to get out of the dock. The first stop was a large cave on one of the 2000 limestone outcrops in the Ha Long Bay. As we approached the island I thought it looked like Tortuga from Pirates of the Caribbean! I'm not sure what the cave was called officially, but i'm pretty certain our guide said it was called 'Amazing Cave'. Apparently 900 of the 1800 caves in the area have been named, so I guess they were short of ideas when they got to this one! It turns out that the cave was pretty amazing! After the cave exploration we headed back into the Bay for some kayaking. After a few months of no exercising it proved to be tougher on the arms than expected! We then reboarded the boat and floated off to Cat Ba Island, where some of the boat's passengers were staying the night. It was quite eerie as we made our way through the mist past these massive rocks jutting out of the water. An English woman had brought her 2 year old daughter on the boat and was off chatting to other passengers, leaving us to stop the cute little girl from clambering overboard! As docked at the island and were chatting to two guys that we had just met, Matt and James, two new passengers appeared. Sophia and Anique were two 18 year old English girls who seemed quite quiet to start with. After a dinner consisting of exactly the same things as our lunch and a singing performance in full Vietnamese dress by one of the crew, the karaoke machine was switched on. By this point half of the passengers had moved onto a boat tied up next to us as there weren't enough cabins aboard ours. This left the six of us and a group of eight 50 something Austrians. I broke my no-karaoke rule and belted out such hits as 'Gangsta's Paradise' by Coolio, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana and 'Take it Easy' by the Eagles, before completely murdering 'Me and Mrs Jones'!!! The six of us then sung 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' at the top of our lungs to the Aussies on the boat next door. You'll understand if you are a rugby fan. After a few hours the Austrians had gone to bed and listening to the now hammered girl duo murder every song under the sun was growing thin, so we made the decision to turn it off and play cards. This proved equally as frustrating as Anique was just struggling with life in general at this point, and Sophia was more interested in picking songs on my iPod! After a couple of long-winded games the guys went to bed and the girls followed soon after. It was only 11.30. Lightweights! This left me and Kirsty to have a rematch of Speed. I still didn't win a game! As we had payed quite a lot for the trip we assumed that we might get a couple of free drinks, but that wasn't the case. All of the crew, apart from one guy who was asleep on the floor, were playing cards on the boat next door, leaving us with a cooler full of beer and a clipboard where we had to mark down how many beers we had drunk. After a while we realised that we couldn't afford any more so we had to resort to taking beer and then pretending to mark it down when the crew were watching! By 2.30 we didn't want to risk any more beer thefts so we headed down to our cabin which had the most comfortable bed of my travels so far. The problem was that all you could hear was rats scurrying along the decks and in the walls, as well as one of the Austrian guys snoring a few cabins down!

Tuesday 1st April
Breakfast was at 7 and, after 3.5 hours of sleep, it was a struggle getting out of the comfy beds. Especially with my hangover! We ate, then went back to bed. Getting back to sleep however, was proving to be a problem, as the staff were trying to evict us from the room so that they could clean it. We were also next to the engine room, so when the engine started it was really noisy and the room got a bit fumey! After the 3rd or 4th time of being asked we got up, had ice cold showers, and went up top. The trip back to shore was pretty quick and after getting onto dry land we were taken for a lunch remarkably similar to our two previous meals! Due to all of our combined money being spent on beer and the nearest ATM being 2km away, all we could scrape together was enough to buy a small bottle of water to share between us which had to last to Hanoi! After lunch we were herded onto a minibus, which only took 3.5 hours with a half hour stop.
To be continued in my Hanoi blog...

I hope you have enjoyed the last 3 blogs. It only taken me about 3 hours to do!!!

Love to you all
xxx
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