North Asia

This article is from Angie Whitehead. Check her website at http://www.srilankaundiscovered.co.uk

China

Sri Lanka to Shanghai via Malaysia,Borneo,Philippines,Thailand) Feb-April 2008)

(exchange rate 1 GBP = 14 RMB/Yuan ;1 US$ = 7 RMB ; 1 Euro = 10 RMB)

It was dark and raining heavily when I arrived in Guilin, South East China, after a 2 hour flight and a 2 hour time change to put us on Beijing Time (good for the whole of China).  The luggage took a long time to arrive and then my credit card got stuck in the only ATM – not a very good start.  The tourist information counter was English speaking and got me a taxi into town.  I paid cash – the lady driver accepted 20 US$, which was probably too much.  Hotel Fu-bo, opposite the Li River, had been booked by the Bangkok travel agency and I had a voucher for it.  I noticed that the price quoted on the wall by the reception desk was more than double what I had paid and later found out this is standard practice in all this part of eastern China; I guess you are supposed to bargain?  The room was excellent  (large with private bathroom, TV ( with Channel 9 – China World Service in English), a/c/heating, amazing lights and so on, all activated from a central console by the bed; be it Tibet or Thailand,  Shanghai or Kuching, wherever you find a Chinese hotel, you will find this same format – so easy for travellers!    Downside -  the room cost around US$ 40, more than twice what I usually like to pay when travelling.  And it was so cold I needed heating not a/c and this did not seem to work properly!  Breakfast was not included in the price and cost 65 Yuan extra – I was the only person in the dining room, not surprisingly. 

Well, Guilin is China and China is hustle and bustle and huge Chinese tour groups everywhere, so that is what I found when leaving the hotel and crossing to look at the world famous Li river flanked by limestone pinnacles.  The whole world seemed to be here, but of course it was only a tiny part of the Chinese world….Modern China hit me in the face as usual – a parody of the west adapted to their own needs and taste.  And below on the riverside path remained the old China – women washing clothes in the cold water of spring-time, men trundling carts of coal and wood (for heating and cooking I suppose).  Spring was here, I had left the tropics behind during that 2 hour flight north-east from Bangkok.  Another world was here, another climate zone, another way of life.  OK local people wear western clothes in Thailand but they are summer clothes, here it was winter clothes.  (Summer clothes don’t come out till Mid-May in China, even if you get a warm spell of weather.)  So I rushed back to get my fur-hooded, padded, waterproof jacket, bought in Beijing last Spring for 4 Euros.  And it was windproof too against the freezing draught which blew across the river. 

Guilin is a very big town – city in fact – as all Chinese towns are.  It is attractively laid out with lovely parks – spring flowers, waterfalls, lakes and so on. – as well as loads of shops, banks (lucky for me as I needed some cash), cafes and (surprisingly) travel agents.  There were so many travel agents I was spoiled for choice but no actual tourist office.  I was planning to stay longer and needed to change my room so I did this via an English-speaking travel agent and moved to the Golden Elephant which cost Yuan 200 for a room with bathroom, TV, a/c and view over another building!  My neighbours were all Chinese and in true Asian way left their doors open most of the time so they could run in and out of each other’s room and chat!  No western food was served in the Korean restaurant, called Arirang (in honour of Ariane my daughter?) . After an awful dinner (I really don’t like East Asian food) I gave breakfast a miss and bought biscuits to eat in my room with the ubiquitous flask of water and jasmine tea bags provided in Chinese hotels. 

Right opposite the hotel was Elephant Hill Park, a very attractive area overlooking the Li River.  The Chinese are good at everything but especially parks!  I chose another travel agent and arranged my onward travel tickets with Robert, a fluent English-speaker and probably from Hong Kong (this place is not far away and probably accounts for the high prices in this area of China).  He even managed to get me a flight to Paris from Shanghai (usually in China you have to go to the place from where you want to start the journey, i.e. Shanghai in this case). For the price of Yuan 4000 (Yuan 5000 had been quoted at another travel agency). I was so pleased that I bought an excursion ticket to visit Longmen rice terraces and villages of the Meo ethnic minority.  This was a great excursion – a coach with mainly Chinese and a few foreigners so at least we got some input in English.  I teamed up with an Australian couple on their way to Cambodia and we hiked/trekked for 2 hours in the hills, helped on the way by persistent old women with bright pink socks and bright pink sashes around their knee-length skirts and carrying large baskets attached to bright pink bands around their heads (swathed in turbans as they never cut their hair).  After a performance of local dancing and another trek across a rickety swing bridge we returned to Guilin.

The next day I took the boat to Yangshuo, a  4 hour journey in a tourist boat especially set up for foreigners (cost Yuan 400 which included an insipid lunch which I shared with an Indian family from Hong Kong who were also vegetarians!).  The scenery of limestone pinnacles was magnificent but the rain was often quite heavy.  At Yangshuo it was raining very heavily and  the hotel booked by the agency was nor good.  Having paid in advance as usual I stayed for one night and then moved to a lovely place called  River View.  Indeed I had a great view of the Li River (Li Jiang), large room, private bathroom, heating (not working), TV including Channel 9 and balcony.  This cost Yuan 150 and was worth it!  Food was excellent – western and Chinese.  Yangshuo is a  very large town, although described in the Lonely Planet as a sleepy small place!  Part of it is very commercialized and aimed at tourism both Chinese and International.  There are heaps of shops and restaurants and hotels and everything, including street markets and so on.  Green Lotus Hill Park gives a good view over the whole area and good walkers can get around most places on foot.  To go a bit further I hired a bike for Yuan 10 per day. I cycled along the river bank and out into the countryside – through paddy (rice) fields past small farms and villages and orange groves and barking dogs, the whole reminiscent of Andalucia in Southern Spain.  The weather was cool (18-20 deg) but fine for cycling. 

My next stop was to be Xian and I got a taxi from Yangshuo to Guilin Airport – this was provided by the hotel.  As usual in China if you get a good hotel/guest house with an English speaker everything will be fine because they arrange onward and local travel for you; all this can be a problem if you don’t speak much Mandarin. 
The scenic journey, spoilt again by rain, took 2 hours and cost Yuan 200.  At the airport I was able to recover my lost credit card from the bank in whose ATM it had got stuck and then was on my way to Xian. 

Sadly the agency forgot to pick me up at the Airport but the helpful tourist office phoned them and they met the airport bus (cost Yuan 27) when it arrived at the Bell Tower in the centre of town.  Bell Tower Hostel has private rooms costing Yuan 180 with view over the Bell Tower Square, private bathroom, TV, heating (not working again).  Meals are extra and western breakfast cost around Yuan 22.  Xian is a very big city of around 6 million people and the famous Terracotta Warriors are outside the city limits.  I took a tour costing Yuan 300 and was in a minibus with  Dutch people and 1 Hong Kong Chinese. On the way we visited a factory making life-size stone warriors (priced at 12000 Yuan), the Emperor Qin’s tomb (at 2 km distance from the warrior pits so that he couldn’t be discovered to pillage the tomb).  There are 3 huge pits containing the warriors and their horses, the first one being the most impressive.  The whole is set in a pretty park with mini trains for the lazy to avoid walking. 

Other highlights of Xian include the city walls 13 km long which you can cycle around  and which mark the start of the Silk Road via Xinjiang to the Middle East and so to Europe, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, dating from 7th century AD, the Forest of Steles (stone tablets) museum, the Hui (Muslim) quarter, complete with souk and mosque (a blend of Chinese and Muslim architecture in a pretty garden with cats, the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower.  It had been my initial plan to take the Silk Road from here back to Europe but finances (or rather lack of them) cut this short, so I took a flight down to Shanghai, which I reached at 23.30 after a 2 ½ hour flight.

Pudong airport may be modern but it was scary at night and I was harassed by touts while trying to get a taxi to town.  I finally found a metered taxi and it cost me the dreadful price of Yuan 260. The drive through concrete tunnels was fast and furious and scary and the hotel turned out to be in a pedestrian street, Nanjing Road.  East Asia Hotel Reception was on the 2rd floor above a tailor’s shop and my room was on the 5th floor – large room, private bathroom, TV with Channel 9, heating (working this time) and view onto a central well!  All this for Yuan 280; costs increase the further east you move in China.  Buffet breakfast was an extra Yuan 25 and here I met Florence, on holiday from Hong Kong with her mother.  Shanghai was much warmer than Xian and after a chilly river cruise on the Huang Ho (I needed my Chinese jacket for this one)  I managed to strip down to a t-shirt to complete the sightseeing. 

The Bund is the path/road which runs along the waterfront and gives superb views of Pudong, the island with all the skyscraper buildings for which Shanghai has become famous.  The road side of the Bund is lined which ex-Colonial buildings from UK such as banks and customs houses.  Shanghai has an excellent museum with free entry, the usual lovely parks and gardens and  I discovered one quarter called Yuyuan which was supposed to be old but looked like a westernized  shopping area to me.  Ah the wonders of progress…With my usual dislike of  East Asian food I ate in McDonalds (fish burgher, chips and coke here I come again for Yuan 15).  Some of the street food is OK though like baked potatoes or Muslim pancakes or doughnuts! 

East Asia Hotel got me an airport car  for Yuan 150 when I left to catch the night flight to Paris with China Eastern – best avoided next time I think, as it was jam packed full and had no in-flight entertainment.  Imagine a 12 hour flight (the longest I have ever done) with no movies, no music, just non-stop screaming babies (why are they always near me?).

Comment :  China is always interesting but the east is a lot more expensive than the west.  Because of this maybe English is much more widely spoken and there are more western tourists about (proximity to Hong Kong makes for this also).  Shanghai is close to Korea and Japan, also high cost destinations.  In general people are quite reserved, like western people, although I have been told that beards on men and fat people in general can attract a lot of attention. Fortunately these don’t apply to me.  Chinese people are generally slim though that may well change if they keep going to McDonalds….Weather was cool and rainy a lot of the time, as this was the spring season.  In general China is a modern, westernized country with pockets of poverty .  Women form an integral part of all life and often it is young women who come forward to speak English rather than young men in the more traditional countries.  All the hotels I stayed in seemed to have females in charge of air con/heating, TV, plumbing and any other such problems!  This is a far cry from the Indian or Middle Eastern way of life….Still diversity is the stuff of life – whoever said we all have to be the same?