China - the quest for the biggest Buddha

I'm currently sitting alone in the hostel in hong kong, one my new laptop (which I still haven't worked out how to use). Alone is a strange feeing after 3 weeks in rosie's company, I'm not sure I like it.

It was nice to be back in the comfortable Beijing hostel (even with its mirrored ceiling). we spent 4 days there, and crammed in all the tourist attions possible. The first day we went to the great wall, it was a long 3 hour bus journey to get there. It was worth it though as we prety much had the wall to ourselves. We quickly lost our annoying yet thankfully unfit tour group and hiked up the wall in solitude. It is breathtaking, it stretchs semmingly endlessly into the mountains, well worth the visit. We also visited the forbiden city, the summer place, the temple of heaven, a silk factory, the olimpic stadium, the Beijing opora and a few parks.

Edit: comp crashed in Hong Kong so I've been putting off finishing the entry until now. I'm in Vietnam, its raining.

Beijing was great. AS you can see we cramed loads into the 5 days we were there, which did unfortunaly mean they were all a little rushed, but great to see never-the-less. Beijing is a proude city, but with good reason. Its spotlessly clean and beutiful. I really enjoyed my time there.

From Beijing we took a horribly slow 20 hour train to Shanghi. A baby was on the bunk below us and I was convinced that it was going to wee everywhere (Babys in China don't wear nappies, instead they just have crotchless trousers and shit and piss wherever they please - its weird oversight in a otherwise higean parinoid cities). The baby didn't pee, and we enoyed passing the time by reading and playing cards. Shanghi was cool. The City was very busy due to the World Expo which was finishing on the weekend we arrived. This made booking a train to get there, and accomodation difficult, but we mannaged to get a nice hostel in the end. We met a lovely chinease girl in our dorm who got us tickets for the Expo on the last day - brilliant! We were going to spend the day with her, but she decided to stand in the que for the Swiss expo (I don't do queing) instead. I took her 6 hours of queing to get in! My non-quing attitude ment we saw African and south american small countries expos, England, India, Peru and Canada which were all cool. Was nice to go to something which had such hype in China.

Unfortunalty Rosie caught a death disease at the expo. The next day we tried to see a temple, but Rosie collapsed on the subway. I had to enrolle five bewildered chinease men to help me carry her off! Well we finally gave them a proper reason to stare at us (other than just being ginger and blond). Luckaly she came round fairly quickly, but did mean we took it easy for the following days. We did see a park, the Jade Budda temple, a museum, and an acrobatics show which was truelly spectacular.

Next stop Hong Kong. A lesser 10 hour journey (I think - Rosie correct me if I'm wrong) to Koolong station. We were a bit worried going through imigration. The Chinease are so scared about SARRS that they have temperature checks at the boarder. They won't let you enter with a fever. Rosie did well, we snuck her through despite her pale complection and she mannaged not to cough. Well done Rosie.

We only had one day together in Hong Kong so we decided to treat ourselves. I bought my laptop and we went to see the MASSIVE Budda on the mountain. The China leg definatly was a quest for buddas. The massive Budda was cool, built fairly recently, but had an education center and I finally learnt something about Buddism. Its actually makes a lot of sence, and its 'truths' have a lot of overlap with therapy for depression which is interesting. We also treated ourselves to a posh meal. I had Rissottoe which was lovely - we were horribly underdressed though, the restarunt had to hide us in the corner. oh well, to be fair I have worn the same trousers for over a month now.

Anyway in summery. China = clean, culteral, a little hostil, very easy for tourists, safe, enjoyable. I think I would have a very different opinion if we had visited rural China but time was short. I really enjoyed our time there but it did feel a little too easy. I hope the next leg holds more adventure.