Not doing much in Xi'an

Xi'an is supposedto be the place for history in china with hundreds of tombs and monuments and a fucking massive city wall but we were only there for a few days so we ended up doing very little. This was not aided by the fact that i lost my wallet on the bus when i arrived so most of my time was spent going to police offices and stations and the public security bureau.



Afterfailing to sort out all my shit we settled and played a few games of cards with this South African English guy called James who was onholiday in japan from his tokyo sandwich year. we gave him one of our beers we had left from the train journey the night before. after the cards we went and chilled out the front where we got talking to Leigh another english guy who was on a round the world trip before going into his final year at uni. we were joined by a girl called Sarah who had been teaching in china for 7 month and was chilling out in SE Asia before heading back home to Frisco. James left us a bit later cos he ahd a train to catch, but everyone else kept drinking and we were eventually joined by a few others including an Aussie called ben. Me,Pierre leigh and sarah went for some food with sarah doing all the talking, she is pretty good at manderin, and this resultedin a very tasty and cheap meal. that night we just went to the hostel bar and stayed drinking and playing pool to the wee hours sarah somehow managed to make us agree to be awake the next day for 10 to see the terracotta warriors.



The terracotta warriors are the must see sight around xi'an they are about an hours bus away from the town centre and are the big tourist attraction. because they were only discovered in th e1970s and are in none of the history books they call it the 8th wonder because the '7 wonders of the ancient world' are all out there already. (rap fans may also now understand why the great Jay-Z calls himself '9th wonder') anyway the guidebook says you should see the film about it first if u dont get a tour guide- which we didnt - the film was jokes it was a 360 degree screen that placed u in the middle of battlefields and processions and all in the mean time told u the story of the great emperor - i forget his name - that basically did everything for dynastic china. everything. then we had to see teh pits in reverse order cos they get smaller in normal order. Pit 3 was cool it probably had the most in upclose experience of the soldiers and least busy too. pit tw0 was a bit of a disappointment cosit wasall just covered over. Pit 1 however the first one to be discovered was wicked cos u get to see the true scale, there are like 5000 which is mental. to be honest i wasnt blown away, i mean it would be a lot better if they hadnt of taken all the weapons away etc,but the little things are really inpressive, like the fact that they all have varied facial expressions and how they manageto make the horses look angry. Afterthis we just wwent backto teh hostel and chilled out for the rest of the day with breaks for lunch at a dumpling restaurant and dinner on the muslim street (thats what they call it).

next day i went through the wholepolice station palava again and eventually got directed to another police station where they finally got something done, and i got a loss report formy insurance, only thing is, is that its in manderin. we weregoing to do the walkalong the city walls which are 14km long but we just ended up hiring a tandom bike (romantic not gay) and did the wholecircuit in about half an hour including a snack break. the walls were pretty imporessive but the view wernt.

that night we decided we wanted to have a big one so we asked the hostel workers where do they go clubbing and they pointed us towards salsa club which has nothing to do with salsa but is just a huge club full of chinese people (dancing badly) and westerners on tours (dancing badly) how can i tell that they are on tours? because they are dancing in short sleeved shirts with no creeses and every traveelerknows that u cant have a shirt without a creese your bag if ur travelling. the club although it was teh busiest, biggest and the fullest of clubs we have been to in china the tour groups were putting us on a bit of a downer and no1 was giving us drinks which was especially bad because me and pierre had been bigging it upabout how we have got it at every club we go to. we left teh club at about 2, cotched in maccy Ds for a bit, checked out another club that we saw earlier - empty then went home.

on our last day in xi'an we did pretty much nothing, our train was at 5 in the afternoon so i just cotched about made some albums went half way out of town to try and visit teh PSB about my wallet on but it was closed. yeh we didnt really do much, yet i still find myself writing an essays worth about it, shanghai's post will be epic, trust.

ping pong update: beat pierre 4-2 after coming from 0-2 down.

Jokes story i remembered

just a breif one but i'd thought i'd put it up for jokes sake, seeing as pierre reminded me of it the other day...

just after St Paddys we all got back to the hostel quite drunk to get some kip, i went to teh bathroom to brush my teeth and theres this small chinese girl/woman getting ready for bed too. For some reason i bust out the french and go 'parlez-vous francais?' she nods or acknowledges or summit, then leaves the room and comes back with her towel to go and have a shower, 'pour quoi vous-allez a la douche?' no answer, again 'pour-quoi vous-allez al douche?' no answer again, so i go back to brushing my teeth. i leave and then get my water to bottle to filll it up in the water cooler which is also in the bathroom. this girl finishes her shower sticks her head out and i'm still there! (i had gone and come back, but foir all she knew...) so she waits in her cubicle till i go to my room.

next morning i wake up and go and meet pierre for some breakfast, as i open the door the same girl walks past, i let out a little titter she looks around and with a look of horror doubles, NAY TREBLES her pace and swifly walks away. i dont see her that whole day. later that day as we were leaving to go to dali, i walk out and see her reading a book, she looks up and see's me, then covers her face with the book and, after i walk past, goes back to reading normally...

its funny what how scary a drunken, 100kg, mixed race guy, speaking french can really be.

ching chong Chengdu.

last day in chengdu man how time flies. fair enough we were in yunnan for abot 8 days amd we're only here for three nights because we only got 2 weeks left in china :( but yeh mad place (both china and chengdu) we got here after the overnight from kunming toi find more heat, again quashing the fears that it is infact winter/early spring in china, we have yet to have a day under 20 degrees. got to our hostel, cab fare payed (cash back!) and settle into our usual routine of beer and pool. we have tended to find our days spent flirting with the chinese female staff at the hostels, eating scrambled eggs for breakfast, going on the computer, playing pool, drinking beer, having some noodles for dinner then either going a chinese club or go to watch some premier league football which on the first and second nights is exactly what we did. we caught the spurs game at the 'local' irish pub, about 3km away (chegdu is a massive city btw) brilliant performance by darren bent i must add then bumped into some guys from our hostel (seamus and fiona, who seem to be doing our journey but in the oposite direction) and had some beer and played pool. earlier on in the night we were searching for a vegetarian restaurant in the main temple but to go out on the town where u just arrived without a map especially when you dont know how big it is, is a bad idea - walked aimlessly for an hour then got a taxi back to the hostel then went and got some spicy noodles pretty much next door.

we ended up going to the wenshu temple the next day which like most of the temples weve been to is just a nice little peaceful sactuary in the middle of a busy city. this one was particularly leafy which was really nice. we went to the restaurant in the temple passing through the tea room, which was mental, loads of people drinking tea, playing cards, getting their earwax removed (yes, really). the meal was massive and cheap 6 dishes, a bucket of rice and a 2 litre bottle of coke for 3 quid. then we just went around messing about with the buddhist stuff disrespecting the locals, brits abroad and all that. when we were leaving we realised that the temple closes at 5.30 so even if we did find it the night before it would have been closed anyway. that night we went back to the irish pub to wacth super sunday which was interesting to say the least, javier mascherano, what a dickhead. spent the night with some irish guys, man u and spurs fans, non stop jokes throughout the chelsea arsenal game chants like 'why cant we be friends, why cant we be friends...' wicked. arsenal basically out of the title race now, pierre and some racist, homophobic arsenal fan cunt were in dispair come the final whistle 'matt do u wanna kick' - ok.

5 hours sleep later we went to see the pandas, who are basically the jokesest animals in the world they are just so clumsy and lazy but and they love bamboo, ive a got a pic of this one just reclined busting joke munching on some massive bamboo cane looking directly into the camera. the red pandas are not as jokes. theyre just like big red racoons, but the red of their coats is beautiful. its a shame that there is only like 1000 left but then again eat some fruit or eggs or something get some energy in ur diet u dumbarse animals.

we went back to the hostel and i had a sleep for an hour or 3, pierre decided to 'power through' after an afternoon of doing what we do best - u guessed it, drinking beer and playing pool - we went for dinner, pierre wanted to try the local speciality of hotpot, but i was a bit sketchy over the vegetarianism of it all. anyway we ask in our best manderin for a vegetarian hot pot which is basically a big pot of chili, and just point at random things on the menu that we wanted to put in, then the waitress braught us our hotpot and to plates of raw fish and just puts them right in! i sat there for a second and said i cant eat this and got some jidan suchai chow mein (egg veg fried noodles) somewhere else. pierre soldiered through and managed to eat about one and half a fish. I decided i wanted to go clubbing that night so we went back to the hostel to get tanked, i tried out the old baiju again but i just couldnt stomach it. beer would suffice. on the chinese girls in the hostels recommendation we got a cab to the student district, best place for clubbing on a monday night, and went to teh first club we saw that had loads of people out side and... loads of people of people inside! yay! bit of a sausage fest to be honest. as always i was agiant on the dancefloor, in both size and dance moves, there a few mental girls, one who was dancing like she thought she was in a music video and another who was dancing by herself in a mirror away from the dancefloor, she got a bit annoyed when i started doing the same thing, in the same mirror, in front of her. its weird how clubs work in china. in the big clubs teh people stay on their tables and pour u drinks after calling u over, in the student clubs all the tables are empty full of closed beers that the people have just left on the tabel why they go and dance. obviously they take the westerners back to their table and give u a beer and a cigarette. the second of the two tables was the funniest, they forced me into giving them my chinese AND english number i gave teh wrong english one but they called me later at 4.30 when i was trying to get to sleep phones been off since. they also said to me one of funniest things ive heard since ive been in china and i dont know quite how to take it it went something like this 'you rook rike Wayne Looney...'

see you in Xi'an. x

Ping Pong, Pool and Trains

As ping pong goes i am very near to becoming the grand master (over Pierre) as out of 4 best-of-seven games i am currently winning 3-1 including 2 4-0 drubbings. after adapting away from my backspin cut shot and now adapting a very deaqdly forehand and backhand topspin shots i am starting to outpower the man of chinese origin's ONE shot which is his (truthfully quite good) forehand topspin which at first was giving me a bit of trouble.

Pool on the otherhand is a different story, out of the 30 or 40 games (i know its a lot) pierre has won about half. i know that sounds about normal but when u look at the amount of wins that pierre has actually pot all his balls and then the black it is about 1. then again i realise that to be a truly greta pool player i have to cut out the errors and stop potting the white and teh black or actually pot teh black in the hole i say i will. fucking pool.

trains i cool. slept in a open footed hard-sleeper this time which is basically just a gallery (and smellery) of people's feet. the food as always was delicious, ive got the chinese down for tofu, vegetables and rice, sorted. the family underneath us didnt give us as much ranjdom shit but teh they did give us some non-specific fruits, we also got our jasmine tea on.

Things that chinese people love (ongoing)

Babies (esp Western)
Tea
China
Honking there horn

Squatting

Saying Hello

Mao

ping pong

Dali

The only reason we went to dali and not Leijang which is a similar probably more pretty and older is that we were told we could go there and get some draw, we were not disapointed.

thhe bus ride took just over 5 hours and thats only because our driver was some nutcase and managed to take what was probably the worst 'tarmac' road in Yunnan. he also liked to stop off at random places to pick up people at the side of the road - not hookers. when we got to dali we checked into a place called friend's hostel's where we got a nice bed each sharing with one other guy in the room for only a quid a night (!). Afterwards we went for a pretty average meal, the town was deserted which was wierd but we knew that there was a street where there were somethings. Eventually we stumble across a place called Bad Monkey, a place that Hong Kong Matt recommended to us as a cool place run by some Brits and yanks where u can chill out, smoke zoot, drink beer and listen to the reggae music. we only had about 60 cwai between us so we just got a few beers and a shisha. a few joints got passed around and i asked how much a hash bar about 2 inches would cost and got told 100. ok cool i'll come back tomorrow night. another thing we got told was that the local old women (Bai pronounced bi) sell it to you in the street, the half owner of bad monkey said 'when i heard there were bi women selling drugs in the street i was like Dali here i come!'. we were still quite dubious over this but the next day after getting some money out the bank this old bai lady comes up to me and asks if i want a bit of 'smokey smokey' i was liek yeh cool, so she took me back to her house, i would normally got to a drug dealer's house but whats a old chinese lady gonna do. but she goes under her bed and gets out this shoebox of goodies, sticky green, sticky brown, dry hash, a bag of stems and seeds, which she points out to me is very cheap (really...). first of all she tries to sell me an 8th of sticky brown for about 400 (26 quid) but i end up leaving with an 8th of stickiest of icky green for 100 about 7 GBP, sick one. after that i literally got propersitioned 10-15 times, madness. apart from smoking draw and listening to reggae music, we did a massive 60km bike ride around the lake. to ste ourselves up for it we went to the tibettan cafe to have a big breakfast. the first half was spent along the main road but the second half we road around through villages and along the lakeside through all the rural land. pierre did it easy but i had such bad chafe and my saddle sore was unparralled, anus and taint still hurting 2 days later. the bus ride home was a lot smoother as the drivewr wasnt mental and drove on real roades and didnt pick any randomer up along the way ended up being abot 45 minutes shorter.

Update on yesterday, as u might know me and pierre are back in kunming and getting the train to chengdu tonight. others of you might know that there are tibettan riots in the shizuan province in china, the capital being chengdu with its large tibettan population. luckily me an pierre know a shop in kunming that sells knifesticks and tazers and riotgear. wish me luck, thsi might be my last post EVER.

Kunimingus

After 26 hours on the train we get to Kunming and through the bustling train station out into a cab that takes us to our fucking wicked hostel called 'the hump' which refers to the massive mountain range between here and india. we meet a couple of guys called will and jules who were having a weekend off from the country nearby where they are teaching english. we get down to saome drinking games, jules teaches us the australin rules to ring of fire. a bit later we get joined by this guy called mickey who is american, learning maderin here, but he used to be a soldier posted in iraq and korea! we also get joined by this guy called michael who's half thai, half chinese (we presume michael isnt his real name but who cares. a fair few beers later and we're doing the hokey cokey, michael was LOVING it. then we decide to head to the bar and club, we went downstairs and will got everyone a shot of tequila, earlier on in the night teh gusy were telling me about the chinese rice spirit called baiju which is fucking butters, but fucking cheap. i run to the shop and a small bottle costs me 30p i down a bit share soem with jules and sneak the rest into the club. the club was the most packed out of all that we'd been to and i go over some people's table after eying up there popcorn and start pouring them baiju shots (whilst obviously muching their popcorn) then i want to dance see some girl, literally drop my baiju bottle on the ground, smashes, i go and dance and this girl is like come to our table. they start pouring some shots of what can only be described as fanta fruit twist and then the guy on the table starts playing my belly and going what's this so i grab is bicep and go whats this, feel mine he gets ashamed the girls start squeezing my bicep, next memory is waking up in .... my bed.

the next day we grab some brunch, at the hostel... ok let me describe the hostel, the common area is hugeit consists of a place with beanbags and floormats, tables and chairs, 4 computers pooltable and bar, and thats just the inside is a roof terrace which is 3 times as big as inside which is big in its own right and this has beanbags as well, more tables a ping pong table (on which i beat pierre 4-3 and 4-0 in matches of best out of 7 - that chinese guy taught me well) and a little bar table with stools that looks over kunming's central square. anyway back to the story, i was still drunk at this point, but after some food and a bit of fresh air, i just felt hungover. after reading teh guidebook we realised that there is nothing to do in kunming, really, during the daytime, we hit the museum which was closed, so we went to the market which was cool, cos they we're selling animals not intent for consumption -yay! after that we just returned to the hostel to cotch, which it is excellent for. that night we just chillaxed and watched the spurs play shit with some cool irish guy called matt who was having a rest after working a couple of months in shanghai. next day we went to probably the best buddhist temple we've been to in china in terms of its age and design, though i didnt feel the same religious experience that i had felt in hong kong. after that we went to the park and listened to some guy play accordian then we eventually went to the museum which had about 4 rooms, although it did have some interesting stuff like bronze age discoveries from early yunnan and a buddhist statue with some guy with 4 arms and faces standing up with his knob in a woman facing him, extra detail on the balls, pics will follow.

that night was st paddys and we had a jolly good knees up in the hump bar (different one) downstairs listening to dropkick murpheys and sweet molly malone. hit a club afterwards, pretty shit, very drunk. not good to have a hangover for a 5 hour bus ride to dali the next day.

One thing i have failed to mention is how nice kunming is. it is so warm at certain points hot and i think the moniker 'city of eternal spring' would be better suited with summer. the sky is blue, meaning no haze, and your lungs feel a lot better than they did in say, hong kong and guangzhou. we are back here tonight after going to dali for a few nights before getting another ridiculously long train journey to chengdu tomorrow night.

chant

a chant i made before the train ride

'SPURR IS ON HIS WAY TO KUNMING, MATTY'S GONNA DO IT AGAIN, I AM MATTHEW, A BOY CALLED MATTHEW, A BOY FROM NORTH LONDON. OH. SPUUUUUUURRRRR...' etc.

Mainland

from macau to mainland u physically walk over the border, no boat or plane international territory just a walk through the provisional passport, health, customs and final passport post. we got the bus from zhuhai which is one of china's new economic zones so it is basically just a big market. the bus took something ridiculous like 3 hours to drive 50 miles and eventually we got to Guangzhou at about 7pm. as we expected for the capital of Cantonese China the air was pretty bad and we were thinking of walking to our hostel but looked on the map and realised it was about 2 miles. fortunately bruno wasnt with us so we didnt SAS it instead we spent what seemed like hours looking for a cash point and then got a taxi to our hostel on Shamian Island.

Shamian island is a really nice escape from the city, it used to be the trading post (yes another one) that the british and french built on a sand bank of the pearl river but now its just a leafy relaxed paradise in an otherwise packed and poluted city. the first night we went for dinner in a place called lucy's which was basically an american diner where all teh staff were chinese but dressed like american waitresses from the 90s. what was wierd about shamian and especially lucy's was that there was always an american family with a chinese baby which they had obviously just adopted, one pair of parents already had 4 children. that night we planned to go to the bar street and so we got a couple of beers to drink in the hostel where we met dave, an australian guy who was out in china trying to make a go at the whole teaching english thing. to get to the bar street we had to cross a bridge but as we found out what looked liek a bridge on the map was infact a tunnel, so dave took us to a club about 25 minutes walk away. luckily for us dave could speak manderin (or mando as he called it) and he talked this chinese business man into giving us loads of free drinks which all his women poured for you, he also bought us a few shots as well. in the club there was no dancefloor justa podium and the waiter kept egging us on to dance on it eventually we did but this guy came up and stroked my inner thigh. in the cab back i was telling dave about it and he just came out about how he swings both ways which was pretty jokes. next day pierre payed for a few of my tube (which is so cheap and fast and useful cos guangzhou is huge) journeys and was like ok u owe me 4 rmb now and i was like yeh but i payed ur cab fare and he was like 'we got a cab home???'

apart from that night guangzhou was a bit boring we did see a pretty cool buddhist pagoda, and i played ping pong with some random guy which was cool, but our strangest day (morning) was spent in the countryside...

on our second night we had an early(ish) one cos we had to be up early to get to quinyan in the morning to get the ferry to check out some amazing temples only accesible by boat. we get the bus and end up in quingyaun which is some shithole city, as we left the bus station about 40 people all start calling 'hellooooo' which you get a lot over here. we get in a taxi and the woman doesnt put the fare counter on, so we're like ok we gonna get bumped. we end up paying 30 which is like 2 quid but it should really be more like 10. we get to teh ferry dock and the man wouldnt sell us the 50 cwai ticket and teh only otrher option was paying 350 for our own boat. FUCK THAT. we only had 150 between us, so i buy some peanuts and we assess our situation. ok we are in the official arsehole of nowhere (the ferry dock was 4 km out of quinyuan,may i add), these arseholes here i just laughing at us going silly laowai (foreigner), and there are no taxi's oh well time to walk. 50 metres down the road a pick up drives past us i stick my thumb out, ask if he's going to quinyuan, ask if we can get in the back, they say no sit down with us inside -sick one - they even dropped us off at the bus station - there are nice people in this place. back at the bus station, 'helloooooo' we try and get the bus to one of the temples which is possible but after the ticket woman was giving us screwface we realised that the bus to the place was across town and after consulting a map which was all in chinese we decided fuck it lets go back to guangzhou. whilst waiting for the bus, some cool young chinese guy was like 'hey man, u guys are the first westerners i ever seen in quingyuan' i wonder why....

the train we got to kunming we thought was 22 hours which is long, hard sleeper, top bunk (of three) 350 cwai turned out to be 26 hours. everybody said hello, hello, hello, other people just talked to us in chinese even though we didnt understand a bit, the family beneath us kept giving us random shit, some good, some bad, the dining car was fucking awesome, for dinner i had fried cabbage and next day lunch i had spoicy tofu, both delicious. but 26 hours, 1600 km is just too long.

Macacacacacacau

Going to Macau was a big thing for me cos when i was a wee lad my mum would always ppoint it out to me as one of the last remenents of Portugal's once great coastal empire. I never knew anything about it, what it was famous for, why Portugal had kept it all these years but i always knew that it was there and that one day i was gonna go there.

Whilst i was in Hong Kong i was reading about it and was fascinated by its history in becoming the first real trade hub between china and the west. for centuries it lasted like this until the opium wars in the late 19th century resulted in hong kong being handed over to the british which really fucked it up. After about a century of decline Macau started setting up its super casinos and now its fucking sick! anyway enough of the history lets hit the nitty gritty....

we had been chatting about macau to some guy in our first hostel and he recommended a place for us to stay if we wanted a bit of luxury after the shitty little hostel we had in hong kong. when we arrived by the ferry we got in the taxi and the taxi drivers dont even know the street names in portuguese. which is ridiculous seeing as this place has been portuguese for 500 years so everything has portuguese names but the chinese give them different names. bizarre. anyway, we eventually get there - a place called villa universal on rua felicidade, it was ALRIGHT, the guy overcooked his description of it a bit but it was nice - 2 single beds, TV, ensuite shower etc.

Central macau is just like any chinese city except the fact that it has loads of portuguese churches and tiled streets - just like my mum's home town in portugal. it was really layed back compared to hong kong which was good and on our second day we did a walking tour of the peninsula and there was barely any people around which was bliss.

Nights out in macau were wicked. the first day we went to a portuguese restaurant then walked along the bar strip which was empty due to the opening of teh new fisherman's warf. our main aim that night was to catch the spurs and arsenal games so we went to a bar where we got 6 beers each, put in a bucket because happy hour was ending and they put the channel on whatever we wanted and we watched spurs beat the hammers 4-0 (!) and arsenal draw 0-0 to WIGAN (hahahahahaha). after we left the bar we started to go home but then we heard this pounding bass so we were like LETS GO THERE! we got in in and there were lots of people but as u tend to find in china, not many were dancing, obviously me and pierre got our moves on and the ladies started flocking to the dancefloor, followed by the guys. i went to the toilet and some guy said 'hi!' and i was like alright mate. then he followed me to the dancefloor and i was like ok... then he starts point to his nose and sniffing and making crazy dance movements trying to imitate me and i was like no, no i'm slightly drunk - 6 beers, half a jug of sangria - and the spurs just won 4-0 (!) then this guy pulls out a baggy of coke, and i'm like WTF! put it away, put it away, i dont wanna go to jail for the rest of my life! then i started dancing with some girls. i got with some cute chinese girl with big boobies and pierre got off with the drunkest girl in china, fact. she started saying to him GO HOME GO HOME, and then to me GO HOME, GO HOME. and then she would point at all three of us and say go home go home and we were like no thanks we dont want to take our friendship to the next level just yet. on the way home we saw her again and she saw i wasn't with my girl and she shouts out NO GIRL WITH YOU HAHAHAHA. oh yeh pierre wants me to add that he taught chinese boys how to dance (cut shapes).

the second night we went to a place the book recommended but it was closed, so we just sat in the seats outside and had some ridiculously heated argument about football about which resulted in me storming off to the club we went to the night before (which happened to be next door). the same jokes of the night before didnt repeat but there was the same croud and the same pounding bass. sick one.

I love Macau, Macau is my Llubjana.

HK reflections.

I realised that my blog has been basically all narrative and as any A-level teacher will tell THIS IS BAD. therefore ive decided to put up what i thought about Hong Kong itself. here it goes:

My first impression of Kowloon was exactly what i thought hong kong, china and asia to be. some buzzing metropolis full of neon lights, hooting cars and lots and lots of hawkers. after a very short while the calls of tailor, tailor sir. copy watch, copy watch started to piss me off and as a result we tended to spend the least of our time in kowloon using it only as a place to sleep cheap and eat cheap. Hong kong (the part of hong city on hong kong island) was a lot nicer. half the city was in the air as the cars were on the ground all the people walk around in skyways. teh buildings are pretty much all steel and glass, stark in contrast to teh depleted apartment blocks of kowloon. what we ended up liking about hong kong was the night life. all though lan kwai fung was a bit snobby, and wan chai was a bit prostitute laden, both provided jokes nights and stories to tell. the more rural parts of hong kong such as the south side of hong kong island and lantau gave a nice escape from the city enviroment and although where we went in lantau was a bit touristy (and it was a saturday so it was even busier than usual) it was nice to get up into the hills and have some clean air. Stanly, especially, on Hong Kong Island was a lovely retreat away from the hustle and bustle of the big city, just a sleepy little fishing town with a few secluded beaches.

overall hong kong was pretty cool, i recks.

Honkers.

On our first full day in Hong Kong we went for breakfast by the ferry port. a cool little chain over here is cafe de coral and they do fried breakfast and whatnot, but all them have MEAT!!! so i was like can i have only eggs, and she was like do u want sausage, no thanks. pork, no thanks, only egg so she gives me my order and i find i only have 4 fried eggs - no toast, no nothing - and when your stomach is feeling a fragile as mine was that makes u feel very ill, needlss to say i was in teh bogs a minute later, only reached the spits stage ...

after breakfast we caught the star ferry across the harbour to central where i bought my Nikon digital slr (!). we then headed to stanly which is a little, reletively relaxed town on the south side of hong kong island. we got the standard noodle soup lunch and then hit the beach, for a swim and a sunbathe which is pretty cool for the beginning of march. after a good nap we headed to aberdeen so pierre could get a snap for his grents who live near aberdeen (in scotland). afterwards we went back to the hostel, took the girls to the noodle place we went to the night before and had an early night - if u know what i mean ;) (as if...)

on thursday after moving hostels cos we couldnt keep our beds WE WENT TO DISNEYLAND. it was alright...

that night however we went in search of hong kong night life. we found the bar street in central called lan kwai fong, unfortunately every bar was either too pricey, too snobby or too tragic, so we headed to wan chai (where pierre watched the arsenal) to try and catch spurs which was on at 4.05 in the morning. luckily we were in the kebab district so we chillaxed with some falafel. there was ONLY ONE showing the game, and they were playing very loud latin music, so we got a taxi home.

the next day we wanted to do the museums -which all close at 6pm, but we slept for like 11 hours and woke up at 3 in the afternoon and only did one - the hong kong museum of history which gave us the story of hong, from the bg bang all the way through to when the british left in 1997. unfortunately cos we were so late the last 2 out of 8 sections of the museum (basically the interesting parts) we missed out on.

that night however was JOKES. thining we were gonna have an early night the people in our hostel persuaded us to go out to wan chai AGAIN. The people in our hostel that really persuaded us to go out - not steve who was making a documentary on the silk route or the canadian girl who was on her way to korea - were luke, rob and katie. they were the first people we met who were our age and who wern't travelling solo - so we got on pretty well.

We knew Wan chai was teh hooker district but we didn't realise it was a bad as we would find out. We went to a club called fenwicks and after we got in we realised that half the clientèle were old men and the other half were phillipino prosies. A wicked cover band came on playing cheesy pop from the 80s as well as now. as well as singing along with and blowing kisses to the lead singer (female) we started to take snaps of us all grinding up against the old men while they were trying to get the whore on. pierre started getting it on with katie so me, luke, rob and canadian girl went out to get some beers from the 7eleven. Outside we met some jokes Irish guys who were having a little blow out in Hong kong on their way to Perth to join the gold rush literally leaving everything back home in Ireland to start a new life in Western Australia. Back in the club i decided to get my groove on and try and get some asian. my drunken mind was thinking - 'ok, most of the old men have left so therefore most of the hookers have left, maybe there might be some actual chinese girls here'.... anyway, about 15 minutes later i think i find one start dancing, grinding etc one thing leads to another... meanwhile, pierre and katie go back, rob, luke and canadian girl go back and i am officially lone clubbing. at this point the girl turns round and goes where u from? i say London, what part of hong Kong are u from? nonono she says , phillipines - MANILLA! i swear at that point i just picked up my jacket and walked out the club. the tube didnt open for another hour so i just went and chilled out with some falafel. got back to my room to see pierre's bony arse in the air, clothed thank god. i kicked the two of them out and got some kip.

Morning after we went fo breakfast in Big John's cafe where i had SCARBLED EGGS ON TOAST - heaven. afterwards we went to Lantau to see the po lin monastry and the big buddha next to it, it made me feel quite religious and i even got my prayer on, one for my Neu-Buddhism group no doubt. We got there via the ngong ping 360 which is a cable car that goes over the top of the biggest mountain in hong kong (934m) after crossing the sea - just a little bit impressive. That night we went out with luke rob and kate to watch liverpool newcastle, rob being a liverpool fan, and luke a newcastle fan. newcastle lost 3-0...

If we stayed another night in hong kong we would have probably gone to see david beckham and LA Galaxy play the South Asia XI but we went to Macau instead.

Arrival! Hong Kong.

Goodbye Finsbury Park, Hello Kowloon. After 11 hours on the plane Me and pierre finally get to kowloon via a bus from lantau, the hostel instructions being useless as always. we get to are hostel with the lovely name Travellers friendship hostel to find that all we have in terms of security is a curtain. It doesnt matter though cos we got a bed (a 2 inch thick matress which felt like it was made out of wood) but we ditch our bags and go out to get some munch.

When i ordered my vegetable noodles the lady kindly pointed out to me that there was no meat in it. a sign of things to come i'm sure. We we got back to the hostel we met everyone else who was staying there - some really nice people. just cotching, drinking beers, chatting. they invited us out for another meal and cos everyone was going we did too. with two meals in me i was up for a night in but pierre went off to meet up with some guy that chatted him up on the internet. (it was really the leader of the arsenal fanclub in hong kong and he was off to see the 'outstanding' arsenal champions league performance against Milan).

I stayed with the other guys and we went to a night market in jordan, about 20 minutes up Nathan road -where i scoped out the pink silk dressing gown which i later bought - god knows why. after the market closed we went back to the hostel and me, Matt and Louise stayed up till some ridiculous hour drinking and chatting to some guys over from the Uk and Germany who were doing kung fu training. they also had weird bruises on teh back from some candle therapy. eventually hit the sack at fiveish.

pierre got back at 6.30.

woke up the next day at 9.