Hong Kong Express

One of the tourist things to see in Guilin and Yangshou is the Cormorant Fishing.

This is a historic way of doing the fishing, the fisherman have tied the Cormorant’s neck so it cannot swallow large fish. The bird will dive into the water and get a fish, then come back to the boat and the fisherman will collect it.

Now, this isn’t very effective for modern terms, but its still pretty cool. People might say its cruel, but the birds get fed often thanks to this tourism fed capitalist venture.

I even gave it a go:

We were on a bamboo raft – was a good relaxing experience! Even though its heavily touristy, its one of the things that you should really do.

One of the famous places in Xi’an is the ‘snack street’.

This is a mostly Muslim area, with all the food in the uighur style, from western china.

The food was all delicious, spending about RMB30 – ate like pigs!

Photos are as follows:

Meat Skewers – delicious! Amazingly delicious!

Rice cakes(?)

Chinese ‘hamburger’ – roast lamb in bread bun:

Chinese sweets – some sort of cakes:

A short trip to Xi’an during July with Brendon.

We were very lucky to have met a lovely girl (Michelle), on the flight who offered to give us a lift to our hotel and show us around the city.

With most things in China, everything is cute. After arrival, Brendon needed to get some money out so over to the ATM. Spotted this sign board with some very cute police about security for your ATM card.

Our first day, we made a trip to the Terracotta warriors. No tour group, just travelling on our own. To take the bus to the Terracotta warriors – we needed to go to the train station, it was about 3 blooks up the street so we took it on foot.

While walking up the street, we crossed the new subway line under construction (due to be opened later this year).

After arriving at the station and fighting to get through the swarm of people, arguging with the lady to hop on the bus & an hour long bus trip later we arrived at the dig site.

On the way – we passed the university as well as a mountian ( i can’t recall its name)  – it was a rain/misty day, looked good to go up – but we were short on time, so we stayed on.

The warrior sites were pretty impressive, huge amounts of it is still not unearthed.

For day two, we had the girl we met picked us up from the Hotel and took us for breakfast.

I’ll post the rest of the day’s trip later in another post.

Sunday 30/May left me bored so I thought “how about an adventure”.
A quick look in my Lonely Planet book at Shenzhen, the neighboring city in Mainland China found “Windows of the World.”

So I packed my Camera & extra battery, blew the dust off my passport and jumped on the train to SZ!

After a 45 minute or so train ride and HK$40 or so dollars deducted from my Octopus, I arrived at the Lo Wu border crossing.  A quick scan of my thumb print and I’m out of Hong Kong!

This being my first land crossing between territories was interesting! Hong Kong Police sitting on one side of the line, Chinese Police on the other.

They get narky at you taking photos here, but I sneaked this one in. Lots of barbed wire on the Hong Kong side of the river. As part of the hand over agreement, the border would be maintained for 50 years – till 2047.  Will be interesting when that day comes.

This is the view back to the border crossing, you can tell how bad the pollution is, just in that 100m stretch!

Why Hello there Chinese Pollution!

If McDonalds is consistent around the world, there is one thing consistent in big Chinese cities. Pollution. The same gray colour of the sky.

A short stroll around and down the stairs to the subway, purchase a “Shenzhen Tohng” (their version of the octopus) and I’m on my way…

I sit down on the train, open my bag to remind me of the station name I need to get off at – but shit! I forgot my lonely planet book at home.  I take a punt, I knew it was near the end of the line and I picked right. About half an hour later and a random guess if it was the right train station I picked the one.

A big map outside the paid area of the station showed me where the park was – Exit I so I start walking.

Yup. This is the place.

It was a stinking hot day, hot and muggy, but overall I spent about 3 hours at “WOW”. Some Faves:

My photos are all online at: http://picasaweb.google.com/peskey/ChinaShenzhenWindowOfTheWorld#

Edit: What trip to China wouldn’t be complete without Engrish:

The flowers and tree’s really enjoy being protected!

No Dabbling!

…you find chicken feet in the office fridge!

Great bit of Chinese Engrish, or Chinglish, not to mention just hilarious to have at the urinal.

The Chinese translation is a little bit different I’m told.  its closer to:

“Taking one step closer will be a big step for our culture.” 

…to step on the grass.

Unfortunately, the grass was already pretty worse for wear and the only “fragrance” that day was the lovely Beijing pollution!