The beach

Crawled out of bed, then figured out some travel logistics, which took a while. Next..... hit the beach! Walked to Otres beach (almost) from Serendipity, avoiding the washed up Jelly fish and cuttlefish ... and strutting cockerels. Plus, the restaurant touts too! The sea is so warm and we enjoyed a paddle.

When we arrived back at the hotel we relaxed with some very pleasing elevator music, then some music that reminded us of being in France and finally... The Crazy Frog to the tune of Axel-F! Anyone who remembers it will surely think along the same lines as us ... terror!

This evening there is a Halloween party at the beach. Christine has put her name down for the cockroach eating competition! Well, that's not strictly true....but we may attend as official observers for the Guiness Book of Records ;-)

The photo that's been added below was taken by Darryl. He couldn't see the phone screen clearly to take the picture due to the glare. Please do not worry, the horizon is still 100% flat, not at a 45 degree angle!

Off to the beach

Treated ourselves this morning to bacon and eggs with toast and jam, all washed down with a cup of coffee. It tasted real good!

Saved ourselves a few dollars by walking to the bus stop, rather than taking a bus booked by the hotel. Walking is fairly easy with trolley bags rather than backpacks. Arrived at the bus stop just as one bus was about to leave, so good timing.

Arrived at Sihanouk Ville after a 5 hour karaoke bus journey. Caught a free mini bus into the main part of town. Then we started walking the 2km to the beach. When we saw a lady selling bbq'd sweetcorn, we couldn't resist a short stop.

We eventually found a hotel after looking at many, and dropped off our bags. Down to the beach we went.

There were many restaurants selling bbq'd seafood but we opted for pork and it was sensational!

Walking tour

This morning after breakfast we walked along the river to a really pretty temple, Wat Phnom. There was a huge clock outside and a giant cobra made from woven palms. We also walked to the palace which was closed in the morning due to the king's coronation holiday. We peered through the fence at the beautiful gardens and headed over to the park opposite. There were a number of police trailers parked up containing reels of razor wire. Not really sure why they were there, but they could be related to the recent protests.

We arrived at another temple just as a ceremony was beginning. One of the monks explained to Darryl what was happening and how each of the golden boxes present contained a set of orange monks robes.

The evening started with a great fireworks display, which must have been for the king. We ate some of the most delicious food so far at a riverside restaurant. We also bought a small friendship bracelet from an 8 year old Cambodian girl who approached our table. Her English was excellent and she assured us the money was going to pay for school. Who knows the truth, but this was a very articulate young lady, far more advanced in comparison to other children we have met. Very smart indeed!

Khmer Rouge

Today, we walked a lot of Phnom Penh to have a good look around. We visited a beautiful temple with no other tourists in sight! We passed the independence monument and had the lunchtime special in a lovely restaurant called The Cyclo. On to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, not so lovely, but a must see. The museum is the former prison of the Khmer Rouge, where thousands of innocent and well educated people were tortured and killed. Many other people faced their end at the notorious Killing Fields and were thrown into mass graves. A very sombre but interesting visit and this all happened in our life time! WHY WAS THIS EVER ALLOWED TO HAPPEN?!

Visit to the market

Walked around the local market this morning. A fairly dirty place. It stank too with loads of rubbish everywhere! There was nothing really appetising to try. The best looking snack was a barbequed snake on a skewer, but we passed on that one. We ate vegetarian for dinner!

We spent the afternoon chatting (well Christine was chatting, I was listening, of course) and drinking tea overlooking the river in the cool breeze.

Off to Cambodia

After being spoilt rotten by our very lovely friends in Singapore, they dropped us at the airport to catch our flight to Cambodia. Once boarded, an electrical fault meant we were asked to return to the departure gate and await further instructions! Yikes, but after half an hour all was ok!

After getting a remorque-moto (like a tuk tuk or motor rickshaw) from the airport, we walked around the area down by the river looking for a hotel. We saw a few and the price ranged from US$7 (£5) per night for a double, upwards.

There are lots of expats here and you can eat food ranging from the local beef noodles to pizza, cooked in a proper pizza oven. We ate the local food of course!

After we headed to a 4th floor terrace restaurant and had a cold, refreshing glass of beer each, complete with peanuts. The bill, US$1 (65p) in total!

Day of Play

We did very little today but played hide and seek. Oh, and water pistols too! Great fun.

We have uploaded loads of photos, so check them out at ...


http://www.vengara.co.uk/photos.html

Spelling mistakes

Please forgive any spelling mistakes and random words appearing in the middle of sentences! Trying to type on a tiny phone keyboard is tricky!

Singapore

What a lovely place! Clean, little crime, lovely people and loads to see. We headed off first to see the botanical gardens. So many different kinds of plants, it was really great.

Next, we caught a bus to Orchard Road which is packed with shopping centres, selling the latest designer gear. Of course, we couldn't fit any new items in our bags, so had to restrain ourselves from purchasing!

Little India was calling as lunchtime approached. The area was packed with beautiful decorations in preparation for Deepavali. We ate in the hawker centre and enjoyed a tastey byriani and mango lassi.

We walked through the old colonial districts with wonderful old buildings and on to the famous Raffles Hotel.

Afterwards we headed to China town and the Maxwell Road hawker centre. Darryl had seen, back at home, an Anthony Bourdain programme about food all around the world. One place he raved about was here! We had to try it. Very famous chicken rice at Tian Tian, delicious.

Finally, at the waterfront we saw the Marina Bay Hotel. 3 huge buildings with what looks like a huge ship resting on top of them. When it got dark, we watched the light show that the hotel puts on, before heading back to a well earned rest!

The Peak

Crawled out of bed after our night on the town. Headed up the famous Peak, where the tram has been running to the top for the last 100 years. We took possibly the world's longest escalator and then walked up the steepest slope to get to the top. What a great view over Hong Kong. Getting down was a little quicker and easier.

The evening was spent on the roof terrace enjoying a wonderful barbeque with so much food!

Hong Kong

After a short breakfast we headed on the bus to the Chinese border. There were fairly big queues due to the Chinese tour groups heading to Hong Kong. However we got through pretty quick, including our border entry into Hong Kong. We changed our last Chinese Yuan to Hong Kong Dollars and headed to where we were staying.

The views of the towering blocks were amazing. We headed across from Central on the Star Ferry to the walk of fame. The views of the central business area were really nice.

After heading back, it was dark so we took a lift to View 62. The lift was incredible! It was outside the building and completely glass. We have never experienced the a panorama like this of anywhere! View 62 is on the 62 floor and is a very, very upmarket bar and restaurant.... that revolves! We sipped cocktails, blew the budget and sat in awe at the view. Truly incredible! We went to bed in the early hours of the morning after a wonderful evening in Hong Kong.

Our last full day

Yangshou really livens up in the evenings with so many bars and restaurants! The streets were packed!

We left Yangshuo this morning after our daily fix of steamed dumplings and warm soya milk. We caught a bus back to Guilin so we could get a sleeper train overnight to Guangzhou. We tried lots of different snacks in Guilin. One was a nice flat bread 'thing' and another was like a soup with small dumplings. The lady at the stall added some chilli oil to flavour it and it was so spicy, eating it was tough!

Cycle China

Well a very small part! Today we explored the Yulong River which had really breathtaking scenery. We saw Moon Hill, passed lots of caves and even passed a cave that looks like the inside of a butterfly's stomach. That is ... according to the sign, but we resisted and didn't go inside. Some of our time was spent watching the bamboo rafts ferry hoards of tourists along the river. In fact not all of the rafts are bamboo, but blue PVC pipes. Possibly cheaper, harder wearing and easier to find if you're a panda.

Really?

As we asked to borrow the bikes again, the owner asked us,"Has it stopped?"

Completely oblivious to the rain we were about to set off on a great cycle adventure along the river! We thought it only rained in England!

Instead we went to eat dumplings...

It is much colder today. In fact the first time we've needed jumpers in the day time since we left home. So, rain stops play and we spent our time in the hotel and exploring Yangshuo.

Lazy day

Today we spent our time lazing around in Yangshuo. We went for a walk in the park and watched the locals playing their instruments. They also get together with their friends to play majhong, cards and a Chinese version of cards where the cards are long and thin. We also witnessed a rather heated discussion over a game of dominoes!

The afternoon was spent browsing the market stalls and Darryl got his watch battery replaced by a little, old man in the street who appeared to fix mostly wind-up watches! He must have been really impressed by Darryl's exclusive plastic 'Casio' time piece...

Pink and named Alice

First we stopped at the market. There were loads of 'things' that are eaten in China, which we tend not to in the UK. Darryl witnessed an older man selecting his dinner and watched the whole process from beginning to end. Not great, but interesting experiencing another culture.

We hired a couple of bikes today for just a £1 each. Only trouble was Darryl's was pink and named Alice! We set off down the road and through a tunnel, the longest, most horribly polluted tunnel ... ever, and into the countryside! We explored lots of little villages, saw water buffalo, bamboo rafts and some beautiful butterflies. When we headed home we passed through a lovely little tunnel, (which was the way we should have headed out too!) and stopped to fill up in snack street. At least that's what we call it as we can't read the street sign in Chinese characters.

Tried to find the night market near our hotel but either arrived too late and everyone had gone home or there are so few tourists, they decided not to bother opening. Shame, Christine was looking forward to a juicy frog to eat for supper!

Yangshou

Yangshou is apparently a real tourists haunt but it is really quiet at the moment. Maybe there is something we don't know! We booked into the friendly hotel and will spend the next few days, possibly on bikes, exploring the local area!

Woah! Now it's not so quiet. Every one must have been out for the day...but we do have a nice view!

Countryside at last

Today, after catching the local bus 3 times - we eventually ended in the right place to take a connecting bus out to the village of Jiangtouzhou. A little old ex policeman escorted us to the next bus stop and drew us a little map. So kind!

Jiangtouzhou is a small village out in the countryside away from the hustle and bustle of the cities! The scenery was gorgeous and it was interesting to see the local people going about their harvesting in the fields. A lovely spot!

We returned to Guilin and walked to some wonderful pagodas and watched people swimming in the famous Li river...

We ate Chinese fast food in the evening at a local stall. Basically, you choose your ingredients, they stir fry it and you eat it before Christine can!

4.30am arrival

The overnight sleeper arrived in Liuzhou bright and early and our connecting train was later in the morning so, we went and are breakfast and had a good look around. We found the local market selling all kinds of fruit and vegetables. There were butcher stalls too with a variety of animals hanging ready to be purchased. One particular animal caught our eye...it was a ***.

Our connecting train we booked ourselves. Aren't we clever! However because we couldn't really understand what the friendly girl behind the counter was saying, we insisted on a particular train number for our journey. Later we found out what she had was trying to tell us. It turns out there was only one seat free! So we had managed to buy one seat and one standing space... in a different carriage.

Luckily on the train we managed to both get a seat and sit together.

Arrival in Guilin was pretty smooth, we caught the correct bus from the train station and asked directions in a Government building. The nice friendly policemen walked us all the way to where we were staying, about 10 minutes away!

Zhangjiajie

Walking, walking and more walking! We are staying inside the park in a hostel and have seen the most amazing limestone kasts. Really, really beautiful.

This morning we watched an amazing sunrise with a couple from Taiwan. Only negative... up at 5.30!

Hopefully when we are out of China we can add the pictures to http://www.vengara.co.uk/photos.html

Look out too for some of the odd Chinese signs we have seen...

Booking train tickets

Once we'd prepared our 'stuff', food and water, we headed to the train station fully equiped to book train tickets 4 days in advance because they sell out quickly.

Whoa ... did we have problems. Everything was written for us in Chinese script but it appears you can only book 3 days in advance at the train station. We worked this out through asking for trains on different days and it was not easy!

So we were heading into a national park in the middle of nowhere and when we came out there would likely be no trains available?!

We had to try something else....

There was a McDonald's, surely someome could speak a little English. No, but the staff did try to translate using their smart phones and iPads. Luckily a man overheard us and came to our rescue.

We went with him to the train station to try again and we hit the same problem. You can only book 3 days in advance but he did find out there is a 20 day booking machine in a few minutes away!

So, off we went in a taxi with our loyal assistant and found the machine. But... you can only use the machine if you have a Chinese I'D card and of course we don't!

Luckily the taxi driver knew a booking office a further 10 minutes away and he took us there. Great we thought until they told us their computers were down!

No problem the taxi knew another office 10 minutes away. When we arrived our loyal assistant explained what we needed and the tickets were booked! Excellent, we thought, until we checked the tickets. Each ticket must have your passport number on. Well that's ok I we gave him the passports. BUT we think it was the first time he had dealt with tourists... the numbers he had entered on the tickets were random numbers he had seen in the passports. One being a Chinese visa number and the other an Indian visa number! Do you think he would change it? No way.....so we will hope they let us on the train!

We caught the bus to the Zhangjiajie national park where they filmed parts of Avatar... it looks amazing!

Another sleeper

Last night was yet another glorious sleeper train. This time to Yichang, where we catch a connecting train to Zhangjiajie.

We have no map in our guide book so we caught the busiest bus from the train station hoping it went to the city center. Luckily it did and we had breakfast at a little local shop before hitting a large hotel to try and use their wifi.

In the afternoon we headed back on our lucky bus to take another train which would take us on the final leg to Zhangjiajie.

At Zhangjiajie we headed to a hostel in the city and booked 2 dorm vega which are a lot cheaper than a double room. Luckily, no one else turned up so we had the room to ourselves. There wasn't many places to eat but we found a really wonderful family run cafe. We spent the rest of the evening chatting to the son who spoke English (you could see he was trying soooo hard) and his mother, who spoke no English so he translated. They were both absolutely wonderful and kept plying us with tasty different fruits!

Blind Date

We had a fairly lazy morning and then took the metro to the centre of Chengdu. We ate in a famous local place and had a mixed meal of all the local dishes including; ducks neck, chicken's foot, tripe, dumplings, spring rolls, other weird things..... and fungus! Delicious!

Following our meal we headed to a free (very unusual for China) museum. There was loads of Tibetan artifacts and an interesting area purposely missing all English signs which were present in the rest of the museum. Interesting, maybe they don't want us to know about somethings in China's past....

Next we headed to the dating corner in People's park where people put up messages (or their parents do on their behalf). The messages are a dating system, where you tell potential dates about yourself. Your height, date of birth, salary and job, family history including medical illnesses and health insurance, whether you own a home, whether your family are from a village or a city... Basically, everything about you except what you like to do and your personality.
Dating appears to be based on your potential to stay ahead of the competition and your posession of good genes.... not a good pair of jeans but genes!

Interesting fact: Some one told us that a walnut looks like a brain. Ok, you know that but some of the people in China believe because it looks like as brain, it must be good for your brain!

Another sleeper train tonight...

Photo is blurred to protect the innocent blind daters ;-)

Pandas at last

At 6.40 we headed for a different bus to get us to the panda base. In fact 3 buses in total. All we needed to do was count the number of stops, then change to the next busy. Easy?! But... after we had counted 19 stops as our instructions stated, we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere! Yikes! Christine thought she had seen written on a previous stop the bus number we needed, so we followed our route back about 4 stops. And, she was right, phew. We caught the bus and started counting again but only 8 stops. What could possibly go wrong?! Well, after 5 stops the driver stopped the bus and along with all of the other passengers shouted something at us. Why? What had we done wrong! They persisted with their shouting whilst we sat staring and the bus didn't move. Strange....Maybe we had arrived. Sure enough 5 stops it was. We had arrived!

The panda base was amazing with a lovely area for their enclosures. There were big giant pandas, small giant pandas and baby giant pandas too. Even red pandas. We took loads of photos! There was also a lake with black swans and gigantic koi carp.

We caught the buses back home but all we had to do is count the correct number of stops which we now knew. Great we'd get home easily....

Err, no... on the way home the bus followed a different route and ended up at a bus station! We looked around trying to figure out where we were, when luckily we spotted a metro station and we knew we could take the metro home.

Out for a walk this afternoon we saw some school girls aged about 6. They were dressed in jazz dance costumes. Once they had spotted us we had to have our photos taken with them... as we look different!

Whilst eating some of the tastiest food of our trip we heard the 'happy birthday' tune blaring out behind us. So, we turned around to check. Expecting to see an ice cream van, we were fairly surprised to see a road sweeping vehicle blasting out the tune!

Finding the bus

Woke fairly early to head off to visit the panda base just outside Chengdu. The pandas feed in the morning then are pretty lazy for the rest of the day. All we had to do is get on bus 69. Do you think we could find it?

After searching for a while and asking several people. We decided to give up and went to eat ice cream in KFC, very frustrated. Try again tomorrow....

Instead of visiting the pandas we looked around several pretty parks in Chengdu. There were many people dancing and practising Taichi.
We also came across a little stall where you spun the wheel, and whichever animal it landed on, the lady made it with melted sugar. The Chinese dragon she made was amazing!

We also wandered through another park packed with food stalls and visited an ancient tomb with many statues of musicians. After leaving the park we walked through the Tibetan area, which was really interesting. On our way home we tried to order some food by pointing at Chinese writing on a board, which we didn't understand. Luckily a young man who spoke English came to our rescue and told us we were ordering lung and we may not like it. He then advised us to try a local dish which tasted ok but made our lips feel really weird. It wasn't hot like chilli but left us with a strange sensation in our mouths!

Xbox dance party

The day was spent looking round the city of Chengdu. We visited a Buddhist temple, the people's park and even ate chips! Well sort of. They were wrinkle cut potatoes, shaped like chips but covered in a million different spices.

In the evening we spotted a little alleyway full of food stalls.... oh, and an outside dental surgery in the same street. We pointed at someone else's food which looked good and that's what we ordered. It seemed to consist of mainly bacon rhind, tasty though just a bit chewy.

When we returned to where we were staying we played Xbox.... yes, you heard it right Xbox Kinect. Tennis, dancing.....

A hard seat for the day

An early start, 4.45 to be precise, to catch a train for the 16 hour journey to Chengdu. We thought we may have problems with rogue taxi drivers this early in the morning getting us to the station, but no problem at all! The station was busy and we waited patiently for our train.

What do you do for 16 hours on a train? EAT.... we had bought loads of food from Walmart but still enjoyed the 2 meals we bought on the train. In fact they were really nice with loads of vegetables.

We are using our new tea bottle and have bought a pack of chrysanthemum tea, as they provide hot water on every train.

Just as we were getting a little bored, a smartly dressed soldier moved to sit opposite us. Traditionally, the Chinese people don't tend to smile but this soldier certainly did. He spoke a little English and was really friendly offering us advice and help with the use of Google Translate on his mobile! He explained that as a soldier he could not travel to England but only to Tibet. He was such a lovely fellow and I really felt so sorry that he had so many restrictions imposed upon him.

Not sure I want to post his picture as it may cause him problems.

Dumpling Day

A nice relaxing day in Xian. All we had to do is buy some food for the train tomorrow and book our train tickets for next week.

Nutritionists look away ... NOW

Oh, and eat dumplings.... and more dumplings because we love them and they're so cheap. Today we've had beef ones, vegetable ones and sweet ones all washed down with hot soya milk! Yum, dumpling day!

What we didn't try was ...

Terra-Cotta Warriors

Following a good nights sleep, not on a train but in a comfy bed, we caught the bus to the railway station. From here we were to catch another bus to see the 'warriors'. Only a small obstacle appeared in our path - the 3 hour queue for the bus! We decided after seeing the length of the bus queue to go to the warriors with a tour. We were warned about the traffic and sure enough, the half an hour journey took 2 hours!

The warriors were amazing but the entrance queues equally as impressive. We have never seen so many people....Ever! Loads of pictures were taken before the long journey home.

Food was calling, so we hit the back streets and after queueing for a while the restaurant told us they had ran out. We hurried around the corner and had some amazing soup, full of everything, especially chillis. It was so hot....

Xi'an - National Day 1st October

We were forced from our slumber bright and early by the train stewardess, who handed back our paper tickets to allow us to leave the train. They Exchange your paper ticket for a plastic card during your journey. At the Xian train station exit we had never seen so many people. Today is the first day of the Chinese holidays which last a week. EVERYONE in China is on vacation - all 1 billion! We made our way to where we were staying which was quite a walk, past the bell and the drum tower to the West gate of the walled city.

Later that afternoon we headed to the Muslim quarter to grab a bite to eat. It was so packed. Next we caught the tube to the Big Goose Pagoda, a beautiful Buddhist temple. It is in a wonderful park all lit up at night. The tube was an interesting journey. No one seems to know where it goes as it is new. Darryl tried to get what he thought were tube tokens from a kiosk. He handed over a 10 yuan note and asked for 4 tickets. The lady gave him 10 tokens so he gave 6 back and told her again he wanted only 4. She looked at him as though he was completely mad but handed him back 6 yuan in notes. It turns out the lady was giving change for the ticket machine. So when Darryl handed over the 10 yuan note, she gave him 10 yuan coins. No wonder she thought he was mad asking for 6 notes back!

Pingyao

After surviving a Chinese sleeper train, we arrived in Pingyao about 16 hours after our departure! Pingyao is the best preserved example of a walled Chinese city and it is really impressive. Our hotel is a little steep but the rate triples tonight due to the whole of China having a 7 day national holiday. It is set in a little courtyard with traditional Chinese decorations. The whole of Pingyao is adourned with beautiful red Chinese lanterns. It is so quaint! We spent the day exploring the city walls and eating the wonderful Chinese food.

Exploring Beijing

Today we headed for the Lama temple, a buddhist temple in the heart of Beijing. We took our time watching people pray and lighting a rather large number of incense sticks.

After we headed to Tiannamen square, the world's largest public square but made famous for all the wrong reasons.

From here we walked through the Forbidden City which no one had been allowed to visit for 500 years. It is a huge palace complex containing many wonderful buildings and antique treasures from the past.

Eventually, we tackled the only hill in Beijing formed from the soil from the moat at the Forbidden City. It was built in a beautiful garden where we watched people perform Tai Chi and a strange method of back massage! On top of the hill stood a lovely pagoda offering 360 degree views of the city. After the tranquility of the park we weaves our way through the backstreet of th Hutongs.

The evening was spent strolling round a really lively area full of bars, each with a live band. The area overlooked a small lake and all of the buildings were lit with neon lights. Very pretty. Some of the shops in the area made mini sculptures of passers by, a bit like a characatures! We tried our first taste of stinks tofu, never again!

Sleepy

After a rather long accidental lie in, we headed off to the Birds Nest and Water Cube which were venues for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The Olympic village was rather large and quite a few people spent their weekend walking through admiring the architecture!

In the evening we went for headed for the CBD (central business district) to see the tallest building in Beijing and the TV tower. The TV tower is like 2 buildings joined together with what looks like a totally unsupported overhang!

Afterwards we hit the night markets where they sell a variety of different bugs.... to eat. There were live scorpions, snakes, centipides, baby birds, starfish and even poor old sea horses.

We decided to have rice soup and to sample the local rice wine instead. With an alcohol content of 46% we only braved a little sip!

At 1am we tackled the packed out Beijing Train Station to catch an overnight sleeper train to Pingyao.

Great Wall

An early start as we headed off to the Great Wall. Out at 6am and a 2.5 hour journey! We slept all the way so it seemed like only 10 minutes.

The Great Wall is an impressive sight but it is a fairly steep climb up to join it. We spent the day enjoying the views and wandering if it ever comes to an end ...

We ate at a wonderful restaurant in Beijing called Green Tea. It is located just across the road from where we're staying in a rather upmarket shopping centre which happens to contain the work's largest Adidas shop!

This was our view

The Blue Mosque

Istanbul photos

Here are some pictures....