Run little man, run!

Asia ~ China ~ Shanghai

The little green man in China doesn’t let people know they can cross the road safely – he suggests that they run as fast as they can to the other side – for that is all the traffic lights are over here – suggestions. The little green man not only runs – he also warns you just how many seconds you have left – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – and then a SLAM of oncoming traffic! Wrestling with the traffic is sometimes an adventure – in my limited Chinese I have made many friends – I attach myself to a local whenever attempting to cross the road, and once safely across, point at them and then me, and say ‘pengyou’ – friends.

Me and Mum munching on vegies

As usual, my trip has been centered around food – and what a feast we’ve been having! Dad and I have been making daily breakfast meetings, where we sample the different Chinese foods on offer – we’ve had dumplings for about 5 days in a row – YUM! The other night we went out to celebrate my birthday at M on the Bund, a well-to-do restaurant in modern Shanghai, where we dined on interesting, non-Chinese, menu. The drawing card of the restaurant was evidently the view, not the food or value. After our dinner, we all trotted off to the hostel that Tash and I stayed in last time, and had a drink from the roof top bar, fitted in a lot better!

View from the roof top bar

Of course we’ve been doing a lot of shopping as well, and my understanding of Chinese numbers is coming along in leaps and bounds, as are my bargaining abilities. Each day we have found a new souvenir to pack up and take home – my pack just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Best of all are the Chinese supermarkets – a new phenomenon over here. They not only contain all the different fresh fruits and groceries (including extremely fresh fish (i.e. live)), but also mini k-marts, with everything from bikes to dvds. School started yesterday, and it’s already a struggle. I’m rooming with a friend of Kylie’s, Ling, and we’re having a ball. We’ve been learning by trial and error all the different customs of the uni – from the smartcard food cards, through to where the supermarket actually is. And how to portray that to a taxi driver… Food on campus is good, average $1 AUD per meal, and there are also a couple of restaurants on campus, with more only a few minutes away. Weather has just turned cold, it’s gunna be a tough winter, thankfully we went out and brought scarfs, gloves and beanies yesterday. Classes are difficult, but should be rewarding.Kylie has now joined me and mum, dad and Chuck have just arrived back in Australia. It was a fun family holiday, but now it’s time to start living the life of a student backpacker – no more 5 star hotels 🙁

xoxo Bobbi

Dancing with Panda’s in Chengdu

Asia ~ China ~ Shanghai & Chengdu

So a 10 hour plane trip doesn’t seem that long when you compare it to some of the long hauls that we’ve done (namely Australia – USA), but man, any flight over 3 hours is a long flight! Before we even left Australia we had our first embarrassing experience- dad walked into the ladies toilets without realising. We quickly took off and pretending we didn’t know him – he got shoo-ed out soon after! We flew Qantas, so service was reasonably decent (although Chuck really didn’t like her vego food – chickpeas and cous cous, ugh! [says her hehe]), but the entertainment was top notch. They have a new entertainment system – movies on demand – so you can watch whatever you want, when you want it. Chuck got her fill of movies!

All things done and said, arrival into Shanghai was easy and quick. After filling out the health card (“do you have sniffles?” “no [sniffle sniffle]”, “do you have a fever” “no [ooh it’s hot in here]! we got through and out into the arrival hall. After picking up our bags, we ran the gauntlet to get through past arrivals – so many people! We we’re supposed to pick up our tickets for our flight – so we grabbed a phone card and attempted to ring the dude… and he spoke only Chinese! I knew that this trip would be a great way to practice my ‘barely-there’ Chinese, but I didn’t realise it would be this soon! Stumbled through the phone call, and we arranged a place to pick up the tickets – my Chinese worked!!!

Family waiting for taxi in Shanghai

First hotel was interesting – a typical Chinese hotel, complete with a fantastic little restaurant. Little to no English though, so it was interesting to see what we got to eat! Up early the next day for our flight to Chengdu, just made it to the airport on time (as usual, whoops!). Chengdu was awesome – we went on a tour to see the pandas first up. They were so incredibly cute – we got to wander around and see the babies, and then have out photos taken with the olympic panda…

Chuck & I with Panda in Chengdu

Train trip was sooooo long. But not unbearable. In usual O’Riley fashion, we stumbled onto the train, bags flying and feet tripping. Caught a taxi from our hostel to the station – just imagine the four of us, two large backpacks, 2 even larger suitcases, a small wheely suitcase and numerous handbags and bags of food all fitting in taxi – with a huge gastank in the boot! Taxi drivers at the station thought our driver was a legend for fitting us all in the car – I wasn’t so happy with a bag of coke wedged under my chin. Train trip was fun – the four of us in our little cabin, venturing out for dinner and lunch. Chuck went through 2 ipods, but the rest of us slept, read and slept for the 50 hours.

Dad shopping in Chengdu

Now we are living the life of luxury – I booked us into a 4 star hotel and man, is it class! Gold fittings and marble everywhere, Chuck and I have the executive room, on the nice nice nice floor, whilst mum and dad are on the ‘ordinary people’ level. Hehe. Now we’re all relaxing after a taxing day of shopping, enjoying the offerings of room service and cable tv – this is the life!

xoxo bobbi

Shanghai Captain Hostel (Shanghai, China)

I loved the dorm rooms here, they were very big, with tables and chairs and so forth. They were clean and the other travelers were friendly. The unique ship theme was cute, with the staff dressed in sailor outfits and ship memorabilia around the building. The bar on the top of the building was fantastic, allowing us to look over the entire city. The location was perfect, steps away from The Bund, and only a few minutes from Nanjing Lu and the subway station.

I didn’t have any problems with the reception staff (despite some bad reviews on the internet), and it was no problem when we stumbled in at 6am. The showers weren’t the cleanest, nor were the bathrooms. Overall though, I enjoyed my stay and would recommend this hostel.

Huangshan International Hostel (Tunxi, China)

The BEST hostel I have stayed in so far.

The hostel was extremely clean, with a nice little cafe/resturant with cheap food (they also provided hot water for noodles, etc). Upstairs there was a TV viewing room, with DVD player. The rooms are spacious and clean with private bathrooms. Beds were comfortable, and included little shelves etc to keep knick-knacks. Up on the top floor was a washing machine as well as an area to hang out clean clothes.

The staff were extremely friendly, and helped us to organise a bus up to Huangshan. Be warned though – the walk around the mountains is amazingly beautiful, but difficult. The only issue we had with this hostel was climbing up into our bunks after a long day climbing the mountains – it was our own fault though!

Tackling Huang Shan

Asia ~ China ~ Huang Shan & Shanghai

Getting ready to leave mainland China now, about to head off for Hong Kong. From Xi’an we headed down to Huang Shan and then onto Shanghai and finally back here, to Beijing.

Huang Shan was beautiful, said to be the most well known mountain range in China, the ‘Mt. Fuji’ of China. The scenery was amazing, we stayed in a little hostel full of Chinese tourists. On our second day in Huang Shan we jumped on a minibus and headed off for the mountains. Turns out our hostel booked us in for a Chinese tour group, we all got yellow hats and little badges and walking sticks. We have seen these tour groups all over China, little groups of people wearing matching hats traipsing around the tourist spots. Anyway, finally ended up at the mountains, and off we went. Tash and I decided we didn’t want to walk to the top (a 3 hour hike), so we took the cable car up. Our guide freaked, convinced he was going to lose foreigners in the mountains and found some other people to babysit us while we waited for the cable car. Once at the top we hiked around for about 5 hours. The scenery was awesome, the hike wasn’t too tough, or so we thought. Whilst we were up the top we saw a total of 3 foreigners, everyone else was Chinese. And what a lot of Chinese, I’d say about 10,000 people, all in red hat and yellow hat and blue flag and green flag tour groups! Although we started off taking photo’s of the beautiful scenery, we ended up taking photo’s of the thousands of Chinese people taking photo’s of us!!! Finally it was time to go, our guide pulled us aside and asked if we wanted to take the cable car down, or walk. Well, stupid us decided that since it was all downhill anyway, we’d be fine. Over 9km of steep steps going STRAIGHT down the mountain… We basically fell down the mountain, our legs were jelly, and I’m not sure that our knees will ever be the same. [My legs are still extremely sore, that was a week ago.] We stumbled into our hostel that night, everyone just laughed at the silly foreigners – there were grannies doing the walk who seemed to be power steaming ahead!

Huang Shan Mountains, China

The next day we took off to Shanghai, what an amazing difference. Shanghai is truly a destination for foreigners – upon arriving we ran into 3 separate groups of Aussies, almost more than we’ve seen in the past 2 months! Our days in Shanghai were basically spent sleeping and shopping, the nights reserved for the clubs. Clubs were good, met a lot of interesting people, a lot of people from Germany, surprisingly. Beers are expensive in Shanghai though, we were paying the same as what you would back home, bit of a shock! We tasted the foods – I tried stir fried bull frog, very tasty, if not a little difficult to eat. Shopping was good, Shanghai has a great selection of pearls, not exactly what a backpacker needs, but exactly what a backpacker wants!!! We stayed at the ‘Captain Hostel’, where all the staff were dressed as sailors, very full on. Our bar overlooked the city and the river, which made it a nice place to wind down after a tiring day shopping. Oh yeh, on our second day in Shanghai Tash and I took out my hair – I’m now blonde again, no longer have purple plaits down to my waist. It took us 3 hours to get out, and my hair has never been so frizzy and knotty in my life! Starting to get back to normal now.

Now we’re just chilling, doing our traditional ‘end-of-country’ shopping, we’ve been picking up some great bargains, mainly because we’ve finally got the bargaining thing downpat. Next stop – Hong Kong, should be fantastic!