nightlife

Sweating it out in Edinburgh

Europe ~ United Kingdom ~ Scotland ~ Edinburgh

How typical is this? We’re in one of the countries that is renowned for its cold and rainy weather and we are in the middle of a ‘hot spell’. Everyone is complaining about the heat, people are having trouble sleeping at night. This morning I was eating my brekky in the dining room (one of the coldest rooms in the hostel, brrr), one of the longtermers walked in and remarked ‘wow, isn’t it nice and cold in here’. Tomorrow the temperature might get as high as 22 degrees Celsius, I wonder how everyone will deal with the heat and lack of sleep. Despite all this, I did manage to get horribly sunburnt the other day, ouch!

We went out for a couple of hours on Sunday night, ended up coming home early because it was oh so hot in the club. Funny, in Australia, Sunday night/afternoon is spent lazing around, sad that the weekends over, slightly sick from a weekend of partying etc etc. You might have a drink or two, but that’s about it. Over here its one of the biggest nights of the week, 1 pound drinks, so everyone gets really drunk, quite different from home.

Next week the G8 is coming to Edinburgh, expected to be pretty big. Not only will we have all the world ‘leaders’, we will have all the protesters that come with them. Bob Geldof is calling for over 1 million people to flood the streets and ‘make poverty history’. The whole of Edinburgh is shaking in their kilts… Everyone has made all sorts of plans – they are closing down the main street (the one that runs past the front of the hostel) and are advising most shops to close for the day, if not the whole week. Pubs are replacing pint glasses with plastic cups and removing all chairs in anticipation of riots. The council is advising people to stock up on groceries and not to venture into town unless ‘absolutely necessary’. Despite all this, some of the shops are staying open – one of my friends shop is staying open, however they have put aside extra funds so they can whisk staff out the back, into taxis and away to safety in the event of riots. Should be fantastic, we’re gunna be right down there in the middle of it all…

Apart from gossiping about what’s going to happen next week, we haven’t been up to much. Just more roaming of the city, yesterday we went for a nice long walk up the mountains. Walked past Holyrood, the Queen’s residence when she’s in town (pretty impressive, she has her very own church in the backyard). Climb up the mountain wasn’t too bad, very impressive seeing the view over the city. The difference between the ‘old town’ and the ‘new town’ is astounding.

Hugs and kisses all [and a special hug to my new 2nd cousin, Phoenix]
xoxo bobs

Tash, Elysha and Mike, on their way up the mountain

Tash, Elysha and Mike, on their way up the mountain

Life is like a game of monopoly

Europe ~ United Kingdom ~ London

So long Asia, now we’re back to the land of English – or rather the Motherland… Arrival was full on, we got into the airport and lined up for immigration. We haven’t had any problems in any other countries getting through, but after 12 hours on a flight from Hong Kong, they decided to be difficult. After getting through the line (took about 2 hours), we got to the front, only to be questioned and then sent off for a health check!!! Turns out that as we had travelled through ‘tropical’ countries (Thailand and India), there was a possibility we had TB, so they had to check us out. In the end we didnt need to get X-rays or the like, as the nurses decided it wasnt worth it!

Our hostel is in Earl’s Court, nicknamed ‘Kangaroo Court’, due to the abundance of Aussies who have made it their home. The hostel is full of Aussies, Kiwi’s and South Africans. Most people are friendly, but there are a lot of politics flying around the hostel – such as who gets the kitchen first and so forth. We’re at the very top of the stairs – five flights up, everyone else complains about the climb, but we reckon its nothing – compared to Huang Shan!!! We’re sharing a room with a South African guy and an Aussie guy. Both are long termers and the room is decidedly male – from the sign on the door (‘MEN!!!’), to their choice in posters. All day they have a fan going, pointed at their shoe collection… But they’re nice enough, and the room is alot cleaner than some of the ones we’ve been in.

On our first day we caught a train (‘the tube’, hehe) down to Westminster, to wander around. Imagine us, we’ve just stepped off a plane from Hong Kong, tired and jetlagged, and we’re wandering around London, seeing famous sights such us Big Ben and chasing pigeons through Trafalgar Square. I feel as if I’m trapped on a Monopoly board!!! After wandering around the National Gallery for a couple of hours we set off back home to plan our next day. Ended up teaming up with a pair of Kiwi girls and a pair of South African girls and made plans to go out the next day. We sat on the steps of our hostel drinking the local drinks – we like to think that we looked like the old guys on Sesame Street…

2nd day was spent SHOPPING on Oxford Circus, and then we toodled off to the Tower of London, to see the sights. The Tower of London has a 900 year history as a Royal Palace and fortress, prison and place of execution, mint and jewel house. Lucky us got to see the crown jewels, and even sit on a royal gardenrobe (read: loo!)

Since then we’re been to many wonderful and amazing places – and of course done our fair share of shopping. By shopping I of course mean browsing, as the prices over here are so so so expensive that we can only afford to look! We went to Westminster Abbey to see all the famous graves – such as Queen Elizabeth I, Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, and Thomas Parr, a guy who lived to age 152 (?!). Also went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard, lots of red guards with fluffy black hats running around. The London Dungeon was a bit different, bit like a horrorhouse, we got to see the more spooky history of London, from the black plague to Jack the Ripper. King’s Cross Station was worthwhile, we all got our pics taken standing in front of ‘Platform 9 3/4’, pushing a trolly through to the platform where Harry Potter caught his train to Hogwarts.

Shopping has been fun, we’ve wandered around the main shopping districts – Picadilly Circus, Oxford Circus (All have ‘circus’ attatched, any ideas?), and even Camden Town. Camden Town was interesting, magic mushrooms and marujana lollypops are sold everywhere. The mushrooms come in many different types (flavours?!) – from Cuban ones to good ol’ Tassie ones!

Apart from the sightseeing and shopping we’ve just been chilling in the hostel, and partying with our fellow backpackers. Nightlife is great, and everyone is so friendly. Only trouble I’m having is wrestling the remote control off the Aussie boys on the weekends – no-one here seems to care how much I HATE watching sports – oh well, they’ll learn quick enough. Take care all, am about to jetset off to the U.S., so if you’ve over there, watch out for me!!!

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

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!

Being famous in Xi’an

Asia ~ China ~ Xi’an

Well well well, hasnt been long since my last blog, but so much has been happening that I thought I should write it all down… We managed to catch our 14 hour train trip from Beijing to Xi’an, home of the Terricotta Army. Train trip was good, we were in a cabin with an older Chinese couple who went to bed as soon as we got onto the train (about the same time that Tash went to bed!). I stayed awake for a bit longer, chatting to a Mongolian guy who was travelling to Xi’an to go for a job interview. He had some really interesting views on life. At one stage, while waiting to go to the toilet another woman starting chatting to me, telling me all the good places to go to in Xi’an. Many many other people were happy to talk to me on the train, unfortunatley they didn’t speak English. However, when trying to communicate this, they obviously didn’t care and continued to chatter away to me in Mandarin!!!

On arriving in Xi’an, a group from the hostel that we’re staying at met us at the station. With them was another woman from our train who was to stay at the same hostel, turns out she was at the same hostel in Beijing with us! We all hopped on the local bus with our HUGE backpacks on, quite an effort, and ended up at the Bell Tower Hostel. Ended up sharing a room with Tracey, the girl from the train, really nice girl from Wales. Getting ready to go out for the day, we stepped out onto the street to find some food. Straight away a guy jumped in front of me and started snapping photos of me (no doubt because of my hair!), the first photo he took must have looked a treat, me completely shocked, with little sleep from the night before and just in general absolutley buggered!

We spent the day with Tracey, going to the Terracotta Army, an amazing place! About 30 years ago, a farmer who was digging a well found some statues buried in the ground. Come feel it was the greatest archeoligical find of the 20th century. 3 Large pits of terricotta statues have been uncovered, it is thought that there could be more, not yet discovered. The biggest pit is thought to contain over 6000 peices, including soldiers, horses, carts and weapons. They are believed to have been built over 2000 years ago, although there is some dispute over that. Really interesting site though.

That night we went out to a bar with Tracey. Turns out that whilst on the train, she met a group of guys and gals from Xi’an, who treated her as their guest all night, taking her to dinner and wining and dining her. One of the guys, Stanley, owns a bar in Xi’an, and he invited us out, so out we went! Upon arrival he started pouring our drinks, and didnt stop! The bar was awesome, made from old railway carriages, really interesting paintings and murials on the walls (he’s an artist as well, it turns out). After a couple of drinks at his place, he took us to another couple of bars, all the bartenders were shouting us too. Last stop was the Music Man, where we staying to the wee hours. Night was really good, only problem was that only Stanley and another girl, Jojo could speak English, so we were forever translating between them. And then we discovered that one of the other guys had been to Japan for 6 years, so I was able to chatter away to him in Japanese, it was great! We ended up getting back to the hostel at about 3am, late, but well and truly before the other people in our dorm room!!!

This morning we were all buggered (one of the other girls didnt get back until 7am!), so we slept in. At about 10.30, one of the girls that works at the hostel came barging in, saying “Bobbi, I have a surprise for you!”. Bit of a shock, we all sat up in bed, as I was given the morning newspaper with my photo in it! Turns out that the crappy photo that the guy took the other day when we had just arrived was in the paper! We spent today touring the markets and every second stall had the newspaper, so I had people shoving it in my face and pointing to it all day!! Who knew, I don’t have to earn millions to become famous, I just have to have purple put through my hair!!!

XO ME!

Me with my purple hair, scary!!!

Me with my purple hair, scary!!!