HONG KONG AND AWAY...

Waking up in Beijing that morning, my sole task of the day was to get to the airport and fly back to Hong Kong. Simple? You'd think so. But Beijing was trying its hardest to make sure I left in a bad mood.

Did you know that Hong Kong officially became part of China again in 1997 (called 'the handover' by the Brits and 'the return' by the Chinese)? I knew that. Beijing apparently is still a bit confused about it, though. My flight back to Hong Kong was classified as international, meaning that I was subject to that ridiculous 100ml all-your-stuff-in-a-teeny-plastic-bag rule. I hate that rule at the best of times, but on a domestic flight? I was carrying one small suitcase which I hadn't thought to check in, this being a domestic flight and all, and as my original plan was to catch a train back to Hong Kong my packing wasn't very 100ml rule-friendly. So I had to watch with resignation as they confiscated my shampoo and deodorant and dumped them unceremoniously into a garbage bin, then with sadness as they did the same with my fake swiss army knife from Burma. Resignation and sadness then turned to horror as they pulled out the luxurious handcream that my grandma had just bought me in Australia. Noooooooooo! I don't usually carry luxuries when backpacking, and I'm not much of a handcream user, but this one I was very, very attached to. Ignoring the images in my head of being clapped in irons and thrown mercilessly into a Chinese prison, I kicked up a bit of a fuss. Unsurprisingly, they were rather inflexible. Eventually the uniformed gentlemen agreed to run it through that machine that allegedly reveals whether the contents are of the scary, bomb-building variety. Apparently they were. But, but, but...

So I did what any normal, self-respecting, sleep-deprived, slightly unhinged, weary traveller would do in times such as these. I took the handcream back, opened the jar, and proceeded to smear it all over my body. Everywhere. I rolled up my jeans and rubbed the handcream all over my legs. I rolled up my sleeves and put handcream all over my arms. I covered my face with handcream. I was a greasy, gooey, handcreamey mess, but they still wouldn't believe that it wasn't made of bomb-stuff and wouldn't let me take the rest of it (less than 100mls) on the plane with me. Bastards. I refused to let them sweep it into the bin while I was watching, so it sat on its own at the end of the table while I turned and sloped forlornly away to catch my plane.

I had arranged to meet up with a school friend in Hong Kong that evening, but - can you guess? - China decided to throw some more spanners into the works. The flight was delayed for half an hour in Beijing, then another hour during the stopover in Shanghai. I finally got to my hostel in Hong Kong half an hour after the time I was supposed to have met my mate at the pub. Forsaking a badly-needed shower, I dumped my gear and rushed out to meet H and her fiance. When I arrived at the pub I was flustered and distracted (though my skin was smooth and handcreamey soft) but all the trauma of leaving the mainland was quickly forgotten over cocktails and beers and 7 years' worth of catchup chats. We all had such a good time that I stumbled back to my cheap, grimy, windowless hostel only 4 hours before I was due to wake up and go to the airport to catch my flight to London. What could possibly go wrong?

If I was hungover when the alarm went off, that would have been ok. Unfortunately, I was still heavily intoxicated when the alarm went off. I didn't even hear it until it had reached the rapid, high-pitched screech that kicks in after it's been ignored for a few minutes. I think there was a ringing phone in my dream, but I was more than happy to ignore it. So when I eventually stirred, I reached out my hand, grabbed the alarm and...switched it off. I fell instantly back into a heavy and drunken slumber. That was a bit silly, really.

Still, I've decided I must have had a guardian angel (of non-specific religious denomination) who was determined to ensure I made it back to the UK. First, he/she/it compelled me to race along the streets in Canberra to collect my passport from the Embassy seconds before it closed for the weekend; then conspired to have me inexplicably arrive at Sydney airport three hours early only to find that my flight had been moved forward by two hours. I have to believe there was some external intervention happening, because it was very early in the morning, I was in a very dark room, was very drunk, had been asleep for a very short time, and had just switched off my alarm.

But, for some unfathomable reason, I woke up again 20 minutes later and suddenly (ok, slowly) realised where I was and that I needed to get to the airport immediately. I launched myself drunkenly out of bed, had the world's quickest cold shower, and left the hostel. I nearly got on the wrong bus, was almost physically ill the whole journey, but then finally, mercifully, managed to board the flight back to London...

...only to have it grounded for an hour and a half. So I folded my dehydrated, queasy and sleep-deprived self into a cramped, uncomfortable economy-class seat and counted down the minutes - all 87 of them - until the plane took off and I was on my way back - at long last - to London town.

THE WALL

My trip to Beijing started very badly. I walked out of the train station and into torrential rain, couldn't locate the bus I needed to catch to my hostel, and found that the taxi queue was about 100 people long. Quite literally. There were about ONE HUNDRED people lined up. I reluctantly stood in the queue for about 15 minutes, during which time only one taxi showed up to start shuttling the people in front of me. Tired and impatient, I decided to walk. In retrospect, walking on the streets of Beijing during a thunderstorm with zero knowledge of the language and very little idea of where I was going was probably not the best idea.

I had a map, which for many of you may have been a useful tool, but in my hands became quite meaningless. As soon as I stepped outside the train station I became completely and utterly lost. I couldn't tell one street from the next, the characters on the street signs were indecipherable, and the rain was coming down so hard my map quickly became a soggy mess. I wandered in the pouring rain for HOURS. Again, this is sadly not an exaggeration. I was actually wandering, lost in Beijing in the middle of a heavy downpour, for nearly two hours. Nobody on the street could understand English or help me get towards the place I was pointing to on the map. Oh, and did I mention I had no umbrella?

Eventually I found a tuk-tuk guy who screamed out at a passing student who ended up speaking a little English. I explained to her where I wanted to be, she told the driver, and insisted on jumping in the tuk-tuk with me to make sure I got there safely. At this point it's probably worth reminding you that I was completely drenched; I couldn't have been any more wet if I had jumped fully-clothed into a pool. She, on the other hand, was the picture of elegance underneath her umbrella. Why she offered to squeeze into an area the size of car boot with a drowned-rat and her soaking suitcase I'll never know. Once we screeched to a halt at the metro (which was much further away than I had imagined it to be), my Chinese Angel insisted on paying for the trip. I was completely overwhelmed by her generosity and kindness in helping me. Then to top it all off, despite having told me the metro was on her way home, she said her goodbyes and then hailed a taxi to get back to wherever she was heading before being dragged into the whirlpool of my disastrous morning.

Feeling overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers, I squelched into the metro and bought a ticket to the stop that looked closest to my hostel. I can only imagine what the other travellers thought as I stood beside them on the train, water puddling on the floor at my feet. After re-emerging above ground (still raining! joy!) I still had a 15-minute walk to reach my hostel. It was located in one of the few remaining hutongs in Beijing. Literally meaning 'alley' or 'small street', a hutong is a small neighbourhood of traditional courtyard houses and is a rapidly disappearing part of Beijing's cultural ecology. Given the splendid day I had had up until now, you'll not be surprised to learn that I managed to get lost among the interconnecting alleys in the hutong. And being rained on for two hours straight had me rather urgently needing the use of a loo. As I became increasingly agitated, I fleetingly toyed with the idea of dispensing with the use of a toilet altogether and relieving myself in the manner favoured by small children and crazy bag-ladies the world over (I was so drenched with water there would be no evidence) but alas, it wasn't in me. I decided instead to try my luck with a scary-looking hutong toilet block.

Relieved of my most urgent need, I was still dripping wet, miserable, dehydrated, and now sneezing and nursing a cracking headache. When I found the hostel and went to unpack my bag, I discovered that everything inside it was rain-sodden. Perfect. I had a shower and changed into a t-shirt that was only damp on the bottom half and managed to find some dry underwear hidden inside a wet shirt. The rest of my belongings I hung off the edge of the bunk and every other surface I could find in the dorm, before crawling under the sheets for a well-deserved nap.

I woke up a short while later, still unfortunately accompanied by my headache and sneezing. While I couldn't bear the thought of heading out in the rain again, I'd only planned two nights in Beijing so eventually I dragged myself out and made my way to Jingshan Park which overlooks the Forbidden City (photos above). Very impressive. Then I caught a bus home and went back to bed.

Walking the wall
I had already booked a bus trip to the Wall for the next day, meaning a VERY early start. I had two very sympathetic Chinese girls in my dorm with me, and after a bit of sneezing and sign language, they offered me what I assumed was cold or flu medication. I really had no idea what the little pills were, and I'm the sort of person who doesn't even take a Panadol unless it's under extreme duress, but I was eight hours away from hiking the Great Wall of China and felt like twelve layers of crap. So I took the pills.

And they worked! I woke early after a blissful sleep, packed my water and snacks for the day, and caught the bus that would take me out to the Great Wall of China (have you noticed how much I love saying that??). I'd opted for the more difficult of the wall segments open to daytrippers - Jimshangling to Simatai - and was a bit nervous about my fitness. I'd heard that there were parts in such bad disrepair you needed to climb around them, and that it was so tough that even guys with military training struggled. Rubbish. It was more often a climb than a walk, but it was fantastic.

The terrible weather of the previous day had lifted completely, and it was warm and sunny. I had taken some more wonder drugs that morning and while I still felt a bit crap, the euphoria of walking the Great Wall soon lifted me above the trials of a headcold. Yes I was still blowing my nose every three minutes, but I was blowing my nose on the top of the world!

It was a great day, and as I headed back to Beijing late that evening I found myself disappointed that I was set to leave the next day and train back to Hong Kong without having explored the city itself. So I decided not to leave after all. The fabulous Aussie couple I'd met in Xi'an had offered to let me stay with them should I need a place in Beijing, and after the horror and misery of my arrival in town, I decided to take them up on their kind offer. They had spoken so highly of Beijing, and all I'd seen so far was rain and traffic. I hadn't yet bought my train ticket back to Hong Kong, so booked a flight departing one day later instead.

Bicycling in Beijing
So my final day in Beijing was spent riding a bicycle around the lakes, through the streets, seeing a side of the city that I would never have thought existed behind the traffic-congested streets that I had glimpsed outside the bus window. B was a fantastic tour guide, and his love for his new home town was infectious. We met T for lunch, and later that night also had a great dinner with her dragon-boating friends. It was a lovely day, and my impressions of Beijing were changed so completely by that experience.

It was with a tinge of sadness that I headed off toward the airport the next day. Flying back to Hong Kong meant my trip was coming to an end, and though I was excited about finally returning to London I'd really enjoyed being back in Asia. Still, I intended to go out with a bang. I was planning that night to meet an old school friend who had moved to China a couple of years before, and was looking forward to much merriment in Hong Kong. First, though, I had to deal with Beijing International Airport...

THE WARRIORS

I was really really looking forward to my trip to Xi'an. It was to be my first foray inland into rural China. At least, that's what I thought. Once I jumped off the train I realised that although I was indeed inland, Xi'an was definitely not rural. I really should start reading guidebooks before I travel. If I had, I may usefully have learned that Xi'an is a city of more than 8 million people. It is also the capital of Shaanxi Province, and has a long and distinguished history as capital for many of China's most important dynasties. A guidebook would presumably also have alerted me to the hideous heat that awaited me. It was allegedly 39 degrees Celsius on my first day there but it felt much hotter.

As it was, all I knew about the place was that it was the gateway to the Terracotta Warriors, and apparently going to China without visiting the Warriors is akin to visiting Egypt and skipping the Pyramids. With this being such a short trip, I had given up any notion of seeking meaningful experiences and was just doing a quick tour of the biggest tourist sites with the intention to come back and explore China again in the future. Speaking of which, I met some amazing amazing people at my hostel in Xi'an who were definitely making the most of their first visit. Among my favourites were a lovely Australian couple who had recently moved to Beijing as part of AusAID's Youth Ambassador for Development programme; a Bosnian-born Swede who had spent most of the last 6 years living in India and Africa, and who was desperately seeking an elusive 'unguided' trip to Tibet; an amusingly clueless group of eight Canadian lads who were on their first trip out of the homeland, had no idea what they were doing, and were trying to make every decision (EVERY decision) on the basis of consensus; and lastly the seriously hardcore group of an Australian, an Irishman and a Finn who had met in Irkutz and stuck together ever since. While I suspect from a few things that slipped out in conversation that these guys had met and bonded through some pretty unnerving and harrowing experiences in Siberia, their adventures in Xi'an managed only to include a missed train and a suspected kidnapping.

Trying to overcome my severe case of Backpacker Envy, I wanted to have my own adventures and arranged with some other girls to cycle 14km along the top of the city walls on a bike that turned out to be so old and bone-shatteringly devoid of suspension I think I was 3cm shorter when I dismounted. Then of course there was the trip to see the famous Terracotta Army. AMAZING! There are three separate pits, discovered over the period of a few years, with Number One being the largest. Acting on a tip, we started with Number Three and worked our way backwards which I highly recommend. I walked into Number Three and was flabbergasted by the size and sheer amazingness of the whole thing. After taking about a billion photos we moved to Number Two which was even bigger and blew my mind again. Concluding with Number One - the biggest and most impressive - was just too much for my heat-exhausted and over-amazed brain to deal with. So I had an icecream and a little sit down. My Swedish friend and I had caught a local bus out there, flashed our drivers licence in order to claim a student discount (naughty, I know) and managed to spend the entire day at this breathtaking site for about AU $16 (including my icecream) as opposed to the $100-ish being charged by tour operators. Bargains make things even better.

The evening was spent exploring the Muslim quarter, buying souvenirs (a Chairman Mao clock! Irresistible!), eating and drinking. The next day I was on the train again and off to Beijing.

HONG KONG -> SHANGHAI

After the dramatic events surrounding my departure from Australia, I was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which I settled into Hong Kong. Immigration was quick and efficient, the buses were easy to find, bus routes were clearly marked, it was all very straightforward. And after a long, sleepless flight, that was exactly what I needed.

I'd booked into a little guesthouse in Kowloon - an area I hadn't really explored on my last trip to HK - and was delighted by the the contrast between it and the Hong Kong of my memories. Last time I'd stayed on Hong Kong island, which is the Hong Kong of postcards - huge, gleaming skyscrapers crammed side-by-side, a towering shopper's paradise of malls, air-conditioned walkways and office blocks. Kowloon is more stereotypically Chinese: neon signs hanging above the streets, chinese characters adorning every shopfront, crowds, grimy buildings, bustling markets popping up unexpectedly in side-streets. It had been a few years since I'd been to Asia and I was loving it.

I spent a couple of days in Hong Kong: eating, exploring, unsuccessfully trying to avoid buying things, and plotting my China trip. Apart from getting the visa and booking two nights' accommodation, I arrived without any plans at all. Just the way I like it. After eating my body weight in yum cha over a couple of days, I decided to catch a train to Shanghai.

From Hung Hom station it was a 20-hour journey to Shanghai. I thought for a moment I would have a 4-berth sleeper to myself, but in the end I was joined by a Chinese man who looked to be in his fifties and spoke not a word of English. After exhausting the cross-cultural communication potential of pointing and nodding within the first sixty minutes, I passed the daylight hours gazing out the window at the countryside passing by. I saw women washing their clothes in a filthy river, children riding their bikes along dusty streets, vegetable patches growing alongside the train tracks, images of life in the country. I pretended to be posh and had dinner in the dining car, then it was back to the berth for a surprisingly good night's sleep.

We arrived the next morning in Shanghai, and were held on the train for around 15 minutes while everyone had their temperature checked for swine flu. In Hong Kong, they'd tested me by shooting a laser gun at my head, but here on the mainland they weren't quite as high-tech. I tried not to shudder as a mask-wearing official stuck something in my ear, the very same unhygienic something that had just gone into my roommate's ear. My ear must have been particularly warm that morning, because I was pulled out of the queue and taken into a special room for further examination.

Despite nightmare images of being locked up in quarantine, the interrogation was cursory so I re-joined the immigration queue and entered China for the first time. I walked out into the madness of Shanghai.

The first thing I noticed was the smog. I'd been disturbed enough in Hong Kong - visions of Sydney harbour being as smoggy as Hong Kong harbour had horrified me and brought home the full tragedy of the pollution - but Shanghai was a whole other ballgame. The sky was milky, and the air was thick. I dragged myself and my baggage through the hazy morning air and settled into my hostel. It was a calm oasis providing refuge from the loud and dirty world outside. With a courtyard, a gently trickling water feature, and a bar packed with hot Norwegian backpackers and cheap lager, it was hard to make myself head back into the madness of Shanghai.

With tremendous willpower, I left my sanctuary and went out to explore the town. I wandered along Nanjing Lu, described by the Rough Guide as a cross between Broadway and Oxford Street, soaking up the consumerist extravaganza; explored the former glory of the Bund and fought my way through the hordes of Chinese tourists having their photos taken in front of the famous Pearl TV tower to take a snap of myself there.

The next day brought more exploring, and a surprisingly rewarding few hours in Shanghai Museum, but the city wasn't really exciting me as much as I hoped it might. So I booked a train to leave that night for somewhere I suspected I'd enjoy a whole lot more - Xi'An, most famous for being home to the Terracotta Warriors. After only 38 hours, I was off again.

OH WHAT A MONTH!

June 2009: The month I hiked along the Great Wall of China, gaped at the Terracotta Warrior Army in Xi'an, visited Windsor Castle and the Tower of London, saw the dawn of the summer solstice from inside the stone circle at Stonehenge, sat on Centre Court at Wimbledon, ate Swiss chocolate in the country where it was produced, visited the Pyramids in Egypt, watched the banks of the Nile slip past from the sundeck of a cruise ship, and explored 3,500 year old tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Not a bad way to spend 30 days...

I've been a very busy camper since flying out of Australia on the 31st of May. I think I'll start by outlining my escape from the land of Oz, then write later about my overseas adventures.

Come fly, come fly away...
I have to say, it was a huge pleasure to finally board the return flight to the UK that I had booked last September. During the intervening months there were many times when I doubted I would be able to make that flight, thanks to the imbecilic fumblings of the Home Office. In the end, it was my own imbecilic fumblings that almost caused me to miss the flight.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the bumbling UK bureaucrats had mistakenly sent my passport to Sydney, so I flew there first, collected my passport, and then drove a hire car to Canberra. I had a bunch of things to do there, one of the most important being to secure a visa for China. The Chinese embassy offers a same-day visa collection as long as you submit your application before 9:30am. Because of the timing of my arrival, I had to submit the visa application on a Friday morning. Then I went off to get a haircut.

Now, I knew the visa could be collected by 12pm, but as the minutes turned into hours my hairdresser didn't seem to develop any sense of urgency at all. After covering my head with chemicals she ran away, and seemed to forget I was there. Probably off with the trendy people. It was getting closer and closer to 12pm, and I was trying to remember whether the embassy re-opened after lunch. If I could collect my passport later in the afternoon I'd have plenty of time to receive a cut and colour so stylish that my friends in London would pass out with envy the minute they saw me (obviously the ideal). In my mind, I could still see the sign on the wall of the Chinese embassy: it said "Opening Hours", with "09:00-12:00" written beneath it and another line underneath that which my annoyingly non-photographic memory couldn't picture. Was it the afternoon opening hours? 13:00-16:00? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember.

I was getting a bit antsy, so the next time I caught sight of the hairdresser I grabbed her and tried to impress upon her the urgency of my leaving. She sent me to the basin where the dye would be washed out. Several long minutes (ok I know a minute can't actually be long but it seemed that way) later an apprentice came along to start. Halfway through it became clear that something had not gone according to plan. The head stylist was pulled over and many more minutes passed while they fussed around and rubbed something into my head. I had no idea what was happening. Despite being fairly confident I could collect my passport after 1pm, (that must have been afternoon opening hours on the sign) I was getting more and more agitated.

Once free of the basin, I told the hairdresser I didn't have time for my hair to be dried, ignored the look of shock on her face, practically threw the money at the till, and raced out the door with water still dripping down my back. The drive to the Embassy should have taken about 15 minutes - I think I did it in around 8. During the whole drive my head was thinking, "Why on earth are you speeding? You've missed the early slot, pick it up later" while my foot had other plans and was planted firmly on the accelerator. I wasn't consciously panicked, but my body was behaving as though it was. Very strange.

I (almost) screeched into the dirt car park and raced through the embassy doors at 11.59am. While I felt satisfied in an adrenaline-fuelled kind of way, I still felt a little silly about my melodramatic exit from the hairdressers and super-speedy trip to the Embassy. That is, until I looked again at the sign that my mind's eye had been trying to picture for the last half hour. It did indeed say "Opening Hours", with the line below reading "09:00-12:00". However the line underneath that didn't say "13:00-16:00" as I had assumed (but not seen in my mental picture). It said "MON-FRI".

Whoa.

I was literally 30 seconds away from having the ever-bureaucratic Chinese close the doors and lock away my passport until 9:00am Monday: more than 24 hours after my international flight was scheduled to depart from Sydney. I was a bit stunned. All morning I had been confused by the involuntary panic that had driven me to hurry the hairdresser along, cut away early and speed along the streets. But it seemed my subconscious had remembered the bottom line of the sign and forced me to act even though my conscious mind didn't know why. Would've been a whole lot simpler from the start if my subconscious had just let my conscious mind read the bloody sign. Don't they know how to share?

Oh well, at least it all worked out. What else could go wrong now? Um...

I drove back to Sydney on Saturday and stayed with some friends in Lane Cove. My flight was the next morning, and the plan was to drive to the airport and return the hire car, leaving plenty of time to do a bit of duty-free shopping and board my flight to Hong Kong. I had to be at the airport 2 hours early, but I added a little extra time in case there were any issues with the hire car, then added a little more in case I got lost or traffic was unexpectedly bad (at 5am the latter wasn't likely but the former certainly was). In the end, the gods of fortune smiled on me. The traffic was non-existent, and I cruised to the airport without making a single wrong turn. The hire car return was also quicker than expected, so I arrived at the departure terminal with plenty of time to spare, looking forward to wandering around and buying a few last-minute items of Australiana (think Tim Tams and Triple J CDs, not koalas and kangaroos).

So far, so good. I walked into the departure terminal and looked at the screens to find out which counter was checking in passengers on my flight. But my flight wasn't there. That was a bit weird, as I could see an earlier Cathay Pacific flight on there, and one a few hours later. Where was mine? I walked over to the information desk and asked which counter I should use to check-in to my flight, and was promptly told that my flight had been cancelled.

Uh, excuse me?

"Don't worry," the woman continued, "we've booked you on the earlier flight".

I didn't even have time to yell at her about the impracticality of cancelling a flight and re-booking to an EARLIER flight without advising the passenger (were they relying on my psychic powers to ensure I arrived at the airport 4 hours early?) because the luggage check-in closed in 10 minutes' time and boarding commenced immediately after that. I raced to the counter, checked in (was allocated a crummy middle seat, no surprise there), twitched impatiently in the security queue, then ran up to the boarding gate to arrive just in time to board. Whew.

If I hadn't left my friend's house extra-early, or if I had made one wrong turn on the trip to the airport, I wouldn't have arrived in time to make my flight. That was twice that the Universe had conspired to ensure that I successfully made this trip back to the UK. I don't know what it is about things happening in threes, but 'they' helped me one more time, as I also nearly missed the final leg of my flight from Hong Kong to London. But I'll tell you about that bit next time...

HAPPINESS THROUGH WANTING LESS

In an oh-so-subtle reference to my lack of recent blog updates, I offer you this article from the New York Times on The Joy of Less.

It reminds me also of a Danish study that found that the secret to happiness is to have low expectations. This makes good sense. I've always found that being pessimistic and then surprised by good things happening makes me feel more joyful than those times I've built up high expectations only to be slightly disappointed by reality.

For example, I had low expectations of my recent trip to China but ended up thoroughly enjoying myself. I'll eventually find the time to blog about that trip and attach some pretty photos for your viewing pleasure. By being so slack in updating you on my travels, I'm actually keeping expectations low and therefore increasing your happiness when I finally post something interesting. So this irregular blogging schedule is all for your benefit, really.

(See what I did there?)