Kowloon, HongKong

Will in theory put up pics from Yangshuo in next few days but in reality ... um ... prob won't get round to it cos we will be hooooome :D And i'm afraid to confess we don't have a single photo of hongkong - oops!

Yep thats right - we head out to the airport in about 1/2 an hour then tonight hop on a plane back to good old Perth! As always with these things it seems like we have hardly been away for anytime but at the same time it feels like aaaaaages since we've been in Oz!

Either way we are both looking forward to getting back and catching up with everyone! So, barring meteor showers, spontaneous human combustion and other likely holdups we will see you all soon :D

Love Meg xxx

Leshan, Sichuan, China

Spent the day today at Leshan seeing Buddhist temples and the 71m high Buddha. I swear i have never sweated so much in my life! Even walking up the mountains was dryer than this!! The temples that we saw were also really fascinating. Especially good was the hall with 1000 terracotta 'Arhat' (Buddhist celestial beings) which look like people. They are all life size and all have different positions and faces and facial expressions (some of which were really funny!).


The pics here are:
1) typical looking scene with river inlet, buildings etc we then walked down and across the the wall path you see here
2) Vera carefully reading and then rereading the info on the tombs cos it was really interesting (nothing to do with the fact it was 10degrees cooler inside the tombs of course ...) To be fair tho the ancient Ming tombs were pretty cool (in all senses ;)



3) The giant Buddha from above - note the teeny tiny people in top left corner to get an idea of size)
4) The same Buddha from below after we climbed down the cliff steps (along with half the population of China)









BTW we also went to see a Sichuan Culture show last night which had Sichuan Opera, puppets, fire spitting, face changing and music - VERY cool .... um but i forgot my camera :P

Oh and heading to Yangshuo tomorrow (fly to Guilin then bus to Yangshuo)

Also - only 1 week till we are home :D

Chengdu, Sichuan, China

This is a quick pic i just snapped (literally cos i just ran outside in my pjs to get it lol) of our hostel here in Chengdu, the 'Dragon Town Hostel'. Since we have stayed here 3 times now i and the building itself is really cool - typical Sichuan old style, i thought i'd put a pic up. Plus at night with all the red lanterns it is all golden red and glowy :D

Qingcheng Shan, Sichuan, China

We just climbed 2 mountains in 2 days!!! Ok they are very little mountains with steps all the way up but still sounds good we reckon :D

The first was Qingcheng Shan which we climbed the first day then spent the night in the Taoist Temple complex near the summit, then the second day we walked back down, caught a taxi to Qingcheng Houshan, then (when we eventually found the path) climbed about 4/5 of the way before we caught a cable car for the last bit, then caught a different cable car for 1/2 the journey back down. This was officially so we didn't miss the bus back that night - but unofficially we were just sick of climbing slippery stairs in tropical humidity! :P

Anyway we had fun - i only slipped over once and then only slid down a few steps (apparently only once is really good!) and of course Vera didn't slip at all :) Also had 2 short boat trips where the path runs into a lake and Ve is now in about a billion Chinese tourists' holiday photos! Had i only started charging 1 yuan per photo from the start we could have been rich! ;(

Finally returned to hostel in Chengdu that night (3 buses later) and thoroughly enjoyed our 'Liao's Bon Bon Chicken' for dinner (we got half a chicken cos it was the only thing we recognised and we were too hungry to be adventurous - though i confess neither of us wanted the half a head including tongue that was attached ... )

Mounigou Reserve, Sichuan, China

We visited this area during horse trek one afternoon. The photos really don't do it justice! The collection of lakes, streams and caves was only over a few kilometers but was just stunning. Also included hot springs, fields of wildflowers and lush dark forest.


Reflection Lake










Vera the muskateer (see the feather in her hat??) examining yet more wildflowers...











Erdaohai Lake








very clear lake whose name i can't remember - see the fallen logs lying at the bottom!











Another clear lake but with a limestone bottom this time

Songpan, Sichuan Province, China

Well back in Chengdu again now after our horse trek in Songpan (a veeeery long bus ride from north of here). Had a brilliant time on the trek! We went for 3 days, which generally involved riding all morning, then walking in the arvo. Our guides were great and the area is just stunning. Packed with wildfowers and streams and waterfalls everywhere! Anyway here are just a few pics (we took over 150 in 4 days!!!). I will put the ones from Mounigou Lakes area in next post.
The first pic here is just some of the stunning wildflowers we saw.




Vera with 2 of our guides. She now has an impressive number of adoption offers from all over the world lol












Vera with one of her many flower collections - apparently she does still want to be a geologist but said and i quote "if i lived here i'd definitely be a botanist instead" :)










Vera riding her horse along the mountain side










Our trusty steeds!










Misty mountain view - pic taken from horseback (and i didn't even fall off doing it!)








Vera having a lesson in working the animal skin bellows while our fellow trekkers look on










Pic taken from bus as we drove along cliff road above the river south of Songpan

Chengdu Panda Capital of China

We flew to Chengdu from Beijing and headed off the next day (yesterday) to see the pandas at the research sanctuary here. It is a fantastic place - very big and great enclosures and they have the most successful captive breeding program in the world.
(btw no idea why the above seems to want to be a hyperlink?? All instructions are in Chinese characters at the moment so no clue how to fix? Um yes this is one of the many reasons i'm ashamed to say i'm in IT lol)

See if you can spot the adolescent pandas gobbling bamboo here!




This pic looks fake i reckon but the pandas truly are that adorable!!!












Aaaaand once again he is eating :) It is pretty much all they do all day - not a bad life i reckon - so long as bamboo does it for you!

Great Wall of China at Mutiang

I'm sure i am spelling everything wrong for China but i'm too lazy to check and hey - at least you are getting some pics ;)



We walked along the whole section that was open to the public here - not sure how long it was but we estimate 6-8km (and we did both directions so we were pretty stuffed by the end!). Beautiful views and some horribily steep climbs up steps made for giants and midgets alternatively! In this pic you can see about half of the section we walked.







Stupidly enough it surprised me cos i had thought from pics i had seen that the wall itself was pretty flat ... but when you think about the fact it is built on the ridge between the highest points of mountains ... well no - flat is not the word i would use!









This is us looking verrrrrrry hot and sweaty - and boy were we ever! We didn't bring quite enough water but i confess when we had to fork out 5 times the normal price for a bottle of icy water from some enterprising locals it was well worth it!






I should confess that we cheated a bit since we caught a chairlift up to the wall itself and a toboggan down (weeeeeeee!) These blokes were at the bottom and once again we got ripped of cos i totally suck at bargaining but they were very entertaining at least :D









This last pic is the beautiful view from a window in one of the watchtowers in the wall.

Beijing, China

A few brief flashes of our time in Beijing :)



First views of China (including front of the train!)











Temple of Heaven Park












Vera with her whole coconut drink in Wangfujiang Snack St (we declined the fried scorpions and sea horses i'm afraid)













Countdown to the Beijing Olympics opposite Tiananmen Square

Beijing, China

Hiya
Just a brief update to say yes we are in China :) Unfortunately the 'great firewall' of china doesn't let me go to our blog address - however i can update it since this has a different address (just not see it!) To add to the fun this computer doesn't have a USB port - i have found lots where you can't access the USB port but this is the first i've found that actually just doesn't have one!! Sooooo no photos today sorry - and we had cool ones of us on the the real Great Wall too :(

So heading from Beijing to Chengdu (in Sichuan province) in a few hours for anyone who is following us on the map. Hopefully we will find some pandas and also a connection where we can upload our pics :D

Otherwise China is great fun and yes we have been gorging ourselves on steamed buns ;)

Meg xxx

the Gobi, Mongolia

Photo diary (well a teeny tiny part) of our Gobi tour. It also doesn't show the millions of horses, goats, cows, sheep, camels, eagles, vultures, marmots, weird bugs and other unidentified creatues we saw ;)

1) yet another horse and foal - we saw millions!

2) the trendy twins at bayan zag - site of heaps of dinosaur fossil and the edge of what used to be a sea!

3) Yoliin Am ICE gorge - yes that is actually ice in the middle of summer in the middle of the gobi!!!! Very bizarre!
4) cute little squirrel sized creatures we saw in the non-ice parts of the gorge

5) khongor els (sand dunes) - the smudge on the edge is vera collapsing on the way up - I was already at the top (hehe - points for the oldies versus the kids i reckon lol) btw she did make it to the top a few minutes later :D

6) riding 2 humped camels out to the dunes

7) lunch break in middle of the little mountain range we were driving through
8) a tiny part of the ruins of the huge twin monasterys at Ongi - they were destroyed (like nearly all buddhist temples) during the stalinist purges in the 1930's. The monks were mostly killed or imprisoned, the buildings destroyed and in this case the river diverted to a mine.

9) hole in ruins built on island, view through to the lake and grassland

10) a typical view during trip - note the angle of the jeep to the horizon!!!

11) Some really deserty looking gobi :)

12) sunset at Ogii Lake where we chilled for a few days and ve played with all the kids before returning to UB Beautiful lake but looked kinda strange to us cos there was no vegetation higher than a foot and mostly it was just grass.

Terelj National Park, Mongolia

We have spent the last 4 days in a beautiful area just north of Ulaanbaatar. The tour we went on was really cool cos we got to meet and get to know some of the local nomads. The trip was called “become a nomad in 4 days” to give you some idea :)



Started with us hopping off the bus and basically directly onto horses! Only the second time i’ve ever ridden a horse and the following day we did over 20km! I think i stupidly looked overconfident cos Ve and the other girl on the tour with us had their horses led by the guides while i was kinda just tossed on and pointed in the right direction :P Great fun, though my legs could barely hold me up by the time we arrived lol

We brought our own tents but pretty much spent all our time in the ger(s) of the local family we were staying with. Got to eat traditional food which was mostly dairy products this time of year (mostly meat in winter time apparently) and even helped make some which was fun. We had urum which is a kind of cross between cream and butter, dried curds, very ‘fizzy’ yoghurt and an absolute tonne of milk tea. The milk tea is cows milk, tea scraped from a solid block, water and a little flour boiled together and served alllll the time lol. I think the only time we actually appreciated it was on the last day after riding on an ox cart through the rain and being thoroughly cold and wet by the time we arrived at the next ger!

We also played traditional games using sheep ankle bones (like knuckle bones – but different games), attempted some traditional Mongolian sewing and generally just hung out with the people. Even had a game of tennis Mongol style which involves wacking the ball at each other any way you please and the other person hopefully stopping it before it rolls down the hill to where the cows are being milked :) And there sure is lots of nice grass to play on out there :D

Anyway the people we stayed with were absolutely lovely and we returned with a much better understanding of nomad life, a lot of photos, a strong need to never see any cream again ever and a slight tummy bug – clearly we are not as tough as the locals who drink water directly from the river while we had to boil ours first :P Also a rather desperate need for a shower lol