New Berlin?

We shared a sleeping compartment to Taishan with two pretty disgusting Chinese men. One snored so deeply all night we each separately fantasised about cutting his face off, and the other hacked and spat into the bucket next to me all morning, and then calmly smoked under the no-smoking sign with the compartment door shut. A 'Chinese bikini' (hoisting the shirt up under the armpits to expose the huge belly) would have completed the look. I opened the compartment door to let the smoke out and he hurriedly put his fag out in his gob-filled bin. I think I embarrassed him because he spent the rest of the journey trying to communicate pleasantries with me, and then forcibly carried some of my bags off the train for me once we arrived. Awkward.

Taishan was a bit of a nightmare for tired souls such as us (the train had left at 1am and arrived around 6am). No taxi would even look at us, and our instructions for the bus were far from clear. We felt well and truly stuck and hostel-less. It took a lot of bleary walking about and asking the tourist office guy for help (similarly vague directions) before we found a street we were happy to give up on. Photocopied Lonely Planet was not much help as the map lines didn't show up. It took several more taxi-attempts before one would deign to take us (driving all of 5 mins to our destination – it was more like paying for directions). Our destination was a YHA place, but instead of putting helpful signs directing you to its entrance, it just left its logo everywhere like a dog pissing out its territory. These logos led us on a merry dance round several confusing sets of buildings before we found someone to ask and point us. We changed our booking from dorm to private room and commenced to sleep all day.

We knew about Taishan because it's in Lonely Planet and because friends of ours went there – but from the reactions of the locals you'd think they'd never seen a Caucasian before in their lives. Again it was stares, giggles, candid cameras, and more giggles if they tried to say hello to us. Weird.

The main focus of our stay was this clever concept of 'hey, it's midnight, let's climb this holy mountain to see what dawn looks like from up there!' The rest of the town is pretty shitty and very much under construction, so I won't bother talking about that. We had the first day to recover from the overnight train, then checked out the next morning and had to hang around all day waiting for night, then the next day to recover all our sleep in. A simple plan.

We equipped ourselves with raincoats (the weather wasn't being kind) and a very clever rechargeable torch which can plug into the wall, and headed out to look for the mountain at around 10.30 (bored of waiting). We're definitely not night owls, so we were already pretty sleepy. We knew we'd arrived at the gate because people had started to try and sell us stuff, so we joined a bunch of Chinese kids with radios blaring out pop songs and ventured into the dark. Every so often you would come across groups of people or drinks vendors emerging like ghosts from the dark. Then temples with incense. A very nice excuse for a stop and a sit-down – the steps were relentless. We began to wonder if a sunrise really was worth all this. It was our third sunrise pilgrimage of the trip and we weren't sure we want to do it ever again. I don't think we even like sunrises. But the temples were pretty all lit up in the dark, and there was a sort of camaraderie spirit. Shortly after the halfway point I definitely thought I was going to die. The steps only seemed to get steeper and more unforgiving. It was like the Inca Trail but with no coca leaves to keep us going.

I actually didn't believe we'd reached the top. I suppose seemed too much to hope for. It was like a refugee camp with tents pitched on the concrete, even more vendors, and guys hiring out these slightly sinister military trench coats. Actually, it turned out this wasn't the top. Not the one we'd been told to aim for anyway, so we climbed another half an hour in the now freezing winds past some pretty temples to find the dawn viewing place. Our torches revealed dozens of Chinese couples huddled against rocks for shelter and we did the same until we realised we should keep moving if we wanted to avoid hypothermia.

I'm ashamed to say our patience failed us when waiting for the sun to actually rise. It was getting quite light, and the usual guys had pitched up to try and sell you a photo of yourself. We decided screw proper sunrise, it was too cold, and confused everyone by leaving. Hordes of people in trenchcoats swarmed up the mountain towards us to make the sunrise point. It felt quite good to be going against the flow. The refugee camp was being packed up and everything was all new in the emerging daylight. A few stragglers trying to get up those last steps tried to practise their English with us, but apart from that our trek back down was almost deserted. A new wave of vendors were setting up, the sun was beginning to establish itself, and overall it was an incredibly peaceful and beautiful walk down (if not murder on the legs). We're glad we left early.

Actually, after a while we were wondering how we didn't notice what a stupidly long way it was. Especially the bit between the mountain entrance and the hostel. How did we miss that? Anyway, I think we'll be happy if we never see another sunrise again. We claimed a room back from the hostel and did some more all-day sleeping.

Next destination: Beijing! Taxis back to the station were even bigger arseholes than on the way since they wouldn't even stop to see what we wanted. So, fearing we were about the miss the train, we had to drag our weary bones complete with heavy bags to the point of collapse half an hour to the station. Grrr. Ok, so we made it, and we also got to Beijing no bother. So let's just acknowledge the general wankerishness of taxi drivers the world over and move on.

When we were volunteering at SSF in Cambodia we met Isabella, who had spent 6 months living in Beijing and said she'd had the best time ever. So it only made sense that we should therefore do the things she did. She very kindly hooked us up with her couchsurfing friends there, so it was that we found ourselves staying with Seen and Jean-Marie. And it was good advice because they were fantastic. We too had the best time in Beijing. The couchsurfing scene there is very active – more like an ex-pats social club. On the first night we went to a film night at a vegan cafe which JM had organised; the next night was all you can eatanddrink Teppanyaki to celebrate Isabella's return to Beijing (so yay! We got to see her again), next night everybody else went to see Fatboy Slim at the Great Wall, but we stayed in with all you can drink hangovers; then on Sunday there was a BBQ and taco night where Paul was taken for Kid Rock and got really into Guitar Hero; and then the last night was some of the best dumplings I've had in China! After that we felt like Beijing regulars. In between this busy social calendar we went sightseeing (Forbidden City, Wall, some lake with annoying massage touts who hit me with their sign) and, of course, the Mongolian embassy.

These guys keep their visa section in a hut at the back of the embassy so you can't actually get into the complex. This is because hundreds of angry wannabe Mongolia tourists would storm the embassy and hold the ambassador under siege if they could. The reason being the queue is very long, the time window very short, and the woman in the hut excruciatingly slow. I hear for many people it takes several days of queuing (and probably missing their train) before they have some success. We were lucky though, got our passports in, and were told to come at 4 the next day. We also had to do some weird dance with the Bank of China to pay for the visas and bring back a receipt, because the embassy wouldn't take the money. Paul only knew this because he read the sign. When we came back at 3.30 the next day (the queue was already getting pretty epic) many people were not aware of this payment quirk and were forced to run to the bank in a panic. 4 came and went, and as 4.30 approached a siege mentality had developed. Pick up of visas was only meant to be between 4 and 5 so people were quite irate. It almost came to blows when the visa lady did eventually turn up and some old man tried to do the Chinese thing of pushing in. Unfortunately for him he tried to push in front of a very scary tattooed Kiwi woman who was having none of it. 5 came and went, and we were so close to the front of the queue! We had visions of the window coming down in from of us and leaving us stuffed (we didn't really have the luxury of coming back). But no, we made it. If nothing else it made us really appreciate our shiny new visas. We went for a bubble tea to celebrate.

Oh yes, we also went to the Great Wall! Well you've got to, haven't you? By now we're too lazy to wrestle camels or whatever to find special no-touristy places, so we went for the second easiest section of the Wall (not so lazy that we'd stomach Badaling!). We were going to Mutianyu and the Internet had told us that there was an actual direct bus at 9am. This was a lie and for the life of us we could not find this bus. So we had to take on the Beijing transport Olympics instead – take a bus to some place, then get a taxi from there. Unfortunately we had no idea which this stop was, but we were pretty sure it wasn't the one that the guy with 'I am a scammer' written all over his face made us get off at. He was very insistant about it to the point of panic, and since we were so helpless and he'd paid off the driver, we had no choice.

So we got off, I negotiated us the price I was expecting to pay anyway and then, lo and behold! Mr. Scam's nasty broken car was parked at the bus stop. No wonder he was so desperate we should get off there. Anyway, we were very annoyed about being so blatantly targetted as victims. We did get there, however, and the guy said he would wait for us, no charge, and take us back again for double our original price. He also followed us into the carpark and tried to offer us tours. I think he had grand plans to make a lot of money out of us, but we had gone and found out about the bus back. When we tried to pay him and get rid of him he put up a huge fight, lying to our faces about there being no bus, putting on a pretty pathetic display. Evenutally we won and he looked like he might get some thugs to beat us up so we legged it. Paul reckons he actually lost money on us because he would have had to spend a bit to get his claws into us in the first place. So ha ha ha – we screwed over the scammer. Serves him right for being such a lying cheat.

The base of the Wall was filled with the usual annoying touts and salesmen (salesmen whiney, touts aggressive) but we escaped them, bought our tickets, and started to climb some million steps upwards (Taishan all over again). It was a gorgeous hot day, and since it was Monday and not the main toursit place, it was actually pretty peaceful. The scenery was lovely and the Wall (once we got there) was pretty spectacular. We did a bit of a hike along it, but the heat got the better of us in the end and we headed back down into the cool conifers. Back at the bottom we had an hour to find the bus stop and met some very friendly Germans who told us the ridiculous and roundabout route they'd had to take to find the outgoing bus in the first place. I must point out that, actually, everyone in Beijing is German. We should be calling it New Berlin or something. At the BBQ (and there were a lot of people there) around 70% of people were German. I'm not complaining – we've recently come to the realisation that the Germans are always really good craic. Just like the whole trip was building up to China, and China building up to Beijing, the amount of Germans we've met around the world was really building up to the New Berlin we discovered in Beijing.

Anyway, eventually it was time to leave China. We'd bought a whole shop full of instant noodles and dried things, and were ready for the Trans-Mongolian. We were sharing our carriage with a lot of Dutch people (not German for a change!) and the scenery out of the window changed from city to Great Wall mountains to flat deserts. It felt like we were really journeying somewhere, and this was the real start of our journey home.

At the border we were obliged to wait 20 years for the guys to change the wheels of the train and do clever things with our passports. By the time we were allowed back onto the the train I was pretty much asleep and kept having to be jolted awake to hand various forms over to Mongolians. There wasn't time to celebrate our arrival into Mongolia. The minute my passport hit the table I was away in the land of Nod, and the train trundled along through the desert.

Things we will miss about China:

Dumplings and steamed buns
All the weird things you can buy in the supermarkets
Actually, food in general
Bubble tea (what's the point of a drink if it doesn't have bits of jelly floating in it?)
Friendly people
Young couples wearing matching clothes (haha, hilarious)
The infrastructure and handy metros
General relief from touts
Shopping centres
Relative cheapness
Relative safety
Hot water everywhere

Things we will not miss about China:

SPITTING
No sense of queuing (and pushing and shoving and unacceptable stranger-on-stranger violence)
Staring
Stealth photographs (I tried to accept that I should just use it as a practise for when I'm a celebrity, but it still just felt too invasive)
spitting
Chinese bikini
Smoke everywhere
Smog
Instant noodles
Firewall
Heiroglyphics
Gangs of noisy Chinese tourists
Disgusting men and male dominance
Blueberry Crisps

The Inception Effect

The interesting thing about China was how un-like the China we'd expected it actually was. Most people in the western world still have the picture of the rice farmers being transported around in busfulls of chickens etc. Instead you're generally presented with ultra-modern cities with super-efficient metros and in a way, it feels a lot more 21st century than the likes of the UK. We were certainly loving it as it was a huge (positive) contrast to our impressions of SE Asia and felt much more like Japan than say, Vietnam.

Our next destination was Guangzhou where we met Deirdre, a friend of ours from Scotland. There was a bit of a moment where it looked like the immigration lady was going to make a fuss about Charlotte's passport photo but thankfully the production of her driving license solved the problem (despite the two different names...). Deirdre left Scotland not long after we did to do a year's teaching music in China. She'd been there for a few months before this time and had had a hideous experience with a deeply unpleasant, scammy (UK-based before you go accusing China!) employment agency. She'd ended up flying back to the UK in that "emergency" way that we all dread but had had the balls to come back to China (I wouldn't have done!) a few months later and thankfully, all was going swimmingly. She was living in a gorgeous new apartment complex with all mod cons, gymn, swimming pool, shop and Maria, her crazy flatmate (in an entirely wonderful way). She'd donated us the use of her room and was bunking down with Maria - another example of the crazy kindness people have shown us.

Guangzhou is a good example of the super-modern Chinese city and on our first day of wandering we took in the big skyscrapers and the river. we started to notice what we later dubbed the "Inception Effect". We'd seen the movie "Inception" first in Brazil. It's about Leo De Caprio invading people's dreams and manipulating them to his own ends. Whenever he tries to change something in the dream, the people in the dream start to notice him, first by staring and later by attacking him. This is what walking through a Chinese street can feel like. People stare without the Western "it's rude to stare" attitude that we usually have and as a result your paranoia can start to kick in. You have to try and rise above it as to them, it's just them being interested in you and what you're up to in their country. In fact, it's frequently that they're impressed that you're there and surviving at all! That evening Deirdre took us to a restaurant that she had tried a couple of weeks before. We did the Chinese thing of ordering a few dishes to share not knowing exactly how much food would be coming. The portions were enourmous, particularly of a kind of fish-in-broth which seemed to have come in something resembling a bucket. There were also green things with bits of meat, gyoza (like we'd had in Japan) and some kind of chicken dish. Also unlimited flower tea poured by a guy with a huge, er, spout. It was all stunning but we left tonnes as our bellies started to bulge. We saw another example of making-friends by speaking the language when Deirdre seemed to be chatted up by the waiter. She restrained herself from getting his 'phone number but I reckon she could have done! Everyone was so impressed and surprised by any foreign grasp of Mandarin.

We went out for beers afterwards which involved our first encounter with Chinese taxis. First of all, the drivers are mental and all drive like Nigel Mansel and secondly their temperament is extremely variable. Actually it's a bit like the Chinese way of queuing. Ie they don't queue, they shove you out of the way (in this case with their car). The first guy was a total horror and spent most of the journey huffing and and puffing at Deirdre and talking on his mobile. The guy on the way back on the other hand was a total gemstone and spent the journey chatting Deirdre up and teaching her how to speak.

Day 2 in Guangzhou was spent wandering round the colonial area. Although China was never a colony, there are a number of "concession" areas in its cities (e.g. the "French Concession" in Shanghai) which were areas carved up amongst various countries for trading purposes. The Guangzhou area had loads of bronze statues all over it including some rather fine fiddle players! It was apparently THE place to have your wedding photos done. There were so many white clad couples there (yes, the men too) we thought it could be a magazine shoot. That evening Deirdre got very excited about the prospect of having instruments kicking around the place, not having had access to any for a year so she spent a bit of time playing around with the fiddles and working out some tunes. All too soon the next morning it came time for us to leave so we bid our fond farewells and headed north on the sleeper train. This one was the so called "hard sleeper" which is a long corridor with berths of six bunks in it - a bit like a hostel dorm. It was a pleasant way to travel which was just as well as the journey to Shanghai was to be 20 hours! China is a really big place. We were in a berth with a couple of Thai and Chinese guys who were veyr pleasant and spoke a little English. It was interesting to see the lack of adherance to China's recently introduced smoking ban with loads of folk puffing away between the carriages. China as a whole really reeks of fag smoke. Oh well, it's the Chinese way!

At 4.00am the next morning the lights flashed on and we started drawing into Shanghai. A couple of metros later (super efficient as-per!) and we met up with Daisy. She is the fiancee of Tom, a schoolfriend of Charlotte's who she used to lift-share with back in the halcyon days of her youth. Daisy was the first Chinese person we'd really had the chance to grill so we asked all our questions about the history and culture of China and she was able to fill in the roles of such famous names as Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping. China is obstensibly a communist country but realistically, it's probably the most capitalist country we've been in and suffers from a lack of free education or healthcare - odd for socialism.

After much chat it was food time again so Daisy took us to try some Shanghainese food. One of their specialities is Dumplings filled with soup which you suck out before munching the dumpling - great fun! She also took us on a wander round the bund and East Nanjing road - two of Shanghai's famous areas. The Bund is part of its colonial past but the real highlight is the view across the Huangpu River to the crazy skyscrapers on the other side. We did see Tom that evening but all-too briefly as he was off to his regular gig at the Hilton.

Shanghai was and still is a major international trading and financial post and as a result has a bustling ex-pat scene which we got a taste of the next day. We joined Tom, Daisy and their friend Oliver at an Irish bar which did a great Sunday buffet brunch. A very British feeling lazy Sunday was had as a result with many beers drunk (including some Kilkenny - brown ale at last!) and many musings pontificated over. Throughout our lazings various other friends of Tom and Daisy came and went and a generally chilled time was had by all. It was a grand day.

Tom and Daisy were moving flats at the time we were in Shanghai and had a "spare flat" as a result which they leant to us. It was such a pleasure to have a place to be where we could cook some food, come and go as we please and spend some time chilling out and watching telly. They even had a coo-el DVD player with a USB slot that could play all the episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" we'd downloaded. I'd been reading the follow up to "Eat, Pray, Love" which is called "Commited" and is mainly about the authors musings on marriage as she drifts around SE Asia with her Brazillian boyfriend. At one point he displays truly Paul-esque bout of travel fatigue stating that all he wants is a "coffee pot". In short, he craves exactly what I crave, a place to exist with a kettle, cooker, shop nearby, TV and (for me) decent internet connection. Here, in Shanghai we finally had it and it was a real pleasure.

Not that we didn't explore Shanghai. We made sure that we took in the Bund at night (stunning), explored some of the big crazy shopping centres and went out for some more keen means with Tom and Daisy (including some seriously impressive spicy Szechuan food laced with frog no less!). A particular highlight for us was having the ability to have "dinner guests" in the form of Tom and Daisy and a large pot of my special spag-bol. I hadn't made it for ages and I totally relished the opportunity. We also got the chance to see Tom play at a local jam night and even did a little playing and singing ourselves.

Our last day in Shanghai was spent mostly in two museums. The first was the "Shanghai Urban Planning Centre" which sounds like it should be as dull as ditchwater but was actually really good. It took us through the history of Shanghai with a bunch of old photos and then to the present and future. There was a certain amoint of "oh look at us aren't we jolly clever" style propeganda but it was impressive nevertheless. It even had a small-scale model of Shanghai which was pretty nice. Afterwards we delved into the past at the museum of propaganda posters. It took us through the time before, during and after the Cultural Revolution and was truly fascinating. The owner was particularly enthusiastic and would occasionally come through to point out some of the characters in the posters including Mao (of course) but also Truman, Churchill and Stalin. It even went through to the mid 70s when the famous "one child per family" policy was instigated with a smiling nurse holding a leaflet and a bottle of pills...

Again, the time to leave had come so it was off on the train to Nanjing, after thanking Tom and Daisy profusely for more extreme kindness.

One confusing thing that happened in Shanghai (before we move on to other things) was this - space jellyfish. We just can't understand them. In the sky were what looked like the underneath of aeroplanes, but on second glance weren't really moving and were actually multiciloured lights. Getting closer it looked like they had tails behind them which made us think they were lit-up kites. But they were too high up, even compared to the tops of the appartment blocks, for that. Only conclusion - space jellyfish!

Our China leg was starting to feel a lot like our US leg as we were bouncing from friend to friend. Nanjing is the home of Zhijun, one of Alan (my dad's) colleagues who had recently moved back to China after a spell in the UK. He met us at the train station with another of his colleagues and whisked us off (in a car he'd hired specially no less) for some Korean BBQ. It was a bit like the Cambodian BBQ we'd had before but the quality of the meat was far higher. We were able to quiz Zhijun about his impressions of living in the UK compared to living in China. we took in some of Nanjing's central area that evening which had loads of crazy pet shops with some rather sorry looking furry creatures packed into far-too-small cages. There was also the Confucian temple - which had been turned into a shopping area and lit up with multi-coloured lights all along the traditional roofs.

Zhijun toured us round the lake and a really lovely mountain green space with several temples and pagodas. In the evening we headed to Yangzhou (not to be confused with Yangshou) which is the town where Zhijun grew up. He took us for some typical Yangzhou food which was a lot lighter and fresher than much of the Chinese food we'd had (which can be pretty oily) where the waitresses giggled and tried to see if our eyes were blue like they'd heard Western peoples' were. He'd booked us into a flashy hotel for the night as he was staying down the road with his parents - what a man!

In fact, Zhijun's parents and brother came for a "Yangzhou Breakfast" with us the next morning where piles and piles of dumplings, tofu noodles, mushrooms and various other delicious bits-and pieces were consumed. Zhujun's family told us a bit about their impressions of the UK when they'd visited and Zhijun's mum (in true Chinese hospitality style) encouraged us to eat as much a possible. It was a fantastic meal and a super-authentic Chinese experience. Zhijun's brother gave me a gift of the shirt of his favourite football team - generosity really knows no bounds in this part of the world.

Yangzhou is known around China as "the Garden City" and this is really no exaggeration as we spent the whole day touring the stunning, colourful gardens and beautiful old houses of the city. It was interesting to see how the houses and temples were much more like the wooden-style we'd seen in Japan as opposed to the crazy gaudiness we'd seen in Chinese buildings in other countries (e.g. Malaysia, Singapore). The gardens were extremely well kept and full of colourful flowers which (again in ture Chinese style) I took loads of photos of. We had the usual moment of someone wanting their photo taken with Charlotte (rarely me mind) and it was really interesting watching the hordes of Chinese tourists. I was trying to compare their attitudes towards tourism compared with our's. It seems very much the culture that you hire a guide for every tourism occasion. These are usually well-dressed young ladies with a microphone and a little belt-mounted speaker being tailed by a whole load of tourists in hats clutching cameras. It seems that Asian tourists are far more into "touring" than we tend to be as western tourists. Our attitude is usually that we want to be left alone in a place to enjoy it on our own terms but in a sense we do lose out a bit as a result and no doubt miss some important stuff.

Back in Nanjing that evening we went for some spicy food (including some more frog and some amazing mushrooms - and I'm not usually into mushrooms) before catching another overnight train to Taishan. Zhijun drove us there (at midnight would you believe) without a hint of complaint and made sure to buy us water to see us through the journey. He had been an incredibly generous host, paying for absolutely everything including our hotel and train ticket. I just hope that sometime in the future we have the opportunity to repay the compliment but it's very much the Chinese way to treat guests like royalty without any thought of yourself. On we go!

Great Firewalling it up

It feels like the whole of the trip so far has been building up to China. There's hardly been any place we've visited (even Peru!) that hasn't had a Chinese influence, and the closer to China we've been drawing, the more significant that influence has been. And lately, what with China leapfrogging to second world economic power, people have been talking more about the Chinese globally buying up everything.

Paul often comments that you can tell the change in a country as soon as you cross a border. China is definitely no exception. We'd been preparing ourselves for a whole lot of difficulty and culture shock after Vietnam, but actually it was quite the opposite. We pulled into the border city of Nanning – everything was developed, organised, and the people ignored us in the streets. People we did come into contact with were smiley and polite (aside from the excessive hacking and spitting). In short it was a surprise. We'd been expecting the language barrier to be a trial, but in fact it was a sanctuary. If they can't communicate with you, they can't sell you something. They can't use your language as a weapon against you. And when you do try to speak Mandarin, they're so happy and give you special attention. We discovered this when we went out to dinner with a couple from Sheffield who had been in China 6 weeks and were about to cross into Vietnam. We found a plastic restaurant with a menu all in Chinese (reading it was a bit like a linguistics puzzle exercise) and they impressed us with their Chinese food-ordering skills. The restaurant owner was over the moon that these guys were speaking Mandarin, and was eternally helpful and patient with us. After the hostile reception we were constantly receiving in Vietnam, this was lovely. I suppose the phrasebooks and the relative scantness of Western people have made us feel like old-style travellers again. You know, when people used to take language courses before going on holiday and arming themselves with phrasebooks rather than relying on everyone being able to speak English.

The next day we took the train east to Guilin, and from there the bus to Yangshuo. One thing we love about China (apart from the polite and friendly people) is that there is hot water available everywhere (even trains). And this is great as a lot of portable Chinese food is of the just-add-water nature. So on the train we, like everyone else, produced pot noodles and took full advantage of the facilities. Things suddenly felt a lot cheaper.

Yangshuo/Guilin is said to be one of the most beautiful parts of China, nay, the world. It is filled with green-covered karst mountains (like Halong Bay, but not in the sea) and little villages and gorgeous rivers. Well, so we were told. It was a little difficult to tell as it was absolutely bucketing it down. We had a wet hour looking for our hostel (with the heavy bags not getting any drier) and were too burdened to notice the scenery. But once we were settled (with an amazing view from our window, I might add) we could tell even through the rain that it was a sight to behold. In the region Guilin is the 'brand', the famous place – but Yangshuo is thought to be the prettiest. It's nestled right in the heart of the mountains, which are floodlit at night. And yes, it's uber touristy. This hasn't been as headachy as you'd think, though. For a start that means things are set up to handle the likes of us, and there's probably more English spoken here than anywhere else in China (so yes, back to avoiding touts). The tourists are mostly Chinese – which is a fun thing to watch in itself. Really fascinating, actually. They all sneak photos of us like we're the curiosity (which was funny to start with, but is now starting to feel a bit invasive). We're enjoying watching how Chinese tourism works, and it's refreshing to feel such self confidence in a country. In SE Asia we were always being pleaded with and begged to feed their tourism economy - but China doesn't really need it. They're doing well enough, whether we're here or not, thank you very much!

It rained pretty solidly for the first few days and we went of a couple of soggy cycle rides. The hills looked enigmatic and mysterious looming in the fog, as we teetered on the wet and narrow paths between the rice paddies. It wasn't the sort of thing that could ever be captured in a photograph, so I enjoyed it with my eyes. Chinese girls and boys with flowers in their hair would sail past us on their tandem bikes whilst busloads of others visited the big attractions. We were feeling pretty saddle-sore after just one day on the bikes (several more to come!). I suddenly had quite a lot of admiration for Jill and Bryn (of Vernon) for their cycle tours round France, and up-coming Lands End to John o'Groats. Good luck!

Eventually our patience with the weather paid off and the few extra days we'd booked but were considering regretting, were filled with eternal sunshine. On our way out for breakfast on our penultimate day (the first sunny day) we ran into one of the hostel staff who was just about to take everyone on a free bike tour. Just what the doctor ordered! In our stinginess and naivety we were solely relying on the free leaflet map which actually told us nothing about what our route actually looked like. We'd spent many soggy miles getting lost and irate this way. The countryside was even more spectacular in the sunshine than in the rain. And the moving air as we cycled kept us cool. Our guide told us that a lot of rice paddies, especially the ones you can take tours to, are kept solely to attract tourists. They don't need them for the rice as they make more money with the tours so, like the Highland cattle in Scotland, they're purely decorative.

We had another day of physical exhaustion and map related general lostness and confusion, before leaving on the sleeper bus for Hong Kong. This bus was infinitely nicer than the nasty Vietnamese ones, and we adopted some other travellers for border-crossing moral support.

Paul had arranged for us to couchsurf with Ada, a warden at a charity trust boarding school (perhaps for naughty kids?), and we had a set of instructions to get there. First of all, joy of joys, we were back in a city with a metro system. We've discovered we love cities with metros. This is how we can forgive London. Maybe we'd even cope with living in Glasgow. Second set of joys – though we had been relishing the chance to battle the language barrier, there is quite a lot of English spoken in HK (for obvious reasons) and it made figuring out the right bus and right place to get off a lot easier. Third joy – the shopping centre where we were to meet Ada had a free customer telephone so we didn't have to spend money and hours fiddling with a coin-operated one. Hurrah!

Ada whisked us up the road to the school and gave us reams of helpful introductory instructions, a form to fill in (the most testing question being 'what are your hobbies?' - nothing like the kind of paranoia-forms we would have had to fill in back home!) and then showed us to our room for rest and shower before lunch. We were lodged in one of the boys' floors of the boarding house surrounded by dorms, with our own bathroom, private bedroom, fridge and kettle. Such luxury! At lunch we were introduced to Erature, a young lady from Malaysia who was working there temporarily. She showed us how to queue, collect our lunch (Chinese school food!) and sit on our respective boys and girls sides of the room. We had quite a few interesting meals in that place. Poor Paul was left all alone on a table of boys, and all the kids were pretty reluctant to speak to us (although we suspect they spoke a lot more English than they let on). After lunch the kids had activities – today, 'watermelon ball'. This was essentially 5-aside football played with a plastic blow-up watermelon coloured ball. Go on my son!

Later on we met the staff and Bobby, our designated interpretor who would be helping us with our presentation to the kids after the weekend. Ada's attitude towards Bobby was hilarious. 'I don't like this boy's personality,' she told us. 'He is too passive. I want him to learn confidence.' Later she asked us, 'have you seen the fat kid, your interpretor, yet?' Bobby was shy, but we had a back-up member of staff in case he bottled out.

That evening it was dinner 'Chinese style' (they consider their lunch to be 'Western style', although to us it tasting like Chinese takeaway) where we all all sat round tables with dishes in the centre and helped ourselves. I was permitted to sit with Paul on a boys' table (they still weren't talking to us) and we were shown how to go and collect the plates for the table etc etc and guessed how to navigate our way around eating conventions (do you use different chopsticks to serve your food than to eat with?).

The kids had more activities after that, so we sorted out our plans for the next day. Essentially, our visit to the Russian embassy. Ah the Russians. We're beginning to wonder why we're even going there at all. The visa form was like applying for a job as a Russian. Worse, as all we wanted was a transit visa, a job as a Russian in transit. It had very small spaces to answer questions such as 'name all the countries you have visited in the last 10 years and when' (in 3 lines) ! ! ! Give your last 2 jobs and current employer's address, chief's name, phone numbers. 'Do you have specialist training in firearms, explosives, nuclear, biological or chemical substances?' (for Paul, yes). What organisations or charities are you involved with or co-operate with? Etc etc. It would have been funny if it hadn't felt so invasive and impertinent. We were thinking perhaps we didn't want to go to Russia that badly after all, if this was the effort we had to put in. We felt that even more strongly (to the point of outrage) when we made it to the embassy the next day and the stern-faced Russians charged us £100 each! What's so good about bloody Russia anyway, I ask you? Why don't they want us to visit? Do they not want our nice foreign money for their economy? Turned out this initial bout of hoop-jumping was only the tip of the iceberg. We're not even staying in Russian, godamnit! The trans-Mongolian had better be the highlight of the whole entire trip.

So Paul was fuming quite a lot as we wandered quite aimlessly around the financial buildings of Hong Kong Island. We had a bit of time to kill before our next engagement at 6.15. By pure coincidence, about a week before we were due to arrive in HK, a HK British Council representative had sent and enquiry to Paul through the Chemical Connection website (the science communication project he did for the university). She was quite surprised when Paul said they could meet in person. So we met in a posh cafe in a posh shopping centre full of Suits (it's all about Suits in HK Island) and they talked science festivals and workshops.

That evening we had the floor to ourselves at the school as all the boarders had gone home. It was eerily quiet since the night before they'd spent all evening tearing up and down the corridors shouting. Erature kindly let us in as the school was locked. This was a dance we'd have to do with her all weekend – arrange a time for her to let us out in the morning, go out for the day and phone her from the free phone in the shopping centre asking her to let us back in again in 15 mins. Sometimes things would be a lot simpler if we had a phone with us.

Saturday we were meeting an old school friend of mine, Alice Lo. I'd been to stay with her (and another friend – they shared me) in HK 11 years ago over the 1999 Christmas holidays. It was strange to be back as it felt quite different. Also I hadn't seen Alice since we left school so it was quite exciting. She took us to lots of places using the 'public light bus' system that we probably wouldn't have been able to find on our own. Some places were familiar from before, including some pretty spectacular live seafood. Actually I've never seen fish so huge, crustaceans so colourful, or creatures so weird. It was raining quite hard by the end, but it was a fun day out and great to see Alice again. She also revealed to us why couchsurfing in Asia has been so much more difficult than e.g. South America - there's just not a culture of having people to stay. They don't like it. Seems I was quite lucky to have stayed back in 1999!

The rain became a big feature of that weekend. We decided to do our customary shopping centre-junk food-cinema day and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. It was good, we enjoyed it. After it got dark there was a brief break in the rain and we went to Kowloon to look at the typical skyscraper-lights view of Hong Kong island. Not ten minutes after we were safely back at the school, though, the storm hit with a vengeance and there was much flooding.

I must add that we very diligently shopped in ParkNShop during our stay (treating ourselves to cheese – yes, cheese! - and bread that night) – people who know Logan will understand why.

School again on Monday and this was our big day. We retrieved our passports from the 'friendly' Russians in the morning, all safely and expensively visa'd up, and came back for lunch (another food adventure, though not as crazy as the breakfasts which I'm glad we experienced but wouldn't like to make a habit of). Bobby was nowhere to be seen, but we were sure he'd pull through.

We were presenting in the dining room and the kids had been promised dancing – but we also had a short talk to do. We were starting to have second thoughts about this as Ada kept telling us they didn't like seminars (then why did she ask us to tell them about Scotland?) but, well, Bobby needed the public speaking experience for his passive character. One of the members of staff had made a nice display all about Scotland for us and we were set up with mics and a projector screen and everything. After school a team came to move all the tables, and then at the very last possible minute (waiting until the bell had gone) the kids shuffled in.

It was immediately a more daunting prospect than we'd imagined or than anywhere we'd faced before. We had support from the staff, and Bobby performed fantastically, but the kids were truly the worst behaved I've ever come across. What's more, they were the worst behaved Paul had ever come across and he's visited a lot more schools than me. The chatting amongst themselves throughout alone was distracting (there were a lot of them, it was loud) but then things dissolved into chaos when it came to teaching the dancing. It's very difficult to be authoritative with a language barrier, and they did the whole 'urrrgh! A BOY! I can't be partners with a BOY!!' (Vice versa for girls, and some boys objected to being partnered with each other too) beyond the usual adolescent patheticness.

It was all quite funny really, if not horribly frustrating. Ada had assured us they were all excited to learn about Scottish dancing, but this wasn't apparent as about half of them refused to do anything at all. In the end Paul got a self-conscious all-boy demonstration group going and they even managed it with music. Boy it was all hard work! The staff felt we had been received well, although we weren't so sure!

They were quite hyper during dinner and some of the girls made a half-effort to say a few words to us, so maybe it had worked after all. Bobby was certainly in high spirits. It was strange, because we'd assumed an Asian school would have the kids all orderly and whipped into shape (like the Japanese schoolchildren on the plane to Singapore, and like the kids in Cambodia) but a special kind of chaos reigned here.

In all it was a really interesting experience and it would have been good to stay longer and get more involved (who knows, perhaps some of them might even have begun to talk to us?). But once again it was time to move on and press back into mainland China.

About HK's relationship with China – Alice noted that the pre-'97 days were really the best, but right now they do have the best possible deal. They have nearly all the autonomy of a successful city state, but can also go asking China for help with anything they can't do themselves. And China's doing pretty well for itself these days. So long as they're left to do things their way, being under the wing of a world superpower isn't that bad.