Claire, Mic, Jo & KT's BIG trip

We arrived safely in Beijing after an awful train journey involving bright lights! Apparently taxi drivers don't know their way round their own city, so it took us a while to find Leo hostel as it was located in the middle of a building site! On our day of arrival we visited the temple of heaven and the gardens surrounding, it was extremely warm and we have discovered the chinese tourist population have no aspect of queueing/ control over their brollies. Later on Jo napped whilst me and mick got ripped off at a tea tasting session-long story you will have to hear on our return. In the evening we discovered a food street and ate some nasty noodles containing unexpected octupus, then fell asleep promptly in a state of exhaustion! The following day we cheched into a 5 star hotel complimentary of Peter Jones (thanks dad!!!) We made the staff giggle because of our grubby backpacks which right now are very big. In the hotel we swam and watched films whilst eating nice cake-it was luxourious.
The next day we sadly checked out and went back to the building site. Decided to make a trip to the summer palace which turned out to not be so summery, we have not been so wet in our lives, paths turned into rivers and we transformed into drowned rats. Later The public bus on the way back was interesting as well. Jo was very happy to see Oli the next morning when he came to join us in Beijing-we gave him just enough time to get ready before we headed out to explore the forbidden city. We climbed up to a pavillion where we got a beautiful view of the tiled roofs from the city.

the next day we went on a secret adventure to the wall it was beautiful there where no tourists in site! we where really lucky with the weather and had a prety clear daywith no rain which was good as every other dayit managed to rain on us! mic jo and oli did another adventure to the wall the next day to a new part that had been rebuilt, claire felt sorry for herself in bed or on the toilet it was prety much 50 50! in the evening we sat by the lake and had some goodbye drinks it was a sad affair!

jo left us the next morning with oli and they headed to mongolia on a very long train journey!
mic and claire decided to spend the rest of their pennys in the silk market and ended up spending more than that!

we went out for a final evening dinner of peeking duck and headed bk to the hostel to pack our very big very hevey bags the waight is going to be interesting when we get there we will hav to wait and see!

we are about to head off for the airport so we will see you all very soon!

Mic and claire

jo left
shopping

Well we all enjoyed Sapa very much, it was the perfect end to Vietnam, and also where we said bye to Pete and Vinnie! From there we headed across the border on foot to a random town called Hekou where we booked our bus to Kumming. Kumming was much busier than expected and suprise suprise noone spoke english which is where the phrase book came in handy, we eventually managed to find our hotel and went straight to sleep because it was past mdnight and we didn't want to turn into pumpkins! Dragged ourselves out of bed in the early hours to fight our way through the crowds to the station, we managed to get a ticket for the same day so set off on our first 24 hour train journey; which was thankfully much more comfy than the one to Sapa!!

Chongqing was also a lot bigger than expected, it took us a while to realsie that everywhere we're visiting in China has a population of over 3 million, which confirms how different our experience is going to be compared to south east asia. In Chongqing we spotted the first tourists we have seen in a very long time, this was very exciting on both sides as they also hadn't seen westerners for a week or so, we shouted and waved across the street and found out we were staying in the same hotel so organised to meet up later! Booked our boat trip through the 3 gorges, and decided to cheer oursleves up with a shopping trip. The evening entailed a real experience oh how the Chinese like to party, we went to a local club where we were the only foreigners in sight-the moment we walked in we had drinks put in our hands and a massive warm welcome of sheers and dancing.

The next day we boarded our boat in Whanzou and found out we had been lied to; all are activities were not included as told! Spent a lot of time chilling on deck eating instant noodles and enjoying the scenery. We caught a glimpse of the damm as we arrived in Yinchang where we departed the boat and stuggled up a million stairs in the heat of midday. Wandered and did more shopping, Jo bought herself a beautiful chinese dress, and we had an interesting dining experience, again with our phrasebook! Having no idea what we had ordered and being plesantly suprised with fried cucumber.

It was then time for our next 24 hour train journey to Shanghai, we have been here for 4 days and the buget has gone out of the window. We have had lots of fun exploring town and sweltering in the heat. Mick and I have been busy designing more tailored items that will remain a suprise until our return. Jo visited and art street yesterday, and enjoyed the picturesque YunYan gardens. We are slowly becoming accutomed to the heat, I don't think it willl ever be possible though to leave the hotel room and remain sweat free!
Love micky and Claire x

ow my god i have just deleted the hole blog just as i finished it and was doing spell check im about to kill my self arrrr severs me right for writing it on hotmail and not on the blog : (
so lets start again me and micky where the last to arrive in hoi an after our very squashed bus ride over, where we met pete and kt and claire in a very nice hotel with a swimming pool, it was like being on a proper holiday relaxing and eating lots. pete had already been there a couple of days so had kind of been adopted by an australian family who where a great laugh, kt and claire arrived in time to sing happy birthday to vinnie and even got some birthday cake! sadly we missed this, the main reason why pete came here early was because hoi an is the place to come to get cheap suits made we arrived in time for pete final fitting at the tailors his suit is definably one of a kind, we had not planed to get anything made but once i found out that they would make what ever i wanted i started designing and consequently have now ramed my bag with a jacket a coat a dress a top and a skirt and just just to make it really heavy i bough a marble sculpture to pack in there too!!!! the others didnt quite go so over the top! the original plan had been to spend most of are time on china beach however the pool was just to close so we only made it there once!!! lazy.
micky and pete headed of early to hue to look at the tunnels and other war thing and we all met up again in hanoi, which is the capital and quite nice as far as big cities go as usual we got ripped of but it was all in good humour and some time you just cant be bother to barter! we spent most of the day look for a halong bay tour for the next day.
after a bit of a panic where we didnt think vinnies bus was going to get in on time the 6 of us head out to halong bay for 3 days, the views where amazing, and we did along to sea kayaking, vinnie and i decided that we would do some cave exploring in our kayak against our guided wished. it was pretty cool apart when we couldnt see anything and we had no idea where the rocks came down to,we even found a little enclosed bay it was like something out of jurassic park as well as an enclosed lake thing. amusingly we ended up getting in trouble as we didnt come back when the boat honked us and they came out a grabbed our kayak while giving us the evils and shouting NO (it was like being back at school)!!!!! we also went to visit the AMAZING CAVE and though shear boredom we formed for one night only the cavetts choir!!!! singing their new single 'amazing cave' solo by claire jones and managed by micky mclaughlan we performance in the middle of the cave and put a smile on a lot of peoples face! the song was surprisingly similar to 'amazing grace'! even though the waters where infested with jelly fish we went jumping and swimming apart from micky who for once was too scared even kt jumped!!!!
we are now in sapa after saying bye to kt : ( the train journey was a bit of an experience as we spent the night on wooden beaches with vietnamese opera blaring until 12 pm arrrr it was an experience!!!! sapa is a nice hill town just south of the china boarder with lots of hiking around and well as some markets (mic and claire have a shopping list!) so this is our last stop before saying bye to pete and heading over the boarder.

well we left katie and claire after our treck had finished and got an over night bus to pakse, i hav to say that this bus was the best bus we hav been on so far it had bunk beds on it so we could actually lie down! pete left us in Pakse and me and jo headed on down to the 4 thousand islands! we decided to stay on Don det which was surposed to be the more party island out of the 2 big ones, party island was deffinetly an over statement iv never been somewhere so chilled out before it took them 3 days to get our washing back to us and that only happened because we where leaving, there was only electricity from 6 till 10 and after that it was prety much bed time! it was really quiet and relaxing just what we needed we chilled out on hamocks for a couple of days and did some reading! of corse me and jo being us couldnt actually do nothing so on one of these days we rented some bikes and cycled around the 2 islands visiting the waterfall with the biggest volume in asia and cycleing along the bumpyest track ever right doun to the boarder of cambodia where we got a boat over and saw the famous pink dolfins!

after we where relaxed and refreshed from a couple of days chilling we got a local bus back up to pakse and then carried on up to tad lo, the busses where quite interesting but nothing compared to the the transport coming later, Tad lo was really nice also very chilled out, it was really interesting walking around the village all the children would shout and wave at you and animals would be wondering around everywhere noone seemed to realise there was a road that had moving transport on it. the next day we hired some moterbikes and went exploring the near by places, starting off on the bikes was very interseting considering i had only bin on one a week or so before and jo hadnt done it before i think the guy we borrowd the bikes from was a bit worried they wouldnt come back in one piece! we drove up the main road toward one of the cities which was actually a dirt track but didnt go to far before turning around and heading back to the tarmak road we had a really good day exploring the place and came back in one piece which i think the man was very pleased about!

the next day we headed on aqccross to attepeu where we where going to get the bus over to vietman and meet the others we got on a bus that took us accross the dirt track the bus had 3 goats on the roof and about 20 chickens tied up on the floor! attepue was interesting as noone could speak english and it looked like noone had ever seen white people before they where stroking our arms and pointing and staring! we got a bus over the boarder which was very interesting it got stopped by the police and searched they found something and there was alot of argueing and eventually alot of cash was handed over and we quickly left! we arrived in vietman and had no idea where we where and unfortunetly we didnt hav a guide book so we wondered around trying to find a way to hoi an it was very stressful, eventualy got on a bus that was rammed full of people i was actually flat against a window and jo was practically sitting on peoples knees! we where both very glad when we finaly made it to hoi and and met up with the others!

Well well well we meet again, Claire speaking by the way! So I thought I'd catch you up on what me and KT got up to when we branched off from the other 3. We flew out of Vientiane on the 21st (fathers day) and got a flight to Siam Reap in Cambodia where we jumped on the back off motos to get to our guesthouse! That day we visited a floating village and the great Angkor Wat for sunset. Despite the not so good weather the temple itself was amazing. Following day we did a huge temple tour starting at 6am; I think I can speak for both of us when saying Ta Prohm aka the Tomb Raider temple was by far the most spectacular-I loved it.
Tuesday we headed to Phnom Penn the capital of Cambodia where we explored the city in the evening and did our much needed laundry-the following day we got a tuk tuk to S21 which was a concentration camp and the killing fields-this was all related to when Polpot was taking over Cambodia to make it a communist country and in the process destroyed many lives! It was an emotionally exhausting day for both of us.
Early rise to get to Ho Chi Minh city the next day in Vietnam-crossing the border was fun fun fun especially the thermometer shoving in my ear that they call the health examination!!! This city was beyond crazy-motorbikes in every direction it made crossing the road v.interesting-I got clipped by one on my arm at night (I'm fine), but it was very scary! went to the markets and met some nice fellow backpackers at night time.
Night train to Danag the next evening, we chose a hard sleeper which was suprisingly great fun we met some lovely Vietnamese people who wanted to share all their food with us, and we taught the man how to play a card game which he loved. 17 hours later we arrived in Danang and shared a taxi with 2 other brits to Hoi An where we had arranged to meet Pete, Mick and Jo. The hotel is amazing and has a lovely swimming pool and lots of friendly guests. Pete was already here and Mick and Jo arrived later that day! The fantastic five are back together, and very very happy!!! xxxxxx