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Trip Start Dec 02, 2009 Previous
Entry Trip End Jan 25, 2010

  Hong Kong, China
Monday, January 25, 2010

One night sleep before an early flight home and at dinner in Pizza Hut Wan Chai we discussed the trip. By the way we relapsed about four times (shame) into a carb/fat fast food joints, including maccas, kfc, dicos and pizza hut. We claim it was for purely experimental reasons! Hong Kong has been great and we have spent the last few days shopping for clothes at lee garden markets and fashion walk. We ventured to Kowloon for the temple street night markets and had a delicious curry feast. Ocean Park, a theme park with rides, hotdogs, fairy floss and carnival games made for an interesting half day excursion, as did today when we visited Lamma Island, a vehicle-less, tropical retreat for artisans. We splurged big time on a seafood banquet of a lobster each, giant prawns (we've forgotten the name) and squid, undoubtedly a delicious taste bud tingler, free of bones, so we didn't choke when we received the bill (it was $100 aus dollars, expensive!). 
The trip has revealed a lot about the country and the love/hate dualism that people offer refer to when travelling in China has once again emerged. The scenery of some locations are jaw-dropping, yet you share the moment with all manner of Chinese tourist. The tourism industry is reluctant to let one see China free of money-making distractions and a facade over the real China covers many of the true individuals and characteristics of society. GDP booming in the last few decades hasn't resulted in eventual trickle down of wealth and the gap between the poor and wealthy is evident, sometimes surprisingly candid and emotionally-streching. A growing middle class is there somewhere, but probably on the poor end. En masse, the Chinese way feels saturated in entrepreneurial spirit, an individual attitude and self-serving mindset. But where some are rude, pushy and aggressive, others are indifferent, kind and helpful. Where there is success and Audi's in the countryside there are shopkeepers sitting outside never visited shops, screaming for some cash flow, while others lack any conviction. Its changing, but I cant effectively comment on anything, just walking down the street it feels like any other in Australia, but then it doesn't. Its a miss match of everything, its all strange. Some woman cleans the street from 5am till 11pm, but its never clean, a man throws a bag of rubbish in the river while his son washes the dinner vegetables 2m down. The acres of farmland is immaculately ploughed, seeded and nurtured, with all the vegetables growing in perfect lines, and all at the same stage of growth in individual paddocks in order to successfully produce vegetation, yet the farmers working in the fields throw their rubbish in between the paddocks with no care as to how it will effect their perfectly planned paddocks and vegetation.Travelling through a country that is struggling to keep up with its own modernisation has been interesting, there is infrastructure, education, and a booming industry of all-sorts but one walk through an average size city and its an stairway of different decades and even centuries. A ramshackle hut with a coal burner sits by a modern glass encased three storey building. Moving on to other things we both agree that we've met some interesting characters and families, eaten gut-retching foods, traversed beautiful landscapes and sucked down enough fumes to stay continuously high. Maybe thats why some of the older generation are ever smiling. A few highlights have been watching Sarah been jumped in on whilst showering by nainai from our Heijing story who was apparently always mean to Sarah when noone was watching. The least favourite moment was turning slightly insane at Panzhihua where insanity seemed a perfectly reasonable cure for our state. Sarah can drink excessively without urinating (24 hours), and she also managed to understand Chinese miraculously at different occasions, as if she had known it all along and wasnt telling me. 
 Watching Simon grow more confident with his language skills was a true highlight for me, considering we thought that there would be no mandarin spoken in the south. Train and bus trips may have taken up a large chunk of our time, but quite often were our best source of entertainment being in such close proximity with the Chinese allows one to see things that they never thought left the bathroom. At first the large swarms of chinese were incredibly over whelming for me, but i have learnt to fight my way back through the crowds, tell the chinese when i know they are trying to rip me off and what not to order off their menus! I have been both emotionally touched by the love of the chinese and revolted by their complete disregard for personal space and hygiene. I have been in complete awe of some of the most amazing sceneries and at the same time been disappointed in the lack of care/pride shown by the chinese tourists.

 All in all we have had an amazing adventure, and with our packs packed ready for our 5am start, we are returning to australia in search of some good home loving!


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