Part One: From Whale Sharks to Shark Fin Soup

When I last wrote I was challenging Ningaloo Reef, on the West coast of Australia, to beat the Great Barrier Reef in terms of its marine life. It’s one:nil to Ningaloo! I’ve snorkelled in some great spots around the world but never somewhere with so many fish – it was like being on the set of Finding Nemo. As the week went on the bigger the fish got. Parrot fish, cat fish, angel fish, laser fish, box fish, comedy cod, little sting rays, white and black tipped reef sharks, turtles …and that was just day one - snorkelling right off the beach in beautifully warm sea and a stunning setting. The highlight was at the end of the week when I went on a Whale Shark trip.

You may remember them from wildlife documentaries – big spotted fish with huge wide open mouths eating up the plankton in the water. They dozily swim along with little fish eating at their mouths, and bigger fish swimming under them catching the dregs and seemingly sheltering. Whale Sharks can be up to 18m long, though the biggest I swam with was a mere 8m long. There were 4 of them the day I went, and it was exhausting jumping in and out of the boat to swim alongside them, probably equally weird for them with all these odd humans gawping at them with snorkels and masks and big wide eyes - the experience really was awesome. Almost as spectacular were the Manta Rays swimming up to you out of the depths with their big wings like angels in the sea. To top that, at lunch time Hump Back whales were swimming alongside the boat flipping their huge tails out of the water. Wow!

After all that marine excitement I spent a wonderfully chilled week in Perth with friends (huge thanks to Ads and Kiera) and then a lovely w/e back in Sydney. A fantastic goodbye to Oz was had by a day out on a boat in the harbour with luxuries like prawns, champagne, BBQ fish and great weather (big thanks to Jen and Tracy). Then time for a culture change as I headed to Hong Kong and China.

Mum had bravely decided to do this part of the trip with me and it was great to meet her in Hong Kong and spend a solid amount of time with her. However, no matter how hard one tries not to, when you travel with a parent somehow you tend to regress into spoilt child mode, so poor Mum had to cope with some of that! On the other hand you have a bit of role reversal in that you become the organiser and to an extent the protector – so whilst stamping my foot and wanting my own way, I also felt a kind of parental responsibility for us both. Interesting.

Anyway, back to the travels… Landing in Hong Kong in the day time is a little like landing in Lego land with all its tall skyscrapers, I’d only seen it at night before which is always spectacular. It was the start of my Chinese food diet here. So many people had warned me of the terrible Chinese food saying that I’d come out a stick insect. This I was quite looking forward to after the amount of weight I've stacked on travelling. However, they were all wrong! The Chinese tend to pride themselves on their cuisine. Yes, they did have some dodgy stuff on the menu such as turtle, snake, pig intestines, star fish and shark fin soup, but aside from those their food was delicious and very, very cheap. From night markets, to streets lined with food stalls, to restaurants – it was all fantastic stuff.

Aside from our introduction to Chinese cuisine Hong Kong was really just a meeting point and after a couple of days we flew into China proper starting in Beijing. Beijing was a good introduction to China as barely anyone spoke English there and only a few signs were in Roman script whereas outside of the city no-one spoke or understood English and all signs were in Chinese writing! Somehow we managed to get by. Most hotels, hostels, and tourist places were very surprised and a little inconvenienced by the fact we were independent travellers and not part of a tour group. Our first challenge was to book all our internal flights around China (of which there were many) – after being served by about 6 people we got there, it took all morning! Public buses were a bit of an issue too but thanks to our Lonely Planet bible we either had a bus number or bus stop location to help us get the right one. Cities with metros were a blessing and easier to navigate. They also had air con, unlike the hot sticky tube back home, which was much needed as China in summer time is incredibly hot. It’s also their rainy season – so you see why people thought Mum slightly mad to join me on this bit of my trip! However, despite severe floods over the whole of China while we were there, somehow we missed them. We had lovely sunny days with only one morning of rain. It was 38 – 40 degrees though which I don’t mind but there were times when I thought Mum would melt away! We spent a good amount of time walking through hot city streets avoiding a mass of brollys – the Chinese have umbrellas to keep the sun off them, it’s a status thing – the whiter you are the wealthier you must be. Umbrellas were prodding people out of the way on the pavements, umbrellas on bikes, umbrellas, and indeed whole families, on mopeds!

Back to Beijing… a huge flat city stretching about 165k from North to South and quite ugly except the historical Hutong areas. Old community alleyways with houses, food stalls and little shops, which they are now knocking down and replacing with new monstrosities. We were lucky to stay in a hostel in the Hutongs – a little bit of history soon to disappear no doubt. There’s a lot to see in and around Beijing – The Forbidden City, lovely old Chinese architecture still in amazing condition probably due to the fact that it was closed to the public for 500 years. The Summer Palace outside the city with its quaint canal street, big lake, temples and peaceful gardens. Tiananmen Square where all we could think about were tanks and people being shot. Then 2 hours out of Beijing the spectacular Great Wall of China. We went to a quiet spot on the Great Wall and had it almost to ourselves for a few hours. It really is a stunning sight to see stretching 100s of miles across ragged mountains, very steep in places, an amazing construction and almost impossible to describe – go there!

We seemed to bounce from site to site – next stop the city of Xi’an and the Terracotta Army. The Chinese call it the 8th wonder of the world and it is a truly spectacular sight to see and still being excavated. There are 3 different sites all enclosed and near each other with different army formations. The terracotta figures are a little bigger than life size with incredible detail – they believe that the craftsmen used their own images on the soldiers so they are all individual and quite different. Rows of soldiers, horses and some chariots - quite breathtaking at first view. Part of me was amazed and part of me thought it all too perfect to be true. So I’ve come to the conclusion that it could be a fake, which would be a bit of a scandal! It makes some sense though – the Chinese think status and wealth more important than anything so I reckon they built the terracotta army ‘unearthing’ it in the early 70s claiming it to be a historical wonder and therefore getting world status. It would explain why the excavations don’t seem to be progressing too readily as there would obviously be nothing to excavate! Yes, maybe my brain got a little frazzled in the heat…

Another place we visited near Xi’an was the Huashan Mountain. This captures all the beautiful pictures you see of rocky, sheer, ragged mountain ranges in China. Another stunning spot. It was hard work though, climbing steep rocky steps in 40 degree heat was difficult enough but added to that was the challenge of negotiating thousands of Chinese tourists like ants crawling up the mountain with their brollys! Also hard to endure were the men with their awful habit of rolling their shirts up above their nipples and walking, nay strutting, around like that all day. They do have large egos and think they are god’s gift – but it’s the women that seem to get on with it and do all the work. Everywhere we went men just ignored our pointing and bartering and it was always the women that would (begrudgingly) help.

After the heat and the pushing and shoving in crowds it was time to head to the Yangze River. More in part 2 …