Remember us ?

First of all... we would like to wish you a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

2007 is a big year for us as we continue our journey and we hope that the year brings excitement, success and adventure for you and yours as well.

Now...to bring you up to date....we spent a very relaxing and enjoyable Christmas and NY in Yangshuo, China...from where we were intending to get the blog and photo albums up to date before we setoff on our next jaunt...but that was before an earthquake broke most of the fibre optic cables running between Hong Kong and the US, thereby chopping us off from most of the internet world for the past week or so. We will endevour to get as much updated as we can in the next few days so please bear with us.

So, lets continue from where we left off, heading from Luoyang across to Kaifeng....

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Our hard seat train journeys churn up some interesting characters. We're normally only left to our own devices (under very watchful eyes) for a few minutes before curiosity gets the better of someone around and they start asking us questions. During question time there are at least 20 onlookers. Unfortunately our Mandarin leaves us a bit in the dark so we've to rely on our trusty phase book. The phrase book rapidly disappears into someones clutches where it is read cover to cover passed along and then returned. So far there has been someone around has spoken English and translates all the questions and answers. It certainly whiles away a few hours in hard seat. On our train journey to Kaifeng we befriended by a student called Wang Fu who not only chatted away to us but was determined to "send us to a hotel". At Kaifeng station he shielded us from all the touts and rickshaw drivers and paid for our bus fare into town. An hour or so later he was still energetically searching out accommodation with us. He left us wishing us well and asking that we don't forget him. This is just one such example of the friendliness we've encountered in every corner of the country which we enjoy and appreciate.


Kaifeng has a famous nightmarket that commences at 6pm every evening. Please note that's precisely 6.00pm not a second before nor a second after. A part of Kaifeng main street is slightly wider than the rest of the street and at 5.59pm hundreds of carts, with oven fires blazing and hot frying pans on the go jostle for pole position to race out and set up their stalls for the night. Within minutes the rush hour traffic status seriously deteriorates and the street transforms into a huge street restaurant. The food all complements each other, you get skewers from one vendor, veg from the next and flat bread fished out of a tandoori oven from another. Our four day stop there gave us ample opportunity to try all the local specialities like chicken on a stick (KFC could learn a lot from this idea) gluttonous rice on a stick, fresh rice paper rolls etc. Our picture point-it book filled with pics of animals and foods came in handy to find out whether the eyeballs on a skewers were from a goat or a sheep.

:: Before shot ::

:: cue.. night market ::

Kaifeng itself is an ancient capital with a 2,700 year long history. It has many spectacular buildings and pagodas within it's old city walls. We visited during the annual city festival where the city's flower, the chrysanthemum, is blooming everywhere. The highlight of our sightseeing was the impressive old Guild Hall with it's intricate woodwork. We managed to meet up with a local rickshaw driver named Jason, who turns out to speak excellent english. He scooted us around in his pedal rickshaw (with the other drivers smiling smugly seeing that he had the short straw pedaling Marcus) and gave us a great tour of the guild hall.

Getting out of Kaifeng proved to be a stressful experience. We had great plans to take a train the whole way across to the Eastal coastal city of Qingdao. After researching our train options we sauntered down to the train station to purchase tickets for that night. When you go to buy tickets at the local station first you have to join a huge queue and hope it's the right one. When you finally get to the top, after the queue has been blantantly skipped multiple times, you have at least twenty people pushing behind you and you're agressively flanked each side. Quality time at the top sorting out problems is very limited and stressful. If you so much as take a breath to gather your thoughts the flankers see it as an indication that you've finished your business and will start furiously shouting and purchasing under/over your shoulder. Questions asked are briskly answered over a loudspeaker letting the taxi rank outside aware of your predicatment. Usually the answer is a simple "Mei Yo" meaning "Don't Have".


From the immediate "no-no" nodding we got at each ticket window in Kaifeng it emerged that something wasn't as straightforward as we thought. Eventually we got the help of a local person who translated the problem saying that if we came back early in the morning we'd be able to get tickets (no problem) for the following night. With limited enthusiasm at 7am the next morning we arrived to buy our tickets and were subjected to another round of no-no's from the 5 or 6 ticket windows we tried. Frustratingly the problem seemed too complex to be explained through charades and it was beginning to feel like we would be trapped indefinitely in Kaifeng throwing ourselves at the mercy of the train window each morning. Some of the agents recommended a train to Cang Kao .... we asked where it was and someone pointed to a place on the map hundreds of miles away from where we wanted to go. Cang Kao did not appear on our huge detailed map of China let alone in the index of the guidebook so we hadn't a clue why we were being sent there. Finally giving up we bought a ticket and left our destination in the lap of the gods. Literally not knowing where or when we would be dropped in this place called Cang Kao and face getting an onward ticket to Qingdao. As it turned out .. after all the exhausting effort Cang Kao was about 15 minutes away from where we wanted to go. We were dropped at the station, plonked on the next train through and for not a penny more stepped out into the old Qingdao main square, complete with ocean breeze, a few minutes later....a great result (and we didnt spend too much time thinking about how it could have worked out :-)...)