Jakey Jake

Wednesday 2nd June
What a trip, i cant beleive how fast this tour has gone, and weve covered sooooo much damn ground. This morning we arrive in shanghai, i really want to get teh new maglev train to the airport, but well see how that goes, considering mikes directions are a little on the weak side, scratch that, they are appaling, often hes pointing left and saying right, so you try and clarify where it is you are going and hell say something completely different like keep going straight its upstairs. beewildered and confused you set out knowing that you have the hotel card so the taxi can return you to whence you came. anyway hopefully at the stopover in hong kong ill be able to get my carl jung book. but who knows??? South africa here i come I did managr to catch the maglev train, but not quite the way i had wanted. Instead of the taxi dropping me at the station in the city and then catching the train to the airport, he decided to drive as fast as the maglev and take me to the aiport… obviously Mike had told him the wrong thing so i had to get a return ticket and do a round trip from the airport. Its pretty awesome, it does 33km in less than 8 minutes, topping out at 431kmph. Anyway i almost missed my plane because of it, useless taxi driver and he was pulled over by the police for speeding on the way there. Once i was in my seat on a south africa airlines flight (a brand new plane) i was ready to catch some zzzzs and watch some new movies. Bye bye china…

Tuesday 1st June
What a wonderful sleep in i managed to have. I even had my breakfast order written down by mike the night before so i wouldnt have a problem getting the breakfast i wanted. so i got up and left the room only to realise i had left the note wiht the order in the room. Not wanting to wake charles up i figured i would go to the internet cafe for a while and check my mail. None loves me to be expected really, and aza still hasnt replied, thats almost two weeks now… c’mon aza where are you?? i went back to get my order, then i went down to the restraunt only to be told NO…. arrrrrgh. DAMN IT… i figured it was because the kitchen was closed… i found out later that the kitchen was open and serving brekky til 12…. why on earth did she say no????????? anyway im outta here tomorrow… the end of my asia tour… only 4 more continents to go….

Monday 31st May
So the blurb was wrong… however this time it was wrong in a good way. This place was by far the most beautiful natural scenery i have seen so far. Stunning. We started at the base of the mountains, apparently it was 7km to the top and at its highest it was 1894m above sea level (which i think is slightly smaller than kosiusko, i could be wrong ill have to google it) anyway if you decide to visit this place be warned, the climb up is very tiring and long. by the time i got to the top i was soaked in sweat, there is a cable car but i decided to get fit it was well worth it, and once you get to the top the view is nothing short of breathtaking. The tops of mountains breaking through the low clouds making you feel as though you were somewhere in heaven. Spent the rest of the day walking around looking at various mountain areas before decending, youll have to check out the photos to really appreciate how amazing this place truly was. By the time i arrved at the bottom, most of the rest of the group were already back down, having caught the cable car. My legs were like jelly and they couldnt stop shaking once i had stopped. Once we got back to the hotel i indulged in a bath, my muscles where aching and it was just what the doctor ordered, as well as watching fletch lives for the 12th time TOnight we were going to have our end of tour party as the last night was going to be spent on the all night sleeper train. It was never going to be a big one as we were all utterly stuffed. i was in bed by 10.30

Sunday 30th May
As we drove out of Huanghzo i got to see a lot of the city, it was a pretty cosmopolitan place, although with all chinese cities it was covered in a thick blanket of smog. Anyway we jumped on this small crappy little bus that was headed for yellow mountain, the place where most of “crouching tiger hidden dragon was filmed” apparently its not just one mountain but an area which includes a lot of mountains and rivers and waterfalls and breathtaking natural beauty. Although thats what it said on a chinese brochure ill wait and see if it lives up to expectations, as any chinese blurb rarely does. We pulled into town at about 4.30 after 7 hours of bum numbing touring on the ricketty bus across some pretty poor roads. Tonight was free, although we had dinner at 8. didnt do a heck of a lot as we had to be up at 6am tomorrow.

Saturday 29th May
We caught a train from SHanghai to Huanghzo, which was a pleasant city, although still ensconsed in smog. They had adsl in their hotel room, so basically i spent the whole day on the internet. There wasnt a whole lot to see and do here, the tour had organised a bike ride around the city, but considering it was raining i decided to skip on it.

Friday 28th May
We went to explore some famous garden just around the corner from the hotel room. It was pretty nice with the skyscrapers in the background but realy i just longed for some starbucks coffee so i didnt stick around too long and decided to explore the cty on my own. I headed around the bund and down the main street looking for a foreign language bookshop, i really wanted this carl jung book, but again no luck whatsoever im just going to have to wait for that one. Still it let me have a good wonder around the city and see what they had on offer. If it wasnt so damn smoggy im sure it would be a very prety city. i wanted to check out the pearl of the orient building, it the strange looking one with the three sprheres hanging on three large concrete cylinders. THe only way to get there was to cross the river, and the best way to do that is near the top of the bund, there is a little rail carriage system thing that takes you through a tunnel in some weird light extravaganza thing… quite bazaar. On the other side i foud the tower and paid my 50 yeun to get just below the top. Once up there i realised what a waste of money it was because the only thing i could see was the road below and i could just make out some shadows of other buildings that the smog was covering from the view.

Thursday 27th May
This morning i awoke with some answers to questions i had the night before, love it when you get the answer after sleeping with it. Anyway i started plugging away at it again and writing in the diary. Today we were catching a train to Shanghai, just 2 hours away. We stuck the telly on just for some backgroud listening. Its truly amazing how far reaching their censorship is. Pretty much anything that makes china look bad is not aired or spoken about in public, or for that matter even in private. Anything that makes the US and europe look like they are evil in contrast to a good china is put on the box, the propaganda machine gives the most skewed view of china and the government. Talk about gagging free speech. makes me think of that jack nicholson line “the truth?? you cant handle the truth”. Today we were catching the train to Shanghai. I was looking forward to seeing this city id heard a lot of hype about it expanding rapidly and becoming the new mecca of capitalism. On the train coming into the city, you could easliy get a feel for just how large a city it was, with huge apartment highrises begining from the outskirts of towm. there was very little that was under 4 storeys high. After we actually pulled into the train station, and jumped into cabs you could really see just how massive it truly was, with big buildings scattered around everywhere, and in the distance a bunch of skyscrapers in all sorts of shapes, although they were difficult to see through the smog.

Wednesday 26th May
This morning we arrived in Su Zhou, and caught a cab to the hotel, its a nice little city with incredible amount of pollution, We were only going to be here for one night, and there wasnt a lot to see here. There is an old garden that is called the leisure garden, it failed to ignite anything in me other than “seen better gardens in backyards at home” well perhaps that mightve been a bit too critical, it was a decent garden, but i was pretty over it. We were sposed to go bike riding this afternoon but i wasnt feeling the greatest and decided to give it a miss. sat in an internet cafe for a few hours looking for acomodation adn things to do in cape town. decided to get back to the hotel and hack away at the smith and smith database again. I got Heaps done, but i was super strung out on caffine til about 4am, and we were leaving at 11.30 so i HAD to get to sleep.

Tuesday 25th May
Today was spent trying to recover from the night before, and slowly remembering all those things you said and did which make you feel like the biggest idiot that ever walked the face of the earth. Ahhh the blessings of alcohol. Basically just wandered around Beijing, had another game of bowling and went to an internet cafe as well as the supermarket. We were catching a train at 7.30pm to take us to Su Zhou, two hours north of Shanghai. I decided to eat on the train, however they didnt have an english menu, luckily there was this chinese guy who had lived in europe for 3 years and spoke excellent english who managed to get me what i wanted. We had a beer and a chat and then we sat down for dinner. There was a lot of those awkward silences. Not sure why people who help think they need to hang out with you, especially when they dont try and make an effort to make conversation. ahh well as soon as i had finished i was out of there. I wanted to finish the book i was reading, a chris ryan book called the watchman. a very good book.

Monday 24th May
Today we were in for a big day, the Great Wall, The Ming Tombs and The summer Palace. First stop the great wall. Its vastly impressive as you see this wall snaking along the spine of a mountain range, making twists and turns and ascents and descents that make you wonder just how physically fit the warriors who patrolled the walls would have had to have been. We finally arrived at the really touristy part of the wall that you are allowed to walk along (there are a few places but we didnt have the option) anyway of course there were a million hagglers, there were also a lot of bears in an enclosure that the RSPCA wouldve closed down yesterday. Poor things. There was also a toboggan ride down from the top of the wall and a cable car for those unable to walk it. The going was tough in certain bits, you cannot possibly imagine what it wouldve been like to build this 5000km wall, at parts it would be over 15m high and generally around 4m wide, with turrets every couple of hundred meters or so. It ranks up there as 3rd to Taj Mahal and the Angkor temples. definately a must see. The ming tombs were hohum, really nothing much there to see at all….. but the summer palace well, that was another story, that was very nice indeed. We only had about 30 minutes to explore as we had run out of time, shouldve skipped the Ming Tombs. Still i managed to hot foot it around to most of the interesting sites, except i missed the giat marble boat that sits on the lake where the emperor/sses used to eat and pretend they were sailing. Tongiht we were having a big one, as our group actually consisted of two groups, and the other groupd were finishing up today. We headed out to a nice restraunt for some peking duck, and we had an awards ceremony. I received the price for the person who stresses out our tour guide the most, and also the award for not listening. Yes yes i hear you say. But i already know what they are talking about cause ive already read about it, and at the end of the day you often need an interpreter for the interpreter, takes a lot of energy to struggle to understand someone, and its much easier to read yourself. anyway winners of awards recieved a shot of snake wine…. BLEHHHHHHH. makes you want to barf. i also managed to polish off a bottle of wine… so i was a tad bit under the influence. We were kicked out from there at 11… apparently all the staff had gone home. So we all trundled down to the local karaoke bar. We took the place over, and i somehow got it into my head that i could sing (although every now and again i would hear myself screaming down the mic and hearing just how bad i sounded through the speakers, but by this time i didnt really care, the booze had managed to make me think i was ‘the king’. countless beers later we were all kicked out, we said our goodbyes and went home to do a lot of hangover curing.