Shanghai

A couple of hours on the fast train from Qufu took us to Shanghai, the epitome of a modern, bustling Asian city.
Our hostel was remarkedly good - a brand new, clean room with the best shower we've had in a long time; a cute rooftop bar/restaurant; really friendly staff (who even went with Alistair to the local Mandarin-speaking barbers to enable him to get a much needed haircut) and all within a short walk of People's Square, the centre of the city.
We did rapidly find out that our desire to maintain our early morning routine was going to be a challenge as nothing seemed to open before about 9am; the daytime was pretty hot and there was lots to do in the evenings, as the city really seemed to start buzzing under the lights. However, a slightly more relaxed schedule did allow us to recover from the strains of the previous two weeks and a cold which had been annoyingly persistent.
Hightlights of our few days included:
The day of the dumpling
Fried, steamed or with soup in them; in any shape or size Shanghai is the place to get dumplings - and we didn't hold back - on our first day we had 4 varieties!
At lunch time there were hundreds of tourists crowding the restaurants around the gardens. We walked a little further and stumbled upon a food court, where we were the only westerners. Here we enjoyed dumplings where you sip out the soup inside through a straw and fried crab dumplings, both delicious local specialties:

This was followed by more dumplings for dinner - this time the cloud-like ones, at Din Tai Fung, a well known Taiwanese chain with branches in all the major Chinese cities.
We also enjoyed some delicious Japanese food and found a great cafe in Tiangzifang for breakfast, with probably the biggest coffee mugs in the world:

The skyline at night

An evening trip to the Bund, one of the most prestigious streets in Shanghai, gave us glorious views of both the old buildings that line the street...

and the modern towering skyscrapers of Pudong, just across the river:

We also had the opportunity to experiment with some night-time traffic pics...more work needed:

 

Evening entertainment
Shanghai has it all - but we opted for a trip to the circus, to see some amazing athletes do death defying stunts (not quite as good as the Cirque de Soleil we'd seen a few years ago in Japan, but half the price and still pretty amazing); a cocktail at a fabulous bar high up over the city, with a great view of Pudong and the Bund; and an evening of jazz in a really retro 1960s hotel bar, played by a band who looked like they'd played exactly the same set every night for the last 60 years:

The markets and gardens:
A good few hours were spent meandering the streets of the various markets and antique shops in Shanghai - again selling anything and everything you could imagine - watch anyone?

And Yuyuan Gardens was a delightful little haven from the hustle and bustle of the city, with a great selection of tea houses, pagodas and other old buildings:

The train

To top it all off, we were magnetically levitated to the airport in a matter of seconds by one of the fastest trains in the world:

Yes you read that correctly!

 

Shanghai may not have had the 'big sights' of Beijing, but we enjoyed our few days here a lot more, and has made a strong claim for a place in our top 3 cities of the trip.

Qufu - the home of Confucious (and not much else)

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do" [Confucious, 4th century BC]
On the weekend we left Shaolin Kung Fu school we decided we would see a bit of Qufu (the nearest town to the school) given it was the home of Confucius.
A couple of our group from school came with us too which was nice.
After paying an extortionate entry fee, we went into the Confucious temple. I've not got much to say about it as there wasn't much written in English! A few nice buildings (many of which spring up after Confucious' time), the spot where he used to teach and about a billion Chinese tourists

We then went and had a posh cup of tea in the Shangri-La hotel to get out of the heat:

On the way back into town we spotted a bakery giving away cake and a kind Chinese gentleman pushed to the front of the queue and got us a couple of slices of very average cake, but it was the thought that counts!
An average (but thankfully cheap) dinner later and we said goodbye to our friends and stayed the night in the local hostel before abandoning plans to go to Jining to catch a plane, and getting a train to Shanghai instead, hoping for some of the glitz it is famous for. Perhaps it could lend some to Qufu?!

The end of an era...just a very short one

The time has come for us to leave the Shaolins in Qufu and start our China adventure proper. It is with mixed feelings we depart:

• It is after all a Friday and we've just been forcibly stretched by a sadistic Shi Fu
• It has been fun to settle down and get to know people, our group has had good commeraderie
• It's been good to learn some new skills, some more useful than others!

In the past couple of weeks we've completed three forms:

1. Tai Chi
2. Wudang - short staff
3. Five step fist form

And learnt some Sanda, Qi Gong, sweeps, takedowns and Shaolin flips (the less said about the latter the better). It's remarkable to think we've only been at school two weeks, but we got lucky as we were accelerated to catch up with the folk a few weeks ahead.

It has been good for us to try something different to our usual highly aerobic sports and we've appreciated the control and balance of Kung Fu.

Oh, and it has been good to be in a routine again (albeit one that starts at 05.30!).

So for now we shall hang up our plimsolls and lay down our staffs and say 'Xie Xie Shi Fu' [Thank you master]

Sam vs Goliath

Today at Shaolin Kung Fu school I learnt how to take down a man three times my size. We all had to take turns practising on each other and I 'm the only girl. It was funny because some of the chaps in my group were struggling to come to terms with having to fake punch and drop a female and kept saying sorry.

On the other hand I was having a blast and couldn't stop laughing, neither could the master. I've not seen him smile so much, I think it just probably looked quite funny :)

Really useful skill though.

Beijing

We hadn't planned on going to Beijing, but had been regretting that decision a little. When some fellow trainee Shaolin's said they were going for the weekend we decided to go for it and join them.
Booking a train ticket is a little complex as requires an upload of your passport, but seemed to work and six of us set off in a van to the station after Wudang (internal style, with short staff) training on Friday afternoon having asked permission from our Shi Fu (master), written him a note, AND signed out in the office. When we got to the station we handed our phones over at the ticket office to show the confirmation email (helpfully in English and Chinese) and showed our passports and they duly printed our tickets. One chap hadn't managed to book on line and was upset when there were no tickets left and we had to leave him in Qufu. Six were now five and off we went. The second class train journey was fast and comfortable after Sam managed to successfully negotiate people out of our seats with lots of pointing and smiling.
On arrival, having successfully negotiated the tube system we arrived at the station closest to our hostel. It was situated on a narrow bustling shopping street, heaving with Chinese people, but full of atmosphere. As seems the norm in Asia, people still managed to drive cars down the alley at about 100mph through the thousands of people, with about an inch of clearance on their wing mirrors.

Lots of cafés, boutique shops and street sellers, and quite possibly the coolest Starbucks building ever!

Our hostel was nice and clean and after dropping our bags we headed out for a late dinner. We ended up in a Japanese place which did yummy sushi rolls, but had curiously run out of normal rice (which I would have thought impossible in China, but hey).

A short night sleep then up early for a trip to the Great Wall.
It took 3 hours in the bus, but we then had 3 hours to walk the 6km section of wall we were at which was a quiet section, therefore not heaving with Chinese tourists.
The view from the wall was spectacular and best described in photos:

Long sections of wall were connected with large guard towers:

Some sections were pretty steep:

And some sections had fools on them:

And it was actually quite a work out in the heat, when were were supposed to be resting our battered bodies!
Back to Beijing and we had a yummy Chinese meal on the roof of a restaurant near our hostel and then an earlyish night in beds that were hard, but at least had proper mattresses. The beds at school have 1/2 inch mattresses and aren't very comfy!!
The group split up on Sunday and we went to Tianamen square, where it seems since 1989 the Tanks have been replaced by golf buggy buses:

And then to the forbidden City which was our first experience of swarming masses of Chinese tourists, which is not an experience we hope to repeat (they could do with a queuing lesson). A selection of photos below:

After a while we were tired of being trodden on, poked in the head by sun umbrellas and generally manhandled, so we headed back to our hostel for lunch and then started back to the train station.
As we'll miss dinner at the school we needed to pick up some food for later, but we're not enamoured by the local delicacies:

Luckily we found a bakery!

Thursdays part two

I like Thursdays. It's the first time I've come close to 'no friggen way!', but it was hard, full of comaraderie and rewarding.

After lunch was the power training we'd heard so much about (in the scary rumour type way), here's what we did:


We walked over to the national park behind the school.
It started with a run up some steep stone steps (not bad you think, given all the running in New Zealand), unfortunately that was only to get us to the top.

Next we had to crawl down the stupidly steep stone steps head first on our hands and feet, which was tricky to say the least. Sam wasn't given anymore confidence when someone came hurtling past on their belly having lost their grip. A few of those made our arms wobbly, but as we were with all the older students in our group there was lots of encouragement. [sidebar: we newbies are described as the Noobs, and by 'older', we mean been at school longer. The one and two week noobs have largely been trained on our own until today].

Next we had to piggy back each other up another set of steps a few times, where pleasing Sam did better than some of the lads in our group.

Next came a humumgous slide, which we had to run up (so long it took almost 5 minutes to get up). Pleasingly, once everyone had got up (some rather worse for wear), we were allowed to slide down...weeeeeeee!!!!! True to form our Shi Fu came down on his feet 'surf style'. One of our friends took his camera down with him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T98dNjbTrkE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rUOT5MYvmo

 

Finally we were taken to a near vertical rock face and told to run up it 3 times...the sort of thing you'd think impossible if you didn't just see the person in front do it. It was actually really fun.
From there we took the 15 minute walk back to school on wobbly legs, with huge smiles, where we chatted with the older students and there was a clear sense of achievement.
So, in conclusion, Thursdays are hard, but Thursdays are also deeply satisfying, and that slide was awesome :)

Thursdays part one

We'd been warned about Thursdays. It started however, pretty sedately, Tai Chi at 06.00 followed by the by now normal excruciating stretches, some relays and Qi Gong (another slow, internal martial art) in a pretty wooded area next to the school.
Then we had to hit trees (poor trees)...then we had to kick each other...really.
Apparently it conditions us to attack, so we won't be easily defeated by the sudden pain of a hit as we'll be used to it! Hmm...


This was all before 10 o'clock. The rest of the morning was spent learning about acupuncture and cupping from Master Wu, sadly he doesn't practise any more due to his age (no idea, probably 80+) as we have lots of aches and pains that could do with some help. Funnily he randomly stuck needles into the people sitting too close without asking permission (mental note- sit in the back of this class).


This afternoon is power training which we're told is horrific, watch this space...

First day at school

A full day's travelling took us from KL, via Shanghai (where, running from the moment we got off the plane in Pudong airport, we thankfully just made it across the city to catch our next flight from Hongquai airport) to Jining, the nearest airport to Qufu Shaolin Kung Fu school.
Yes you did just read that right. Despite neither of us ever having done any martial arts previously, we've chucked ourselves into the deep-end and decided to spend the next 2 weeks training with Shaolin monks.
The first 24hrs felt very much like a first day at a new school - and one that we'd joined halfway through the year what's more. And this isn't some plush modern private school...think old-school boarding house at its worst!

Having completed the paperwork and been told about some of what was to follow, we were shown to our basic room, with 2 wooden beds with 1/2 inch mattresses and sparse furniture. Despite being knackered from the journey, a somewhat restless night followed as we tried to find a comfortable position to sleep.
We had the luxury of a lie in on our first morning, being allowed to skip the 6am training session and join everybody at breakfast at 7am...our first experience of school meals.
A loud shrill on a whistle indicated we were allowed into the dining room and we were immediately swamped by the c.60 other students pushing to get their rations and a seat at a table. Breakfast consisted of 2 boiled eggs, a steamed bread roll and a sachet of what we later discovered was soya milk powder. Many of the older students had their own porridge oats to mix with the milk powder and hot water, but we had to suffice with what had been issued. In the following 10 mins, the food was wolfed-down, with little to no conversation (particularly on our table, as we'd unluckily chosen to sit with some of the least social students) and everybody immediately left, with a trail of destruction behind.
8am was the first of the bi-weekly room inspections, which given we'd been in our room for less than 12hrs we thankfully passed with no issues.
And so just before 8.30am it was time to line up outside for the first training session - which started again with a shrill whistle. As 'newbies', we needed to introduce ourselves to all the other students and then the Shaolin masters - making sure we bowed as we'd been instructed to so we didn't offend anybody before we started. Thankfully there were two other newbies, who were also assigned the same Master as us, which made the whole thing slightly less daunting.
Together we muddled our way through the various routines for the rest of the day (despite little guidance) including further training sessions at 10.20-11.30, 15.00-16.30 and 16.45-17.45; lunch at 12.00; dinner at 18.00 and mandarin classes from 18.45-19.45.
During the day, we realised that, whilst some of the students had been there for several months (or even years), there were quite a few others who were still relatively new themselves - and some of them were actually friendly and helpful. And having done one training session, the second was more predictable. And having gone through the breakfast routines, lunch and then dinner was also more predictable (and the food pretty much identical to the 19 lunches and dinners over the next 2 weeks).
And so it was that by 21.30, as we started to nod-off in preparation for an early start the next day, we were pretty much settled into the routines of school.

Ps we have also found out that Blogspot is a black-listed website in China - so this (and the Thailand blogs we didn't manage to post before getting here) will have to wait - hopefully only for a couple of weeks until we reach Hong Kong.

36 hours in Kuala Lumpur

Between Thailand and China we popped into Malaysia to see Sam's friend from uni, Jacinta and her family.
Since we last saw Jacinta she has married Stuart and had a beatiful son Ethan.
They took us to see the Masjid Jamek:

A cool model of KL:

A fabulous food court. And a bar on a helipad!

It was a fleeting visit, but it was great to see them after all this time. Thanks for the great hospitality Gould family and we look forward to one day welcoming you in England if you come our way!

Ko Si Chang

I think we mentioned that Thailand was a last minute substitute for the Philipines when it turned out the wind wouldn't be good enough for kiting. As a result we didn't have much planned, but decided on the spur of the moment to spend 5 days on Ko Si Chang, a small island about 3 hours from Bangkok.
An island idyll it is not. Not really sure what you'd call it. It's only a few miles long and has only one beach to speak of, a few temples, a small bustling Main Street by the port and not many tourists.
As glass half full folk, we settled into a nice routine of:

• Early morning run (trying to a. Avoid being eaten by all the stray dogs, b. Run up the very steep hills without passing out, and c. Not melt in the heat),
• Post breakfast yoga session.
• Mid morning walk into town, grab an iced coffee from moo cafe ( not really a cafe, two ladies with some ingredients, with whom we managed to arm wave negotiate soya milk that we brought with us replacing milk product in the coffee for Sam).
• Hideaway in the air con of our little hut for midday, using the internet to finish planning the China part of our trip.
• Venture out mid afternoon to either the beach (hired a kayak which slowly sank, with paddles that had been fixed up using metal patches making them heavy and unbalanced), temples(where we were 'washed' by a monk and given hydration drinks, he wanted to feed us too, but we weren't sure of customs /expectations and things, so managed to politely refuse), or the old palace grounds.

When I first started thinking of writing a blog for Koh Si Chang a day or so into our stay, I thought a couple of lines about 'not bothering to make the effort' ,'wish we hadn't bothered' would suffice, but a little like finding some dusty junk in the attic, if you bother to clean it up and look closely, you might uncover something with a little charm, and that we did. Here's why:
The old palace used to be a summer residence for the king, but much of it got taken down years ago. Despite this, the ground have a certain otherworldly charm

 

The palace surroundings also gave us ample opportunity to play with our new photography tricks:

[Post processing colour changes]

[Fun with perspective]

 

A few of the things we ate on the island, are right up there with the top eats in Thailand and not just for the taste, the experiences were what made them special.

• A lady stands on a street corner making Pad Thai noodles fresh, endlessly from lunch until late. A couple of bags (yep, they serve them in bags) of these made a fab takeaway dinner.
• Another street seller makes mango with sticky rice and coconut cream. She spent ages selecting the perfect mango fir us and she used disposable plastic gloves for hygiene and that coconut sauce was heavenly.
• One day when out looking for lunch we were flagged over by some folk with huge vats of food on the street. Not really knowing what it was, it seemed as good as anything, so we said yes please, at which point we were served up two huge bowls of rice, a vegetable dish and an egg and pork dish. We tried to give them some money, but they sent us away with a shake of the head saying 'free, free'. The chap who had called us over then chased us across the road to give us some free drinks to go with it. No idea why I doubt we looked malnourished...

The old port area is quite pretty. It has some colonial features, brightly coloured fishing boats and an odd mix of old and new:

So, in conclusion, we probably wouldn't bother going back, nor would we recommend you visit, but if you got ship wrecked and washed up on a small island that happened to be Ko Si Chang, we expect like us, you'll find some of it's (quite well) hidden charms!

Bangkok or Bust

We took the 'bus' (minibus crammed full of locals) to Bangkok from Pran Buri where we'd been kiting. It has some real plus points over UKs Stagecoach:
- It's cheap (4 pounds each for 3 hour journey)
- Great service (they pick you up from your accomodation)
And some negatives:
- If you sit in the first row (which we were), the locals stack up their bags around and over your legs
- They drop you at the side of a main road in Bangkok, not at a bus station or stop or anything, just literally on the kerb of a dual carriageway from where it is a hot and sticky 10 minute walk to the BTS metro.
We took the metro (clean and quick) to our b&b which was out of the tourist area and down what in the UK would be called an alley, but passed for a two way street in Thailand. We picked this place as it was cheap due to the location, but it was wonderful. Cute rooms, very clean with decor reflecting the rooms name 'yesteryear' including an old fashioned design telly and wind up toys.
The staff spoke great English, were endlessly cheery and helpful and they pay for a tuk tuk ride to get you to the station each morning.

The breakfasts were Thai style, changed daily and huge. A common combo was fried rice and prawn (can't get used to prawns for breakfast!).

We spent the next few days enjoying the sights and the aircon of Bangkok including:
A boat bus trip

The Grand Palace. Two very hot and sticky hours walking around and marvelling at the splendor, and seeing the emerald Buddah (who was a little disappointing to be honest. Half the complex of buildings are dedicated to housing him, so we were expecting something huge. When you eventually get in to see him, he's about a foot high...but I guess size isn't everything.

One of the best bits was the garden out the front which looked like something from Alice in Wonderland:

An escape hunt murder mystery game. Where you dress up like Sherlock Holmes and have 1 hour to solve a load of puzzles in a room- a little like the crystal maze for those that remember it (apparently a version is opening in London shortly....)

Chatuchak weekend market
One of the biggest markets in the world apparently, you can buy everything and anything in its tiny alleyways from Thai spices:

To plastic fruit:

To art:

To an Alien sculpture:

And you can eat all manner of things from the traditional, like squid on a stick:

To the modern - Beautiful handmade ice-creams:

Or the random - some Paella, cooked by a man who looks (a little) like Salvador Dali:

As we are not coming home quite yet I (Sam) wasn't allowed to buy lots of things, but we stocked up on some flip flops (3 pairs for £4) as I had walked out the bottom of mine and some t-shirts to replace those we've thrown in the bin.
The Bangkok Airways cinema. For a novel cinema experience this is like flying business class. You initially go into a lounge for a complimentary drink and snacks, then the cinema is made up of pairs of business class airline seats surrounded by walls. You are given pillows and duvets too (which is lucky as it was baltic in there). We saw Spider-Man as it was the only thing on!
Whilst not actually buying anything, we also spent some time in the Siam Paradigm mall, a HUGE shopping complex with aircon (you're noticing a pattern here...), a great food court and endless coffee shops.

Bangkok was big, hot and bustly, but well worth the few days stopover.