I know it has been a while since I posted anything but the ‘bootsnall’ people have lost loads of their backups and my last entries have been lost. After the amazing (but packed) Huangshan mountains of Anhui province I said goodbye to Fen at Pudong airport in Shanghai and I jumped a ferry from Shanghai to Osaka in Japan. (This all feels like a very long time ago now). I stayed in Osaka and chilled while recovering from a ridiculous 48hr drink binge on the ferry with this lad from Dover who had lived in Tokyo for the last 20 years with his Jap wife and son. I went around a brand new shopping centre called ‘Hep5′ with a 6′6″ Kiwi geezer. Very modern and fancy. I was asked a strange question about the possibility of me being a metrosexual by an oddball Canadian. This is where you dress so that you look gay but actually aren’t - there is a lot of this in Japan but I don’t think I am one of their number!
I headed to Hiroshima on the most high-tech bus I have ever seen. Japan is very clean and organised, quite incredible to see no graffitti and that kind of thing. No incessant horn-beeping like the insane Chinese ahhhhhhhhh!. While in Hiroshima I did alot of swimming in the hostel pool, ate many Economiackis (Japanese pizza kind of thing), saw the Mazda factory visitor centre thing (the robots looked a little scary), visited Miyajima Island (very famous in Japan) and of course the A-bomb park and museum. This was a very moving experience. At 0815 on the 6th August 1945 the first nuke used in anger was dropped on this city by the septic arseholes. There are some horrific scenes in the museum and it is hard to keep the tears back. I stood right under the epicentre of where the thing exploded. I also went to a place called Sandankyo Gorge down the central mountainous spine of Honshu Island (the largest Japanese Island). I hiked with a couple of Jap lasses 10km to a waterfall. The scenery was stunning and we swam in some crystal clear pools in the river that crashes through the gorge - something special. We slept in a bus stop since the rain was quite bad but this bus stop had a door and electric lights and everything - it was ace, and free (which is nice as everything here a costs a bomb - not as bad as Iceland though). I then headed to Shimonoseki in the far West of Honshu to catch a ferry to South Korea.
Again I had this ridiculous piss up on the ferry with the 3 other westerners on board. So I felt lousy when I got to Pusan on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. I really did chill here and spent 3 days at the beach swimming and sun bathing and generally perving at the hottest of asain lasses (but, they don’t like to sunbathe like us westerners). I walked around crazy fish markets and looked for dog meat. I had a few beers in a disco and loads of people came up to speak to me which was nice as none of the useless tossers in the hostel would come that night. I can now also officially tell the difference between Chinese/Korean/Japanese written language - woohoo! I caught an mint fast train to Seoul in the North of South Korea and then on again to Incheon where I caught my first flight since leaving Newcastle. A 4.5hr trip to Kunming in Yunnan province in the South West of China. I came here because it was the cheapest flight destination available and I had heard that Yunnan province is meant to be a cool place and a great place for further travel into Sichuan province and Tibet.
I landed in Kunming at midnight and set about getting a hostel and this is where the wheels came off my travel plans. I simply couldn’t be arsed continually packing my bag and moving every few days so I thought bollicks to it, I’ll have a couple of months off and that is what I am doing. I stayed 2 weeks in Kunming and then 2 weeks in Dali old town which has been a blast. I haven’t really bothered with any tourist stuff here - I just like been in a culturally different place. I jet off to Chang Mai in Thailand for 28 days where I intend to do the same before returning to China to continue my language quest. My Chinese language skills are getting better although as you might expect progress is slow. There is this Irish lad who runs a cafe bar and I have been in there having the odd full English breakfast, I feel guilty doing it as I am all the way in China but it is pretty hard to resist indulging yourself in a bit of western cuisine after months out of Blighty. Not that I really miss the food or England itself mind - it is just nice to have what you grow up with now and then. The food in China is still very very good itself. The problem here is that tabs and booze are so cheap that it is a real effort to avoid the evil juice. In Dali I know all the expat community (they all run bloody pubs) and it is really tempting to return and set up a business or something after listening to these lads. Watch this space. I got some good news about my house sale. It finally went through in mid-september so I don’t have the worry of having to go home to sort it out.
One thing about Yunnan province is that it borders Laos and Burma and all the drugs from Burma are trafficked through here for further global distribution. Apparantly, I am told most of the heroine in the World originates in Burma (I thought it was Afghanistan). So you end up with quite a bloody interesting place. When you are at home and you think of drug dealers you think of young disillusioned lads living on council estates etc. Take a walk around Dali and it’s the old women who hassle you to buy the weed that grows wild around here - this invariably draws all the hippy tosser types to Dali. I am just surprised how many people are into this stuff around here. I can’t really handle it myself. With cheap booze, drugs, food, tabs and awesome natural beauty the expats reckon this place is going to kick off as China’s economic growth gathers momentum. It could be the place to set something up mmmmmmmmmmmm?
Happy hunting
