Which way was the tent again ?

Well we finally headed off into the great "Outback" to try our hand at camping (no pun intended). As you can see from the pics we arrived just before sunset and erected our "Chateau Mungo" . The camp site consisted of the main entertaining complex surrounded by the sleeping apartments.

As you can see Ron was quick to test out the "waiters friend" on a good bottle of red and with the fire going we settled into the night. One of our first visitors (pictured in the centre) bounced by for a quick drink and I must admit that our presence did not deter him/her from coming into the camp site and helping itself to as much water as it could find. Totally ignoring the situation that there is NO water available for 100klms and that whatever he/she took we went without.

The national park is spectacular, it was a series of great lakes 45,000 years ago supporting a large population of animals, most of which are now extinct. I will post some pics of the "Wall of China" for you to look at. Very isolated but equally fantastic.

After two days the winds picked up and we spent the entire day wondering if our tent would take off, in the end we gave up and left the park.

It's Sunday, the birds were singing, the sun was shining so it was time for Ron to take "RT" (Rons' Truck) out for it's first run around the bay trip to clock up those first service kilo's.

We headed off to Sorrento (no not the Italian one) to catch the ferry across to Queenscliff and then drove home via Geelong. Great easy day. Next trip is Mungo National Park which will hopefully happen this week.

This is the first "Camping" expedition and should make for some funny stories. Just getting the tents etc together was funny enough, at least I have learnt how to get the mobile hot water system going so each morning will start with a shower and hot cup of coffee. Bring it on.

A night at the Opera

A closer view of the warriors

At last we are out of the big city and off into the country. A 2 hour flight from Beijing and we arrive at Xian which promises to be one of the trip highlights. On arrival the spirits of the group plummeted when we were confronted with air quality that could only be compared to the tailpipe of a very old Harley LOL. Our expectation of clear blue skys and unlimited vista's disappeared immediately. First things first, on checking in at our hotel Ron spotted a Sofitel across the opposite side of the city square so that cleared up dinner for the night - aaaagh a big steak with pepper sauce, maybe some snails and a rich desert.

NO FRENCH restaurant in a sofitel - unheard of. Well not to be beaten we tried the Moroccan and boy were we in for a treat. Hands washed in rose petals, fabulous bread and dips, mouth watering pork rolls and a very slow cooked leg of Lamb - bliss.

The next day we were off to the warriors. The highlight for most people on the trip. I dont know how to describe this visit but I will try. You are first greeted with the sight of all the warriors lined up in the trenches and this takes your breath away. You then realise that only a very small part of the complex has been excavated and you then begin to realise the size and scope of the wealth this emperor had. This is an entire army, each piece hand made and individual. There are the chariots, horses, archers, infantry, generals, cooks etc etc. Truly magnificent.

We were very lucky and had several hours to take this all in. That evening we were off to the opera which was great, Ron and I kept expecting to see the radio city starlets or Ester Williams appear as it was very theatrical and 20's in style. Great night enjoyed by all.

Back to China. We returned to Beijing to meet up with our tour. This turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. As you would expect everyone was a little shy on first meeting but we soon became good friends and this continued for the remainder of the trip.

Beijing is big, congested, polluted and under construction, especially the big ticket items that are covered and being repaired for the games in 2008. Above is the Temple of Heaven and it was one of the few places that had been finished and was not packed with other tourists. The trip in Beijing included the Summer Palace, Forbidden city, Ming tombs (approach only) and the Great Wall. It was interesting to see the difference between my previous visit in 1978 and now. As you can imagine the Forbidden city was packed, unlike my first visit when there were only the 14 of us and we had 5 hours to wonder around without supervision. This Forbidden City trip was the express visit in one and a half hours. CITS also manage to inflict a Pearl factory, Silk Factory, Jade factory assorted temples, museums and the "Knock Off" Market, most of which could happily have been missed and the extra time spent seeing something worthwhile.

The Hutong area of Beijing was very interesting and is probably the only old area left intact in the entire city. The maze of backstreets, lakes and small shops was well worth spending some time exploring - maybe next time.

Next stop the warriors in Xian

We decided to take a quick trip up the highway to look at a deco hotel at a small town call "Bridgewater", but on discovering that it was a one hotel town and we planned to close the pub for most of the week, we would quickly become the towns most unpopular people.

So we drove on and spent the night in Echuca, famed for its paddle steamers and port. Unfortunately as you can see from the pic the drought is having a major impact on the rivers and this is all that's left of the great Campaspie river

Our first full day in China and we are off to Chengde, which is about 4 hours north of Beijing. Chengde is the Summer retreat in the Mountains. In the early 1700's the Emperor built the worlds biggest garden surrounded by 8 temples overlooking the palace and lake complex. Pictured above is one of the temples.

Chengde is still an exciting place to visit as its not on the tourist lists yet and most visitors to the city are bused in and out without have much interaction with the local inhabitants. We had four full days to explore the gardens, temples and the city. The gardens are huge and it takes all day to do a tour which consists of a 20 minute bus ride around the perimeter. The gardens are split into 3 sections to represent the different areas of china. The Plains, the forest and the mountains. The plains were stocked with deer so the emperor and his friends could go hunting - YES they are that big. The temples surround the complex and are simply amazing. Changing in style from Tibetan to Circular and everything in between.

The people are very friendly and go out of their way to welcome you into there city. The restaurants are great. We stumbled through several wonderful meals. In particular was the Seafood around the corner from our hotel. We dined on fresh scallops, fish, lobster (all live from the tanks) and fantastic slow cooked venison and all for $30. It took us 2 days to instruct the staff on how to open a bottle of wine and in the end they were a wiz at it. That also implies we had a glass or two LOL. The other good place was "The Lucky Cow" (or unlucky depending on which side of the chopstick you were on). We started off ordering what we thought was a Beef casserole and a spicy lamb dish. We had a bit of difficulty with the ordering so the owner presented himself at the table fully equipped with his five words of English. Between him and our being "fluent in finger pointing" we got the message through. The first dish arrived and we dived in, not realising that what looked like cherry tomatoes were actually Chillies. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH - Beer, more Beer and lots more beer. Once we got our taste buds back the meal was great. More pics and tales soon.

Ron and I preparing to take a ride around town bejing style.

Travel and Tales with Moi

5/9/07

Just returned home from 23 day in China.

On August 12 2007, Ron and I arrived in Beijing and stayed overnight to recover from the flight before heading off the next day to Chengde to start our adventure. The first couple of hours involved trying to get the legs working after 14 hours of cattle class flying, you know knees up where god never intended them to go, bad food and a three hour layover that you didnt want to happen LOL

We explored the immediate area of the hotel and found a huge market that sold everything that you normally see in "Antique" markets here in Melbourne. Hmmmmm guess they really are yesterday's antiques.

We made the big purchase of a couple of pairs of chopsticks so we had some control of what we put in our mouths over the coming weeks.

Our first run-in with the Chinese menu's occured at our hotel. Being a seafood lover we ventured into the resteraunt area of the hotel to discover the wall of live food to choose from, this included, flounder, schrimps, lobster, crab, turtle, seahorses and other strange looking items.

This was the for runner to many interesting adventures when it came to dinner.

Further updates and pics to come