China: Chengdu

Chengdu 09.05-12.05

After spending just over a week in Malaysia, we were very excited to be catching our flight to Chengdu in China. On the plane we met a friendly Chinese woman who was studying some ridiculously complicated science PHD in Singapore and we told her all the places we were to visit in China. It became clear that our Chinese pronunciation was not really up to scratch. We kept saying we were going to ‘Chengdu’, ‘Xi’an’ and ‘Beijing’ among other places. We repeated them about 10 times before she finally understood and said ‘Ohhhh Chengdu, Xi’an and Beijing!’ in completely different tones and pronunciations. To establish the fact that we were going to the ‘Jiuzhaigou’ National Park took about 25 attempts! We found it quite funny that it seemed so difficult to make her understand that we were going to Chengdu, when we were on a flight to Chengdu! In Chinese it is said more like ‘Chongdu’, but still that’s not that big a difference. We actually had this discussion with a nice couple we met on a bus who had had this problem all over China!

We managed to make it to China, and after all the hassle of getting the Visa in Kuala Lumpur we were simply waved through immigration in a couple of minutes. We even had the opportunity to electronically rate the level of service provided while we were waiting. Nina was ‘satisfied’ with the process. We managed to find the airport bus without much hassle and got to the hostel just after midnight where Nina wished me a happy birthday.

The next day on my actual birthday we decided to go and see the Pandas in the morning and go to a Sichuan Opera in the evening. Nina gave me my birthday present in the morning, a swatch watch we bought in Kuala Lumpur and a card she made while I was snoozing on the plane (we don’t get much time apart!). We then went to the Giant Panda Research Base located just on the outskirts of Chengdu. It was quite ironic that this event, the one Nina has been looking forward to most out of our whole trip, happened to fall on my birthday! Saying that, I enjoyed it just as much as her as the Pandas were ridiculously cute. There are about 70 in the entire enclosure and we were allowed to see about 40 of them. We saw Pandas of all ages but our favourite were the young ones who were only about 3 or 4 feet tall and seemed to spend most of their day just snoozing in the trees. The reason for going early in the morning was to see them all at feeding time. They grouped about 8 of them together and provided what seemed to be an unlimited amount of bamboo! The whole facility was extremely well looked after and the Pandas all seemed to be really happy which made the experience even better.

After a nice Sichuan lunch, a few of games of Table Tennis in our hostel and a couple of beers with some other travellers, we made our way to see the Sichuan Opera. It was a mish-mash of different acts, from comedy to dancing and acrobatics, and it culminated in the famous ‘face-changing’ show. The face-changers wore masks that they could seamlessly change instantly to different colours and designs. We were bamboozled and really enjoyed it. After the show we wandered up to the central Tianfu Square to see the imposing statue of Chariman Mao that looked down the main boulevard. It was an amazing birthday and one that I definitely won’t forget!

The following day we endeavored to do some serious sightseeing around the city. We visited the Wenshu monastery which was set in a beautiful courtyard with ponds that had hundreds of terrapins and frogs in them. The streets surrounding the monastery looked extremely oriental so we had a walk around there and looked in some of the shops. There was a fairground game where you threw beanbags at toys to hit them off the shelf and win them. I stepped up to win Nina a panda- but alas we left with no panda in hand. We then went to a famous shopping street named ‘big and small alley’- a slightly strange name but an awesome place with loads of interesting shops and street food stalls. There was a shop named ‘Panda House’ which sold literally EVERYTHING panda. Nina was in heaven and ended up getting a long-desired Panda t-shirt. We also tried some of the street food, Nina went for mystery meat with chilli in a banana leaf while I opted for a single rib. Both were distinctly average. We then tracked down an antique market that sold loads of fascinating Mao-era trinkets. There were communist propaganda cartoons and the ‘little red books’. We ended up buying three Mao badges which were worn during the Cultural Revolution as a sign of devotion to Mao. For dinner, we decided to try the Sichuan delicacy hot-pot which was absolutely….horrible! It all looked very promising as it was a similar setup to the Satay restaurants in Malaysia where you choose your own skewers and cook them in a broth in front of you. We chose the ‘half spicy’ broth which turned out to be a big pot literally split in two between a spicy broth on one side and some water with tomatoes and a random fish floating in it on the other side. Another problem was the fact we had no clue what any of the meat was. As it was all marinated, what looked like beef when raw came out when cooked to look and taste like no meat we’d ever had before! The only meat we could definitely tell what it was were the chicken feet which we wanted to by-pass anyway! To make matters worse we accidentally poured vinegar onto our rice thinking it was soy. A wholly unsatisfying dinner!

Wenshu Temple

Wenshu Temple

Mystery meat!

Our rather odd hot-pot

Unidentified meat

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Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur & Melaka

Kuala Lumpur 27.04-06.05

Thanks to Air Asia we arrived in Kuala Lumpur airport so late that the buses had stopped running to the city! We decided to save a bit of money and just sleep on the floor in the airport along with all the other people waiting for early morning flights. We managed to get about 4/5 hours before getting some breakfast and catching the shuttle bus into KL Sentral station. On our first day we applied for our Chinese visas and found out that we could only pick them up a week later on the following Monday. This meant that we would have to stay in KL a bit longer than anticipated so we extended our stay at our hostel and decided to see everything KL had to offer.

We were staying in the heart of Chinatown and every night there was a bustling market selling all kinds of fake goods from bags and clothes to watches and jewellery. Needless to say we bought tonnes of new stuff! Nina got a ‘Mulberry’ bag and some ‘Tiffany’ earrings while I bought 3 ‘Fred Perry’ polo shirts and 4 pairs of ‘Calvin Klein’ boxer shorts. They all look surprisingly real but will probably fall apart in a few weeks. During the course of our week in KL we visited quite a few other famous markets in different areas of the city. The Chow Kit market in the north of the city seemed to specialise in meat and to our shock they actually displayed the heads of the cows that had provided the beef! The Pudu market was even bigger than Chow Kit and sold fish, poultry, fruit and veg and all kinds of delicacies. Although all the vendors kept shouting for us to buy their squid or frogs or chicken feet, we only ended up getting half a watermelon from one of the fruit sellers. While walking around we came across a man who was blow-torching chickens and he was extremely happy to pose for a picture!

Massive Jack Fruit

Happy to have some fresh fruit!

The proud blow-torcher!

During our week in KL, we managed to divide our time equally between the historical sites and the more modern ones. We visited the national museum which gave a great outline of the history of Malaysia and had a really interesting section on the country under the separate colonial leaderships of Portugal, The Netherlands and Great Britain. Combined with the Chinese and Indonesian influences, Malaysia is now a melting pot of cultures. We made a trip to the outskirts of the city to see the Batu Caves which are hidden away in mountains behind a giant golden-coloured Buddha. In the centre of the city we walked from the Masjid Jamek, the largest mosque in Malaysia, to Merdeka square where independence was proclaimed in 1957. 

Outside Batu Caves

Inside Batu Caves

Masjid Jamek

Merdeka Square

A Hindu temple near Chinatown

We went to see the iconic Petronas towers but decided to skip going on the sky-walk between the two as it was quite expensive and we had heard that the view was better from the Menara KL tower. The observation deck on Menara KL prodived a panoramic view of the city and you got a great view of the Petronas towers against the skyline. KL also has a huge amount of up-market ‘megamalls’ and on the Friday night we decided to go to the cinema to watch Iron Man 3. While walking around looking for a place to eat, we discovered to our joy a Nandos! After 2 months of curry in India, we couldn’t resist treating ourselves to the peri-peri goodness. The Bukit Bintang shopping area was also home to the newest Megamall which had the biggest food court we had ever seen. However, our favourite place to eat in Kuala Lumpur was a stall on the side of the road in Chinatown that served satay in about 50 different varieties. We knew that satay was the most famous Malaysian food and our eyes lit up when we found this perfect place to try it. You chose your own skewers before either boiling the veg on your table or having the guys BBQ it on the grill for you. It was amazing and we ate there about 4 times in 6 days!

The Petronas Towers

A hard life

SATAY

The KL skyline

Petronas Towers as seen from KL tower

We anxiously made our way to the Chinese visa centre on the Monday knowing that all our plans for the next 3 weeks rested on the outcome of our application. In the end, we were silly to even worry and picked up our passports complete with visas inside. HOORAY! We then picked up our bags from the hostel and got on a bus to Melaka, an old seaside town south of KL that had gone back and forth between colonisers and invaders. It had a lot of history and reminded us a bit of Galle in Sri Lanka with its Portuguese feel. It was a lovely place to stroll around and we had a delicious traditional Malaysian meal on the riverfront to celebrate the fact we were definitely going to china! The next day we decided to take a river cruise which went right through the heart of the town and showed all the major sites. We then had a horrible lunch of what can only be described as under-cooked scrambled egg on top of chicken that didn’t taste like chicken and rice which was infused with the flavours of the former. Massively unsatisfied, we vowed to have a good dinner and we were recommended by our home-stay a satay restaurant famous in all Malaysia! The difference with this satay was that all the meat was boiled in a peanut sauce on your table instead of being grilled. This meant the flavours were amazing! We came back from Melaka to KL for a night before jumping on a plane to Chengdu in China.

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The Melaka Riverside

A traditional Melakan Lunch

Christ Church

We couldn't resist!

India: Darjeeling

Darjeeling 22.04-26.04

Just as Kolkata was starting to get really hot, we took an overnight train to spend some time at the Raj-era hill station of Darjeeling. It was significantly cooler when we got there and we all had to dig out the jumpers from the bottom of our bags. We were staying in a hotel called 'The Windamere' which was a heritage hotel with a lot of history. It was originally used to house the bachelor tea planters that came over from England to start their businesses. Since the buildings were so old, they didn't have central heating but every room had a fireplace and we were provided with hot water bottles every night to keep warm! The Windamere was also a famous place to have afternoon tea and to our delight there were scones and flapjacks! The Darjeeling tea itself was a bit weak for our tastes until we realised that you were supposed to drink it without milk. After helping ourselves to lots of scones, sandwiches, cake and flapjacks we sat down in a cosy living room with a log fire. Throughout our stay we met various interesting people at afternoon tea including three elderly Sikkimese sisters who had been educated in Darjeeling but emigrated to London and New York to work for organisations like the UN. They returned every year to sort out business matters and at one point mentioned they had recently sold a "little garden" which turned out to be 125 acres! Dad (an afternoon tea aficionado)  had wanted to have afternoon tea at the Windamere for over 40 years since his last trip to India so he was completely in his element.

The living room

Scones in India!

The fire keeping us warm

The happiest man in the world

Nina sipping her tea in a very refined manner

A building called 'The Snuggery'!

The dining room

We were met in Darjeeling by our guide Dawa, a Tibetan/Indian whose first language was Nepali! Given Darjeeling's location, it is a melting pot of cultures with large Nepali, Tibetan, Sikkimese and Bengali communities. Dawa was only supposed to show us around for a day, but we think communications with his company got muddled as he was very willing to show us around for the duration of our stay. He was extremely inquisitive and interested in our lives and England and we got on very well. After talking about his village, he asked Nina what animals she had in her village. She said that Chesham had some cows and sheep to which he was very impressed and mused "your village must have lots of milk". He also kept asking when Nina and I would marry after finding out we'd been together for a few years. He asked Nina why she hadn't decided yet and found the whole situation very strange! We had to keep reminding him that our cultures were very different.

He showed us the Tibetan Craft Village which was set up to provide jobs for the people who had fled to Darjeeling from Tibet after the Chinese invasion. They made all sorts of things from carpets to jumpers and sold them on-site with all profits going back into the charity. On the walls of the workshops we noticed that there were charts showing all the workers and the results of their regular blood pressure tests. All of them, most in their 70s or 80s, seemed to be in very good shape! We also visited the Himalayan Zoo and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. The zoo had many animals that were local to the Himalayas including bears, snow leopards and some giant Yaks which we found out can survive at -40C. The mountaineering institute was founded by Tenzing Norgay, the first man to reach the summit of Everest with Edmund Hillary, and it contained an interesting museum about the Himalayas and various Everest expeditions. Looking at the basic equipment that they climbed with really put into perspective what an incredible achievement it was.

A worker making yak-wool shawls

Applying the finishing touches to a new carpet

A heaven for cats

A Himalayan bear!

Himalayan Yaks

The HMI

Tenzing Norgay Statue

We woke up at 5am the next day to try and get a glimpse of Kangchenjunga Mountain. It is the 3rd highest mountain in the world after Everest and K2 but until 1852 it was believed to be the highest. Although it is relatively close to Darjeeling, the frequent cloud cover means that it's often difficult to see. Early morning is usually the best chance you have for clear weather. We were really lucky that the morning we picked was relatively cloudless. Although the cloud just covered the peak, the views were still amazing and sunrise was beautiful. After catching a couple more hours sleep before breakfast, we visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate which provides Darjeeling tea to Harrods. We wandered around the plantation and saw how the tea was made in the factory before purchasing some ourselves. It became clear that someone, most likely Harrods, was making a huge profit as Dawa told us the tea pickers only made 90 Rupees (about £1.05) a day!

We also looked around the botanical gardens which was in significantly better shape than the one in Kolkata. It had loads of flowers and interesting plants used for medicinal purposes. A conversation struck up about dangerous animals in India and Dawa explained how he often came face to face with Himalayan bears when trekking. He said that they also came to steal corn from the field behind his house during the night. He then asked us what dangerous animals we had in England and the only thing we could come up with was badgers because some carry TB! We couldn't really compare! Afterwards he showed us around a really beautiful monastery and explained about the different sects of Buddhism. We then took the opportunity to explore on our own during the afternoon and took a look around the Gymkhana Club. It was an old Raj-era social club that hadn't changed one bit and reminded us of something out of A Passage to India.

Kangchenjunga (Centre right)

Sunrise from Observatory Hill

The Happy Valley Tea Estate

TEA!!!!

The root can be used as mouthwash

Foxgloves

Bird of Paradise

The monastery

Prayer flags overlooking the hills

On our final day in Darjeeling, we took the toy-train from Darjeeling station to Ghum. Ghum is the highest railway station in India and used to be the highest in the world. Unfortunately the steam trains weren't working so we had to take a diesel powered train for the 7km trip. The train literally goes on the side of the road and has to blow its horn the whole way to make sure cars and people get out of the way. We stopped for 10 minutes at the Gurkha memorial which paid tribute to all the Gurkha soldiers lost in wars worldwide up until the present day. At Ghum Station there was a steam train you could take pictures with and a small museum explaining the history of the line. Before it was built, the journey from Kolkata to Darjeeling took 6 days! We also had a look at Ghum Monastery which was 150 years old and a lot bigger than the one we saw the previous day. The monastery belonged to the Dalai Lama's sect so we got to see some of the big yellow hats like the ones he wears at ceremonies. The next day we flew back to Kolkata and had our final curry and even more upsetting our final Chai in India. Dad left the following morning back to London and we caught our flight in the afternoon to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

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The Darjeeling Railway sign. Look familiar?

The out-of-action steam train

Our cheesy steam train tourist picture!

At Ghum Railway station

Ghum Monastery

The Buddha inside

Us and Dawa