China: a summary

Well it's all over now, but here are some highlights and lowlights....

Lowlights.... (but still great experiences!):

Having travelled in every content except Antarctica, and having seen some pretty bad toilets, I can say wholeheartedly that the toilets in China were the absolute worst I've come across. I've never vomited in a toilet anywhere else in the world because it was so awful, nor have I not even been able to enter from over 20m away because of the odour (dubbed Eau de Asia by myself). Shocking. More details to follow, but they are not for the faint hearted.

Dogs and cats. Not on the streets though.... My naive self was hoping that dining on these was just shocking rumours, that I would find unfounded. Nope. Also snails, frogs, snakes.... "if it walks, crawls, swims or flies, someone in China eats it".

People. There are 1.3B people in China, without a doubt. They are everywhere. I knew this before I left, but it has to be seen to be believed. Everywhere, and everything, is "packed with Chinese". And that is quoting a Chinese person.....

Spitting, snorting, sniffing and snot in general. If they can huck it up and expel it, they will, and it will miss you by millimetres. There were some close calls, but we got through unscathed. Witnessed some 10/10 snot-releasing efforts though.


Highlights.....

The Great Wall - a true wonder of the world. Absolutely incredible to see (those poor Chinese slaves that built it....).

The Terracotta Warriors - now, that's an ego (details to follow).

Yangshuo - beautiful mountainous scenery.

The Food - OMG awesome. I've never, ever enjoyed the food in a country as much as I did in China. It was fresh, delicious, and I couldn't get enough of it (well, actually I could. And I don't need to see Chinese food for quite a while).

Travelling with Nick - we laughed the whole time. Mostly at other peoples expense, but I'm cool with that.

The Hutong in Beijing. Old Beijing.... a really great area to explore.

Suzhou - we extended our trip to spend five days here - and it was well worth it... beautiful gardens in a "small Chinese village" of only 5M people - the pace was a bit slower than our first, hectic three weeks where we covered at least 5000k's I think....

But the story began in Sydney, so I'll start there. In the next post. With pictures : )