I promised Cath she would get her picture on the blog... so here it is, at that rather surprising german beer fest in Hong kong!

So we have arrived in New Zealand, it's all going really well so far. We landed in Wellington on Sunday and were greeted by Seb's new manager, who kindly took us on a tour of the city, sorted us out temporary accomodation in a motel, and invited us over for dinner. Such nice people! Absolutley everyone we have met has gone out of their way to help us and has been kind and welcoming. The place is just as beautiful as I remember and as there has been so much rain this spring, everything is incredibly green and lush. The sun seems to be finding it's way out now though and maybe summer is on it's way??

Seb started work yesterday and it all seems to be going well. He's got this week as a training week so he probably won't be let loose on the patients for a few more days yet. He says they have a slightly different system of diagnosis and treatment that he's got to get used to, but he seems really positive about it all.

I have been rushing about the city, trying to find us a flat, a car and sort out work visas and try and find some sort of work for me... Yesterday we managed to find the most amazing and gorgeous flat, we can't move in til next week so we'll have to go into a hostel for a couple more days but it's so worth the wait!! I saw a few really dingy places during the day, and then this place was about the 4th place we looked at. It sounds corny, but we both fell in love with it as soon as we saw it! It's about 20 mins outside the city centre, on the side of a hill, surrounded by jungley trees, with amazing views over the city and has sliding doors from the living area out onto our huge deck which has all day sunshine... and it has a spa bath in the bathroom!!! It's very cool! It's only one bedroom, but there is plenty of room on the living room floor for visitors! Unfortunately it's unfurnished so we'll be sitting and sleeping on the floor until seb gets his first pay cheque... Oh well, it's definitely worth it.

So that's about it from us for now, no new pictures yet but we'll have some soon as seb ahas a very snazzy new camera to play with!

Love to you all,

Katie and Seb

Goodbye China!

........wow back in Hong Kong already...lots of stuff has happened since the last blog, however we have been unable to update it as we were on the move almost every day..crazy bus rides, little sleep, 10 hour hikes, going out and having drinks and catching up on some desperately needed sleep.....

Apologies, but our photos again seem impossible to up load so click here for link!

So here it goes:

I think we were in De Qin or Zhongdian when I last wrote, which is still in Yunnan... well next we got an incredible bus accross the border into Sichuan across mountains and plateaus and just stunning scenery, we had 12 hours to appreciate this but it really was amazing. We ended up in a little village called Daocheng where we rested for a night before another early start to go south again to Yading national park... amazing place again huge 6-7000m peaks towering around us... after a night in a wooden hut that pretended to be a room with beds in it, we took a short morning stroll 5 hours through the forests and up the mountain to some amazing lakes at about 4500m... again astounding colours, turquoise to deep blue to indigos...(it is absolutley freezing up here though so we had to get down pretty quick).

On our way down, we got some pretty heavy snowfall and intermittent hail and strong winds. By the time we reached the start again (9 hours in total), our steps became slightly more eratic as it became more and more slippery and we became increasingly more exhausted (we were amazingly unprepared for this trek with 1.5 litre of water and 3 packs of biscuits between three of us for the day's supplies). On our 3 hour bus journey home, in an incredibly precarious stupid mini van with bald tyres, going round these icy mountain roads, we had to get out several time to help stop the bus from falling off the cliff... loving it!

After another night in Daocheng we started moving north to Litang... another minibus journey from hell as our suspension surprisingly broke half way there and he had to call his mates who came to fix it on the side of the road! I can't understand why this happened as this car for 6 tiny chinese people was only loaded with 5 heavy people, 6 large rucksacks, a bag of vegetables and a large panel of glass?!?!?!

Anyway, one night in Litang (the Cowboy central) and we stayed in another gorgeous damp freezing hostel and were up again at dawn to get the bus to Kanding in order to catch a bus to Chengdu... More awful bus journeys, crammed in a space half my size for 8 hours freezing our faces off as the guy 2 seats in front of us insisted on having the window open the entire way and being sick almost continuously for the entire ride, sometimes inside the bus, sometimes outside, didn't really seem to matter... sick and ice and a distinct smell of some kind of strong cheese rated this as one of my favourite journeys ever!

So finally Chengdu, 4 milion people live here....Civilisation at last. We treated ourselves to a room with a shower.. our first for about 5 days... mmmh we were quite nice to know at this point! However, no rest for the travellers, up again at 6 after all of 4 hours sleep to see the pandas at the research centre, well worth it and such a nice place for them, lost of space and expert care, gorgeous animals.

Anyway can't stay in a place for too long: next day train to Beijing... 26 hours on a sleeper train... slept well and had plenty of time to think and try and assimilate all that we've seen here... havn't quite figured it out yet but this country has definitly left us baffled and we feel we have only scratched the surface of all there is to explore, such a wonderfully confusing place, I would like another month to see some more!

Beijing..spend two gerat days with Seb's friend from home. Lovely appartment with shower and a mattress..luxury!! Went to see the Great wall in Simatai..very impressive. The wall section here is incredibly steep..up to 70 degrees at times and very well preserved...I hope the pictures speak for themselves.

Now we are back in Hong Kong...We were wondering about at the airport after our plane arrived and who should we see but Catherine Tristram (one of katie's oldest friends from home)... would you believe it! Not quite such a coincidence as we had been organising this for the last 2 months but still wonderful to see a face from home! HK is definitely a completely different country we have decided, no matter what the government says. The food is different and no way close to the Sichuan haute cusine and the Yunnan dishes...MSG all the way here. Strangely our first night out in HK involved a German Octoberfest party in a 5 star hotel with the Hong Kong skyline behind us... slightly surreal, watching Chinese people party and sing Bavarian folkloric songs, very funny!!

Had our last Chinese dinner today and then off tomorrow to NZ....wow time flies...
We will keep you posted....

Be good, lots of love

Katie and Seb

ps. thanks for all your comments and do keep em coming: we love hearing from you!!

NEXT!

Click for link to recent photos... stupid problem with site won't let us add photos... grrr...

We left Guilin in search of some slightly more rural parts in the south western province of Yunnan. We had the pleasure of spending a couple of days in the famous tiger leaping gorge.. which was absolutley gorgeous and such a relief to get into the mountains again... clear blue skies and sunshine accompanied us on our 2-day hike through the gorge. After the first day's 7 hour's hike up and down steep rocky paths with stunning sheer mountain faces on either side of you, we slept at the cleverly named "half way" guest house which reputedly has the toilet with the best view in the world... was a pretty beautiful pee stop I must say! A second, much easier day, mostly downhill, took us to a convenient resting lunch point where we all felt we had seen enough gorge and decided to make our way on up the province.

We arrived in Zhongdian (Shangri la county), supposedly for a bit of a rest and chill out, however this pocket-sized Chinese girl, Helen, staying in our dorm room had other ideas... she decided we were going with her to visit this place called De Qin... ok then... so off we go at 7am with her and our friend Eithan from Israel.. no idea really where or why because she spoke no english but she sorted us out and really it was amazing. The bus journey took us through 6 hours of continuously changing scenery, through stark dry hills, to forest covered mountains and finally in view of this spectactular mountain range, whose name none of us can remember but it was seriously impressive towering 6750m above us with a 12km glacier carving up the valley towards us!!! Lame I know, but details like names are unimportant! The next day was another compulsory 6am start (this is no holiday!) to see the sunrise over the mountains and get some compulsory tourist pictures. The rest of the day was spent figuring out through broken chinese and english how to get to the mountian and trek up the glacier a bit. Helen sorted out a rude boy taxi and his amzingly bad chinese-english techno-house music, took us down to the bottom of the mountain and a 3 hour trek along a well trodden forest path took us to the toe of the glacier and we all cheered! Hurrah!

Pretty exhausted we all tumbled back down the mountain and into our rude boy taxi again... I think they have only just discovered backward caps over here... and back up to our hostel. Having our Chinese friend Helen with us did make the whole thing a little easier to handle and ordering food has become much easier wince we learnt the word for rice - "mee fahn" and vegetables "chutzi" this pretty much gets us by. ANything els you want you just point at what other people are eating and they'll make that for you!

Anyway, we're back in Zhongdian again now and off up to Sichuan tomorrow... 5.30am start... I'm telling you this is no holiday! The whole of the restaurant and hostel decided to organise the next leg of our tour for us advising us not to go where the lonely planet says cos it's all over rated... so off we go into the unknown... much more fun.