Making our way back to China:
Our last stop before heading back to Luzhou, was Chongqing.
We have been here a few times before. We really like Chongqing, as it is a much bigger city than Luzhou. There are foreign supermarkets & (some) foreign foods available too. There is a little monorail which you can catch for 1 or 2 Yuan per person, which is pretty handy.
Chongqing is one of China’s 3 hottest cities – very hot in summer, & warmer in winter than a lot of other cities, which makes it nice to visit when it’s freezing cold. Chongqing is currently home to 32 million people & is regarded as the world’s biggest city.
We spent 1 week here before heading to our new school in Luxian, Luzhou.
Taken while sitting in the park, eating fruit salad.
We ate Hot Pot a few times (a famous Sichuan dish), did a bit of shopping, went to the movies (watched G.I Joe in Chinese) & also played proper Mahjong at a teahouse with our friend.
Making our way back to China:
As mentioned previously in the last blog post, we caught the K202 train from Guangzhou to Chongqing, which was about a 22 hour trip. We departed from Guangzhou at 3:45 pm & arrived in Chongqing the next day at around 2 pm.
We love catching the over night trains in China, they are just about the best form of travel in China. You can buy tickets for hard seats, soft seats, hard sleepers or soft sleepers. We have caught 2 of these trains on our last trip to China in 2008, & caught the soft sleepers then too. You pay less for a bottom bunk than for a top one, for some reason. We always get one of each. We paid 604 Yuan for the bottom bunk & 631 Yuan for the top bunk.
The soft sleepers are a lot of fun, if you have the time. The trains have dining carts onboard which are fun to experience as well, but it helps if you can speak a little Chinese as they have no English menu’s, but you might be lucky if there’s someone in the dining cart who can speak some English! There are toilets on board in between each different cart, & there are windows on both sides of the trains all the way along.
Each soft sleeper cabin has four bunks, two on the bottom, two above. They provide pillows and nice soft proper blankets for each bunk. Above the top bunks, above the door, there is some room for storing suitcases & luggage. There is also some space under the bottom bunks for extra storage. In between the bottom bunks, next to the window is a little table. The windows have curtains, there’s a bin, little steps to climb up to the top bunk & also a jug with hot water, for tea & noodles.
When we jumped on the train this time, there was no one else in our cabin for about 2 hours & we took a video of the cabin to show other people how cool it is.
The little boy in the cabin next door took a liking to us & was very interested in the iPhone.
This is the best photo we got, looking out the window in the corridor of the train while it was moving along. In this shot the scenery isn’t that great, but sometimes the little farms and mountains you pass are very beautiful.
Making our way back to China:
After Malaysia, we flew to Shenzhen, China. From there we caught the bus to Hong Kong, went through customs in Shenzhen, then jumped on another bus into Hong Kong city.
We had a really great time in Hong Kong. Joel had been to Hong Kong a few times, but I had never been, so I was quite excited to go. We stayed at our friend’s house in Hong Kong, who we had met last time we flew to China. It was so kind of them, we are so thankful that we could stay there, & hang out again.
Yum Cha
Tasty little steamed buns for breakfast! There are a few different varieties – different fillings. This one was yellow on the inside & tasted sweet. Very delicious!
Our friend Yuky who we stayed with.
We spent 5 days in Hong Kong. We had a few lovely Yum Cha meals. We went on the Star Ferry, a famous attraction & great way to see the Hong Kong harbour. We got our Chinese visas. We saw a lot of Hello Kitty things, everywhere! & we also enjoyed numerous little trips on the Hong Kong trams & the MTR (underground railway). We also saw more designer shops than I have ever seen in my life, much more than anywhere in Australia. We even found an Anna Sui store, which I had never seen before. Hong Kong is a lovely place to have a little holiday, but much more expensive than mainland China.
Day 3: We had Yum Cha again, this time at a different place. The restaurant was packed. They only have big round tables so they seat you wherever there’s room, it’s a lot of fun!
We found a place called New York Fries. We decided to get a tasty hot dog feed, knowing we would soon be back in mainland China, and where we are headed, it’s pretty much impossible to get hot dogs like this! It was worth it!
A quick snap of Hong Kong Harbour.
Hong Kong is worth visiting if you have never been & a it’s great shopping spot.
Making our way back to China:
Firstly we stopped over in Malaysia for 2 & half days. We stayed in downtown Kuala Lumpur, at Tune Hotels.
Malaysia was very hot every day, but we still had a good time exploring & eating different foods.
We walked through the local markets, & bought some Durian fruit. Neither Joel or I had ever tasted it before. It’s an unusual fruit, & the taste is hard to describe. Joel really enjoyed trying the new fruit.
While we were in Malaysia, we also bought a Manfrotto monopod from a little camera store, for around AUD $59, which is cheaper than most places back home. It’s a tripod but with only one leg, & convenient for when you’re travelling & on the go. It’s light & very easy to use.
We had a great time staying at the Tune Hotels. We stayed at 2 of them in Malaysia while we were there. We stayed at both the downtown Tune Hotel, and the KL Airport Tune Hotel. Tune Hotels are new (locations across Asia), & owned by AirAsia, who we like to fly with. They are cheap, convenient, but also clean & comfortable. For a good price, you can get a nice room & bathroom with a strong shower. You only pay for extras you want, such as towels (5 MYR per towel) & toiletries, Air Conditioning, Wifi. We liked this idea because it’s smart & more environmentally friendly to only use what you want.
The Tune Hotel in Downtown KL.
The wall mural in our room – downtown KL.
We definitely recommend Tune Hotels!
The journey thus far:
August 6th at 8:50am with flew from the Gold Coast, Australia to Kuala Lumpur LCCT, Malaysia with AirAsia X.
We had a pleasant flight, I’m quite tall and always find that flying economy class is quite difficult due to my long legs.
AirAsia’s new planes are good in the sense that the people in front are unable to recline their seats, only the inside of the chair slides forward, the back remains fixed. Which is good that people can’t recline and squish my legs further. However in can be bad that you spend more of the flight in a somewhat upright position.
Still for the great value AirAsia provides, I’m more than happy to fly with them for my Asian holidays. Nice new safe aircraft & nice meals on board.
We arrived in Kuala Lumpur and spent 3 days looking around (which Ursuli will detail in another post)
August 9th at 6:50am we flew to Shenzhen, as soon as we arrived and cleared customs we made our way to the Hong Kong bus office located inside the Shenzhen airport. We paid for two tickets to take us to Hong Kong. 2 hours later we arrive in Hong Kong.
We spent 5 days in Hong Kong getting our visa’s done, eating Yum Cha and checking out some of the sights. (Ursuli is writing a detailed post on Hong Kong)
August 14th we boarded a train from Hong Kong (Hung Hom) to Guangzhou the train takes about 2 hours. Arrived and Guangzhou and paid for soft sleeper tickets to Chongqing.
The soft sleeper tickets for the two of us ending up costing about 1300 yuan which is pretty expensive, but wasn’t bad for a 23 hour train journey.
August 15th we arrived in Chongqing and were taken to our Hotel while we waited for our medical.
The guy whose family owns the hotel is really nice and friendly and we had a good time eating hotpot and hanging out with him and his friends.
