We started off the day by eating a fairly good breakfast included in our accommodation at the hostel, we’re not sure how 4 mornings of eggs and toast would go down! We spent a short while documenting the hostel downstairs as it really is a lovely space. Following on we took the number 56 bus to the Chatuchak weekend market which took around 45 minutes to get to. It’s a much cheaper option than taxiing or getting a tuk-tuk there and cost 26 baht between us. When we got there we went straight to the information office for a guide of the area, there are more than 8000 market stalls in a 35 acre area of land so we thought it would be good to know where we were going and plan our route.  We wanted to pick up a few items ready for the south and some replacement clothes for one’s we’ve been wearing over and over since we started travelling in October.

We started by exploring the vintage/second hand section which is any stylists and fashion designers dream. It houses anything from vintage tea dresses to leather bags, retro sports wear and re-worked seconds into new garments. It has to be said that the Thai’s on are top of their game when it comes to vintage trading, they know what sells to Westerners and they have a good depth of stock. Helen was very close to picking up some old tea dresses for when we get back home but managed to resist spending the pennies. We crossed through many fashion stalls and picked up sandals, shorts, t-shirts and vests whilst taking a few shots along the way.

The most memorable photo for us from this collection is of the giant tattooed man sleeping next to his market stall, surrounded by badges, paintings, bags and handmade crafts. He was covered all over in tattoos, piercing’s and leather and was disguised by the goods that swamped him…There were certainly many characters around. We walked by the music area and watched young children playing on their violins and we passed through the antiques section too. Seriously though you can buy pretty much anything you want at this market, we’ve read about illegal animal trading going on here too so if you do see anything you’re not happy about you can always report it to the police that patrol the site. We think we got what we wanted though with little fuss and enjoyed some decent street food too.

Later that night we took the ferry south and made our way to the flower market, it’s a 24 hour place with fresh flowers being prepared day in day out. If you get there late or very early in the morning it will be a real hive of activity. We got there at about 6.30pm at night and wandered through the street area and also some back street warehouses where we saw some of the work that goes on behind the scenes. We did want to go to other markets but with only one weekend in Bangkok most of the better markets take place on Saturdays and Sundays and there’s only so many markets you can get to in 2 days!

We ended the evening at a lovely restaurant overlooking the river right next to our ferry stop in Thewet, we had great views but the service was a bit of a mess, good job we weren’t in much of a rush.

Oh oh beautiful Pai! How we loved our days camping in our wonderful boutique style tent with views across the valleys…not to make people jealous but we really were spoilt and all for as little as 250 baht a night! We loved spending time in our tent, reading, watching the sunrise, and having the luxury of a duvet! It was very hot during the daytime when we were here sometimes reaching 38 degrees, but in the night we were nicely cooled by the 16 degree air. This felt quite cold actually, long gone are the cold nights in China.

There isn’t that much to do in Pai to be honest, but it is a very beautiful town with lots of yoga class offerings, cooking classes, walks, bike rides and so on. In the night-time the streets turn into a walking night market with local crafts and clothes many of which are made by the neighboring tribal villages. We picked up a few nicely branded Pai items which are hard to avoid, but they do tend to stand out over most tourist branded things. There are opportunities to hike and explore on kayaking tours in the wet season but we opted for some low-key adventuring in the form of hiring a motorbike for the day and exploring most of Pai’s famous sights. It is a very twee place and extremely popular with Thai holiday makers due some old films that were made there in the 90′s.

There is a pool around 1km outside of Pai in the direction of the Canyon at a place called Fluid, it’s a good sized swimming pool and they have plenty of space for sunbathing too. The food there is okay but overpriced for what you get, however it’s probably the best place in town to cool down from the heat especially when the river is at a low level.

Helen found a nice yoga class to attend which cost 200 baht for a 2 hour session, if she hadn’t had been struck by her 3rd tummy bug in 5 weeks then she would have been able to attend a few more classes!! It’s also a great way to meet people as many will do 3 classes in a row before moving on. Aside from the stomach upsets though we had a fantastic time here and would consider returning. We don’t think we’d be able to get as good a deal on accommodation in the future especially for our little set up as we knew they were a new resort.

So 5 days later and we were ready to head back to Chiang Mai. We can quite see why people end up hanging around Pai for longer than anticipated. There are great restaurants offering a variety of good Thai, western and other foods, there are places to go and drink chai, a good choice of bars, shops to poke around in,  and a nice river that flows through beautiful scenery. If you’re a little prone to travel sickness then the 764 turnings in the road to get there may cause a slight problem but getting a mini-van would help with this. We got a minivan there for 180 baht and the return journey to Chiang Mai was only 150. You can get a local bus for around 72 baht if you don’t mind being crammed into the rooftop and the journey takes around 3-4 hours.

When we got back into Chiang Mai we sorted out a few arrangements for the next few days; one was to book an elephant mahout day, another to do a one day massage course and the last to sort out our travel arrangements to Bangkok.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

We have quite a lot to fit in on this post so here we go…

We had a night train booked to go to Xian, leaving Beijing West on a hardsleeper. The train was full and we were 2 of 6 in our cabin in a carriage that houses around 10 or so cabins! There are also around 20 carriages so the trains are pretty massive. The price for our bottom bunk was 275 RMB each, not bad as it’s our accommodation and travel in one. Once we were ready to get into bed the lights went out and everyone went to sleep until our arrival the following morning at 8am.

When we got to Xian station our hostel Shiyuan were waiting with a sign saying Helen Roecoe…we knew it was for us! There were a few other backpackers on the taxi bus to the hostels, most were dropped off at Yin Tang Inn a few streets away from us. Shiyuan is a YHA hostel located near to the South Gate of the city wall. It’s a pretty good location and they were really helpful. We were impressed at being able to check into our room at 8.30 in the morning. For our time in Xian we booked a mixed dorm room so we could save some money and meet a few other backpackers. On the first night though we had the place to ourselves. They have a decent cafe at the hostel and breakfast is fairly substantial and at a good price. You also get free coffee and beer every day you’re there!! Not bad!

We had a few things to sort out when we got there – our ticket back to Beijing was one, breakfast another and looking into the tour to the Terracotta Warriors. Getting the train tickets was easy once we found the little ticket office a few streets away!! It’s well located to the hostel but it is tricky to find – appearing as a kiosk to an ICBC branch. You can’t buy return journeys over here, so each time you arrive in a place you need to pick up your return or the connection to your next destination. We got back to our hostel having purchased two hardsleeper tickets for two days time. After some breakfast at the cafe we went to the reception desk to book ourselves onto their tour the next day. We know we could have done this ourselves and got the bus to the site for a lot less, but we wanted to book a tour so that we could meet a few other backpackers/travellers in Xian. Having sorted this out we then walked up to the South Gate entrance to the City Wall, paid the entrance fee of 40 yuan each and then found a bike rental service quite easily once we were on top.

Cycling on the XIan city wall was really good fun and we stopped plenty of times for sights that we wanted to photograph. Construction of the city, demolition areas, temple rooftops, large apartment blocks on the other side of the wall, lanterns and a strange collection of animal shaped floats left on the top after some type of carnival…we couldn’t quite figure out how long they’d been left there and whether they’re still in use!! All of this mean’t that we were stopping every 50 meters or so at some points! We even managed to set up the self-timer on the Olympus to get a shot of us cycling toward the camera! Oh fun!

We cycled the wall for around 2.5 hours and paid an extra 10 yuan for the privilege. We would recommend doing this if you get to Xian! Later on we went for some street food in the city’s manic Muslim quarter. This is quite an experience with so much food being cooked right on the street under burning flames, hot pots and local delicacies are thrown into the limelight and under your nose. Mixed in with the food are a few streets of tourism gift stalls, dried fruit and restaurants. Again probably a must if you get to go. We had some of the Cool noodles, which is supposed to be a famous local snack but it is what it is…cold noodles!! Helen had a vegetable hot pot dish and Dave opted for the Chinese sandwich with beef. We got back to the hostel at a good time and Dave rang home.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

26th – Terracotta warriors

We left at 9am for the trip to the Terracotta Warriors with a few people from our hostel and went onto Yin Tang Inn to pick up some more people on the tour. We met a great group who’d all met at the hostel the night before, most of whom were traveling around China and had loads of tales to tell of their experiences. After some brief bonding we were interrupted by our tour guide Jha Jha (“Lady Jha Jha” apparently) who proceeded to inform us about the warriors and the local area that we were traveling through. She is quite a character and well known amongst travellers as she loves the line, “My name is Jha Jha, I’m 27 and single!” which made us all chuckle. Our fellow sight-seer Sam was her target on this trip and we all teased him about this as the day progressed.

Make sure you take some photo ID with you when you visit the warriors as security is tight and you have to go through airport style security twice before you get anywhere near. Whilst walking to the entrance from the bus drop-off point you have to walk through an 80′s style English pedestrianized shopping mall! It’s pretty kitsch!

The warriors are located in bunkers that are covered by huge structures. It did feel a little Indiana Jones with a smattering of easy tourism thrown in. Bunker 3 is the biggest and best site so with that in mind we were taken to 2,1,3 bunkers, saving the best until last.

It’s an impressive site with excavations continuing to be undertaken which all happens after 6pm when the sites close. The visit is a worthwhile one however we were expecting more!? We felt that you would be able to get closer to the masses of warriors, that it would be more of an under ground cave system and that in-fact there would be more warriors. We did learn that there are more sites around the area however they have not been officially located yet. The background story is an impressive one involving Mercury ingestion by a power hungry/eternal life seeking emperor and ultimate death for the workers under his control.

As we are in China and we are tourists we were taken to a gift shop selling various things such as jade jewellery, warriors and the man who discovered the site itself was sat behind a desk signing books for those seeking that extra special touch! We couldn’t quite believe that he was there…it was a little surreal but very typical of the levels tourism have reached here.

Following on from the trip to the warriors site we had a brief journey to the tomb where the crazed emperor is buried, it sounds like an amazing site, but it is yet to be reached due to the dangers of a mercury moat and oxygen damaging the hidden artefacts with his body. So you can see a hill in the distance and after about 5 minutes we went back to the bus to leave! On our way back we stopped at a hotel for a big lunch all at a bargain of 25 yuan. As Helen and Ian don’t eat meat they had to sit on a separate table to the rest of the group…romantic meal for two! The restaurant was huge and only had about 3 tables full so this looked pretty funny! David and the meat eaters gouged on pork and other unknown meat-like objects whilst Helen and Ian were very civilised in their Pak Choi and sticky potatoe spread.

When we got back to Xian we decided to get a taxi over to their hostel a little later on as there would be a dumpling making party! A couple games of pool some beer and a few snacks later and we were all making speed dumplings! We’d say a little more atmospheric than the one at the CCC earlier in the month…Jackson 5 on the soundsystem and we were on our way to dumpling heaven!! They weren’t much better though than the last one’s we made and after a while when they’re cooked they do tend to be very samey! Still it’s all in the fun of making them!!

A couple we’d met the day before came to join us for beers at the bar after the dumpling making session and we chatted about plans for China travel, we are doing a very similar route but at a different time so it was good to get some ideas. We then went to the bar street…hmmm not really Liverpool’s Matthew St but there were a few bars offering cheap beer so we went in for an hour or so before saying goodbye to our warrior buddies and went back to our dorm.

27th – Next day Helen was ill, we didn’t do much as she had some kind of tummy bug so it was a light and slightly teary stroll to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, which was a lot further than we had anticipated, we followed this up with a taxi back to the hostel where we managed to get a room for the day. We decided later on that it wasn’t a good idea for us to leave that night for the train. The hostel were very accommodating and let us have a dorm room for 4 just for the two of us. Helen slept and Dave went out for food. We didn’t know this at the time but we could have taken our train tickets back up to 2 hours before leaving Xian in exchange for a refund with only a fifth of the price lost. We didn’t know this so we did loose out on some money and had to buy tickets for the next night. 28th – Helen was feeling better the following day although we laid low in Xian and ventured to a local park in between hanging out at the hostel for most of the day. We could only get a soft sleeper back to Beijing, which was okay but not that much better than a hardsleeper! Still it mean’t we had a quitter cabin. The train left Xian at 8.34pm and arrived in Beijing at around 7am. It took us around half an hour to catch the metro back to Xinjeikou on line 1 as the rush hour was pretty crazy! We literally only just managed to squeeze on with our bags after watching several locals climbing their way off the train. Madness.

On the 29th we spent the main part of the day at the apartment resting, writing, washing clothes, watching Peep Show and only ventured out once to the supermarket. Sometimes you just need to have a lazy day (and have a washing day)! We followed this up the next day with a spot of Christmas Shopping at the Yashow clothing market on the other side of town, it was fun bartering and we managed to buy most of our prezzies too. Good times! The bookworm also delighted us by providing some nice solid western food. We also went out for food with our hosts the chen family, but for some stupid reason we forgot to take our cameras out with us!! What were we thinking! The food was really good aswell…ah well we think you are enjoying the food pics so we will have plenty more to show and we had a very enjoyable evening – big thanks to them for helping us out with our accommodation whilst we have been staying in Beijing.