Suzhou, Yangshuo and Hong Kong - Noodle Soup, Breakfast of Champions!

After smoggy Shanghai we retreated to Suzhou, a smaller city just a couple of hours away on the super fast Maglev bullet train. Our hostel was quiet, peaceful and best of all, there was an amazing little eatery just yards away that served some of the best noodle soup we had eaten on all of our travels. A huge chunk of meltingly soft stewed pork placed on top of perfectly cooked wheat noodles in a meaty broth. The perfect breakfast! Seeming as breakfast was so good we went back for dinner too and had some delicious crispy sweet and sour pork!! To anyone staying in the Suzhou Watertown hostel, I highly recommend eating at this restaurant, just a minute walk from the hostel towards the main road. Fully charged after our rest in lovely Suzhou we took a trip to Huagshan to climb the famous Yellow Mountain. We arrived at the small city after another long but comfortable train journey in the sleeper carriages and found our hostel close to the station. The climb up the mountain was relatively easy but Melissa was annoyed with me because I befriended a simple Chinese boy who wouldn't leave us alone. We didn't hang around long at the top because it was starting to get busy and unfortunately, we got stuck in a queue of people coming down the mountain. On the bright side it gave us lots of time to take in the beautiful scenery and takes lots of photos of the stunning mountain. We didn't waste any more time in Huangshan and travelled directly to one of the most beautiful places yet on our travels, Yangshuo. The views of the karst landscape from the rooftop on our hostel were other worldly and the food available in the city's many restaurants was top notch Cantonese fare. We enjoyed juicy meat stuffed peppers, crunchy stir-fried broccoli with garlic, beer fish, a local delicacy and the most delicious sliced duck that I've ever tasted. The weather was fantastic and everything was just that bit more laid back than the rest of China. We soaked up the more relaxed atmosphere in Yangshuo for nearly a week before we had to leave China for Hong Kong. There's a noticeable difference between Hong Kong and the rest of China as soon as you cross the border. We stayed in the 'notorious' Chungking Mansions which were like a big breath of fresh air to us. The fact it's home to travelling immigrant tradesmen, dodgy dealers and some delicious little hole in the wall restaurants from all corners of the world felt more like the world we know. The streets were spotless, you could browse the internet without restrictions and enjoy some world class nightlife. There was freedom of choice and the language barrier that proved problematic at times in China was not a problem here. I was lucky enough to celebrate my 30th birthday here and had a fantastic night watching Tom Stephan at a 25th floor bar with panoramic views of Hong Kong's amazing, 'Bladerunner' night skyline. We stayed in Hong Kong for two weeks whilst we waited for our Indian tourist visas to arrive and ate some fantastic Cantonese food and more surprisingly, some wonderful Indian food. One of the first things I noticed about Chungking Mansions was the number of little eateries selling Indian food. The tempting smells and very cheap prices (for Hong Kong) persuaded us to eat at the Mansions on our first night. We chose a selection of curries with a pilau rice and chapatis, the highlight being the unusual black chickpea curry, all washed down with a can of coke. Mmmmmm. Around the corner from the Mansions was a simple Chinese restaurant that sold Cantonese food similar to that of a UK Chinese takeaway where we enjoyed some good, old fashioned Chinese chicken curry and rice. Strangely enough, we were really craving Chinese takeaway food after two months in China! For breakfast we found the most fantastic noodle soup shop that served the best bowl of prawn wonton noodle soup ever for under 2 quid a bowl. The juicy wontons were stuffed with sweet minced prawn and placed in a slightly salty, clear broth with egg noodles. A divine way to start the day. Hong Kong is so mixed compared to the rest of China and we managed to find a little Filipino restaurant one day where we enjoyed a meaty liver curry for lunch with some mince and peas, rice, pork and shredded mooli. Fantastic, hearty food served in a little hole in the wall, canteen style. One night we treated ourselves to a meal at the Guangdong Barbecue Restaurant. We'd walked past it on a few occasions and drooled at the crispy skinned meats hanging in the window. We entered the simple establishment and ordered some crispy pork belly, some marinated bbq pork belly and some rice. It amazes me how they can get the skin so crispy on the outside and the meat so juicy underneath. Absolute meat heaven. Walking through China Town, we fancied a dim-sum lunch and went to one of the larger restaurants, Yung Kee. The dim sum were exquisitely crafted and wonderfully presented but the whole experience was a bit stuffy and formal. Maybe we're just too used to roughing it up now and don't quite know what to do with ourselves when we go for a fancy meal!! Hong Kong was fantastic and a great way to end our amazing adventure in China. Our 3 month Indian tourist visas arrived at the Indian Embassy and we booked our flights to Calcutta. You couldn't begin to imagine the contrast between the two places !!

Fullboy - China - Beijing & Shanghai - Roast Duck & World Expo

Lots to do, lots to see, lots to eat!! We arrived early in China's capital city and made our way to Leo's Hostel, a very friendly and social place in a great location down a pedestrian street, just down the road from Tiananmen Square. We were so early that we had to wait a few hours for our room to become vacant which gave me chance to scope out the area. I walked around the quiet, dusky streets and found some great street food stands selling what I eventually called Beijing Egg Muffins, two greasy flatbreads with a fried egg between them, perfect for soaking up alcohol the morning after! This was to become our regular breakfast in Beijing as there were many late nights watching the World Cup!!

One morning we did try something different, there was a restaurant a few doors down from the hostel selling cheap noodle dishes. One of the bowls we had was simply called 'Beijing Noodles' and consisted of thick, ribbon like noodles with shredded cucumber, beansprouts, thinly sliced pink cabbage and a fat dollop of black bean sauce. Mixed together, the combination was a rich yet refreshing sensation and definitely a memorable bowl of noodles.

We ended up staying just over a week in Beijing as there was so much to do and we were really enjoying ourselves at the hostel. We met nice groups of people from all over the world, UK, Mexico, Germany, Holland and we enjoyed watching the football together. We went on a great hike of a relatively unknown section of the Great Wall, away from the tourists. Other than the group from our hostel, we were the only hikers on it and after 10km of walking up and down very dilapidated and overgrown sections of the wall, we ended with a nice meal at a local's house and went back to the hostel to watch more football.

Another typically Beijing food experience is of course duck. There was duck everywhere and of course, we had to try one of the famous Beijing duck restaurants. I have to admit, the decor was all a bit glitzy and ballroom for a restaurant, especially after some of the shacks we'd visited on our travels, and I felt pretty scruffy sitting in there with my overgrown beard and hippy hairdo. It was a lovely treat for us though and the initial shock of regality soon evaporated as the chef arrived with the duck. He cut some of the prized crispy skin off first and arranged it neatly on a plate. He then went to town on the rest of the duck leaving us with a plate of juicy shredded meat. We took care in making the perfect duck pancakes and had a great time polishing off the meat. We also enjoyed some duck liver pate and other duck bits. Great fun!!

A few days prior to our duck feast, we spotted a butchers at the bottom of our hostel's road that was selling all sorts of duck products. Duck breast, duck sausages, whole ducks, duck legs, duck skin, duck arse, duck neck, pretty much everything. He had a couple of tables and chairs in the butchers so we thought we'd try a more rustic duck meal. We sat down, ordered an ice cold beer from his fridge and got stuck into a couple of juicy duck legs. With grease dripping down our chins and the smell of roast duck swirling around our nose, I have to honestly say that I preferred our duck butchers!!

I really enjoyed Beijing. It's a vibrant capital city with so many things to see and do. As a city we enjoyed it far more than our next stop, Shanghai. Getting a train to Shanghai was a nightmare because of the World Expo. They were booked for weeks in advance and we ended up having to get a seat ticket on one of the slower trains to Nanjing and then onward to Shanghai on the superfast Maglev bullet train ( I watched the speed hit over 300km/h!). We arrived in Shanghai and made our way to our pre-booked hostel, the Captain Hostel, located on the Bund, a beautiful stretch of old, grand buildings lined on the waterfront, overlooking the famous Shanghai skyline. The hostel could not have been located any better and the view from the bar was incredible, especially at night, looking straight out over the river with the famous Oriental Pearl tower standing alongside countless other tall buildings with their neon lights flashing and shining through the smoggy haze. It's a shame there wasn't many other good things to say about the hostel. We were in separate male female dorms, the staff were very rude and there was very little in the way of a jovial atmosphere there. Probably a good thing we weren't that comfortable there because it was also downright expensive, just like everything in Shanghai. There were a few cheap restaurants around the corner from the hostel and we ate there mostly as our outgoings were skyrocketing. The food was simple Chinese and we enjoyed our breakfast won-ton soups. The highlight of our trip to Shanghai though was the fantastic World Expo. We were lucky to get in to the UK building without having to queue for four hours by using our UK passports to get us to the front of the queue! After walking around for nearly 12 hours and eating foods from various different countries, we crashed back at the hostel and watched some more world cup matches, drank beer and ate crisps, being careful not to upset the grumpy staff!