Man I stink of Deet again, bloody little bugers (litterally!) are eating me alive up here, wasnt expecting to wake up with mosquitos ozing with blood after a nights feast on me it seems in our tent. Yes we are living in a tent again! Seems funny to say were camping in China, brings back some good old roadie memories! We are in Xiamen at the moment on a beautiful island just off the mainland. Although its touist central you can see why, lots of european styled architecture has been restored nicely and the winding cobbled streets hold lots of treausres. Im actually quiet surprissed how nice the whole area is, my sort of place to travel with all the lovely buildings to look at, its nice to peer up the ramshakled alleys at local life with the washing hanging on electrical over head wires to dry!
This Yha hostel is a little gem, we think we might havd got a bit of a bargin too by staying in a tent in the courtyard because its all they had left buta t 1pound a night i cant complain! We stole some sofa cushions to make it more comfy and i slept like a dream.
Yesturday was spent pretty much recovering from the train trip. It couldnt have been to bad as im sure I managed to get a few house kip. We were lucky to pull seats on the side with just two seats next to each other rather than three. I dont know how it worked ticket wise but at some points there were about 25 people standing in the asiles for parts of the trip, some for hours on end until someone alighted. Im glad I had I had some ear plugs and that mini pillow is deff a new travel essential!
Today was fun, we went over to the mainland and looked around a buddhist temple that had clearly been restored to attract the hoards of chinnese visitors! It was rammed, so many tour groups milling around with their different coloured caps on. And boy I dont beleive how many photos they take, they love to pose. Everywhere you look they are clicking away in a variety of obviously well used posses, its hilariouse the length they go to to catch that perfect picture! I mean one guy today was up a tree (not a very big one!) on the side of a rocky hill, one wrong move and he's a gonner! We joined the crowds and milled through the colouful temple overwhelmed by the stink of inscense, you shouldhave seen the sizes of some of the Jos sticks they looked more like base-ball bats! We climed the rocky hill to the different shrines and sat at the top tea house for a few hours.
We decided to do "local" for lunch and wandered down this back alley near the temple and close to some markets it had the sort of restaurants filled with locals, always a good sign. Stopping a th e first restaurant the menu was all in chinnese, we were doomed! Heading to the secound we were again faced by a load of symbols starring back at us but deciding to give it a go we headed in to find a griup of American students out the back eating too. Embarrisingly we asked them for a hand and they spun off to the waitress a mix of dishes some of what they were eating and introduced themselves - first conversation i think weve had in days! Traditionaly as always we had a pit of tea with our meal and then the food came out and it was deliciouse, some chicken dish with raw ginger and shallots which was hot and sweet, chow-mein and an egg and tomatoe dish, the flavours were amazing! When we saw all the dishes come out we thought there was no way we would finish them al but as you can guess of course we did, it was to good to have left behind! A few hours later and a few more pots of tea (i think they drink more than we do at home!) we expected the bill to be a load only for it to be a steal at 35yen, thats about 2 pounds! Yummy!
