So my China adventures have finished. Yes, they may have finished a few weeks ago but since then I haven't been in a constant place with good internet for very long so here is my 'China is over' blog post.
China. People ask me how I found China and the words that I say about 94.5% of the time are 'interesting.. interesting but good'.
Our two main quotes of the trip were 'don't question it', and 'it's China'. Sometimes these just combined into 'Don't question it, it's China'. Because at the end of the day you were best to not question it, accept that it was the fact, and move on with your day. This mantra applied to situations such as when we had no money and the banks would not give us the emergency cash visa international promised us or where there were no buses going to that place because.. well because it's China.
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| Obviously... |
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| Romantic lover wine because it's China |
In saying that, there were some definite highlights. As I have said in my last post, Tibet was great. 10/10. End of story. Another highlight was Juizhaigou. This was a national park. It had nice scenery but turned out to be pretty hard to get to and none of the banks there accepted our cards so we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere (pretty much) with no money. Shout out to our buddy Mark for helping us out there. 7.5/10.
In Chengdu we saw the Pandas. That was pretty cool. They didn't move an awful lot and just ate heaps. But they looked like fun to cuddle and had nice personalities. 8.5/10.
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| Babies cuddling |
We ate hotpot, saw a giant Buddha and ate some sweet tofu and steamed buns in Chengdu too. Also fun, but Pandas took the cake for Chengdu highlights (literally.. cos they eat heaps).
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| Steamed-bun-goodness |
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| Giant Buddha |
We went to the Avatar mountains in Zhangjiajie. If you google it you can see some pretty epic pictures. We got fog and mist... But we saw monkeys and they were pretty cool. 7/10.
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| What Google shows |
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| What we saw |
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| Monkey |
Finally to escape the cold we went to Sanya, a tropical island off the south of China. There we ate mango, lay on the beach and explored some rain forests. We also went to a beauty pageant because, well.. it's China. Upon returning from a pageant event one night I was told by the hostel manager 'Wow you look pretty.. I didn't know you could look pretty. Seeing you around here the last few days I wouldn't have thought that but WOW'. I bit my tongue and said 'thanks'.. which was pretty nice of me seeing as by the end of my time in China my 'being-nice-to-dickheads-fuse' was pretty short. Luckily it was sunny there and I had been swimming that day. Sun and exercise generally make for a less grumpy Jess. 8.5/10.
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| Beach |
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| 'Tropical Forest' |
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| Beauty Pageant final |
So in conclusion, China was a pretty crazy but cool experience. I learnt a lot and had a fair few pretty unique experiences. There were many laughs and great memories made. But now it's time to get back to reality and apply for jobs and unis all the while awaiting my next big adventure!
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MASSIVE shout-out to Steph for surviving this adventure with me
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Stay Golden everyone.
Peace and Shaka
J x
