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There was a flight sale and I quickly booked us on a trip to Laos with a side trip into China before returning home. Then with flights paid for, I found I had chosen a week in Laos with multiple public holidays. No problem I thought, I could just swap China to the start of the trip and finish in Vientiane. Turns out that would put us in China during the 7 day mid-autumn festival when all of China is on the move home to visit their families – and highly not recommended to try get tickets for train travel. So it was back to original plan and just fit in whatever people I could manage to catch up with while in Vientiane

Vientiane had the Annual Boat races following the end of 3 months of Buddhist Lent – so there was lots of money being spent down by the river with an excess of cheap tat and lots of fried food. People were enjoying themselves and there was a real party atmosphere.

Work done, we took a 2 hour evening flight up to Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton). A huge Chinese city with 18 million people, even at 23:00 it was nearly an hour from the airport to the hotel. Then settling into room 1313 we found that Andrew had left his iPad in the seat pocket on the airplane. Andrew emailed them that evening , as we didn’t have a Chinese phone number. The next morning they replied that the iPad was waiting for him at the airport. Maybe hotel room number 1313 was lucky for us – and China Southern rated highly for in terms of customer service and a good flight

The next morning it was off to master the metro system. This would take us back to the airport and it took one hour each way but only cost $2 compared to $40 via car. The lost property retrieval mission removed a good half day out of our time in Guangzhou and we didn’t explore quite as much as originally planned, but on the good side Andrew didn’t have to buy a new iPad. For the week in China we did not spend a single Yuan in cash, instead everything was done through Alipay or WeChat digital payments. It was impressive to see how well it worked.

We did have a couple of very good meals. One was a local speciality of Salt Baked chicken, at the Hakka Yu restaurant. An advertising video played on the wall behind Andrew for the 45 minutes we were sitting and I can confidently summarise the process that the chickens are are rubbed/marinated with ginger and other aromatics, wrapped securely in baking paper and then cooked for 1:30 hours covered in hot coarse salt in a wok and then chefs lovingly cut the chicken into portions. It was 100% delicious, juicy, falling of the bone and with a gentle underlying salt flavour. I looked up a recipe for this and it is often described as Hakka comfort food. And some great Dim Sum selections at a huge & busy restaurant. They were all winners including some outstanding egg tarts, which had such flaky pastry I inhaled a bit of that pastry and couldnt dislodge it. We had no water at hand, only tea. I. DO. NOT. drink. tea – I hate the flavour – but the nasty tea flavour was preferable to choking away, while all the locals stared at the only obvious foreigner in the room.

The next morning we took the metro to Guangzhou Southern station, for our fast train to Yangshao. We arrived early, navigated the security scans and prepared to find out train, carriage and seats when we were allowed through to the platform.

We got on the train OK, but on boarding we found a man in one of our reserved seats. After some translator app conversations and each of us brandishing our digital tickets at each other, I could see he WAS in the right seat, just in the wrong carriage. But he wouldn’t believe me. By this stage the train had started on its journey and I was left looking for a crew member to talk to to. I eventually got one of the hostesses and she checked our tickets and explained to the man. He then proceeded to take down his bag and stomp off toward his correct carriage. Ok everyone, stop looking at us, and look at the view out the window. It was a nice smooth 2.5 hour trip, travelling at times just under 300km/hour

Yangshou high speed railway station is effectively in the middle of nowhere. We had thought we might have lunch somewhere there, but a lack of cute little cafes prompted us to head straight for the shuttle bus to Yangshou. The town is about 45 minutes away and it cost us something like NZ$4 to go via the bus. We then picked up our 1st Didi taxi (local Uber), which worked well until it came to dropping us of at our destination. He wasn’t sure it was the place and we certainly had no idea. So we said yes, and exited the taxi. I walked into the hotel reception and was told we were in the wrong place but our hotel was 100 metres down the road – again via digital translations. With our small cabin sized rolling bags, we walked along the main road for a short distance to find the welcoming staff of the Yangshou Mountain Retreat. And for the next 3 days we enjoyed a relaxing spot where everyone spoke good English.

The resort was on the Li river, where Bamboo rafts were poled down the gentle stream from 8:00am to 5:00pm, all day, every day. Sometimes the beach umbrellas were up and sometimes not, but it was a lovely backdrop.

The hotel offered free bikes and we headed out on two days in 2 different directions off the main roads, along river paths. It was very pleasant to explore the area.

One day we got a taxi into Yangshou city (10 minutes away) for a walk around. There were lots of people dressing in ethnic costumes to get their photos taken with the karst mountains, rafts or Cormorants (fishing birds – but really only for tourists now). Picking a random, but well rated restaurant for lunch, we had a local speciality of beer stewed Duck. Actually they are famous for beer stewed FISH, but Duck was more acceptable to Mr Andrew, and it was 100% delicious. The restaurant was attached to a hotel. When we went in a was nearly empty and we thought we might have made a silly mistake, hotel restaurant and all. But it soon filled up with locals / local tourists – so we knew we had made a good choice.

We got premium tickets to the Light Show, SanJie Liu. They were only about $10 more expensive than the normal tickets, but it meant our driver could park in the VIP parking lot and we just had a short walk to the venue. He was also able to retrieve our booked tickets from the vending machine and walk us into the venue. It was so worth it and we hadn’t expected any of that.

Andrew also didn’t have any expectations about the show I told him we wanted to go see. But he was surprised and impressed by the show staged on the river, with the Karst mountains in the background. Even the occasional lightning added to the atmosphere. It had been developed by one of the men involved in doing the opening or closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. It was simply stunning. The music, the people, the boats and the experience was well worth the rain. It had been bucketing down in the late afternoon but we were told by our hotel reception it was going to clear. It did not! We were given plastic raincoats as we came in, no umbrellas allowed. At times during the show it was almost torrential, but it did not dampen our experience at all

We returned to the railway station via the old town of XingPing, which had been suggested as a good place to visit. To be honest it was a bit -meh. While we were pleased to have visited, we were more pleased we had not made a separate journey and instead just had a hour there on route to the train. Andrew did manage to find the smallest seat possible to rest his weary bones on while waiting on our taxi to come back for us.

Train through to Shenzhen, change of trains and then an 18 minute trip down to Hong Kong for two nights before the flight back to NZ.

We went out to the Buddhist Chi Lin Nunnery and linked Nan Lian formal Chinese gardens. They were a lovely oasis in the middle of a busy city.

And the focus of the rest of the time seemed to be eating one meal after another – very enjoyable dumplings, crispy pork buns, sourdough egg tarts and chinese bbq.