Welcome back!

For full disclosure I’m writing this from the 7th floor of a gigantic mall in Bangkok so this will be a bit of a retrospective look back on my time in the South of China and Hong Kong but I shall do my best to remember!

Down South!↗

I left you in Nanjing. Contrasted with the horrors in Nanjing’s past, I really enjoyed my time there and could have easily had another day. Unfortunately due to not being too well versed with the events and the impact they had on the community, I couldn’t make it to the massacre museum as it needed pre-booking days in advance :(

I spent my time instead hopping between Luckin coffees, finding interesting sights on the way. The daytime’s oppressive heat made walking around quite tough but I was able to take it relatively slow at Sun Yat Sen’s mausoleum, soaking in some beef noodle soup and recording some videos for my YouTube!

At night Nanjing old town really came alive, all these little shops folded out into the streets and people flooded the ancient alleys. I had some very hearty mystery meat skewers and munched on them as I walked around. Just as I was thinking about heading back to the hostel, the strum of a bass guitar pricked my ears up and I found myself compulsively pulled towards a nearby bar with a fantastic view of the old wall. I had half a conversation with a fellow bar-goer (as it was in Chinese) but we both understood Ganbei and Cheers, cheers to that.

Where next? Hangzhou!

A (relatively) small city a little further down south with a huge lake and not much else! I spent the day walking around the lake and trying to catch a boat at every pier I saw but couldn’t seem to get on one… I was more than satisfied with some ice cream and so marched on around the lake, finishing up with a pretty amazing pagoda.

A few days earlier I had been put in contact with a water bottle factory a little south of Hangzhou as a potential supplier for the fabulous company of Cornflower and so seeing as I was in the area it made perfect sense to go and pay them a visit.

While definitely not on a tourist’s map of China, this venture certainly showed a different side of China, the business end.

I was met out of my Didi (taxi) with two young Chinese people who were very friendly and took me up to the boss’s room where we had tea, fruits, some strange coca-cola drink and a cigarette or two. Not much was talked about business, either because they kept saying I was very young to visit a factory or because they just don’t talk about business…

Either way, after a tour of the factory they helped me to plan out the rest of my solo leg down to Hong Kong, recommending a few stops along the way and we even got a little selfie in on the way back to the train station.

The next morning I was back in Hangzhou train station and off to the seaside town of Xiamen, a city of fusion, Taiwan and mainland, meat and fish. I really enjoyed Xiamen, it felt so different to the rest of China I had previously explored and it would have been great to eat fish again if I hadn’t have chosen the oyster omelette (in fairness its the local specialty), which was grim.

My hotel was right by the infamous Gulangyu island, with the most dense concentration of pianos anywhere in the world, apparently pretty much all of China’s musical talent comes from this island and it was clear to see why. The place was full of funky cafes, musical themed schools and just felt very artsy in general. I even got onto my first beach there!

As it had been a very long time since I had tasted fish I tried my luck with the local specialty of oyster omelette, I wish I hadn’t. The consistency of mashed up oyster combined with not fully cooked egg would have been very useful for a glue in manufacturing but not on my plate. I tried to eat as much as I could and washed the rest down with a beer.

As the oyster was making its way down my stomach I made my way down Xiamen’s night market. The walk involved a bit more action than I was expecting as I had to dodge a sanitary truck that was spraying the alleys quite violently while playing a cheerful song. It honestly felt a bit like a horror movie because when I headed down another alley I heard the sing-song voice of the doom truck as it speeded towards me, I felt like Pacman dodging the ghosts.

The next day I made a beeline for the train station and hopped on my five hour leg to the true south of China and tech capital, Shenzhen.

Along the train journey I met a girl who, again with the help of translation, spoke to and got recommendations for Shenzhen from.

Shenzhen itself was in all honesty a little bit underwhelming. I think I had pictured this crazy city full of self-driving cars and modern buildings. While it did have segments of that, the buildings were just buildings and the self-driving cars were only allowed in a strict 3 block area, meaning it was basically just another Chinese city, only a lot hotter and with a lot more mosquitos…

The next day I woke up early and headed for the electronics market which was actually really cool and had some pretty interesting tech. However after a little wander and quick lunch bite it was time to head even further south…

I got onto the cross-country metro and popped up out of the ground in Hong Kong. Pretty much immediately I could tell that (obviously) HK was very different from mainland, even from small things such as fashion to the obvious different language. Suddenly my Mandarin I had worked decently hard on wasn’t too useful!

After dumping my bags at my hotel(?!) near Jordan station I hopped on the MTR and attempted to meet a special someone. It took me about 20 minutes of trying to connect to any wifi possible to figure out how to get to the meeting point.

Eventually I saw the majestic man himself, Petrus!

It was honestly so good to see a friendly face and we headed straight to dinner along with his parents. The food was amazing, but the company was better.

After getting a SIM card sorted with help from Petrus and his Mum, we headed out into the night and the drinking began. Well actually it was shisha first but before long I found myself back in the very Chocolate bar that I (kinda) remember from New Years a couple of years back. After a few rounds of a dice game (which I won) and some absinthe shots, it felt like being right back at uni.

Although it was only my second time in Hong Kong it felt so familiar in a weird way, like knowing this place so far from home and genuinely really liking it! The next day we took it chill and went for a little stroll, hopped on the star ferry, the usual stuff along with some great food!

At this point I checked out of my ‘hotel’ which was basically just somebody’s room as they seemed to sleep out on the corridor while I was there, and headed towards Petrus’ place and got some much needed laundry in!

We also tried to go for a run and I ended up heading decently far up the track to the peak by accident. I was wondering why the track had suddenly become pretty much vertical. It would have been near impossible normally but in the HK humidity it was just not happening so I spent pretty much the rest of the day in a constant layer of sweat…

Now the fun begins! After some great noodles we started off with a game of poker which I did very badly on…

A halftime break of the best crab (actually probably best seafood) I have ever eaten (it was sooooo fresh) meant I was refreshed and armed with some whisky to take on Petrus and his parents in some more poker, this time doing decently well.

As it was our last night together we spent the rest of it playing some Fifa (I got destroyed), watching a horror film and drinking Soju.

We ended up staying up till the sunrise before we realised we should probably get to sleep if we wanted to be functioning for our day in Macao later on.

After a little sauna session when we awoke we headed towards the ferry terminal and hopped onto the boat, arriving in Macao shortly after. We decided we would try our luck with the shuttle buses to the casinos instead of a taxi. We got up onto the bus and pretended we were staying at the Venetian. The only problem was, as we weren’t staying there, we didnt actually know where to get off and so ended up spending our first hour in Macao doing one big circle straight back to the ferry terminal…

Welp, second time lucky. We got off the right bus at the right stop and dumped our bags in the Venetian lobby before heading out to get some really good Macao munch (pork bun & milk tea). It probably wasn’t the best idea to eat because little did we know how we were going to stomach the casino losses incoming.

We headed for the electronic roulette machines first, getting comfortable losing small amounts of money. After one re-up and Petrus attempting to join the actual Poker tables we decided we needed to at least try one table game. We landed on Blackjack, a very simple game. Only problem was the minimums were equivalent to about £50, and so it was only fair to have two goes on it in case we get unlucky on the first hand.

So it may have taken us two tries to get the right bus and it only took us two tries to lose £100 in blackjack. Within about 10 seconds the Venetian took £200 from us together and so we headed to the bar and tried to rinse them of the free tea and coke.

I would have had to drink constantly for a couple years to make back what I lost so we called it a day and explored the rest of the casino and the Parisian.

Before long it was time to say our goodbyes :( I really enjoyed my time in HK and Macao and it was of course made so much better by being with Petrus and his family, cheers lad!

I hopped up on a local bus with a bunch of casino workers and got to the north of Macao to the border with China. After having to change my train to Guangzhou multiple times due to the long queues at border control, I eventually got back into China and got the third Chinese stamp in my passport before catching the bullet into GZ.

At this point it was about 2am and I was absolutely finished so conked out straight away at the hotel.

Remember I said I met someone on the train from Shenzhen? Well she came over to GZ the following morning and we set out on a tour together. I was introduced to all sorts of strange dishes and drinks which were actually all very tasty and explored the main sights of Guangzhou. It felt very similar to Shenzhen but definitely had much more character and obviously a very deep history being the centre of Canton.

After seeing some more sights and having a couple of drinks it was time to head back to the hotel so I could catch my flight to Xi’An early the next morning.

Just like that, my time in China was over! It had been the most incredible country tour, even though I ended up being there for nearly 6 weeks I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of the country. There was just far too much to see.   Next time I meet back up with the family and explore Uzbekistan, Istanbul and the secretive Turkmenistan!

A huge shoutout and thank you to Petrus and his parents, wishing you all the best!

Thought↗

Sometimes I just forget to breathe deeply, don’t realise just how tense I am until I let go.

Album of the week↗

Mac Miller - Faces↗

I love all of Mac’s albums and it is super cool to see the transition from ‘cringe’ to deep and introspective rap as he got older. While this album was released posthumously in 2021, it was actually recorded between 2013-2014 right in the middle of his transition to a deeper artist and this album therefore captures a very unique vibe that Mac had at that time in his life. While it isn’t actually my favourite Mac album (Blue Slide Park or Macadelic) it has such a variety of songs and has a track for every mood.

Note↗

Thinking I might look into creating a substack for these emails, gmail doesn’t seem to be handling these inline images too well and I can’t rotate them… I’ll keep it on gmail for the time being but may look into making it more of a robust thing.

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