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Other entries in Tai Po

Anything-but-sleeper bus

We've been able to avoid taking a sleeper bus for over 7 weeks in China, and typically on our last night, we end up on a 9 hour jaunt from Yangshuo to Guilin - overnight. We ended up in the worst beds possible, right over the rear axle, and that combined with the lack of road surface led to a very VERY bumpy journey that lasted 4 hours more than it should have. If you've never seen a sleeper bus, it has rows of beds (on two levels) almost interlocked so that your feet go under the person in fronts' head - as a result, the tops of the beds are slightly raised making it impossible to lie on your side without seriously endangering the blood supply to your arm - neither can you stretch out either as they have been built for the slightly shorter chinese stature. Hmmm comfortable. The girl sleeping in the very back row (right behind ours) got two bruises when she hit her head twice going over the same pothole!! We managed to get 'air' but she was worse off being in the last seat!

We arrived in Shenzhen at about 11.30, and couldn't believe the heat we met - it was unbearable!!!! Well over 30 degrees with high humidity - thank god we didn't need to walk for long before we got to the border, and were able to cross over to the airconditioned KCR trains in Hong Kong. We met Mark and Chantal in their school to pick up their keys (they teach 2 and 3 year olds dressed in a little sailor suit uniforms, so cute!!!), and it was a short hop to their place where we had BADLY needed showers and a nap. 

Today, Kenny and I hit downtown Hong Kong and finally bought our camera!! Its a nice piece of kit if say so myself - we didn't get the kit lens but got the Canon 17-85 mm IS and the 50mm fixed lenses. We've been practicing with it all evening - Mark and Chantal were nice enough to host a BBQ in their place tonight so we would have some interesting portrait subjects, thanks guys! We just kept it on 'auto' for today, but we were surprised with the quality of the pictures, so so far, so good. Check them out for yourself ...

Monday night we fly to Oz! We're going to be so sad leaving China (and Asia for that matter). We were both taken by surprise with what China has to offer (very friendly natives, superb food, and blow-your-mind scenery), and even given our rocky start, we're delighted we decided to give it a go. I can't believe this part of our trip is over already, it's been almost 6 months - it'll be weird being surrounded by white faces and blonde hair for a change.

Anyway, until our next blog in Australia, take care!

A-M

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