Chapter 1

Well readers, that's it, chapter 1 of the adventure has now concluded. Its been an eventful journey so far but as they say, all good things come to an end. Well not completely to an end as I'm currently heading back towards sunny Australia to see out the remainder of my working Visa, but an end in so much as my round the world ticket has now expired and Rory’s sadly left me.

My sidekick for the past 8 months has decided its about time he returned to the real world and got on with life. I know he’s particularly looking forward to the pleasures of a weekly Tesco’s shop, student load repayments and Chanel 4’s relentless coverage of Big Brother 19. So may I wish him the very best of luck with everything he is about to encounter and thank him sincerely for his participation. Quite how I would have managed without him, I shall never know.

Rory’s departure has left me in a slight predicament, I now have no wingman or wingwoman to continue beside me on the adventures. This is why I’m now in the market for a new sidekick. I will warn you, there’s some rather big boots to fill, not quite as big as Rory would have you believe in the physical sense, but quite large none-the-less. So anybody that may be interested, please email me your CV’s along with a recent photo and we shall take things from there. Similar adverts have been placed on Gumtree, in Financial Times and on commercial radio throughout East Anglia so if you are considering joining this well established franchise its best to get in early. If you don’t hear anything after 14 days I’m afraid your application has been unsuccessful.

Over our last few days together, Rory and I done a fair bit of reminiscing and in classic High Fidelity fashion we started putting our experiences into a top 5 list. I thought this was a good and fittingly suitable way of summarising the highlights so here they are.

Chapter 1 Highlights, In reverse order:

3. Great Wall of China – Now the reason I haven't posted anything about the Great wall so far was because after visiting it I new it would make the final cut but also new my limited vocabulary would run out of superlatives to describe it. It was a toss up between this and the Taj Mahal for 3rd place, but because of beautiful surrounding landscape and the shear workload it must have taken to build it, it pipped the Taj to the post.

2. The Islands of South East Asia – We spent just short of a month travelling through Malaysia and Thailand Island hoping and despite the hideously confined and sometimes dangerous modes of transport used, we loved every minute. On these islands we met some great people, who we still keep in regular contact with even now, nearly 6 months later. I think I may have mentioned this before, but I intend to travel through Europe on my return the England. The main reason for this is because of the people we met on these islands and the great times we had. Also it will bring down the accommodation costs significantly so it’s worth a Facebook message every now and then.

1. The South Island of New Zealand – With the possible exception of Great Yarmouth Wax works, the south island of New Zealand is the greatest place I have ever visited. You can pretty much, within the obvious legal boundaries, do anything you want there. From leaping off anything tall be it building, bridge or mountain to swimming with dolphins, New Zealand is the place. Possibly not the greatest of examples as neither of which appeal to me in the slightest, but I’m sure they would feature on a few peoples bucket lists. Even if you just watched other people partake in the activities it would be worth a visit as New Zealand’s scenery is simply awe-inspiring.

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Now some bad news. I’ve made the executive decision to draw a line under the Adventures of James Peel – Chapter 1 for a while. This is due to the fact that I’ve now returned to Melbourne and intend save as much money as I possibly can for chapter 2 which will probably result in my life becoming pretty dull. To save you all from reading any further boring tripe, I thought it would be a good idea to just give you a little break until The shiny new Adventures of James Peel 2.0 is launched. Because a) I don’t know when it will be & b) I don’t expect you to keep checking, I have set up a mailing list and will Email anybody who wishes to join when I’m back online. You may even get a little bonus snippet sent directly to you if something spectacular does happen. So if you would like to join just email at the address below with your name:

Jpeel@live.co.uk

You can rest assured, your personal information shall not be passed on to any company or organisation not affiliated with the Adventures of James Peel (C) or Fruitskin’s Laundry (TM).

I've also just exceeded my photo limit so no more can be uploaded until I find an alternative solution that doesn't cost me any money. This is the main reason for the lack of Pictures in posts lately, I do apologise.

I do love hearing from you all, so please keep in touch.

On that note I wish you well and until next time, keep up the good work.

For Rory (16/1/2009 ~ 20/9/2009)

Soon To Be Relatively Famous

Over the last couple of days in China, my fame has reached stratospheric heights. First of all, we visited Beijing summer place and not only did I have a classic few photo requests, I had an actual queue. It started off with a simple mother-daughter shot and soon turned into a Nikon frenzy. The queue was getting so long people were even settling for plain old Rory. Eventually I roped him into my shots and together we done our bit for the community. Afterwards Rory had the cheek to call me a “Bloody crowd pleaser” due to my willingness to pose in almost any fashion for a fans photo. The clear favourite was the “2 hand peace sign with semi-cheesy grin" pose which I’ve got down to a fine art now. Just as I though my fame surely couldn't get any bigger we went shopping in silk street market and while we were poking around trying to accumulate various pieces of tat for presents, a young lad came over, introduced himself and offered us his assistance. We were obviously a little dubious of this to start with and tried to politely palm him off, but he just kept following us around. Eventually he cut to the chase and removed a weird little magic goose egg from his pocket. He then said “I would like exchange this salt egg for something your possession”. Ill be honest, I thought he’d lost the plot. I didn’t have a clue what he was running on about, but eventually after a lot of rewording and sign language, it turned out he was on a mission to keep exchanging items that he considered to be of greater material value that the previous until the market shut and we were his latest customers. I was at a bit of a lose end as I had nothing to give him other than a selection of biros I’d accumulated from various hostel receptions and pub quiz's over the last 8 months, so in an attempt to get rid of him I offered him a neon retractable Bic. Rather embarrassingly for myself he didn’t consider the highly particle and working biro to be a suitable exchange for his scrawny little egg and pretty much laughed in my face. To add to my humiliation it transpired that he was actually filming the whole encounter for a Chinese TV show. National Television exposure, now I'm in the big league.

Train Tracks & Bad Backs

Recently Rory and I have had the pleasure of a few train journeys throughout China and have been quietly impressed by the efficiency and the level of service provided. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on long distance public transport, but compared to the India or Thai equivalents the Chinese trains are like Bentleys. I can fit comfortably in the beds, they run on time, a lady comes around every half hour offering fresh fruit and someone's sent to wake you up 20 minutes before your arrival so you don’t miss your stop. It all seems to work splendidly and to top it all off its cheaper than a hostel which means you get a free nights accommodation as you travel, sort of.

To acquire a ticket for these trains you have to book a couple of days in advance so we headed off to the station in Pingyao to make enquiries. We had hired an orange tandem bicycle for the day, which is a story in itself, as the station was a fair distance form our hostel, which meant I had to leave Rory outside on guard as I went in to book the tickets. As a rule of thumb, you can normally get away with a fare bit of pointing, signing numbers with your fingers and waving cash around but today this was not the case. After joining the back of the queue and waiting 15 minutes for my turn at the counter I started my pointing routine. This method hadn’t let me down before but for some reason the ticket lady wasn’t playing along. She kept asking me over and over the same question, I’m guessing it was a question, and pointing at her screen. I had no possible inclination of what she was trying to tell me. Another 3 long minutes of pointing method didn't pay off and I got the impression I was upsetting a few people waiting in the queue, so I accepted defeat and walked back to tell Rory the news.

Just as I’d left the counter a small Chinese girl walked towards me. I really wasn’t in the mood for more white man photos but I stopped anyhow, you have to keep the fans happy. It turned out she was learning English at school and was able to tell me the reason I couldn’t get the tickets was that the train was full. She also said the lady at the counter was offering me an alternative for the next day but I was just shouting “Beijing, 2 people” and giving her a peace sign. With this newly acquired knowledge, I rejoined the queue and waited another 15 minutes before returning to Rory triumphantly with the tickets. These tickets were cheaper than the others we'd used previously but in the words of the ticket lady, these were only “sitty” tickets. All our prior travel on overnight trains had been in beds, but we’d done a fair few stints on planes using “sitty” chairs, so how bad could it be………..

2 days later we were back at the station and ready to leave for Beijing. The announcement was made for us to go to our platform, again a complete guess, so we followed the crowds down towards the tracks. As the train arrived we clambered on and started hunting for our seats. Now to say we stuck out like saw thumbs would be an understatement. I was the tallest, whitest, and certainly most ginger bearded saw thumb ever to a grace third class sleeper carriage and I soon realised why the tickets were considerably cheaper. The carriage was laid out in two rows of back to back benches on each side with a small aisle in between. Just to keep things amusing, the ticket lady had given us seats in the middle of the train so we had to walk through the entire carriage before we eventually found our place for the night. The benches were glorified church pews with nylon covers and in no way were they made for 3 people to sit side-by-side but we had to squeeze in. The seating pattern also meant you faced the 3 people on the opposite bench and forced you to constantly play twister for a better leg configuration. We were in this predicament for 12 long hours and to top things off people were constantly smoking, eating loud nuts and spitting all around us. I was in desperate need of entertainment, just to take my mind of the situation, but I didn't dare get my Ipod out through fear I might be pillaged. I ended up sleeping crouched over my rucksack partly for safety but mainly because it was the comfiest position I could manoeuvre into. By the end my lungs would have been in better shape if I’d done a shift in a coal mine and my spine used in crash testing.

If I never travel on another Chinese 3rd class train again, it will be too soon and I wish anybody the very best of luck who has to in the future. You’ll need it.

Health & Safety

If there’s one thing in western society that I feel there's absolutely no need for its the necessity to sue people when an accident occurs. The whole business of suing really grinds my gears, from the “Have you been injured at work because your stupid enough to climb a broken ladder” adverts to the practise of health and safety. Don’t get me wrong, I think there should be consequences for people who are grossly negligent and drive blindfolded for example, but no matter how many hi-vis vests you wear, accidents will always happen. A little bit of common sense goes a long way and I’ve noticed throughout my travels that other cultures seem to have far more of it than the western world.

The other day Rory and I decided to climb Mount Hua, a large mountainous range which is particularly symbolic and a site of pilgrimage for the Taoist religion. We heard before we started the climb that there were three paths to the top. The first a gentle 6 hour ramble up a mild slope to the summit, the second the cheats cable car that took about 10 minutes and required no calories to be burnt and finally the soldiers path which ran under the cable car and guarantee 2 hours of hard work with great views.

The cheats cable car was out of the question as James Peel is no cheat, may I add it’s purely coincidental that I’ve never lost at Monopoly when playing as the banker. The gentle track sounded a little long and by my own admission, 6 hours of one man Disney film re-enactments can be a little tedious and I wasn’t sure if Rory could handle another sitting of my highly contrived 101 Dalmatians musical. So we got ourselves a couple of bottles of water and headed for the soldiers track.

The first kilometre or so was pretty easy going, but then things got exciting. The steepness became extremely apparent when the steps were no longer wide enough to fit a shoe, resulting in a crab-like-walk assent method. The track then continued vertically along a 50m stretch of shear mountain face with nothing but foot holes carved into the rock and a chain either side to pull yourself up. Finally there were narrow paths along cliff faces with chains more commonly seen in garden centres to stop you plummeting to your death. By the end I was so tired I felt like I’d completed an entire pre-seasons training in one sitting. The most fascinating thing about all this was that we were doing it with people who could have been claiming their pensions. 80 year old men and women were happily dangling themselves over cliffs and pottering along mountain sides. Now in England I can safely say mount Hau would be shut down in an instance, health and safety would never allow half the things up there. But since they started keeping records not a single person has ever died, they’ve not even had a serious injury. I’d guess that statistically someone should have accidentally had a little trip by now, but luckily they haven't so it can be enjoyed by thousands of people everyday without a single need for a harness. We got the cable car back down, we heard it supplied really good views.

In addition to this little story I thought I’d enlighten you with a few English translations of Chinese notices or signs that are about. I’ll let you try and work them out:

1. Please slip carefully

2. A be seated defecate

3. The green shards are afraid of your foot

4. Disabled elevator

5. Be careful not to be stolen

6. Don’t stroke the works

7. Cash recycling system

8. Unrecycling

9. Fire in safe hand people

10. No tossing

The Tourist Attraction

I’ll happily admit I’m not that tall for a man in western terms, or even particularly wide, but compared to any run of the mill Chinese man, I’m huge. I tend to be a good 6 inches taller than your average local and I wouldn’t be too far off by saying I’m twice the width. This in conjunction with my white skin, ginger beard and blue eyes make me quite an attraction. The more rural areas tend to be the worst but even in the big cities I have my fare share of adoring fans. I regularly get a “Hallo” yelled at me by passing strangers who expect a “Hi” or at least a wave back. I’ve even been stroked a couple of times but my personal favourite is the photo. There are various strategies used by the Chinese to get me in their photos, firstly there's the simple but effective “ask nicely”. This technique normally reaps the greatest reward as sometime they can get a quick stroke in while they are stood next to me as well as the prized photo. Secondly there's the stand-next-to-him-while-he’s-eating technique. This one’s normally preferred by families with young children as it allows them to usher there kids right up next to me and then start clicking away while I’m struggling with noodles. The final method is to pretend your typing a text on your phone whilst its aimed at me then take a cheeky shot when they think I’m not paying attention. I’ve heard stories from other travellers and by the sounds of things, I’ve got it pretty easy. I’ve been reliably informed blonde women get pestered all the time and anyone with ginger hair even more so. I think poor old Rory, with him sun tanned skin, is starting to feel a little left out. I’ve walked around for 8 months now looking like Casper the friendly ghost next to him and it’s not until now my pasty skins brought me any enjoyment.

The Liking Of Hiking & Biking

If you read any guide books on China, they would have you perceive China as a pretty dirty country with millions of scruffy looking old men pacing about, spitting and playing dice, but that could not be further from the truth. Yes, it could do with a good spring clean here and there but other than that its a pretty beautiful country. The people are also really lovely and helpful. During our time in South East Asia and even more so India, we learnt to be very cautious around people who offer assistance. It would nearly always end up as a long con into buying a carpet of staying at their uncles hotel, but here people will happily be of assistance. So far China is nothing like I expected, the scenery in places has been spectacular and despite the odd language problem, things have been thoroughly enjoyable.

After spending 12 hours on a bus yesterday evening, we eventually arrived at our fist destination, Guilin. It was 5am when we arrived but we heard there was a good hostel in town so we made are way there and knocked on the door. An old chap was asleep on the floor but he got himself up, undone the door and without using a work of English explained that we couldn't check-in until 7am. So he offered us a sofa each and we slept there for a couple of hours until the English speaking check-in lady arrived. While she was scanning our passports we booked a bus out to the local rice fields called Dragon's backbone terrace. It sounded pretty interesting and we were not disappointed. We hiked our way up to the tiny village of Ping'an and then stopped off for a bite to eat. The local delicacy was Bamboo Chicken, so we opted for some of that. It was the entire carcase of a chicken stuffed into a bamboo shoot with ginger, lime and mushrooms then cooked over a BBQ. It was pretty simple cuisine but rather tasty. We then spent the afternoon rambling up and down various windey paths along the rice terraces around the village. To farm on such step terrain really is a feat of great agricultural engineering and the staggered effect it has on the landscape was remarkable. On the bus back both Rory and I were in agreement, than China doesn't get the press it deserves.

Then today we arrived in an even the even smaller town of Yangshuo and hired a couple of bikes for the day. We didn't really know where we we going, but we had a hand drawn map which the hotel owner gave us, so off we went. Almost immediately we made a wrong turn and before long we were cycling down tiny dirt tracks trying to find the actual path. In doing so however, we managed to find some spots that were so remote and of the beaten track that we really didn't mind. After a few hours we managed to get our bearings and we continued down the bank of the river Yulong. At one point the track crossed the river but there was no bridge so we had to pay an old lady to ferry us across on her boat. When I say boat, I actually mean 8 large bamboo trunks fastened together side by side. The entire vessel was only about 8 foot long and it had to fit Rory, two bikes, the driver and me on which was worrying. As the fattest I jumped on first and immediately the boat sunk just below the water, but this didn't faze her. She carried on loading and before long we were floating gently across the river with just enough buoyancy as to keep my ankles dry but my feet wet. It only cost 50p, you get what you pay for in this world. Once we disembarked on the other side we set off again through some more tiny little villages and eventually back to the hostel.

I hope the rest of my time in China is as enjoyable as the first few days have been. We are off on the bikes again tomorrow and there is talk of more bamboo rafting, which should be exciting. Ill know to take my shoes off first this time.