This is the first part of the Tour through China with Imaginative Traveller. Altogether we were 14 people travelling.
Starting in Bejing I visited all the important sights, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, Great Wall, Forbidden City and Lama Monastery.
After some days we head to Xian by overnight train. The most famous attraction is the Terracotta Army. But also the Big and Small Wild Goose Pagodas are very interesting. Inside the huge city wall (very impressive) you can the Great Mosque close to the Muslim Market and also the Bell and Drum tower.
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After the big cities and Chinise cultural highlights we now discovered some of the fantastic landscapes China has to offer.
Again we took the overnight train to the Yangtze river and saw the huge dam beeing build. Then we boarded a cruise ship for 3 nights. During the cruise there were two little excursions. One to the "Lesser Three Gorges" and the other to a Ghost City which was a temple (including 1000 of tourists).
Destination was Chonquing, the biggest city in China. From there we flew to Guillin and continued to Yangshuo by bus. This area is famous for the beautiful mountains. For some hours we rent bikes and got some nice views of the area. A shame that the weather was not good (like my stomache...)
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This was part of the tour I was most looking forward to. First we flew to Kunming, the city of eternal spring. Spring means lots of rain in China I guess.... So we did pretty much nothing except for searching a nice place for Western food.
On the way to the trainstation we realized, that all of our bagpacks were searched in the "secure" storage room of the hotel. But just a minor amount of (my) money was missing. Supidly I had 18 US Dollar in my luggage.
The Overnighttrain ride to Dali was very nice. Good trains. But we arrived 4 in the morning. Dali is famous for the big Lake Er Hai, the Three Pagodas, and the mountains.
The absolute Highlight on this trip was the 3 days hike through Tiger (s)leaping gorge. We could get nice views of the Jade Snow Mountain range and had a nice evening in the Naxi Guesthouse.
End for the Imaginative Traveller tour was in Lijiang, a nice city (with lots of Chinese Tourists!!). The old city (world heritage) is very lovely especially at night.
But for Phillip and me the tour was not over. On our way to Hong Kong we stopped in Kunming and visited the Temple, Pagodas and the Park.
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HongKong is a fantastic city. Very spectecular skyline. On the same evening we arrived I had to buy a tripod!
Our hotel was in Kowloon, very central, 5 Minutes to the Star Ferry and the subway. I think we did the typical stuff, cable car to Victoria Peak, Aberdeen Harbour cruise and some shopping, of course.
Very nice was a trip to Macau.
Even if both cities are China (but still not fully) they do absolutely not feel chinese. Will be interesting to see if that changes in future...
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