China!

After saying good bye to Sarah in Sydney, I flew up to start another part of my adventure with Kellie in the Gold Coast. First we went to China with her mum and sis Mandy. We met up with their oldest bro Dave and his gf Yolanda. The picture to the left is how our adventure started....the toilets were disgusting! This was in the airport and sadly we didn't see a toilet this nice for 2 weeks!!!! Most of them didn't even have their own toilet papter...you had to bring your own!!! The other picture just shows my love for my mom and Chinamen :)

These pictures were taken outside of Dave's apartment near a government building. The lights in this center were amazing! We had so much fun taking picture after picture!!! To the left is Yolanda, me, Kellie and Mandy. To the right is Lynn, Susan, Yolanda, Dave, Bob, brother, Kellie, myself and Mandy. In China you call your brothers and sisters just that, not their names! Bob and Susan were a nice American couple also teaching English over there with Dave that Kellie and I stayed with so it wasn't so cramped in their apartments!

Next was the food!!!! Half the time Yolanda and Dave wouldn't tell us what we were eating! I think this was their way of getting us to stay adventerous! The most extreme thing we ate that we knew about was the linning of a pig's stomach. A bit chewy but not bad, I had seconds! Below is a picture of me eating spicy noodles! I had quite the audience! Oh and if you can notice that chicken has a head and legs...yeah they don't bother cutting any of that stuff off for you! :)

We did an amazing hike to this unbelievable view. I don't even really remember without looking in my journal as to where we were! It was the hike from hell though. We were rushing the sunset and just trying to not melt away! It was really hard not to stop and take pictures. Yolanda didn't bring the right shoes for this intense hike so she was carried up half way...I wish I was that smart!!!

Unfortunately the pictures just don't do this justice at all but here are some anyway....

One of my favorite things about China was how cheap everything was over there! We were able to get full body massages that lasted over an hour and once we converted everything it only cost up $4!!!! You just walk into this hotel looking thing and these girls come in and massage you. It was pretty painful and at one point I thought I saw tears in Kellie's eyes but afterwards it felt really nice, especially after a long day of shopping!!! We also walked into this hair salon at 10pm and they washed our hair and gave us head massages and then styled our hair afterwards....they cleaned our ears....3 cue-tips for EACH ear! It was nuts!!! I've never been so pampered for so cheap! Who needs the La Costa Spa Snelgrove!?!?!?! Our head massages cost us $3!!!!

Here is a picture of Kellie and I with rice fields behind us :) We pulled off the road to breathe for a second (their driving is absolutely nuts and I thought I was going to die just 5 min before when our driver came to a complete stop on the freeway on a blind turn!!!) and also to admire the view. My family, especially my brother Roger, gave me a hard time for going to China. He kept saying that he would look for me in the rice fields while he watched Survivor so it was a must!

We also went to this relly cool ancient village. We took about 100 pictures this day so I picked one to show you. It was crazy though cuz we only were allowed to walk through half of the village cuz people lived in the other half still!!!!!

Here is my final China picture! It's crazy how far our money went!! About 100 of their dollars was about $20US dollars so I felt RICH!!! It was great!! As you can tell I was a bit stoked over this new discovery :)

There are seriously heaps of photos that we took but I couldn't be bothered to post anymore...sorry but you're all welcome to have a look at my scap book when I finish :) I'm such a nerd!!!
Oh and I just previewed this post and it comes out crap compared to how it's looking now but once again, I couldn't be bothered to fix it...sorry!