Given the nature of overlanding and how insanely big China is, we have decided to break our blog posts down thematically rather than chronologically for ease of writing (and reading!) Today's post is about some of the BIG tourist attractions that we managed to see on this trip to China (think the kinds of things that make the top ten in Lonely Planet).

The Great Wall

Whilst you can't actually see it from space, there are quiet a few different options to visit the Great Wall on the ground given its vastness. Contrary to popular belief, the ‘Great Wall’ is in fact a series of walls and fortifications built by different Chinese dynasties, with many branches which were made from a variety of materials (not just stone!). Given this some sections are nothing more than a vague line of tumbling bricks and others are testament only to the most modern of Chinese construction techniques and are absolutely rammed with people. We ended up in an area close to the popular Jinshanling but at a section of unrestored wall nestled in the sharp green hills which still manages to retain its features but was completely deserted. We stayed at a very quiet homestay and it felt as though we had the wall pretty much to ourselves!

The Forbidden City

A must see on any guide to China, this former imperial palace complex of the Ming and Qing dynasties is truly truly vast. Now a UNESCO world heritage site and museum, it remains one of the best examples of Chinese palatial architecture which went on to infulence construction all over Asia. With over 16 million visitors annually in 2017, it is one of the world’s most visited sites and at times, it does feel like all the tourists have come at once. Despite the crowding it is possible to find less intense courtyards and areas, as information regarding the history of the buildings and those who occupied them is delivered via a headset which automatically plays when you enter specific areas.

The Terracotta Warriors

As one of the defining images of Chinese cultural heritage projected to the outside world, the Terracotta Warriors located near Xi'an were one of the things we were most excited about visiting.

The sculptures, dating from the late third century BCE, depict the armies of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, complete with archers, generals and even horses and cavalierly men. They were designed to protect the Emperor in the afterlife and were only rediscovered in 1974 by local farmers. The feat of craftsmanship and planning on display were superb, but be warned, the excavated pits do vary in impressiveness - we were correctly advised to visit them in reverse order (3,2 then 1), to save the huge aircraft hanger sized pit (and the most famous) until last. As with most places in China, expect enormous crowds and no air-conditioning and be prepared to use your elbows or you will NEVER get to the front!

Tian’anmen Square

We happened to visit Tian’anmen Square on a day when the Forbidden City was closed, so the huge crowds normally expected were eerily absent. The whole area is so vast it's almost impossible to fully appreciate its scale and with the backdrop of Beijing's hazy overcast smog, the whole experience was slightly surreal if fitting, given its notoriety as the location of the Tian’anmen Square Massacre in 1989, which saw the armed suppression of a pro-democracy movement.

The Temple of Heaven

Another of Beijing's tourist hotspots, the Temple of Heaven is actually a complex of different religious sites which were visited by the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, all set within a lush green park. Here older locals can be seen playing games whilst others jog through the manicured grounds. The crowds of tourists meanwhile snake their way through the different temples often at a snails pace. The ticketing system is twofold, whereby you pay entry into the park itself and purchase separate tickets for each of the temples within.

After waiting 8 months to get started on this final 3 month leg, we met the Dragoman crew, our fellow passengers and our truck Layla in China's capital. The trip kicked off with a few days exploring Beijing's rich history (mainly by the metro!) with stops at the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven to name but a few, before we headed out on China's super slick highways to start our 44 day long drive across the vast country.

Obviously we didn't just eat in Hong Kong, there's plenty to see and do and we managed quite a packed itinerary in our five day stay. Our first adventure out into the crowded and claustrophobic streets of Hong Kong was to take a ride on what was once the world’s longest escalator system which provides a means for many Hong Kong commuters to travel from the residential area high in the mountain down to the business district and then back again – in fact the escalators switch direction at 10:30am each day. Despite being built to relieve traffic on the roads, the escalators have become something of a tourist attraction in their own right, with the streets either side of them lined with all sorts of restaurants and cafes which you can pop into on your way by, and provided some interesting if not a little unorthodox entertainment for the morning. On reaching the top, we meandered down the hill and took a tour of some of Hong Kong’s famous street art complete with the next generation of instagram celebrity wannabes posing in front of them.

No doubt if you ask someone to sum up Hong Kong in a word, at least a few of them will probably mention shopping. Presumably due to its dense population, it seems like almost every building houses some sort of shopping mall on its first few floors. Perhaps the most famous of these is the mall in Times Square which spreads across 14 floors and houses over 200 shops as well as a decent number of restaurants and a cinema. Pictures and words cannot do justice to the scale of this place. We spent a few hours wandering around, gawking at the shiny goods we had no hope of purchasing. Another of Hong Kong’s top shopping attractions is Chungking Mansions located in Kowloon and famed for it’s knock off electronics. Sadly, we visited on a Sunday meaning most of the stalls were shut but it did mean we had plenty of time for the last stop on our mall tour - Whampoa. Conveniently located in an area of the same name, this mall is housed in an enormous concrete luxury ship. I suspect the novelty of the ship is the most appealing part of this one as on the inside it’s much the same as all rest but nevertheless it still provided us with a few hours of window shopping fun.

In between our mall hopping we made some time to visit a couple of cute animal cafes. The first was a cat cafe located up a lift with questionable safety standards called Cat Island. The place was clean and the coffee was OK if a tad pricey. Sadly, however, the main attractions were a little too lazy and we had only a single feline visitor to our table during our stay – the rest were lying down having a nap. The second cafe was called Rabbit Land and was home to a great number of small balls of fluff who happily ran around us as we sat on the floor. Here we were also able to buy some rabbit feed, AKA grass, enabling us to entice our furry friends over for a pet. To our amusement the rabbits were also toilet trained, doing their business in small plastic bowls in the corners of the room. Whilst not strictly a cafe, we also made time to visit the bird market which sell not only birds but also live grasshoppers you can feed to them. Not one for the vegetarians but it's certainly interesting to wonder down the small alley listening to a cacophony of bird squarks and insect screeches.

It might seem like outside of retail therapy and transit systems there isn’t much to do in Hong Kong (weirdly the Hong Kong MTR is 12th best thing to do in Hong Kong on trip advisor) and for the most part you’d be right. There are, however, a few temples dotted around. The Man Mo temple, located on Hollywood Road, is dedicated to the civil/literature god Man Tai and the martial god Mo Tai. Whilst it is quite small, the inside contains intricate figures from Taoism and the air is filled with smoke from incense hanging from the ceiling. We also visited the Wong Tai Sin Temple, another Taoist temple in the north of Kowloon, which is significantly larger than the Man Mo temple. Here we found people praying to the many colourful shrines as well as statues of the Chinese Zodiac. The last temple we visited was a little different to the others since, in order to get there, you have to take a trip on the Ngong Ping 360 cable car which provides excellent views of Hong Kong and it’s airport. Rather unfortunately when we went it was thoroughly overcast and we spent a significant portion of the journey being only able see a few meters ahead. Once we arrived at the top we were greeted with yet more shopping opportunities as well as some western faves like Starbucks which we just about resisted. Walking on from the shops you go along a road lined with more statues of the Chinese Zodiac to the Po Lin Monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha. There were also some stray (?) cows wondering around but I’d advise not to get too close as we saw one poor woman get violently coughed on. Ew. Walking around the monastery we found several buildings in the now familiar Taoist style along with some comically large incense sticks. Going up the hill we found the enormous Tian Tan Buddha but due to the low lying cloud we had to make do with only seeing his knees.

Overall we had a great time in Hong Kong and it was nice to get one last breath of western niceties before heading into mainland China.

        5. Pizza by the Slice at Paisano's Pizzeria. Whilst more commonly associated with the Big Apple, this pizza chain serves up huge individual slices of hot delicious pizza to a very busy restaurant full of waiting customers. It was bit mad, but the food was good and who doesn't love pizza?!

        4. Fancy McDonald's at the Admiralty Centre. I know I know, who travels half way across the world to eat a Maccy D's but bear with us, this one was special. With an open kitchen and the option to build your own mega gourmet burgers and salad, it was hands down one the craziest fast food experiences we've had.

Joe’s mum’s birthday meant we spent a few more days relaxing at a beautiful coastal resort

• Marble Mountain – this has to be one of the best places we went to, even if it was a little busy. A series of shrines, statues, caves and grottos are perched high up on one the karst formations, which can be reached through a glass lift or by climbing a number of steps.
  
• Hoi An - a beautiful old port town that was once the shipping and trading capital of Vietnam. Old traditional buildings were influenced by the foreign traders who passed through and the whole area was preserved because river silted up, cutting off larger trading boats
• My Son – UNESCO World heritage ruins of Champa Hindu temples 4th -14th century AD Kings of Champa

After celebrating Lisa’s birthday, it was back on the road (or should I say train) to the next stop on our itnerary, Hue. Here we made a few stops in the city (including the Imperial City, the Perfume Pagoda and a horrendously stinky local market) before hiring a private driver for a full day tour:

• Imperial City – this is a walled palace in the city with open courtyards and some beautiful gardens
• Perfume Pagoda – this was just a quick stop on one day to visit the towering pagoda that over looks the river which gives it its name
• The old North/South Vietnam border bridge – this is pretty self-explanatory!
• Vinh Moc Tunnels – we decided against visiting the more famous Cu Chi tunnels and instead took a trip to Vinh Moc, where the tunnels are a little taller and A LOT less crowded. We only saw one other family group and these tunnels had the benefit of being right next to the ocean as they were used to move munitions and weapons during the war.

Having only one full day in Ninh Binh meant we had to make the most of our time and so once again we had to don a set helmets and travel like locals on motorbikes. Luckily Ninh Binh is on the whole a very quiet place with plenty of wide roads connecting some of the main attractions. Our one day self guided tour included the following:

• Bich Dong Pagoda – reached by riding through the limestone karst formations that sometimes earn this region the nickname Dry Ha Long Bay. The Pagoda entrance was surrounded by lotus flowers and there was cave to explore and catch a glimpse of some of the scenery from a high vantage point
• Tam Coc – this was mainly a lunch stop for us but you are able to take a boat trip through the rice paddies here which is often very busy with bus loads of tourists
• Hoa Lu ruins – this area was once an ancient capital of Vietnam but we opted not to pay the entrance fee see as you could see most of the old structures from the outside
• Boat trip in Trang An – this was the biggest stop of the day where we were paddled around by a little old lady through three sets of caves and some pagodas. The trip took about two and half hours and the scenery was stunning!

The capital of Vietnam is both similar and different to its Southern counterpart – it is still humid, loud and intense, but the streets of the atmospheric Old Quarter are narrower, resulting in even more dancing around scooters, cars, vans and buses. Most of the ‘must see’ sites are in walking distance from each other:

• The Ngoc Son Pagoda - this site sits on an island in the middle of the famous Hoan Kiem Lake which in itself is lovely to walk around in the evening. The paths are filled with locals jogging and taking exercise classes so the people watching is quite fun!
  
• Ta Hien Street – this area is also called Beer Street and was full of locals and tourists alike sitting in street side bars on tiny plastic chairs. The beer served is said to be fresh, meaning it is not stored for more than a day before being served to waiting customers.
  
• Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum – the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh himself has very restricted opening times which we missed, but the site itself is located in an impressive square
  
• Imperial Citadel of Thang Long- this was an ancient capital of north Vietnam which has been repurposed over the years and served as an operations base during the war. Today it houses a number of exhibits and education programmes.
  
• The weekend walking street and night market- selling all the usual kinds of tourist fodder, allowing for plenty of souvenir shopping!
  

The first few days of arriving in Vietnam were spent recovering from our flights, getting over our jet lag and exploring the hot and humid city on foot. Highlights included:

• The French Quarter – an area of the city with government offices housed in French colonial buildings with a backdrop of shining skyscrapers and designer stores, as well as large statue of Ho Chi Minh himself.
• Zoo and botanical garden complex- which animal lovers may wish to avoid (the cages and conditions are questionable, though they do have a nice collection of bonsai trees).
• Vietnam History Museum – the exhibits here have detailed information in English as well as Vietnamese, and gives some insight into Vietnam’s ancient past.
  
• Bitexco Tower/Eon Heli Bar – this is highest restaurant/bar in Saigon which is accessed through a shopping mall. It does offer views over the city but is a little expensive for what it is.
• A day trip to the Mekong delta.
• War Remnants Museum – this place is known colloquially as the ‘American War Crimes Museum’ and details some very graphic aspects of the Vietnam War. The exhibits include upsetting photography and testimonies, including the continued genetic devastation caused by exposure to the highly toxic Agent Orange, but on the whole the information is enlightening.
  

After the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh we headed to the small coastal settlement of Muine. I say settlement because the area is mainly hotel complexes and resorts with a small town attached. Our days here consisted of lounging by the pool and heading to the beach as well as the following day trips:

• Phan Thiet – this is a city close to Munie that houses a whale museum (which was unfortunately closed when we tried to visit, so we can’t vouch for its content!)
• Bike ride in Munie – for this we hired bikes and had a guide from our hotel to visit the morning markets and catch a glimpse of the fishing boats in the bay (again unfortunately the wind was pretty high on the day we visited so barely anyone was on the water)
• Champa Ruins – a small selection of ancient originally Hindu temples that transitioned into Buddhist temples and which are now being restored (not exactly sympathetically)
• White Sands – Some impressive white rolling sand dunes is an area about 40 minutes from Munie – there were guys here offering dune buggy rides so it got a little hairy as they hurtled down the dunes.
• Ta Cu – This mountain resort is home to the largest reclining Buddha in Vietnam at the top of steep mountain, accessed by a cable car ride and climbing some 300 steps.
  

This was a stop over day – a place to sleep before a flight but arriving in the dark meant we didn’t appreciate its beauty until the next morning when we woke to see this:

It was so nice to go home, see the family, hug the dogs and spend some time drinking tap water and relaxing. It turned out to be a great recharge of the travelling batteries and the perfect opportunity to offload some useless space wasting items we hadn’t even used, as well as the chance the stock up on some essentials like paracetamol and toothpaste – we just wish we could have done it under less stressed, last minute circumstances! You live and learn…

This presented 3 main challenges: 1) timing (when could we reasonably make the trip home? We were going to have to cut out a part of our itinerary and which was really sad after all the planning and preparation we’d done), 2) the cost (the price of return flights half way across the world was eye watering, not to mention all the flights and prepaid accommodation that would be lost), and 3) actually getting a visa (the official way to get a visa from the embassy is through an agency that required appointments which were fully booked up months in advance). There was also an added complication that Joe’s parents had a fully booked holiday for us all through Vietnam in just over a week so we HAD to be in Ho Chi Minh city for the start of that. All this meant we really only had two options: fly home now and miss out the last week of Cambodia or fly after Vietnam and miss out Hong Kong.

Many hours of googling flights, phone calls home to parents and agencies in London (not easy given the time difference!) and lots of considering which bits of the trip we were willing to sacrifice later, we booked absolutely last minute flights home from Phnom Penh via Kuala Lumpur, returning to South East Asia after 8 days but this time to Ho Chi Minh. We found an expensive agency who could get our visas through an express service without an appointment in advance, giving us time to get everything sorted and still be back in SE Asia for the start of the family Vietnam trip. Phew!

It is hard to write an account of what we learnt about the Cambodian genocide without coming across disingenuous and trite – I’m not sure there is any way to express just how moving the spaces we visited were for us personally, and we fully appreciate that our sadness at the accounts we read is absolutely nothing compared to the suffering faced by those who were tortured and killed, those who lived through the regime and those who lost loved ones to its’ brutality. The memorials and sites of atrocities are not easy places to visit, nor are they easy to write about, but, as the plaques and information boards urge, as visitors we come to bear witness to the suffering of the victims, to learn all the details of what happened to them and to preserve their memory as custodians of world history and collective memory. Our education was centred on two of the main sites in Phnom Penh, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and an execution area known as the Killing Fields.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum stands on the site of the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21), one of an estimated 150 execution centres established across Cambodia by the communist Khmer Rouge regime during their control of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. Housing 1,000 – 1,200 prisoners at anyone time, an estimated 17,000 people passed through Tuol Sleng alone, though some estimates suggest this number could be even higher, at 20,000. [1] As a former high school, the main buildings were converted into cells and interrogation rooms, with torture chambers used to obtain false confessions from innocent people to legitimise their own executions. Victims were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed.[1] Very little has been done to ‘clean up’ the site, and part of its power comes from the preservation of that state it was found in after it was discovered by the invading Vietnamese forces in 1979. Outside stand the graves of the last 14 victims of S-21, who’s mutilated bodies were found still chained to the iron beds they were being tortured on before they were beaten to death as the compound was abandoned.

One of the most harrowing aspects of the site is that in many ways, it still looks like a school. The classrooms still look like classrooms, some with chalk boards, some with horrifying implements of torture made out of existing outdoor gymnasium equipment, some with blood stained floors, walls and ceilings and many containing the original shackles and chains used to lock up prisoners. The buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, with some rooms converted into tiny prison cells, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes and suicides. [2] Today, exhibitions in the classrooms give information, personal accounts and detailed descriptions and pictures of just how prisoners were arrested and tortured. One particularly moving exhibition shows hundreds of photos recovered from the site, documenting prisoners and staff (who often ended their lives as prisoners themselves). One of the most striking things is how young both victims, and those carrying out the torture were – at one point we were informed almost all staff – known as cadres – in S-21 were approximately 13 to 24 years old. The knowledge that children were expected to carry out unimaginable torture, which included beatings, water boarding, mutilation of appendages and sexual organs, and other barbaric practices designed not to kill but to inflict pain and injury so intense that prisoners had no choice but to sign their own death warrant, was particularly difficult to stomach. The photographs not only showed the documentation of people as they entered the prison, staring intently into the camera holding boards with their newly assigned numbers aimed at dehumanising them, but also horrific pictures of the mutilated bodies of those who died during the course of ‘interrogation’. We spent hours listening to recorded information on a personal device, which was told by a Cambodian native who lived through the regime. We found that whilst the subject matter was difficult, the whole museum was incredibly well put together and so intensely moving because of the way it confronted visitors with the necessary details whilst giving them space to process the information in a personal way.

S-21 and Choeung Ek, aptly nicknamed The Killing Fields, really go hand in hand when visitors come to understand the history of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. All over the country, prisoners who had their confessions coerced in interrogation camps were then transported to sites of mass execution where they were held and murdered before being buried in mass graves. It is estimated that around 1.7 million people were executed in this way, with the death toll of the entire regime (including those caused by widespread famine) is thought to be between 2 and 3 million. The state sponsored genocide was aimed at anyone thought to have connection to the former government of Cambodia before the communist take over, as well as professionals, intellectuals, ethnic Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and Cham peoples and Cambodian Christians and Buddhist monks. In a climate of extreme suspicion and paranoia, even wearing glasses or having ‘soft hands’ could be seen as sign of connection to these groups, and execution did not just stop with the person under suspicion – entire families, including infants, were killed under a policy of leaving no survivors who could one day take revenge. The Killing Fields site today is eerily peaceful, and it’s hard to imagine that this former orchard and Chinese burial site could ever have ever seen such violence. Again the site offers headsets which visitors can use to listen to testimonies and information whilst walking through a guided tour of the area. The details are harrowing – to save money on costly ammunition, most people were bludgeoned to death with makeshift tools, there is evidence of the production and storage of chemicals used to poison prisoners once they were deposited in shallow pits and perhaps most upsettingly is a tree, still standing today, against which soldiers would strike the heads of children and babies before throwing them into graves with their parents. When this tree was discovered by local farmers, it still had blood and chunks of hair, brain and pieces of skull embedded in the bark. To this day, the rainy season shifts the earth of the site, constantly bringing to the surface clothing and bone fragments of victims, to the extent that visitors are asked to watch where they walk. It is moving, sickening and upsetting all in equal measure and for us the whole place highlights the true horror of the systematised destruction of life that was committed against the Cambodian people. Around 25% of the population was killed in just 4 years.

We decided that we didn’t feel it was appropriate to take pictures anywhere in the places we visited, though as mentioned, the photographic evidence was one of the most striking aspects of the memorials themselves. If you want to learn more, we suggest that you do some of your own research (the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum website is a good place to start [2])

[1] - http://www.tuolslenggenocidemuseum.com/tuol-sleng-genocide-museum.htm

[2] - http://www.tuolslenggenocidemuseum.com/