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Sophie JonesSophie Jones
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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    232
    Día 361

    Lukang

    8 de diciembre de 2023, Taiwán ⋅ 🌙 21 °C

    I had originally intended to go to China after Hong Kong but Chinese bureaucracy got the better of me. Giving up on getting a Chinese visa I booked flights to Taipei with very few expectations. I'm glad that I did because Taiwan turned out to be a highlight of the trip! I only spent a day in Taipei before heading to Lukang, a small historical town on the west coast.

    Lukang was once a major port and the 2nd largest city in Taiwan. However, the silting of the port and the local governments refusal to build a train line led to a decline of the city. While unfortunate for the local economy this meant that Lukang avoided much of the modernization that other cities in Taiwan underwent leaving the historical centre well preserved.

    These days it is a chill yet bustling town, and although you don't tend to see many foreign tourists it is popular with the Taiwanese. The famous Lukang Old Street, which is lined with well preserved buildings housing souvenir shops and food stalls is rammed by day with Taiwanese day-trippers. Away from the old street there is a network of old lanes that are in normal everyday use as people's homes and businesses and are far less busy. Most of the lanes are too small for cars and can only be accessed by foot or moped. Some are so narrow that only one person at a time can pass through.

    Taiwan has a huge number of Chinese temples. One of the post popular is the Lukang Mazu Temple, a temple to the Goddess Mazu, the goddess of the sea and patron deity of fishermen. Like the Chinese temples in Hong Kong, these are very atmospheric with the incense, the chimes, and the activities of people having their fortunes read.

    One thing that Taiwan is famous for is the street food. As winter is strawberry season in Taiwan, there were many desserts and drinks containing them around - so I had to make the most of it! One of the favourites is the strawberry mochi. This is a strawberry packed in a red bean paste and then covered in 'mochi', a glutinous cake made of rice or cornstarch. By itself the mochi doesn't taste of much and has a strange texture, but with the bean and strawberry it's actually quite good. Another favourite of mine was a dumpling filled with oyster, egg, some kind of green veg, and glass noodles, with chilli sauce piped inside. This stall had a large queue so I knew to get in it and whatever they were cooking would be good, and I wasn't disappointed!    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    1
    Día 358

    Hong Kong part 3

    5 de diciembre de 2023, Hong Kong ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    In my final few days in Hong Kong I decided to get out of the city and see some of the other islands. First up I got a ferry to Lamma Island which has a laid back vibe and some nice paths to explore. I hiked to a nice beach with a great view of some kind of power plant, which is always what you want to see on a nature hike! The port town of Yung Shue Wan is far more relaxed than Hong Kong, it seems to attract the hippy expat types. There were some great bars and restaurants with all sorts of seafood on display in tanks.

    My next day trip out of the city was on the southern side of Hong Kong Island, where there are lots of nature trails. I took one called Dragons Back, mostly because I liked the name but also because I'd been told that you get great views of the area as it takes you along the ridges, or the "Dragons Back" of the hills. To get there I had to take the tram as far east as I could go to the suburb of Chai Wan, a part of the city that you rarely see tourists. I had to stop and take a wander through the market there, before hopping on a bus to the trail head. The hike did indeed have some lovely views especially as I reached the highest point at Shek O peak. From there it was downhill to Shek O Beach, where I celebrated with a tin of Tsing Tao beer.

    My final day trip was to Lantau Island, which is known for the giant Buddah. After getting a metro to the island, i queued for 2 hours to get the cable car to the top. I'd have just gotten the bus if I'd known it was going to take so long! The Buddah was very impressive though, and after climbing the 268 steps to get to the top of the hill it sits on I felt very enlightened! Nearby the Buddah was the Po Lin Monastery founded in 1906, for which the Buddah was built. This monastery was interesting for the giant incense sticks that were burning, and the many Buddha's inside.

    On my final evening in Hong Kong I had to finally visit Victoria Peak. I got up there on The Peak Tram which has been in operation since 1888 and is still wonderfully old fashioned. You have to hold on tight when going up as it was very steep. At the top I wandered around some of the trails to take in the views, and then stopped for some dinner and beers at one of the peak restaurants so I could watch sunset over the city one last time. Leaving Hong Kong was the first time I felt genuinely sad to go, I could have stayed there forever!    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    1
    Día 356

    Macau

    3 de diciembre de 2023, Macao ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    Just a short ferry ride away from Hong Kong is Macau. Macau is a former Portuguese colony and you really get a sense of that as you wander around the historical centre, with the architecture and patterned paving, not to mention all of the pastel de natas. Also like Portugal was the life size nativity scenes across the city.

    There are some quite interesting sites to see including the mount fortress built in 1626 with a nice view of the city, and the ruins of St.Pauls, a catholic church built in 1640. The church burned down in 1835 leaving the facade still standing at the top of a hill.

    To see a bit more out of the centre I took a tour bus taking in some of the unusual architecture and the 338 meters high Macau Tower. Instead of going up the tower I decided to visit the food fair that was taking place at the bottom where I had some good green tea ice cream and some griddle cakes filled with fresh strawberries!

    Macau is the only Chinese city where casinos are legal, and there are plenty of them along with huge malls. Seemingly styling itself after Las Vegas some of the casino/hotel complexes are like mini cities including London, Paris, and Venice. I didn't stop at any of these though, opting to stay on the tour bus to the last stop of the ferry terminal where I headed back to Hong Kong.    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    Día 350

    Hong Kong part 2

    27 de noviembre de 2023, Hong Kong ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    My time in Hong Kong continued with more of the same, just wandering the streets seeing what wonders can be discovered down random alleys. Every street in Hong Kong is interesting in some way and I don't think I'd have felt satisfied until I had walked down every one.
    One day I headed to the cultural sites of northern Kowloon such as the Buddhist Chi Lin Nunnery which was set in a peaceful garden with a large pond containing the biggest and most beautiful carp that I had seen. Then I headed to the Taoist Wong Tai Sin Temple which was full of people performing rituals to tell their fortunes, and surrounded with fortune tellers. The incense and the chanting was all very atmospheric, but I didn't opt for any fortune telling myself, I'd rather not know! Finally I headed for a walk through Kowloon Walled City Park, which is built on the site of Kowloon Walled City. Kowloon Walled City was a Chinese enclave within British Hong Kong that was essentially an ungoverned high rise slum with 35,000 people living in 6.4 acres of land (about the size of two rugby pitches). It was run by Chinese triads (organised crime syndicates), and illegal activity and squalor were rife leading the Hong Kong government to announce its demolition in 1987. After a lengthy eviction and relocation process it was finally demolished in 1995, with the park being built in its place. The park today is a pleasant and serene place for a walk, with parts of the foundations of the city still visible in some places although you'd never guess at the urban chaos that was there in the past.
    Back on Hong Kong Island I visited more temples, each of them unique and filled with incense. I visited the Blue House, a well preserved example of the tong lau tenament buildings common in parts of Asia in the first half of the 20th century. And of course I mostly got around on the famous trams, otherwise known as ding dings! Trams have been in use in Hong Kong since 1904 and are a great way to get around, I always chose to take a tram over the metro for the views while riding them, even if the journey took longer. They were also just a good way to spend time going around and seeing as much as possible from the top deck!    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    1
    Día 343

    Hong Kong part 1

    20 de noviembre de 2023, Hong Kong ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    I fell in love with Hong Kong almost immediately. I had a hostel high up on the 14th floor of a dodgy building in Kowloon, the mainland part of Hong Kong. It's a fascinating place where I could happily spend hours just wandering around the streets, taking in the culture and architecture. Everywhere in Kowloon looks a little bit decrepit, there's something interesting to see everywhere you look and every now and then you'll come across a little Buddhist temple hidden away.

    A little more upmarket is Victoria Harbour, lined with fancy department stores and world class museums. This is a great spot to get a coffee and people watch for a couple of hours, see how many dogs in prams that you can spot. It is also the best place to watch the Victoria Harbour Light show, a slightly cheesy show where lasers flash around the sky off the top of the skyscrapers to music for 10 minutes.

    Kowloon is great for cheap food. Hong Kong was the start of an obsession with milk tea while I was in Asia. It's basically very strong tea boiled in milk and traditionally strained through a stocking, and drank either hot or iced. There were also great dumplings, dim sum, soups, noodles, and weirdly "pineapple bun" with spam, another hangover from British rule. I ordered this by accident, thinking I was ordering a pineapple bun and tomato which was on the menu, but they brought me the spam, it wasn't actually too bad! But I preferred the pineapple bun with condensed milk.

    While I spent a lot of time in Kowloon my first week there, I did manage to make it over to Hong Kong Island a few times via the Star Ferry, which had been in operation since 1898 with a fleet almost as old. The central part of Hong Kong Island is quite modern and westernised, but it is still interesting to walk around if you can manage the steep hills, and there's excellent food here from all over the world. Hong Kong Park is a tranquil space to explore the aviary and the terrapin filled lake, with the famous skyscrapers looming over you. The harbour front on that side of the harbour was another great spot to walk along and people watch, I quite enjoyed eves dropping on the British expats and watching the Chinese Hong Kongers fishing.    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    2
    Día 337

    Dubai

    14 de noviembre de 2023, Emiratos Árabes Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    A two hour bus ride up the coast and I arrived in Dubai, where I was very happy to be meeting up with mum for a few days! The weather was much better than when I was last here so it was pleasant enough to spend some time wandering in the old souks and along the creek. This part of old Dubai is nice for seeing some of the culture, get some souvenirs and eat some good, cheap food.

    Dubai is pretty sprawling so to take it in we did a bus tour, saw some of the crazy architecture including the Dubai Frame, the Burj Khalifa, and man made The Palm. Of course we had to see some of the famous malls, which have every brand that you can possibly imagine. We went up the Burj Khalifa, hoping to see the sunset but it was a pretty hazy day. It was still impressive to be in the world's highest building at 828 meters. The observation deck is on the 124th floor at 452 meters high. The view was pretty good at night when all of the lights in the city turn on and many of the skyscrapers are lit up. From the bottom of the Burj we watched the famous water fountain display and had a delicious middle eastern dinner.

    On our final night we headed into the desert to watch the sunset. It was all very Disneyland but it was still nice to get out of the city. You really get the perspective of how tall the Burj Khalifa is from a greater distance, it is twice the height of all of the other buildings around it. Unfortunately the next morning I had to say goodbye to mum again, but I loved our meet up and can't wait for the next one. Thanks for coming xx 😘    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    Día 331

    Abu Dhabi

    8 de noviembre de 2023, Emiratos Árabes Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    For the 2nd time on this trip I landed in the United Arab Emirates in the middle of the night; but unlike the first time when I landed in Dubai at 4am to 37°C heat, this time when I landed in Abu Dhabi the temperature was in the more respectable early 20s and with a lower humidity. But it still reached the 30s in the day so a lot of my time was spent avoiding the sun! Everybody else seems to have the same idea, the streets come alive around dusk.

    Abu Dhabi has a bit more cultural than neighbouring Dubai, with good museums and impressive Mosques and palaces. I visited the Louvre Abu Dhabi which was probably the best art museum that I've been to (although I haven't been to the Louvre in Paris so I'm not exactly one to talk about art museums!) I also visited the very impressive Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, which isn't that old having opened in 2007, but is indeed very grand.

    One of the nicest parts of Abu Dhabi is the The Corniche, an 8km long promenade that runs along the harbour. It's deserted by day, but as soon as the temperature starts dropping in the late afternoon it's buzzing with life as people stroll and cycle the paths, and socialise in the cafes and on the beach. UAE is probably the most diverse country that I've ever been to so the people watching here can be really interesting. On my last night as I was chilling in a cafe on the manmade beach I was surprised by a huge fireworks display over the harbour, which I later found out was for Diwali!    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    11
    Día 329

    Lakes, canyons, and Astana

    6 de noviembre de 2023, Kazajstán ⋅ ☀️ 6 °C

    Kazakhstan is a vast country with very little public transport so the easiest way to see some of the natural highlights is to join a tour. There isn't much tourism infrastructure outside of the cities in Kazakhstan so a coach load of people are split into groups and stay in someone's house for a couple of nights, being collected every morning for the sightseeing. On the first day of the trip we hiked to visit a few lakes. Kaindy Lake was formed by a landslide during an earthquake in 1911 blocking the flow of glacial water and resulting in a sunken forest. Kolsai lake is a large lake that you can take boat trips on, so me and a few other tourists that I had made friends with went out on a pedalo.
    Back in the house that I was assigned to with some other Kazakh tourists, we had a good home cooked meal of dumplings and lots of tea. Then all of the people on the trip were meeting back up for a bonfire and dancing. The other tourists I was staying in the house with couldn't speak any English, but they were nice people and we tried to chat. They told me that we were supposed to prepare a dance routine for that night's bonfire, which is something I had somehow missed in the earlier briefing! Each house group had been sent a video by the tour leaders and had to come up with a dance for it. I had no idea what was happening but I just followed my housemates lead to learn a thankfully very simple dance routine. At one point they even had me dressed in a traditional Kazakh outfit, but luckily they took pity on me and told me that I didn't have to wear it! Which I was also grateful for as it was freezing outside! We all headed over to the bonfire which warmed us up a bit, listened to some music, and then everyone did their dance routine. It wasn't as embarrassing when you see everyone else in the same boat as you! This carried on into the evening with more games and dances, again I didn't really know what was going on but it was very funny. The next day we were off to see some canyons. The largest and most spectacular was Charyn Canyon.
    After my trip into the Kazakh countryside I flew to Astana, the capital. Until 1997 Almaty was the capital of Kazakhstan, what is now Astana was a small town that the previous president Nur Sultan came from. It was even named after him at one point. As a result the majority of Astana is very new and there isn't much interesting about it. There are some flashy monuments including Baiterek, the monument of the transfer of the capital from Almaty to Astana. It is supposed to symbolise the egg of a rare bird in a tree, and has an observation deck in the globe. Astana was my last stop in Kazakhstan and after a day there, which was more than enough, I flew out of Central Asia for the next part of my adventure!    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    Día 315

    Almaty

    23 de octubre de 2023, Kazajstán ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C

    After leaving Dushanbe I headed back to Uzbekistan for a few days so that I could get a night train from Tashkent to Almaty in Kazakhstan. The train was pretty comfortable and I met a couple of other solo female travellers that were fun to hang out with while in Almaty. Almaty is yet another soviet city, probably my favourite so far. There were loads of tree lined avenues that were nice to walk around, and there are lots of interesting things to see including museums, opera houses, parks, cathedrals, bazaars, mosques, cool architecture and monuments. After spending quite a bit of time in the mountains I loved being back in a cosmopolitan city, so I spent most of the time wandering the streets and parks, visiting the cool buildings and monuments, drinking the fruit teas and eating the good noodle soups! I also made the most of the russian connection and had some good Russian food. Apples originally came from Kazakhstan and they are very proud of it, you see monuments to apples all over the city. Almaty even means "full of apples", so there are lots of good food and drink containing apples that we also tried as much of as possible!

    One must do thing in Almaty is to visit the Arasan spa, a huge complex built in 1982. The spa has many types of saunas including a Moroccan hammam, a Finnish sauna, a Turkish steam bath, and a russian banya, where you're supposed to wack yourself with birch leaves and then douse yourself in freezing water from a bucket. I only did that the once! There is also a nice pool and lots of areas to relax, plus an area for treatments. I had a back massage as I'd cricked it and I was in agony the whole time and couldn't wait for it to finish! It did fix my neck though. Everything is gender separated and you have to be nude while using the facilities, with just a towel for sitting on.

    While I was trying to endure the sauna one local lady called Aliya started chatting to me and asked if I'd like to go to hers for dinner one evening as she'd like to continue to practice her English, which I did. I was interested to go inside one of the Soviet blocks where she lived. The building stairwell was original but the inside of the apartment was very modern. She lived alone as her husband had died of COVID, and her children all lived abroad. She very kindly made me mushroom pancakes with salad, and she bought me some Kazakh chocolate, which was great! She then showed me around the local area a bit which was nice of her.

    Just 20 minutes outside of Almaty is the ski resort Shymbulak and the highest Ice skating rink in the world. Even if like me you're not a skiing fan, you can still get the cable car to the top to see the views. Unfortunately the ice rink hadn't opened for the winter yet, which is probably for the best considering my coordination!    Leer más

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  • ViajeroSophie's Trip
    Día 302

    Pamir Highway part 5 & Dushanbe

    10 de octubre de 2023, Tayikistán ⋅ ☀️ 5 °C

    The last couple of days of the Pamir Highway road trip spent driving along dusty mountain roads through deep dramatic valleys. These roads seem to be constantly in a state of construction so we had to stop many times while the road was blocked for construction workers, sometimes for hours at a time. In these deep valleys there is no way around, so people would just park their cars up and wait in the shade of the vehicles until the road opened to let people pass.

    The mountains gradually gave way to hills and gentle valleys as we got closer to Dushanbe, the capital. Dushanbe is another ex-soviet city, but a lot of its charm had been diminished as the Tajik government removed much of the old architecture and tree lined alleys. There were still some interesting monuments, including a flashy monument to Ismail Somoni, the ruler of the 10th century Samanid dynasty, whose mausoleum I had visited a few weeks earlier in Bukhara. Somoni is also the name of the currency in Tajikistan so they obviously really like this guy!    Leer más

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