Travel Log 19

Dali is an ancient city that has been partly reconstructed and partly renovated by the Chinese government. The city is set in beautiful surroundings with a 4000m mountain on one side and a huge lake on the other. The town itself although pretty has been turned into a tourist town and is backpacker central. It was quite quiet when I was there as it was the beginning of the season but you can tell it is a backpackers heaven because the old ladies come up to you and ask very politely if you would like some Ganja. So the town was unfortunately touristy but I did enjoy walking up the mountain and going to see the river under a very threatening sky.

   

From Dali I took a bus up to Lijiang which is another reconstructed ancient town more complete than Dali and also more touristy with every building filled with shops and restaurants and the streets filled with groups of Chinese tourists. Here I met a Scandinavian guy who joined me in eating cakes and drinking tea in the Prague cafe and watching the pretty groups of beautiful Chinese women wander by. Nearby Lijiang is the Tiger Leaping Gorge which is a river valley surrounded by huge mountains up to 5500m high. This is one of the most spectacular sights I have seen on my travels. We hiked up the mountain in the sunshine for 7 hours to reach a guesthouse to stay the night in. The guesthouse had the most amazing view of the side of the mountain and the river. The next day we tried to hike to another village to catch the bus back to Lijiang but unfortunately the new mountain road that was being built had a section that was not passable and we had to back track for an hour and a half. I got a little bit worried that we wouldn’t make it back into town that night and I might miss my bus the next day.

 

Luckily we caught a minivan back to the village we started the hike at and then got a minivan back to Lijiang. On the van two English guys recommended Mama’s guesthouse to us. This guesthouse was cheaper than the one we had been previously staying at and they offered a cheap communal meal of local Chinese food.

The next day I hopped on a bus that would take me to Chengdu. The bus had to wind through the mountains often stuck behind several slow moving trucks. On the journey (which took 25 hours) we went through a true Bladerunner city that had nearby power plants with flames rising from the chimneys, red and blue lit up skyscapers and shops. It was just like Bladerunner as we past in the middle of the night. We also past a lorry in a tunnel that one of the back wheels had completely fallen off and was in the middle of the road on fire and smoking out the tunnel and the lorry was sat there sitting on the three remaining sets of wheels. At about 4 in the morning our own tyre decided to give in and we had to stop and wake up a mechanic so that he could replace it. Another thing which made the journey memorable is that for the entire journey we had two babies crying and pooping. The mother would change the nappy on the bus and then put the used nappy in the bin next to your head (the buses were sleeper buses and the bins were in the aisle). Also one of the little girls on the bus was allowed by her mother to pull her trousers down and pee in the aisle this might have been to wash away the spit that is a constant feature on any bit of ground in China. Another thing about this being China is that the toilets at the toilet stops were the most disgusting things I have ever seen. What they are is a series of concrete holes in the ground in an outhouse where you stand and try to pee next to a guy squatting down taking a grunt, often these holes have not been washed for a few days possibly weeks and have a healthy pile waiting to be spread on the fields.

After 25 hours of the China experience we finally arrived in Chengdu home of the Giant Pandas.

Travel Log 18

The bus I caught was heading to Jinghong. Luckily our bus driver changed the $35 worth of Lao Kip I had as past the border you can’t change Kip and it would have become worthless. I had decided to skip most of southern Yunnan as it is said that it is very similar to Laos and after almost 5 months in SE Asia I was keen to move further into China. So I caught an overnight bus to Kunming where I was to stay with Richard a work friend of Ben’s that is studying Chinese at Kunming Normal University. We arrived at 7 in the morning, unfortunately the day I arrived was very cold and I was only in my shorts and the warmest top I had was a hoody. I later found out that the day before I arrived had been 25 degrees but now that I had arrived the temperature had dropped a good 20 degrees. This and the altitude (1900m) caused me to come down with a high temperature and cold and I was house bound for two days. The illness meant that although I was in Kunming for 7 days I didn’t see a whole lot. It also meant that I didn’t go to some towns nearby(ish) but since it is the wrong time of year to see rice terraces I don’t think I missed much. In Kunming I did go to some parks and see the spectacle that goes on in so far all parks in Chinese cities. The parks in Chinese cities are where the middle aged and retired go to sing and dance … badly, it is quite a sight and quite amusing.

Richards Chinese was pretty good and this provided a little more freedom and during my time in Kunming we went out for some nice food. On Sunday I went to watch Richard play football and after seeing how terrible everyone was playing I thought I’d better help them out. So on I trotted and within about 10 minutes I score a peach right into the top right hand corner. Unfortunately later on I got lobbed as the last defender and the game ended up 2-all.

After my time at Richards I headed on a bus to Dali.

Travel Log 17

After a 24 hours bus journey where we stopped at the border for 4 hours waiting for it to open I arrived in Vientiane, Laos. Here I stayed with Guy an American-Laos that now resides in Vientiane. Vientiane is a quiet, sleepy capital where we spent most of the time in cafés and bars, eating and sleeping. We also visited a few night clubs where the local ladyboys play (Guy is gay and so quite a few of his friends are ladyboys).  Unfortunately during this time my cut that I got when I fell off my bicycle in Saigon got infected and I had to visit the Australian embassy clinic for the doctor to prescribe some antibiotics – unfortunately I had to fork out a fair sum for the consultation and had I asked beforehand I may have gone to the cheaper clinic. Hey ho hopefully I can claim it back on my insurance.

So after I got my visa for China I took the bus to Luang Prabang a beautiful French colonial town, porbably the best preserved town I have visited on all of my travels. Here at 6:30 every morning people gather to give alms to the monks and snap them parading in the morning sun. The town is bordered by two rivers, one of which is the Mekong. Every evening a market blocks the road and the women from surrounding villages come to sell scarves, jewellery, umbrellas and other bits and bobs. After spending a few nights in Luang Prabang I took a bus to Nong Khiew on the Nam Ou river. Here I caught the boat to Muang Ngoi a quiet carless village which can only be accessed by river.

In the evening I joined some Australian travellers that were with a Lao fella that was offering every passerby Lao Lao – a homemade spirit drunk by most locals some of which is ok some of which is foul. We also joined the restaurant’s owners for dinner where “King Lao Lao” as he calls himself fried up some wonderful fish that he had caught earlier that day.

The following morning I joined other travellers as we waited for the boat upstream to fill up and once it did off we went through some amazing mountain landscapes and past some villages with people fishing, picking river weed, swimming, bathing and using the river for many other things. The boat arrived after four hours in Muang Khua. Here we saw the locals sort the grass they use to make brooms and play bamboo foot volleyball which they were amazingly good at with martial art like skills. In this town there was also a scary suspension bridge that had unattached metal sheets to walk across at a height of about 20 metres above ground.

Then the next morning I took a bus to Udom Xai. There isn’t really much to do in Udom Xai but I stayed a couple of nights to figure out what to do next whether to go straight into China on the bus to Kunming or to see a few more places in Laos. Having found out that my couchsurfing host in Chengdu, China would be on holiday until a few after I had planned to get to Chengdu I decided to stay a little longer in Laos. So I took the bus to Luang Namtha where I hired a motorbike straight away and rode the 2 hour drive through the mountains to Muang Sing. The drive was wonderful as there were hardly any traffic and every child I past waved and said hello. Just outside Muang Sing there are large watermelon farms and the workers were packing boxes due to be send to China by the side of the road. The tractors the farmers use to cart the watermelons around are strange contraptions – they are like a cross between a lawnmower and a small tractor.

In Muang Sing I met a Swedish fella and two Polish girls.  The Swedish guy had bought a Russian Minsk (a Russian motorbike) in Hanoi and was going to travel across SE Asia on it. The day after I arrived I, the Swede and one of the polish sisters went for a motorbike ride across dirt tracks and small streams to the Chinese border. The 2 hour ride took us through ethnic villages and fields and through some pretty landscapes. At one point one of the stream stopped us in our tracks as it seemed to be quite deep. Ladislav (the Swede) went first and got through with ease, so I backed up a bit to allow some momentum to get through the stream. However although I made it through without falling over by scooter was much lower to the ground than Ladislav’s Minsk and I got a little wet. Luckily it was the middle of the day and I dried off pretty quickly. The next morning I had a few hours before I had to ride back to Luang Namtha to return the bike so Ladislav and I took a ride through different ethnic villages. These were pretty interesting and some of the older locals still wore there traditional dress. Unfortunately as soon as you stop they rush up to you to try and sell you various bits and bobs that they had made. The route we had planned was supposed to take me to the road I had to be on to get back to Luang Namtha, however since we were effectively riding through fields and there of course weren’t any signs we ended up going around in a circle so I had to zoom back through the mountains to get the bike back in time.

Then the next morning I took the bus to China.