Foreign culture at your doorstep

Of course, the best and most obvious way to experience foreign culture is to pay a lot of money to physically remove yourself from your country to get yourself to the foreign lands themselves... There is however, if you live in Australia, a much cheaper alternative, and that is to stay home. Today alone I've experienced 4 different cultures, all distinct, and all here in Australia.

The last few days has been spent with an Indian family, family friends, who are currently staying at our house on the Gold Coast. Today for lunch I was invited by a bunch of Korean and Taiwanese students - who I met by chance on the train home from the airport. We first went to buy ingredients at a Korean store in Brisbane - it was huge, full of Koreans and full of Korean produce. We next went to a Taiwanese store, again full of Taiwanese stuff. So for lunch, amongst other things we enjoyed Taiwanese pearl tea, Korean 'manju' (dumplings) and 'teok pogi' - which is rice-cake in chilli sauce. Nice, but not what I actually miss from Korea...

Then tonight I'm lucky to be staying in the home of a good uni friend who is Sri Lankan. Dinner involved papadums, rice, pickles, salty things, curry, etc...

Australia has it all, apparently...

Australia

Well, I'm back 'home'. I arrived at my parent's new house in the Gold Coast on Christmas Eve. I went down for a few days to visit relatives in Newcastle over Christmas, and only yesterday I arrived back in the Gold Coast.

Ah, Australia, the First World, one of the most comfortable countries to live in on earth. It's gorgeous, there are endless trees all round, the air is clean, the roads are perfect, the beaches are sublime, it's modern, safe, friendly, relaxed and we are free from oppression. It's just about perfect.

So why don't I want to stay here? Well, it's just a little boring. It's predictable. There's no chaos. Chaos occurs in virtually every country except Australia, and also brings with it higher death tolls, inequality, poverty, corruption, oppression and destitution. So, it's morally wrong to say chaos is a 'good thing'. But, well, for reasons I don't fully understand, at this stage of my life I'm enjoying being on the move and experiencing new places. When paternal instincts kick in and I want to 'settle', well, Australia will probably be a good place to do that.

Bags packed, but don't want to leave...

Well, tomorrow morning I'm supposed to leave Bangkok. I'll fly to Singapore, spend a night there, then return to Australia.

This is it! The end of my super-trip. Today happens to be exactly one year since my last day of work in England. In truth I don't quite feel like this is the 'end' of Yoni's travels as I don't plan to start working in Australia yet. I'll be out of there by March, potentially, I just have to choose a place I'd like to go.

How about a summary of this year's travels? This year I've been to the following 15 countries:

Australia
Bhutan
Cambodia
China
  Hong Kong
  Macau
England
Japan
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Malaysia
Papua New Guinea
Singapore
South Korea
Taiwan
Thailand
Uzbekistan

People often ask me: 'So, which was the best?' I tend to go for a diplomatic: 'Well, they each have their own appeal.' But for fun's sake, I'm going to try to assign 'top 3's' in various categories of my choosing:

Most hardcore (a measure of screwed up administrations, remoteness, inhostpitible geography/climate, grot, security, and lack of toilet hygiene)
1. Uzbekistan, 2. Papua New Guinea, 3. Kyrgyzstan

Most extreme nature
1. China, 2. Bhutan, 3. Kyrgyzstan

Most heavenly food
1. Japan & Thailand (tie), 2. Laos, 3. Malaysia

Friendliest People
1. Laos, 2. Taiwan, 3. Bhutan

Quirkiest Culture
1. Japan, 2. Bhutan, 3. Kyrgyzstan

Prettiest Girls
1. South Korea, 2. Kyrgyzstan, 3. Bhutan

If anyone cares to suggest another category I'll happily attempt at assign more 'top 3's'.

Well, time for me to sleep. zzzzzz

More relfections

When you travel you generally use your time differently from when you are at work. As a traveller you have a few key tasks and these are that you have to sort accommodation for the night, you need to sort transportation out of wherever it is you are, you need to plan where you want to go and how to get there, you need to find food and you need to see sights. Outside these activities you're generally left with a lot of time to yourself. The amount of time you have to yourself is even greater if you're staying in a place for a long time - because accommodation is sorted, you don't need to plan for the next few days, you don't need to sort transportation to anywhere and you've seen all the sights.

So, as a traveller, you find yourself having to fill this free time. If you have somewhere comfortable to sit you can often fill this time reading. If you're on the move or you can't find a park or don't want to pay for a seat, then you're left wandering the streets with lots and lots of time for reflection. It's nice, I suppose, to have a time in your life for reflection - not something I found I did much of when I had an office job. You can reflect on all sorts of things - the smells around you, girls, why the street dog by your side has no fur, girls, the nature of the universe, girls, what you want to do with your life, girls, how pleasant it is not to be working... And such things.

I've been fortunate enough to have a number of people to see in Bangkok, so a lot of my time has been spent with friends. But, I've had lots of time to myself and have pondered the above in great detail. Today I read a book about Buddhism - it's about time I learned something about this religion that's followed me around my travels of Asia... The most resonant advice seems to be: don't think about girls so much. Good advice probably.

Passing time in Bangkok

I haven't much to report. I've spent the last few days around Bangkok and at the family home of a best friend who lives about an hour outside of Bangkok (in an ice-factory). Notable activities include chaperoning my friend to his ex's sister's wedding - which involved little more than showing up in not entirely disrespectful dress, and prancing from table to table eating cocktail treats; accompanying my friend's family at various furniture shops - they need furniture for their new house (which is not inside the ice-factory); eating Thai food and cleaning the many messes left in the wake of my friend's tiny nephew and niece.

In Bangkok itself my task has been to eat more Thai food; to meet friends; to soak up the atmosphere of the place (generally smog), roaming the streets of this my old home city, reflecting on various things & trying not to think about Korea. 2008 is a bit of mystery for me. 2007 has been carefree fun. I realise now I'm actually going to have to find work in 2008. But I'm not sure where to go. I have an idea where I'd like to go - but not sure if I'll be welcome. Hrmmmmm... Decisions await me in Australia in the new year.

Photos!!

My digital camera might be dead, but my ultra-cheap, ultra-flimsy film camera lives on, and I've just had some photos developed. I've updated all my previous photo-less blog posts from Sichuan, Yunnan and Laos with relevant photos, so please check them out. Beware the quality is atrocious, some made worse by the fact that I opened the back of my camera exposing several shots to the light - they come out kind of green. But in a way we can say that the poor quality of the photos reflects the hard-core nature of the adventures they capture...

So please, browse through my older blog posts, I've updated all of them with photos. Here are some highlights:

Sichuan




Yunnan




Laos

Laos, Cambodia, Thailand

Laos
Last few days in Laos spent thinking about things on buses and on hammocks in the country's sleepy south. Encounter a culinary curiosity - Chinese girl I'd been travelling with buys hard-boiled egg as we take a toilet stop on our bus. On opening it seems a little darkened, after breaking through the white of the egg we're left with sight of a baby duck. She didn't eat it. Another curiosity was deep-fried spiders (tarantulas), but that was in Cambodia...


Cambodia
Not a particularly developed country, a rough, grubby place. Our bus takes us on car-ferry across a river, only our boat has no power, we get stuck on a rock. After being freed we free-float down the river, and ricochet off the river bank. Eventually a tug-boat rendezvous with us and takes us to the other side. Cambodian highlight is of course the famous Angkor Wat & surrounding temples. These are a series of stunning ruins of the ancient Khmer civilisation amid jungle in the flat plains of Cambodia. The temples are epic - some with stone walls kilometres in circumference. The temples are sublimely proportioned, and as you approach them up close you find intricate and beautiful engravings. Tag along with a Korean girl, nice opportunity to talk about what we each miss in Korea... ;p

Thailand
3 hours in traffic on arrival back in my favourite city of Bangkok. Fireworks outside as we are at standstill on highway - we arrive on the King's birthday, which is a pretty big deal here, he turning 80 and revered nearly as a god. Most Thai's wearing his colour, yellow, and crowd the streets as do yellow flags and lights. Bangkok is excellent, very pleased to be back here, will meet with friends and eat good food.

Reflections

This evening
My time on the road is nearly up. So I thought to myself this evening, with sorrow, as I rolled small balls of sticky rice and popped them in my mouth. I sat at a table of Lao girls in the backyard of a home in a Vientiane suburb belonging to the cousin of a friend of a sister of a friend. In other words, a complete stranger's house. I wasn't part of the conversation, it was mine to stare at the neon light balanced precariously in the banana tree above, to be blasted by traditional Lao music from behind, and to eat sticky rice, reflecting on the fact that in less than a month I'd be back in mundane Australia. I'd been shuffled along to this dinner by my Lao friend as some person's brother had been ordained as a monk - this was a kind of ceremonial party. Oh, the random things you get up to when travelling are such fun. The First World has nothing to offer but monotony and the mundane.

This afternoon
Today cycled around town. The afternoon was perfect, I thought to myself, as I rode up to the high banks of the Mekong. I sat on my bike and stared at the river, under the balmy sunlight, the river was still and silver. Thailand is on the other side of the river. I'll be there soon enough.

Death
In other reflections... some people shorten their lives with cigarettes, others with alcohol - I do so with French pastries. I know, already, that I'll die of a tart-induced heart attack. But, I think, it's worth it - today's lemon tart at the French patisserie Le Banneton was divine. Sigh.

Tomorrow
Tomorrow to Pakse in Lao's south. Then to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, then to Bangkok.

Good night.

Happenings in Vientiane

Hello from Vientiane. Plenty has happened over the past days that I better commit some of it to my blog. It's quite a backlog, so I might have to resort to over-simplification or outright omission.

Monk Feeding Frenzy
6am meet old highschool friend (who I'd not seen in 10 years) to feed several thousand monks at stunning stoopa 'Tat Luang' - it's gold and looks as though it was designed by Ferrari. This was the last day of a festival held at the stoopa, the monks had come from all over the country. The monks cannot prepare their own food, so instead rely on donations from the public - they in turn are willing to donate because they get good karma (points in the afterlife). I followed my friend and her family, and many thousands of other Laos (many stunning in their best dress), as we gave rice and other foods to monk after monk - who formed a giant ring around the temple grounds of empty bowls, shaved heads, orange robes and appreciating smiles.


Tat Luang Festival
The same festival concluded in the evening with the largest fete I've ever seen - thousands upon thousands of shops, games, food stalls. People told me how sleepy Vientiane was, but I saw no evidence for it that evening - it was more crowded than the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China. The religious aspect of the evening involved circling candles around the Tat Luang stoopa. There were too many people to get anywhere close to the stoopa - but I got close enough, it was lit up majestically gold in the night. I love that stoopa. In fact, it's my favourite stoopa in the whole world!

Empty waterfall
Today with friend in back of pick-up truck to lunch by some river some distance out of town. Then to some strange waterfalls - the slightest incline of any waterfalls I've ever seen, but on a bed of rock of strange shapes and forms. Anyway, it was completely dried-out due to the fact that this is the dry season, so I walked all about where the water would be falling, or rather, gently declining.

Radiohead
Also going on during my travels is music, which I carry in my iPod (bought in March, now obselete and called an 'iPod classic'). Anyway, recently acquired latest Radiohead album In Rainbows. It's always an exciting day, the day of a new Radiohead release, but the first listen of this album, well, I found to be a challenge, as is the case with any new album by the band. Their style becomes, erm, at the time of first listening, 'weirder' every album. But after time, the new style settles in, starts to make sense, and then becomes seriously listenable, before becoming brilliant. Well, I'm now several listens into this album and it's incredible. 15 Steps, Reckoner, Jigsaw falling into place, Faust Arp, all getting lots of repeats on Yoni's 'oldskool' iPod.

Vang Vieng

Hello from Vang Vieng. 'VV' is a small town in northern Laos - set along a river beside some rather stunning limestone mountains. Like much of Laos, this is a sleepy town and the locals are friendly. But there's something not quite right about this place. It's sleepy in a spaced-out, disconcerting way. It's now apparent to me that this is ... a *zombie town*.

Zombie town
It doesn't take long to realise that the very many young backpackers here are zombies. My first walk around town confirmed it. The place is brimming with them, many out of of their minds or entirely brainless, lying like vegetables in bed-cafes in front of the TV ('Friends' is shown in most such cafes). They just lie there, listless, sipping at their 'special' lassies, watching TV. Sadly, zombies outnumber locals in epidemic proportions. Many of the zombies are travelling around South East Asia in large groups, their only plan to drink, do drugs and enjoy Laos. It's all a bit false, I feel, which is why I'm leaving here sooner than I had planned.

Tubing
VV is also famous for 'tubing'- which is when you get driven upriver, dropped into the river on an inflated tyre-tube, and float downstream, stopping at bars on the way. All very well, it's very relaxing. The only problem is having to socialise with the other tubers - many of whom are loud, drunk and stupid. Of course there are other genuine human beings who tube- I met a few, but on the whole it's drunken madness. I found a restaurant where I could be alone, have a drink, eat some noodles. Then I floated all the way back to town, about an hour downstream. It was very relaxing once I got passed the bars and the techno music. On arrival in town, I returned my tube, had a shower then became a zombie myself at a cafe, watching episode after episode of the Simpsons. It was an Israeli cafe - the menu was in English, Lao and Hebrew and the place full of Israelis.


Countryside
The zombie culture is strange and unpleasant, and contrasts with the genuinely stunning landscape around VV. Yesterday I hired a bicycle and rode around the countryside, entered a cave, met plenty of locals, ate a pineapple beside a cow. All very pleasant. In the evening I made the mistake to take a walk around town at midnight. It was full of thoroughly unpleasant drunks disrupting locals. One English chap thought he'd be a star by getting in the way of oncoming motorcycles. His friends were laughing. The poor Laos were patient and waited until he let them pass. This is just abusing the local culture.


Summary
Vang Vieng is a small place in a very charming part of the world - I just feel sorry that Laos has to endure some of the worst parts of Western culture. Be warned it's full of drunks and zombies, be advised to avoid them, enjoy your stay. Have a pineapple.

Laos - buses, leeches, lime juice, taleban & neo-nazi

An eclectic post from an eclectic few days.

Buses
Today caught bus from Luang Prabang to 'backpacker-central' - Vang Vieng. I'm told the only thing to do here, besides lots of nothing (itself very pleasurable), is 'tubing'. This takes the form of taking a tuk-tuk several kilometres upstream of the river, getting onto a tire-tube, and drifting leisurely back down the river. More about this after I've tried it.

Curious point on the bus journey: lunch at some tiny town, then hang out with a crew of 11 year-old school kids playing snooker. All of them were smoking, and offered me cigarettes, but I declined telling them I don't smoke, never have and that I think it's bad for the health.

Leeches
I made a small journey out to some waterfall near Luang Prabang. I don't have a guide book to Laos, so I have no idea what this waterfall was called. I just said 'well ok' to an offer to join some Australian girls. The waterfall was well, walked over it, through some muddy jungle paths, and, was even attacked by giant leeches. To be more exact, it was only one leech and it was only giant compared to an ant. I pulled the sucker off with my bare hands. Now, at long last, I can say I'm a man - I feel like Steve Irwin.

Lime juice
I love lime, and have enjoyed lime juice and food with lime several times a day since arriving in Laos.

Taleban & Neo-nazi
I'd been growing my beard for close to 6 weeks. It was full and tinged red. I had a similar one in Uzbekistan where I was accused by police in an underground police questioning room, in a friendly kind of way, of being Taleban. Mostly this was because I was standing next to Michael Rayner - whose beard is infamous. On a whim I entered a barber in Luang Prabang and told him to cut my hair and beard. *Not too short* I insisted. His razor was lousy and he accidently shaved the side of my head to the skin. So I've gone from Taleban to Neo-Nazi in a day. I'm off to get some lime juice.

Laos - Luang Prabang

Today was a day spent in Heaven. Technically I'm still on Earth, in a town in Laos called 'Luang Prabang'. This is a very attractive, laid-back town in the hilly jungle-forest along the Mekong in Northern Laos. It's such a pleasant change from China, it's so much more laid-back, less crowded, such an agreeable temperature, the people are friendly, quiet and polite. And then there's the food, which I'll devote a whole section of this post to. It's very much geared up to tourism, there are endless guest-houses, and foreigners. But in contrast to the Chinese tourist towns of 'Shangri La', and Lijiang, I feel the locals in Luang Prabang come out with their dignity intact.

Anyway, let me first tell the story of how I got here, then about my day (eating).

Getting to Luang Prabang
Despite advice I'd heard there indeed does exist a direct bus from Kunming in China to Luang Prabang in Laos. It takes 30 hours. It wasn't the most unpleasant - I had a bed and we made regular food and toilet stops. It's a Chinese bus full of Chinese people (and the odd foreigner). The Chinese passengers made sense in their Chinese context, but once over the border, sad to admit I could begin to sympathise with Thai's complaints about Chinese mainlanders (that they're loud, smoking, spitting, screaming, littering, uncouth monsters!) .

Erm, I usually prefer to take a diplomatic non-committal stance to describe people, but, well, I think this is a pretty objective observation! As we pulled up to a small town in Northern Laos for a toilet stop, we spilled off the bus, there was that now familiar cacophony of the clearing of throats, spitting, screaming (conversation), throwing of bags and bottles onto the streets - it was quite embarrassing. The Lao's running the stores were so quiet, watched timidly and waited patiently for the Chinese Storm to pass. Erm, no offense to my mainlander friends - you all rock, perhaps, I hope, you know which people I'm referring to though.

Eating in Luang Prabang
50 metres into the Laos border I'd already ordered Som Tam (Papaya salad), and what a delight it was. I'd been craving fresh vegetables and lime for weeks in China. This salad didn't disappoint, it was cold, spicy, refreshing and dripping with sour lime juice and fish sauce. I didn't order the grilled mouse (or whatever it was).

Today however, I woke to a forest-fresh morning, dressed in shorts, t-shirt and sandals (the first time in over 2 months), and strolled the town. It's all jungley-overgrowth, guesthouses, French colonial buildings, Thai wats (temples) and other miscellaneous filler buidlings. I ate by the road-side, I had a baguette filled with grilled chicken and salad. This was a new combination of Thai-style food with French, it was a delight. Another curious remnant of French colonialism was the ample crowds of people passing the day playing petank- it seemed very relaxing.

I went back to my hostel and had a leisurely nap. I woke to thoughts of lime juice and spicy-sour-tangy-chewy phad thai (thai noodles) - which I made my mission to find. I found a wonderful spot on the high banks along the Mekong, under giant jungle trees. I had a big grin on my face as I enjoyed my lunch and read my book. Bliss.

I later found a French patisserie and continued the sour theme with a very tart lemon tart. Another evening stroll eventually led me to dinner. I'd decided to splurge a whopping £8.50 on a fancy French restaurant - (buffalo) steak with chips (I'd been craving such a dish for months), a glass of red wine, creme caramel and Lao espresso to finish. Oh, what a delight.

I'm loving this place. It's so incredibly relaxing and to indulge in the food is bliss. No big plans tomorrow - more leisurely strolls, more eating.

Kunming

Greetings from Kunming - the regional capital of Yunnan province, China. My guide book says about Kunming that with Chengdu it's the the most relaxed regional captial in China. I wouldn't know about that, but it's certainly laid back. My first impression of the place was that it was Grot City. But then I arrived late and hadn't noticed the trees. It's not the tidiest of cities, not the most orderly, it's actually quite grubby, but it's certainly fun. In fact, the outskirts reminded me of Bangkok - rust, concrete and billboards. There's not all that much to do or see here, but that suits me. The Yunnan university is very pretty however with neo-classical buildings, green lawns, bamboo, avenues lined with yellow ginko-tree trees, and so on.

Today I opted to get a 'cooking class' which took the form of me paying a small sum to my hostel, the staff then took me to a local market in the morning to buy ingredients, we cooked lunch together, and then we cooked several dishes for dinner. The market was fun, full of bustle, grot, people and vegetables and parts of animals I never knew existed. Cooking involved little more than putting too much oil into a wok at high temperature, adding ingredients, serving. My menu was as follows:

• Tomato with egg - a favourite in China
• Gong bao chicken - chicken with peanuts
• Mapo tofu - spicy tofu dish
• A kind of potato pancake

When you travel you find you tend to bump into the same people again in random places - in fact this happens so regularly that it raises serious questions about the nature of the Universe. Anyway, in Kunming I met a cyclist who I last met in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He's ridden from Germany to Kunming, and lost over 20ks in the process. We went for Indian food.

Not much more to tell. Today was a sunny day. It was warm - and we're still at 2,000m above sea level.

Dali

Hello from Dali, Yunnan province, home to the Bai people (to me they all look Chinese anyway). After the lofty heights of the Tibetan plateau, there is, in normal circumstances, only one way to go and that is down. Indeed, since I left Litang (at 4000m+) I've slowly made my way back towards sea level. In Dali I feel as though I've found the lowlands where the air is thick, but it turns out the place is still at 2,200m, which is about the height of Australia's tallest mountain, Mount Kosciusko.

Dali is a small city perched between tall green mountains and a large lake. It's an old town, very much done up for tourists - backpacker guesthouses, trendy cafes, pizza restaurants, etc. It's laid back though and the Chinese culture protrudes comfortably about the tourists, and you don't have to walk far to see traditional ways of life. Today I hired a bicycle and went for a cycle to the nearby lake Er Hai. There wasn't much to do there but take a ferry, so I headed back along the road I came. I chanced upon seeing two foreigners on their bikes following a local lady with a baby on her back down a narrow alleyway close to the lake. I decided to follow them, and found myself peddling along muddy concrete, past old men smoking tobacco, dirty kids with big grins, men and women mixing concrete, old houses and rubble overgrown with vines. It was quite charming, and then I caught up with them.

They were Germans who'd found a lady to take them cormorant fishing. I decided to join them. Parked our bikes in a farm, then jumped into the lady's husband's boat, full with cormorant birds. Out we went into the lake and the birds got to work. They're well trained and know what to do. It wasn't long before they returned to the boat to be lifted back in, regurgitating caught fish into a bucket.



I later rode about about the countryside by myself, lost in thought. This is a nice place.

Lijiang & Tiger Leaping Gorge

*please note, some of the photos in this article I sourced from Flickr, they're not my own.

Lijiang
Lijiang is a popular tourist town in Yunnan province and is the 'captial' of a minority group called the Naxi. After an earthquake in 1996, it's old town was largely reconstructed, and with tourism in mind. I'd been warned about this place - of the hordes of tourists, of the endless souvenir shops and of the marginalised Naxi culture. With suitably low expectations, I can say after getting here, that in fact I really like this place.

You have to know what you're getting in Lijiang - this is a modern Chinese city, and it's old town is in fact rather new and is completely separate from the living city. It's a contrived tourist-only zone completely removed from reality, but is very charmingly done and is a wonderful place to stroll at night - by its tiny streams, over its many bridges, under its many red lanterns and past its endless souvenir shops, bars and restaurants. Don't expect genuine, living Naxi culture - it is a kind of theme-park but a very pleasant one. I'm still IMMENSELY sad that my camera isn't work, of course.




Tiger Leaping Gorge
This is, I'm quite sure, the most incredible place I've ever seen. Tiger Leaping Gorge is the name given to a very deep valley in the Yunnan mountains (part of the Himalayan system), after the legend that a tiger once leaped across it (I don't know why, google can tell you if you wish to know). It's the deepest gorge in the world in fact (and one of the narrowest) - from the river below, the valley walls rise a whopping 3 kms directly upwards, from forest through to sharp snowy peaks. The hike takes you along one of the valley walls, with views of the mountains on the other side.

I'd initially decided to skip this 2 day hike, but I met a Japanese person in Lijiang who insisted that I went. The scale of this gorge is nearly beyond the imagination. Again, killing myself that my camera doesn't work - how sad that my camera should die at the most beautiful place I've seen on my trip. The hike here also featured the most memorable peeing experience of my travels - peeing into a beautiful sunset to the sound of the river far below & out of sight, where the ground beings to heave directly upwards, forever, into clouds far overhead.

Tibetan culture

Shangri La
Greetings from so-called 'Shangri La' in Yunnan province, China. The town's actual name is 'Zhongdian', but the Chinese Tourism Bureau decided it better ought to be called 'Shangri La' - justified on the grounds that it's in the mountains (3,500m) and is somewhat Tibetan. Actually this town is a very sad place. It's just a big Chinese city, with token Tibetan architectural flourishes on big concrete buildings, and souvenir-shop after souvenir-shop selling Tibetan trinkets. I suppose there are a good number of Tibetans living here, but what you get to see as a tourist is just the brand-new old town, the shops, hotels, bars and the Tibetan hard-sell. Very sad.


Sichuan > Yunnan
Getting to Zhongdian was a delight of epic, bumpy, long-distance mini-bus journeys through the mountains. Starting at Litang on the Tibetan plateau, we crossed strange landscapes from high-altitude, boulder-strewn grasslands, to densely-forested valleys, to monumental rocky gorges. Culturally this whole route is Tibetan - the people are Tibetan and so is the architecture: attractive white block houses. Some of the most impressive scenery I've ever seen.



Sky burial in Litang
Before leaving Litang I was invited to view a Tibetan funeral. Where in some cultures it's common to bury a body, and in others to burn the body and put the remains in a little jar, in Tibet the norm seems to be to tie the body to a stick on a hill, have a holy man hack it to pieces, then let vultures devour the whole thing - sending the body back to the heavens. It sounds gruesome, and is, I'd never seen a corpse before, let alone one being chopped to pieces - there's a lot of blood involved - yet, the experience wasn't as disturbing as I thought it would be. In fact, it was peaceful in its way, we (few others from the hostel, our pretty Tibetan host, and the relatives of the deceased) sat by a small stream, there were no sounds but for the trickle of the water, the slamming of the sledge-hammer and the tearing of the vultures. There was no mourning, just the disposal of a body back to nature, whose soul had since moved on.

Tibet (sort of, not exactly)

Greetings from Tibet, sort of, not exactly. I'm staying in the town of Litang, one of the highest in the world at 4,014m above sea level. All the hostel staff are Tibetan, virtually all the town's residents are Tibetan, all the buildings look Tibetan, on the streets the Tibetan greeting 'tashi delay' has replaced the Chinese 'ni how'. I'm on the Tibetan plateau. Geographically and culturally then we can say I'm in Tibet. As far as borders are concerned however I'm still in Sichuan - in its deep far west, a long way physically and culturally from the administrative capital Chengdu.

Pretty much all the advice I read advised against taking the bus to Litang, my guidebook said it's 'dangerous' though didn't offer any details. Blog reports I read spoke of arriving here at high altitude and feeling as though their brains and lungs were about to explode. The only people enthusiastic about the trip and who dismissed all dangers were the bus-station staff selling me the tickets. This was the reassurance I needed.

The bus from Chengdu rises through some of the lushest terrain I've ever seen. I guess it would be jungle, but farms, construction and miscellaneous industrial buildings take its place, but always covered in overgrowth. Eventually jaggered stone walls shoot up out of the ground and we being our ascent. We work our way from this lush forrest eventually into a temperate Autumn forrest at over 2,000m. I stay the night at Kangding (2,700m).

Today was gruelling. Left Kangding before dawn at 6am, climbing. We climb and climb until we reach a giant pass - completely snowed over at 4412m. This was my first test at serious altitude. Although I was just sitting in my seat - I was very cold (I had 6 layers of various kinds of shirts on), and I did feel a little queasy. The bus continued on, the highest pass we took was a whopping 4718 metres.

The very bumpy hours before arriving in Litang are quite nauseating - both for altitude and sheer bumpiness. The scenery changes drastically - gone are the forests, all that remains is rather pathetic yellow grass and rocks. Stark. Arriving in Litang the sun was hot, and the trek to hostel proved epic. When I finally arrived I was light headed and needed to sit, staff let me, served me lots of tea, and it was a good 20 minutes before I asked about rooms. The trek from the bus station to the hostel is about 150 metres. It's evening now and I've taken this slow, acclimatising. It's really not so bad, you just tire faster up here.

This is a long post, sorry. My camera started working again yesterday, so will post some pics, but it died again today. =( Thanks for your comments by the way, I cannot reply them now because of blogspot bans in China (I can write new posts though, obviously, strangely). Yoni: out.

Moving on

Today was an odd day. A random series of unrelated events, stressful, funny, happy, sad. It was also a day of decisions, many decisions.

Breakfast - Fried dough sticks dipped in sweet soy milk on road-side.

Camera - MY CAMERA BROKE, so I got myself to Casio's Chengdu office which was closed. This means no more photos, perhaps for the rest of my travels.

Huanglongxi - Got myself to what's been the prettiest city I've seen in China - a Qing dynasty town of ceramic tiles, wooden architecture, banyan trees, bamboo, teahouses and Chinese tourists - my only photo is a crummy one from a film camera.


Lunch - On arriving in town I looked particularly disorientated, the bus station staff felt sorry for me so invited me to sit for lunch with them - a divine feast of Sichuanese stir-fries with rice, all laced with that distinctively aromatic & tingly spice Sichuan pepper.

Onward travel - Decided to head through Tibetan plateau back-route to Yunnan. Tomorrow in 'Kangding' the following two nights in what's just about the highest town in the world 'Litang' (over 4,000m) then to "Shangri La" 'Zongdian' in Yunnan. I share this itinerary in case I go missing or something.

Thermal underwear - It's going to be cold in the mountains, so I got heavy-duty underwear.

Jacket - I wanted a jacket but don't want to pay for it. As it happened late at night I walked past a used jacket sitting by itself on some stairs. I looked around for homeless people but could find none. I wanted to take it but thought someone else might get better use out of it, so I walked off. About 1km later I changed my mind, I thought I'd use the jacket until I got to Yunnan then donate it appropriately. Anyway, by the time I was back it was gone.

Enjoying Sichuan

I seem to keep extending my stay in Sichuan Province's capital Chengdu. It's the most polluted city I've seen in my life, visibility is abysmal - and yet it's so friendly and laid-back, I don't want to leave. The streets are lined with jungle-like trees, teahouses abound, the food is great (lots of tofu, chilli and Sichuan pepper which numbs the tongue), and people are generally pretty nice.



Pandas
Chengdu calls itself 'Home of the Panda' - it has the world's largest panda reserve (breeding & research centre) just outside town, and is one of the main tourist draws to the city. So I got myself there and saw some pandas. They're well and all, but it didn't really excite me, and the place is over-run by tour groups.



Big Buddha
Another tourist draw to Chengdu is a rather large Buddha called 'Dafo' which I visited today. It's the largest Buddha, in fact, in the whole world, at 71 metres high. The Buddha is located at a cliff near a river in a town called Leshan, which is a curious place - it's on the confluence of three seperate rivers. Air quality was as terrible as Chengdu - I saw lots of heavy industry on the 2 hour drive there. I jumped on a local bus, and changed to a smaller bus to get to the Buddha. I was assulted by a large pack of 8 year old kids on the bus, who after making fun of my nose, forced me to give them an English lesson. At the Buddha, once again, the site was over-run with tourists.



Today I met many locals. First it was the kids on the bus - then at the Buddha someone ahead of me in a queue put an arm around me while his friend came in front and took a photo, without asking. I knew the drill and played my part. We got to chatting anyway (in the *very* limited English they had), they had a group of about 10, were about my age or a bit younger, workmates. It's a different culture in China, but it's warm and people are genuinely nice and non-threatening, at least, this is what I've experienced. Finally I befriended a mother and child on bus back to Chengdu - the girl, understandably, couldn't help cracking up in laughter each time we established eye contact.

Getting to Chengdu

The journey from Beijing to Chengdu, in Sichuan Province (in South-West China, bordering Tibet), took me 4 days longer than expected. To start, I missed my train in Beijing, an express. The next available train left 2 days later and was not an express - it would take, and indeed took, 31 hours - which means to 2 nights on the train. I arrived this morning at 5am.

Beijing
So, having missed my train, I had extra 2 days to fill in Beijing. I decided I ought to visit the Great Wall - not the obscurer more untouched sections but the most touristy section of them all, a spot called 'Badaling'. I knew it would be throbbing with tourists, but not to the extent that it was. My only thought was: wow, what a revenue generator.


Once again, Domo kun was unfased by the change of plans - in fact he quite enjoyed the 31 hr train journey.


Chengdu
I like Chengdu. Tibet looms to the west, but around here it's quite flat. It's also atmosphere rich, so rich in fact that most buildings are lost in it - or maybe it's pollution, I can't tell. This place is dank, yet cool; dirty yet lush with trees, gardens and overgrowth; the buildings are a mix of skyscrapers, decaying concrete blocks, and exquisite Qing-dynasty architecture. The place is rather enchanting. And yet it's almost surreal - as though it were plucked from my subconscious. It's a dreamlike exaggeration of the corner behind my old house where I used to dump the garbage - a dank brick wall overgrown with all sorts of green.




Chengdu is famous for its cuisine and teahouses. Teahouses can be found everywhere and remind me of French bistros. The idea is that you pay for your cup of tea and you're given unlimited refills of hot water. This is great, but an odd consequence of free refills is when it's time to leave you do so in a rather painful limp, for pressure on your bladder. This happened at both teahouses I visited today.

Some thoughts on travelling...

On food in China
I'm not going to say Chinese food is bad. China has one of the oldest, proudest, tastiest, most influential cuisines on the planet (even though it includes rat). All I wish to say is that for a non-Chinese speaking independent traveller (ie. me), eating food in China is tricky and often frustrating. For several reasons which include:

1. Menus: You rarely know what you're ordering (at times exciting, at other times frustrating). Menus are usually in Chinese, if there is English it rarely makes sense and more often than not only includes simple dishes, and there are rarely any pictures.
2. Hygiene: Some of the worst I've ever seen.
3. Price: If you want to avoid hygiene issues you start paying big money - more than a night's accomodation in a hostel.
4. Culture: It seems to me the culture is to eat together, not by one's self. This means that you need to order several dishes to have a balanced meal - which is just silly when by yourself.
5. Monotony: If you buy cheap (and dont know what's available) you invariably end up with noodles or dumplings or fried rice - which are all very nice but aren't very nutritious and get bland and boring fast.

On toilets
There is, I believe, a very easy way to guage how hardcore your travelling experience is. It's all to do with toilets. There is a inverse correlation between the pleasurable experience of using a toilet and degree to which your travels can be said to be 'hardcore'. If I map this theory of hardcoreness vs toilet pleasure on my travels it would as follows:

Best toilet experience (therefore least hardcore travelling): Japan, where toilets are heated, electronic, clean, they clean you, dry you, play music for you.

Worst toilet experience (therefore most hardcore travelling): Uzbekistan, hole in the ground, cloud of flies, stench beyond words or imagination, need to stand on other peoples' excrement to align yourself with the hole - inside of which is a giant pile of other peoples' excrement. China tends towards terrible toilets too.

On being hardcore
Yoni & Mike's rule of travelling: There is always someone whose travels are more hardcore than yours. This rule holds true for everyone except for Heinz Stucke, the most hardcore of them all - a German cyclist on the road for over 40 years.

On asking questions
Always ask questions. In full backpacker attire (sandals, shorts, smelly t-shirt, hat) I asked the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong if I could store my bag for the day for free. Strangely they let me.

On assurances
Always treat assurances with suspicion. People who think they're right often aren't.

Back-packing Proper (in China)

Korea
So, I went from Japan through Korea to China. The preferred route would have taken me north from Hokkaido to Sakhalin, through Russia, Mongolia and down into northern China. But I had reasons to return to Korea. You can ask me about those reasons in an email or in person. Sadly I ended up leaving Korea sooner than expected. At least I got to eat 'sam gyob sal' (grilled bacon dipped in sesame oil wrapped in lettuce leaf) and some ice-cream.



China
Now I find myself back in China. I find backpacking doesn't feel 'proper' unless I have to carry my own toilet paper (and so on). Well, after more than two months in civilised Korea and Japan, being back in China backpacking suddenly feels proper again. Dodginess greeted me early on my way to China - the very boat I took was completely rusted and in parts falling to pieces. And on arriving in Yantai, still on the boat, in my room reading a book - something funny happened. I heard someone fiddle with my door's handle, the door opened, a middle-aged Chinese man popped his head inside, saw that it was just me and entered the room (I had a 4 person room to myself). Once inside, he looked around again, saw the bathroom, invited himself into it, came out with all the 4 towels, felt bad - offered me one (I declined), put them in his bag, started singing and left. Welcome to China.

With ample dodginess and backwardness I have also been greeted with exceptional warmth. Even on the shuttle bus to the ferry in Korea (full with Chinese) I was greeted with warm smiles (and stares) and attempts at communication through body language and shared vocab (not much). On the ferry I sat on half a rusted business chair that was left on the deck, enjoying the setting sun, when three Chinese chefs came from the kitchen for a cigarette break. We laughed and commented on the weather. And now, in China, people smile or approach me and say 'hello' or 'nihow'. I took a seat watching the sea where a host of people came and chat to me (in Chinese), including an elderly couple who sat next to me and chat to me in Chinese, asking where I was from etc. These kinds of encounters happen all the time in China - the people are so very nice (at least, this is my experience). It's quite a change from Korea and Japan - where people are friendly but very reserved. And in Japan where the default volume for speaking (especially women) is close to a whisper - in China it's most common to scream. There's a girl on a computer next to me right now screaming at someone on her phone.

Glad to be on the move I guess.