More Overnights

Published on July 18, 2007 in China

We arrived in Chengdu tired but with high spirits: our adventure was progressing quickly, and we were in the land of spicy food, Sichuan, which holds a special interest in my heart. We had two missions in Chungdu: 1) find a place to shower, 2) catch the bus south the Kunming. The quest for a shower took us down a dirty side street with several hotels, where we stopped and asked a few for prices. We had to be careful, however, as I don't think asking "how much for three hours" would have really been too successful. We finally found one that wasn't too expensive, maybe $20/night, which at the time thought fairly expensive.

A shower, movie, and nap later we were ready to continue on mission #2. Unfortunately, there weren't any trains or buses for the entire day. The only solution was to take a hardseat (see previous postings). After several hours of sitting in filth, having sunflower seeds fly in my face, Yan-Shih and I finally had had enough. We jumped off a few hours short of Kunming, in a random city called ZhaoTong. Upon leaving the train station we met a woman who asked if we wanted to stay the night in her spare room, which we agreed to see. The price was acceptable, and we crawled in bed and fell asleep. Early the next morning we said goodbye and took the rickety bus into the main party of the city.

Having the need to finish our mission, we looked into the bus schedule. A pattern was starting to reveal itself: no more buses were available. Without exception, however, we found a black car with the driver hustling people to Kunming. Negotiation is always a bit tricky - but we were able to settle on a price similar to the cost of the bus tickets, 48RMB (about $9-10), and departed for the south.

What we didn't know at the time is that although the map displayed a highway between the cities, the highway hadn't actually been fully constructed. For the next few hours we hopped between highway and country road and village dirt side-walks. However, the view through most of the ride was simply amazing; a type of view one would see on a postcard, or on the TV. Around one bend we stopped at a local restaurant and ate some food, which had been ordered on the drive down. Although the fried rice was decent, I had to drink several bottles of water just to stay hydrated. The presence of MSG wasn't just apparent, it was overwhelming, almost like the top of the MSG bottle fell off and the contents dumped into the rice. Everybody else didn't seem to notice, but I certainly did, and maybe because of the conflict between MSG and white people.

We finally reached Kunming and asked for a bed at the hostel we had written on our paper. The hostel itself looked very nice - people were playing pool and enjoying a few beers - but it was totally booked. They mentioned another hostel located rather far away, and we decided to go visit it. Since we had been sitting down almost non-stop for the last three days, we ultimately decided to just walk to the other hostel. Having small backpacks when you travel is a bit of a catch-22: it allows you to have great mobility, but it also encourages you to walk when you should really just take a taxi. For instance, when crossing the border into Cambodia.

An hour or more of walking and we found the other hostel, somehow, after being drenched in water from an evening storm. We showered (again?), and went to bed.

The 60 Hour Train Ride

Published on July 5, 2007 in China

Early in the morning, 6:00am, we arrived in Guangzhou. Can you guess what we did? We ate rice balls, of course. Maybe I should explain what a rice ball is. Although Taiwan does rice balls differently, the ones in Guangzhou are usually in a dark seseme paste/soup, and are filled with peanut butter. Yum.

After rice balls we checked email (since it was really cheap), and wandered around the nearby mall. We needed to purchase about three days worth of food since the trainride would take over 60 hours. At 13:00 we boarded our train, and met our bunkmates: two girls from Hong Kong (May and Kwin) and a guy from Malaysia. We started chatting, and soon started playing cards. They taught me how to play German Bridge, which would soon become the card game of the trip.

For the rest of the afternoon we played bridge, read, and chatted. Soon night took over, we had our instant noodle dinner, and fell asleep.

The next few days were consumed with bridge and reading. The Malaysian guy jumped off the train in Xining, and we made friends with a local Tibetan girl. I can now count to three in Tibetan, and now how to say hello/thank you, and even more importantly: beer.

Expect updates about Lhasa soon.

A Day in YanShuo

Published on July 4, 2007 in China

We awoke at 8:00 and went to breakfast. At 10:00 we rented a bike (a tandum!) and started biking to Moon Hill. The traffic was pretty dense so we needed to be careful, but we enjoyed ourselves none-the-less.

Half-way up the road we paused for a break and an older lady came up to us asking if we wanted to buy post cards. Since they were cheaper than in town (about 70us cents) Yan-Shih bought a pack. The hunt was on, and all the other ladies all surrounded us. Yelling "go away go away" had no effect, if they understood it at all. We cycled across the bridge and took our rest.

Within an hour and a half we had reached the hill, which is obvious due to the masses of people trying to get you to buy stuff or sell you tickets. We decided to pass on purchasing tickets and continue up the road -- indeed, just around the corner was a perfect view of the hill/rock with a huge hole in the middle.

We continued up the road seeing rice patties being worked by water buffalo. We reached the next city, which was pretty dirty, turned around, and returned to the city. On our way back we took a break under the bridge and marveled about how every possible thing had been transformed into a tourist activity. The little patch of river we sat on was the only undeveloped tourist spot.

By 16:00 we were back in YanShuo, and we wandered around a little. Yan-Shih took a shower, and we pondered what to do next. We decided to go read somewhere, but unlike the U.S., there aren't that many cafes in China. Especially YanShuo (or at least the one's that don't charge $4/drink). So, we sat in KFC. The ice cream was a nice treat. After three hours of reading we ate dinner at a "Taiwanese Style" resteraunt, yet Yan-Shih nor I had ever eaten that style of food before. Still, not too bad. The waitress was the first nice person we had met in China, even though the customers were extremily rude.

We purchased some water and food, and got on our bus for Guangzhou.

GuiLin to YanShuo

Published on July 3, 2007 in China

Our boat to YanShuo left at 9:00, so we needed to wake up somewhat early. We ate some noodles typical of Guilin, and met up with a French couple going up the river as well. By 9:30 were on our boat ride up the LiJiang.

The boat ride was overall quite beautiful. Although the river is somewhat polluted (as could be seen by trash floating down it), the hills are quite amazing. The Chinese Goverment must have thought so as well, the back of the 20yuan note is of the river and hills (and I have a picture of it now too). By 12:30 we had arrived in YanShuo, a highly tourist city nestled in the hills. There were only a few things we indended to do, so we decided to go slow for the rest of the day. We sat by the river chatting for quite some time, and eventually grabbed our books and headed to a cafe. We were in bed by 23:00, ready for a big next day.

A Zoo, Bears and Monkeys

Published on July 2, 2007 in China

The bus arrived at about 4:00am, a little too early for Yan-Shih and I. Neither of us slept that well -- the road (highway?) was in pretty bad shape, and the bus drive drove pretty insanely. In fact, whenever Yan-Shih woke up I kept saying "I love you, I love you"; I didn't know if each time I fell asleep would be my last. But we made it, somehow, and had to find our hostel.

We walked out of the train station and in the general direction of our hostel. We asked a cleaning lady and she just sort of replied "that way" -- a couple helped us more and we finally found it. By 5:30 we were knocking on the front door, and a guy drinking beer let us in. We checked into our dorm, and fell asleep.

By 12:00 we had woken up and decided to explore the city. We wandered out and over to the Seven Star Park, across the river. Notice next to the river the huge clocks of different cities -- not a single one of them functioning (which seems to be somewhat of a motif throughout China). We arrived the park and after buying our tickets, saw a girl drinking jin jiu nai cha. I asked her where she bought it, and we bought one ourselves. Too sugary, way too sugary. We entered the park and took a b-line away from the other tourists. We found a little path off to the right, and then a little path into the mountains. Nobody was on this path, and we finally reached a small gazeebo type of thing.

I'm dazing over the city and the surrounding hills, and Yan-Shih gasps. I look behind me and a group of monkeys were sitting on the bench. I tried to take a photo, but they had already wandered away. Moments later another monkey lazily jumps on the bench, sits down, scratches its head, and wanders off. An hour or so later we wandered off too.

Next we wandered to the "zoo", which was quite depressing. First, we stepped into the panda bears cage, and saw the most depressed bear we had ever seen. The sign next to the panda said "the zoo has saved this bear, who's habitat was disturbed to due shifting forest climate" or something like that... aka deforestation left the panda without a home.

Next we saw a brown bear, which now claims the award for the most depressing bear we have ever seen. It was in a cage the size of a small dorm room, just walking in circles. Near the bear was some Chinese guy with a monkey dressed as a clown -- whenever the monkey didn't "perform" accurately, the clown beat it with a stick. A group of Chinese tourists were viewing with glee.

We walked around the back of the zoo and saw "camel hill", three hills that look like a camel. Some tourists took some photos of me.

By 18:30 we had left the park and wandered back to the hostel. We sat in the lobby talking for some time, and finally arranged a boat ride up the LiJiang river for the next day. Some food was eaten, and we walked up to our room. In our room were two guys -- one French and the other American. We sat talking for about an hour about politics, life, China and traveling. Then, bed time.