Shaaxi 沙溪

As we're into week 13 - the last week of this trip, I'm set in Chengdu, and not moving too much other than to take care of some beaurocratic issues that need to be addressed until the last minute so that I can get out on the designated time - I will save you the sad details.

 

In the meantime, between an overdose of Hot-pots, Dry-pots (干锅) and Chuan-cai (The Sichuanese Cuisine minus the above), a sampling of museums/ exhibitions, and drinking spots - we might be able to throw in another couple of posts. Alas, at this point, we are tracing back, nibbling at memory traces with the help of the remaining photos, and the order of posts is going to be quite random.

This one - Shaaxi, is from back in Yunnan, somewhere at the end of August.

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In one of the hidden valleys between Dali and Lijiang lies Shaaxi - a small ancient village that lies on a trading route, through which many trader horses passed and traded in years long forgotten.

 

Most of the travellers skip this place, and really, it's a lot of effort to get here (no direct transportation from either Dali or Lijiang) for a village that can be explored throughout within a couple of hours.

Still, some of the few travellers you do find here (and you find them all quickly - we were 7 foreigners for my first night in, sitting together over beers at the village's ancient square, including 2 foreigners that actually live there doing some botanical research) get caught here for quite some time, and quite a few are repeating visitors. So it's not a bad place apparently.

 

It's quite charming and quiet (minus the dancing in the village square that makes a lot of noise every night - something that apparently started to happen recently), and offers some nice little hiling opportunities around.

 

The real fun for me, though, was on a day trip I took for the near-by mountain range. And more than the mountain itself or its promised grottoes (that at mostpart stayed hidden from me), the real interesting bit was quite random and lucky, as I ran into a big group/ family that came up with me to the little rundown temple at the top of one of the hills, and with which I spent half the day as they were cheering the place up, and preparing loads of food - I asked later, and there was a very local festival coming up in a few days, but nothing really on that day - it might have been a private occasion or some early prep for the upcoming festival - but I never really found out.

 

And with this, I'll let the pictures tell you the rest.

 

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Tiger Leaping Gorge

It's morning. You open your eyes.

About 500m from your room's wood-framed window stands a 2,000m tall wall of rock. Mostly grey, with breaks of whitish-yellow, and some patches of greenery, mostly on the lower slopes. 

The window is at about 2,000m altitude (or so I figure), while the river down below is at 1,800m and the peaks at its other side are gaining on the 4,000 mark.

I'm the only guest in this guest house today, so it's a perfectly quiet morning, the only sounds - a dog barking 500m or so away from one of the Naxi-village houses down in the valley below.

In pockets of rock, some white clouds have settled in and are resting lazily. One of them warms up to the morning and slowly lifts away. A few minutes later, another small white cloud is slowly drifting in front of the mountain with the soft breeze.

I sit up on the bed in front of the window. I now notice some bird chirping added to the dog's distant barking. Noticing some curves of white limestone exposed on the mountains where the water are usually gushing through after a downpour.

I can now see the guest house's (= G.H.) little yard. Some small trees. Some bamboo. Stone tables. Beyond, the valley slopes down towards the river, with fields of corn and sunflowers, in between - some small wooden houses. From one of them the dog continues.

On the side of the yard, I notice the roof of the "restaurant"" area of the G.H., the roof-tiles are held in place by stones resting on them. A memory of yesterday's soup comes back. I was in real need of a proper soup, but none was to be found on the menu. I mentioned the lack of soup in a cracked disappointed voice to the lady here, and she told me that it's not on the menu, but of course the can make soup.

I have no idea if that soup falls under the "Naxi food" category, but that was an amazing "village/ farmhouse" vegetable soup, heavy with tasty chunks of vegetables, just a touch of chilly for added flavor, and amazingly no oil floating on top.

The G.H is probably the last down the road (at the moment), called "Woody".

Now, before going back for some details of the road leading to this point, let me go right ahead and give my recommendation for a visit to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. By now I gave these recommendations to a number of people I met later on, and twisted their plans a bit.

First thing. If you have no other interest to come to this area - you are not planning to do the back-door route, no interest in Shangrila, Lijiang, Dali, you just heard that this is THE hiking trail in south-west China ... cough-cough "BullShit" cough-cough.

Give it up, and don't waste too much time to get all the way here just for this.

If you are here, and passing through - it's a nice place, go for it.

So here's the main recommendation, fitting most of you:

Come in, find a minivan going through the lower path all the way to the "walnut garden" area (currently 180 Yuan for a car), and settle in one of the G.H's. Woody's is a good option, but you might want to tell the driver in advance - if he drops you off at Tina's, it's another 2 km down the road from there.

If by the time you've settled it's already 15:00 or later, just take out a book, sit in front of the mountain, and relax. Have a dinner and a few beers.

The next day (or alternatively, if you got here early enough - after a light lunch), go down to the "Middle tiger leaping stone".

Start from stairs going down in front of Sean's G.H. It's 2 km down the road from Tina's, or 10 mins walk up from Woody's. You will have to figure out some parts of the route, as signs exist (pointing towards were you just came from) but are sporadic.

In no time the "trail" goes right into some sunflowers/ corn fields - you will go right through them, in what seem to be the farmers' working trails rather than your designated path, and then through some villagers' back yards. After about an hour along the path, you go through a little wooden cabin - this means you've reached the "site" proper, and they'd hassle you for some passage money. It is very unclear of who can charge money for what there - it seems like these kind of gatekeepers appear and various spots with a sign that says you're to pay them money - supposedly this is for the maintenance of the path in the rock coming after that point - but supposedly you've paid an entrance fee for the whole area.

The path beyond that point was built into the rock, for the next 100m or so, and leads towards a view of the stone, and further towards a normal trail again.

You can actually see two stones - they both look like stones, and it's quite difficult to tell which one it is you're supposed to be excited about. Either way, while the stone makes for the story of the place, you're not here to see the stone.

You'll soon get to a point in which you can pay to climb up ladders built into the stone wall and stone steps. The person there will convince you that's the best way to go up, and that you can't really get further down to the rock. You can sit down for a break on some wooden benches there, and move on to the other side of the clearing. I personally missed that part, but you can go down very close to the river, and enjoy the powerful water running nearby.

You then have 3 options. Easiest is probably to just track back. If you don't mind a steep intensive climb, and for some reason would like to speed things up, go back to the ropes-and-ladders option, pay 10 yuan and climb. 

Alternatively, you can continue up the valley on the other side - this should go all the way up to Zhang's G.H, from which you will have to go back down the end of the "high trail" about 2 km to Tina's and on to your G.H.

The ropes-and-ladders option will take you 60-90 minutes depending on the amount of break-time. The way to Zhang's with getting back to Tina - will probably be about 2 hours.

If this is your arrival day, now's the time for a shower and a dinner, if it's your second day, you can take another relaxing day, or just get a shared van at Tina's with people coming off the higher trail, and head back to Qiaotou and hop on a bus to Shangrila/ Lijiang.

Option 2: If you're really really into hiking, then go for the higher trail. It's a nice trail all and all, and will give you a nice workout. If you're really into hiking, and fit to accommodate that - go for the full challenge, start bright and early, and finish in one day the whole thing including the second part that goes up to the "bamboo forest" and the waterfall, with a view to another gorge - this part starts to go back up just after you came all the way down and almost reached Tina's. Finish it all for a well-deserved dinner with drinks at one of the G.H.'s at the walnut garden area.

The next morning go down one of the paths (above) to the Middle stone before getting a shared van back or heading on east to some of the other options.

Option 3: is kind of the middle road - you're not an athlete-hiker, but feel in descent enough shape, and would like to sweat a bit for the views (although you know you don't really have to). See the story below for details of this option.

The option you do not want to take (!): Go for the higher trail although you do not really feel like doing much climbing, and then opt for riding  horse all the way up. Riding a horse up a steep rocky trail when you're tiered, scared, and not in shape is probably not that much fun anyway, and really - if you don't want to go through with the climb - there's no reason to do this - just go for option 1.

So what's the story?

Why did this gorge get attention, when really, you can probably pick any random mountain along the road to Shangrila or Litang, and get the same quality of scenery.

As a tourist - the reason is transportation, markerd trails, and available G.H.'s everywhere. But why here?

Legend has it that a Tiger one day ran across the mountain ridge, and decided for some reason to Leap across the Gorge to the other side. Nothing special, only that this Tiger was apparently not in proper shape, and did not really make it through to the other side.

In normal days, this would have been the end of that Tiger - plunging into the gushing river below and drowning.

But not this Tiger - he was lucky enough - as it happens, where he fell down (the ridge comes quite low here, so it might only be about 500m to 1 km worth of a free fall), he actually fell down on a solid rock rather than into the water - and that apparently saved him.

Right, so there you have it. I'm waiting for the cable cars that will take people soon up to the ridge, so that they can jump down to the stone and be saved as well.

The higher trail:

Or at least the first part of it ... Hopefully I'll be able to upload a few pictures soon enough.

I guess I have a special thing about attracting errr... stories. Maybe, again, it's the fact that when I climb on a steep hiking trail on a humid day I tend to take off my shirt and show off with my big sweating belly. Yes, I know, I'm not drawing a nice picture here - but that's the kind of picture that attracts them - it smells of money for those who make a leaving from helping you up the trail with a horse, or offering to carry you on a scary-looking stretcher or on their backs.

I am not against this kind of entrepreneurship, or generally against having such services on offer.

 

Indeed I politely smiled and said no-thank-you to the first 2 or 3 people along the path that were offering me a horse-ride. They were very nice to offer, and I politely declined and continued.

The last one I ran into, however, gave me the once over, and then tried to explain to me there just is no way I will be able to make it through on my own (no better way to get to a man's heart and make a sale). He even produced a small map (that encouranged me that I'm still on the right track), and showed me the dreaded/ notorious 28-bend climb, for which I will definitely be in a need for his services.

I tried to do the thank-you-but-no thing, and continued, but I quickly realized that the guy decided to follow me just the same. It was not difficult to find out - the horse had a little bell attached, so I was now accompanied by that annoying sound. I managed to make the guy realize I was not happy (without too many words at this point - the main exchange was "I'm not interested" answered by "no problem. Later."), so he quieted the bell - at that point I only heard the horses breathing at my ass as I was walking.

 

I tried to tell myself to just ignore the dude, and enjoy my time - or alternatively to enjoy the comfort of a free guide/ escort ... but I could only fool myself for that long - this was really killing the fun of walking along this magnificent path enjoying the quiet and nature (plus there was this implied insult with the guy believing that I will pay him at some point - surely he did not understand Israeli stubborness).

At some point, I had to start using the "opportunity" for some language exchange. I decided to keep it on nice words for now - which did not mean I was nice. I started shouting at the guy that I do not want to see or hear him. When I asked him if he understood, he started to say "Yes, but ..." "There's no but!" (没有但是). I tried to explain to him, that even if I will die trying to climb I will not pay him - I'll die in pain or use someone else...

But nothing helped. This was one of my breaks, and the guy moved up ahead of me on the trail, and for a few minutes I thought that maybe he got it. But apparently he took "not hear or see" in a different interpretation, and just moved 50m ahead to wait for me to pass him there, then waited, followed me 50m behind, and moved ahead when I rested again.

 

At some point, we got to the first G.H. on the trail ("Naxi G.H."). I decided I need to go beyind my current Chinese language abilities, and asked them there, as I was sipping my tea and Redbull if there's someone who speaks English. And there she was - very kind and helpful. I pointed at the guy waiting for me outside with his horse, and told the nice lady: "you see this nice gentleman sitting there? Can you please tell him that if I see him anywhere near me on the path I will throw stones at him?".

She made some clarifying questions, and then translated what I said into "he's not interested". right.

 

So there we were past the Naxi G.H., and the guy continuing on my tail.

The story ended when we reached the 28-bend climb. He was not about to continue up there once he saw me go ahead and not giving up beyond that point, so he was to make his last stand there. Only that I did not realize that we were at that crucial point on the trail.

All I knew is that on that very required break I was taking, the guy decided again to park his horse next to me, and sit right in front of my face. Even that little 50m-off thing was not happening.

So at that point, I started to resort to another part of my Chinese vocabulary. My Chinese teacher (bless her soul) gave me a few key phrases to be used for exactly these kind of occasions (originally, when I asked her - I had in mind people in bars that take friendliness a step or two too far).

 

"Gun!" I told the guy.

Now this might not sound like much, but from past experience, this word has a strong effect - unfortunately it never seem to be the desired one ... the meaning is all-encompassing, something between "get lost", "get out of my face" and "fuck off".

It seemed that they guy understood what I'm saying finally, but he was not taking it lying down" "you Gun!!" - and he was pointing the way back down the path. He did not stop there either, but continued with saying that that was HIS mountain. He was saying that he built that path himself, and if I was to climb and use this path I had to pay him. As he was saying that, he was repititively making signs of sticking a pole into the ground - I have no idea what's the significance of that.

 

When he was finished, I more or less realized that we will not get to agree on that fine day. I gave myself a few more minutes of rest, took some pictures of him, telling him it's for the police (maybe not the smartest thing ever, admittedly), and then stood up, and put on my backpack ready to move on. I had to pass right in front of him and was wondering how that will work out. As I was approaching, he asked "you're not going to pay me?!" I smiled mildly and moved on. He did not follow.

 

As if by magic, although throughout the day so far we ran into no other traveller on the trail, as soon as the guy left me, I started to pass and be passed by mmany other travellers.

The climb was - as expected - tiering, but with a few resting stops, I miraculously did make it all the way up the 28 bends, ending them at the right timing to join an Israeli couple for another couple of hours to the next G.H. (can't remember the name right now, butit was the first one out of ~3 around the "mid-way" area. I thought I'd call it a day at that point.

 

Though the couple decided to move on a bit, and I was left at that G.H. more or less alone - before long I found myself playing after-dinner cards with 7 other Israelis - an older couple, a mother-daughter duo, and a between-semesters Trio.

 

The next day, as I ended up not going for the second climbing part was rather straightforward, mainly going slowly downhill. Leaving quite early, while the others were mostly still sleeping, I found a new companion for the road - but this time it was a welcome ompanion - a little dog that decided to adopt me for a couple of hours - he was marking for me the vintage photo-op points as well.

 

The trail is supposedly well marked by red signs/ arrows - or so I was told at the outset. It can still get somewhat confusing at times. The signs have a tendency to be there at the most irrelevant points, and not really there when you'd appreciate a clear arrow. They seem to have been done by the various guest houses around, so that at this point they are in various colors, and not always 100% consistent. Generally, it seems that there is no higher power involved that regulates who should write what and where, and the authorities - as such - allow the market economics to take care of the trail's maintenance, while they focus on contunuously trying to build that road through the lower trail, and the mega-hotels that will come with its completion.

 

At some point, the Israeli young couple overpassed me, and I enjoyed their company for the reminder of the road to Tina's. Later in the afternoon, after having settled in Woody's, I went down to the Stone - but we've talked about that already.

 

You can try this link as well, and get the same story in pictures. Since the views are not changing that oftern, you'd find that it's spiced up with some "wildlife" additions. The quality is obviously signifianly lowered - due to the space-saving uploading the pictures. I might consider upoading the pictures in full scale for later batches, but that will probably mean I will kill my allocated space within 20 pictures.

 

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[Editorial] An apology

It seems that I have finally managed to stir some commotion. I was quite surprised it took so long to get to this point.

 

I'll start with some context and reservations and end with the apology proper.

Writing here about my experiences and impressions as I travel in China (or other countries), is expected to bring with it good as well as bad experiences, and with writing on the fly what is happening, some of the views are expected to (and should) stir various opinions, which can be shared in the comments section. I'm expecting as well that I will be contradicting myself over time, as I experience new things and change my perspective. Getting a few people upset, is alas a part of the risk I'm taking with this kind of writing.

 

In addition, since I have no direct access to Blogger, I am posting in a very unedited version, writing on the fly when I have a chance, and so - writing unedited - can make some occasional stupid remarks that I would probably have not left otherwise. This "posting on the fly" is obviously evident in some of the mispelling and "mis-grammer" that you can find throughout the posts. As I write this, I realize that making grammatical or spelling mistakes can also cause some misunderstanding of the intended meaning.

 

Thus, I do expect anyone reading this Blog, to be aware of the above, and to be able to be a bit forgiving and patient when I occasionally sidestep, or make some stupid comments.

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To the point at hand, then, Yunjun's remark seems to suggest that I somehow support this awful sentence: "no dogs and Chinese allowed". If anybody out there somehow understood this paragraph in a similar way, then I want to clarify 100% that this was not the intention or the meaning. I am far from calling any people dogs, or imply anything as such. I love Chinese people, have many Chinese friends, and would definitely have not been spending so much time travelling in this country if I had any such thoughts.

The realization that somebody could have interpreted my remark so wrongly is very upsetting for me - and I sincerely apologize to anyone who might have understood it this way. Hopefully nobody else did.

 

[ Some of the side remarks from Yunjun, I think are best left aside, as truthfully I fail to fully understand the intention - Yunjun, we can discuss those in person when I'm around Dublin again ]

 

The intention was quite simple, relating to customer rights to be served equally - something I learned to expect and believe in over time. The usage of this sentence, was intended to spice the description up, but obviously the associated implication intended is very loose and easy to miss. [ I would skip here the temptation to try and clarify further my original intention - this original comment is best left alone, and even better - deleted when I finally have proper access - it was the least important part of that post anyway. ]

 

Additionally, I have obviously chose poorly and have been stupid to have underestimated the kind of emotions this might bring up with people - which might (as it obviously has) take the conversation to a completely different direction than intended. So apologies for overstepping with using this very bad association.

 

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Through Guizhou to Chongqing - Part II

The 8+ hours' bumpy (big understatement) from Congjiang to Kaili was not the end of the Guizhou drive-through, but Kaili is the base for any proper village-hopping in the area, and I already chose the one village in its vicinity out of the available list on the guide book that sounded like it would be most value-adding.

 

Ling-zi offered to go together to the biggest attraction-village, Xijiang, once she'd finish working at 6PM. The place, thought the most touristy of the bunch, sounded like it's touristy for some good reasons, but those would be mainly day-time reasons (at night the all surrounding scenery will not really be available), plus I had some indications that there are no buses going back to Kaili in the evening. Ling-zi claimed (and I believed) that she knows how to get cars going back when we'll need them, but the whole thing somehow felt like a bit too much.

 

Either way, morning time I was clearly heading for my chosen destination - the Gejia-minority village of Matang. Easy enough to decide, small and unknown enough to be an adventure of its own to just figure out how to get there.

See, Kaili - as small a city as it might be - has about 5 bus stations. Add to that the fact that there is actually no bus going there as a destination, and that most people around may have heard about the place, but never really gave it a thought such as visiting, and there you go ...

 

I asked the lady in my hotel about it, as I was checking out, and she gladly told me that I can get a bus from down the street, adding something with the number 4, as in the counter for 4, as in there are 4 of something ... "4 buses a day?" I was guessing gladly, but she just repeated what she said, obviously we were not really understanding each other, but I had to stick to my guess.

 

At some point later, I realized there was no bus station proper down that street, but rather that she meant take the #4 bus - only she did not use the bus-line counter (I'm pretty sure), and she didn't really tell me where to be heading with that bus.

After also failing to find the station for the #4 bus, I went to one of the bike-riders on the street corner, and asked him if he knows where to get a bus to Matang from. With all my bad intonation, I have no idea how I can ask about "Matang" and they can come back with "Xijiang?!" - but this repeated several times that day. I showed the guy my pre-written little note of the place's name, and then he happily said "Ah, Matang" (right) "you should get a bus from the ~ bus station". He was pointing in the general direction which was the right one (easy enough, we were all the way on the east side, and he was pointing down the main road going west).

So there I was, sitting at the back seat of a Chinese motorcycle, flying down Beijing Dong Lu with the Engine off and in Neutral (to save on some Gas downhill), and without a helmet - cursing myself for being stupid enough to do that.

 

So I was happy enough when the guy said we arrived. But after some back and forth at the station I finally realized that this was of course not the right station, and the most that the ticket-clerk was helping me with is something along the lines of "take bus #4".

But again, no heading, and no help with where to get it.

Eventually I did find the #4, and went on it. The bus driver, as well as his ticketselling assitant, though, had no idea what everybody else was talking about. They had no idea where a bus to Matang would be going from, and where I'd expect them to be dropping me off.

Eventually, some of the people on the bus had an idea, and helped with some suggestions, and once she got it, the assistant even wrote for me the actual destination I should be aiming at - the bus that can drop me along the way in Matang. I started walking in the direction they indicated, which would have drawn a big blank if not for the nice guy who decided to follow me from the bus. We walked to a crossroad where he indicated I should be able to flag a bus, and waited with me, but once we failed flagging a bus, we headed up the street towards supposedly the actual bus station.

 

And there I was on the bus, and was indeed dropped off at the entrance to the village road. It's about 20 minutes down that road to get to the actual village proper (including a parking plaza for tourist buses, but not yet a restaurant), but the road itself is part of the fun, as it goes through the village's fields, filled with farmers beating the grains out of the rice growings.

 

The village is very nice, if very small, and once you're done exploring it, you can follow the path that leads up the hill and towards the village of Shilong - I did not follow that path, unfortunately, as I had no idea what that might be, and had not yet fully explored the village - but that now seems like a great recommendation - if you're already in Matang, go for this path, and get another rare minority village into it - it's a Xi-minority village, and from it, you can go on to the road that leads back to Kaili on the village's other side - no need to track back. You can then walk for 20 more minutes down the road towards Kaili to get some great views of mountain-side rice terraces before flagging any bus back to Kaili.

 

I stayed in the village, though, and tried to find a place to eat. Seeing me going back and forth near the village's entrance (which seemed the most tourist-oriented spot), a woman (who's picture I just took 5 minutes earlier spreading rice grains on straw matresses to dry, dressed in the local traditional clothing) asked me what I'm looking for. I asked her if she knows where I can get something to eat, and she happily replied "here, what do you want to eat?"

 

I said "vegetables", as I wasn't sure she'd be prepared with a sophisticated menu, and then I was seated in front of the rice-drying mats to wait, while she headed in to prepare. At my back was her house, at the side of which was the kitchen she entered to prepare the food.

It took close to one hour - apparently my timing was spotless. She started chopping some pumpkin, and before long her little daughter got back home, and was sent to buy some fresh green leaves. She then went and brought in some wood to light the kitchen's fire, went behind the house and picked up some spices and specifically fresh chillies from her garden.

 

The rest of the family arrived just as the smells were beginning to show, and just after she showed me a big chop of pork and asked me if I'd like some of that (with my vegetables).

When everything was ready, I was seated inside the "dining room" with the rest of the family. I said yes when I thought I was being offered some tea, but soon enough I found in front of me a bowl filled with a pinkish liquid which turned out to be their own brewed liquer. As I was drinking that, the grandpa figure was trying to convince me to let him pour me some of his own transparent liquid - he had his own stash. The father, though, insisted that I should stick to what I started with.

It was a great meal.

 

After saying my goodbyes, and heading back to the main road, I decided to give myself an hour of walking towards Kaili, in the hope that it will be enough for getting to a bend in the road I earmarked during the busride earlier for some great views of rice-terraces (in compensation for having skipped Longsheng). It took 45 minutes to get there, going by a number of small villages, including the mentioned Shilong.

 

Passing that views-section, I flagged a bus and headed back to town. Got my bag at the hotel, and headed to the bus station for a bus to Guiyang, from which (after a few hours) I got the night-train all the way to Chongqing.

 

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Arriving at Chongqing (through Guizhou)

There's no way around saying this - using the internet in china is a bitch.

Yesterday evening, I had a few hours to kill between arriving in Guiyang (the capital of Guizhou perfecture) and getting my train out of it towards Chongqing.

 

After eating way too much of some local - supposedly Guizhou food, but one never can tell - and finding out that Cauliflower can taste retty good, I decided to kill some of the extra time on the internet, and maybe throw in another quick update, or even better - get some of my pictures offloaded from my memory card to my portabe HD (since I could not find a computer to do this since Shenzhen, and running out of memore quickly).

 

I quickly found myself in a need for the police-trick again, but this time around - while finding a policeman, and get him to come help me was easy enough - the girl at the internet place just gave me a knowing winner smile, while she explained back to the policeman that they're not interested to bother with registering me for the one hour I'd be using the internet.

Puzzled, he just made some walkie-talkie calls, and ended up looking and me and apologizing that no - I cannot use the internet there.

 

Well, I guess in a country that allowed restaurants to put on signs such as "no dogs or chinese allowed" not to long a while back, there's only so much you can expect in terms of consumer rights.

 

I decided I want some down time, plus after the added hiking opportunities around Yangshuo, the descriptions of some of the other possibilities in Guangxi just didn't sound that much value-adding at that point (although I'm sure they're mighty nice places).

I've seen quite a number of Karst peaks in various forms by now, so seeing them around another village or a waterfall, seemed less of a must-see.

 

So I opted into running towards Chongqing, cutting through Guizhou - and as it happens, the most direct route was actually the "backdoor" route into guangxi (another route I seem to be doing upside down). So there I was heading back to Dong-minority country in Sanjiang - west Guangxi, and from there on into Guizhou.

 

The road were as always beautiful to the extreme (and so possibly saved me some of the need to actually visit some of the places enroute, such as the Dragon backbone rice terraces, or the villages just next to Sanjiang, minus the opportunity to take proper pictures there).

It was a day of bus-hopping. Starting in Yangshuo, after a dumpling breakfast I first took a bus back to Guilin, which turned out reaching the train station, rather then the bus station. Hopping on to the bus station, I got a 4-hour bus ride to Sanjiang - passing by longsheng (and the famous rice terraces area), and from there, moving from the east to the west bus station, was just on time to get the sunset-shift bus heading into CongJiang in Guizhou.

 

The next day I spent with Emma and Nick, a young Australian couplet I met on the bus to Congjiang.

We headed in the morning up the local hill to an ancient Miao village called Basha, where the locals are still holding on to some ancient customs and cloths - being in the holiday season, it still felt a bit touristy - although there is basically no proper transportation to this place. Still, it was lovely, and after we toured the place and got back to Congjiang, we still had time for a lazy lunch before taking the daily bus heading to Kaili - the local big-city.

 

On the bus, I made friends with Lingzi - a Dong girl from one of the villages in east Guizhou that now lives and works in Kaili - which is surprisingly looking like a proper city. The road getting there, however, felt nothing like a city - at most part, it falls under what I normally categorize as ass-buster road for bike riding. This one was not a pleasant ride.

We spent the evening with Lingzi, and met some of her friends - she even made a call, and they ended up coming with a pickup truck and shoving us around to find a cheap-enough hotel.

 

On the next day, I'll have to write separately, as it's time to move out ...

 

 

 

 

Huaihua to Yangshuo

I ended up reaching Yangshuo much much faster than I thought. For a big part, this is to win 2 days of relative quiet before the big crowds arrive. So I committed here for 4 nights, 2 of which are more than doubling in price for the same room,

 

But a big part of this is the connection from Hunan. Huaihua was the only way out (other than heading back north from the village of Fenghuang - being the main transport hub locally. I quickly found out, however, that there were no buses whatsoever going or stopping at Sanjiang (the entry port for Guangxi's Dong villages) or to Tongdao (the equivalent option on the Hunan side).

 

So I got me a ticket for the Guiling-headed bus that would stop in Longsheng along the way. The lady selling the tickets said it will be about 5~6 hours to Longsheng, and the only bus was leaving at 17:30. A quick calculation could show that on an optimistic view, it will be somewhat tough to be doing any price negotiations on hotel rates arriving when I would, but there I was writing my last update in Huaihua and waiting for the bus.

 

As I was looking at the map on the bus, and knowing that the way to Guiling was to take 10 hours, I quickly figured that 5~6 hours might not be the best of estimates. After a couple of hours on the road I asked the driver, and he estimated arriving at Longsheng around 1AM. Ouch - in towns like that you can expect the doors of all hotels to be locked.

I told the driver I would be staying on the bus all the way to Guilin, since I don't expect to find any place to stay at that hour. For some reason he did not bother to ask for extra money.

 

With some luck, the bus had a flat tire and we had a stop for a couple of hours for the drivers to figure out what to do and then change the tire. I'm not being sarcastic at all about the "lucky" part either. That meant that I could stay lying in the sleeper bus the few extra hours, and we ended up arriving in Guiling just past 6AM rather than the middle of the night.

 

I still had to wait until 7AM before anybody woke up to talk to me in the designated hostel, and until 12AM before I could get a room. So left my bags and went for the Guilin round - not that much to see in these mini-cities anyway.

I made the right bet, heading straight for the hill-set at the north of town, called "Folded Brocade Hill" (Diecai Shan) - rather a set of three hills packed into one "park" - great views of the city's surrounding, and a great morning wakeup set of hill-climbs.

When I say views - the city itself is quite boring in terms of city views per-se, but the city is built in between and around a set of Karst peaks, like those in Zhangjiajie and Dehang - they give a nice view around, and it's interesting to see neighbourhood built in between clusters of those peaks.

 

So the next morning, after a long sleep, I took the bus heading for Yangshuo. It's another very small town - I basically got to see the main streets here in the 15 min walk from the bus station to the hotel at the other side of the center. But it's the surrounding that should be really really nice, and I'll be heading out there starting tomorrow.

 

Today, I will be finally heading to the much awaited (on my side) show by Zhang Yimou called "Impressions" - a big nightly show running for quite a while, supposedly using some 600 paticipants, and a light show over some neighbouring hills. To be picked up for the show in 15 minutes.

 

All this talking of hills brings us nicely to address Chris' comments on the food here.  The connection is quite straightforward and was forming in my mind for a while.

 

I find that climbing hills/ steps is very much like eating spicy food. The more you do it, the less you can full the "itch" of it. Spicy food doesn't taste so spicy, and your lungs and leg muscles complain much less after climbing Zhangjiajie's 4,000 steps to the "yellowstone village". But with that numbness of the associated pain, does not come a real relief for the body. Even after getting completely used to climbing or eating spice, your bidy still knows what's happening - the way to realize that is the sweat usually - it's a way to know you've been eating super-spicy food or have been climbing for a while, even though your mouth or legs do not really complain ...

 

And with this connection, When I saw Chris' comment this morning, I tended to agree - the food in Guiling that I managed to sample twice was quite hopeless. Mainly, in the center, you see a lot of touristy traps which I tend to religiously avoid. Those probably were serving the supposedly local "Beer duck" dish.  But my opting into what seemed like nice local options was not with much success this time. I ate in a very down-to-earth-local joint for lunch/ breakfast - it was quite busy with locals, north of the north hills, near the "east gate" - dishers from 1~2 yuan to big ones for 5 yuan ... I can still feel the bad taste from that imitation-tofu dish I tried there.

At night I went for something claiming to be Chongqing food, to taste one of the worst ever imitation-lamb dishes.

 

However, walking around Yangshuo (maybe somebody heard Chris complain before), I saw quite a few Dumpling stores (dedicated ones, no less, with names like Dumpling King). So it's here waiting for you if you're into it.

Also managed to find a cool restaurant for lunch with English menu and some cool Sichuanese dishes (marked nicely by 3 chilly symbols, and with nice extra spice as asked).

 

Quick update - Huaihua, Hunan

I was "deprived" of proper internet access for a number of days now, and am realizing that I haven't put on any update whatsoever for a while - not to mention that I probably didn't really write anything proper since leaving Kunming.

 

I'm kind of stuck in a city called Huaihua for a few hours - a train-hub city, but nothing more - although I randomly explored a bit, and found a huge market, and a street corner with some interesting old-China people passing time.

 

I'm trying to find my way to the Dong villages in south Hunan/ north Guangxi, but transport from my last stop to that area seems to be non-existent, so I'll have to burn a few good hours here, then skip to a place callen Long-sheng (Entry to the "Dragon's backbone rice terraces"), and later get back to the Dong villages before moving on to Guiling and Yangshuo.

 

I'm somewhat fearful of that part coming (Guiling/ Yangshuo) - as however I'm trying to plan things - it seems I'll land in these overly-touristy duo smack at the worst time possible - the Chinese golden week - a week in which 1 Bn people take their longest vacation during the year ... it's going to be somewhat of a nightmare.

 

Going through Hunan was surprising in a few ways, wonder if I should write about this separately, but might as well write something while I'm into it.

 

A lot of people asked me when I was planning the trip why I would be wasting valuable trip time on Hunan. My guide book as well, while giving a Hunan chapter, managed to make Hunan sounds uninteresting, and avoided many of the exrtreme superlative used for Yunnan.

My main reason though - was the food. Hunan is supposedly giving a good serious competition on fiery-spicy food to better-known places such as Sichuan and Chongqing. So I could not give this one a miss.

The legend was enhanced during my short stay in Shenzhen - we were entertained by Phoneix, a Canadian that runs a chain of restaurants in Shenzhen, feeding 10,000 mouths a day together with his Chinese wife's family. Apparently his first success in the world of consumer-food was getting rich by collecting dropped fish-heads from the garbage-cans of Canadian restaurants, and then shipping them to be sold in China.

When I mentioned heading to Hunan for some spicy food, he had a story for us - he apparently went to visit Changsha (the Hunan capital), stayed in a nice hotel, and wanted a nice quiet non-spicy breakfast. He asked the staff to prepare a simple omelet - he specifically said - just fry two eggs without any spice. "No problem", they said and then brought him his eggs. When he got the eggs, he asked the waiter what is that red color floating on his eggs. "That's just for a bit of flavor, not spicy" ...

 

Spiciness is quite disappointing.

As I arrived in Changsha on a plane striaght from ShenZhen, I was ready for the big challenge, but ended up staffing myself with an overdose of food, as I kept trying different restaurants, with repeting disappointment.

 

Later on, I gave up on the food-marathon, and settled on just eating, but kept on trying. Things can at times get spicy - as I now tend to be quite extreme when I ask for food. It now goes something in between: "Can you make that EXTREMELY spicy?  I mean REALLY spicy, and not 'foreigner' spicy ..." (I gave up on using the word "Very", as it didn't get the desired effect), and between (earlier today): "what's your spiciest dish here? Please make it with extra chillies".

But even then, it's spicy, but no killer-spicy. Nothing like that Habanero-sauce we got in the Mexican joint in Shekou-Shenzhen ...

 

Anyway, despite of the spice-issue, I'm super happy I came through Hunan. This place is super not given the proper credit.

Changsha is admittedly easy to give up (although it has quite a nice museum), but some of the places on the west side are killers: Zhangjiajie, Dehang, Fenghuang - really nice places all of them.

 

Zhangjiajie is apparently the place in which they filmed Avatar - while it's overpriced - it's definitely amazing. (and although you can see there was a lot of effort put into the place, they still managed to do a really louzy job with signs and maps - maybe you're meant to come on a guided tour).

 

The real shit though is Dehang. Most people will completely skip this one, but that's THE place to go and see. If Avatar was filmed in Zhangjiajie, that it was conceived in Dehang - it's a much smaller scale, but all the better for it - you feel like you're inside the thing. Every turn and step you make, you stop and say "wow". Maybe before "Avatar", you'd imagine the creatures leaving in the forest, and the birds on the top of them cliffs a bit differently, but you'd still just know that they're there.

There are a couple of hiking routes from the village, and into the gorges between those cliffs and forrested hills, running along villagers, rice fields, cows and water buffalos. At the end of the second little hike I made (these are much more worthwhile then Tiger Leping Gorge to my opinion, and with much much less effort - completely paved routes, almost zero climb, but wonderful wonderful surrounding), or just when I thought I have reached the end - getting to the waterfall, the path seemed to continue, but changed to a more significant climb - stone stairs. I thought they'd go a few meters to get a view of the waterfall from another angle, but they just continued on and on. I looked up - but you couldn't tell at no point where they were going, you could only see up to the next flight of stairs. After about 10 minutes, I seriously thought I should give up - looking back down, I was dreading the way back on the slippery stairs (indeed, I slipped twice when eventually making my way down), and I was in no mood for massive stair-climbing (did the 4,000-steps climb in Zhangjiajie a couple of days earlier). But then, I figured there's nothing to really do once I'm back in the village (all the Chinese tourists come to the town for the "folk-dance-show" in the early afternoon, go around shopping, and then head away - the previous night the only other foreginers in the village seemed to be a gay couple from Valencia), so I thought I'd give it a bit more.

After about half an hour of a climb, I reached it - and it was worth it for sure - you get to stand on a peak of one of them columns (or at least you feel like it - it's actually connected to a ridge on one side, or they'd be no way really to climb up to it).

Amazing.

 

Litang to Chengdu

Finally arrived at the big city.

I more or less decided to run through the route - known as the "backdoor" route to Tibet, and make it here. The road is really really nice, as expected, but highlights in specific places along the way seem to not be high highlights, and I decided to cut a few of the original plans and be able to spend some more quality time in places that will appeal more later on. 

The drop into Chengdu requires some serious acclimatization. Coming from Litang, cool and dry, being the highest city in the world at just over 4,000m altitude, arriving in Chengdu, notoriously hot and humid, can be quite a shock, even though I'm told Chengdu at the moment is quite cool and comfy (with daily highs as low as 30 degrees C).

Now that I'm in Chengdu, see if I can find some time to upload some pictures, and maybe right a bit more soon.

Found a nice new hostel here (they kept asking how I found out about them, as they are quite new, and do not yet appear in any of the travel books etc). Spolling myself rotten, in a room with an A/C, warm and nice shower, King-sized bed, and the place is in the noisy middle of the city and yet perfectly quiet throughout the morning and nights - only sound is when people are playing Ping-pong in the afternoons. [ Called Nova Traveller's Lodge ]

From here I will do my skip - Fly over to Shenzhen and HK, and will get back on a train to Changsha, Hunan (for some of the spiciest food around).

Through Shangrila

Shana Tova!

 

Out of the trek ...

Well, actually a couple of days ago.

 

Will write about it soon, and then maybe write abit more back about previous stories. But that won't happen until at least Chengdu.

 

Anyway, got out in one piece, and moved on to the last of the line of touristy old-towns (Dali-Lijiang-Shangrila). Intended to stay here one day for recovery and then head on into the "back door" route towards Chengdu, going through some Tibetian towns between high mountains, including some very long and bumpy but supposedly amazingly beautiful bus rides. Seems this has been postponed for tomorrow, so here I am writing.

 

And writing this one was not easy ... Shangrila has a number of cafe places with internet access. Meant for foreigners such as myself. But they normally have one computer, and the few places I found, had that one computer occupied. So I went out on an Internet-bar seeking adventure. Followed some vague directions, got out of the old town, asked some more people, and eventually got to the desired place.

A couple of Israelies I met on the way told me exactly were to find it, and said they used the place easily, and were not asked for even their passport (surprising, but cool, since I am not really carrying my passport with me).

 

Alas, when I got to the place, I was encountered with somewhat of a blank wall: " you cannot use the computers here without a CHINESE ID card " ... ?!

This should obviously not be the case ... ID I know about, but categorically not letting foreigners use internet, that will be a new one ... Adding the fact that a while back on the same day, I know that the same exact place let other foreigners use the computers/ internet without even a glance at their ID's, made me think these guys are just being lazy in some way. I tried one more place I could find across the street, but same answer (and that's after I had to really insist to get an answer, they just tried to completely ignore me and just wave me out).

I sent a message to a Chinese friend, and said I'm gonna go to the police. The friend's reply was along the lines of "Police? what help will they be?"

And indeed, I was about to head back to the old town, when I ran into a few policemen standing at the side of the road with nothing better to do, probably there on some traffic-control mission, and I thought "why not".

I asked them if they know if it's possible for foreigners to use Internet in China, and they said yes. I told them about my little story, and surprisingly enough, one of them accompanied me back to the place, and here I am. What transpired, I did not exactly understand. It seemed like he didn't exactly tell them off, but rather, he gave them his own ID, and I am using the computer under his name somehow - whatever works, right?

 

Shangrila, I was told would be as bad as Lijiang, only smaller, but I do not really agree. Yes there is an old town with cobbled streets, and there is a concentration of shops there. But actually, local people get there as well, and it's a spit away, to get outside of the old town (you are actually supposed to for most of the things you go to see, if you do).

 

Also, the bars - very very different from Lijiang, and that makes a HUGE difference.

The bars in Lijiang are super pricey, and are filled with loads of tourists (although most are domestic tourists).

Here, the bigger chunk of the bar-goers are the locals, mostly tibetians. They sing and dance Tibetian hits, drink beer and Tibetian butter tea, ... but mostly ... they are local. Big difference.

 

For better or worth, everywhere from the Tiger Leaping Gorge and on, 50% of the travellers seem to be Israelies. You can't go around for 5 minutes without running into one, and the places are so small, you run into the same people over and over again.

Daisy's, one of the Cafe-restaurants here, actually had a Jewish New-Year dinner yesterday - I ran into a sign in Hebrew yesterday, but timing didn't work out for me to join.

 

 

Lijiang to Qiaotou

Qiaotou - or Bridge's head - is the entry point to the most famous track to be done in Yunnan. I'll be disappearing into the gorge (Tiger Leaping Gorge 虎跳峡) for the next 3 or 4 days, and can now write from Qiaotou, at a hostel that finally has descent access and seems to be able to talk to my HardDisc as well (so that I'll have some space for more pictures).

 

I decided to run away from Lijiang as fast as possible - guess I might write about it at some later point properly, when I get to sit down for a while. Lijiang is a heaven for you if you want to buy a whole lot of Schmonzalach. Otherwise - give it maximum a day and run away (or skip altogether). I went for a day-trip today, to a little village called Baisha just off Lijiang, after checking out - planning to be back for the last bus towards Shangrila.

 

Although every ride I took today ended up dropping me off a couple of Km from where I was trying to get to, I miraculously made it on time back to the hotel, and got on a bus one hour before the last one (an hour which was to be well spent).

 

The ride towards Shangrila (at least the part so far, and I expect the rest as well) is amazing. People talk about taking night-rides. I don't think this is actually available for this route, but if it is - don't take it!  Go during the day, and get your nose stuck to the window. The Bus goes up mountains, and comes back down to beautiful vallies on the other side. On and on with beautiful scenery.

All these touristy cities are not that interersting, but the roads kick ass.

 

At some point I actually got to think that there won't be that much extra in going through the track, as I've been seeing the same views/ scenery for the past couple of hours from various angles. But then - I am not one to break long standing traditions, even if they're dictated by Lonely Planet.

 

But of course, we need to spice it up with a bit of adventure of sorts.

For one, it seems that this is a good timing to get to the gorge. While the lower route is blocked with mud-slides, and road-construction works, the loaded tourist buses are staying away, and so are the prices around. Judging from the amount of places along the way that have big signs saying "Tiger Leaping Gorge" - this is a disaster just waiting to happen, and very soon.

 

And there's a good reason I'm mentioning all of this - at the first sign I saw, I jumped into attention, sure that the bus is about to stop and drop me off, but it continued to go. I looked back, and saw the two Chinese guys that bought their tickets in the same time with me, saying they're heading to the same place. Apprrently it was the same area, rather than the same exact place ...

And the driver seem to have heard my thoughts about continuing all the way to Shangrila.

Yes, you figured it out ... another one.

 

The signs continued to say Tiger Leaping Gorge, but the bus driver didn't say anything, and the two guys seemed to be sitting there.

At some point one of them heads forward, and tells me he's going to ask the driver ... then some commotion - apparently the driver decided the 3 of us are together, and they're heading to another mountain further up the road.

 

I was let off, and the driver said, the village I'm looking for is about 1km back. I waited for a while for a bus, but decided to just head on back. Good warmup for the following day - only that I intended to leave behind 70% of my bag's weight behind. Luckily it was downhill, and indeed after about 1 km I reached the village. Alas, the area I was looking for is on the other side of the village, so another km or so.

 

Mid-way, I asked someone (in Chinese), what direction is the Tiger leaping gorge. "Let's talk English".

"Ok, where is the Tiger leaping gorge?"

He pointed further down the road.

"Great, do you know where this place is?" - I showed him the name of the guest house I was hoping to find.

"Yes, Tiger leaping gorge, that way, then turn right" (pointing more or less left)

"Right, but do you know where THIS place is" showing him again the name of the place.

"It's about 500 meters, then turn right"

"You mean left?"

"Go there, then turn right. Ticket office, Tiger Leaping Gorge"

"Right man. Thanks! Let's talk English indeed"

 

But here I am, batteries getting charged, photos downloaded, ready to go.

Dali and ErHai lake

Dali, I somehow did not find to be the all-relaxing place it was supposed to be. Another place to go and drink at night, do nothing by day - and yes, the streets of the old city look like street of an old city ...

So it's obvious why it would be considered as a nice hangout, but really - a bit too noisy. Maybe the hotel I moved to for tonight will be a bit more quiet.

 

I'm now getting to the confused part about Chinese people (as expected). The rudeness is very obvious - as if there is a gene of consideration lacking - things like smoking inside a close sleeper-bus (thank god it was only two people and not the whole lot), talking or watching a movie on the laptop in a dorm room when other people are obviously trying to sleep - are just small obvious examples.

 

I guess this easily traces back to ultra-rational behavior I was mentioning when talking about Kunming (Game Theory and such) - maybe it is the rest of us that have a defunctional gene.

However, consideration can change when you're an insider. When I specifically mentioned to Luojun that I'm dead tiered after having spent the previous night with 3 women - in the context of him asking me about eating at some point - he suddenly got conscious of the noise, went to close the movie running on his computer, and went out of the room to do his talking.

The previous evening we went for a dinner and coffee together, which brought us close. That night (after getting some sleep), I also joined him and 3 other Chinese guys at a bar. A rare occasion indeed, for them to go to a bar - specially Luojun, but of course when I found them in the bar - I realized they somehow managed to find a bar in which we were the only party. Before long we were doing some fine male bonage blasting the place with some Karaoke.

 

They were planning to rent bicycles and head for a village on the other side of the lake the folliowing morning, but I figured I'd need some rest, so declined their offer to join. However, the following morning, when I woke up about 9 or 10, they were still around, going back and forth talking about going, so at some point I just said "Can I still join?", and there you go. I later told them that I haven't been actually on a bicycle for a couple of years, so will have to go slowly - and they said, sure - no problem. Then one of them realized what I was saying (but it was too late to back up on the offer) "What if you get too tiered?"  "You can leave me on the road to die quietly".

 

Actually, the last time I was on anything remotely resembling bycicle was probably over 3 years ago in some Tel-Aviv Gym ...

 

Indeed, as soon as you leave Dali - it's great - and we had real luck with the weather: a cool overcast but no actual rain. The view of the mountains around is great, with little rice and corn fields and plenty of villagers working them everywhere.

After about 40 minutes, the scenery is slowly being replaced with pain. The name of the game for the day was endurance.

The chair area, is the obvious weak-point, but I got reminded of some other muiscles involved in cycling during the day (and yes,the value of gloves when it comes to mountain-bikes).

 

Still, if you go at the right pace, and maybe get a bit of bike-riding refresher ahead of it, it's a magnificent little trip, with small towns/villages on the way.

Hopefully I'll find some time soon to upload some pictures somewhere and post the link.

 

The last 15 km or so are on a dirt road (last before the Nanzhou village we went to). The road also gets close to the lake, and it's a lot of fun. Specially a lot of fun to ride through the village, with the road completely wet from the last couple of days' rain, smelling clearly of some sewage from the surrounding households involved, and then sprinkle yourself with that mud-cum-whatever's-in-the-mix by the bike's wheels.

 

Not to lose the original point - the guys were perfect gentlemen, keeping pace with me, waiting for me in those moments when I decided to die on the side of the road quietly and motioned them to move on. They even helped me save face a bit - they took regular turns for one of them to fall way behind me, one of them even went the extra mile and went off his bikes on an upward slope.

 

"They" are all from the east part, but not really cohesive: The official translator of the group (translation here means both augmenting my poor vocabulary by some words he knows in English, and more importantly - translating my poor attempts in Chinese to Chinese the others can understand, sometimes using the exact words I used, but I guess with proper tones) was Fengli Wang - 32 from Beijing, very gayish, but I didn't get to figure out what he's doing exactly. Shun Hang Ren is 31 from Han Zhou (near Shanghai) - as far as I managed to understand, he has a company with another friend, designing/ planning train-routes.

Lastly, Kadi Lin was the youngster of the group at 21. From Tai zhou where he is now attending something they translated for me as "senior school" - apparently something in between High-school and college.

 

When we arrived dead-tiered, we had a lovely dinner at the little guest-house we found in the village - just by the entrance to a touristic site, and smack on the lake, with view to some mountains and village-houses.  After dinner, Fengli lead us through a night tour supported by mobile-phone lighting of the tourist scenic zone - why wait to see it tomorrow, while you can go through it blindly for free right now.

 

The next day, I bid them farewell - they wanted to continue down the other side of the lake, completing the whole circle, but that would have meant a longer route, and not really as rewarding, so I opted for the bus/ boat option.

Well, saying "option" here, is a good one - since none of us could figure out if there was indeed an option.

We already realized that there is a bus somewhere, that should be heading all the way to Dali, but that it was very much uncluear if they'd let me on with the bike.

I knew however that I'd find a way, so sent them on.

 

People on the street said there is a bus running along the street that I could just flag down, that would be coming in an hour or so.

The bus eventually came, and as I was flagging it down (along with two other helpful locals), the bus just waved a very clear "no way in hell", and passed on ignoring us. I started to talk about finding a boat, but they suggested that I'll be more lucky with the next one.

The next one did arrive ... this time I left the bicycle a few meters down the road. My helpers said that this was the wrong bus, going somewhere else (on the way), but as the driver saw the discussion (and not the bike) he slowed down, and opened the window asking where I'm looking to go. "Dali". "no problem".

 

Then I showed him the bike. He started to accelerate again, waving a furiuous no-way.

 

Ahh ... this time I had some leverage, since he already slowed down before. So I shouted my pre-prepared magic words "I'll pay!".

 

Tires screeching, dust blowing, the bus stops, driver comes out running towards my bike, cash-lady comes out the other side running towards me to let me know they're going to rip my skin off and suck my blood dry ... which came out to 20 Yuan (just over 2 Euro).

 

Time to give it some extra rest in my bettered lodge, and move on in a couple of days.

Ahh ... for future reference, if someone needs it some day ... this one is called Lazy lodge.

.

 

 

Heading for Er'hai lake

Well, guess the sleeplessness, the noise, the lacky facilities paid off after all. I'm heading now with 3 Chinese guys to rent bicycle and head for a village on the other side of Erhai lake for the night ... see how it goes :)

Jinghong to Dali

I found my hard cot again, here in Dali.

Yesterday's wait for the afternoon's bus was made easy by a Los-Angeles originated gentleman. I didn't really get to ask his name - I was working more on my listenng skills, you could say.

 

As I finished sending the post yesterday (at Mekong Cafe), I moved to a table in the shade for some Mango+Passion-fruit juice, and my Chinese vocabulary notebook.

As it happens, the table I chose was next to the gentleman's table, from which he was heartily talking to Greg (the French owner). When Greg made a move and disappeared somewhere he changed to my direction and asked "so where are you from?".

And that was it, I had my next 2~3 hours filled with Israeli war stories. The guys is about 53 these days, from Hollywood, LA (although he looked quite settled into the place). Sporting a black Harley-styled undershirt with the slogan Xishuangbanna riders (or something like that, could have been Jinghong or Yunnan riders).

 

Presbyterian as he might be, in '73, as a Marine, he felt something was wrong about the way people reacted to the Vietnam war, and affectionately was listening to what was happening in Israel. When he met a 25-yo olive-skinned Israeli lady-officer in California, he asked her if there's something he could do.

Before long he was apparently in Israel doing some logistics downloading of American shipments, and before long - he found himself charging as part of a Tank brigade towards Damascus. Something like that. I could not really follow all the details - it went through a whole lot of weaponary acronyms - he seemed to assume that as an Israeli I would know of any weapon ever used in the Israeli military history - all I could do was to try and figure out when he was talking about a Tank, a rifle, or an airborne thing from the context (as much as I got it). On top of the weaponry details there were stories of people he got to kill (quite detailed, mind you), and to wrap it up nicely, he was apparently in good terms with some big names in Israeli history (such as Arik Sharon, Rafoul, Haim Bar-Lev, and a few other supposedly big-time brigadiers who's names I never heard myself).

 

I later took the bus. Some bits of anxiety as the bus was late, and I was not sure if that was the case, or I missed it, or just bought the wrong ticket.

 

Eventually on the bus - an excellent choice of route - the direct Jinghong-Dali route. That's opposed to taking a bus to Kunming and changing to a Kunming-Dali bus (as some would recommend). The road supposedly takes 15 hours, and it indeed only took us 16, but apparently it can take at time much much longer. Specially if the road get blocked by mud-slides, and you get to stay in another place on the way. In our case - no mudslides, but we were held up a bit in traffic jams (the route goes through some very narrow jungle and later mountain roads, and is quite heavy with buses and big trucks trying to go in both directions. Another small hickup was a police raid on the bus at some point during the night - just to see that we're all fine.

 

But really, since the bus goes through these roads, you get to see some nice Jungle views, villages, and in the morning approching Dali - some nice mountain-side fields.

 

Anyway, arrived in Dali - and after some hostel browsing, settled on what might be the worst option of all that I've seen. And no, not trying to prove a point. They're all priced about the same, but the other options that I saw all had nice soft beds (one had queen-size comfy beds within the dorms option), while this one has hard bunks again.

So why... this is the only hostel in which I saw Chinese travelers, rather than only other foreigners. Not sure how much communication will be happening, and my back my decide in favor of me moving again, but for now.

One does wonder why Chinese would choose this least confortable (for the same price) option. Maybe I'm missing something myself.

Piotr

[ I cannot give a specific link, but you might want to read "From Soft Landing to Hard Cot" first, for some context ]

Late afternoon, returning to the guesthouse, I found the "zombie" awake - seated at the room's desk in front of a laptop, wrapped in a huge set of headphones.

Piotr is from Moscow, 30 years old. He managed to get away from serving in the Russian army, and ended up settling on a job of climbing buildings.
The job had its moments - watching sunrises and and sunsets from the roofs of Moscoe buildings - but Piotr says this job can change a person's mind, and not for the best. Slowly but surely, you get to talk in foul abusive language and drink too much.

Piotr has since changed again.
He is just out of India, where he lived and traveled for the last 15 months. Apparently he picked up all of his English during this period(!).

As he says - he barely has money for survival now, but he likes the way "freedom" is changing his mind (and creativity) again, and would not go back to Russia for now.

He's a bit tiered of traveling, so he is taking it easy in Jinghong, trying to write some music. Chill-out music, apparently.

Back in India, he was involved in some Goa parties, so could get free accommodation, food, plus some pocket money.
Here, he doesn't really have anything, but he can see some potential.

He's teaching himself some of the surrounding musioc - some regional, Chinese and Mongolian songs - while getting himself some gigs here at the local cafes/ bars. He's carrying with him a local newspaper clipping that has his picture playing some exotic type of flute in one of these local gigs.

When he's ready - he'll head to Shanghai and see if he can make a proper living with what he likes doing.

Piotr helped drive it through for me. He asked if I came here on my way to Laos (which would apparently be the natural reason).
When I told him I'm only visiting here before heading to Dali he was quite surprised: "so what are you doing here? there's nothing interesting here. You should head to Dali tomorrow, use the extra days there".

Words of wisdom indeed.

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From Soft Landing to Hard Cot

Arriving just before 7AM at Jinghong (Xishuangbanna) after a night's ride on the sleeper bus, I opted for the one option for accommodation in Lonely Planet that included the dorms option.

I figured this is the time when I should start socializing with other travellers.

At ~7:30, it seemed like I have woken the place's attendant a couple of hours before her time. She was not happy.
Even less happy when I asked about seeing the room ... (and indeed, what is there to see exactly?). She said something that was supposed to explain why I cannot see it right then (couldn't really figure out what exactly that was), so I kept asking her at what time it will be possible. Eventually she shouted at me (in Chinese) "you want to see the room?" ...
"Ahhh ... yes."  She shouted something else, and I followed her the 2 meters to the next door, where the dormitory room is.

I ended up paying her the 15 RMB nightly fee (~2 Euro), and went in.

Guess you get what you pay for. Could have been worse, I guess - it turns out that the shower (minus the shower head) actually has hot water. The shower hose also doubles up as the flush for the crouching-style toilet. And, there was a functioning dim lightbulb in the shower room. The rest of the room, as far as I could tell, had no functioning lighting (I later found out that there are two functioning bulbs in the room, but you have to figure out your way amongst the 10 or so switches).

There is a big set of lockers in the room, which I noticed on my first glance into it, but as I failed to actually ask the lovely lady about it, I found out quickly that thosse have no real function other than some dormitry-style decoration.

The beds are 2-storied cots covered with a plank of thin wood and a thinner "matress" - since it's too hot to be really using a blanket (did I mention no A/C?, guess I thought that's obvious), one can use the provided blanket to double-up the matress for extra comfort (that's right, "the princess and the pea" was probably inspired by a guest-house experience).

Yes yes ... I know what you're thinking, and you're right - I'm getting old.

For all its little misgivings, this guesthouse knows what you really came to Xishuangbanna for, and provides in full - it's the Jungle experience. Without risking a proper jungle-trekking, you can lie in the comfort of your cot, and watch the lizards strolling the walls, or alternatively, you can go for the shower-toilet room, and observe some cool spiderwebs all over the ceiling and corners.

But the reason for choosing the dormitory option was not about the added comfort (and consulting the wrong guide book).
As far as socializing opportunities, the only other person in the 6-bed room ws a zombie that didn't seem like anything could stir alive for the next few hours. Also didn't look like someone I'd be sharing a jungle-trekking with.
I'm sure there are plenty of foreigners around even in this off-season (some were on the bus with me), but they must be reading some more up-to-date guide books ...

I gave it a couple of hours to find out I was not tiered enough to sleep on them cots just yet, took a shower and hit the town.
Not much to see, as expected, but even at 10:30, my shirt got sweat-drenched within 20 mins of walking as slowly as possible, in the shadow.
My morning stroll found me a few "upscale" possibilities for upgrading my accomodation (all on "Manting Lu"). Right in the area that seemed to be the town's center, and all within 5~10 Euro/night, with A/C, descent-looking showers, TV ... one even had a western-style toilet (but when I arrived the next day, they were unfortunately full). I moved to one of those for my next night.

Thank god for the foreigner-oriented cafes here. It's the only place to pass the midday hours here.
On a street corner, mid-town, Banna-Cafe can supply Yunnan or Italian coffee. They make their carrot juice in a blender - no filtering - so it feels a bit like chewing on a carrot, and they have quite a varied food and drink menu that comes with English built-in.
The woman that now operates the place like to practice her bits of English with the customers when the opportunity strikes, and as a foreginer you get to feel welcome - they kept on refilling my water glass for a few hours somehow.

Generally it seems that the foreigner-oriented few places here are giving a good fight for the business, and this works nicely for everyone.

Greg, the owner of Mekong Cafe is a French guy in his 50's. He used to work as a Chef in 5-star hotels around Asia for about 30 years before settling here about 3 years ago with his Chinese wife and son. He offers free advice, help with ticketing, free self-designed city maps, free internet usage, and an extensive western menu (including things like Deer medallions, Lamb stake with Rosmary, ...). A more hidden part of the menu offers some local cuisine as well. The chicken fillets with banana flowers was not bad at all, though it was the first "Chinese" dish I had that seemed to be fried with a lot of butter rather than oil. For sure, it was the first time in a while when I got a chicken dish which was all about the chicken-meat rather than bones and skin.

I later found out that there's a whole nice area, completely over-looked by my guide book - a street running along the bank of the Mekong river, known to some as Bar-street. All the houses in that area have thai-style roofs with yellow lighting, the bars, set one after the other in succession are all very river-bank like, wooden made, nicely styled, all with large wooden balconies in front of the river.

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Goodbye heat (for now)

Jinghong, Xishuangbanna.

Too hot to walk around, too hot to bring up the camera and take pictures, too humid to enjoy drinking.
Definitely too hot to "cycle between villages for hours", which is the only point of being here in the firstplace.
I guess I was relatively lucky, as within 2 days it only rained for about 1 hour. And probably, I will get acclimatized within a few days ... but I see not real point for it.

And the food is not half as spicy as I was promised - I could of course been missing on the real local grub somehow - but I can usually spot a proper chilly from miles away, so I'm somewhat in doubt.

So I'll be moving on to Dali - back to the original plan, and back to 1,900m above see level.
No VPN access no more for nicely organized posts, so I'll be posting some staff remotely once settled again (or maybe even soething tomorrow before heading north).

Here comes the heat

When the waiter in a Jinbi-square club starts giving you free Whiskey refills ...
When you start getting picked up by 17 year-old children in clubs ...
More to the point ... when you start to finally run into some foreigners in town (even hear some Hebrew) ...

It's time to move on.

Yes, with all the disappointment I had with this "school", Kunming was as soft a landing into China as one might get. Relatively cool August, regular warm water supply in the shower, calm beggars, and people that are not trying to squeeze every possible penny out of my pocket.

Before going back on the original planned route, I am going all the way south to Xishuangbanna (西双版纳). It's going to be hot.

This is Mekong country. Bordering Myanmar and Laos, with 1/3 of the population being Dai people (very close ethnically to the Thai people). 21 degrees north of the equator.
I'm told it is now 40 degrees Celsius, but a quick look at the weather forecast for the next few days says I can get away with about 35 degrees, only 85-90% humidity, and some scattered (yay!) thunderstorms. Lows are at a cool low 20's - sounds promising.

Since one is drenched in sweat in such places at all times, might as well hit it with some Thai chillies. The dai food, and more generally Xishuangbanna food is supposedly the spiciest around when it comes to Yunnan. Can't skip this one.
This is siesta, minorities, spice and Jungle country. We'll see how it goes - run away from the heat after 2 days.

Time to go out and get some last Kunming samples before I head off to my overnight bus ride:
Fresh carrot juice from the juice-shop downstairs, followed by a whole roast duck (the most expensive roast-duck dish in this excellent restaurant goes for 38 RMB - just under 5 Euro, for which they separate the duck into 3 parts: one is the classic roasted brown skin - the whole duck, you get the head, tail and whole ; another part is the duck's meat, pan-fried with some vegetables, and then the bones are not lost - serving to make a third big bowl of duck-soup).
Yummy!
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Some generalizations - Chinese relationships, marriage, and foreigners

This is mostly coming "straight from the horses mouth" if you will, so I'll allow myself some leeway.

I have noticed for some while that foreigners - as frightening as they might have originally been considered - are representing something of coolness here. It is true that I'm being stared at a lot, but 95% of the time - this is with some sort of admiration. A lot of Chinese - mainly young people and children - just love to communicate with foreigners, even if that means just saying "hello" or "how are you?".

In my case, there's the added advantage of the protruding belly - it seems like Chinese people just cannot get enough of the Buddha thing I have going - this might just be the thing that keeps getting me all them free drinks.

This is one with the clubs, and the dancing - copied 1-to-1 from MTV, all apart of feeling closer to western culture. They see a foreigner in a club, and they expect her/him to automatically pull out some serious MTV dancing routines.


With that, and maybe because of that - Chinese men fear nothing more than a foreigner man next to their girlfriend.

Teach (my teacher of the last few weeks) is 26, coming from a city in Henan (just north east of the area I'll be traveling). Her big dream is to open a Bar of her own when she's 35. In the meantime, she really enjoys teaching Chinese to foreigners. She started with this accidentally, by helping out a foreigner woman on the street, and now left her hotel-job to join this school and teach me (yes, I was the first experiment).

Teach says that it is quite difficult for Chinese men to accept that she is working in the vicinity of foreigners. She was recently on what might be considered a first date. All was going well until the guy asked her what she was doing for work.
She told him she was teaching Chinese (bad move), and he asked "Chinese? who are you teaching Chinese? ..."

And there you go - this was the end of it.

Generally speaking, it seems that most of Chinese men will find it very difficult to live with the fact that their wife-oriented girlfriend or their wife will have work that puts them in touch with foreigners.
And this can be pretty tough for women that have passed 25, and are fearing getting to 30 without marriage - becoming what is known as 3S ladies - originally coined for Single, Seventies (born) and Stuck, but we can generalize by replacing Seventies with Thirties (age). See here.

The foreigner thing is rather a singular case of a broader picture - not unfamiliar to men all around the world - we (men) being jealous of capable independent women. The point just seems to magnify itself and be crystal clear, rather than sub-conscious when it comes to the foreigner issue.

I said wife-oriented girlfriend before, as this apparently can be quite specific. As teach says (she can say it, as she was quite in love with a married-man with a 7-yearold daughter), girlfriends and wife are separate things here.
Creating a family is an expectation and tradition, and both men and women feel the pressure to get there in their 20's (the law actually forbids women to marry here before they're 20, and men before they're 22 - but nobody seems to care). So they opt to quickly find someone suitable for starting a family, but then many times find other forms of fun or love outside the nest.

Not highly surprising, when you hear about the expectations from Teach's last boyfriend. That boyfriend comes from a small city in Guizhou province. For context, here's a quite from Lonely Planet: " Poor Guizhou, always the short-end-of-the-stick southwest China province. A much-quoted proverb has it as a place 'without three li of flat land, three days of fine weather, or three cents to rub together', Ouch. "
The guy is now "making it", jumping between Kunming and Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province). The guy was expecting Teach - if they were to be married - to go and live with his family back in Guizhou, while he will continue working (and partying) between Kunming and Chengdu. (she said "no" by the way)

This is quite the norm in many cases - not something that was never heard of. While Teach is really fond of drinking and bars, she's not really into the club thing. She has a friend though - a married man, with his wife and daughter leaving in some remote town while he's working the Kunming-Chengdu line. She says that he really likes the clubs, and has numerous "close" female friends.

You're getting the picture, but this is just one woman telling a story, so I asked for the opinion of Lin Yang (fabricated name). Lin is 25 (just entering the pressure zone), half Han and Half Yi (minority). Came to Kunming from a small town not too far off. She's been in Kunming working in a Jewelery shop for the last 5 years, and she has a boyfriend she's been living together with for the last 2 years. She originally thought she wants to marry the guy, but seems like she's recently going through some second thoughts. Her boyfriend recently told her that she's a bit too much on the chubby side, and he might not marry her. Her parents don't really like him, and would rather she doesn't marry him.

I asked Lin whether she would go for a combo as described above - marrying a guy and joining his family in some remote location (where she would probably be a slave of the mother-in-law), while he will continue to work in the city. She said that she doesn't like the idea, but that probably she will agree indeed.

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Kunming 昆明 - Part II

Continued from Kunming 昆明 - part I ...

I did promise to talk a bit about the club thing here. Clubs and bars are not really what you'd call traditional China, but they seem to be abundant in all big cities.


It's definitely an interesting mix of old and new.
The clubs usually have a mix of music, but all and all focused on trashy club-trance, technosized dance and Chinese hits, and most important - make it loud (nothing new so far).
Although these are - generally speaking - clubs, and the atmosphere is dancing, most of the clubs don't really have a proper dance floor (a few do), but rather the full place is filled with small round tables all over what was supposed to be the dance floor (and why not, if people are ready to stand there and buy an extra bottle).

Kundu club

These clubs usually add on some color in the way of some life acts - triplets of skinny dancers with minimal clothing, drag queens, Chinese pop wannabe singers. These moments are usually when the music might get semi-descent for a little while.

"Disco" in Kundu is as trashy a place as you can get, but it has an operational dance-floor, with a nice ratio of about 100 men/ 1 woman, and a wannabe radio-MC's that interrupt the music every roughly 20 seconds, so if you have some patience you can enjoy it. Around 1:15, just after the daily drag-queen finishes her thing, there's a moment of descent trance when they put on "Infected Mushroom".

Drinks of the day are warm Beers - bought at multiples (usually, about a dozen a time), or Whiskey mixed generously with room-temperature green tea. Either is drunk from very small glasses.
The beers are around 3-3.5%, and so is the mix of Whiskey with tea (thank god for that).
The whiskey, is the local breweries finest, usually bottled in your choice of Chivas Regal or Johnie Walker Black. If you really want to splash out - you are entertaining people or female company and you feel for some reason that you want to show off with spending extra money - you can usually opt in to pay twice and have the same Whiskey presented in a more classic way (say, in a 18 year-old Chivas bottle).

The tendency in the clubs is to try and get you a table, were you would normally be presented with a menu suggesting that you buy a whole bottle of Whiskey or a couple of dozen beer-bottles. They seem to fail to understand that one person does not require a whole bottle (or a table). And it's not necessarily a language barrier.
Not to despair. The trick is to arrive when the place is full - so they do not really have any tables to try and sit you at. Arriving to the main club areas after 11:30 or so, will usually allow one to just be ignored entering the place, and then go around as you will and enjoy.

This version of clubbing is so not standard, that it might actually be difficult in this case to get yourself a drink, or even find out where the bar is hidden.
Also, most of the clubs only (!) stock Whiskey and beers (bad beers), so you'd need to do some club-hopping to find out one where you can get your Cuba Libre flowing. But if you're ready to experiment a bit, and walk out whenever someone insists on escorting you to a table of your own - you'll be in for a good evening before too long.

While standing around the tables and drinking, it is highly important to have some drinking-facilitation. This comes in the form of games. There are a few favorites around, and it most of the clubs you'll see most of the people deeply occupied with padded glasses (usually red) from which they are rolling dice, or otherwise you'd see them playing cards or waving their hands frantically as they play group-stone-paper-scissors. I'm starting to slowly get the idea behind some of these, so might at some point do a post with the rules for some of these.
Getting the point, however, doesn't really help matters - as you might end up being too good and hence not drinking enough - bad company in other words.

Assorted Yunnan mushrooms on a Kunming street

There is one game, however, which stands out as a clear all-around favorite.
Called "get the foreigner drunk". EVERYBODY just loves this game, and I actually enjoyed it on my first night.
Really, if you don't mind drinking only the tea'd-Whiskey and warm beers, there is not particular need to spend money at all. You just get to a club, and stand or stroll slowly between the tables. They all stare at the foreigner anyway (Kunming is actually full with foreigners, but it seems they like to hang out together in foreigner-oriented bars, so I very rarely saw any foreigners inside the clubs so far), so before too long - someone will add to the smile a "cheers" movement. You can reply with an empty hand (which will speed up the next step), or cling glasses and have a sip (which will bring the next step just as fast), and then they'll signal you to get close to the table, where a glass is already being filled for you with beer/ whiskey. They might let you off the hook the first time (that's in the case that first toast will include all residents of the table), but by the second glass if they're patient, they'll make you understand they expect you to drink-up properly. This is because they person you just drank with did the same.


Only that the table is with 10 people around it, and once you've cleared the glass, it's being filled again so that you can drink with the next person down the line. When the table is more or less done with the round, there can be a few options (and don't forget, there is not much communication involved other than the toasts).
Possibly, if they found you really intriguing (and you have not found the experience too boring yet), they might continue with toasts, this time more sporadically, not in clear round-the-table order, and will point for you some nice girls (I cannot say about pointing boys for girls, as I hadn't had the pleasure). This is true event if they are themselves girls (assuming a mixed table). Also, usually, you'd find out quickly enough that a table nearby wants a piece of the action, so you'd be pulled a bit to have some drinks with them as well.
Sometimes, they'd actually release you after the first round by smiling politely while waving you goodbye.

Midday Siesta in Kunming, by the East Pagoda

On my first night here, I was actually pulled away from the table I was drinking with by some nice Chinese girl. The people at the table with me motioned me positively to go and follow her (she was not from the next table). I had a feeling that this was something of a more official nature, as I was following her towards the exit of the club, but just as we reached the exit, she turned right, and after a few more meters we reached a table with her friends. She just wanted to treat her friends for a round of their favorite game, after which I got the sign that I can go back to my original "friends".


At nights like this, you really get to appreciate the super-weak beers, the extra tea in the Whiskey, and especially the extra-small glasses. It all suddenly makes sense.

Taking a stroll - Kunming streets

I was surprised to find out that not a lot of people in the school (living here for a while) have noticed that, but Kunming has what seems to be a surprisingly big Gay community. At least on the male part. This might not be as straightforward to see, I guess (if you're blind), since a lot of men here can be seen as having somewhat of a gayish behavior - specially around foreigners in clubs - and even the gays tend to not kiss here outdoors, but still - this can get quite obvious. The men-women ratio, as mentioned, is not favoring men, so you might not be sure at a first glance, but on some nights in some clubs, and on the streets as well, this is becoming more and more obvious for anyone who cares to look.
I wouldn't know to say much about a gay "scene" here as such, and I didn't run into any gay clubs per-se, but they are definitely here in numbers, and not hiding.


Another option in Kunming, is to go for a bit of inspiration on Green-lake park. Specially in the evenings (or early mornings, as I hear well from my window), you can find people practice their Chinese-opera singing (usually, they have been practicing for many many years with no apparent success, but are not deterred by this technicality), Tai-chi, or what seems to be quite popular, dancing in groups to the sound of Techno. The Techno groups are mixed with a tendency for older crowd, and there's usually some sort of a leader-figure that in between tracks gives instructions about the steps for the next track. Really cool staff.

Street beggars - definitely exist here, but very easygoing for China - no groping, no heavy insitence - nothing like what one will experience in Shanghai or Shenzhen

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