You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2010.
May 29th
It is 8:52am and I am sipping a small green bottle of 56% Chinese alcohol (translated Red Star) for my cough. I look outside the window as I’m typing from the 15th floor of this apartment building. The buildings across the street are wrapped in a shawl of white gauze. Behind them, a grayish nothingness. My first morning in Beijing.
May 24th: The mask
You know those Chinese tourists in big American cities who wear the surgical masks on the streets? You do a double take and wonder ‘if China is so polluted, just how bad could Denver be?’ Truth is, they’re wearing the facemasks because the air outside of China is too clean.
I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. I think I may be allergic to China. The pollution from the cars, factories and construction is palpable. It has a chalky taste. Couple the pollution with the incessant smoking – every Chinese man lights up at least a pack a day in small enclosed spaces – and my throat is feeling pretty rough.
So yesterday I broke down and bought a facemask. Yes, that’s right — I wore it for three hours on the smoke filled train today and it was a godsend. I’m holding out for Beijing to find a hello kitty, american flag or camo-loving facemask and then I will take glamour shots. Rob says that the one I have now looks like I’m prepping for surgery in the 50s. It’s white, bulky and fashioned from thick layers of gauze. I may have lost all self-respect, but hopefully I’ll sleep through the night soon.
May 20th: Fu you!
Last I wrote Rob and I were headed up the mountain for a week of kung fu (Rob) and tai chi (Jenny). It was a great experience. Another guy describes the daily routine in his blog (http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/Dali/blog-489895.html). He does a good job, so I won’t rehash the details.
We practiced with some wonderful people. Including us, there were nearly a dozen foreigners staying at the monastery. The young monks were our teachers and during the five hours of practice a day it was ‘no pain no gain’ (which was funny coming from a monk who speaks little English).
The monks may have been trained warriors, but there was a tenderness about them. They are very special. One day I gave basic English lessons to a few of the younger monks during their school time (our nap time – they never stopped working). At the end of the lesson, one of the monks snuck me something like a Chinese moonpie from his stash to say thank you.
The monks were hard on each other, but they looked out for each other too. Rob joked with a couple that their kung fu was lazy and all of them sprang to their defense. He had to learn how to say ‘your kung fu is very good’ in Chinese very quickly.
We were lucky to have the flexibility to spend the week in such a beautiful place. The monastery was tucked into the mountainside, overlooking Dali and Erhai lake. Most of the food we had was grown in their gardens. We could drink the spring water straight from the tap. It was such a luxury – we’ve been living on the bottled stuff for a long time.
May 22nd: Tiger Leaping Gorge
After our week at the monastery, Rob and I left to hike what many call the most beautiful hike in China – Tiger Leaping Gorge. It did not disappoint. You’re hiking the sides of mountains, so the views up and down were spectacular for the whole eight hours.
We met another nice Canadian (man, they really get around China) and a very friendly couple from the UK at our first guesthouse at the start of the trail and hiked together the morning. It was good to have the company. The trail is peppered with guesthouses and places to eat, so we did the bulk of the hike on the first day and then stayed at a place with a wonderful view (even from the squat toilet, which helps to take your mind off things).
The trip back to the start of the trail was a whole other adventure, since the road is under construction and technically not open. We took a minivan partway, then got out to walk a couple miles (run at one point in intervals as rocks slid down the mountain), and then took another van the rest of the way.
May 24th: Back to where we started
Rob and I took a van from the Gorge to Lijiang. The streets were so crowded with tourists that you can’t lift your arms. This morning we took the new train back to Dali, a much quieter, cuter version of Lijiang, with windy stone streets and early morning steamed dumplings. We will stay here til we return to Kunming for the train to Beijing.
Today again: Beijing
The train was a wash really. We thought the two day trip would be a great way to see the countryside on our limited schedule. It rained the first day and the rain brought fog, so we didn’t see much past the landscape immediately outside the window. The next day as we inched closer to Beijing, we riding through cities and the pollution blocked the view in the same way.
The view wasn’t as much of a let down as the smoking. The attendants rolled metal carts down the aisles, selling whole cartons for the two day trip. Even the facemask couldn’t live up to the challenge. By the end of the trip, you could roll my t-shirt and light one up.
Rob and I had gone to the grocery store before boarding and stocked up on instant noodle soups, fruit, fragrant teas and treats. Our compartment had a hot water thermos, a tablecloth and a vase with a red rose, which was a funny touch. No plug though to watch kung fu movies on the laptop, so we did crossword puzzles for about 20 waking hours.
…and now we’re in Beijing, “couchsurfing” with another awesome Canadian (seriously, more Canadians than Europeans in China). Rob will wake up in a bit and we have plans to see the Forbidden City and then tomorrow, we’re off to hike the Great Wall, where I may be the only hiker carrying my medication in a green bottle about the size of my palm.
We got a new camera — another Canon — and it is way better than the other two combined. Getting the camera was an experience though. We tried and failed in Laos so the next stop was Kunming, China. For those of you who think that “made in china” means cheap electronics are abundant here, you’ll be sorely disappointed. We were. That’s right, the cheapest electronics in the world are a quarter mile down the road at your nearest Supercenter. Like, 25% cheaper.
We went to a Best Buy equivalent called Sunning and found a very patient, non-English speaking staff member to assist us. It is tough to find someone who speaks English outside of the guesthouses and restaurants advertised in the European guidebooks.
This guy went above and beyond. On the first day we negotiated. We agreed on the price and hour later learned that they couldn’t take credit cards, but the banks had a limit on ATM withdrawals. Day two: we found a way to withdraw the cash, returned to the store, bargained a little more, bought the camera (with Chinese instructions), set up the camera and registered the camera. All in all, it was a 6 hour process.
On the second day our helpful friend had opened up one of those handheld pocket translators from the store in an attempt to better communicate with us. The translations on both ends were deplorable and it was like cracking a lunatic’s puzzle figuring out what the hell he was saying. “Don’t worry” became “no paste” and at one point we were told: “you take the get and way the flower.”
Our troubles should have been no surprise. Chinese is complicated and so much of the language depends on tone. “Wa” is used at the end of a question. Said with a different inflection, it means “horse” and with another tone, a bad word (though we’re not sure which one). So if I said, “Vegetarian Dishes, wa?” that could come out: ‘Do you cater to vegetarians?’ or ‘Do you have vegetarian dishes plus horse meat?’ or ‘I want vegetarian dishes, asshole.’ You see how delicate the situation can be, but we still try and get laughed at often.
The Chinese people are nothing but nice. They will go out of their way to help you. Really, they are across the board the nicest people we’ve met on our trip. We were ordering a soup at one of the stalls and the woman next to us stopped to help translate. We didn’t know which bus to take and someone walked us to the right stop (twice). Even the people trying to sell us touristy stuff for the most part aren’t pushy. Older women in Dali will walk up to young-ish Westerners, asking if they want to smoke the ganja. You say ‘no, no Chinese prison’ and they will leave you alone. In Laos they often followed you, just to make sure you weren’t interested in snorting heroin. Just to make sure you weren’t having any second thoughts.
Chinese food
It is so good! We’ve had wonderful new dishes like battered rose petals in a honey lemon dipping sauce, stir fried asparagus and garlic, agar jelly in a delicate sweet broth, and tea. Green tea is served with every meal and the flavors of tea are complex. Some are savory like grains and others are fruity, infused with apples or pomelos.
…Rob and I are in Dali in the Southwest Yunnan province of China. This evening we’re headed up the mountain to a monastery where we will practice Kung Fu (Rob) and Tai Chi (me) over the next week. There’s no electricity at the top of the mountain, so it will be another week til the next post.
Just to be clear: his part of the trip is not fun. What I mean is that the Southeast Asia we’ve visited is no roller coaster ride at Disneyland, riding horses along gently rolling hills, sipping frozen pina coladas on a beach.* We have had some remarkable and memorable moments, but I can’t recommend traveling around these parts for weeks of pleasure. Our travels around Cambodia, Northern Thailand and Northern Laos have taken lots of patience, a willingness to make compromises, an ability to pick our battles, and most of all, great stomach bacteria. In other words, come here for life lessons, not for decompressing.
*Full disclosure: we did not visit any beaches in Thailand, Cambodia or Laos – but we hear lots of people do go to those spots to relax.
For the record, my bacteria is winning between the two of us. We ended up staying in Luang Prabang for a week. On day four, we were packing up our bags to catch an early morning bus and something awful hit Rob in the gut. It took him out for three days.
Later we found out that he got sick from draft beer or maybe an unclean pitcher at one of the bars in LP. A friend who shared the pitcher with him had suffered the same fate. That’s so evil – of all things, beer should not make Rob sick.
LP is a small town and after staying there a few days I started to run into the same people. No one’s in a hurry, so you stop and talk for a bit before you continue walking. It’s a comforting feeling that I haven’t had since going to college in a small town. But, then you stay here long enough though, and your friends have moved on and you start to feel that you should too… that it’s not the same place it was a few days ago.
Hanging on for dear life…
While we were there, we met a wonderful couple from Luxembourg. We visited the Kuang Si Waterfalls together, about an hour drive outside town. The main falls are quite tall and then cascade into a series of pools where people go swimming or chill their beers for nearby picnics.
The falls are nestled in thick jungle. With the rainy season starting it was luscious and wet. We were hiking along the water for ten minutes when Rob felt a thud on his sandal. He looked down and tried to shake off what he thought was a slug, but the little guy just wouldn’t let go. A few minutes of trying to pry him off the shoe with a branch and it clicked – it was a leech. Rob lifted up his pants leg and another one was crawling up to take hold, but brushed him off in time.
We continued walking towards the falls. Rob put his feet in the water and I was sitting next to our bags on a rock watching the might of the water hit the pool, when he suggested that I recheck my legs. Sure enough there was a leech clasped to my ankle! It was much bigger now than the others, its body pulsating. I screamed and the leech went flying. They use a numbing agent when they bite, so I hadn’t felt a thing. They also give you an anti-coagulant so the little hole didn’t close for hours. My first leech. I hate them.
That evening our friends invited us to a dinner that they had heard about the night before at the market. A couple of Americans were volunteering with a local Laotian who was starting LP’s first “public” library. (Public meant public access, not publicly funded.) Anyhow, the Americans were organizing a dinner to raise some funds for books.
We had a great time. It was the best traditional food we have had here – Mekong “seaweed” fried with garlic and sesame and served with a chili paste, spicy eggplant puree, sautéed veggies in sweet lemongrass and soy, sticky rice, buffalo laab, and for dessert – fresh coconut rice in a banana leaf.
Even better was getting the chance to talk with locals about their work and culture. One friend who showed up worked with the government on a new program to encourage villages to set up their own credit unions. With the local unions, they are able to lend money to villagers at affordable rates, gather the interest on the money and reinvest it into the community. Pretty great stuff… it was a good evening.
Once Rob came back to life, we skipped Vang Vieng and headed straight for Vientiane, the capital city. Vang Vieng is a bit of an anomaly in Laos. By day, drunk 20-30 year olds float a truly scenic section of the Mekong River in inner tubes. By night, they drink more. Lao lao whiskey is only a $1 a liter and it doesn’t take much to make you forget your name. People either love VV or hate it.
The bus ride to Vientiane was a long 12 hours, but then we settled into our favorite guesthouse in Asia. It’s been a good respite during the hot weather. Yes, it’s Cambodia hot out there again – 115 F heat index and humid.
I have lost my dignity…
I am carrying around an umbrella for shade. That’s right, it’s not raining. But none of you are allowed to make fun until you’ve walked for three hours in this heat.
Many Lao people do it, but few Westerners, so I admit it – I do feel a little self conscious when passing the touristy areas… until this morning, when I looked up and there was a Western guy walking toward me with the same periwinkle umbrella. He smiled sheepishly.
Rob tried the umbrella once, but thinks it keeps the heat closer to his head. That’s good, there’s only one umbrella.
Next up
…is China. We’re heading out early Monday morning. A couple of notes –
1) Our camera was lost at the night market in Luang Prabang. A nice Polish woman picked it up and then left for Cambodia the next morning. We may not be able to take photos for a while, so I’ll try and link in other people’s shots from the internet.
2) I’ve heard that it’s really tough to blog and access Facebook from China, so I’ll keep writing, but you may not be able to read the posts us until we reach Mongolia at the beginning of June. We’ll have to wait and see…
