Since the family left

So I hadn't planned anything to do after my family left, so I checked into a hostel and got a dorm bed with my own money, and gained a little freedom from Dr. Yin. I knew that I wanted to go to Tibet, but my visa requirement of leaving the country every 30 days was quite annoying. So I just planned to stay for a few days until the best way to go about traveling and border crossing would hit me. Then I realized I could get a new tourist visa for 30 days, but could extend that by 30 days, 2 times, a total of 90 days. From within China. That 90 days would be enough for me now. But you can't get that Visa from within China, you have to leave. So I applied for a Vietnamese visa and planned to travel to Hanoi, because they have pickup frisbee. While my visa was processing I hung out with the Chinese guy named Jay from the city of Hangzhou that was in the same room as me. I visited Hangzhou with my school back in the fall. Jay was probably 24, he studied geography at the University of Sichuan, but now he wants to learn to program Java. He had been traveling around for a little while and was planning to go to Hainan, the big island south of China, where our Navy aircraft was shot down and kept a few years ago, and ride a bike around it. But he was just chilling in Kunming for the time being so we went about our daily business of eating breakfast at noon, spending a lot of time at the web bar playing computer games, and walking around. We went to Yunnan University where I was surprised to see a strong foreign presence, I guess they teach Chinese there. We threw the frisbee, played more computer games, etc.

 

So he took off to wherever and my visa was finished on Friday. I got on an overnight bus to the Vietnamese border, and this bus trip was worst than the last one. I complained about the last one but it was a fine trip. This bus was an old school bus, real dirty etc, open window for AC. While riding I found myself wondering why it smelled like a Chinese public bathroom when there was no on board toilet. We'll be lenient and blame it on the area of the city we were in. When I got on the bus it was at the last minute because the travel agent who I bought the ticket from got me there late, so when the 2 people in bunks near me said that the foreigner was running late, I told them it wasn't my fault. They laughed and that of course sparked the token conversation about me speaking Chinese. One of them turned out to be Vietnamese, the other Taiwanese, and they worked in Vietnam and said they would help me get where I was going.

 

So yeah, the trip was interesting as always. Looking at a map you may think a trip will be short, but thats forgetting that theres no real highway, and its not just a public bus from A to B, but a delivery service from A to Z, stopping everywhere in between as well. All cargo area was stashed with boxes and those token Chinese woven plastic sacks, and at random times and random points in the middle of nowhere we would stop, people would get off, sometimes unload cargo, sometimes the people would get back on, sometimes a guy would approach the bus and get something and pay money. So by the time we reached the border it seemed as if the foreigners were the only people going to the border Hekou, on a bus that just said it was to Hekou. We crossed, I decided to go straight to Hanoi on a 9 hour train ride, instead of staying the day and waiting for the sleeper train. A Canadian couple formerly living in Taiwan went with me. That was a great trip, sitting on a hard straight back seat, and being pestered by the ladies selling drinks and snacks walking up and down the aisle. I think the deal is they don't buy a ticket, or get a cheap ticket, as long as they don't sit down.

 

While in Kunming, I was chatting with my friend Jiew from Bangkok Frisbee through email and she decided at the drop of a hat that she wanted to go to Vietnam so she said she would meet me in Hanoi the next night. I told her I would meet her at the airport. She's 32 and not interested in me like that so don't get the wrong idea. Well during the 9 hour train ride to Hanoi I was slightly nervous because I had no clue it would be that long, and I thought her plane arrived at 7:30, when thats actually when it departed Bangkok. Our train was due to pull in at 7:30, I figured a direct taxi ride would get me to the airport on time. I was given a Cambodian SIM card for my cellphone by the Taiwanese guy and I sent Jiew a text message to her Thai phone, although I had no clue if she would receive it. It had the hostel phone number in it, I told her to wait at the airport I would be late. So we arrived, I had the hostel pick us up at the train station, we went to the hostel and I immediately went to the airport, it was a 45 minute cab ride and I was fairly nervous. We got split up for about 10 minutes of confusion at the Bangkok airport last month when going to Cambodia, and I didn't want her to be mad at me again, or even worse, not see her. But I walked into the airport, checked the arrivals, her flight had actually arrived at 8:40 and she walked up at that moment. She had only waited for 20 minutes so all was well. Sorry that I write about these boring to read travel details, but this is the reality of traveling, so I'm giving it to you uncut, unedited, no spin, no political bias. And its hard to read about the fun times unless you were there, so if you want to have fun, just go travel. Anyways.

 

Next day we walked around the old quarter of Hanoi, where we are staying. Hanoi is pretty cool. Its a large city but there are hardly any tall buildings and the old quarter which is the only place I've been, obviously has a lot of French influence(I had the best French toast today that i've had in long time) and is pretty neat, at one point I thought it was like commercial parts of the Fan in Richmond, but with 10x the number of people, and Asian. I played frisbee today, it was basically all Vietnamese people, which is a first for my ultimate adventures. The level of play was nowhere near what I had seen in other parts of Asia, but there were a few decent players and it was fun, they get even more riled up and tease each other more than the Thai people.

 

Tomorrow Jiew wants to go see Ho Chi Minh. Like all other communist leaders, he is lying in a majestic mausoleum. However, just like Mao, the place is hardly ever open because of the maintenance it must take to keep a dead body looking heroic, and packed with pilgrims, so I don't know if I will be able to wake up early enough.

 

Traveling around the country and seeing if any of the war history is interesting sounds tempting, but time is limited and I would have Tibet in the back of my mind. I have to go to Tibet. So I will go back as soon as my new Chinese visa arrives, probably Friday. I think its cheapest just to fly to Tibet, it appears to be double that of flying to take a 4WD even when splitting it with other people. I guess so many people go 4wd for the experience. As I said, time is limited and its only one of those experiences you want to say you've had, not to actually experience it. This guy named Tommy from Hanover County, and UVA, same year as me, plays some ultimate, has been hopping around India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal since last summer, and he will be in Tibet, so it would be cool to meet up with him. He really gets down and dirty when traveling and reading his emails makes want to kick it up a notch. I'm not too hardcore right now to be honest. But you have to have a balance.

Travel: Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge

From Kunming fly or take overnight bus to Lijiang. "A Liang" guesthouse in the old city or any other guesthouse in the old city is great. Probably 25-50 RMB per bed.

Have your guesthouse help you arrange travel to Qiaotou, which is the city just outside of the gorge. It is possible to get a van all the way into the gorge. If you go public transportation (30RMB), you might have to get on a bus going to Zhongdian and get off at Qiaotou. Thats a 3 hour ride. The best way is to rent a mian bao che. Those are the small little minivans that you see everywhere. They only take 1.5 hours to Qiaotou and will even take you into the gorge for an extra fee. From Lijiang its probably 30RMB per person, but that was with 5 people. If you are alone I don't know. To go to the middle of the gorge from Qiatou it was 100 RMB for a 45 minute ride.

You can start hiking in Qiaotou, guesthouses are spaced less than a days hike apart so you always have a place to sleep. Should be about 25 per bed. We were there in early April, during the day it was quite warm, maybe a long sleeve shirt for night time.

Get back to Lijiang the same way, in a mian bao che, or go on to Zhongdian. From Lijiang or Zhongdian you can find some people to share a Landcruiser to get into Tibet. I think its 5000 RMB per person from Zhongdian. This should include the permit required. You can also fly from Zhongdian I think.

Week with the family

On Saturday 8 April my family; consisting of Mom, Dad, Devon, and Aunt Sherri, flew into Hong Kong and I met them at the airport. We stayed the night across the border in Shenzhen and flew to Kunming the next morning. We were met by Dr. Yin and a friend with a big van. Dr. Yin acted as our host and took care of our every need Sunday and Monday. In Kunming, my family was shocked with the chaotic mix of traffic, bicycles, mopeds, and the occasional horse drawn cart.

At dinner the first night, our host and his wife and friends toasted us in every way about 50 times. It is an interesting Chinese custom. Also, groups of waitresses would wander around, place a napkin in front of an unsuspecting diner, hold him back and pour a bowl of various minority rice wines into his mouth. It was an interesting Chinese custom, they said it was showing your respect for that minority. Dad even got a neck  and shoulder massage from some of the waitresses.

The next day my dad gave a presentation at Dr. Yin's hospital, since Dr. Yin runs the same type of department that my dad works in: Physical medicine and rehabilitation. I bought tickets for all of us to fly to Lijiang that night.

We got into Lijiang around midnight and took taxis to a guesthouse. Our guesthouse was in Lijiang's old city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we walked along cobblestone streets with interesting drainage canals surrounded by walls, and entered the door of a house into an open air courtyard. The courtyard is square with rooms on all sides. The guest house was very simple and nice, with sit down toilets, not the squat loos prevalent throughout China (as an English woman described them). A family of 5 lived there and took good care of us – the grandparents, daughter and son-in-law, and the grandson who was probably just under two years old and quite entertaining. We woke up the next day to an excellent breakfast in the courtyard sitting on small stools at a low table. We washed our clothes and hung them to dry in the courtyard. In the time we were there (3 nights all told), there were a number of other European guests that came and went. Otherwise, we rarely saw anyone but Chinese folks.

Tuesday we walked around the old city, which is all cobblestone streets, no cars, and open air stores everywhere. It basically caters to tourism, because there are tons of Chinese tourists. So we just walked, and I acted as translator and negotiator. Sometimes we ended up paying way too much despite my hard- nosed bargaining skills. When you are white, you just have to pay the "foreigner tax". Dinner at the guesthouse was cheap and very good. It was great for the members of our party who had fickle stomachs to know that we had solid, good tasting, and easy on the digestive system home cooking waiting for us.

The next day we rented bikes and rode out of Lijiang to a small town called Baisha. This was just a small farming town that had a section of its street set up selling tourist stuff. My mom said it felt like we were stepping back in time 100 years or more. We ate lunch there and then perused the tourist goods. I bargained for some stuff that my family wanted, but I had no sense of real value, so my counter offers were too high. I realized this when people would quickly cut their price and agree to what I thought was a really low offer that they wouldn't take. Oh well.

After the tourist stuff we visited "Dr. Ho", an old Chinese medicine doctor that has a room along the street that is covered with foreign business cards, news articles, and letters from businesses or organizations, one I saw was the American Biographical association. One guidebook I read mentioned him. Apparently John Cleese met him once, sparking the quote: "interesting bloke; crap tea."  So my dad talked with him and later he gave Aunt Sherri some powder because Devon mentioned she had an upset stomach. However Aunt Sherri said her stomach was fine and refused to take it later in the day sparking a debate about Chinese medicine and cleanliness. I didn't blame her.

So we were flagged down by an old lady wearing the same traditional looking outfit that all the other old ladies wear, and she invited us to her home to chat in Chinese (very few people we met could speak English) . She showed us a notebook of all the foreigners who she had tea with, and they would all leave real nice entries into the book about how it was a great time. So we went, sat down, drank tea, she forced us to take pictures of Devon dressed in traditional clothes, and chatted. Before leaving, we were debating if we should pay and how much. There was nothing mentioned in her comment book about money. So we offered 10 RMB as we were leaving, that's what I thought was appropriate if we were to pay. I never want to give too much because sometimes I feel like the person might think of it as a slight insult, like "I don't need your charity". But then again everyone is after our money anyway. So it turns out the 10 RMB wasn't enough, she wanted 20, because we took pictures with her. After that we wanted to add to our book entry that we left 20 RMB (she couldn't read the English in the book), but she wouldn't let us, saying that we had written enough. So that's her plan, get them to write in the book before they pay.

The next day we took a bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge, about 3 hours north. The gorge is where the Yangzi river makes its first bend and goes through some serious mountains.

We arrived after 3 hours on the bus, but this was outside the gorge, so we found a guy with a minivan to take us to the middle of the gorge. This ride was a harrowing adventure along the side of a mountain, with maybe a few feet between us and a fun trip way down into the river, on top of what was an unfinished and extremely bumpy road for most of the 45 minutes. It didn't really worry me, I trusted the driver, but what worried me was what was out of our control, like rockslides. And we definitely noticed evidence of them. I'll mention that now that my family is home, I didn't want to mention it while we still had the ride out of the gorge to complete.

So Tiger Leaping Gorge is pretty sweet, on either side of the river you have the steep slopes of mountains going up. On our side, there is terraced farmland working its way up to the road, where our guesthouse was, and it continued further up to the peaks on our side. On the other side it was sheer rock face all the way to the top. Semi distant peaks had snow on them, but the weather was mildly warm. The small village of Walnut Garden consisted of our guesthouse, one a little bit down the road, and a bunch of farm houses going from above us down to the river. So we ate and went to sleep.

The next day my dad, mom, Devon, and myself got a guide to take us on a 3½ hour hike up to a waterfall and down back to the road on the other side of the ridge. It was a fairly intense hike; the beginning was basically vertical past wheat terraces. Then we started traversing and walked along some small irrigation stream that had been made, leading us to the waterfall. From there we basically slid down hill through a bamboo forest and made our way back to the road. I thought all of the views were great. Pictures are already on Flickr.

We went back to the guest house in Lijiang, leaving the gorge in another minivan, on the inside lane this time! The next morning we flew back to Kunming with their flights for Shenzhen scheduled for later that day. My parents were kept at a huge tea market for a long time by Dr. Yin and we ended up being pretty rushed at the airport because my Aunt Sherri, who married last year and now has a new name, but whose passport still has her maiden name, was held up because the ticket I gotten her had her new name on it. So Dr. Yin somehow managed to take care of it while we held our breath. After that my family took off and I wondered if they would make the flight and the ensuing hotel, buses and trains they had to take without me , but I got no phone calls and no emails until they were home in VA. Regarding the ticket issue, over dinner with a bunch of his friends and myself, Dr. Yin told me that if we weren't white foreigners my aunt would still have been in Kunming. So it was a great week.

Yangshuo

So now that my family has left for China and won't read my blog until the week is over, I'm going to say that the overnight bus ride I just took was kind of a pain in the rear. The bus was about as nice as the come, a brand new Volvo sleeper bus. But no amount of Swedish engineering can protect one from roads that I have a feeling have potholes on purpose. First of all, a 300 mile trip took about 12 hours. Yes we stopped a few times, and real early in the morning we let half the bus off at one city, but thats averaging 25 miles per hour. Unless its a brand new highway, Chinese roads either a. don't have lanes, or b. the # of lanes is dynamic, depending on how many vehicles are passing each other at once. For example one time it was 3 lanes going one way: a bus passing a truck, and a sedan passing the bus at the same time. The other direction was reduced to a bicycle lane. The road we were on while I was awake was only traveled by passenger buses and industrial trucks, a different sort than 18 wheelers in the US. Thats what its like late at night. We never got going too fast because we had to slow down every 200-300 meters for what seemed like planned 10 meter segments of deep potholes. In fact it was just unfinished road. The reason I think it was planned is because of the distinct edge between where they had poured concrete and this pothole field. Maybe its a way to keep people from speeding? But I don't need to complain because I got to sleep fine and the bed was adequately comfortable. We'll see how my family reacts to taking a sleeper bus in Yunnan province. Aunt Sherri said only trains or planes but my mom doesn't want to fly, and there are no trains where we are going... They arrive in Hong Kong tomorrow and I will go pick them up.

I'm back in Shenzhen now after an awesome 2 weeks in a place called Yangshuo, near the city of Guilin in Guangxi province, southern China. I went to Yangshuo seeking rock climbing after tasting it in Thailand. I read online that this was THE place in China for it so I went. On the overnight train there I awoke to rain and the normal overcast China sky accompanied by an uninspiring landscape of muddy farmland. I said to myself, "why the rush to get back to China? You could have gone back to the beach in Thailand and climbed for just as long without the expensive trip to Hong Kong, and you know the people down there, they are fun." Anyways, so I had to take another bus to the city of Yangshuo which brought me into a much nicer countryside, with Karst topography (small mountains with rocky cliffs and no mountain ranges, looks like they were pushed straight up out of the ground). So I walked through this town to my guesthouse, along the tourist street which was lined with cafes with western menus and your normal fake North Face jacket shops, silk clothing stores, etc. The good thing is that I love fake North Face jackets, you never know when you will see an exceptionally good one or a new brand or new design.

I think I've said this before but I stayed at the Karst Hotel, owned by the Chinese girl that owns the Karst Cafe and Karst Climbers, a rock climbing guide service. So this girl named Echo spoke fluent English and I went climbing with her and her other guide, a Chinese guy named Ajia. I climbed for 3 days and rested on Sunday. Some other people went along with us, 2 Chinese girls that climbed every now and then and a foreign girl that was really good at climbing. She had all her own gear so she just tagged along because she was friends with Echo. My hands and forearms were really tired each day, but I improved a lot.

 

After we got home I would just eat a banana pancake and chill. I found a good restaurant to eat Guilin noodles at and would eat 2 bowls each day for a total of 50 cents. One day while I was just chilling in the street out front of the cafe like I always did, kicking the Chinese hacky sack, a group of high school aged girls walked up to me and asked me what my name was and if I had free time to chat with them. So we walked and talked, then went and played some ping pong by the river. These girls were from the "Wisdom Girls English School". They were mostly from nearby Hunnan province and living in Yangshuo studying English. They were interesting to talk to, sometimes they would ask weirdly phrased questions like "During normal times, what forms of entertainment do you like to enjoy?". 

 

So mostly I just chilled, ate the same thing everyday, and went climbing most of the days. The weather alternated between rainy and sunny, but it was good overall. My first room had an interior looking window that received no sunlight so I would sleep straight until noon without waking up at all. So one of the 2 girls that worked the hotel called me a lazy pig. My friend Aidan came to Yangshuo after I had been there a week. I met him in Bangkok. I saw him on the street with a pair of cleats while I was walking to frisbee and said are you going to play ultimate? So yeah, he was in Vietnam and caught a train up to Yangshuo to hang out and then left a few days later for Beijing. We moved to a different room and split the cost. We continued to chill out for a few days, we rented bikes and rode out into the country, saw some farms, went to Moon Hill which is this mountain that forms a bridge at the top that you can walk under, pretty cool. I took him to the Wisdom Girls' Thursday English corner and we had fun getting grilled by the girls with questions like "what about your country?". A reply of "what about China?" usually gets them to ask a more specific question. I gave one of them my email address and now I'm receiving tons of emails in poor English asking if I remember them. I met a ton of different people in different settings so it is really hard to remember individuals. 

 

I met some of the guides from a different company, these were all young Chinese guys, and they received mostly Chinese customers, whereas the others got foreign customers. I hung out with them a bunch and they were really cool. Every girl that I meet says that I look really young and they ask my age. I was sitting in the Chinese guys' climbing shop once and there was an English corner going on at a cafe outside. A girl walked in and said to me, "you look really young, how old are you?" with a serious attitude. I told her I was 38. 

 

So all in all it was 2 weeks of chilling, rock climbing, and eating banana pancakes and rice noodles. I made a lot of friends and was disappointed to leave them. They all asked when I would come back, and I said I don't know. It would certainly be fun to go back, but I want to go to Tibet.

 

Speaking of which I still don't know exactly how I will do that. I don't think its extremely hard, you just arrange a "tour" and go. But my Visa allows me only to stay in China for 30 days at a time. After 30 days I must leave the country and re enter to reset it. Yes its weird, but China does that to Americans since we make it incredibly hard for Chinese to get US visas. So I have 3 weeks left on this stay and am debating going to Tibet and maybe crossing to Nepal, or staying around Yunnan and going to Myanmar or Vietnam to reset and then to Tibet. After that though I have to go back to Beijing, but I will have to reset it yet again. There aren't any easy and cheap countries to go to from Beijing, a train to Mongolia seems like it will be cheaper than flying to Korea. Who knows. 

 

So my family just got on a flight from the US to Hong Kong. I am now in Shenzhen with my friend Lam. Tomorrow I will go to Hong Kong to pick them up from the airport and bring them back to a hotel in Shenzhen. The day after that, Sunday, we wake up and fly to Kunming.


 

Travel: Yangshuo

I went Shenzhen to Guilin on overnight train. Train station is at LuoHu port.

Get into Guilin, walk out of train station and wait for someone to say "Bus to Yangshuo!". Follow them to their bus and pay 10-15 RMB for a ticket. Its private bus but thats ok.

In Yangshuo walk along Xijie and pick a hotel, pay 15-25 for a bed. If you want, go to the Karst Hotel. First go to the Karst Cafe and ask them. http://www.karstclimber.com/ for info about them. You can also go climbing with them for 180 RMB for an afternoon. There are 5 different climbing outfits in Yangshuo, all are good.

I returned to Shenzhen on an overnight bus that I got from one of the numerous travel agents littered around the city. It was a nice bus. But the road was bad.