missruckus's TravelStream™ — Recent TravelPod.com entries TravelStream™ news feed for member missruckus on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/missruckus en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:57:47 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com Food poisoning, strangers and hand pulled noodles — Shanghai, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196509980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196509980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196509980/tpod.html Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:57:47 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Shanghai, China

It's been awhile since I updated this thing. When I had the easy access in Hanoi, I never felt like doing so but now when I've been wanting to write an update, it's not been very convenient to.

So what have I been up to since the last entry?

Lots more just hanging out in Hanoi, including with a new friend I met named Jimmy: fellow Viet Kieu ("outsider Vietnamese") but from California. He's a friend of a friend who has been teaching English in Hanoi for the past year and it was kinda cool to be able to speak in both English (mostly) and Vietnamese (a little) with each other.

More Hanoi stuff: sitting in cafes sipping cafe sua da (strong and delicious Viet iced coffee.. sua = milk, da = ice, cafe = coffee, stupid!), working on my bargaining skills (still crap, but even by virtue of speaking Vietnamese, you get a better deal) while buying souvenir gifts for people and shoe shopping, eating, eating and more eating, visiting the Vietnam Women's Museum (really great exhibit on women from 1945-1975 during anti-imperialist struggles.. amazing and inspiring!), and dealing with food poisoning during my last few days.

One thing I really like about Hanoi is that it is full of lakes. A funny thing is that come night time, they are lined with young couples seeking some alone time together (since most people live with their parents till they get married). The streets also come alive in a different way after dark: young people out in full force, eating and drinking street side and roaring through the streets on motorbikes. The government has been very strict with bars and clubs and legally, they all close pretty early (by midnight or 1:00am), so many youth seem to spend time outdoors instead. The streets are completely dead by 2:00am which is kind of odd to see.

From Vietnam, I made my way to Hong Kong where I spent a few days wandering busy and interesting streets and meeting up for food with friends who live there (Kathy & Anina & a fellow traveler from Toronto named Alex, Heidi, and Yin). I stayed in the Mongkok area in Kowloon, an area I found really interesting: bustling with what seems like gazillions of people, tons of cheap hole in the wall noodle shops, tall weathered buildings with air-conditioning units and laundry hanging from the windows (actually, this is a common sight throughout HK.. a very striking sight with all its uniformity), a market with lots of clothes and shoes, and a certain grittiness I found lacking on the Hong Kong Island side. I much preferred Kowloon to HK Island, the latter of which seems more about money, suits and commerce.

I also went searching for some of my history..

After a lot of research, I went looking for the spots where I might have stepped foot back in 1979. The pier on the west side of Kowloon (maybe Jordan Rd. and seaside area?) where the boat from Vietnam might have landed, and where we might have been forced to stay temporarily until the HK government shipped us off to the Kai Tak East refugee camp. I don't know if I located the right spot because things have changed so much in 28 years, and what was once Stonecutters Island where the Government Dockyards were located has since been annexed to the Kowloon Peninsula (HK is a "natural" landscape full of human-created land reclamations). I hopped on a bus and sought out the rough area where I think Kai Tak East might have been too, now an area with new building developments. The old Kai Tak airport has been torn down and new construction is taking place now too. If my sleuthing is correct, the Kai Tak East camp might have been located in the former Royal Air Force station.. but I think that building may be gone now too. Instead, all I could find were parking lots, a new soccer (football!) stadium, and Kowloon Bay park. I can't help but wonder if any of these sits on the old site of the place where my family lived behind barbed wire all those years ago.

I am now in Shanghai after a late night flight via Shenzhen (a big Chinese city an hour's fast ferry ride from HK). Arrived in Shanghai Pudong airport at midnight and it was a bit challenging trying to figure out how the hell to get from the nearly empty airport to my hostel (an hour away in the city centre) without resorting to an expensive 150RMB taxi ride (all while a cab driver tried to convince me that there was no other way to get there.. but I was on to him since I'm familiar with how cabbies tend to be outside of airports in Asian cities). Hopped on a night shuttle bus to Renmin (People's) Square (19RMB) and cabbed it from there to my hostel (15RMB). Finally got there around 2:00am.

Wandered around today with an American guy named Tristan that I met from here. Nice enough guy and easy to get along with but I can tell we really differ in our politics and worldview, so I chose to mostly keep quiet about it to avoid pointless conflict with someone I'm never going to see again. When travelling solo, it's nice to be able to break up the solo time with human interaction so I usually find myself hanging out with people I might not necessarily hang out with back home. We had noodles for dinner near the hostel and I sweated with exertion for the guy who made our Lanzhou style hand-pulled noodles.. so much muscle work!

Also, people here all seem to think I'm Chinese so speak to me in Mandarin and all I can do is stare at them blankly with a weak smile (though I have learned to say "I don't understand" now). In HK, it was nice to be able to understand some of it (though I could only speak back sometimes.. like ordering food or asking how much something cost, etc.). In Vietnam, few people seemed to believe I was Vietnamese, even after speaking to them in Vietnamese. After asking a xe om driver to take me to my uncle's very untouristy neighbourhood in perfect Vietnamese, he asked me if I was Korean or Japanese! I don't think I look like either. At least Chinese makes sense since that's in my blood too, though when I look at other Chinese people, I don't see myself looking back at me. I think who you are is often also how you feel, and I feel much more Vietnamese than Chinese, with language playing a big part in this, as well as the predominant culture I grew up with back home (though I grew up with aspects of both too, often sometimes having no idea which was from which culture.. still don't always know!).

I'm currently at a free stand-up computer terminal (but way too high for my short self!) in the busy, smoke-filled lounge area of the hostel with beer guzzling travellers all sitting behind me.

More later, plus photos...

Oh, and if you're reading this, please post a comment or sign my guestbook so I know who my audience is! Thanks!
]]> From the other side of the ocean... — Toronto, Ontario, Canada http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1198487100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1198487100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1198487100/tpod.html Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:11:59 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I am back in Canada now, but thought I would write one final entry to fill you in on the last part of my trip...

Upon arriving in Yangshuo by bus, I was dropped off in the middle of town, by the side of the road and I had no idea where I was. My bad Mandarin skills came in handy again when I asked people how to get to Xi Jie (West Street.. aka: "Foreigner's Street") and luckily, the town is small enough so you can walk almost everywhere. Xi Jie and the few lanes and streets surrounding it are the touristy parts of town where you can find most accommodations, cafes and restaurants catering to tourists, souvenir shops, etc. It looks all pretty and the buildings look more traditional, but I was told it was likely all built to look appealing to tourists.. who knows though! It's probably true because there is no reference anywhere about it being any sort of historic area of town, even though it looks like it.

I checked in at a hostel and spent the rest of my days wandering the streets. Yangshuo is a laid-back town with beautiful limestone karsts surrounding it. I can't believe people get to wake up to that sight everyday and it's normal for them!

My hostel dorm room had 9 beds in total, but it being low tourist season, only two others were there that first night.. unfortunately, they were an annoying, giggly and probably new hetero young couple who came back late that first night and proceeded to HAVE SEX IN THE SAME FREAKIN' ROOM I WAS SLEEPING IN. Well, almost the same room.. the room was divided into two parts, with a 2-metre long 'hallway' separating the two parts. Luckily, the sex didn't last too long (haha) and I was gonna say something out loud when they were done after I was done feeling traumatized (something to the effect of "next time, get your own fucking room!"), but decided to be more discreet (and maybe embarrass them less?) by leaving a note the next day on my way out instead, and then request to change rooms. The next morning though, a new guy moved into the room so I decided I was going to stay, thinking they wouldn't dare do it again with more people in the room, but I left a note for them anyway. You see, it would have cost them maybe $8 each at most to get a basic, private room. Sure, $4 for a dorm bed is cheaper, but come on!

Anyway, the next day, I signed up for a boat tour on the scenic Li River (more limestone karsts!), somewhere between the nearby town of Xingping and Guilin.. and who should also be on the tour as well, but the giggly young couple. I think they were embarrassed so we didn't acknowledge each other's existence the whole time.. haha. I have to admit I felt kind of sorry for them when i saw them the next day.. they looked so harmless and couldn't be a day older than 21, and after all, they were just a young couple in newfound love (lust?).. but still.. GET YOUR OWN ROOM! They stayed put though (plus, another person also moved into our room.. yay!) and no more sex happened while I was there.

The boat ride was okay, but it was really, really chilly. The kind of cold you get in all these places I've been to in China is a different kind than I'm used to in Toronto.. it's the (damp?) kind that gets under your skin, no matter how many layers you're wearing. Plus, there's no indoor heating so you can't just go warm up anywhere, aside from in the shower if you have hot water. During the boat ride, I spoke to the new guy that just moved into our room: a 30-year-old (or thereabouts) Chinese guy from Chengdu (but working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) named Shu. I ended up hanging out with Shu for the rest of my time in Yangshuo and I was glad to have some company again after a few days of talking to myself. We went for food, beer, and the next day, rented mountain bikes to cycle around the surrounding countryside, along the Yulong River.

What a beautiful ride it was (though my butt and knees hurt afterwards!).. we got lost among the rice paddies (literally, actually), and biked along very bumpy dirt roads through small villages, past limestone karsts (and crawled into some of the cave parts) and various other scenes of rural China.

After returning to town that evening, I hopped on a "luxury" sleeper bus to Shenzhen so I could get back to Hong Kong before my journey home. The bus had 3 rows and 2 levels (bunk bed stylee) of really narrow and short beds all down the length of the bus.. and somehow managed to fit 40 horizontal people! Only in China, right? I wondered how the big, tall white guy at the back of the bus possibly managed to fit into one of these things. Anyway, the bus departed and we got to endure chain smoking (of course) staff at the front of the bus all night, a driver who seemed to like to make the bus lurch, and numerous stops for pee breaks. I also always seem to be located right next to carsick people who throw up on buses and this time was no different. The woman next to me spent the morning puking into a bag, as did the woman sleeping in the bunk above mine. I slept only a bit during the 12 hours, and upon arriving in Shenzhen, spent more than an hour or so trying to find my way to the Luo Hu/Lu Wo border. Walked across to Hong Kong and made my way back to Mongkok where my China adventures began.

It felt great to be back in HK! I really like HK, and wish I had more time to explore not only the urban areas, but the beaches and outlying islands too. I spent a few days wandering around Central and Sheung Wan with Yin (as well as a visit to an indie music store in Causeway Bay), eating vegetarian dim sum (YUM!) and probably far too many egg tarts. I am addicted to egg tarts in general and they make 'em damn good in HK! I also did some shopping cuz clothes seemed ridiculously cheap to me in some of the stores and markets of Mongkok, ate some more veg dim sum and egg tarts, wandered around trendy SoHo, rode up the uneventful Mid-Levels Escalator in Central (the longest outdoor escalator in the world.. except it's not one escalator, but several parts of one big escalator unit that takes you up the hill and past many lanes in SoHo)... and missed my planned daytrip to Macau cuz I got started too late in the day to make it worthwhile. Woops!

The next day, I boarded a plane back to Toronto.. except it was bound for Anchorage (Alaska) first for a cabin crew change and re-fueling. On the way to Asia at the start of my trip, passengers just stayed on the plane while this happened, but not this time. The most stupid thing in the whole wide world is that although every single person on the plane was bound for Toronto, we all had to get off and go through US customs (they had their desks in the waiting area), even though none of us were planning on staying in the US.. and some people got fingerprinted and photographed, even though none of them were planning on staying in the US. I somehow didn't have to so I suspect they were doing it to non-Canadian passport holders. I would have felt really violated having to go through that if I had zero intention of staying in the fucking US of A. Anyway, we then board the same freakin' plane and departed one hour after we landed. That extra level of bureaucracy made absolutely no sense at all (except for collecting data on people for "security" purposes?). There also seemed to be increased security when I arrived in Toronto, with customs officials questioning everyone before we even hit the official customs area where we got questioned again. So what big "terrorist" threat did I miss while I was away?

And now here I am back in Toronto, jetlagged and still awake.. awake.. awake..



P.S. A few things I forgot to mention throughout this journey (that is going to make this entry way too long!):

LINE-UPS...
People in China don't line up unless they are forced to by virtue of physical structures that force people to stand in neat lines (like for the first few spots in front of the ticket booths at the Kunming train station).. a big mass of people usually all descend upon whatever it is everyone is after (toilet stall, entrance to boarding gate at airport, door to bus, ticket booth, food counter, etc.). I knew this in advance and it didn't bother my Canadian-orderly-sensibilities at all, except this one time when I had to piss really badly and this woman from behind me nabbed the toilet first. Lack of queuing seems nonsensical through our culturally biased eyes, so I was trying to think of a comparison here, and realized that we do the same thing at bars and clubs. Everyone stands at the bar in one big mass waiting to be served, and we never think of this as being nonsensical, even when someone else gets served before us (sometimes anyway!).. so this is what it feels like when not lining up in China. A friend of mine wondered if it harkens back to the days of scarcity in China.. if you wait at the end of the line, everything would be gone by the time your turn came up! Maybe?

TOILETS (AGAIN)...
A few entries back, I had said I didn't mind squat toilets in public washrooms. Well, I have since been educated during my journeys through the many washrooms of China. The worst are the trough toilets because there is seldom any sort of flushing mechanism in the public washrooms. The worst ones seem to be in bus stations. A few times, I tried to be all cool but then felt myself nearly gagging as I unzipped my pants and squatted in the wide open trough toilet stall while trying not to look at a very nasty pile or two of someone else's shit and bloodied maxi pads in the trough below me. Trough toilets are stalls (usually with no door, of course) with one big long trough in the ground that runs through all the stalls, and ends in some ominous place beyond, where who-knows-what happens to the waste.. so you get to see the piss of whomever is in the stall ahead of you running through your section of the trough as you squat (sideways, so everyone can see your bare ass.. but like with men's urinals (I guess), everyone politely averts their eyes) to relieve yourself. It's not usually the squat toilets themselves that I dislike, but the fact that in public washrooms, they can be very, very nasty. The one good trough toilet I encountered was in the Tiger Leaping Gorge guesthouse.. there was a big bucket of water that you used to "flush" the toilet with afterwards. I happily squatted and did my thang here while peacefully looking out at the snow-capped mountain top of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain...

MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS IN HANOI...
Every morning at around 7:00 or 7:30am, speakers all over the city blare out really monotonous state-sponsored propaganda speeches about how to be a good citizen, reminding you to keep your house clean, obey the law, etc.etc.. and everyone just goes about their morning activities as the PA sounds out across the city.

FOOD...
I sent this in an email to an old housemate who is a food fanatic as well, but thought I ought to share what I pigged out on while in Asia. Here are some things I enjoyed eating:

-steamed dumplings of many kinds (including Tibetan dumplings called Momos that were filled with curried vegetables)
-hand-pulled Lanzhou style noodles (stir-fried with potatoes, tomatoes and egg) while in Shanghai
-Muslim flatbread in Dali, especially when spread with spicy sauces and filled with veg mixtures & these deep fried dough things (that you normally eat with congee)
-potato dumplings in Lijiang (the outside was deep fried and made with potato flour, I think, and stuffed with some fillings.. I think this was Naxi cuisine)
-some type of mushroom/fungus thing that was kinda meaty and stir-fried with some veggies (again, Naxi cuisine)
-Laksa at an Indonesian/Malaysian place in Hong Kong (not quite Chinese, but still..)
-many egg tarts from bakeries in Hong Kong
-vegetarian dim sum! This made me very happy cuz I got to eat veg versions of stuff I miss like Ha Gow (shrimp dumplings) and Siu Mai (this kind of beef dumpling)
-the best banh cuon (Vietnamese rice flour crepes) ever
-cafe sua da (STRONG Vietnamese iced coffee) in Hanoi
-various Viet veg cuisine at this yummy restaurant in Hanoi called Com Chay Nang Tam
-Japanese curry with croquettes (a deep fried potato thing, filled with veggies) in a food court in Hong Kong
-some other tasty stir-fried or sauteed dishes for dinner and eaten with steamed rice that the cooks just whipped up when I said I was vegetarian and then pointed at some of the vegetables I wanted that they had on display (in Shaxi village.. but also similar stuff during the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek and Yangshuo cuz I was with Chinese-speaking/reading companions who could order properly)
-a dinner of steamed rice, curried potatoes and a spicy eggplant dish that I had in a Naxi restaurant in Lijiang
-a Shanghainese meal that I had not in Shanghai, but in Hong Kong
-my aunt's perfect congee when I was recovering from food poisoning in Hanoi
-my aunt's dinners in general (she's a great cook!), including this tasty stew of vegetarian snails(!) and green bananas (skins and all.. I had no idea green bananas were edible, but they are tasty when cooked, kinda like green plantain).. and this Viet-style scrambled eggs & tomato dish that was nothing like Western scrambled eggs at all (kinda saucy rather than with egg chunks).. I loved it cuz it reminded me a bit of the crab & egg topping in bun rieu (crab noodle soup) that I miss soooo much.
-corn-flavoured soymilk from supermarket-bought Tetrapak drinking boxes in Hanoi. No, really.

Those are some of the tasty dishes I had that I can remember. It sounds like I ate pretty well, but there were definitely one too many days when I felt like I was gonna lose a gazillion pounds (and apparently, I did lose weight.. booo) cuz I found it a bit hard to find veg-friendly food without being able to speak the language or read the menus. When I told them I was vegetarian, they would often bring me out really boring food, like fried rice or noodle soup with nothing but green onions in it (and sometimes meat stock.. hmmm), even though I know that a lot of Chinese food is veg-friendly.. but without being able to read the menus, there's not much you can do! Also, the serving sizes seem smaller in both China and Vietnam, and most things are so darn low in fat and calories..
]]> On the home stretch.. and looking for bits of home — Yangshuo, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197874200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197874200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197874200/tpod.html Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:08:17 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Yangshuo, China

At an internet cafe again trying to upload my photos. This can only mean one thing: I have a lot of time on my hands again, and not much to do today. I'm in Yangshuo now, just south of the infamous Guilin (the place that features a lot in scenic images you see of China, with the Li River and limestone karsts). I got here early this morning from Beihai, after a mostly sleepless night on a non-sleeper bus (i.e. upright seats) and they kept stopping for bathroom breaks (good for obvious reasons, but also bad cuz it meant you kept getting woken up from your already bad sleep). Arrived in Guilin around 5:30am, and hopped on a bus headed to Yangshuo, an hour away. Yangshuo seems like a nice town so far, but like Dali, there are not many tourists here, it seems.. so it will be a lonely few days before I head back to Hong Kong, I think. I plan to go for a bike ride outside of town (to see the limestone karsts, rice paddies and bridges) and hopefully not get mugged all by my lonesome (reports of people getting robbed at knifepoint on one of the hills that I probably don't intend to go up), and possibly go on a rockclimbing trip before I leave too!

It's my last week in China.

So, what happened in Qinzhou? I met up with Jamie and her partner Scott, both Americans, for food. They'd been in the city as English teachers for the past 4 months so far. They were nice enough people, but again, I'm not so sure we would be friends in the real world. Anyway, Jamie was excited to go on this detective mission with me to find my grandmother's birth village. She told me that a Chinese friend of hers who grew up in Qinzhou City had tried to locate the village on a map but could not find it, so we didn't know if it existed as it was anymore (new name? subsumed into the city proper since then?). As it turned out though, it was a lot easier to find than either of us expected, and I think what was good for me was to just have company as I ventured into the unknown.

First of all, everyone we encountered on the journey was very friendly and helpful, despite the language barrier, and it is thanks to them that we found the village at all.

Jamie suggested I start out by asking one of the drivers of the "3-wheelers" (what she and Scott called one of the local modes of taxi transportation.. somewhat similar to the ones in Yunnan). Everywhere I've been in Asia so far, taxi (of whatever kind) drivers are almost always men, but in Qinzhou, it seemed that quite a large number of the 3-wheeler drivers were women (same with the rickshaw drivers in Beihai). We showed her the Chinese characters for Dazhi Town which is within the same area as White Pigeon Village. She seemed to recognize both so we hopped in and for 7 yuan, off we went. We were amazed at how cheap it was so we figured it must mean it was a lot closer than we thought.. but when she dropped us off at the minibus station, we finally understood that we had to take a minibus to get there. The women in the booth seemed to know about both places and luckily, it seemed that Cantonese was the local dialect (though Jamie said young people spoke Mandarin more. The area used to be part of Guangdong Province until the border was changed in the 1950s) so I could communicate a little bit better. They directed us to take a bus to Dazhi Town and from there, we could get to the village. Exciting.. the village still existed and we were going to find it!

The driver assured us he could help us and off we went on bumpy dirt roads for what seemed like almost an hour through rural areas outside of the city. Finally, we arrived in Dazhi Town, a very dusty town that was bustling on a Saturday so I assumed it must be market day and villagers from the area probably descend on the town on that day. The driver explained to the woman who ran the hair salon outside the spot we stopped at where we were trying to go (I think everyone is just very friendly in this town) and I explained what I was trying to do in my broken Cantonese. She got on her cell phone (I swear, everyone and their moms love their cell phones in China) and made a call, then invited us to sit in her salon and wait.. so I assumed she must have arranged a ride for us. She also explained to me that someone she knew (a relative perhaps? I didn't fully understand) was also from this town.. I think. Anyway, our driver showed up and after asking how much it would cost, Jamie and I hopped on the back of his motorbike and away we went, even further into dusty, rural dirt roads.

After awhile, we stopped and he told us we were at the very rural White Pigeon Village. We were on the main road (an unpaved, dirt road) with a couple of small houses surrounding it.. and that seemed to be it. Chickens and cows crossed the road, and occasionally, a bike, 3-wheeler or motorbike would pass by. A couple of kids stared at us. Our driver got out and said something I could only half understand about looking for someone to find our person, or something like that. I tried to explain I wasn't really looking for anyone, that I just wanted to look around.. but he had gone ahead already, and was talking to several of the locals who were outside one of the houses as I was thinking to myself, "Wow, I'm really here!" I told everyone my grandma's name and this tiny old woman seemed to know who she was! From what I could make out (damn, do I wish I was better at Cantonese!), she was recalling how my grandma left town (back in the late 1930s or early 1940s) and it more or less fit the story I was told before I left Canada. I couldn't believe it! I tried to ask her to write her name down for me but she sort of just looked at the paper and I realized that she might not be able to read or write either (just like my grandmother), so i just found out her surname (Wong), and took a photo with her so I could show my grandparents. She said something abut my grandma being the 4th something (gah.. damn my Cantonese!) and she was the 3rd. Soon after, we bid farewell and headed back to Dazhi Town.

In Dazhi Town, Jamie and I walked around for a bit and she being white (and the town being a place that I'm sure no tourists ever go, much less white people), got a lot of stares (though apparently not as much attention as she normally gets in the city, she said). We bought some tasty snacks from a friendly street vendor and eventually, boarded a bus back to Qinzhou City. Another thing with her being white was that she had two different women tell her that she was beautiful (one on the bus, and one in the village) and I'm fully aware how this has much to do with the colour of her skin because for example, the woman on the bus stroked her arm as she looked longingly at her skin. This sort of thing happened a lot while I was travelling through Southeast Asia with a white friend several years ago too. White privilege/supremacy will follow you wherever you go, in any corner of the world. And if your skin isn't white enough, you can just pop into any store or market stall in Asia that sells cosmetics and buy any one of a gazillion brands of creams and lotions, all promising to whiten your skin...

Mission accomplished, as soon as I got back into town, I bid farewell and thank you to Jamie and boarded the bus-that-was-leaving-in-15-minutes to my next stop: Beihai.

Beihai is the small city an hour and a half away from Qinzhou and right on the southern coast of Guangxi Province that our boat docked at for a month while enroute to Hong Kong back in 1979. Apparently, there is a large "Vietnamese" population that lives there because that was where they settled after the mass exodus from Vietnam. I put "Viet" in quotation marks because you see, the exodus from the North usually had to do with being forced by the Vietnamese State to flee if you were of Chinese ethnicity (known as the "Hoa" minority in Vietnam).. but upon arriving in HK or China, these people were/are labeled as "Vietnamese". So where is home anyway?

I settled in at a found-a-cockroach-in-the-bathroom hotel (yes, again.. though the price was double that of Qinzhou's) and the next day, set off for the harbour and beach areas, in search of another kind of past. That is, after having a helluva time finding something vegetarian-friendly to eat (ended up picking the meat out of a plate of noodles and trying not to think about the meat grease that the noodles were dripping in) and finding the stop for bus #3 that would take me to Silver Beach.

Silver Beach is a lovely strip of beach at the southern end of town with fine, white sand and lots of fully-clothed people under umbrellas even though it was perfect and warm out. I was wearing a sleeveless top (one of my few clean articles of clothing), but I had my hoodie on and didn't want to take it off even though I was sweating because of my conspicuous, big honking dragon tattoo. I just didn't want the stares and comments like I got when in Vietnam.. I just wanted to blend into the background. So I walked around and sweated a lot, got to see the nice beach, and also the harbour areas (I found two) where gazillions of old wooden fishing boats (and homes?) are docked. I read that the Viet community could be found by the harbour, and I suspect this was it but I was feeling too shy and insecure about my crummy Cantonese language abilities to ask anyone. Anyway, the sight of all those boats was pretty intense, and there were a few large ones I clamoured around that seemed to be "shipwrecked" and abandoned. I also saw women wearing the conical Vietnamese hats around the beach, selling souvenirs like (fake?) pearl jewelry.

The funny thing as well is that one of these boat "neighbourhoods" was literally right next to the bridge that you cross to enter Silver Beach. The city is obviously trying to increase tourism because of this beach, and all along the other side of the road and waterfront are fancy new pastel-coloured resorts and hotels (in the most hideous architectural designs). And an even funnier thing is that right behind these fancy new buildings are little old houses (with chickens walking around, and pigs oinking in their sheds), obviously the remnants of the poor neighbourhoods that I'm sure will not be around much longer if gentrification rears its ugly head even further. I read in my older version of the Lonely Planet guidebook that the old neighbourhoods around the harbour are nice to walk around, but I suspect much of these old areas no longer exist. On the bus ride back, I noticed construction project after construction project, with older-looking houses and buildings wedged around them (soon to disappear forever?). Again, this is the new China...

Oh, and by the way, I have noticed that people in southern Guangxi look a lot like Vietnamese people, which makes sense since the Vietnam border is here.. so I feel like I (or at least my family) looks more like the people here, unlike when I was in Shanghai or Yunnan.
]]> Rural farmland, Disneyland, and perilous journeys — Kunming, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197477180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197477180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197477180/tpod.html Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:26:31 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Kunming, China

I'm now back in Kunming. Got here yesterday afternoon after a 7-hour bus journey from Lijiang (complete with 'free' bottled water and lunch, bad Chinese comedy movies, and a poor older woman feeling carsick and puking a lot near me), and have been doing nothing so far.. it's nice to take a "holiday" from travelling every so often! Since arriving, I've just been chillin' at this laidback hostel (with a nice rooftop terrace!) and haven't left the place yet... just been doing stuff like uploading my pics, catching up with some emails and doing other online stuff, writing in my handwritten travel journal, reading, eating, and chatting with people (a Viet-American man who will be returning to Vietnam for the first time in 10 years, and a Chinese-American man that I also bumped into in Dali who has been travelling since retiring 4 years ago). I'm actually going to leave the hostel after I finish with this entry and wander around a bit. At 7:31pm, my train departs for Nanning in Guangxi Province and I arrive in the morning. I then hop immediately (I hope!) on a bus for Qinzhou and begin the hunt for my grandma's village. Before I left for Asia, I had made contact via internet with a Westerner who is in Qinzhou teaching English and she said her friends may be able to help me find this mystery village. The kindness of strangers...

The problem with Qinzhou for me is I have zero info about it. It is not listed in my guidebook and I cannot seem to find any accomodations or bus info online. Once I get there, I think I will just walk around the bus station and try to find cheap accomodations near there (hopefully, that will exist!), and then find a phone to call the kind stranger.

Anyway, from Dali, I had hopped on the #8 local bus back to Xiaguan.. I decided it might be easier than trying to identify the bus to Jianchuan from the side of the road and flagging it down, but in hindsight, I was wrong. I got off when I saw what seemed to be the centre(-ish) of Xiaguan, where I saw a street sign that appeared on my bad Lonely Planet map (though I had no idea where on the map I actually was) and where I saw a market, thinking that might be near where I had caught the bus when I first arrived (within walking distance to the bus station). Of course, what really happened was I think I got off at the wrong place and was a bit lost because I had no idea where the heck I was... so I approached someone on the street, uttered a few badly pronounced Mandarin words, made wild gestures and pointed to the words for "bus station". He turned out to be very friendly and responded with some incomprehensible Mandarin (while I nodded as if I understood), and made his own wild gestures back. He pointed and made gestures that I read to mean street light, lead me across the street and pointed some more. I walked in the direction he pointed in and eventually, I stumbled across the bus station, went to the ticket booth and pointed at the words for "Jianchuan" and it turned out minibuses for Jianchuan left from another station. She scribbled some words down in my notebook and we managed to communicate sans common language that I was to show a taxi driver what she wrote. I eventually made it to the right place and boarded a minibus to Jianchuan...

There are several forms of transportation in China, of which buses are one, but there are several kinds of buses. The one I took from Lijiang to Kunming was the upper crust of buses.. had all the amenities you need (like a toilet), air vents, buttons to push to call the attendant, and wide, comfy seats (like first class flight seats).. and you can't smoke on them. Minibuses are smaller buses that have no amenities, seats made for Asian asses (I saw with my own eyes how 5 Asians managed to fit in 5 small seats in the back, but how 4 white Westerners took up the same 5 seats), sometimes more passengers than available seats (they just sit in the aisle with the luggage), and you can smoke to your heart's content.. and there is always at least one chain smoker on them. Through all my travels in China so far, I've always seemed to be the only Westerner on the buses, except for the bus to Qiaotou for Tiger Leaping Gorge (more on the gorge later). I have also been appreciating being able to "blend in" more, with people just thinking I'm Chinese. I have also lost all sense of the fear I felt when I first arrived in Kunming that night awhile back. There isn't much to fear here.. it's all in my mind and I feel fear usually because I impose fear on myself while projecting things onto other people just because I'm in an unfamiliar place where I don't speak the language.

Anyway, several hours later, I arrived in Jianchuan, found a minivan that had the Chinese characters for "Shaxi" on the windshield, and when it was full to the content of the driver (only took about 30 minutes), we drove off for an hour through some spectacular valley and mountain scenery (and very bumpy roads) to Shaxi Village.

Shaxi Valley is nestled amongst several small mountains, and is basically rural farmland otherwise. There are several Bai villages that are all within walking distance (through the fields) from each other. It was also one of the most peaceful and magical places I have ever been to. I arrived around 4:30pm, when the sun was low in the sky and casting a golden glow on everything, making it all look extra magical. Unfortunately, arriving so late also meant catching only the tail end of the big market that happens every Friday in Shaxi.. people from all around make their way to Sideng Market to buy, sell, and socialize. I missed even the tail end though because upon arriving, I walked around for way too long, trying to find this one guesthouse I had heard about that is owned by a local schoolteacher who speaks English and who can be your guide on treks around the area. Eventually, I just settled for one of the other guesthouses instead (I saw about 5 or so in the village.. quite a lot considering how few travellers stop here, and how small the village itself is). I stayed in the most expensive (and beautiful) room because i thought that was all there was since they only showed me the one, and I never thought to ask if they had a cheaper room (which they did). I suspect this guesthouse (called Laomadian Lodge) is owned by a Westerner: rustic looking decor & furniture on purpose and strictly for aesthetic value, Western toilet, heat lamps in the shower, an actual shower stall, etc. There were only 6 people (4 of whom were travelling together) at this guesthouse, and I suspect we were also the only travellers in the village at all.

I spent the last remaining hours of sunlight, and the next morning walking around the amazing old streets of the village with its ancient wood & stone buildings, cobblestone roads, and people just living their everyday lives (it's a very quiet place), and walked through some of the pathways in the farmland surrounding the village, feeling very happy, at peace, and completely mesmerized by the magic of the place. The villages in Shaxi Valley are being restored with funding provided by some Swiss organizations. Walking around Shaxi Village, I saw a lot of the local people engaging in construction, and I assume this is all part of the reconstruction project. Apparently, the local people are generally happy about this because it means possibly increasing the socio-economic status of the place (through tourism, I assume), as well seeing their old, run-down buildings get fixed up. However, as I will later discover in Lijiang, restoration projects and the tourism it brings can also have a very bad side. I cannot imagine Shaxi being a big tourist spot anytime soon though, due to how relatively out of the way it is, and how 'bad' the roads are.

I would have loved to stay longer but decided to leave that afternoon for Lijiang because time on my trip is running out, and because not staying at the original guesthouse I meant to stay at (which I ended up finding later on during my wanderings), I didn't have much to do by myself (my original plan was to spend a day or more exploring the area with a guide or a group).

I waited in a minivan (driven by a young woman.. yay! Very rare for women here to be drivers, it seems) on the main strip till enough people got in it, bid farewell to the Tea Horse and Caravan Trail and headed back to Jianchuan where I caught a bus to Lijiang. Lijiang is a city that was settled by Naxi people 1400 years ago, and has a modern part (where most of the locals live), much of which had to be rebuilt after an earthquake totalled the new parts of the city.. but left the ancient buildings of the old part of town intact. After that, the old town was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and fully restored. The restoration, along with better roads leading to the city meant that there was a huge increase in tourism. This was both a blessing and a curse because it meant increased standards of living to some of the Naxi people through their employment in the tourist industry or opening up businesses catering to tourists.. but many of the Naxi people were also displaced by this tourism, with many of them moving out of the old town.

Anyway, I arrived after dark to a lit-up-by-red-lights old town overrun by tourists (most of whom are Chinese, actually). After peaceful and untouristy Shaxi, this was a big disappointment. I knew Lijiang would be touristy but I didn't realize the extent of it. Almost every shop seemed to cater to tourists, with the 'real life' of the place seemingly nowhere to be seen. I checked in at a hostel and hoped that it wouldn't seem so Disney-like in the morning. In daylight, the old town is still very touristy but I found that some real life still exists in small corners if you stray off the main streets and wander through back alleys and to the outskirts of the old town. In all Asian cities, towns and villages I have been to, there always still exists real life stuff, like street kitchens and merchants, markets, stores selling everyday things like dish washing detergent and toilet paper, etc. but in Lijiang, it's harder to find any of this, although you will still occasionally get a peek of someone washing their clothes and vegetables in one of the many canals that run through the old town (the canals used to provide the people with their drinking water, apparently). I felt kind of sad being in Lijiang, knowing about the displacement of local Naxi people by tourism (which I was also contributing to), and knowing how many of the Naxi people were also being displaced by Han people who migrate to Lijiang to set up businesses catering to tourists. Walking around though, I still noticed a lot of the tourist shops were run by Naxi people and if I ate anything or bought anything, I tried to only buy from them. As I sat eating a breakfast of congee, Baba (a Naxi flatbread.. similar to the Muslim flatbread in Dali but flakier), and pickled daikon at a street stall in an alley off a main tourist strip, I wondered if business would be much better for the woman who ran the stall if the place wasn't so touristy since most tourists don't eat at street stalls. For those who have been to Venice (Italy), the old town of Lijiang seems much like Venice to me (aside from more than just the canals): more tourists roam the streets than locals at this point, and many locals actually only commute to the place everyday for work.

I stayed at this youth hostel that was actually pretty pricey for what I got, but I wanted to make sure I met someone(s) to do the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek with, so that was the reason I stayed there. When you get to town, a lot of people will come up to you and try to get you to stay at the guesthouse that they're working for.. they'll show you photos and pamphlets for the place and try to lead you there to show you the rooms. I ended up following one woman to her place.. she quoted me a cheap 50 yuan for a room with bathroom, but I saw that it had signs only in Chinese so I knew few English-speaking tourists that I could trek/communicate with would be there, so I decided not to stay. I felt bad walking out because in desperation, she kept lowering the price.. 40 yuan.. 30 yuan.. and finally, 20 yuan! She must have been confused about why I didn't want to stay, but I couldn't explain to her because I can't speak Mandarin (doh!) or Naxi. The room was much nicer than my crappy one at the 80 yuan/night Ancient Town Youth Hostel, but it was one of the Hostelling International places so I knew I'd have an easier time meeting a trekking partner.

All the next day I didn't meet anyone who was planning to trek the gorge the next day and so I thought I'd have to resort to paying for an expensive (and unnecessary) guide to trek with.. but then at 10:30pm the night before the trek, I met Terence, an 18-year-old guy from Suzhou (a city near Shanghai). We didn't even utter a single word to each other, but as he was leaving the lounge area, he said something to me in Mandarin.. but it turned out he spoke English too, and asked if I wanted to join him at the pub. Off we went to Lamu's House of Tibet (a backpacker cafe/bar/restaurant run by Tibetans) where we met up with 3 other guys (2 from China and 1 from the UK) he had met at the hostel. I managed to convince Terence and Ken (a 24-year-old from Chongqing who is now living in Guangzhou) to depart the next morning with me for a 2-day trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge, a beautiful gorge where the Jinsha River (of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River) runs between two high mountain ranges. A tiger is said to have leaped across the river by jumping on a specific large rock surface (that I saw) in the middle of the gorge, hence the name.

We ended up meeting 4 others (also Chinese, but they didn't speak English) on the bus to Qiaotou, the nearby town where most people begin their trek. We took a minivan down to Tina's Guesthouse, about halfway through the gorge trek, and hiked the Middle Gorge. The upper and lower trails (the lower is actually now a road rather than a trekking trail) are government-funded and maintained (or something like that) but the middle trails were all carved out and are maintained by locals without any government funding. Because of this, they request that you pay additional small fees if you go through the different sections of it, which I thought was pretty fair. We hiked all the way down to the river rapids and then made the ascent up the mountain we had just gone down and soon learned how difficult and often treacherous the trails were! I thoroughly enjoyed climbing dangerous "sky ladders" and edging along the edge of cliffs though and was disappointed when the group opted to turn back and take another path this one time, instead of inching our way along this narrow ledge high up in the mountains. Okay, one wrong step and you'd be toast, but it looked really amazing!

Anyway, we hiked for about 6 hours the first day and my bad knees were in pain, but no pain no gain, right? (I wore my knee braces which helped a bit.) I saw the most beautiful scenery (possibly of my life) as the trail wound around the gorge, through valleys, along mountain ridges thousands(?) of metres above the river rapids, and through/past streams and thundering waterfalls that fell from the sides of the mountains. Amazing.

All along the trail, there are guesthouses and snack stalls (with locals setting up makeshift stalls to sell fruit, water and other snacks) every few kilometres. The trail is also very well-trodden so unless you stray off the path, you won't get lost and barely need a map to guide you. We spent the night at Halfway Guesthouse which was really nice. It was in tiny Bendiwan village (just a few houses) perched on the side of the mountain, with the magnificent Jade Dragon Snow Mountain just outside our dorm room's window. Had dinner and drank local plum wine (strong stuff!) with other fellow tired trekkers, then departed the next morning (with only 5 of us this time) for the rest of our journey.

Being in the Tiger Leaping Gorge and seeing some of the most beautiful things that Mother Nature has given us the privilege of seeing/using/experiencing, I didn't understand how people could throw it all away and damage it, by doing things like building huge dams in order to provide hydro to wealthier areas of the country. For example, the Chinese government has already built the monstrously huge Three Gorges Dam in the Yellow River which has already displaced millions of people and buried huge areas under water (including historical structures and entire villages). There had been (has been?) talk of damming the Yangtze River as well, in order to mostly provide energy to the much wealthier Eastern coastal cities.. which would mean goodbye Tiger Leaping Gorge as we know it, but Ken told me that apparently, enough resistance from people had prevented it from happening. Who knows though. Ken also said his family was one of the ones displaced by the Three Gorges Dam when he was a child, but he said they were not unhappy about it.. they got relocated to a newer area (the whole city was rebuilt or something like that) and got monetary compensation for it. I'm sure for every happy family, there is an unhappy one too though.
]]> Roots in Qinzhou? — Qinzhou, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197679980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197679980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1197679980/tpod.html Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:42:25 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Qinzhou, China

I am in Qinzhou City. My grandmother was born in a village in the prefecture of Qinzhou. Chinese cities apparently don't often just mean the city itself, but also the surrounding area, I think.. I think here, it's divided into towns and then villages. My grandma is from White Pigeon Village, somewhere in the rural parts around here, and I'm going to try and find the place tomorrow.

I took a night train from Kunming (on the top bunk of a hard sleeper). I thought sleep wouldn't really happen, what with the two men in the bottom bunks talking loudly even after they turned off all the lights, and the guy in the top bunk next to mine snoring like a chainsaw.. but after awhile, I passed out till morning. Soon after, we arrived in Nanning, capital city of Guangxi Province. I tried to take the bus to Qinzhou (located south of Nanning), thinking it might be faster and more frequent but it got too confusing what with the departure bus station being nowhere near the train station, so I decided to take a train instead. Headed back to the train station and found out it would not leave for another 4 hours, so I bought my ticket and waited. I thought it might be an hour or so ride, judging by the distance, but as I soon learned, trains can be very slow. We kept stopping at every middle-of-nowhere train station along the way (okay, I know I'm being very city-centric here) and I had no idea when we'd reach Qinzhou, but we finally did after 3 hours. My train carriage was full of chain smokers (of course), and high school kids spitting phlegm and sunflower seed shells onto the ground.

Anyway, upon arriving, I discovered the train station was a bit out of the way from the city centre, and I could see no hotels or guesthouses anywhere, so I hopped on the back of a motorbike taxi and off we went to the vicinity of the bus station where I found a cheap hotel to stay at. I took a look at the room first and it seemed clean enough to me (except the bathroom which was just very marginally clean-ish, but bathrooms in cheap places in China often tend to be less than perfect anyway..) but after coming back from having dinner and flicking on the bathroom light, I found 3 cockroaches! I squished them all with some toilet paper but I feel kinda grossed out.. oh well, it's only one night and I'll survive (I hope)! That's what I get for staying at a 36 yuan/night place near the bus station, I guess. I moved my bed away from the wall a bit to try and prevent getting crawled on at night (ahhhh!) and left the light on in the room to keep them from coming out of hiding while I'm away..

Anyway, I managed to chat briefly on the phone with the English teacher (Jamie) who will be helping me with my mission tomorrow. Gonna meet her tomorrow and off we go! In the meantime, I have nothing to do and found this internet cafe near the hotel, hence this boring entry.

The weather here is very mild which is a nice change from the chilly nights in Yunnan Province (though the days tended to be warm enough.. but no indoor heating + chilly nights = COLD!).

So far, my impression of Qinzhou is that it reminds me more of Southeast Asian cities than any other place I've been to in China so far. The streets are filled with more motorbikes than cars. Driving is more orderly than in Vietnam, but like all Chinese cities, cars have the right of way.. so if you're crossing the road at a green light and some car wants to turn, you'd better watch it cuz the car isn't gonna stop! I read that China has one of the highest incidents of traffic accidents in the world and I'm not surprised. I can't seem to fully figure out if people speak Mandarin or Cantonese here, but I think most people speak both. It's a bit hard to understand the Cantonese though cuz being in Toronto, I'm most familiar with the Hong Kong accent! The strip I'm staying on is full of chain stores, much like other Chinese cities I've seen so far. So far, I've not been too fond of any of the cities I've been to (Shanghai, Kunming) because they seem to have some of the worst elements of consumerist culture everywhere you turn, but Qinzhou seems a bit better (though only a bit). Kunming apparently is almost all new buildings now, what with the old parts of town having been torn down years ago to make way for the new. This is the new China..

p.s. I am gonna add photos now to the previous entry so go back and check it!
]]> Dumplings, chairlifts, mountains and Westerners — Dali, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196939520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196939520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196939520/tpod.html Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:19:06 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Dali, China

It's the end of my second full day in Dali and while it's beautiful and relaxing here, I'm ready to move on.

Dali and the surrounding area is home to predominantly Bai people, an ethnic group that is indigenous to the area since 3000 years ago. In the 8th century, they defeated the Tang imperial army and established the Nanzhou Kingdom which exerted considerable influence in southwest China (with Dali as its main spot) until they were defeated by Kublai Khan in the mid-13th century. It was this invasion of Mongols that apparently brought a Muslim presence in Yunnan Province, but the Bai people remain the main inhabitants of the Dali region. However, like all over China, it is the Han people (the predominant ethnic group in China, and most Chinese you meet around the world will likely be Han, myself included) that exert the most power and control. China's many "minority" and indigenous ethnic groups remain marginalized and generally at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum while Han people prosper on their backs, much like with "minority" and indigenous populations throughout the world (Canada included).

After wandering the beautiful old town and soaking up everything I saw, from the Cang Shan mountain range behind the town, to the historical Bai architecture, to the people going about their daily lives in town, I decided I would spend the following day checking out some of Dali's surroundings. There is not much to do in town itself (aside from wander, check out a couple of museums - none of which I visited - and kick back with a book and a beer or cappucino, yes cappucino - this is a backpackers' haven after all... more on that later - and eat, sleep, buy stuff, pee, etc.) but there are a bunch of things to partake in just outside of town, like visit local nearby villages, markets on certain days of the week (I managed to miss them all), pagodas, Erhai Hu ("Ear-Shaped Lake"), and hike in the mountains. I decided I wanted to do some hiking, but it's never a good idea to do this by yourself in case something goes wrong (plus, there are reports of solo hikers getting robbed on the trails around the Zhonghe Shan/Peak where I intended to go), so I set out on a mission yesterday of finding a fellow traveller to go with... but nothing came of it. I met no one. The town is known to be some sort of "backpacker's haven" (those familiar with places like Khao San Road in Bangkok and Vang Vieng, Laos will know what I'm talking about.. hippie bars and clothing stores and cafes and all the rest) but it's low season here right now so the cafes and bars are pretty empty. I walked around and looked in the windows and saw almost no one.. so I grabbed my book and sat at the cosy bohemian cafe/bar across from the place I'm staying, sipped ginger tea and read, all to the soundtrack of stuff like Lovage...! Remember that shortlived Dan the Automator project? I suspect some of these bars snag some of their music from backpackers to appeal to the Westerners. I noticed that at my guesthouse's cafe, this kind of music gets replaced by Chinese pop once the Westerners have all left the room... :)

Anyway, no one came to talk to me, of course (see previous entry for the deets) and there was no one for me to approach. So, I decided to try and wake up early-ish the next morning and sit down with an unsuspecting victim at breakfast at the guesthouse and see if I could convince them to rent a bike with me and go for a hike in the mountains, but then I managed to..... sleep in (this time, I forgot to even set my alarm at all).

So, I decided to just go it alone...

Seriously, when in doubt, throw your caution to the wind and just go it alone... like the time I hiked up and down the mountain in Dawson City (Yukon, Canada) all by myself and had to sing loudly much of the way up so as to frighten off any potential bears that might be waiting around the next bend to devour me...

But first things first: breakfast! I walked down Renmin Lu to the local dumpling place and had me some tasty nourishment. Who should be sitting there but a white guy, so I sat down with him. Turned out he's a French guy transplanted here in Dali for the past 2 years. He owns a bar in town with some friends and is just bumming around here. (Later on, I found out that a lot of the bars and cafes catering to backpackers are not owned by local people, but by Western ex-pats or by Chinese people from other provinces.)

By the way, as with everywhere else in the poorer regions of Asia, food is always way cheaper when purchased at local places as opposed to backpacker places. Today, I had those dumplings for 3 yuan, two of those Muslim stuffed flatbread things for 1 yuan each, and rice with various (spicy!) veggies for 3 yuan. Yesterday, I had a Western breakfast (eggs, hash browns, toast and tea) for 20 yuan, a Bai-style tofu hotpot soup thing (23 yuan for that and fresh-squeezed OJ), and fried rice (8 yuan).

Alright, so I went it alone. I found out biking to the base of the mountain was a bad idea due to the uphill ride, so I followed the advice of the guesthouse woman and took a taxi there. This turned out to be unnecessary because it wouldn't have been a very long walk at all, and the cabbie charged me 15 yuan (which was 5 more than the guesthouse woman told me it would cost.. but I gave up trying to reason with the cabbie). I took the chairlift up the Zhonghe Shan (one of the many peaks on the Cang Shan mountain range, and the highest one) and as it ascended, I sat there in a semi-freaked out state because it kept going higher...and higher...and higher... much higher than I expected... and there I was, sitting by myself (with no one for what seemed like miles around) in a flimsy ski-style, open-air chairlift. The mountain is approximately 4000m above sea level, though Dali itself is at about 1900m. This means the chairlift went really, really high.. took about 20-25 minutes or so. I finally got to the top and checked out the uninteresting Taoist temple (though Buddha was at its entrance) and hiked up a tiny bit to catch the view of Erhai Hu (the lake) and the Dali area.. and then went back down. I know, not very exciting. I decided I didn't want to do a full hike by myself and it didn't look that interesting anyway, though I'm sure it was spectacular further in. I took one of the local forms of cabs back to town for only 5 yuan (should have hunted one of these down on the way there instead of the meter-less automobile cab)... sort of like a big caravan thing on top of a converted motorbike. A very bumpy ride.

Got back to town and wandered around some more. I am wandered out. I also have a lot of time on my hands to make use of the free internet access, for something to do.

I've also been trying to figure out how to get to my next destination tomorrow morning: Sideng Village in Shaxi Valley, about 3.5 hours north of here. It is located on the former Tea and Horse Caravan Road (part of the southern part of the Silk Road), once used as a trade route connecting Tibet with Eastern China. The name apparently comes from the fact that during the Song Dynasty, Tibetans would trade their famous breed of horse for Yunnan tea. It doesn't appear to be a very popular tourist destination so travel info does not abound. I was told I have to flag down a bus heading to Jianchuan (though I may head into Dali City/Xiaguan first, just to make sure I can catch a bus at the actual bus station), then take a minibus from there to Sideng. I've got "Jianchuan" and "Shaxi" copied down in Chinese so let's see what happens...

P.S. People here speak a different local language, but also speak Mandarin. These are some of the Mandarin words/phrases I can now say:

I don't understand.
Sorry, I don't speak Mandarin.
Canada.
Do you speak English?
Excuse Me.
You/I have...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.
How much is it?
Washroom.
Where is...?
I don't eat meat. I'm vegetarian/I eat vegetables.
Tasty.
Some food words like fried rice or noodles, bread, orange, etc.
...plus a few more that I cannot think off the top of my head right now.

Not too bad (but not too good), huh?
]]> Traumatic adventuredom — Dali, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196818980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196818980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196818980/tpod.html Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:34:16 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Dali, China

I've left Shanghai but here are a few observations about that city:

After the population density of Hong Kong (small geographical urban area but big population of about 7 million), it did not feel like there were millions of people swarming around me.. undoubtedly because Shanghai is much more spread out than Hong Kong. I definitely found that out while walking around.. and also getting lost on my last night, by myself.. after asking someone, I was finally able to find my way again. I initially got lost because a huge construction area forced me to take a detour and I ended up completely losing where I was on the crappy and very undetailed map from the Lonely Planet guidebook.

Construction abounds! The city is constantly changing, and at a very past pace, apparently. A nice guy from Inner Mongolia who was in the same hostel dorm room as me, and whom I hung out with briefly one night, told me my LP map (from several years ago) shows only one or two subway/metro lines but Shanghai now has four.

Shanghai may be an up and coming city, but perhaps it's a reflection of China (and capitalism) as a whole to see so many people begging in the streets, alongside the glitzy new shopping boulevards and futuristic skyscrapers. It also seems like a fairly commercial place, with consumerism and commerce being the names of the game. I went on a hunt for some art spaces but when I got there, could not find them (based on an older edition of the LP guidebook).. according to the LP, art scenes are constantly moving in their attempts to find more permanent space. I wonder if this is why I couldn't find the spaces I was looking for.

Walking along The Bund (a mile of old art deco buildings built by the Europeans way back in the day.. along with their signs of "No dogs or Chinese"), I could see the newer Putong area across the river.. and it looked like some sort of futuristic city! Shanghai is rather risque with its new architecture.

Like other big cities in China, Shanghai is very polluted. I could feel it in my throat/breathing (worsened the endless cough I have had since my 1st or 2nd week in Vietnam), and it is clearly visible in the form of smog that clouds the buildings. On my 2nd day when I returned to The Bund to snap a photo of the old buildings, I found that it was pointless to take any photos because of how hazy it was (much worse than the first day.. the first day was kinda like Hong Kong - obviously present but not as bad)! I was amused by how many tourists were still desperate to take photos though, as they posed in front of the Putong backdrop.

After 2 days in Shanghai, I hopped on a plane the next morning for a 3-hour flight (as opposed to 40-hour train ride.. or something like that) to Kunming, capital city of the Southwestern province of Yunnan. I thought I would arrive as scheduled (mid-afternoon.. well, except that my departure was delayed so I got to Kunming in the evening instead), then cab it to the main train station (15 yuan the legit metered way, as opposed to the 30 yuan "deal" offered to me by a tout outside the airport) to buy a hard sleeper ticket for Dali and depart that same night. I got to the train station and after some communication difficulties, learned that there were no overnight trains available and I'd have to depart the next morning instead. I knew there was also a sleeper bus available so I went looking for that instead. Had some trouble finding the overnight bus station and figuring out where I was because the street signs were written only in Chinese (in Shanghai, they were also written in Pinyin, so legible to English readers). With my almost non-existent Mandarin, I asked a bunch of youth near me where Beijing Lu/Road was and they didn't help too much.. so this eavesdropping man in a suit nearby came to my rescue after trying to convince me to stay at the hotel he was soliciting for.

We communicated via me pointing at Chinese words in my phrasebook and mumbling some badly pronounced words I had learned. He lead me to the nearby bus station (turns out the map in the LP was very inaccurate), showing me on the way his business card - turned out he was a travel agent - and had me board the 12-hour sleeper bus to Kunming. I looked around and saw how uncomfortable it looked and remembered the warnings I'd read about sleeper buses here and people's bags getting stolen or razored. I didn't like the thought of taking the bus by myself but didn't want to stay in Kunming so I almost decided to just go with it.. but then the shifty travel agent man came back with the ticket book he retrieved from the bus guy in order to try and sell me a ticket for 150 yuan, which seemed suspiciously high, compared to the prices I'd read about. I was also suspicious that he was trying to complete the sale rather than the actual bus people so I decided he must be trying to include his commission in the ticket price without telling me. I mumbled/motioned that I would rather take the bus tomorrow, grabbed my bag and fled the bus, much to his dismay. I walked fast, hopping he wasn't going to follow me.. he did for a bit but then after I said again I was not taking the bus tonight, he left me alone but looked kind of angry.

At this point, I did not like Kunming. Arriving as a solo female after dark in a completely unfamiliar city, armed with only an undetailed and inaccurate map, being unable to speak or read the language, and being unable to communicate with people brings on the fear factor. Mishaps when travelling with someone can feel like an adventure, but mishaps on your own can feel more traumatic. I was a little nervous at this point but I decided to walk up Beijing Lu to the nearby budget hotel listed in the LP (if it was still there!) and spend the night. Luckily, it was still there and got myself a 60 yuan room (pretty cheap!) for the night, then went in hunt of food and the other bus station to get a ticket for early the next morning (only 5 hours by express bus). It was less scary after I had found a place to crash for the night and no longer had my big stupid backpack with me. Without it, I blend in more and people leave me alone while with it, I'm an obvious backpacking tourist. When I was walking around in Shanghai with the white American guy, solicitors kept approaching us, but when I walkd around by myself, no one came up to me. Anyway, found out I only needed to show up early the next morning and get a bus ticket then. Got some food (my crappy Mandarin skills at work again.. I'm getting better though out of need!), went back to my hotel room, set my alarm and proceeded to.... sleep in.

Oops. Luckily, there were later buses and so I hopped on the first one I could. After trying to ask someone what time the bus would arrive, I learned that it was at 11:00.. so I thought that I had somehow got on a slow bus that was gonna stop at every town on the way, but braced myself for the looong journey. Realized halfway through the ride that he thought I was asking what time the bus departed and felt relief at knowing that the ride was indeed only 5 hours and that I would be in Dali in broad daylight.

Got to Dali City (Xiaguan), asked a friendly woman how to find the stop for local bus #4 that would get me to Dali Old Town (Dali Gucheng). After some failed attempts at flagging down some minibuses, she led me through a market for awhile (I wondered where we were going after awhile but figured she knew what she was doing) and deposited me at the stop for bus #8, also heading to my destination. I thanked her ("xiexie") and boarded the packed bus.. after about 30 minutes, I got off in Dali Old Town.

So far, I have found that people seem much friendlier in this part of China than in Shanghai. Obviously, my inability to speak the language leaves me unable to really speak with anyone, but I learned from my past travels in parts of Southeast Asia where I don't speak the language that a smile goes a long way.. people almost always smiled back. They don't seem to smile much here though. Also, I find that very few people in China speak any English at all, unlike in Southeast Asia. I really wish I knew how to speak Mandarin because this will mean I will have few meaningful interactions with local people and am relegated to meeting Western backpackers instead.. ack! Looking Chinese, English-speaking locals will seldom approach me either, unlike when I was travelling alongside my white friend in Southeast Asia. they probably assume I don't speak English and some of them might want to chat with "real Westerners" (cuz only white people live in the West, of course). And non-Asian Western backpackers won't approach me either (except in hostel dorm type places) because they assume I'm Chinese and don't speak much English. It has been a lonely few days so far. There don't seem to be many travelers in town this time of year, and most of them seem to be Chinese tourists (which means I probably cannot communicate with most of them).

Anyway, if any fellow travellers near me are reading this and want to meet up, get in touch! :)

I am currently staying at a guesthouse in Dali that is owned by a Tibetan family. Have not done much but wander around the beautiful village for a very short while, but decided I was tired and would spend the day doing that tomorrow instead. I got some street-side food ("Muslim flatbread" grilled streetside and stuffed with spicy sauces and veggies.. tasty! Dali has a large Muslim population.. more on that another day) and decided to take it easy for the rest of the evening. It is chilly here but doesn't get cold enough for people to have indoor heating (same as in Shanghai) so I wear a coat indoors as well. I discovered an electric blanket in my room though! The village and surrounding countryside is nice, so I think I will spend a few days here. It's a relief to be out of Kunming..

Oh, and final thing I wanted to mention is that China is the land of squat toilets. Most public bathrooms consist of them, even at airports. The ones here in Yunnan Province that I have encountered so far do not have any sort of door.. they are just stalls side by side, separated by walls on 2 sides only, so as you squat to do your thang, everyone gets to watch you. There is a special way to squat without flashing everyone though, and it is integral to the success of your squat toilet experience that you know how to proficiently do The Asian Squat (which I must say I do very well). If you do The Squat poorly, everyone will be able to see and you may be the laughing stock of the entire washroom population. I actually like squat toilets okay and find that they do make sense.. I mean, women tend to do The Hover in public washrooms in the West anyway (because the seats are often covered in other people's piss.. and you add your own when you do The Hover, so it's just a vicious cycle), and this way, your skin never touches anything bad. The only bad thing though is that your shoes touch whatever is on the floor around the toilet, and I'm sure not everyone aims well..

Also, a weird thing is that there was a woman talking on her cell phone while squatting in the very disgusting washroom (I tried not to look down at what was below me.. there was no flushing mechanism) at the bus terminal in Xiaguan/Dali City.

p.s. Check out the previous entry (Shanghai) for new photos!
]]> Kunming — Kunming, China http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196721000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196721000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1196721000/tpod.html Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:03:32 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Kunming, China

Map pin entry only
]]> Drifting around the north — Hanoi, Vietnam http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1195576620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1195576620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1195576620/tpod.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 05:38:34 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Hanoi, Vietnam

I'm sitting at an internet place right around the corner from my uncle's house in Dong Da, wiling away some time until lunch. This area is not touristy at all so internet is ridiculously cheap at less than 20 cents an hour (unlike the $1USD/hour in the Old Quarter). The keyboards are also crap and sticky so I have to type slow or I miss some letters.. probably due to the hordes of young boys (and sometimes girls) who come here to play video games while swearing at the top of their lungs (pretty hilarious). Also, people here smoke everywhere so there's some guy smoking in this place a few computers down.. yuck. I have to get used to it though cuz I'm not in Toronto anymore..

Anyway, I have been here now for a week and still have a week to go before I take off for China. In Hanoi, mostly been chillin' with the family, or wandering the streets.

I love this city and all the things that make it interesting: the relaxed (yet exciting and not-so-relaxed) atmosphere, the camaraderie of the people, the street food (the other day, we had the best banh cuon (thin crepes made with rice flour and stuffed with crispy fried onions for me, and ground pork for everyone else.. and served with fresh herbs and of course, nuoc cham).. sold by a woman at the very back of a narrow alley near my uncle's place), the tree lined boulevards in the French Quarter, the way life is conducted on the street, the way people keep the doors of their homes wide open (unlike how we like to seal ourselves off with locked doors and fences back in Toronto), the way you can ask in the neighbourhood where someone lives and people will often know where to point you based on the person's name alone, motorbikes being the primary mode of transportation, etc. Things are changing rapidly though (ever since the government opened the doors to foreign trade and investment).. more cars on the street nowadays, more westernized style stuff, more corporate ads and billboards, more affluence and a growing middle class (mostly in the cities while people in the rural parts are getting left behind).. and all those things you get with capitalism (growing gap between rich and poor, increased mindless consumerism, etc.). I think vietnam is going the way of China.. is it considered an "Asian Tiger" yet? And yet, the other day, my aunt told me her daughter makes about $100USD/month selling phones in a store..

I've also been keeping odd-for-me hours here.. in bed by 10 or 11pm and up anywhere between 6:30 and 8:30am! I can't help it.. I get so sleepy by 9 or 10pm! Also, the mornings here are loud. People are up super early. My uncle lives near this place where they park trucks so I hear them roaring by early in the morning.. along with the barking dogs (they have 16 of them as guard dogs!) and crowing roosters. Yes, roosters.. at 4:00am, I swear. And parents calling for their kids to come home by sticking their heads out the door and just yelling their names.

The other day, I had walked from this area to Hoan Kiem Lake (otherwise known as Bo Ho to the locals) and the Old Quarter and it took me longer than I thought at 40 minutes or so, with xe om (motorbike taxi) drivers inviting me to take a ride (no one seems to really like to walk here if they can avoid it). At first I wondered if it's because they can tell I'm an "outsider" but this woman in an art gallery I spent half an hour chatting with the other day (she wanted to practice her English, and then had me practice my Vietnamese) told me that it's just the way people do business here - they invite you to use their services or buy things. It's funny because I see tourists freaking out about people coming up to them to try to sell them stuff (especially on the streets) and they think it's because they are getting targetted as tourists, but really, it happens to everyone here and it's not a big deal.. if you're not interested, you just have to say "no thanks" (um, just like back home).

On the second day here, my family packed up and drove for 3 hours to Ha Long Bay, a beautiful bay (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) with limestone karsts jutting out of the water. "Long" means dragon and I think the limestone formations are like a huge dragon's back peeking out of the water all along the bay. I normally hate organized tours but it's actually a good deal when going to Ha Long Bay. We spent a day and a half on a boat and also slept in these small rooms on the boat. Not the most appealing thing at first, but when I woke up at 5:30am to the most beautiful sky and peaceful waters lapping against the side of the boat, and peered out at the interesting limestone formations, I quickly changed my mind. The night before, we visited a floating village where my dad and cousin went kayaking at dusk and my mom bargained with a woman for fresh fish and shrimp for dinner.. then the boat drifted out a bit farther away to the spot in the middle of the bay where all these boats stop for the night (like a floating village ourselves!) and just float there, anchored till morning. In the morning, they let people swim off the boat in another spot in the middle of the bay.. then we headed for dry land for lunch and the trip home.

At one of the floating villages, 2 of the tourists with their big fancy cameras and zoom lenses started snapping photos like crazy, of everything they could as our boat drifted through.. like kids sitting in their school, families seated on the floor of their homes and eating dinner, people relaxing on hammocks, etc. I considered asking them if they ever considered how the villagers felt being photographed without permission while trying to go about their daily lives but I didn't. It was interesting to see the village, but I felt a little weird gawking at them as these tourist boats sailed by (like they do daily), as if they are animals in a zoo.

In Vietnam, the be all and end all of life seems to be getting married and having kids.. so when you're in your 20s (or 30 like me, apparently way over the hill), one of the first things people like to ask you during a conversation is whether you're married yet ("yet" is always in there cuz it's not even an option to not get married). I just smile politely and say "not yet" rather than delve into my thoughts on marriage and how it's actually not really a priority for me. Anyway, on this boat journey, my mom was showing one of the tour guides (a friendly 26-year-old guy) the photo of her kids that she carries in her wallet and when he commented that her daughters were attractive (haha), she told him that I was the only one available, while I was sitting there uncomfortably next to her! So then after that, he kept trying to come talk to me which I found kind of funny.

Aside from Ha Long Bay, we also took a day trip to the Lang Son area yesterday. Lang Son is right by the Chinese border, and also happens to be the town (city?) my grandfather was born in, and where my grandmother first fled to after crossing the border at age 20, after her 4-day walk from her Guangxi village (still part of Guangdong at the time though). We went to a temple where my family prayed, and then to a bunch of markets full of cheap Chinese goods. I really stink at bargaining (and I hate to do it, but that's how business is conducted here) so it was really interesting watching my experienced family in action. To an outsider, it seems like people are annoyed or arguing, but really, it's all very much like a game, and it's funny when you see people smiling or looking amused at the end of a hard bargaining session. Because I know Vietnamese, I could also observe other people bargaining, and people all seem to do it similarly. This is something you're not privy to unless you can understand the language. We also walked up to the Chinese border and I wondered if it was the same one my grandmother or great-grandfather had crossed (my dad told me there are several in the area).. I don't think this one was the Friendship Pass border that I've seen in photos online (where the train goes through, I think). I hadn't realized there is more than one border in this area.

Anyway, it's lunch time now so I'm gonna go take a xe om to Com Chay Nang Tam, one of my fave vegetarian restaurants in the whole wide world!

I may add some photos later.. or I might just leave them on my Facebook account so check there if you know me!

p.s. It took me an hour to type this entry!!!

p.p.s. You can auto-subscribe to this blog so you can get notified via email every time I update.. not sure how to do it though so look around.
]]> Alive and jetlagged in Hanoi! — Hanoi, Vietnam http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1195038300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1195038300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/missruckus/asia2007/1195038300/tpod.html Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:14:43 -0500 Off to the Great Muthalands I go!
Hanoi, Vietnam

After 20+ hours of sitting in the crappy middle aisle of a big airplane and transferring to another one in Hong Kong, I made it to Hanoi! Jetlagged but been forcing myself to stay up until a regular sleeping hour. Been just hanging with the family so far. It's pretty warm here in Hanoi, a nice change from Toronto's impending winter, though a bit too humid today for comfort. Lots of family visiting right now from various locales in North America: aunt, cousin, uncle, mom, dad. We went to pay our respects at my grandfather's grave, lit incense and burnt paper gold. Tomorrow, we are off to Ha Long Bay.

Changes: more cars on the streets (very impractical here, but a status symbol), and big gross commercial billboards where there once were none. Leaving the airport, I was welcomed to Vietnam by Mastercard.

Aside from that, many things haven't changed.. street life being the most obvious one. Food, conversation, chillin', haircuts, shoe repair, etc.. it all happens on the streets.
It's nice to be back and I love this city! I can't wait to get out and just walk around, or my favourite: sit on the back of a motorbike.

More later. This keyboard is annoyingly sticky. I'm at an internet cafe around the corner from my uncle's place in a very non-touristy area of town so it's dirt cheap (unlike in the touristy parts)..
]]>