23/02/07 - Tiger Leaping Gorge Part 1

I'm sitting at the guest house with possibly the most magnificent mountain views in the world. It's the 'Halfway House' that's halfway along the Gorge hike. I haven't hiked like this since army cadet annual camp when I was 17 in Year 11 - it was quite hardcore and intensive today. I was in a group with the aforementioned 4 top blokes and all day we were hiking along the high gorge trail which is an extremely remote path that follows the Northern side of the gorge with really grand views of the Haba Snowing Mountains on the southern side. They are 5500m high at their peaks and the Yangtze rapids are maybe 1500m-2000m below you. You look up and all you see are snowcapped mountain peaks up close, you look down and you can catch glimpses of the Yangtze,at it's source almost, deepe chasm.

We ourselves had to climb a 2670m peak with a scorching Sun on our backs the whole day. THere was a 900m ascent at one point called the '28 bends' that absolutely killed us. I think I drank at least 4 litres of fluids (excluding the beers tonight) just to get through the day alive. We walked along rocky ledges with sheer cliff drops only centimetres away for much of the day but it was totally worth it for the view. Words can't describe it and even the photos that I've taken can't capture enormity of this natural wonder.

On the social side of things, Olaf, Max, Stefan, Santiago and I had an absolute blast of a time doing the trek together - we've been drinking quite a lot all night on this balcony and with 3 of them being engineers we've been talking shit on how to solve China's energy crisis.

22/2/07 Li Jiang 丽江

Arrived in Lijiang today after a 5 hour ride with 24 other poor souls on an Iveco Turbodaily that isn't meant to seat that many. Remember these minivans Barge? Not the most comfortable or safe I can assure you but at 45 rmb during the high season around Chinese New Year I can't really complain.

Finding the infamous Mama Naxi's Hostel 古城香格韵客桟 was another matter - Lijiang old town is a maze of old school cobbled streets harder to navigate than Beijing's Hu Tongs. Too many of the shops here are geared to sell souvenirs/trinkets to tourists but nevertheless the old style Chinese buildings that line the streets are so authentically restored that it feels like you've moved back to Qing Dyansty times - no wonder they shoot so many movies here including "Riding for Thousands of Miles Alone". It's truly wonderful. Mama's also lives up to her legendary reputation with all the motherly hospitality. It's also a good place to meet fellow backpackers to go trekking with and also as drinking buddies.

I was too tired tonight to wonder the streets of Lijiang after having a dinner at Mama's followed by drinking with my new friends Olaf and Max (Dutch), Stefan (German) and Santiago (Argentine) - tomorrow we're leaving early to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge for a two day hike.

21/02/07 Bike Riding to Xizhou

Determined to get out of Dali Old Town for the day (because it's a tourist trap like Yangshuo) I rented a mountain bike for 15rmb and rode 20km north up to Xizhou. It was overall a good experience, the 40km roundtrip seems to have cured my cough and runny nose somewhat and I needed the exercise.

Along the way I rode throuh some rural villages just to see how the rurals live. I would have to say these people seem really content and money (too much of it) would be poisonous to their society and way of life. Each little village is surrounded by maybe 1 square kilometre of farmland and I think everyone helps each other out. I offroaded through some of the local farms as well and to get away from the traffic on the main highway.

It's also best to stay off the beaten tourist track in my honest opinion, the local 洱还 lake tour boat wanted 130rmb so I gave that a miss - it would've broken the budget too easily. There's not much else to see/do in Dali - some people really love the lifestyle here cos of the cheap weed and numerous Western cafes/bars/restaurants but in my own eyes, this is not what I'm after. I've been told that 丽江 Lijiang is not so hippy infested as Dali...

20/02/07 Dali Old Town and Xi Zhou 喜州

I walked the Cloudpath this morning after being woken up to the sounds of Chinese communist music and safety announcements blaring out of the cable car loudspeakers 150m away. It was bloody freezing staying at the Higherland by myself last night. I would've liked to climb further up the Cang Shan 苍山 range to 4100m Zhong He 中和 peak but with no hiking buddies and a path that was iced over this was too dangerous. Instead I took the 'soft' path that rings around the mountains at a constant height of 2600m so it's really easy to walk. I'm guessing it's called the Cloudpath because you'd be able to touch the clouds on an overcast day. I was really impressed by the snowcapped mountain peaks above me and the alpine forest below me. It's almost Spring now so all the snow is melting and you can see the small waterfalls this creates in the chasms and gorges between each mountain with the crystal clear water.

After having seen enough of this I headed back to the Dali Old Town itself to find some new accomodation there. Dali Old Town itself is rather disappointing, it's a haven for weed-smoking long-haired hippy backpackers and throngs of 'noveau rich' Chinese tourists. You can spot the hippies from a mile away, they all wear rainbow coloured rags, carry a hemp bag and aim for the 'Jesus look' with their long hair and beards. I tried the local sandpot lake fish 沙锅鱼 for dinner - to be honest, it's quite average - freshwater fish cooked in a tofu/cabbage soup. Luckily I had a cold so it was good for me.

19/2/07 A night at the Higherland Inn

I couldn't afford to spend anymore time in Kunming as nice as it was. Gonna have to budget time as carefully as money as there are so many places that I want to visit in Sichuan, Qinghai and Tibet but so little time as I only until March 31st. 2 months disappears really quick when you're travelling!



I arrived in Dali Old Town 大理古城 this afternoon after being dropped off at bloody Xiaguan which is known as New Dali by the long distance coach. Luckily I encoutnered a taxi driver who was nice enough not to rip me off and told me how to take the public bus for 1.5 rmb instead of driving the whole way for 20 rmb. The locals here are nice, I see a lot of the Bai minority walking around in their white costumes with their colourful hats.

On the advice of Simon, I went to stay at the Higherland Inn which is halfway up the mountain range on the western side of Dali - I guess I'm at least 2800m from sea level as there is snow on the rooftop of my quaint lodgings. It's quite remote.




What I didn't know is that the HIgherland is supposed to be closed for Spring Festival week - luckily enough the caretaker who lives here let me in to stay for the night. I was cold, hungry and tired when I arrived and I really didn't want to go back down the mountain to look for another place to stay.

Snippets from my travel diary....

First of all, I need to apologise for not keeping my blog up to date - I've been keeping a diary but with no or slow internet it's been hard to post online. Also, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to upload photos while I'm in China, it's way way too much hassle - I'll put the illustrations into the blog posts when I'm back in Oz.

Now going to post my diary entries for 17-18-19 Feb in one big blog post - read on if you're interested in what I've been thinking and what I've been doing....

17/2/07 - On travelling alone (Kunming)

It's my 3rd day in Kunming now - after a bit of Kunming culture shock where I was almost run over by some dick who thinks he's a king who has right of way anywhere just cos he drives a large black sedan in China I've warmed to the place. I don't think the culture shock came from Kunming itself but rather from the fact that I have been travelling alone for a few days now and its a new experience for me to arrive in a new place with absolutely no frinds or contacts to help make getting around easier. All I have are my improving Mandarin skills and crazy sense of direction that Brett will attest to - so I'm still probably still better off than the average foreign backpacker.

Travelling alone for the uninitiated is a lonesome experience that eats at your sanity really quickly. One solution is to keep writing a diary/blog. The other is to live in a hostel where you are likely to encounter other lone backpackers - altough there's a huge element of luck here as to who your fellow dorm mates will be as well. The third solution is to bring good books with you to read.

I have to say that Europeans, particularly French, Dutch and Germans are the best - they're really good travellers and a lot of them travel alone to try to experience more of the local culture. Anglos (Yanks, Skips and Poms) and I'm grossly generalising here, tend to travel in packs/gangs. They aren't interested in learning or experiencing new cultures - they stick together and basically travel to have a good time with their mates like they would at home. It's hard to break into their insular circles - the same can be said for a lot of Chinese tourists as well but I think there's an element of both sides being shy because of the language barrier.

I met Jeremy, a French guy in the hostel bar last night - he's a champion, he's been in Kunming for a year learning Mandarin so his Mandarin is better than his English. He was with a local Kunminger who calls himself Amando and over multiple bottles of beer and one bottle of rice wine we managed to talk in Chinese about the problems of the world. It was the first time I'd been drunk since coming to China.

Yesterday I went to the Western Forest 西山 to trek up a 12km path/800m peak that overlooks Kunming. The view from the top was breathtaking, it was like you could play real life Simcity - I could see the whole city and the 滇池 lake that lies south of Kunming. The air is so clean, it's the only place in China that reminds me of Oz and I can see why Brett loves it here so much.

I'm going to wrap dumplings in preparation for the Chinese New Year's eve celebration that the hostel will be holding tonight now.

18/6/07 - The happiest Chinese New Years Eve ever

I'm so hungover after being drunk for the 2nd night in a row - however as all my friends know, this is the usual sign that Eddy enjoyed himself the night before. I've never had such an awesome Chinese NYE in my life. The biggest mistake that Western thinking people make is to equate Chinese NYE with our own Dec 31st and therefore expect people to just go out and party all night at clubs/bars etc. I spent last CNYE in Shanghai I made this mistake as well. CNY goes deeper than Dec 31st, it's a time for friends and family to gather, much more like Christmas for us or Thanksgiving for Americans - all the real celebrations happen inside people's homes (apart from the firecrackers/fireworks), the pubs, clubs, bars in Kunming were all closed last night.

I went out yesterday with Sven and Sara, two random Germans just travelling alone through Kunming to the city centre of Kunming in the mid afternoon just to see if anything was doing, to see if there were going to be any mass celebrations on the street - to my surprise, all the shops were closing at 3pm and EVERYONE was going home. As one other guy said, it ws like people were preparing for war, they had stocked up on supplies (food, firecrackers) and were heading back to their shelters at which after dusk there would be the sounds of explosions (war) all night.

So how do I explain my drunken state when I had no family to spend 'Chinese Christmas' with in Kunming. The Cloudland （大脚氐旅舍）hostel was kinda like one big family. At 4pm we - both foreigners and Chinese - all gathered around in the courtyard to wrap dumplings which would later become our CNYE dinner. I wrap the ugliest dumplings, I'm going to practise this again when I'm home in Sydney. For dinner, we actually ate these dumplings and that's when the beer started flowing (down my throat, just like drinking at Christmas family dos) -

There were 'activities' after dinner too - I was coerced to participating in an arm wrestling comp inside the bar. I won my first round but then got beaten by a guy the size of Bernie in the 2nd round. He looked like Bernie as well with a black trenchcoat and long hair! There was the pool comp where I was paired up with the hotel manager whos nickname is 西南 literally South-West
- getting to know him was really beneficial as he just handed out free beer to me afterwards cos we won the pool comp (our opponents sunk the black 8) out of luck. We played card games as well - I spend the night with these local Kunming people who were about my age - I've never felt so much part of a Chinese group of friends before, it was totally surreal just speaking Mandarin the whole time and being accepted like another local friend. Chris once described me as a guy version of Elaine just cos I was so Aussie but it's funny now because I've never felt more Chinese. I hope Christ feels more Viet too after his 'heritage' tour of Vietnam and SE Asia.

I'm getting booted out of the Net Cafe now so I'll leave it at that - There's more to come but I'll let you digest this much first. Oh yeah, I lost a mobile phone for the first time in my life ever. My precious Chinese Lenovo that was mainly an alarm clock and a Chin-Eng dictionary to me. It waas about time I lost a phone, the local girls consoled me saying that they lost a phone every 6-12 months just like their bicycles. Damn my bad habit of leaving mobile phones on table tops especially in bars.

The road to Kunming

After another couple of days in Yangshuo doing more trekking down the banks of the Li river, bamboo rafting down the same river when I couldn't be stuffed to walk anymore and climbing Moon Hill (月亮山) to get more panoramic aerial views of the Guilin-Yangshuo area it was time to move on. Yangshuo is a 3-street town that was just too small for Eddy Chan, the whole place smells like a mixture of human sewerage and burning coal and its no surprise that I got a case of 拉肚子 otherwise known as Guilin belly. Simon also left me at this point to go back to HK after being satisfied that his apprentice (me) had learnt how to be a true stingy backpacker in China (i.e exist on 50rmb/AU$8 or less per day including accomodation and food).

The road to Kunming is long - I had to take a 6 hour coach ride down to Nanning, the tropical capital of Guangxi near the China-Vietnam border, stay overnight at Nanning and then take the overnight train from Nanning to Kunming the next day. This is all for the sake of saving about 300rmb/$50 because I didn't want to pay extra for a 2 hour flight from Guilin to Kunming. However I really love China trains, especially the overnighters, they give you time to reflect on life and I'm writing this blog entry enroute - no there's no net on the train, I've written it on a piece of paper so I can type it up when I get to Kunming.

Nanning was ok - its a very generic Chinese city, there was nothing to see or do there, it's kinda like the Adelaide of China with wide streets and a slow pace of life. To describe the people, you'd have to get Cabramatta and Hurstville, mash them together and expand it to the size of Adelaide - the people here speak Canto with a funny accent, there's Viet on a lot of the shop signs for the Viet population and everyone looks dodgy, just like in Cabra and Hurstville. On the public buses I'd see people carry live chickens inside baskets and take the bus - it was a new experience seeing livestock and people together on public transport.

I ran into Yuka again when I caved in to my need for a 20rmb KFC meal after more than a week living solely on cheap noodles, dumplings and rice. A zinger burger never ever tasted so lush - the crispy chicken and the mayonnaise...mmmm and ice-cold Sprite was never so refreshing until then.

Yuka's a Japanese girl that I'd met at the Guilin Flowers hostel - she was on her way to Vietnam - we chilled out together for a day at the Xinhua bookstore (she needed a Viet phrase book and I needed reading material for the train) and at the central park at Nanning cos there was nothing better to do. I bought for myself a selection of Lu Xun's essays (with English translations on alternate pages) - my history professor would've been proud of me haha. 鲁讯 was one of the founding fathers of modern China, he was a doctor-cum-philosopher who wrote satire on the Chinese society in the early 20th century as a means for changing Chinese society to adjust to the Western influences of the time, the stories still hold true for today.

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I'm in Kunming now - what an enormous change from the rest of China, I can't put my thumb on it yet but I felt extremely foreign when I arrived this morning. The people here look different, and act differently - the dodgy 'English teacher' wasn't crapping on when he told me that Kunming wasn't a just another Chinese city. The air is clean here, the sky is blue, it's really cold (weatherwise) - strangely enough I found parallels with the outskirts of Tokyo and Kunming city - maybe the people here are more polite, there are no touts and the general populace is more interested in living life than making money. Then there's the language barrier - I haven't yet adjusted to the Kunming accent and whatever dialect they speak here it totally unintelligible to me. At least I was able to have a hot shower and a shave at the hostel I'm living at now. I'll be here for a couple of days before I move further up into the mountains in North Western Yunnan to see Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-la.

Lost in Yangshuo

I've been in mainland China for less than 100 hours and yet I've got a million adventures to write about but no pics to post cos this computers usb ports are broken :( Let me start by saying Guilin city itself is a total hole - I'd put it on the same level as Hohhot in inner mongolia. Simon and I stayed there for the first 2 nights we were in the area - in that time I spent a morning without electricity which was a bitch because we had a windowless room AND had to take a cold shower as well cos the gas heater/plumbing was broken. That's what we get for staying in the Guilin Flowers （满花楼） backpacker hostel for 30rmb each a night =)

Why is Guilin city a hole? Because it's polluted to the max and there's nothing much to see at least in winter because the Li river is drier than Warragamba at the moment. Well, I lie - we went to the 7 stars park (七星公园）and I met some 'friends' when we climbed a peak - these friends are the local gibbon/monkey population that hang out for humans to hand out lollies to them. They're really sneaky (like the locals in Guilin) - they'll hide in trees and watch you walk past but if you reach into your bag and get some food out they'll come close like pigeons in the hope that you'll throw something to them. Feeding monkeys is more fun than feeding pigeons and I emptied a box of mints trying to see how close they'll come to me.

Simon's really cheap so instead of paying the 30kuai entrance fee to the park we walked about 500m down the river that separates it from its surroundings and found a weir that we could walk across to steal our way into the park because the water levels were so low. The bus there was 1.2 kuai. We spent the day climbing the karst peaks inside the park to look at Guilin from above and just really to exercise away all the cheap food we've been indulging in lately. There was a 'zoo' too where I saw tiger up close, it was sleeping like a domestic cat, kinda like what Cates cat Fatty used to do all day. There was the 'arrogant' Panda who'd look at me and raise his chin up as if to say 'look at me, aren't I great' while he sat on his bamboo platform.

What have we been eating? Following the cheap trend we've been eating like locals - we walk around looking for the 'holes in the walls' where you can get a dozen steamed dumplings for 2.5 rmb and then a bowl of noodles for the same amount - that's brunch and at night it's 40 kuai for a 3 course meal for both of us including beer. We stuck to pork and chicken in Guilin city, what we've been eating in Yangshuo is another matter.

After 2 nights, we got sick of Guilin and took the bus down to Yangshuo (阳朔） which is what people really come here for. It's a 'Westerner haven' in China - I've never seen a larger collection of western style cafes and pubs anywhere than in West St (西街) in Yangshuo. It's also where all the supposedly postcard perfect scenery in China can be found but the weather has been misty so I've only seen the karst peaks in fog. I read somewhere on the net about the need for backpackers not only to observe life in China but to experience it as well - so what did we do, we ran into a couple of local chicks that he met here last time and we spent half an afternoon playing Chinese hacky-sack with them and another Melbourne girl that just happened to be there as well. Chinese people use the 'hackysacks' which actually are a flat circular weight with feathers on the end so it moves like a badminton shuttlecock instead of a sack of beans - it's quite fun and a good past time, I've seen little old ladies playing this in Beijing and it must keep their joints in better condition.

To experience life like a local, of course we don't eat at the Western cafes, it's got to be in the dirty 'outdoor' hawker stalls - Guilin style 'river fish' hotpot - the hotpot stove they put on your table is a tin box with hot coals inside - it's really tasty cos the hotpot soup is really thick. Then there's the dancing lessons after dinner. Another favourite Chinese pasttime especially for older people is to dance the waltz, chacha, rumba and quickstep to Chinese music from 50s and 60s in a large outdoor square with the music blaring out of some outdoor speakers. Kim (Simon's pretty and young friend) was nice enough to give me a lesson in how to dance the cha-cha and the waltz - the rumba and quickstep are too hard for a beginner. Great for me to make a complete fool of myself but I got the hang of it by the end and it's quite fun and great way to pass away a night without watching TV or going on the net. They should have this is Australia for the oldies! I think it's important to be able to dance properly.

Today Simon and I went trekking through the Chinese countryside down the Yulong 遇龙 river next to Yangshuo - what an adventure that was! Chinese people don't usually stare at me cos I look enough like them but once you get to the villages I copped the stares just because I looked rich compared to them. I saw heaps of farms, cows, old villages - it was great to see a feudal/subsistence level of existence - it's just like those movies that depict the 'village' lifestyle in China. The villagers live really close to the land - they spend the day planting crops and herding their cows - there are no cars, just these small tractors, and people car their whole family around on a motorcycle. Some ride their bicycles along the dirt paths.

We mistimed how long it'd take to walk the 25km and took a couple of wrong turns here and there so it was dark by the time we reached a sealed road to look for a bus back. The villagers thought we were crazy to be trekking so close to dusk but we had to push on to make it back to Yangshuo otherwise we'd be camping out in the cold with 1 litre of water to share and a packet of biscuits for a night. There were no buses, none that would stop for us anyway so a bloke on a 125cc motorcycle offered us a lift back to the town for 10rmb - an offer to good to refuse. I now understand how whole families can travel on one motorcycle - this bloke managed to sit up against the tank and leave enough space for Simon and I to pillion on the back of his piece of shit Suzuki GS125 ripoff. I was sitting on the rack behind the pillion seat, with Simon and the driver infront. Mind you we had no helmets, gloves or jackets and this was a Chinese highway we had to travel along at 70km/h - I haven't felt the grim reaper so close for a while but my typing of this blog is evidence I made it back alive in one piece, I ain't hitching on the back of a motorcycle again for a while and with that I shall say adieu, it'll be a few days before I post again - I'm going to Kunming via Nanning in 3 days. Hopefully I can post some pics there!

Go The Long Distance Trains

Still no photos yet because there haven't been any worth taking - I'm sitting at the Guilin Flowers Hostel (30 kuai a night for a dorm bed) in their shared lounge area where there's a pool table, some computers and a small bar. We took the te kuai (special express) train from Shenzhen yesterday and it was a 14 hour ride to Guilin arriving at 10am this morning. In the words of the guy who was sleeping 2 bunks above me (translation): 'Express my arse, how does a express train take 14 hours to go anywhere'. In hardsleepers there are 6 bunks to a compartment - they've been upgraded now, they've now got carpet and airconditioning, and private luggage storage space similar to soft sleepers - that's progress. Even the trains that are the last bastion of communism are going capitalist to compete with the cheap airlines springing up in China.

There is no onboard entertainment on China trains, you pass the time by talking to strangers about all sorts of bullshit, eating the instant noodles you brought with you cos train food is so bad, and sleeping the rest of the time. Some people bring books but I can only read the 'Rough Guide to China' so many times before I got bored so I went to search for interesting types to talk to including a Hunan construction worker who had lots to say about why China and Japan will never be at peace (they've been at war for 1000s of years, the WW2 atrocities are just a small part of the problem), why China will never invade Taiwan (cos Taiwanese people are Chinese as well, and Chinese shouldn't fight with Chinese). Then there was the middle aged Pommy English teacher on the train who also talked world politics with me and what we thought of the changes in Chinese society - he'd been in China for 6 years and hadn't bothered to learn mandarin properly - shame on him haha.

Got to Guilin this morning - been for a walk around the city - fuck its great to be back in China, the grubbiness, dodgy food stalls (had noodles for 3kuai this morning), touts, the atmosphere, the general 'can't give a shit' attitude from the Chinese people - I absolutely love it. I'll be going to Yangshuo down the Li river for a few days starting from tomorrow because there's really not much to see in Guilin city, pity its the dry season so there's not much water in the river but that just made everything around herea whole lot cheaper and there's less tourists to deal with.

Promise photos will be uploaded next time.

Bored shitless in a Mongkok Internet Cafe

At long last, it's time to head into China (I joined the HK-is-not-part-of-China political party!), tomorrow morning I shall be starting a great journey that will culminate in a visit to Tibet to find my inner soul. After a week of non-stop eating and walking shopping malls and visiting relos I've had it and I need to get away from this place. Do I really look that criminal/mainlander - I'll post a pic soon - but I've had to hand over my ID to security already cos they suspected me of being an illegal immigrant from the mainland. That was sometime last week.

I shall be posting many photos and anecdotes from my travels - keep posted. Gotta have steam boat and drinks with my alcoholic uncle. Why does everyone always have an alcoholic uncle who teaches them lessons in life deemed too hard for their own dad to teach them? (i.e how to drink guinness in copious amounts, swear in different languages, pick-up women, gamble etc)