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.