sloths on the move

Taking Flight

2010-06-22T03:40:00.000-07:00

We wake up just before the birds. While I start packing up Gayle goes outside to relieve herself behind a tree - not best campsite etiquette, admittedly, but you haven't seen the toilets. It comes as a little surprise to her when she reappears to find a dozen soldiers lined up gazing in her direction. They then prostrate themselves in her direction. What's happening? Ah-ha - it's morning prayers. As we cycle off in the wonderfully cool morning air through woodlands beside the city there seems to be rather a lot of folk around. It's about 5 am. Seems this is the best time of day if you want to avoid the heat. Eventually we emerge onto a main road and pedal fast along the hard shoulder. The main road becomes a motorway. There are signs for "Lahore, Airport". After half an hour I'm wondering if we misread the sign and are actually heading to Lahore Airport. I look back over my shoulder to consult with Gayle and spot an aeroplane taking off well away from where we are. Uh-oh. We check with a taxi driver who tells us to keep going - sure enough, there's a sign ahead directing us to the airport. When we do reach the entrance we realise that we've cycled the length of the runway and some more.

Security at the airport is like all security in Pakistan - highly visible and highly ineffective. At the entrance we get delayed by bored soldiers who just want to look at our passports. At the door into departures a man wants to inspect our ticket and passports. I push onwards and leave Gayle behind who is then held back because I've got our e-ticket and the man couldn't read our names on it. There is an inspection of the contents of our panniers. Then the x-ray machine. The soldiers gamely try and fit our bicycles through the machine. Eventually Gayle's goes through, but mine's too big and after a bit of humming and hah-ing gets wheeled around. A man is deputed to inspect it for goodness knows what. He holds it at arms length with a bemused look on his face and finally waves me on. We join the check-in queue. Islamabad airport isn't that big and we're happy to see that the baggage conveyor belt behind the five check-in desks is just rolling everything outside onto the tarmac. Surely our bicycles won't be a problem.

"Excuse me sir, but your bicycles will be a problem." Two of the PIA staff are at our side shaking their heads at our bikes. But they're not heavy, we protest. It's not the weight - but their bulk, they explain. They'll have to go as freight. But it's too late for freight and we've no money. Why can't they just go as part of our normal baggage allowance? Is the flight full? The two men consult and then ask us to wait at the desk for a supervisor. Meanwhile our other bags are checked in and we get two labels for the bikes. We wait around for about an hour as many more people check in. Airport trolleys laden head high with suitcases and boxes trundle up and are off loaded without anyone batting an eyelid. No problem with bulk for some, it seems. We continue to wait. Our flight is about to close and the woman at the check-in desk is telling us that we have only five minutes more. "But what can we do?" we ask. She points over at the Cling-film Men, who are doing a roaring business wrapping anything plonked in front of them. We need to get the bikes wrapped if they are to go on board. All of a sudden the problem has vanished. What fun this is. The cling film men quote us a ridiculous price to wrap the bikes and then set to with gusto after we agree. Fifteen quid seems like a bargain after all the doubts and head-shaking. And then our prized posessions are carried off by a baggage-handler and disappear out onto the tarmac. Will we ever see them again?

Our flight is being called. We have to dash through all the controls. No time to linger in Departures, we are soon walking up the steps and onto our plane. Buckled up and still feeling pleased with ourselves about the bikes, we slowly begin to realise that we are about to leave Asia. After all this time. We are on our way home, albeit indirectly, and this will be our last flight. It all seems too much to comprehend. I wonder what there is for breakfast?

Hotting Up (Doing the Dew)

2010-06-19T02:28:00.000-07:00

We've only been in the internet cafe for 10 minutes when the power goes off and we find ourselves in darkness. Load-shedding. The three young guys in the cafe start chatting to us and the load-shedding becomes an off-loading session. Pakistan is stuffed, essentially. With corrupt politicians, an over-powerful military and high unemployment, what are they to do? One of them has two masters degrees and can't get a job. Another has worked in Australia - he enjoyed it there but returned to Pakistan when his daughter died. Their list of woes is long and we can feel their frustration.

In the bazaar we notice many of the barrow boys and traders look different - they're Afghans. And out on the streets we finally get to see lots more women - students and shoppers - their faces are not covered as they have been in most of the towns we've been through since we left the Hunza Valley. Abbottabad's main advantage is the climate - whilst the heat is building up on the plains to the south, the town enjoys fresh coolish air. It's not too hot to wander about and it's perfect when the sunsets. And hey, there's footie on the telly. What's on this evening? Mmmm, Chile versus Honduras. If it does get too hot around mid-afternoon we retreat to our room, sit under the fan and drink a big bottle of Mountain Dew, Pakistan's best pop drink. We are sub-consciously counting the days down to our flight and return journey and thinking about being home more than about where we are right now. It seems inevitable I suppose.

The last leg of our journey is on to Islamabad. Do we take the busy main road or a quiter road that involves a big climb? I don't want to do the former and Gayle's reluctant to do the latter, so instead we take a minibus up to Murree, avoiding the climb, and then free-wheel for 50km all the way into Islamabad. Along the way we stop for chai. We get chatting to a traffic cop, Imran, who is sat reading a book in English - it's a bodice ripper judging by the cover - he's ridden up here from Rawalpindi, the old city that sprawls next to prim and proper Islamabad, in between shifts to escape the heat. He tells us he has an MBA - but this is the best job he can find. He studied accountancy - now all he counts are the cars. He loves reading though - if the traffic is not too heavy he can read. This might explain the traffic flow in 'Pindi. "Are the police respected in the UK?" he asks. Good question. "Mm, yes." "Because here the police have no respect." Political interference, corruption, he explains. Aren't they a bit lazy and incompetent? I want to ask. I remember on my first visit to Pakistan being in a taxi that got pulled over by the traffic police. The driver handed over his licence with a folded rupee note sticking out of it, ready for such an occasion. But Imran is another charming man, and I don't want to offend him. Needless to say we are unable to pay for our tea - he insists.

We arrive in Islamabad as the mid-afternoon heat is wearing off. There's a Tourist Campsite here, unsigned, where we can pitch our tent for about 80 pence a night. The facilities are value for money. Next to the toilet block, some very brave soldiers are camped. They have a sandbagged gun emplacement with a clear line on the entrance gate. Surely they're not here to protect us? Carl, a young Aussie on a bike going to China, is the only other camper. There are a few trees providing some shade, but by 7.30 in the morning we have to get out of the tent. It is much too hot, as they say in these parts. Thank goodness we fly out on Sunday. The heat puts us off doing too much. One thing we plan to do is post home some surplus baggage - but when we turn up at the Post Office on Saturday morning it is closed. We are planning to cycle to the airport and hope the airline takes our bikes without them being boxed. Fingers crossed.

Having a bike in Islamabad is quite liberating. The city is built in a grid system and the distances seem so great. But so many of the roads just end in dead ends. Sometimes it feels like we're in a huge maze. There's a languid air about it all. What's most striking about the city is how green it is - trees everywhere - but ultimately it's a dull place by South Asian standards. Perhaps it'll help us acclimatise to the Western World?

Football Daze

2010-06-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

You learn many things on a journey like this. At our hotel in Mansehra where we had a TV showing World Cup football, I learnt that you should not leap into the air, arms aloft in celebration, in a room with a low ceiling and a ceiling fan. Gayle shakes her head and a tut is audible as I writhe in agony on the floor like a... well, like a World Cup footballer. Luckily no appendages are lost. "It's only South Korea", Gayle remarks. Later the same day, as I'm returning to the room with a bag of fresh samosas I fall down a drain. I have already learnt that you should always keep an eye out for the pavement that suddenly disappears, but I had forgotten this valuable lesson. Only one samosa is lost - disappeared down a black hole.

Our ride to Mansehra is not too long and very pleasant as it's mainly downhill. Traffic has picked up though, and as well as the painted trucks there are now tons of minivans and the much-loved Suzuki Maruti. The drivers are uniformly moronic, or at least that's what I tell them when they buzz past close enough to tickle me. I'm not in a laughing mood and practice some new hand signals. We stop at a chaishop for the obligatory tea and get chatting to a young man called Kamran. When we set off again he insists on paying for the drinks. The air is fresh with the scent of pine as we descend through forest. Now and again we pass some dreadful-looking chicken factory farms. I vow never to eat chicken again - a vow that is broken once we arrive Mansehra.

Outside the little restaurant some women stop us to say hello. The younger one is from England, and she invites Gayle/us to her house. In a nice turnaround I am completely ignored by everyone. We're sweaty and starved so we pass on the invite and hurry inside, where we are then 'captured' by Idrees, a young graduate looking for a job. He wants to talk, practice his quaint English, and asks us a few questions while we stuff our faces. At some point he points out how much a pleasure it is for him to talk with a foreign woman for the first time. In true South Asian style he has lost interest in me once he learns I have no university education. Obviously I'm an idiot. Gayle garners all the attention with her masters degree in demography. At first I found this annoying, but ultimately I'm rather relieved. When I am asked what my educational background is (this is usually Question Number Three) I tend to wave dismissively, and say "Nothing. But my wife has a master's degree......" thus getting out of Questions Four to Ten. Idrees turns out to be a very charming young man, if a little serious. I have to hurry off to catch Algeria versus Slovenia.

Abbottabad is only a short ride down the road, but we still manage to squeeze in a tea stop along the way. Another traveller, a tea trader riding on his motorbike with his small son and a large sack of tea, pays for our drinks. The town is becoming a city - with a huge approach road full of new shops and snazzy restaurants, private schools and colleges. After riding into the centre for half an hour we stop for a mango milkshake. A young student pays for these before we can stop him. These kindnesses to strangers are embarrassing. Would an Englisman buy a foreigner a cup of coffee in England like this?? We're still in the hills here, north of Islamabad, and the climate remains fresh. Down on the Punjab plains it's a different story - pre-monsoon heat is cranking up. So we decide to take a few days rest here - the days we saved by taking a minibus through Kohistan. Besides the hotel has TV and look, it's New Zealand versus Slovakia tonight...........

Stoned Again

2010-06-14T02:01:00.000-07:00

On our way out of Besham we come to a checkpoint beside a police station. The men are wearing tee-shirts with 'Commando' emblazoned on the front, and 'Anti-Terrorist Squad' on the back. You can probably pick these up in the bazaar. An officer with very good English asks us where we are going. We tell him and he asks us to wait. He consults with someone inside and then explains that they'd prefer us to take a bus to Thakot bridge, about 30km down the road. "Is the road dangerous?" we ask. No, no, it's perfectly safe, but it's just a precaution, he explains. We resign ourselves to wait for a ride, but I get itchy sitting outside a police station at a checkpoint. Surely this is the most dangerous place to hang around in all of Pakistan? After half an hour, and much discussion amongst the 'Anti-Terrorist Squad' it was finally decided that we would be safe to continue alone after all. The road south is much more populated and we find ourselves waving and saying hello to everyone all the time. Everyone is very friendly. The truck drivers in their brightly decorated trucks all give us a thumbs up, as they pass us in a wave of tinkling bells - each truck bears tassled skirts of tiny bells. I love the hand gestures Pakistanis use - the Push is a repeated two-handed mime to mean 'Alright'. The more common is the questioning hand twisting upturned. It means what?where?why? I reply with an improvised all-encompassing wave pointing forwards. It'll do.

We meet some policemen in a truck who insist on 'escorting' us. All of a sudden the cycling feels quite different. People look at us but I feel quite self-conscious with the police right behind us. We don't feel threatened at all. Finally we ask the police to leave us be. They look puzzled and perhaps offended, but when we stop for pop one of the policemen shoos away three little boys just hanging around - we don't want this kind of protection. A local man smiles and says the local people are good people. We have no doubt of this. But, he adds, there are some people........

At Thakot bridge we have lunch and then begin a big climb out of the Indus valley. It's too hot and we're slow climbers. From up above a rock falls onto the road between us. And then I spot another little bastard lobbing stones at us. Where does this come from? The adults seem friendly enough. We crawl up hill for about 25km to a little market town which we instantly recognise as we turn a corner. We spent about five hours in one spot here when our bus had a puncture back in 2008. We stop for numerous teas and to recover from our climb. Unfortunately there's another 16 km to climb to the pass. We plod on, through pine woods, in the afternoon's fading sun.

"Where are you going?"
"Uphill."
"From where are you coming?"
"Downhill."

Finally after a lot of sweat and puffing, we get to the top. There's a fairly nice hotel at the pass and we take a room there. None of the staff speak English, but Akram, a Pakistani man who has lived and worked in Norway for most of his life, translates for us. He might be the owner, we can't tell. He spends most of his time smoking spliffs on the veranda, so he probably is. We take a day's rest here to recover from the ride and do a bit of laundry and Akram acts as our host. Down in the village of Sharkul where we go for lunch we are invited to take a tea by a friendly Kohistani who is waiting for a bus. After a while he observes to me "Your wife looks old". "And you look fat", Gayle replies. Despite their hospitality, some Pakistani men can be quite rude and seem to have a prurient interest in our relationship. For the sake of this part of the journey we are now married with two daughters at university. We have now taken to blanking anyone who, after enquiring about our nationality, suddenlys asks, usually to me, "And what is your relationship to her?" or "Is she your 'friend'?" Gayle is getting fed up with being stared at in the street by all the men and then, when we are approached by a friendly man, being completely ignored. The perils of travelling in such a conservative society.

The Badlands

2010-06-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

Sad to leave, but we must say goodbye to our friends in Gilgit and continue southwards. We have a lovely sunny day to ride down the valley. There's no tarmac on the road but we're getting used to this now. Late morning we meet the confluence with the mighty Indus river which is coming from the east, cutting through the mountains from Skardu. We last saw this river in Ladakh. There's a crumbling monument indicating that at this juncture is the meeting of the Himalaya to the south-east, the Karakoram to the north and the Hindu Kush to the west. South of us stands Nanga Parbat. At 8125m it is marking the end of the Himalaya in style.

At our lunch stop we recognise a shopkeeper who looks like a Mexican bandit. Gayle took his photo when we stopped here in 2008. We eat our curry and nan and drink our tea with an audience of about twenty men and boys. Minibuses come and go, and so do the men, but the audience figure remains constant. Life must be quite dull here. Any women passengers are herded into a backroom and then herded back out to the bus when it's ready to leave. This must be fun for them.

There's a police checkpoint at Talechi. "Where are you from?" the policeman asks. "The UK". "Is that the UK-US?" he asks. He's either very stupid or he's got it sussed. "Where are you staying tonight?" He looks a bit confused when we say "here". There's a basic truckstop guesthouse and we cook our own noodles for tea. In the morning a truck pulls up overloaded with kids and women. It's a charabanc. They look like they're out on a picnic. The women are wearing bright colourful clothes and are noticeably showing their faces. We guess they are Gujars, nomadic herders, who move up into the mountains during the summer. They remind us of Roma. They look poor but happy together.

Back on the road it's a dusty ride. The road is often just sand. We stop for tea in one place, Mountain Dew in another. While we drink our pop we are stared out by a large group of uncommunicative boys and the shop suddenly acquires a big clientele of men, some of whom try to shoo away the boys. (Presumably so that they could have a better look.) Gayle is wearying rapidly of these gawpers. Further along we wave to some little boys up above the road. They throw stones in reply. Charming. In another village, as we pedal slowly uphill, we are swarmed by little boys. "One pen, one pen" A man roars at them to leave us alone and throws a rock at them. A little later two of them catch up with us on another hill. We ignore them and they too throw stones as a parting. We're conscious of heading to Chilas, which doesn't have a great reputation for hospitality. However, once we get there, and find a room and something to eat, we do relax a little. The young guys at the hotel all seem a bit dazed and confused but want to chat, and one of their friends speaks English. They tell us about their big families - one has 5 brothers and 2 sisters. Another has 9 brothers and 3 sisters. "Always more brothers than sisters" Gayle notes. Some of them are MQM supporters. This Karachi-based political party has been active in the Northern Areas. In the 80's and 90's it was engaged in a war in Karachi and the party boss, wanted for criminal charges, now lives in London. He speaks to political rallies by telephone.

In the morning we decide that we'll take a minibus to Besham. Otherwise it's a three-day ride through the badlands of Kohistan, a notorious district famous for banditry and hostility to outsiders. It's probably not too bad, but we're kind of wary of riding through these hicksville settlements. After a steep ride up to the bazaar we find a minibus heading that way. A man is found who can speak English. We ask the price. We are told 2,000 rupees. This is a phenomenal amount. In disgust I tell the man that they are worse than Indians. It's the best insult I can think of. We ride off in a huff and decide to continue to the next town, where we may or may not find a room. The Indus valley is fairly wide here and the river is rather flat. There aren't many settlements and we have a good ride in the hot sun until about midday, when we take a break in the shade. A minibus pulls up. It's the same one from this morning. Do we want to go to Besham? We do, how much? Two thousand, comes the reply. How about one thousand? We agree and the bikes are quickly tied onto the roof rack and we're away. It's still too much money to pay, but we feel kind of jolly anyway.

The road south gets more dramatic as the valley narrows, the walls steepen to cliffs, and the road climbs higher. It's landslide-prone for huge stretches and the road narrows where rockfall has been barely pushed aside. The driver is in a hurry - as they all are. The letters VIP adorn the minibus windows. "As long as it's not RIP" mutters Gayle. At a truckstop there's a good meal, and then we continue, passing through some grotty little places that we would have had to stay in if we'd cycled. Late afternoon we arrive in Besham, and push our bikes to the evocatively-named Hotel Paris. The rooms have dirty carpets and dirty bedding. Funnily enough, it reminds me of a hotel I once stayed in, in Paris. It's cheap, we take it. We're happy to have passed through Kohistan without mishap, even if it's by bus.

Oasis

2010-06-07T00:03:00.000-07:00

Today is gonna be the day that I get myself a new shalwar kameez. (I abandoned my previous one in India after crossing the border. The Indian immigration officer had looked me up and down and said "That's a very nice Pakistani costume you are wearing sir." Not such a subtle hint.) In the bazaar there are lots of small tailor shops. I walk into one and to ask the price. There are three men at work. Jonas is cutting, and the other two are stitching at small sewing machines. There is a rack of finished shalwar kameez waiting for collection. Pakistan is one of those few countries where the majority of men are still wearing traditional dress as opposed to 'western style'. The shalwar kameez is simply a pair of baggy tousers and a matching shirt that goes all the way down to the knees. It takes a bit of getting used to wearing but it suits the hot weather. And I regret not keeping my last one. The tailor sends me with a young boy to buy the material, measures me, buys me a mango juice and then tells me to come back tomorrow. Neither of us speaks the other's language.

The Madina Guesthouse is an oasis in Gilgit and feels like a home away from home. The owner, Mr. Yuqub, and Habib, his young manager, greet us like old family friends. Not for us the usual limp handshake that Pakistani men often greet each other with. Here we qualify for the more affectionate half hug half handshake. It's two years almost since we were last here, but it feels like no time at all. The guesthouse is noticeably quieter though. The tourism business is a tough business in Pakistan. Mr. Yuqub has had to cut back on the staff. A few days later a man in the corner shop asks me if I've been here before - he recognises me from working at the Madina. The Northern Areas of Pakistan can easily compete with Nepal for stunning and beautiful scenery and hospitable people but receives just a percentage of the tourists. But everyone here knows that the media reports of regular bombings and shootings, of the army fighting in Swat and in the border regions are hardly going to draw the crowds. And Mr Yuqub points out that the Tourism Ministry thinks that tourists want discos and bars and luxury hotels - which is inconceivable in such a conservative country and incomprehensible in one famous for its mountaineering and trekking. "The donkeys are running this country", he laments.

There is one other side to Pakistan that might put tourists off. In Gilgit, a large provincial capital, it's rare to see a woman. Gayle is happy to enjoy the garden at the Madina and I, like the local men, go out to do the shopping. If Gayle does come out she is stared at by most of the men. This might be because she has decided not to wear a headscarf, but this segregated society seems quite abnormal in contrast to China and even to Hunza where women and girls are seen out and about. We later meet Sue, an Englishwoman who has married Monty, a local man. They are now applying for his visa to live in Britain. We wonder what it must be like to come from the west and live here in this town. She seems very happy but they are both frustrated by the lengthy and expensive process to obtain permission for Monty to come to the UK. Habib has invited us to tea to meet Sue and Monty and refuses to allow us to contribute to the cost of the meal. Instead he regales us with stories of other travellers, of other guides, of the polticians both local and national.

We're also thrilled to meet up with Saif, a local guide, who we met here at the Madina. Although we didn't use his services, we spent some time talking with him and then met him again when he was guiding a group with our friend Jules on a trek over Pakora Pass. (And a tasty trek it was too.) He immediately takes us for lunch. The seaon has been slow so far, but he is still generously treating us. The kindness and hospitality of Pakistanis can be quite a humbling experience. Saif is about thirty and troubled to find silver whiskers on his chin. I tell him that I have them too but he quickly points out that I'm older and with Gayle. He is yet to find a wife. How can he find a wife when he's looking old? And in this segregated society as well. Our hearts go out to him.

I return to the tailor's to collect my shalwar kameez. Jonas smiles broadly when I enter. But his smile is not as broad as the trousers, which are big enough for me, him and his two assistants to fit in together. A pyjama cord gathers it all in, and I remember the trouble I have had in trying to use a squat toilet and deal with so much material all at the same time. Men here squat when they pee, so as not to splash their shalwar, a technique that continues to mystify me even now. I will stick to tried and tested methods.

Our last evening in Gilgit is slightly bizarre as we find ourselves as extras in a film being shot by a French/Turkish film crew. It's a low-budget movie about a young truck driver who travels in search of some magical waters. At some point he turns up at the Madina where Habib is regaling us with a story about another traveller. Poor Habib has agreed to stand in front of the cameras to do his part, whilst we can sit in the shadows, along with the Koreans who are now here, and laugh at his stories. The director enthusiastically explains that he has wanted to make a film about Pakistan showing it's 'normal' side and it's beauty. They are using only untrained actors. The film will either be absolutely wonderful or absolutely awful.

Surfing the Karakoram Highway

2010-06-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Karimabad is a wonderful place to spend a few days relaxing. It's a big village set high up on the steep valley side. You get great views of the surrounding mountains and an overview of all the other villages in this part of the Hunza valley. At a certain point where the irrigation channels begin the mountains turn green and lush in a series of terraced fields and row upon row of plane trees and fruit trees. The cherries are in season and they're good. The locals here are mainly Ismailis, which is a kind of laid-back and relaxed branch of Islam, and they're spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, has used his foundation to build schools and clinics across the region. As a result the kids here are all very well educated and quite confident. Hunza is also renowned for having a large proportion of centenarians. There must be something in the water. In fact, there is: it looks like mica. The water off the mountains is full of silvery floaty bits.

But attention is currently only focussed on the water that has started to overflow the landslide dam up the valley. One of the big hotels, that normally stands empty due to the drop in tourism post 9/11, is now crowded with TV news teams and their vehicles. After 6 months of little action the country is now awake to the potential disaster about to happen should the dam collapse and the lake burst through the valley. There are nightly bulletins on all the main channels. This is a critical time now the water is overflowing and suddenly everyone is talking in cusecs. Y'know, the cubic metre per second flow of water. Figures are bandied about indicating how much water is entering the lake and leaving the lake.

Unsurprisingly there are very few tourists around. The road between here and Gilgit, the main town, has been closed to traffic. We get chatting to a group of Koreans who have been here a while and are now contemplating a helicopter ride to Gilgit. One of them is making his own cherry liquer and passing it around the cafe to anyone who walks in. But then we hear the road has been re-opened. It seems the dam is holding fast for now. We go down to the helicopter landing ground in Aliabad to ask about onward travel. We are directed to the A-C's Office. When we find it there is the usual collection of men sitting around doing nothing. Everyone is in shalwar kameez so it's hard to tell if they are staff or general public. Apart from that guy sat in front of a typewriter the size of a piano. He ignores me completely, but then a young man in western style clothes asks if he can help me. He might just be the A-C himself, but he doesn't even know that the road has re-opened. In fact he knows nothing. Doesn't know his A-C from his elbow. And what the hell is an A-C anyway?

Probably against our better judgement we decide to cycle to Gilgit. It's about 110km, but with only a few sections of the road exposed to what could be a 40 metre-high wave coming through if the dam collapses. The news is that if the dam is going to break, it will be in the next 48 hours. We pedal fast. The road is in a state from all the widening works and there's not too much tarmac left, but critically it feels like we're going downhill and we're confident our bikes can withstand the rough sections. Along the way there are small boys selling bowls of cherries. We stop in one village and are surrounded by a gang of them. They want 100 rupees for a bowl. We laugh and offer 20. Fifty, they ask. We start to ride off. Okay, 20. These boys are so young, are we just heartless tourists taking advantage of them?

Below one of Rakaposhi's glaciers there's a restaurant/ teashop stop where we pull up. There are three other cyclists, Julie, Chris and Ed who are heading in the opposite direction. They scoff at the talk of a 60 metre-high wave coming down the valley. We chat with them over lunch and after a long break continue down the road. We were warned that there was no tarmac on the stretch to Chalt, but in fact there is enough for quick and fairly smooth cycling down the valley. It's late afternoon when we reach Chalt, but we're feeling good, the cycling's been easy and neither of us fancies staying in Chalt. We're about halfway to Gilgit and we decide to carry on. The valley has narrowed and there are few settlements here. Some of them have been evacuated and we see clutches of tents pitched high up on the valley walls. In the back of our minds we start to think about the possibility of an 80 metre-high wall of water thundering down behind us. The road turns to shale and gets tougher. There's a low bridge to cross over the Hunza river which we do so at about 6 o'clock. Only 20 km or so to Gilgit and the tarmac is back. We motor on and into a very strong headwind. The road drops down to the valley bottom where there is a full-fledged sandstorm.

We are so tired now and this is the last thing we need. It's hard to pedal and we're right by the river and now the light is fading and our mouths are full of grit. Out of nowhere a man appears waving to us. He has a truck full of rocks and is going to Gilgit. Do we want a ride? Is the Mullah a Muslim? Of course we do. In the swirling sand we load up our bikes and panniers and cram into the cab with the driver and his mate. Just as we turn the corner into the Giligit valley the truck breaks down. It's dark now, but we're out of the dreadful sandstorm and also beyond the reaches of the impending 100 metre-high wall of water. The driver is very apologetic, but we thank him for his kindness and pedal off with our headtorches lighting the way. We can see Gilgit town not so far away and it's with great relief that we finally roll up to the Madina Guesthouse at about 8 o'clock.

Flying the Karakoram Highway

2010-05-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

There's only so much potato curry and chapati you can eat. Despite Saleem's relaxed hospitality, we know it's time to move on and try to get to Karimabad in Hunza. I ride over to the 'helipad' about 500 metres from the hotel. It's really just a scrap of broken flat ground. There are a couple of ruined brick buildings in which the army are camping. I meet Scott, an American, here chatting with the friendly soldiers. They offer me a cup of tea and Scott explains how they've been telling hime that they are Taliban. He looks highly amused and a little shocked. Apparently there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. Of course, these are the good guys. Masood, from the Punjab has been in the army 14 years. Ali, the NCO, has 17 years service. I can only guess that they might have seen some fighting in that time. Scott is calling the NCO Aliji, ji being a suffix to denote respect. We assume he's never heard of Ali G. After a while I'm surprised to realise Aliji is in charge. At some point a man runs in and everyone runs outside. Is there a helicopter coming? Better hurry, they advise. So I hurtle back to the inn, pay the bill and we load up and ride back to the helipad in about 3 and a half minutes. There's not a lot going on. Surprise, surprise. So we chat a while with Scott and arrange a bookswap with him. He's waiting for a ride to Shimshal, but the man with the jeep is stuck on the other side with a spare part. There are a few others hanging around, a tent with seats for the ladies, and a bunker covered with tarpaulin where chai is being brewed. There appears to be no organisation or reliable information. This is Pakistan.

Finally we give up waiting. It's cloudy and chilly, but the weather is not too bad for an army helicopter to fly, even a 30 year-old Russian helicopter. Saleem cooks us another potato curry and chapati. After our late lunch Gayle wanders outside and shortly afterwards rushes back inside. "Incoming!!" We wave goodbye again to Saleem, and dash over to the helipad just as the 'copter is landing and blowing dust and dirt everywhere. We join the back of the line and go forward to the door, the blades whirring above our heads, the noise of the machine making it impossible to hear anyone. And then all of a sudden we are pushed back, waved away by the crew. Passengers on board are told to get off. It's chaotic. We're left clutching our bikes as the helicopter flies off completely empty. Apparently the pilot got in a huff with the disorderly queue. We are flabbergasted. No-one queues in South Asia. What a wasted opportunity and a waste of money. Everyone regroups, and the local community scouts get us organised into a line. These guys are more authoritative than the soldiers who have all slunk off. After getting us all to agree to behave and not push in, we take our seat on a concrete bench and wait for the helicopter to return. It doesn't. Saleem seems completely unsurprised to see us back at the inn.

The morning looks brighter and it's with Saleem's confidence that we return to the helipad and find all the familiar faces waiting there, including Scott. Two more tourists arrive, one a Dutch tour guide who tells us without asking that he's been here 30 times and how wonderful it is here. We enter into a heated debate about whether the army treat the people like shit or not (we have yesterday's example) and whether the Pakistani government treat its people like shit or not (we have the example of the landslide). The authorities did nothing about the landslide for two months and refused the assisitance of the Chinese, who we feel could easily have dealt with the problem before the lake got too big. The Dutchman explains that his friends, local officials, had said the Chinese asked for too much money. Right. So now what is this disaster costing the Pakistani government in evacuation, IDP camps, helicopter flights, loss of trade and business etc? Let alone the cost to the people of Hunza directly affected. But think what face they have saved.

And then there comes a 'copter. Everyone is excited and tense. Will we get on. Aliji tells us that we must get on with our bicycles last. This seems reasonable, but it does the beg the question will we get on at all. Saleem is there and wants to help but the soldiers are trying to let only passengers through to the helicopter. A lady faints and is carried aboard. I'm wondering if I can pull off the same trick, but I'd probably just get trampled in the dirt. We are about to approach when everyone is waved back. They're full. There are camera crews aboard taking up space. It's possible another one will come later. But then someone shouts "Four more!" We turn and the chief scout sees Gayle and waves her forward. Saleem almost pushes me through the crowd. I start to feel bad about getting special treatment until I rememeber that were next in the queue. It's a drag unloading the bikes and getting the panniers inside, but we're prepared and board quickly. Gayle sts on the floor, the bikes in the aisle with me stood holding them as we take off. The cabin is crowded. I count thirty people and the helicopter seems to be struggling, but in fact its just going slowly. We're up and away. It's not long before we reach the lake and then the landslide dam. I can see hardly nothing stood up, but the flight is fairly steady. Within minutes we are landing in the cricket ground of Aliabad College and unloading before another group boards and the helicopter takes off again.

Slightly dazed and still with a little adrenaline in our blood, we load up and pedal along the back road to Karimabad, the lovely village that sits high above the Hunza river, with some of the best views in the world. We learn that the road onwards to Gilgit has closed. Now we're technically on the worng side of the lake - if a disaster happens it'll happen in this part of the valley - but at least in Karimabad we are safe. At our guesthouse there's a Russian who has come to paraglide. He can take off from nearby and fly beyond Gilgit on the thermals, a feat he achieves the next day. It's possible that the only way we too can reach Gilgit is by flying again....

probably the best view from an internet cafe in the world

Bussing the Karakoram Highway

2010-05-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

On our way back to the immigration post in the morning we spot a couple of foreigners getting on a bus to Kashgar. This means they've probably come from Pakistan - they have. The news is that the helicopter service is in place flying people over the lake that is now almost at the top of the landslide dam. It's now about 25 km in length and several villages have been submerged or cut off. Although this is not good news for anyone, the fact that the helicopters are flying and carrying tourists means that we have a chance to get into Pakistan. After a wait at immigration for staff to arrive, a bus turns up. We ask the driver if he has space for us and the bikes - he has. And so we buy our tickets and wait in line with mostly Chinese workers who are all heading to Pakistan to work on the road-widening and reconstruction. The Chinese do not allow cyclists to go by bike south of Tashkurgan, but there is a chance the driver will let us off at the border to ride down to Sost, where Pakistan immigration is.

The scenery on the Chinese side is beautiful - a big wide valley lined by snowy peaks and pastures full of grass, settlements here and there, animals happily munching away. The people here are Tajik, and the women wear bright red clothes and embroidered rimless hats. There are a couple of Pakistanis on board and an Australian tourist. Everyone else is Chinese. One of them, an engineer, translates our request to the driver when we get over the Khunjerab pass. The border here is at 4800m, and on the Pakistani side the road deteriorates immediately as it slaloms down a narrow rocky valley. The driver doesn't want to let us off. Our names are on his passenger list and he must deliver us to immigration. However, at the first checkpoint we ask the smart Pakistani soldiers if we can get off and cycle. "Yes, of course, no problem" they say, smiling. Great. "But it is the driver's decsion." Hmm. The driver says no, but finally he relents at Dih, a small village about 35km from Sost. So we unload our gear and set off down the road. The valley is still narrow and twisting as we descend, with glimpses of huge snowy peaks. The road itself is a catastrophe. Like all the other roads we have ridden in China which are under construction. We take our time to Sost. The scenery is imposing and the going is slow as we navigate around the works. In one spot the Chinese are tunelling through the mountain to avoid a landslide-prone zone.

Late afternoon we pull up at the police checkpoint at the entrance to Sost. The policeman asks if we are coming from China and points us to the immigration building. It's deserted. He rings someone and he rings someone else and eventually there are about eight officials gathered to admit us. We are applying for a visa on arrival and the process is fairly straightforward if slow. For a start, we sit in the Immigration Officer's office while his flunkeys do the paperwork. The flunkeys can't tell where we are from. "You are from where, sir?" "England" They look at our passport. "Not Ireland?" "No, England, Britain, U.K." They read the title in our passport slowly. "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". It is admittedly a mouthful. "So, U.K. sir?" "Yes." That'll be $90 each. They show Britain/UK on the price list. Gayle points to Brunei, below it. "I'm from Brunei", she jokes. Those from Brunei pay $12. No-one in the office laughs. Finally, after about seven people have handled our passports we are stamped in and allowed to go. We are officially in Pakistan and it feels great. We were not sure that we'd ever arrive here without a single hitch.

After a tasty chicken biryani and a good night's sleep we leave Sost and nosey on down the road to Passu. The road here is not too dramatic, and it was pretty well-paved in 2008. Not now. The Chinese have built retaining walls and drainage ditches and there's not a scrap of tarmac left. The scenery on the hand is wonderful. The mountains here are craggy and dramatic. The villages are green with irrigated fields and tall plane trees all around. It's a lovely sunny day and we enjoy the ride, but by the time we get to the village of Passu we're hungry and tired. And this is cycling more or less downhill. We stop at a guesthouse run by Saleem. There are a few other travellers there , all heading north. A young Japanese couple on their honeymoon, a Chinese woman (only the third Chinese we've met travelling) and an old Aussie man. He immediately dominates the conversation and we recognise immediately what he is - a pontificationg old fart. Now and again, we meet these older men who have been everywhere and done everything and know it all. They like to listen to their own voice and they are invariably boring. It turns out that this is the guy who Alex warned us about in Kashgar. Now we know why.

The Passu peak Inn is in a great location, just outside the village but with a clear view of the beautiful mountains across the river. The valley is fairly flat at the bottom, the river winding its way slowly, and the mountains rise upwards in huge sheer towers. On either side of the village are two huge glaciers. The Batura is one of the world's longest outside the polar peaks, but all you can see from the road is the mass of rock and detritus of the morraine. These glaciers are now releasing meltwater fast into the Hunza river, thus adding to the lake at a fast rate. The news is that helicopters are flying to Aliabad and we need to turn up early and put our name down on the waiting list when we wish to leave. First, we have a rest day and wash some clothes. Then we go and have a look at the outer reaches of the lake. It's a turquoise blue and looks lovely, but in reality it's a disaster waiting to happen. There is a strong likelihood that eventually the landslide will give way and the lake will force it's way down the valley, destroying everything in its path. Villages close to the river have been evacuated, some bridges removed. It's possible that the lake will erode the landslide slowly, but the authorities cannot afford to take the chance. Meanwhile there are a few foolhardy tourists trying to still travel this part of the KKH and lots of locals stuck trying to get to the other side of the lake, in both directions.

Cycling the Karakoram Highway

2010-05-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's a good feeling to be back in the saddle and riding the first leg of our final journey through Asia. The KKH was opened up back 1982 and it runs from Kashgar to Islamabad. We're full of hope that we'll get into Pakistan and see the wonderful Karakoram mountains again. And it'll be cherry season. Our lunch stop is in a little town with some shady open-air restaurants. We are served soupbowls full of tea. We look around. This could be Turkey. Out on the road the riding is easy - the road is smooth and fairly flat. We have notes of this journey from our friend James, who bought a bike in Kashgar in 2008 and cycled this way. Before we start climbing through a narrow valley we spot a small field just off the road and mainly hidden from the passing traffic of trucks. To reach it though we have to thrash through some bushes. Gayle gets a punture and I get bitten. By my bike. I should know not to push my bike on the side with the spokes. Gayle's puncture is from a huge wooden thorn. It's our first. We merrily set to repairing it and then try and pump up the tyre. We can't. It suddenly dawns on me that I've never been able to pump any air into the tyres with our pump - I thought it was just too cheap to pump the tyres hard. Now I realise it's just too cheap. After a lot of frenzied (panicky) attempts by me and some cool reflection by Gayle, we remove part of the valve adaptor and manage to inflate the tyre.

Next day we start to climb, and follow the winding valley past some sheer high cliffs. Near to a police checkpoint we meet a bunch of overlanders in a truck and they invite us for lunch of stale bread and salad. It's very kind of them but not enough. We stop again for laghman and tea soon afterwards. We're aiming to find some hot springs where James stayed and looking forward to a soak before bed, but when we get to them the manager is not so welcoming. No he doesn't have a room. No, we can't camp. We don't feel like bathing now that we know we have to continue up the valley to find a camp spot. Not far on we do - right out in the open, above the river. It's not a bad spot and we cook our tea in the sunshine. But then the wind whips up and the skies darken. Therew are big mountains around us and then we hear the forbidding roll of thunder. Lightning flashes and rain drive us inside the tent. Not long after we hear voices. We shout out hello. They reply in English: "Hello! Just Looking!" A couple of locals peer through the gap in our tent door smiling.

After a night of howling wind that bucked and rocked the tent, we are happy to set off and upwards out of the narrow valley. At the top the landscape opens up wide. Big sky. Big country. We stop in a small place for lunch but a little man tells us to leave. We ignore him. He starts dialling on his mobile. Another man, a Han Chinese, takes us to a little restaurant where we can get some food. Little Man returns with a logbook. He wants to know where we're going. Tashkurgan, we reply, is that okay? Stupid git, we mutter to ourselves. Everyone else looks amused by us on our bikes but friendly. Our destination is Karakul Lake where there are local Kyrghyz who will put you up in a yurt at the lakeshore. A concrete yurt, mind. The times, they're a changin'. However, there is a small problem with the local police. Only a crappy Han-run hotel is allowed to have foreigners, apparently, and the police like to enforec this. We roll up mid-afternoon and are met by a family who have a yurt we can stay in. When they show it to us there are about 35 family members inside. We explain we want to sleep alone. No problem, the family also have a house close by. A bit later a jeep drops off seven French tourists who stay in the the family's other yurt. We are snug and warm inside. Outside the wind is blowing and the two big mountains that dominate the landscape here, Kongur and Muztagh Ata, are hidden in cloud at the top. Just before tea though there is a warning motorbike horn. The family spring up quickly and go outside. "Police! Police!" They drop the curtains, shut the fire off, and close the door, locking us inside. We sit in the gloom for about an hour during which someone tries the door. We whisper to each other for fear of discovery. And then a police siren goes off. We expect the police to bust the door open at any moment. But what would their catchphrase be? Y'know, like in all the good cop shows on TV they have to have a catchphrase. Bored and hungry we try and remember some. Book him, Danno! Remember, be careful out there. Who loves ya, baby? You're nicked, my son! The French are rumbled and sent off to the Chinese hotel. When the police drive off the family reappear with our dinner, apologising, relighting the fire, lighting candles. It looks like a daily duck and dive between them and the gendarmes.

Next day is a long ride to Tashkurgan, but it's the best day for the landscape. First we have a tedious climb for 30kms across what looks like a dried lake and then up a few switchbacks to a pass at 4000 metres. But after that it's almost 70 kilometres downhill on good road. We're convinced we have a headwind until we meet Adam and Cat on their way over the pass in the opposite direction, and they came also to have a head wind. We stop and chat for a bit until it gets too cold to just stand around. Shame really, as we haven't met any cyclists for a while. We get into Tashkurgan at the end of the afternoon, too late to find out if we can cross the border into Pakistan - the immigration building is closed for the day. So we find a hotel and get some food supplies and a bowl of laghman for tea. We go to sleep, not sure in which direction we'll be heading tomorrow.

Kashgar

2010-05-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Finally. We should have been here in 2008 on our way from Kyrghyzstan to Pakistan, but it was not to be. In the meantime it seems that the Chinese Government has been a little busy demolishing the old town of adobe houses. They're still at it. Modernisation. It's understandable in the context of China. But for those who hope to capture a glimpse of life in an ancient Silk Road city, it's a disappointment. Kashgar was a trading post on the trade routes over 2000 years ago, with routes into Kashmir, Afghanistan, west through the Pamirs and east either along the southern or northern routes around the Taklamakan. It retains a strong Uighur influence, with a big bazaar and a weekend livestock market. At the centre of town is the Id Kah mosque and down the backstreets you can still find the artisans at work beating copper into pots, steel into tools. There are bakeries and barbecues everywhere. Tandoor ovens producing lovely samsas (mutton fat pies) and to our delight, chickens roasted on the spit.

We stop in a hostel that's once been a family house, with a nice patio and seating area to meet other travellers. At last we have a hot shower and get some clean clothes on. Other travellers have come from Pakistan or Kyrgyzstan. And now we learn that the Chinese government has finally lifted the internet ban so we can shangwang (get online) and learn the latest from Hunza about the lake on the Karakoram Highway. We meet Alex, a young Australian who has just come from there and rode one of the boats across the lake. He's heading to Kyrgyzstan which seems to have another whole set of problems going on. Alex looks quite unfazed.

We enjoy wandering around the town, checking out the markets on the Sunday. There's a whole theatre performance when it comes to buying donkeys or sheep. Handshakes go on for ten minutes. An audience gathers around. Sheep are lifted off the ground (to check their weight?). Sometimes a middleman acts as go-between for a small commission. There's a bit of shouting, more handshaking and then the ritual of money-counting followed by more shouting. The donkeys and sheep are enormous - I wonder what they feed 'em. In the main bazaar there are tourist souvenirs, jewellery and gems, aisles filled with dark suits and stripey polo shirts, food stalls, kitchen pots and farming tools. It's jammed in places. We enjoy a nice plate of polo (pilaf) in a busy restaurant. The father and daughter who share the table with us both wipe their faces in a prayer of thanks before departing. Walking back to our hostel we wander through streets of boarded houses being demolished. They look shabby and gloomy on the outside, but where walls have gone we can see fancy plasterwork decoration, moorish niches in walls, carved and painted wooden columns and beams. Locals are busy at work salvaging some of these gems, presumably to use again, but not here. At evening time we pass a small mosque on a road where the muezzin is calling the men to prayer. But he has no microphone - he stands on the parapet above the doorway and cups his hands to his mouth and does it the old-fashioned way. We wonder if the call is allowed by the authorities - it's such a rare sound.

We enjoy ourselves here and are ready to leave to Pakistan when we read that the boat service across the lake on the KKH has been suspended. There is no transport between the north and south side, although there is talk of a helicopter service. The news throws up lots of question marks about our route, and we have only a week left on our Chinese visa. We are terribly indecisive at the best of times, so when there are dilemmas like this we are even worse. What if the Pakistan authorities stop issuing visas at the border? In a bid to gain some breathing space we go to the Public Security Bureau to enquire about a visa extension. The good news is that they say it's possible. The bad news is that they say we have to go to Urumqi to get it. Cressida, another Aussie, helps us look up alternative flights to Europe. There's a Baltic Air flight from Almaty to Frankfurt for peanuts (the pilots are monkeys). It's tempting to go for the simple option. But Gayle is also tempted by the opportunity to cycle into Kyrgyzstan as well. Oh no, we can't agree on what to do. Vreeni, one of the other guests, bakes us a cake in anticipation of good news. There is no news from Pakistan, but perhaps the cake is a good blessing. So we decide to stick to the original plan. We'll head to Pakistan with our fingers crossed. Which anyone who has ridden a bicycle knows , is quite a hard thing to do...........

Just Deserts

2010-05-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

It's hard to explain how excited you can get at the sight of a tarmacced road. We've been riding down a dirt road all morning, through a dry valley, dustclouds everywhere and when we finally breeze into Balguntay it looks like we were dragged here rather than cycled. Even the camels we had passed looked dusty. But here is a real road. Yeah! And here is the Traffic Police, asking us to walk this way, into the station house. It's full of chain-smoking Kyrghyz and Uighur truck drivers presenting documents. We present our passports which are duly copied and handed back, once they know where we are heading. In the town we stop at a restaurant for laghman (hand-pulled noodles). When the food arrives so do more policemen. One speaks good English and he's very polite. Where are we going? Korla. Where will we spend the night? Mmmm. Whwere do you suggest? He suggests a town off our route. We smile and say thanks for the suggestion. He keeps our passports and asks us to collect them at another station down the street after we've eaten. We guess they don't see many tourists in these parts. (Much later we find out from our friends Bert and Gill that they are refused to stay the night because it's in a 'military zone').
Joyfully we pedal on down the paved road, following a large river and passing through some rather grim industrial villages. One factory is surrounded by adobe hovels - the worst slum housing we've seen in China. Chimneys belch dirty smoke. Goodness only knows what goes into the river. Towards late afternoon we finally approach the end of the valley we've been cycling all day. There's a hotel by the side of the road with a big garden on the river bank. We check it out and ask if we can camp on the river bank. No problem. The hotel even has water. It's only when we boil it for tea and noodles that the rust-coloured scum comes to the surface and we realise it's the water from the main river. Probably full of chemical waste, heavy metals and much more. The camp spot turns out to be perfect bar one thing - across the river is the railtrack. Every half hour a huge goods train roars past, and if its going up the valley it has three engines. And a bloody big train hooter. As we're nodding off there's the strange sensation that a train is about to enter the tent.

Our final day's ride to Korla is out of the mountains and across desert plains interspersed with a few oases and hills. The road is a super-highway, which is a relief because we've a 100km to clock up. The new road has bridges every 500 metres. We're cycling across a desert. Sometimes the wadis must run with water, but it's hard to imagine. In a village we buy fresh bread and mutton fat pies, mmmm. A little huddle of men quickly surrounds us to check us out. We don't understand a word they say until one says "Pakistan". Ah-ha - they've seen cyclists heading this way before then. We shove off, and fill up our water bottles from an urn in a restaurant. (Only a day later do I look in my water bottle because there are some bits floating around at the bottom. Well, not just floating, swimming more like. Is that a worm? Yes, it is. Extra protein then.)

I'm not sure what they put in the pies, but we motor for a good long way before we suddenly hit a headwind that stops us in our tracks. We sit in a field surrounded by plane trees to eat our lunch. The sky is full of cloud and the wind is still blowing, but thankfully it's moving around a bit. A crosswind almost knocks us over, but at least we can still pedal forwards. Now we're getting close to the edge of the Taklamakan Desert and the landscape becomes quite bleak and ugly. Harsh. There are occasional run-down industrial sites and some shabby towns. We stop in one for fruit before climbing over a ridge of hills and descending through a hazy moonscape and down to Korla. We thought it would be a big town, but actually it's another big city, with skyscrapers. We've not had a shower for four days and looking forward to a comfy hotel room, but then we think we ought to check out the buses to Hotan first. Our hope is to get across the desert in time for the Sunday market there, and then continue on to Kashgar. We finally find the bus yard and a sleeper bus is about to depart for Hotan. The problem is that the driver wants 30 quid to take our bikes. This is way too much. After some discussion with a helpful woman in the ticket office, we decide instead to go directly to Kashgar. There's a bus leaving at 7pm and the driver agrees on 20 quid for the bikes (ouch). Instead of a shower and a comfy hotel room we're climbing into narrow bunks built for dwarves and waving goodbye to Korla not long after arriving.

The bus journey is interminable and quite dull, as we skirt the northern side of the desert. There is only some excitement during the night when we stop in a small town and everyone gets off to pee. Well, that's what Gayle thought. It turns out a man has been run over in the road and everyone is just rubber-necking. Gayle takes advantage of the distraction to relieve herself before the bus is moved on by the police. Everyone hustles back on board and we set off. About half an hour later it is noticed that one of the old men aboard is no longer among us. We have left him behind. After a long debate the driver finally turns around and we go to look for him. He's not to be found.

In the morning the view becomes rather monotonous, and we seem to be running about 5 hours late. We stop for a dusty old man stood by the road in the middle of nowhere. His suit is frayed and filthy and when he passes up the aisle he brings a rather cheesey aroma with him. More Rocquefort than Rockerfeller. After a while the smell becomes quite alluring. I lie in my bunk and dream of food.

Already it feels like we have left China behind. The towns look much poorer and scruffier, the people are quite different. Women are wearing colourful headscarves. The men are in dark suits, stripey polo shirts, white socks and slip-ons. Uighur men are wearing an embroidered box cap like the Uzbeks. Some have flat caps at jaunty angles. Their skins are sunburnt, their features sharp. Moustaches are prominent. It feels like we've travelled back through time and space to 1950's Sicily. Through the bus window, the desert is endless.

Go West

2010-05-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

Our last train ride in China is one of our longest - a full two days from Chengdu, north through the barren lands of Ningxia province and then west through the Hexi Corridor of Gansu and finally to Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Somewhere during our second night we pass by the western end of the Great Wall and the fort which marked the frontier of ancient China. The silk road camel trains would pass through the Hexi Corridor and then branch north or south around the Taklamakan Desert. Our train goes just a little bit faster than a camel....

Urumqi has the familiar look and feel of any big Chinese city. But here there's quite a mixture of people - Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz along with the ubiquitous Han. Some shops have cyrillic signs. We stop for a couple of nights and get our first taste of mutton kebabs and the Uighur bread baked into the size and shape of dinner plates (best eaten fresh otherwise they are just like plates). And then we set off south for Korla, over the Tian Shan mountains, loaded up with nutella, peanut butter and a packet of mature cheddar cheese. Once out of the city we find ourselves cycling through flat desert land, along straight roads lined with plane trees. It gets more interesting as we get closer to the mountains and by late afternoon we are following the Urumqi river into a wide green valley that climbs gradually. We pass through a narrow gorge and emerge into a higher valley where the good road ends. There are signs of quarrying and mining and the skies turn grey. Up ahead is an alarming cloud of smoke appearing from behind the next corner. This turns out to be Houxia, our stop for the night. It's a grim little communist-era coal mine and power station colony. It starts to rain. Perfect.

We stop the night in the Town Hall. Or the Communist Party Rest House/ Cultural Centre. We don't really know what the big institutional building is, but on the top floor are some basic rooms with beds like stone. We dig out our Thermarests. Just before nodding off a couple of policeman knock on our door. Uh-oh. It turns out they just want to practise their English and have a photo taken with us. Next day the weather is fine and we set off up a canyon, the road climbing steadily. We're slow going uphill though and eventually pitch our tent away from the road just as the valley is opening up again. The only traffic seems to be trucks. It's windy but sunny and the landscape is wild and remote. Tomorrow we climb to the pass, which is out of sight from our tent. But tomorrow everything is out of sight. The cloud has descended and it's snowing steadily. We lie in our sleeping bags most of the morning trying to keep warm and wondering what to do. The pass ahead is over 4000 metres and we're not entirely sure how many kilometres we have to cycle to reach it. Finally we pack up and set off just as the snow is stopping. The road is clear but everywhere is in mist. The lorry traffic has died down. It feels like we're cycling into the unknown. After some time the road deteriorates into a filthy muddy dirt road. And then the switchbacks begin and we climb what looks like a near-vertical boulder field. The mud turns to ice and we can't pedal anymore, so off we get and start pushing - but without a clue as to how far we have to go to the top. We stop for an apple and a breather and then suddenly the clouds part and we get a glimpse of the valley we are in. It's a dead end, with a huge snowfield opposite and up on the ridge is a gap that looks like a missing tooth. We can see our road leading into it and a couple of trucks coming down very very slowly. So we plod on, but with a little more spirit now we know we're nearly there. The clouds close in again and then suddenly we're in the gap - we're at the pass. I feel like crying for joy. Out on the other side the weather is quite different - sunny and very windy and no clouds at all. The landscape below is much drier. We know it's nearly all down hill to Korla, still two days' ride away, but the road off the top is not paved, so it's a slow descent at first. And freezing. Now I feel like crying in pain as my fingers turn numb. We pass through lots of grassy pastures with flocks of sheep, yaks or horses munching away.

Our stop for the night is in a forlorn little village built next to the rail line that has come through a side valley from Urumqi. There's one shop and we ask the woman who runs it if she has a room. She does. It's a funky little wooden cubicle inside an adobe hut, but there's space in the hut to cook and eat our noodles out of the fierce wind, so it feels much more comfortable than it looks. We sleep the sleep of the truly knackered.

Days of Beer and Bananas

2010-05-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

The days whirl by in Chengdu. We're spending a lot of time using the internet and catching up with people we've been out of touch with. We've got a train to book to Urumqi in west China and a flight to book from Pakistan back to Europe. There's photos to upload to Flickr and a blog to update. Laundry. Nothing too strenuous. In fact, life in Sim's Guesthouse is rather relaxed. It's not really a guesthouse, but a large hostel. But it's well-run, and spacious, and very comfortable. Too comfortable probably. I'm trying to put some weight back on, aided by the odd beer and chocolate bar and an abundance of bananas. Gayle is happily researching our route homewards - at least I think they're tears of happiness I see.

Our plan is to cycle from Urumqi to Korla then cross the Taklamakan Desert on a bus to Hotan where we'll ride to Kashgar. Then we intend to take the Karakoram Highway into Pakistan. There's one hitch in our plans - a large landslide about three months ago wiped out a village, killing 19 people, closing the road and blocking the river just to the south of the border with China. With snow melt the river has now turned into a growing lake. (Take a look.) I suddenly become an avid reader of the Hunza Times for news updates. I feel like the man who enters the casino and puts it all on black, only for it to turn out red. There is no other way for us. And we have to book our flight before we leave Chengdu as there's no free internet access in Xin Jiang province. The Chinese government have imposed a blackout there. And then up pops a photo of some enterprising Pakistanis using a boat to ferry people. Okay, so there's transport. We book our flight to Frankfurt. We have received an invite to visit a lovely German man, Reinhard, whom we met at Nomad's Open Prison in Bishkek back in 2008. Then we'll cycle across to the coast of Holland and get a boat back to England.

Our days at Sim's are Groundhog Days as we slowly sort out our plans. Sim kindly comes with us to the station to book our bicycles onto a freight train a few days before our own train. He's got the hang of cycling in the city - you can literally go anywhere you want on a bike, just make sure to avoid whatever is coming straight at you. Bert and Gill arrive after their long ride down to the lowlands, happy to be somewhere warm. There are other cyclists too - one Frenchman, Yann, whom we met at Sim's last November. One evening Sim takes us all out for a meal. Such a lovely man.

And then all of a sudden the time has come to move on - off to the station armed with a two-day supply of pot noodles.

Mud And Thunder

2010-04-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

We make a beeline for the first hotel we see in Xinduqiao. The woman at reception tries to explain that there's another foreigner staying, and shows us the register. A woman called Gillian. Mmmm. Very interesting. We're knackered and filthy and just want to shower, eat and rest. The receptionist is happy for us to put our bikes in our room for safe-keeping as if she has had other cyclists staying here. And then we think about this Gillian woman and ask her, is Gillian with a man? Yes. Do they have bicycles? Yes. Could they be our friends Gill and Bert? Yes. We knock on their door, and sure enough it's them. They too were heading to Yushu and have chosen to divert to Chengdu as well. They've been cycling the whole way from Zhongdian and had some snowy cold weather along the way, so they're looking forward to getting to a warmer place. Our plan is to detour via Danba so after an evening meal together and a good kip, we part in the morning.

Our ride is north up a wide valley to Tagong, a small Tibetan town set in grasslands at around 3700m. Because of the altitude it still feels wintry as we follow the wide river snaking up through Tibetan villages. Each house stands fortress-like on its land, with most windows facing southwards, the northern sides usually just solid wall. It's supposed to be a short ride but with only 10 more kilometres to ride we hit road works. Except there's not much sign of work. Or road. What there is is just a huge stretch of black mud continuing up the valley. There's a smattering of traffic, or should I say a splattering? We're putting on a brave face, oozing our way onwards when it starts to rain. There's not a tree in sight. With no shelter we soldier on, but it soon becomes impossible to pedal. Our wheels and brakes and gears are soon caked in the thick mud and even pushing becomes hard work. Finally Tagong appears around a bend.

Most towns look crap in the rain, but Tagong looks particularly grim. It's really just a one-street collection of shops, restaurants and hotels but it is full of colourful Tibetans, some of whom have come into town on ponies. We find a cheap little place to stay and then spend some time washing down the bikes. The sun comes out and we start to feel better. We've survived the ordeal. And when we go out for a look around we meet Angela, a friendly young American who is living here with her Tibetan husband and 3 year-old daughter Sumtso. The restaurant we eat in is run by a smiley young woman who rustles up good fresh bread and a hearty noodle soup. We kill a bit of time watching the TV with her and notice her writing down a telephone number during the advert break. We're appalled at this. We've been watching a 10 minute hard sell of a corset so that You Too Can Look Like A Skinny White Chinese Woman! (The all-Asia Skin-Whitening Cream advert has already been up.) Above the TV is a large poster of the Dalai Lama - the first we've seen in China. Gayle spots his picture again, pinned up next to the prayer wheels at the monastery.

The next morning it's snowing and we decide to have a rest day. Our room is chilly but there's electric blankets so we stay in bed and read for a bit. Later on we meet Angela and she invites us back to hers for coffee. Their house is a simple two room affair with a drop toilet out back. Life seems tough from this perspective. They don't have running water, and it's late April and snowing. No wonder the Tibetans look like a hardy bunch. Angela tells us the road northwards is also being reconstructed which bodes ill for us, as it snows all day. Nonetheless, we set off next day with only about 30km to reach before we leave the 'road works'. It's not to be. The road is much worse, probably because of the bad weather, and when we're not wading through mud, we're bouncing over a freshly broken rock bed. Every 500 metres our wheels clog up and a stiff wind is drying out the mud and stone confection, turning it to concrete. We finally surrender at the start of a climb. This is truly awful. After a quick conflab we turn around, and begin to feel better. We don't particularly want to return to our guesthouse - at night the rodents in the roof perform noisy gymnastics - but the thought of being dry, clean and toasty warm in bed is tempting. And we're able to hose down the bikes and all our stuff. Ahh but the experience has weakened our will to continue any further on our bikes right now. We're a bit weary of the cold and the altitude and the thought that we could be in balmy Chengdu quite soon is too tempting.

Of course the morning we leave it's a bright sunny day and the ground is frozen. Unshakeable in our desire to head out of the mountains we haggle a minibus ride back to Xinduqiao and over another 4000m pass on a brand new road to Kangding. At the bus station we are greeted like long-lost friends by the staff who confirm we can catch a bus to Chengdu at 2pm. The driver lets us slide in our bikes and panniers and then takes us to lunch. The rest of the day is spent hurtling along the highway along some deep narrow valleys and through a series of dismal towns. Sometimes the scenery is beautiful and then we come across an ugly factory or some dam-building. This is China.

We arrive in Chengdu at about 9 at night. The city is alive - shops are still open, lots of people about. Such a huge contrast with Tagong. We load up our bikes and join the bike lane on one of the main roads. None of us have got lights, and the riding is chaotic, especially at big junctions. There's one lively moment when Gayle misses a red light and ends up in the middle of a six-lane highway frozen in the headlights of on-rushing cars like a startled rabbit. But for all the anarchy on these city roads, everyone seems pretty good at dodging obstacles. We survive the ride and pull into to Sim's Cozy Garden Guesthouse, returning to the place we stayed last November. It feels good to be back.

Thin Line Between Love And Hate

2010-04-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

" I love my bike" Gayle exclaims happily when we stop for a breather. All around are big mountains. There's snow on the tops, pine forest falling into the valleys. The road is in good nick and we're feeling good. Nothing like the open road, big country, high altitudes. Our route east is taking us across some high passes to Xinduqiao, a town where the road from Chengdu splits into the northern and southern Sichuan-Tibetan Highways. Our plan is to branch northwards to the Tagong grasslands and then east again along another route to Chengdu. The first stage is over three days at altitudes mainly between 4000 and 4500 metres, with an annoying drop down to 2700m to stay in Yajiang on the second night. The first night we are camping, and after a longish search we eventually climb away from a village and turn up at a little pass with a knoll above the road. We have to carry the bikes and the luggage up to the top, but it's worth it for the sense of security and privacy. Oh, and the views. It feels chilly when we fall asleep but we awake in the morning feeling very snug. No wonder - the tent is covered in snow.
Our ride to Yajiang is interrupted by a convoy of Chinese Army tankers and trucks. There's about one hundred and twenty vehicles. This highway must be the main supply route to Lhasa. The pass above Yajiang is signposted 4712 metres, but we're not sure of the accuracy of this. Still, it's a bloody long way down to the town. Along the way it hails and then rains heavily. We seek shelter in a carpenter's work room, and sit with the old dears who are perched on tree trunks watching the man at work. We carry on down and pass 4 Chinese cyclists on the way up. This is becoming a popular ride - Chengdu to Tibet - and we see quite a few cyclists heading in the opposite direction.
Down in Yajiang we start looking for a cheap hotel that will take foreigners. Whilst Gayle watches the bikes, a policeman who speaks English comes up to her to chat. By the time I get back she's having to show her passport and there's another man, in a suit, with a Communist Party lapel badge prominent. He seems to be asking the questions, and Bob The Plod is doing the translations. Where are we staying tonight? Well, here, if we can find a hotel. Admittedly, the charmless town is hardly a tourist hot-spot. A little crowd has gathered, but the police are friendly and it's quite low-key. Bob, The Plod, offers to take us to a hotel. It's an offer we're not refusing. Along the way he wants to know England's chances in the World Cup. He laughs at my reply.

Our following day's ride to Xinduqiao begins with a nice ride up a valley full of grand Tibetan houses. And then we reach the switchbacks. Up we go, into a colder climate. The road is narrow and deteriorates quickly - the onslaught of landslides, heavy frosts and overloaded trucks taking it's toll. The climbing is endless. We stop to chat with some Chinese cyclists looking rather jolly - they're going downhill. The climb to the top is about 48km according to my information. Somewhere about the 40km mark I crack. It's drizzling and misty, there are too many trucks and buses and cars and I'm feeling very miserable. There's so much broken road and mud and up above I can see the road heading off into the cloud. I get off and start pushing. Gayle perseveres. The altitude is a killer and cycling is hard. I push about 5km in all to reach the top - a big snowy expanse. Now we have to layer up our clothing and set off on the descent in freezing mist. Our hands freeze as we grip our brakes - there's no easy riding on the broken road until finally we drop out of the cloud and into a wintry valley leading to Xinduqiao. The day has been too long and too tough for me. I hate my bike.

Kham

2010-04-17T20:30:00.000-07:00

Windy and cloudy. Is it trying to rain? We're leaving Zhongdian and have a short climb followed by a descent that seems to go on for the rest of the day. We're cold, so cold. But then after lunch we drop down into a gorge and the warmth hits us. There are Tibetan houses dotted around, green fields and trees with blossom. Small communities of people are building new houses in the traditional style - compacted earth walls and brightly painted woodwork. Spring is down here. We finally reach the Yangtze river and have a nice ride along an empty road up the valley to end the day in Waka village. And here we stay a couple of nights because of rain. Whilst we're laid off, we catch the news in Chinese of an earthquake in Qinghai province. And then our ears prick up. Yushu? Did they say Yushu? That's where we are heading. Were heading. Not now. We have no idea of the scale of the earthquake, nor how many are injured or have died, but we know enough of China to think about an alternative route. Over the next couple of weeks the rescue operation and reconstruction efforts get plenty of news coverage, although we can't get the state news channel in English. What we see is the Permier and then the President visiting the zone and speaking to the people. Yushu is another Tibetan area. We see monks and soldiers digging through rubble by hand. Ironically, the large army presence in the area means that soldiers are on hand to help with rescue work. There follows a benefit concert on all the TV channels to highlight the plight of the victims and raise money across China to help. This is an interesting sight. News programmes show communities across the country queuing to put money into a collection box (remember to fan the notes so that you can be seen to be giving generously). The Chinese government doesn't need the cash for reconstruction - it's cash rich, and can invest in infrastructure and housing quite easily. What seems to be important is that the country is seen to be united in helping its citizens. Especially Tibetan citizens.

The following three days we regain the altitude we have lost and some more, as we head northwards up a series of valleys and over three high passes one each day. We stop in Derong the first evening and witness the communal dancing scene again, as a large circle of people dances to Tibetan songs. It's a hypnotic sight. The dancing is a kind of gentle aerobics. I'm invited to join in by a very well-dressed older man. Always a wallflower, I decline. Gayle sits and 'chats' with a group of women munching lychees. The following day we have our first big climb up to about 3900 metres, beginning with some switchbacks that allow me an opportunity for a breather whilst Gayle catches up. We are the Tortoise and the Hare today. There is a small altercation with some Chinese tourists in a four-wheel drive who stop, ostensibly to take photos of the views, but turn their big fat Nikons onto Gayle as she huffs and puffs up the incline. I watch with pity as she asks them not to photograph her. They ignore her and one woman crosses the road to get a better shot. Gayle rides straight at her, forcing her into the ditch. When she finally gets past them I stride down manfully, shouting and waving my fists and asking them to delete the photos. This is the problem with travelling in a country where human rights are non-existent - these Chinese tourists can't comprehend that people might not want to be photographed. And even if they did - what right have you to deny them? After a long climb we end the day dropping down into the next valley which once again is full of farms and Tibetan houses. We're tired when we pass by one with some flat land and stop to ask the women there if we can camp behind their wall. They say yes and sit down to watch as we pitch the tent and start cooking. Then they leave us be.
Next day seems to follow the same pattern - another climb over a pass and a descent to a village spread out along a wider valley floor. We ask an old lady if we can camp in the rock field behind her house and she says yes. There's a dirt track running up a side valley by a stream and the yak herders coming off the hills stop to say hello and have a look on their way home. We fall asleep early only to be awoken by two drunks who are talking to us. They have a motorbike and are mpointing its headlight right at the tent. We decide to stay in the tent as we can't understand them and they sound plastered. Eventually the younger one drags away the more cantankerous old one who picks up a rock and throws it at the tent in parting. It's midnight. We've never had a visiting drunk before - what should we do? If we stay where we are he may come back. But where can we move to? It's pitch black outside. Soon afterwards, the drunks pass by but don't come over. Now we're on edge. Maybe we should move. And then the old drunk returns with someone else. He sounds angry. And he sounds like he needs someone else to hold him up. Finally they stagger off. Okay, we have to move now. We pack up as quietly as we can, load up the bikes and walk off back to the road. We haven't gone far when we find a fallow field behind a low wall. We pitch the tent and go back to sleep. Thankfully there are no more disturbances, but the experience is very unsettling. We'll have to be much more careful to camp out of sight in future.

Inevitably we have another climb the next day but although it's our highest to date, over 4000 metres, the gradient is good and the reward at the end is wonderful views west over big mountains. We're in Sichuan province now, and everywhere we look there are snowy ridges. The pass is littered with prayer flags. We realise we've been blessed with good weather these past three days and we've loved the scenery - maybe all that cycling uphill is worth it. We descend merrily into Xiangcheng with a long downhill ride that ends with Gayle getting chased by a junkyard dog. But she's not as frightened as me of dogs and her bark is greater than her pursuer's. On the outskirts of town are scattered whitewashed houses that remind us both of Morocco and Andalucia. Did we take a wrong turn back there?

After a little deliberation over our route north to Litang we unanimously decide to take a bus. The 4-hour ride over high passes and freezing plateau would take us four days and we're feeling rather slothful. And we're unsure of the weather too. The landscape is wonderful on the ride, but all of a sudden it's passed by - the bus is much too fast. Litang is a poor dusty Tibetan town on the road between Chengdu and Lhasa with nothing to commend it except for the people. As a market town for the surrounding area it's always busy with Tibetans in some of the fanciest outfits we've ever seen. Men, women and monks shuffle around the shops and market stalls in a variety of groovy sunglasses, outlandish brocade hats, embroidered jackets, long woollen or yakskin coats and elaborate bejewelled hair extensions. It's been a while since we've seen such incredible clothing. Many of the men have long hair, every face is burnished by the sun, children have permanently rosy cheeks. The town is at about 4100 metres and the thin air leaves us gasping just tying our shoe laces. The weather's looking a bit 'off and on' but it's time to head east and find some warmer weather.

Lost Horizon

2010-04-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

We have three good days cycling to reach Zhongdian in the north of Yunnan, starting with a climb up from the Yangtze on a brand new and virtually empty road. We're slow climbers, but it gives us time to appreciate the views. Ha! Looking southwards we get another aspect of Snow Mountain in glorious sunshine, around the bend there's a view over the Yangtze valley to mountains off to the east. We climb through pine forest, and come across small villages and farmland now and again. Towards the top of our first climb we meet a tour group of cyclists flying down in the opposite direction. None have any luggage, of course. An Aussie woman yells "Nearly there!" But she's wrong. After this climb we have a descent and then another climb and a half before we reach Baishuitai, our destination. Still, she means well. At the top we're rewarded with better views north. A couple of men are leading a mule train through the woods and around a bend on a track. It's our turn to fly past a couple of straggling cyclists on their way up as we hurtle down to the village of Ha'ba. After a good late lunch we motor on, and are happy to find that after regaining some height, the road continues along the vallley at the same altitude. Off to our right the Yangtze is taking another dramatic bend to the east and we leave it behind, finally arriving in Baishuitai as the sun is dropping behind the mountains. The guesthouses are rudimentary, and just as we settle on one along come two other cyclists from the opposite direction. Stephane and Leen, from Belgium, stop at the same guesthouse and we chat over our meal in the evening. It seems the only foreigners in these parts are all on bicycles. Next day seems to take a similar pattern, with a big climb, a descent, and then another climb. Lunch is pot noodles from a shack shop in a large village. It's just enough. At the top of the second climb, where we're about 3700 metres, I get off and push - to stretch the muscles of course. And on the way down we have to find a spot to camp. Thankfully Gayle has got a kilometre marker to look out for, from some other cyclists' blog. We find the spot and make our first camp near to a babbling brook in a clearing amongst pine trees. Our third day starts with yet another climb. The good news is that it's our last big one. The bad news is that it's our highest, about 3900m, and a long one. But by now we're better acclimatised and feeling good. The pass eventually comes but here we encounter freezing winds and a barren landscape. We drop down into a bleak brown valley devoid of life except for a few yaks. Having left the Tropics we seem to have passed through the seasons in the wrong order, with summer, then spring and now this wintry scene. We hurtle past a phoney Tibetan village that's been adapted for Chinese tourists, and stop at the next place for yet another pot noodle. We're in Tibetan country now - that huge area of China where Tibetans are living outside of Tibet proper - and the women are wearing traditional clothes, jewellery, various headgear, and the familiar stiped apron. Ruddy cheeks are prominent.

Zhongdian has an old town now swamped by its new counterpart. A while ago the provincial authorities renamed the town Xiangelila (that's Shangrila to you and me), claiming that the town provided the inspiration for Hilton's novel. Essentially a cynical attempt to lure tourists here, it seems to be working, although there is nothing like the development we found in Lijiang or Dali. This means that the town feels quite normal, and if the weather wasn't so wintry, we might stay longer. As it is, we want to keep going and stop only to renew our footwear, visit the local monastery (sneaking past the ticket office), and fill up on the traditional local dish of pizza. In the evenings music is played in the old square and locals, women, men, girls and boys form a circle and dance to the songs. The first time we see this it's dark, and the event thrills us. There are old ladies in traditional clothes, old men in their big hats, young boogaloos in jeans and Rod Stewart haircuts, young women in the latest fashions, all performing an elaborate line dance. This communal act seems like an assertion of their ancient culture and traditions, despite the modernisation of their town and the Han influence that comes with it. Here is a shared act, a public display that asserts their ethnic identity. The next day we arrive a little earlier to see the dancing in the twilight. There are groups of Chinese and foreign tourists gathered with their large cameras pointing at anything or anyone who moves. Suddenly the whole scene just looks like another tacky Chinese tourist show. Lost Horizon indeed.

Tourist Central

2010-04-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

Walking the cobbled streets of old town Lijiang you soon realise that the town is no longer real. Every single grey stone building is either a hotel, shop, restaurant or guesthouse. It's a big town and it's in great condition, as you'd expect for a a town on the UNESCO's World Heritage List. There's an eight quid 'protection fee' for entering but what's to protect? Our guesthouse is a lovely courtyard building with small but perfect rooms (a four-poster bed, stylish bathroom), balconies, decorative wood-carved finish etc. It's all new. Restoration and reconstruction might be the same word in Mandarin. No-one asks us to pay the fee, so we don't. The town is lovely, with streams running through, hardly a satellite dish to be seen, the streets are spotlessly clean. But the streets are busy, busy. Our guidebook reckons on 4 million visitors a year, with 700 hotels to accomodate them. The owner of our guesthouse is a Singaporean businessman. He was here during national holidays in October 2008 when over 15,000 tourists were without a bed for the night. He decided then to invest in a hotel.

We've a few chores to do and the place is very comfortable, so we stop a couple of days. The weather's mixed and cloud sits on Snow Mountain (great name) to the north. We have different options to head northwards. Not far away is the infamous Tiger Leaping Gorge where the Yangtze passes through a very narrow and deep gorge. We could cycle through it except, surprise, surprise, the road is being reconstructed. Then we get an e-mail from a Spanish cyclist, Salva, who has ridden a back road to the far end of the gorge, crossed the river, and continued up to Zhongdian on a back road that sounds beautiful. There is also a tourist road directly to the gorge, but it costs 16 quid each to use and we're too tight. We can't decide what to do, so we delay our departure a day. Ahhh, the freedom to be able to do nothing. It turns out well - we learn that the gorge road is passable, though we may have to carry our bikes over landslides, and the day we leave it's sunny and clear. We take the main highway, an easy ride on new tarmac, with a very long descent to the Yangtze. We finally get to see Snow Mountain. It is a mountain with snow. At the gorge entrance the fee is waived due to the road works. Hooray.Next morning we set off down the dusty road through the gorge. It's said that walking the gorge is the best way to experience it and we can't argue otherwise after a dirty and slow ride for the 22 kilometres to the guesthouses at the other end. But we still enjoy the dramatic scenery with the river crashing through the narrow gap below, and on the far side the sheer cliffs shooting up into the sky above. Of course, there's all the drama of Chinese roadworks as well for the whole length. Various teams of workers are chopping bits of the hillside away with explosives, diggers and drills, whilst others are building up the side that drops vertiginously down to the river. The workers are living on site, which means plastic tarpaulin tents strung up on narrow stretches. Labourers break and sift rocks - men and women together. The old road has disappeared under the endless landslides and constant rumble of overladen trucks full of rocks, gravel or sand. We amble carefully along, waiting whilst a landslide is cleared, or sprint over broken ground whilst men drill a rockface overhead. There are a few locals using the road and some tourists in minibuses.

We're pretty grubby when we reach our guesthouse, and it's been a very slow ride, but we're happy that now we've got through the gorge we can continue along the back road to Zhongdian. We sit and chat away with the other tourists. Amazingly it seems that only one person out of about twenty has actually walked here - the rest rode along this horrible road in minibuses.......

Dilly-dallying in Dali

2010-03-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten the joys of bus travel in provincial China - the small seats, the chain-smoking men, the vomiting children and the toilet stops. Oh, how we miss the freedom of the cyclist's open-air pee. Riding the bus we are condemned to those waterless tiled hell-holes where you get to see everyone lined up in a row, squatting and squezzing. And there's always one fella on his mobile phone. Surely this is a scene no English person could ever get accustomed to? Our bus takes us through dramatic scenery, out of the Nu Jiang valley, down to the Mekong/Lancang and then climbs up once again to a high plateau where we join a Super Highway, disappear into a long tunnel and re-emerge into another huge valley, the road descending forever into the mist. Finally it reaches journey's end in Xiaguan, a shabby city, where we unload the bikes from the roofand quickly pedal up the road to Dali.

This little town used to be the capital of a kingdom governing most of Yunnan until Mr. K. Khan's Mongol hordes showed up in the 1200's and incorporatedthe area into China. In the 19th century the city was governed by a muslim sultan who rebelled against the Qing emperor. Along with many other Hui (Chinese Musilm) uprisings, this one ended in blood and tears - it's estimated up to 18 million died nationwide in such uprisings - a sign of the empire's desperate hold on power. The quiet town became a popular hangout for Western travellers in Yunnan and is now fully included in the Chinese tourists' itinerary. There's nothing particularly special about the town itself - it's walled and remains low-rise - but it's a relaxing place and is located nicely between mountains in the west and Erhai lake in the east. The area is inhabited predominantly by Bai people, one of Yunnan's minorities, and as with all touristy towns in China, traditional dress is worn by many of the female shopworkers. And, as with all touristy towns in China, there is the local speciality dish. In Dali's case it's lasagne. We're happy to indulge in some Western food and wander the streets. At last this is a place where there are comfy cafes, book exchanges and, essentially for me, a new supply of Yunnan coffee. We're also delighted to catch up with Gill and Bert who we last saw in Luang Prabang. They're heading in the same direction as us and have information on access to some of the Tibetan towns further north in Sichuan and Qinghai provinces (some have been closed to foreigners). Bert is considering buying firecrackers as a dog deterrent. I'm on the look out for a handgun.

South west China has been suffering from a serious drought and Bert & Gill have had many hazy days on their bikes. In Dali, it's sometimes cloudy and chilly and finally rains one day. We both need new rain jackets and end up in the shops selling fake North Face and Columbia gear where we make a couple of shopkeepers rather happy with our purchases. Ambling down the pedestrianised streets we are approached by smiley middle-aged ladies, some toting babies, who ask if we want to "smoke some ganja". But if we want to get high, there's always the cable car up Cang Shan (boom, boom). No, we just want to relax and sample some more lasagne. Ooops, there goes a few more days.....

Dog Days

2010-03-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

It was around Baoshan that Kublai Khan's army tonked the Burmese back in the days. They went on to chase them all the way back to Bagan. In the morning on the bus I still have a vivid memory of Rambo thrashing the modern-day Burmese army almost single-handedly. If only it were real, eh? Marco Polo was with the Emperor in those earlier days and apparently writes about Baoshan as 'Vochan'. If I sound a bit wishy-washy on this it's because we still haven't read his account of his travels, so everything here is second-hand. Still, it's nice to know we're still arriving in places that the inventor of minty sweets has also visited. The town shows signs of recent expansion - the road outside the bus station isn't yet complete but there's a lovely new hospital in the centre. There are still quite a few buildings with the tell-tale white tiles on the outside - a hallmark of eighties buildings here that now look quite grotty. I am developing a Chinese hotel theory, not particularly brilliant, that nothing is particularly well-maintained here or kept clean. The answer is simply to knock it down and build anew. So, we always look out for the newest hotel we can find. They'll normaly be very comfortable (apart from the bed) and the bathroom will have modern fittings, even if the plumbing's a bit dodgy. The greatest comfort is having a kettle - you can't beat tea and biscuits in bed after a bit of cycling. Speaking of which........

After two more lazy days we set off down the Burma Road, heading south-west towards the Nu Jiang Valley. The Nu river is the second-longest river in South East Asia and the only major Chinese river not to be dammed, and like it's neighbour the Mekong (or Lancang as it's called in China), it rises in Tibet. The government had plans to build dams but have been put off by local protests and UNESCO recognition of the valley's special flora and fauna. But for how long? We want to cycle up the valley, which is a dead end for us - in the north there are dirt roads through the mountains into Tibet where we're not officially allowed without guide, permits etc. - but on the return we plan to take a road out heading east towards Dali. Our first day's ride feels like the easiest we've done in a long time, since we're going downhill for such a lot of it. We end up in a tiny hotel just by the bridge across the river. Gayle has some problem with her gear shifting which I exacerbate with some twiddling. After a sharp exchange of words and the oral equivalent of a frying pan to the head, I stop twiddling. It seems I have misread a critical part of the information leaflet I am reading off. Hmmm.

The road north has been described as a perfectly smooth road by another cyclist. But this is before they decide to straighten out the curves and level out the bumps. Before they remove large sections of the "perfectly smooth road" so that they can widen it. And before they start blasting out the valley walls above us, creating huge landslides, piles of rocks and dust, dust, dust everywhere. In typical Chinese fashion, the roadworks continue for about 80km. In the afternoon, straight after lunch, we have to wait a couple of hours while blasting takes place. When we do go through, there are still stones falling. Ultimately though, all this means is that we go a little slower through some very pretty landscapes. The valley is wide and fertile, the river green-blue and big. But there's been little rain here for a long while and the landscape is quite dry, the views hazy. When we reach Liuku, the main town in the valley, the road has become smooth again and the valley has narrowed into a gorge. There are roads east to the Mekong valley and west over the mountains and into Burma. We find a half-decent hotel run by an exuberantly drunk man who insists on helping clean up the bikes and carry our bags up to our room. He finds a guest, a woman, who speaks English - she learnt in Ireland but has lost the accent - who is helping her sister set up an English-language school. Another aspect of this valley is the mixture of ethnic groups living here, each with their own language. Mandarin is probably only spoken on official business, although we detect many of the businesses are run by in-comers. As we travel up the valley it seems to get more spectacular. It's not perfect - the one-horse towns are a blight, and there are about twenty small hydro-electric plants running down the steep valley sides - but then you get glimpses of the snow-covered peaks, or you ride past an old village of wooden houses set amongst terraced fields, accessed only by a steel cable. These river-crossings look fabulously scary - just hook your pulley on, slide across and don't look down at the rapids.

It seems that as we travel north the villages become more numerous. Paths disappear up vertiginous hillsides and up narrow side-valleys. We soon become familiar with the other valley residents - the dogs. Now there are good times and bad times to cycle through a village. Generally, between 11 and 3 is good because everyones dozing, including the mutts. But early morning or late afternoon and we cyclists may be the canine entertainment for the day. Something about our moving feet? Or our quiet approach? Some of the dogs are simply barking, but they like to get close to do it, and often fall behind out of your field of vision. Others are silent, but want to chase you down. We soon develop techniques to deal with them - the important one is that I let Gayle ride in front so that she can draw out any crazy hound. Her response is to shout loudly, which wakes up the village, but usually stops the dog in its tracks. If the dog is persistent and getting too close to ankles I get off the bike and chuck stones, but I'm an awful aim. I consider practising on some of the dogs that are chained up. These normally go beserk when we go past. I am shamelessly afraid of dogs, so passing through villages starts to make me hyper-alert and nervy. I feel like I'm playing the 'Hunt 'em and Shoot 'em' games that the kids play in the internet cafes. Every building could be sheltering a ferocious beast, or more likely a small yapper that just wants to have a little fun. At the top of the valley, after six day's riding, we reach Bingzhongluo, the village we're aiming for. In one restaurant where we're choosing food we are offered pork or dog. We go for the pork. I only wish that the locals ate more dog to be honest.

The views from the village are wonderful and we are so lucky to be blessed with good weather - only one cloudy day in the valley and one evening of rain - our first since goodness knows. Our hotel looks brand new and empty - ideal. But then we discover another guest, a Chinese fella who now lives in Canada, who we met back in Laos. Tai is also riding a bike which he also got at the same shop as us in Bangkok. His destination is Lhasa and we never expected to meet him again, but circumstances have brought him up the Nu Jiang valley. Cycling in Tibet is illegal for foreigners and Tai has no Chinese papers, so he is hoping to sneak in to the region along the dirt road at the valley head. We eat together and afterwards he is intorduced to a driver who offers to take him past the checkpoints that are further along the road. We hope he makes it. We spend a couple of pleasant days around the village before heading back south. The area is so peaceful and the landscape is beautiful - lots of pine trees and the blue-green river winding its way through the mountains. One noticeable feature of many of the villages here are the churches. French missionaries arrived here coming up the Mekong and more recent evangelsts have also been at work. In one town we meet two young Burmese men who have come over the border to proselytise. We have seen several mosques in Yunnan, but these are the only churches. The locals are working hard in the fields now - lots of ploughing

We return to Liuku by bus and are about to ride east out of the valley to get to Dali in 3 or 4 days. But it only takes three mad dogs and a sky full of dark clouds to make us reconsider our plans. Why don't we take another bus and get over to Dali sooner? So we do.

A Nice Cup of Cha?

2010-03-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

Armed with a new pair of cycling gloves and half a kilo of Yunnan's finest Arabica coffee, I am ready for more cycling. Armed with a fire extinguisher Gayle is ready to make war with the rowdies on our hotel floor who insist on screaming at each other outside our door at all hours: 10pm, 3am, 6.30 am, whenever. It is time for us to depart Jinghong. We're now on Beijing time (GMT+8) which means the sun is rising later - psychologically this is very important for us - now we don't have to get up until 7.30am. We can choose to take the Super Highway or the old road winding up out of town along a valley, and opt for the latter. However, so does all the traffic, and we're not sure why. After a very long haul to the top we descend very quickly and come to the Super Highway anyway - what a waste of effort. However, we stick to the old road which goes right through all the villages and small towns and is more interesting. In the afternoon we find ourselves climbing again, up through woods. Eventually the views open up and we are on a high ridge overlooking acres and acres of tea plantations. This area is called Pu'er and is where tea cultivation began. It's early in the season so there's not much happening at the moment. We end our day in a one-horse town and find a rather smart hotel and some good grub to fill us up. A marvellous day.

Our next day begins with a chilly and wonderful descent that just seems to go on and on until we arrive at the Super Highway again. The new road is obviously a great boon to the region as it speeds up transport links, but you have to feel sorry for one small village that now finds itself literally living right underneath the damn thing - completely put in the shade - quite a depressing sight. We stick to the old road again, twisting and winding, rolling along from village to village. I am delighted to see that all the crazy dogs are chained up - but maybe that's what makes 'em crazy? I definitely do not care. Along the way we pass huge banana plantations and occasional groups of farmworkers in a huddle around a truck. They form a banana-packing plant - cutting, boxing and stacking the produce onto the truck. In some of the busier towns it's market day and we notice groups of women in traditional clothes marking them out as a particular ethnic minority, for which Yunnan is famous. Looking at the faces of many of the people you'd be hard pressed to say where we were.

We're aiming for the city of Simao which has been renamed Pu'er. This must have come as a surprise to the residents of the town of Pu'er which lies 50km to the north. How very Chinese. The old town of Pu'er has also been renamed. It's all a nonsense - everyone still uses the old names. Simao once upon a time was a French and British concession - this was the 'customs' point for the export of nearly all the tea in China. Long before the Europeans arrived the Chinese were sending out thousands of tea horse caravans to cross the southern Silk Road into Burma, India and Tibet. Now it's a bustling provincial city with big palm-lined boulevards and lots of new buildings. Like many Chinese cities it hasn't got much character, or places to sit out, come to think of it, but there's good food and lots of smiling and staring people. "Laowai" is the word we keep hearing - it translates as something like "Old Whitey" - which is better than Old Big Nose, I guess. (They probably say that quietly too.)

Our aim is to get over to the west of Yunnan and cycle up the Nu Jiang valley which borders Burma and Tibet. A quick glance at the map and we decide to take a bus halfway there. It's an odd feeling turning up at the bus station to buy a ticket, but it's all very straight forward. We wait until the next morning and turn up with our fully-loaded bikes. But there's no bus, we are told. Yes there is, I say, we've got tickets for it. No, you don't understand, there's no bus. No I don't understand. It's at times like these that any grasp I have on Mandarin seems to dissolve like sugar in water. Thankfully there's a very nice young woman at the ticket counter who speaks a little English and explains the bus has been cancelled. Why not go to Jingdong, she suggests. How about all the way to Baoshan, we counter. Yes okay, on the night bus tonight. And the bikes are okay? Yes, the bikes are okay. After another day's waiting we roll up to the bus station and when our bus arrives we approach with a crowd of other passengers. The bus men look twice when they see our loaded bikes. We unload them - look, see, not so bad is it? Luckily we're at the start of the bus journey, so the hold is empty. We are invited to load the bikes ourselves, and get a whole locker to ourselves. No problems. We get on board and to my horror find that we are on a sleeper bus. A terrible invention - this sleeper bus consists of two aisles with three bunk beds across. Each bunk is the length of an average Chinese person. As I wedge myself in on the middle top bunk, Gayle gives me a cheery 'Goodnight'. The bus sets off and I'm trying to get my knees out from under an armpit when the TV screen, which is about 2 feet in front of my face, comes on. Oh goody, it's Rambo 4...........

The China Syndrome

2010-03-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

The next few days follow a similar pattern. We cycle, eat a big stir-fried lunch, cycle some more, arrive in a small town beginning with Meng..., find a decent cheap hotel, eat another stir-fried meal and sleep. Our first meal is in a little cafe where the woman opens up her fridge, we point at some meat and some veg and ten minutes later we're eating a wonderful feast. Perfect. This seems to be a popular trend in these parts - and one which we enjoy because we don't have to look all confused at a Mandarin menu. There are occasional problems - such as when we ask for aubergine and tomato together. Obviously not a good combo. In the shops we find our favourite Chinese breakfast ingredients: sugar puffs and milk.

The cycling is easier here - when there are hills, the gradient is kinder. We cycle through a lot of forest reserve, which is very pretty. There's also a brand new Super Highway from the border which is fine sometimes for clocking up the kilometres but one day we reach a 3.5 km tunnel which gets very dark very quickly just as it starts to go downhill around a corner. We backtrack sharpish and find a dirt track that takes us to the old road, winding up over the top of a ridge - it's more effort but more satisfying. And there are many smiles per kilometre to be had here - is it China's population density or just they're a bit more cheerful here?

Most of the hotels we find look fairly new and the rooms are comfortable - tiled floors, white bedlinen, TV, kettle, bathroom, hot water. If only the beds had a little give in them - the Chinese like hard beds. It's probably Mao's fault. Most things are. There's nothing much to do in the evenings but catch up with the Chinese medallists in the Winter Olympics (these are repeated ad infinitum - our favourite is the woman speed skater who talks a million in every interview and looks a bit of a scally) or there's the news to catch up on: earthquake in Chile, British imperialists drilling for oil off the Malvinas Islands, Chinese government plans to spend 4% of GDP on education by 2012. One hotel room has a picture card of pouting ladies in various states of undress who presumably can be called to entertain us should the TV prove be too dull. At reception the room rates are posted up on the wall and all of them have an "o'clock" rate. We like to call these hotels 'Hotels For Homeless Lovers'. It makes them feel less sleazy........ But the best way to experience a Chinese hotel is to pick one that also has a coachload of national tourists, all wearing red baseball caps. They'll fling open all their doors, turn up the TV volume, play cards, spit sunflower seed shells, shout out to each other and generally let you know that you're not alone. They're loud people, the Chinese. Something about their language or the large population?

In Menghun Gayle visits the botanical gardens in the afternoon while I try and finish one of our books - desperate to lighten the load a little. The next day we sail into Jinghong, the provincial capital and probably the largest town we've been in since we left Bangkok. There's a couple of cafes for travellers here and we're happy to take a break from the road. One of our jobs is to plot our onward route westwards across Yunnan and we want to use the internet but none of the internet cafes will have us. "Mei you" they say and shake their heads - a classic gesture. We don't know the reason why but at least the cafes offer internet access. Oh go on then, we'll have a beefburger and chips while we're here.......

The Roadless Travelled

2010-03-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

What makes cycling through Laos so enjoyable is the scenery, the lack of traffic and fairly decent roads. We're on the main road through the northern half of the country and there's hardly anything on the road. Including tarmac. Hang on, where's it all gone??? We shudder and shake northwards. After a climb we have a nice long descent, except the road is a mess of stone, gravel, pot holes - nothing but vibrations all the way down, and none of them good ones. There are road workers everywhere and finally we reach some brand new super-smooth tarmac, courtesy of the Chinese. We glide into a village called Namo, find a guesthouse and call it quits. It goes without saying that in the middle of nowhere, i.e. Namo, we meet another cyclist, John from Denmark. John is travelling south and has had two punctures and a broken spoke today. The spectre of a broken spoke haunts me. I had to confess that although we carry spare spokes we lack the tools and knowledge necessary to make a repair. We both wonder how John will survive tomorrow riding over the awful road we've travelled today.

We're excited when we wake the next day - we're only about 40km from the border with China and we're fed up with foe - Lao noodle soup. Today we'll be eating Chinese. Even better, the last 20km to the border is on a brand new road. On the Laos side is a Chinese town - we know this because it's a construction site. After getting stamped out of Laos at a portakabin we cycle down to the fancy Chinese border post - all spic and span. A security guard greets us and offers to watch over our bikes whilst we're inside. It's big and clean and empty inside. We do the immigration and health formalities (Have you any of the following symptons: cough, fever, diaorrhea, headache, flu, muscle fatigue, sore backside, tingly sensation in the fingers? If yes, have you been cycling through Laos? ) and go back for our bikes. "Have a nice holiday!" the guard shouts after us as we pedal off.

As Easy As

2010-02-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

We depart the next day with Emmanuel & Nawal towards Oudomxay. Needless to say, It's the longest day of my life. Almost immediately the road begins to climb. It keeps climbing for about 30km. Back at home we live near a long valley road known by many cyclists for being the longest continual incline in England (rising 320 metres in about 9km) . It's called Cragg Vale. We have never cycled up it, but it was on my To Do List. At the top of Cragg Vale is a lovely lonely pub serving Marston's beer. At some point in our three-hour crawl up the road I begin to look forward to that pint. Deluded fool. The only thing waiting for us at the top is the road downwards.

We descend and pass through a few dusty poor villages. We can't see anywhere to eat so fall back on our supply of peanut brittle. And then we climb again. A thigh-buster. No really steep inclines, but after our 110km yesterday and the climb this morning, we're beginning to fade faster than the sun. Gayle, dehydrated and hungry, is hallucinating that we're in the Himalaya. I'd share more brittle with her and my water, if only she would catch me up. At one point I realise I can push the sodding bike faster than I can pedal it.

And then, gloriously, the landscape opens up in front of us and as the sun softens in the haze, we gaze down upon blue hills and a beautiful descending road. We freewheel with all the gusto we can muster almost all the way into town. At the guesthouse Nawal and Emmanuel are looking daisy fresh. We eat together in the evening and Gayle and I make a particular effort to stuff our faces. We stay two days in Oudomxay. It's not a remarkable place but after one rest day we can't resist another.

We wave farewell to our French companions who point their tandem towards Vietnam, and then we go for a short ride without baggage to stretch our legs. After an hour I regret losing my gloves back in Luang Prabang. I also regret trying to be a BMX bandit on a badly broken road. And I particularly regret riding into that sandy patch and falling onto that rocky patch. I'm 42 but I can still fall off my bike like an 8 year-old. Gayle clucks sympathetically whilst making it clear I have only myself to blame. She hasn't seen me fall but I know she's right. I'm covered in dust, grazes and have two gritty palms. I should stick to cycle-touring.

Stage Eleven: Luang Prabang to Mont Ventoux

2010-02-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

On our last evening in Luang Prabang we meet up with Gill and Bert who we first met outside the China embassy in Viang Chan. "What's your policy on responding to waving motorcyclists?" Bert wanted to know. I must admit I feel no bond whatsoever with Terminator-clad bikers riding noisy farty mechanical warthogs. Dirt bikes, pah. No, we only give our joyous love and kisses to the cycling fraternity, unless they act like shifty sex-tourists. Bert & Gill share ideas about routes through Yunnan. We, as ever, are rather undecided.

The day we ride out of Luang Prabang is the longest day of my life. The road is actually rather nice to ride, lots of small climbs and freewheels, a lovely river to follow upstream, but it's a long road to Pakmong. Along the way we are hailed by the tandem duo of Nawal and Emmanuel. They look lean efficient. I feel like Bilbo Baggins. We have a quick chat and they glide off effortlessly. After 70km we gladly stop for lunch and order a traditional Laos dish - laap - a chopped meat salad that reminds us of Peruvian ceviche. It's a big plate and sets us back more than the 14,000 kip we are expecting. It costs 40,000 kip. There's a world of difference between "sii sip phan" and "sip sii phan", don't you know. In the long afternoon we're glad of the food.

Each village provides cheerleading infants who shout greetings and wave. Later on we pass schools disgorging hundreds of children. Every single one wants to high-five us. By now we're leg-weary and panting up low climbs. It's a struggle just to wipe the sweat off my face. Every little high-fiving boy looks like he 'll knock me over, so I cheat and keep my hand too high for the little scamps. A milestone tells us that we are close to the finish just as two schoolboys make a break from the peloton. Gayle is caught napping, but I mange to catch the back wheel of one. However the lead boy has started his sprint for the finish early and is away. He looks a clear winner, but he's forgotten that last little climb. I get out of the saddle to power into the lead, crossing the line with chest out, fists in the air, the crowd go wild with shouts. Well, no, it's just Nawal calling from the guesthouse I overshoot. She and Emmanuel look like they've just arisen and are ready for a long day's bike ride. We look like we've raced a stage of the Tour De France. Even my socks are caked in brine.

In the evening we meet Alisdair & Rachel at a restaurant. Now we first met this young English couple in a bike shop in Bangkok and then again at Sukothai. They have cycled all the way north through Thailand, crossed into laos and are now heading south to Viang Chan. Along the way they've overcome some technical difficulties (uncomfortable saddle and broken spokes - the things I dread the most) and lived to tell the tale. We're glad to have met them here rather than in passing along the road., but even their youthful exuberance can't keep me from nodding off with exhaustion......

Calorie Counting

2010-02-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

So I've just finished a peanut butter and salad baguette and a large coffee and thinking about the past seven days. It's already a bit of a blur. It's a grey chilly day here in Luang Prabang, one of Laos' main tourist destinations, and it feels quite weird to be back in the land of tourists. What was once the capital city is really nothing more than a collection of villages, with a fine collection of wats and lovely old French colonial buildings. Thankfully UNESCO has given the town World Heritage status, which has probably saved the town from terrible development, and correspondingly it has brought said tourist by the minibus load. It sometimes feels like the only Lao people here are servicing the tourists. Or they are monks. A bit weird.

I am now beginning to understand how different it is to travel by bicycle. Apart from eating more. Our friend James couldn't have described it better when he told us that once he had a bike he never wanted to walk anywhere - it took too long. And although the bike gave him more freedom he was usually too tired to make the most of it. This we hope will change as our fitness improves. But first things first, let's eat. Luang Prabang is blessed with a variety of eating options, other than the noodle soup and cow pat moo (pork fried rice - linguistically a true false friend if ever I saw one) which we have been living on for a week. We shun the traditional Lao pizza and eat a huge plate from a buffet at a night stall. Along the main street there are baguette sandwich makers (pate, chicken, tuna, peanut butter, nutella, banana, condensed milk - very tasty but a bit sickly altogether). Our bike computer has a calorie counter and we have thousands to catch up on, which makes it all the more pity that we both eat something rotten. Of course, being a man, I take it far more seriously than Gayle, and remain bedridden and full of self-pity for over a day. Our rest stop in Luang Prabang is prolonged a further two days. To add to my woes I discover that I have lost my comfy cycling gloves. I despair. Gayle despairs of me. I despair of Gayle despairing of me. Well, at least it's not my passport. On our second evening we meet Mike, who is on the look out for cycling shorts after those tough hill climbs. We also meet the affable Bernd who tells us he has lost his passport. He will have to make the bike ride back the way he came to ask at the guesthouses for it. He seems remarkably calm about it. Calmer than I am about my gloves.

Lao get up early. They have to - the monks walk the streets collecting alms at daybreak. It's become a tourist sight in Luang Prabang. Strangely we never actually rise early enough to catch it. We do catch up with Gertrude and Rod though, whom we last saw in Bangkok. Gayle summons the energy to visit some of the ornately-decorated wats around the old town. She is stopped by an older English couple who need some help: "Could you tell us where the Mekong is?" So I'm not the only person losing things around here.

What to do on your day off from cycling

2010-02-20T21:24:00.000-08:00

The Land in Between

2010-02-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

Our first day out of Viang Chang seems like a doddle once we overcome the early morning start. Ouch. We pick up baguette sandwiches on the way out of the city (mustn't go hungry) and then we have a pleasant fairly gentle ride, but a long one of about 90km to stretch our legs, along Route 10. Noticeably we get less smiles per kilometre than in Thailand, from our brief experience. In the evening we stay in a simple guesthouse along with two Japanese cyclists and Bernd, a quiet German who has also cycled the same route. We meet him again the next day just before we reach a little village mid-afternoon. We are all ready to call it a day, having hit the main highway and ridden through the heat of the midday. Whilst we are trying to have hearty breakfasts, and long lunches of noodle soup, Bernd gets by with a morning coffee, but catches up in the evening. I try and boost my calorie intake with a BeerLao. I have long been obsessed with food and water whenever we leave the tourist trail. Whenever we go hiking I worry about our water supply. Thankfully here we have no problems. Every guesthouse and roadside noodle joint has a water cooler from which we can fill up our bottles, athough in some of the smaller roadside villages in the hills later on we see people going to collect water on their motorbikes.

Day three is a milk run of about 25km to the infamous town of Vang Vieng. Never heard of it, you say? Well, all I can say is tubing. Tubing? Yeah, sitting in a tractor inner tube and floating down the river. Drunk and stoned and covered in crude magic marker pen doodles, if you like. It seems for all Lao's good intentions, they had to let one place turn into a S.E. Asia teen-tourist hell-hole, and Vang Vieng is it. You can buy the t-shirt. You can sit on some wooden decking and get high listening to old techno and dance music played at full volume. You can wander around the town in your barefeet and swimwear like it's Torremolinos '88. Gee, three days cycling and I've become even more of a grumpy old man. Mind you, the traditional Lao dinner of cheeseburger and chips is delicious.....

With some relief at leaving, but intrepidation of the road ahead, we continue north. But not without another cheeseburger and chips for breakfast. Looking back now as I write it all seems a bit of a blur. There are hills. There are big hills. I'd call them mountains, but as another cyclist has pointed out, we're going to China. In China they have mountains. So, it's Laos, they are big hills. 10% gradient. Leg pain. Knee pain. Lung pain. Thankfully neither of us have saddle pain. We stop mid-afternoon in a charmless place called Kasi, full of truck stop cafes. But that's okay. We are now accustomed to arriving knackered, taking a shower, getting something to eat, rehydrating and then falling fast asleep.

Just in case we are going too fast, we opt for another short day, this time 21km up to a restaurant and guesthouse in a lovely spot by some hotsprings. It's all very simple, but we're so happy to have a hot soak. And the banana coconut shakes are wonderful. In the restaurant there's a bunch of monks chowing down and a tourist who won't make eye-contact. Sex tourist? Nope, just another cyclist. So much for the 'Fraternity'. Eventually we get him to speak. He's a tired Englishman heading south. A bit later Mike arrives. He's just got a bit of light luggage on the back, on his way to Hanoi. Laos seems to be crawling with cyclists. Or is it just that there's only 8 roads in the whole country.

The next day is the longest day of my life. It starts with a big downhill, which is kind of fun on a bike, but kind of terrible too, because you know you're going to have to climb again soon afterwards. The climb goes on forever. At one point I'm cycling up a steep bend in the lowest gear possible, feet a blur, going nowhere fast. The road bends are cambered at an alarming angle. As I inch my way up, leaning with the camber, I imagine myself on a Wall of Death. There's some traffic, but not too much to make it uncomfortable. Just too many trucks and old vans belching black smoke as they also struggle uphill. Now and again a minibus full of tourists whizzes past annoyingly. Half an eternity passes and we finally reach the top. There aresome great viewslooking back the way we came. We then sail down to a dusty road junction for the usual noodle soup lunch and litres of water. We've done well. We're carrying a fair amount of stuff but we've climbed 20km before lunch. After lunch, we descend for about 15km. I'm laughing and crying at the same time. Our second climb of the day goes on forever. Sometimes you can see the road up ahead, alarmingly high above us. We stop more frequently and drink more frequently. I seem to be riding in low gear only. It's hot. In the morning there was some cloud cover, but now we enjoy the full heat of the sun. Somewhere, somehow, we reach the top. Or is it? Those false summits can be a killer. Soon we find ourselves, uh-oh, heading downhill again. Ooooohhh, another biggie downhill...... This is worse than watching Manchester City. And another big uphill. The village we're aiming for is at the top. My eyes flit to the computer every thirty seconds to check the distance we've gone. Along the roadway are ditch diggers. Sometimes we don't see them, and then a pile of dirt gets tossed up onto the road. Often they are just sat on the side of the road, their legs dangling in the ditch. Some of them smile and laugh when we ooze by in a blob of perspiration. There are hundreds of 'em the whole day long. Some invite us to eat with them. Others just stare. They obviously think we're mad. It's about four in the afternoon and we've broken open the emergency peanut brittle. We're down to the last half-litre of water. Our thigh muscles are jelly. We are mad. And finally we get there, and meet Johan and Wilhelmine coming in the opposite direction from Luang Prabang. We stay at the same guesthouse and hear about their rides in Africa and the Americas. We are so happy to have survived today and know that there's only one more day's cycling to Luang Prabang. But where's Bernd and Mike? We know they too are heading this way.

Day seven turns out to be just enough for us - 80km going down, up, down, which is about all the detail I need to know at breakfast. The early morning down lasts for 20km and takes us over an hour. A bit heavy on the brakes, but there are plenty of bends, plenty 4-wheel drives zooming up the centre of the road, and plenty of those annoying bumpy bits in the road that are very hard to spot until you bounce right over them. We're even slower climbing today - yesterday's supreme effort having drained us a little. However, the scenery has been much better on these hilly sections, and the views could even make up for the agony. We meet a Korean on his way to Europe on a recumbent bicycle. He looks kind of laid back, if you know what I mean. Then there's the chirpy Scots/Irish couple who tell us "You're nearly at the top". We meet Mike later in the day and they told him the same thing when he was only halfway up the hill. Mike catches up with us on the long descent into Luang Prabang, just after another noodle soup lunch. Mmmm. Already I'm dreaming of the treats and culinary delights that only the 'tourist' towns have to offer. Mike punctures soon after we meet, and we're too tired to wait with him, so we roll on towards the Big City, exhausted but happy.

Dementia in Vientiane

2010-02-09T23:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's now spelt Viang Chan. Same same, but different. As we cruise into the city-that-is-a-village we suddenly remember that we should be finding the Chinese embassy. After a few dead ends we get there, lock our bikes and...... the gate closes. 11.30am. Shut. Next day though we're back bright and early at 9am for opening time. (Oh how I'd love to work in an embassy - such good hours they keep.) There's another couple, Gill and Bert, with bikes, so of course we start talking. An annoying young American is unfavourably comparing our bikes. I'm tempted to clout him with my handlebar bag. Oooooh. The embassy is almost efficient (they'd get full marks except they make you queue up just to get the application form) and we can collect tomorrow. We think we may get 90 days, the excitement's killing us.

While we're here we meet Coralie and Fabien, two lovely people we met in Iran in 2008 driving a 2CV to Laos and working on a water project. They have returned to look for work and it looks like Fabien has just walked into a job. Coralie has family here and they look very happy to be here. Laos, it seems, is changing fast. Like every other communist country they seem to have given up the ideology and the opening up of the economy has brought some investment, development and all those other wonderful things associated with capitalism. It's still called the People's Democratic Republic, but like China, democracy appears in name only. The majority of Lao are still very poor. To quote one ugly Brit who was shouting down his mobile in the street to a friend "It's not Thailand, y'know". The country opened up in the mid-nineties and there has been an attempt on making sure they learn from some of Thailand's mistakes when it comes to tourism, specifically the sex-tourism and the exploitation of minority villages. Still, on the surface at least, there seem to be plenty of what we snobbishly refer to as 'the wrong kind of tourist'. I need to expound on this a bit more to explain what I mean, but it may just turn out to be blithering drivel.......

Anti-drugs campaign in Viang Chan

I lose our alarm clock one morning. I'm in bed, switch it off and then cannot find it again. I'm losing everything at the moment, including my marbles. Ever since we switched from rucksacks to panniers it's thrown me right off kilter, disrupted my autistic tendencies. The clock turns up at the bottom of the pillow case, but no sign of my marbles. There are an inordinate number of wats to see in Viang Chang, but we're weary temple-goers.

The city sits on the bank of the Mekong although the river looks a long way off. So far away in fact that they've decided to build a four-lane highway along it. That's progress for you.

We meet up with Bert and Gill and Emmanuel & Nawal, a French couple on a tandem. Suddenly there are cycle tourists everywhere and we have an instant bond. Another tandem appears at our guesthouse and Gayle chats to the young woman riding it. The back seat is very low, so Gayle asks. It's for her six year-old son. She looks knackered. She asks if we know what the road is like between here and Luang Prabang. Well, yes and no. We've got a route description from Friedel and Andrew's Travelling Two website. It's a great help to us as we're just starting out and haven't a clue what we can do each day. They describe the stretch as a "challenging ride". This is from a couple who had been cycling for two years. I'm glad we packed some peanut brittle.

The Chinese give us a 90 day visa, hooray, and we have a farewell meal with Fabien and Coralie at a locals' restaurant serving some very tasty Laos food. Early to bed though - we need to pack as we're getting up early in the morning. Where's that alarm clock?

Great Rivers of Asia No. 5: The Mekong

2010-02-08T23:02:00.000-08:00

So we're bussing across northern Thailand to pick up a train to the border with Laos, all in the name of saving time and getting that pesky Chinese visa. It's quite galling to find that our bus doesn't arrive ("accident") and that we have to wait 5 hours for the next one. When it does arrive the bikes are squeezed on through the back door and into the aisle because the bus is running on LPG and there's only room in the hold for five huge gas tanks. A big bunch of monks are sitting there and they prod and poke and ring the bell occasionally. But even more galling is the lovely scenery we pass through which we had originally planned to cycle. At least we get to Khon Kaen without "accident".

At the train station we get tickets for the 5am train. It's about 9 o'clock so we get some food, watch a bit of footie (surprise, surprise, it's Manchester United), watch a large thunderstorm and then return to the station to sleep. Gayle is quickly asleep on a bench on the platform, whilst I try and read, fanning away clouds of mosquitoes that are interfering with my vision and trying to eat me through my clothes. After fitful sleep we board the train and chug onwards to Nong Khai. This sleepy border town is alive with tourists, both Thai and foreign. There's a new promenade along the Mekong and just over the water, Laos. Once again we have crossed paths with Jurek, our Czech friend, as he has just come through Laos. We talk about each others' plans and what we've been up to since we met in Bangkok just before Christmas. Jurek seems to share our some of our feelings about travel in South East Asia (Burma excepted). There's definitely an odd mix of foreign tourists, and the impact this makes on the countries is not always positive. In my jaded vision it seems to be all bars, drugs and sex tourism. Ultimately though, it's probably just mass tourism. We haven't been anywhere else like this on the whole journey since we left the coast of Turkey.

Our last meal in Thailand is wonderful. The next morning we join the merry throng at the Thai border control and then pedal over the Friendship Bridge, which Jurek tells us is one of only two bridges over the Mekong. It's a lovely feeling not to have to wait for a bus again, and once through the Laos side we pedal off down the road to Viang Chan. Until we come to an unsigned T-junction. Which way? With true experience Gayle wets her finger and holds it up into the air. "This way!" and off we go.

A secure start

2010-02-04T20:36:00.000-08:00

We get in to Phitsanulok station during the mid-afternoon siesta, collect our bikes from the baggage wagon, load up and cycle about 400 metres to a cheap and cheerful guesthouse. It's probably the easiest day's ride we'll do. The bed in our room seems to be designed for longevity rather than comfort - oh, I do hope this isn't a 'hotel for homeless lovers'. No, there's a few other tourists staying here too, thank goodness. Our first day and I have already lost the keys to my cable lock - a great start. We are self-conscious about our bikes - people have been giving them the once over and asking about them. Usually the first question is How much did they cost? An innocent question perhaps, but an unnerving one too. If we're honest then the questioner understands that our bikes are quite valuable (and that these farang will pay a huge sum of money just to ride a bicycle - stupid fools). What we need to do is make them look less new and shiny - I guess this will come with time and use. Oh, and maybe we should lie about the price.

road signs for the saddle-conscious cyclist

The town looks like a big one on our map but it feels quite sleepy and provincial. There's an important wat here, so we take a look to check out the unique bronze Buddha, along with quite a few other tourists. There are devotional prayers taking place, the monk's chanting being broadcast on loudspeakers and the temple floor filled with the kneeling faithful. But our priority is finding food, which we do in a busy night market selling lovely fresh take-away grub at good prices. We retire early after our dawn start and in anticipation of our first real ride in the morning.

Fortunately the skies are grey when we awake - postponing the blistering heat of the day. Our guesthouse owner kindly directs us out of the city, sending us the wrong way up a one-way street. Hey, it's Thailand. Soon Gayle is setting a ridiculous pace along the highway. We have only 57km to ride, but we're both concerned about the heat - we break sweat just eating. After a couple of hours and one long water break in the shade of a bus-shelter we stop for a refreshing noodle soup and cold drink. The ride hasn't been particularly interesting - but critically for us it's flat. The road is in good nick and there's even a bicycle lane. This is used by motorbikes too, and cars, going in either direction. A bit freaky. We are wearing our padded shorts - referred to as diaper shorts by Canadian friends - which feels like fancy dress once you step away from the bicycle. I'm sure we'll get used to them and the looks we get too.............

Sukhothai comes just in time before the midday heat exhausts us. There's a comfy guesthouse where we learn an important rule for cycle touring - if there's a ground floor room take it. Carrying our panniers upstairs is a pain in the arse. In the morning we cycle off along to the ruins of the old city. This was the Kingdom of Siam's first capital, built in the 13th century and with quite a few brick and stone religious buildings still standing (everything else was built of wood and is gone). What draws us here are the particular style of Buddhas, quite a few remain in situ, large sitting and standing Buddhas and some unusual Buddhas in walking postures. We spend a happy day looking around the main site before heading back to the new town and filling up on lovely food. We seem to have acquired larger appetites. Fortunately Thailand is one country where you never seem to be far away from good food. We have just heard from our tenant at home that she'll be moving out soon. This comes as a bit of a blow to us as our savings are dwindling. However, we can't complain too much. She has been in our house most of the time we've been travelling and maybe it's better that we won't be asking her to leave. However, it suddenly adds some impetus to our journey plans. We also realise that we need to get our China visa in Vientiane before the embassy closes for the Chinese New Year holidays. This is an oversight on our part and so, after only one day's ride, we are planning again to take a ride, this time by bus towards the Thai/Laos border. At this rate we'll never find our legs..........

Biking Home

2010-02-01T02:23:00.000-08:00

We've had a good time sorting out our bikes in Bangkok, not doing touristy things but trying to make the most of the facilities here. It's a big busy city perfect for shopping and we've spent more money in the last fortnight than I care to think about - but we're determined to make a go of cycle touring and we hope the investment pays off. I guess what we're hoping for is another kind of travel experience - a slower pace, an opportunity to see places that we wouldn't otherwise get to, and a sense of freedom - the feeling we get when we've set off trekking with our tent and food into the mountains - being independent and self-sufficient.
We've been inspired by so many other cyclists that we've met along the way. They've all been doing it in different ways too but their enthusiasm has been uniformly infectious. Callie & Luke, who introduced us to blogging, were going hi-tech London to Turkey. Callie was blogging on her mobile each evening in the tent and their parents were following them on Google Earth. Ruth & Gordon were just pootling about the coast of Turkey, taking it nice and easy. When we met John* in Dogubayazit he'd been going all out for Australia - and he's still going in the United States. Bishkek seemed to be the cycle-touring magnet though - here we met quite a few pedallers waiting for visas. There was Mikkel, trying to plot a route through Kazakhstan to Mongolia via Russia. Two crazy Germans were cycling Berlin to Beijing in 100 days for charity. Greg, our favourite Hungarian, was going low-tech from Beijing to Budapest on a Diamondback and with a Tesco's 7.99 tent. (When we asked what it was like in the rain, he told us it was s**t.) Greg, if anyone, showed us what is possible if you're determined enough. We met Dutch Jan no. 1 who was also heading to Beijing and cleverly raising money for charity by auctioning off souvenirs he found along the way. It was here that we finally got to meet Friedel & Andrew*, a couple who we had been following both geographically and electronically through their blog. They, along with John and Robin, who we haven't actually met, have been patiently answering our e-mailed queries about 'idiot' questions on How To Begin Touring.
Our occasional travelling companion and intrepid tour guide entrepreneur, James*, bought a bike in Kashgar and cycled to Islamabad along the Karakorum Highway. Then, most recently in China, we bumped into Andrea* and Gerhard. With the onset of winter on the Tibetan plateau they were toughing it out across the high passes and gravel roads. Whilst we rested in Chengdu we took long looks at the many bicycles that appeared at the guesthouse. Dutch Jan no.2, cycle-touring for the first time, and on his way to Australia, was happy to come along with us on a recce to some bike shops. Gayle met Chris, another Flickr junkie, loading his photos at the computer here.
As we're absolute beginners at this touring mularkey (I think the furthest I've ever cycled in one go was from my office to Manchester Town Hall and back), we have reconciled ourselves to the idea that we will not try to be purists - which basically means we'll take trains and buses when we feel like it. In fact our very first journey will be by train - out of Bangkok and north towards Sukhothai - to save us some time and avoid the terrible ride out of the capital!
*We've added links to their blogs, full of wonderful photos and accounts of their adventures, just on the bottom right of this page, below our photo links.

Bangkok on two wheels

2010-01-31T01:16:00.000-08:00

Back in Bangkok and we have plenty to do. First a visa for Laos and then off to the bike shops to find bikes. Fiona and Gordon kindly put us up again when we arrive, but as they're both travelling with work and sorting out the bikes is a lengthy process, we move to a guesthouse in Chinatown. I'm terrible at this shopping thing. We have been researching and thinking about cycling for six months off and on. Along our journey we have met a fair few cycle tourers doing incredible journeys and picked up tidbits of information from them all. (One of the first we met was a German riding across Hungary in 40 degree heat in June - he kindly donated us his washing line which we're still using.) So, in preparation, we have been e-mailing people and looking at websites and seeking advice. What's the most important thing? The saddle. The tyres. A steel frame. A good pannier rack. Decent panniers. The best comment we got was from John Harwood, who is on his last leg (not his last legs) cycling around the world, and who told us that if we asked a hundred cyclists for tips, we'd get a hundred different answers. He's not far wrong. John also reassured us that the first bike we would buy would be the wrong bike for us, so not to worry about it! We'd already drawn the same conclusion - we can get an aluminium framed mountain bike and adapt it to our needs.

sunrise from our bedroom window

For Christmas Santa brought us some quality German tyres which my Mum and Dad posted out to us with our cold weather gear. The latter seems a bit odd when it's reaching 34C here in Bangkok, but we're not sure what it'll be like camping in Sichuan in the Spring. We get our bikes from a small shop near the Khao San Road - Bangkok Tourist Central. The area is pretty dreadful and teeming with all kinds of tourists. Ae, the shop owner, is a very quiet but easy-going man - no hard sell - and I would highly recommend Velo Thailand to anyone looking for a decent bicyle shop in Bangkok. While his two assistants are putting the bikes together, we head off to look for racks and panniers and to draw cash from the ATM. This whole business looks like a large financial risk, but we're banking on travelling cheap once we get going, and much of the gear we buy we hope to be using for the next few years at least. The important thing for us is that we can cycle for the next few months back into China and over to Xinjiang province, the missing piece of our Silk Road jigsaw puzzle, before we return home.
After a week of toing and froing, we are, like a true Manc, sorted. We even have some rather weird clothing apparel. Cycling around the wide busy roads of Bangkok is quite an experience. The air is always blue - sometimes from the motorbikes and tuk-tuks, and sometimes from all the curses I utter. The drivers here are not too bad, but it's kind of hard turning right when you need to get across six lanes of traffic. At least they drive on the right side (that is, the left side) of the road. Finally we load up our bikes and do endless circuits of Lumphini Park on a Sunday, where we can ride carefree and find out how the bikes behave with all the luggage. We're amazed to find that it's much easier to ride the bikes than we imagined. Now all we need to make sure is that we have enough 'medical aids' to deal with the sores, aches and pains..........

Look Mum, no stands!

Eclipsed

2010-01-22T21:23:00.000-08:00

Bagan's history is a rum one. The Bamar king who ruled here got word of a new fangled religion called Buddhism, being practised in the south by the Mon king and his people. So he knocks off a request for further information from this Mon king. Soon enough a couple of monks arrive with a few brochures and photos of payas (payas being any religious building) and Buddha statues. The Bamar king was disappointed only to get a taster pack though and sent his army south to capture the Mon king, 30,000 of his people, their whole library of buddhist scriptures and a crate of mangoes while they were at it (it being mango season). Before you knew it, Theravada Buddhism was declared the state religion, the first Burmese kingdom was born and the building of stupas, temples and statues began in Bagan. This continued for about four hundred years until the late 1200's when they ran out of bricks. At this point some pongy Mongol fellas turned up claiming to represent their gaffer, Kublai Khan. They were put to the sword. On hearing news of this, Mr. Khan sent a horde south to represent fully his views on this slight. It's not known if the Bamar fought or just ran off, but Bagan was abandoned.

Many years later the site was tidied up a bit, using forced labour. A few luxury hotels were built and a whole village of people were relocated just in time for Visit Burma Year. This was the year that Aung San Suu Kyi asked people not to visit the country, and calls for a boycott on tourism have been continued by some of the Burma democracy campaigns (see Burma Campaign UK). One of the problems with sanctions against Burma is that they don't seem to cover the oil and gas industries and Burma's near neighbours, India, China and Thailand, all do big business with Burma anyway. Unless China, the biggest investor, puts pressure on the regime, things are unlikely to change. And China is not renowned for its pro-democracy stance.....

Bagan remains Burma's biggest tourist attraction. Old Marco Polo made it down here, and if it was good enough for him, it's good enough for us. We stay in a quiet guesthouse and each day take bicycles to ride around the huge plains where the ruins of payas still stand. The cycling practise is good for us, even though the bikes are old Chinese ones and the dirt tracks are mostly too sandy to ride easily. Gayle gets punctures two days running. When we get the first one fixed at a village bike repair shop, everyone bursts out laughing when they see the inner tube. We count over 24 patches. I, meanwhile, am practising how to fall off a bike safely. This takes me a few attempts and a few cuts before I perfect my technique. Many of the buildings have been restored to varying effect and only a few of the bigger temples are still used for worship. There are some startling details dotted around, but it's the collective sight of countless stupas that impresses most.

In the evenings we catch up with Gertrude and see if there are particular places we might visit the next day. There is more than enough to keep us occupied for a few days. The 15th January is a special day though because a solar eclipse is due and Bagan turns out be a good spot to see it, what with such clear skies and all. A tourist has been selling dark glass to view the eclipse and the locals are all very excited. We meet two fellas who have both come here especially to view it. One of them learnt about this one twenty years ago, and booked his Air Asia flight then for the bargain price of 6 dollars. In July he's off to Easter Island to catch another. The other eclipse junkie is a Muscovite. He tells us that once you have seen a total eclipse you become hooked. Fortunately then, this one proves not to be a total eclipse, as at this time of year the moon is much smaller than the sun. (I know this cannot be technically correct as neither of them changes size, but this describes the visual effect.) The light certainly dims, and the birds get confused. And while we await our turn to look through someone's dark glass I meet a Canadian with the same family name. It was written in the stars, obviously.

We spend our last days back in Yangon. The month has passed quickly and it's time to move on. It's been a bit frustrating having to commit ourselves to flights and sticking to these dates - we much prefer the freedom of overland borders. It's also hard to say whether coming here has improved our knowledge about the situation here. On a simple level it hasn't - we have not been able to have open conversations with people about their country, and the government restricts access to many of the areas where problems are at their worst. But this in itself is something for us to think about when we look back.

Back and Forth

2010-01-14T02:14:00.000-08:00

In Mandalay we meet up with Andrea and Gerhard again before going separate ways. We are heading up to Hsipaw (pronounced Seepaw) with Judith, another German we met in Mandalay. The bus journey is our first in the daytime so at least we get to see some of the scenery. This 'cinematic experience' can be best enjoyed with a soundtrack of your choice on the i-Pod. If the bus is fitted with a TV and speakers the length of the bus you may find yourself suddenly distracted by tepid mushy Burmese pop videos or, as today, footage of a Rolling Stones concert in Toronto. The latter is quite a culture shock but it comes to an end when Judith asks the bus boy if he has something more typically Burmese. He puts in a dvd of some traditional Burmese vaudeville which is meaningless to us tourists but soon has the all the locals laughing out loud.

We climb off the central plain and back into the hills. The rice paddies lay fallow now but there are plenty of vegetable crops being grown. The fields look fertile and abundant. Hsipaw is a little town on the road heading into Yunan, China. It's supposed to be a pleasant sleepy little place, but because of a road diversion there is a constant stream of giant lorries trailing through the town and kicking up dust storms that can be seen for miles. It's noisy and filthy. We meet Gertrude at our guest house and the four of us take a hike into the surrounding countryside. We get lost a bit but finally find some hot springs, which are not as hot as hot springs should be. As with many trips though, it's the journey that is the highlight rather than the arrival.

There's a rumour that our guesthouse is run by a government-friendly owner. I'm not really sure what this means but we all become slightly paranoid at breakfast when a Burmese man blatantly pulls a chair next to our table and sits down with his back to us, all the better to listen in. We're back in Shan State and apparently many Shan separatists have been arrested in this area. One man did speak to us about the forthcoming elections. He said the results had already been decided and that he knew who would be their local governor. But the Shan people were not interested in the outcome across the country. They will go their own way, whatever the Bamar people do. Afterwards we wonder if this man was simply speaking about what he hoped for rather than what may happen. It perfectly illustrated how the minorities view the majority and also how divided they are. There's no hint of a united opposition to the military regime.

We take the old train back the way we came with Judith to Pyin U Lwin, the old summer capital of the British. The train plods along quite slowly, rolling from side to side, through lovely scenery. At each small settlement we stop and hawkers appear, selling their food. An old fella is sitting with us and asks a few particular questions about where we're from and our itinerary in Burma. The usual things. But is it harmless enquiry or is he a government agent? If he's the latter, then his codename must be Breaking Wind, judging from his behaviour. The most notable part of the journey is crossing a huge old steel viaduct across a gorge - when it was built this was the highest railway bridge in the world, so it says here in our guidebook. And it's still standing. The train loops slowly around to gain or lose height over the hilly countryside.

In Pyin U Lwin there are a few buildings left from the colonial days, grand houses built of red brick with tiled roofs, and botannical gardens. We find a cheap guesthouse that has rooms that, to quote a guidebook, look like crime scenes. It'll do - we're only stopping for a night. The food offerings are poor but bizarrely there is a fancy cafe and bakery selling croissants and good coffee, which makes for a very nice breakfast change to the usual eggs and toast. Here we say goodbye to Judith and return to Mandalay by pick-up before continuing on to Monywa a couple of days later.

Our bus from Mandalay has only gone a hundred metres out of the bus station when it stalls right in the middle of the street and goes no further. No-one bats an eyelid. Me and a monk finally get off to see what the problem might be. The bus crew of three have their heads stuck inside the engine, buses and trucks struggle to pass around us. Eventually we have to push the thing to the roadside and almost immediately, with one tweak of a wrench, we are going again. The flat landscape on the plains surrounding the Ayeyarwady reminds us so much of India. It's dry season and there's not a lot to see, just the usual dusty villages, with tea shops and paan stands. Houses are built from wood and most look basic but in good nick. There are pumping stations taking water from the river to irrigate the fields. We might be on the link road that heads north into India, but it's hard to tell, it's so narrow and pot-holed. Piles of rocks are stacked up for huge lengths of the road in anticipation of a new road building programme. Most of this will be done by hand, with a steam roller being the only other equipment.

In Monywa I suffer the indignity of falling out of a rickshaw when we arrive, sprawling on the pavement like a drunk. The town doesn't see so many tourists, but there are a few sights dotted around, including the huge standing Buddha which we saw some distance out of town on our approach. We're catching up with Gertrude who is also here and with whom we're travelling to Bagan. She has been here a day and visited some of the sights. I'm feeling a little worn out with stupas and Buddhas and payas and transport seems a little expensive too. As it is, there's only time to stroll The Strand, a fancy English name for the road running along the riverbank. It's a busy place though, with lots of boats being loaded up with all kinds of goods. There are no docks. The boats moor up at the shore, and gangs of men carry or roll their loads down the steep embankment and over gangplanks and onto the boats. The rivers are still a useful transport link.

In the morning, after a large and elaborately presented breakfast, we take a bus southwards to another town where we can pick up a boat to Bagan. Thinking the bus stop is close to the 'port' we start walking. About one sweaty hour later we arrive at the dusty shore where a small boat toots its horn to attract our attention. The ride down the Ayeyarwady is a slow windy affair with little interest except for being on a boat. Still, it makes a pleasant change from the hectic bus rides.

It Happened in Mandalay

2010-01-08T03:31:00.000-08:00

The road to Manadaly. Another night bus. Another crap film. Another pit stop in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night improbably crowded with about seven busloads of bleary-eyed passengers wondering whether to eat the chicken curry or just have a quick coffee and a fag. It ain't like Kipling wrote it. We arrive at Mandalay's Highway Bus Station at about 5 a.m. Like Yangon, this bus station is just several blocks of bus offices and teashops. Plenty of locals are watching English football live on TV in the teashops. We hop into a shared pick-up that takes the long road into town. Apparently when the British swanned into Mandalay in 1885 they came by boat up the Ayeyarwady because it got them nearer to the city than the bus station.

It's not a beautiful city. It had only been the nation's capital for thirty years when the British arrived and made Yangon the new capital. The reconstructed palace stands in large grounds surrounded by a moat and overlooked by Mandalay Hill. We head up here for an overview and to catch the sun setting through the smog (nice, red sun). To the south lies a tidy grid of low-level buildings, to the north are just fields and to the west is the fat Ayeyarwady snaking past. We're trying to be selective about our sight-seeing but there are payas everywhere. In one old monastery the buildings are made of carved teak. There are only a few monks and in the room next to the temple lives a family sat around a telly. Laundry is strung up across the room. In the 'monk's district' we amble into a large monastery complex which really just looks like student accomodation. There are hundreds of monks all probably discussing the match results. They might be discussing the government's election announcement - but we can't really ask them.

My favourite past time is sitting in a teashop watching the life on the streets. Coffee is always a 3-in-1 affair. You get to know the best brands and usually a cup of hot water is brought with the unopened sachet, so that you know what you're getting. Milk tea is an alternative, and there's always a flask of free green tea. The better teashops offer snacks - something fried. It's quite Indian, but a bit better than a chai stall. A small bucket can sometimes be found at your feet, for expectorating paan-chewers to use. When it's hot and dusty and your nose is running from the traffic fumes, and you're just a bit sight-weary, there's nothing like a dame, nothing in the world. Or a child's seat at a child's table and a cup of 'Premier' instant coffee.

We wander the streets, shops selling all the same things - flat screen TVs, motorbike parts, onions. The women everywhere have faces painted with thanakha paste - a face powder made from something like sandalwood that's part suncream and part make-up. Sometimes it's a discreet smudge on the cheeks and the nose, in some cases it's a big white-out. It seems every woman and girl in Burma uses the stuff. The traffic is not heavy around town but there is always chaos at the junctions as there are no signals. Usually the bigger vehicle wins the right of way, but sometimes a herd of scooters prevails.

One afternoon we catch a pick-up heading out to Amarapura to visit the U Bein bridge - an old teak bridge that spans across a lake. Is it the longest teak bridge in the world? Who cares. The setting is lovely, and the locals seem unfazed by the presence of every tourist in Mandalay present to catch a good sunset shot (perhaps half the tourists - the other half being on Mandaly Hill). So many tripods, but only one view. Across the bridge is a small village and monastery. We spy a large westerner walking past with no shirt. Must think he's in Thailand..........

Evenings are quiet in the city, especially when the electricity's off, which is a lot of the time. Suddenly I remember a dreamlike place we passed through on our bus ride north from Yangon. It was nighttime but a city of light appeared out of the blackness. Roads, hotels, housing blocks all had lights. Large houses and gardens were covered in fairy lights. Brigadoon? We realised we had arrived in Nay Pyi Taw, Burma's latest capital city. The junta relocated here in 2005 but it had the look of a very empty place. 24 hour electricity though.

Auld Acquaintance

2010-01-02T03:18:00.000-08:00

Our night bus journey north to Kalaw begins with some negotiations. The woman at our bus office is selling us on to another company. We're offered two back-row seats. We express horror and outrage. So we're taken to another company and offered seats on the penultimate row of a bus leaving one hour later. We demand an immediate refund or better seats, which gets us somewhere safely in the middle - not too far back to have a bumpy sleepless ride, nor too far forward to reach the windscreen should the bus hit something. It hasn't taken long for us to realise that all the vehicles in Burma have the steering wheel on the right-hand side. But they also drive on the right. The government decided to switch over from the left - a hangover from British imperialist days - so now nearly all the truck, bus and taxi drivers can't see ahead when they're overtaking. There's another thing going on with our bus tickets - a government dual-pricing system for foreigners. We see how this leads all the locals to conclude that foreigners are rich and will pay over the odds for services, therefore it's okay to overcharge them. Of course, foreigners are rich and are willing to pay more. (Word is the bus journeys are hellish and many choose to fly.) But the overcharging can be irritating. Ultimately though, it's up to us to haggle and choose accordingly.

It turns out that we sleep so well on the bus that we miss the stop for Kalaw and arrive at Inle Lake instead at five in the morning. There are people around even those it's still dark and cold - we've climbed off the plains and into the hills. The village of Nyaungshwe is a quiet peaceful little place at the north end of Inle Lake, which is accessed by boat along one of the many canals. I've got a dodgy stomach so Gayle heads off to nearby Taunggyi to visit the market. Taunggyi is the provincial capital of Shan State, which reaches to the border with Laos and Thailand. This is the infamous opium-growing area and the Shan have been fighting on and off for independence since the British left. The people and their dialect are closely related to the northern Thai. Burma has many ethnic minorities and those in the hills along the edges of the country, like the Kachin, the Kayin, the Mon and the Shan have long sought to be separate from the Bamar-led Burma. A democratically elected government in Burma would not necessarily be the end of Burma's problems, but at least it may begin to address these unresolved claims.

petrol and diesel, not Sprite and Coke

When I'm fit we hire bicycles and head along the eastern shore where fields of sugarcane are being harvested, ploughed and replanted. Bullocks are being used to pull ploughs. Everyone wears wide-brimmed straw hats to keep the sun off. In some of the villages there are small monasteries and stupas dot the landscape. There are stupas all over Burma - more than we've ever seen before. We have developed snotty colds and coughs which won't go away. It seems all the Belgians we meet are similarly afflicted - they all say they're phlegmish. There are plenty of Europeans around but few British, presumably because of the boycott.

The next day Gayle finds a woman who has short hair who promises to take her for a haircut. I'm enjoying a stout in the late afternoon and wondering if she'll come back with the nun look when two cyclists go past - it's Andrea and Gerhard, the two Germans we met in Xiahe in China. We have kept in touch and arranged to meet here for Silvestre - New Year's Eve. The next day we take a boat with them out on the lake for a day. It's a tad touristy in parts but still a great day out. The lake is huge, surrounded by hills and marshy at the shore. There are lots of small stilt communities living beside and on it. Locals paddle their narrow boats with a strange upright technique, using one leg. A small boy is fishing with a large basket net. There are floating gardens the size of fields, where tomatoes and other vegetables are growing. At Inthein village it's market day. There are some tourist stalls but most of the business is between locals. Blocks of brown sugar, tobacco leaves and cheroots, spices, flowers, rice cakes that look like popadoms, DVDs, pharmaceuticals, all those little Chinese knick-knacks we rarely saw in China itself, modern and traditional clothes, and vegetables galore - possibly the best spread we've seen for ages and quite impressive for such a poor country. Behind the market is a paya on a hill surrounded by a petrified forest of crumbling brick stupas.

After lunch we are taken to some 'workshops' where there are the inevitable tourist stalls. But there's no hard sell. Boats made from hard wood, weavings made from silk and a thread from the lotus plant, cheroots rolled with star anise. We are taken around Nampan, a very pretty stilt village right on the lake. Schoolkids are coming home in long narrow boats, farmers overloaded with produce paddle past. As we head back home the sun sets on one side of the lake and the full moon rises on the other.

In the evening we buy a small bottle of Mandalay Rum and a large bottle of Coke (it's come from Thailand and costs more than the rum) and celebrate the New Year with Andrea and Gerhard. There's also Franca, a Swiss Italian woman who looks uncannily like my aunty, and Helmut, an Austrian, who carries a card describing himself as an 'Adventure Traveller'. Helmut provides plenty for us to talk about as he flies around Burma on his second visit, taking photographs to illustrate talks (it's called Multivision) which he gives back in Europe. Helmut is prepared to pay for posed photographs and after a successful day he kisses his fingertips and declares with satisfaction "I got the picture!" This becomes a running joke as we too want to capture on camera the beautiful people and landscapes. But is this the only reason we visit places? It was very noticeable during the day how many tourists just seem to look at things through their camera and in the market I felt very conscious that the locals always had a wary eye out for the foreigners with their cameras. Gayle generally asks before taking photos of people, especially portraits. Some say no and some ask for money, in which case Gayle won't take the photo.

It's cool at night and by midnight we're freezing. We hurriedly toast the New Year in and walk back to our guesthouse. Out on the dark streets local youngsters are also celebrating, sitting around fires and singing songs. Firecrackers explode and then all is quiet.

Vamos a la Paya

2009-12-28T01:56:00.000-08:00

Our days in Yangon are spent in the old city centre of streets crowded with stalls and tea shops. Because of sanctions Myanmar, like Iran, is not connected with the international banking system and once again we are carrying dollars (in mint condition, no fold, no tears, no marks) which we have to change on the black market - the official rate is way below market rate. We change money with an Indian jeweller in one of the big markets. The largest bank note here is equivalent to 1 dollar, so we emerge with our pockets bulging with bricks of notes. At first you feel a little self-conscious with these voluminous bill-folds but then even the fruit sellers sat on the pavements can be seen counting their wads of cash. It soon feels normal.

In the mornings we see lines of monks parading the streets with black bowls tucked under one arm, collecting offerings of food from homes and businesses. Nuns too, in bright pink and orange robes and often a brown parasol to protect their shaven heads. They are not begging - merely providing the people an opportunity to gain merits. One afternoon we catch a bus to Yangon's main tourist attraction and Myanmar's most famous stupa: the Shwedagon Paya. The bus, an old crusty thing with loose bench seats and open windows that catch nothing but hot air, crawls through the traffic. Incongruously there are two flat-screen TVs showing Burmese pop videos and TV programmes. Nothing we see on Burmese TV ever looks like anything we see here. The people are nearly always white, often in western dress and the streets are invariably paved with....well, they're paved. It's unreal.

The paya can easily be seen on the approach - a huge gilded stupa on a hill casting the sun's reflection far and wide. We climb the steps barefoot to the complex of shrines, temples, pagodas, statues and smaller stupas. Momentarily blinded by the dazzle from so much gold up here, we stagger forwards only to be called back to pay the 5 dollar entrance fee. Shame really, because the money goes straight to the government. Shame also, because it appears that the lower half of the Shwedagon Paya is covered in brown paper. Like a modern art installation. And as with most modern art installations we are disappointed. This is a phenomenon we now know as the 'Milan Duomo Effect' . It is the sense of being cheated of the glory of a building by the untimely and lengthy restoration work in progress. (Friends from Milan tell us their cathedral is permanently wrapped in scaffolding.) But there's plenty to see - the complex is alive with locals who have come to make offerings, pray and meditate. A young boy is going through the ordination ceremony to becoming a novice monk. Plenty of older monks are hovering around and eager to strike up conversation with tourists - practising their English, talking football (not politics),hoping to solicit donations. Tourists mill around, listening with glazed expressions to their guide's explanation of the religious and historical significance of a large bronze bell. And cameras are inevitably to the fore. Anything Buddha-ish is gilded, usually by gold leaf applied by the hands of the devoted. Some Buddhas have been electro-plated in shiny gold and look more like C3PO out of Star Wars. The sun sets and night descends. The complex remains busy and peaceful.

A Yangon Christmas

2009-12-26T02:50:00.000-08:00

There's always a thrill arriving in a country for the first time, no matter how many photographs we may have seen or books we may have read or conversations with other travellers that have coloured-in the simple sketch in our imagination. Driving into Yangon from the airport we get the sense of a provincial town of low-rise buildings, old and new. Only the distance to the centre hints that we're in a city of six million. We're riding in an old Japanese bus - a real museum piece - that's come from one of the budget hotels. There are a dozen of us and it feels like we've suddenly joined a tour group! But the hotel's been recommended to us and we always find it hard to turn down a free ride. The hotel is busy busy, with a big turnround of guests, and there seem to be as many staff as punters. It's all overseen by a woman who is clearly in charge and got everyone well-trained. After the chaos of sorting out rooms for us we are invited to have breakfast and sit down with Sylvie and Eric from France, who are great company.

We end up staying five days in Yangon, happy to walk around the city and adjust to a new place and a new pace. There's a faded charm about the old city centre. Clapped-out crowded buses tear down the dusty streets, the broken pot-holed pavements are alive with bustling food and clothing stalls. There are trees everywhere and tea-shops cluster around huge banyan trees offering welcome shade. We are immediately reminded of India and Sri Lanka. There are paan sellers everywhere and blotches of red spittle cover the ground. Maybe ninety per cent of the men are wearing longyis, and the women also with fitted blouses. Dotted around are old colonial buildings, remnants of the British occupation. Side streets are lined with mildewed concrete appartment blocks, washing is hanging everywhere. Oh and there are plenty of Indians here too in Yangon - descendants of immigrants who turned up with the British to build and run the railway, to trade or to work in the administration. We read that in the 1920's there were more Indians than Burmese in Rangoon, as it was called, and it's not hard to imagine.

lives, or is it dead?

Christmas Day is a low-key affair for us. We have superb biriyani for lunch and then go in search of a decent internet connection to phone home. In an undeveloped country where the internet is restricted by the government and the electricity supply is erratic, we're not too hopeful. Sure enough, our phone calls home are full of empty pauses and swallowed sentences - all very frustrating. In the evening we find a cheerful 'beer station' selling draught stout. Gayle prefers a glass of Shiraz, but they've none in. We join the patrons sitting on toy plastic chairs at toy plastic tables - like furniture borrowed from a kindergarten - spread out across the pavement. There's a nice atmosphere in the cool of the evening, and Christmas turns out to be rather merry after all.

The Bangkok Interlude

2009-12-24T23:42:00.000-08:00

The plane touches down (do planes really just 'touch down'?) late afternoon in Bangkok and we take the slow bus into the city. The air-conditioning on the bus is set to deep freeze and as we sit in the endless traffic jams of the Bangkok rush hour my lips slowly start to turn blue. When we finally get off Gayle has to massage my hands and frost nip has caught my nose. We soon thaw out.
It's high-season in Thailand, the climate is much less humid than our previous two visits and there's a noticeable increase in tourists. There's also a noticeable increase in Western men young and old walking around with their rented girlfriends. The streets seem to be full of food stalls - a bit of a change from China and Hong Kong and we soon get back into the habit of stopping for snacks and meals when the fancy takes us. It's great to taste Thai food again, even if the red curry sometimes seems to go beyond our taste buds' range. We have a few 'jobs' to do - find a Burma guidebook, trade a few novels, catch up on e-mails and this blog, eat a few choc-ices, buy pristine dollars to take to Burma - all easily done here. I am also in need of a haircut. Down by the main station we had noticed fellas getting cuts on the end platform in the open air. When I get there there's a queue. A man starts chatting to me and explains the haircuts are free. I don't believe it, but when it comes to my turn I'm told the same thing. The woman explains that they are all learning and that the cut is free but I don't get to choose the style. I have about 2 cm of hair, and all I want is a no. 1. She obliges and when she's finished directs me to a stand-tap at the end of the track to wash my head. Thinking back now, it's possible that the trainees were on some sort of rehabilitation programme.

Jurek, our Czech friend who we last saw in Chengdu, is also here and it's nice to catch up with him and hear his stories. It's also good to stay with Fiona and Gordon again. Seeing friends like these helps alleviate our occasional pangs of homesickness, particularly as this will be our third Christmas away. Lest we forget the overt commercialism of the event we are bombarded with carols and kitsch seasonal songs in all the shops. It all seems out of place here and even more phoney than at home. So it's with some relief and excitement when we catch our dawn flight to Yangon.

Hong Kong - c'est tout ce que j'aime

2009-12-21T19:17:00.000-08:00

I'm loving it. You just can't beat a chicken-grilled sandwich, fries and coffee to go from those lovely smiley folk at McDonald's. Ahhh - the adventurous life of the traveller. And ahhhhhh - Hong Kong! You just can't beat the price either. It's the cheapest food around. Thankfully there's the Cafe de Coral too - a Chinese fast food chain that serves up the healthiest food possible in stark contrast. And speaking of stark contrasts. Well, there's the hot sunny weather when we emerge from the station at Kowloon. There's the smoke-free public space along the promenade with the great view of Hong Kong Island. There are the helpful and informative signs in Cantonese and English advising what you can and cannot do for everyone's safety and peace of mind. (Too many signs - the British have left their mark.) And a Falun Gong display of photos with accounts of China's brutal repression and human rights abuses. These are shocking in their own right, but we are doubly shocked to see such a display in public, after three months in China.
We take the best boat-ride to be had - the public Star Ferry across the harbour to Hong Kong Island - and go straight to the post office to collect a parcel from Poste Restante. My Mum and Dad have sent our camping equipment out to us along with some rather tasty chocolate which we sample while unpacking and repacking our rucksacks. Then it's a late lunch at the aforementioned global junk food emporium before we take another ferry to Lamma Island, an island without roads or cars. We've come here to couch surf with Adrian, a charming young Romanian who works in the city and lives alone in a small flat on the island. It turns out that Adrian is a very generous host and once he learns that we have come to trek some of Hong Kong's trails, he kindly invites us to leave excess baggage with him and to return whenever we like. Adrian thinks of Hong Kong as 'a London in Asia', but thinks the Chinese are ruining it. I'm not sure how. The locals he works with meanwhile refer to the mainland dismissively as 'The Farm'. There is certainly a sense that Hong Kong locals seem more sophisticated than mainland Chinese but I'd be hard-pressed to pinpoint why. Is it in their haircuts???

After a couple of days pootling about we buy supplies for trekking. Getting petrol for the stove seems to be a problem at one petrol station. After saying no, none of the staff gives us eye contact. We were never treated like this in China. Still, there is the super-efficient Tourist Information staff who track down a place where we can buy some and off we go to walk some of the MacLehose Trail which runs along the ridge of hills that separate Kowloon from the rest of the New Territories on the peninsula. Our first day's walk takes us over Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong's highest peak at about 950 metres, which promises great views over the whole area. Unless the cloud drops and you disappear into the thick mist, that is. It turns out to be the worst weather day, and from then on we have sun and light cloud as we cross eastwards above the skyscrapers and appartment blocks of the townships. It's good walking and there are some campsites with toilets, but on our second night we end up carrying water and having to camp right on the trail beneath a high-security radar station. I am spooked by troops of monkeys on some stretches of the trail that is forested, and occasionally we pass silent packs of dogs. These animals are pets that have been dumped in the national parks by locals. At one point we pass a group of vets in white body suits sterilising the monkeys - a rather weird sight. In the end we don't make it to the beach at the end of the trail - it's cloudy and trying to rain and we opt to return to Adrian's. It's the weekend though and there are hundreds of locals of all ages out on the trails and off to the beach with their tents.

Our other hike is on Lantau Island. We climb Hong Kong's second highest peak which promises great views over the whole area. Unless the cloud drops and you disappear into the thick mist, that is. We descend to a campsite above a monastery and a huge sitting Buddha statue, which serves as a pilgrimage place and a tourist attraction. The Buddha faces eastwards looking out towards the new airport, as if he's looking out for the Cathay Pacific flight from Singapore. Our second day takes us along rolling hills and down to a beach campsite where we can relax in solitude. Its hard to imagine we're in Hong Kong, having spent so much of the time in the national parks well away from the hustle and bustle.

When we get back to Adrian's for the final time we discover a full house. He seems to welcome everyone and we've already met a few other couch surfers there. On this evening there is also a Moldovan man who is bumming his way around Asia with an old bike with no gears or brakes. His stuff is in plastic bags tied to the handlebars and he looks like he spent the last night sleeping under a bridge. He probably has. He's already spent three years like this visiting every country in Africa, but in Asia he keeps having problems entering countries. No wonder really as he looks penniless. Adrian is as kind and generous as ever and wants to help him along. It strikes us that couch surfing hosts seem to have something special - to open their doors to complete strangers, demonstrating such trust and hospitality - it renews our faith in humanity, after witnessing in Hong Kong what seems to be only relentless consumption. Speaking of which, anyone for McDonalds??

Shanghaied

2009-12-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

Suzhou is one of those little Chinese cities of only 5 million people. Thankfully the city centre is a low-level and low-key place, famous for its canals and gardens and provides us with a few days of easy strolling and low-level, low-key tourist sights. As it's December we skip the gardens (even resisting the temptation of The Humble Administrator's Garden, which is made easier when we see the entry price of a not-so-humble 10 quid) but make a bee-line for the small silk museum that explains Suzhou's role as one of China's major silk-producing centres. There are silkworms munching on mulberry leaves, a collection of old and very old silk textiles and clothing and a couple of large handlooms in operation producing different styles of silk cloth. In the city's funky modern museum there are an assortment of archaeological finds from the area, including some fancy treasures plucked out of buddhist pagodas, and some fantastic silk coats fit for an emperor, or probably a very wealthy merchant. And out on the street it's sunny, the trees are in their autumnal phase, and we're happy to wander around.
Once again we are stymied with our onward travel plans. We want to catch a train from nearby Shanghai to Hong Kong, but to do so we have to go to Shanghai in advance to buy it. For all it's fame and glamour we're not so keen on a day trip there, but at least there are express train connections that make it easier. As soon as we arrive we head to the large Ticket Hall and within minutes have two tickets in our sweaty palms. Now we can go out and enjoy ourselves and we head straight for a stroll along the Bund, the riverside stretch of old colonial buildings built by the foreign traders and businesses that operated for so long in Shanghai. And what was their business? Well, one of the grandest buildings was put up by a bloke who specialised in the opium trade. The British were particularly adept at this trade as they had a ready supply of the drug from India. How ironic that we are trying to prevent this trade these days. When the Chinese tried to stop the sale of opium the British and French waged a little war and by force won concessions to trade in other parts of China, and Britain took Hong Kong Island to use as a trading and shipping base. Nowadays these grand buildings are in various states of repair, but as Shanghai will host the World Expo in 2010 there's an army of construction workers refurbishing and polishing them up. I'm sure it will look lovely, but on this particular day it is all a bit dusty and scaffolded. We seek solace in a park and backstreets through one of the few old neighbourhoods still standing. Part of the area has the city's most popular temple - dedicated to wealth of course - and is surrounded by hundreds of tourist shops. Uh-oh. We take another lane and find a tiny place doing food for locals. We squeeze in with some relief at finding something rather normal at last.
Since we've suddenly got a taste for museums we head for Shanghai's big modern one. There's a stunning collection of statues, buddhas and other figurative pieces, but what impresses me more is the collection of Ming-dynasty furniture - 400 year-old stuff that looks so modern and graceful, including possibly the most comfortable bed in the whole of the Middle Kingdom. Outside we're surrounded by the tall skyscrapers that now symbolise Shanghai's position as the most modern and international city. It's also thought to be the largest. Everyone looks a little wealthier and a little more western, but maybe we're just imagining it. Down one pedestrian shopping street we're assailed by touts trying to sell us handbags, watches, more handbags, marijuana. Marijuana? A South Asian man gives me a conspiratorial wink when I turn in surprise. So the drugs trade is still alive in Shanghai after all.
We have a couple more quiet days in Suzhou before returning to catch our luxury night train southwards. In Shanghai station we pass through immigration control and are formerly stamped out of China before we board the train. We are sharing with a couple of older women, one of whom has been to Manchester in the woolly jumper trade. Her friend has a son teaching English at Hong Kong University and she's planning to see out the winter with him. Wise woman. We ask them whether they speak Cantonese or English in Hong Kong. One of them replies with a smile "We speak Mandarin - it's part of our country now!"

On The Town

2009-12-03T04:34:00.000-08:00

Beijing, Beijing, it's a helluva town. The Bird Nest's up and Tiananmen's down. The people ride in a hole in the ground. Beijing Beijing. It's a helluva ...... oh, Gene Kelly, where are you now? What can I write about the place that you haven't heard before? This is probably the least-surprising city we have visited here in China - it's just how we expected it to be. There's Mao's mug hanging over Tiananmen Gate and the infamous square just over the road - a huge expanse of nothing, oh, except for the man himself, tucked up in his monstrous mausoleum. The flag is flying. And through the gate is the Forbidden City which Gayle visits without me - I feel no great desire to join the crowds of Chinese. She tells me I missed a great collection of Ming and Qing dynasty ceramics, but that the buildings of the city itself are very similar to ones we have already seen around the city. We have already nosed around the Confucius Temple and the neighbouring College for the Imperial Civil Servants' Examinations, plus the Worker's Cultural Palace - and these buildings are all built and laid out in a similar style and decorated in the same colour - Imperial Red (not the People's Red). There are some pleasant parks to visit and at the weekends these seem to fill with people of 'a certain age' who happily indulge in rather wonderful group activities: there's the ballroom dancers swinging to Chinese pop, the opera chorus accompanied by an accordionist, the Tai Chi troop twisting and squatting in unison, two harmonica bands battling for supremacy with booming sound systems, and clusters of folk playing 'zhou en lai' (which translates as 'shuttlecock keepy-uppy'). Of course the rest of the week they all just sit around playing maj jong. Winter's come early this year, with heavy snow already been and gone (the snow had been induced by Chinese meteorologists in an attempt to counter the seasonal regional drought - they really wanted rain.) As a result most of the trees have lost their leaves, so the city seems all the more the great urban metropolis. Big buildings. Big roads.

And then there's the small matter of a wall. We set out early one day for a popular walk along a hilly section of the Great Wall. There's hundreds of steps, steep ramps, broken pathways, iron ladders and a suspension bridge to cross. The scenery is big dry rolling hills. We are duly impressed - the wall disappears into the distance east and west. When we set off it's in glorious sunshine, but at the end of the walk the mist has rolled in and, as we drop down into the car park we can just about spot the taxi drivers' fins sticking up above the cloud. They circle, they feed. We escape eventually with torn clothes but limbs intact. It's been a great day.

While we're here we apply successfully for our Burma visa. We have less than a month left in China, but we definitely want to return in the New Year. As is often the case, it's not the Must Sees or Things To Do that we've enjoyed most, but all the other things in-between. So, in Beijing we enjoy the morning wandering around the Sunday antique/crafts market, or the afternoon mooching about the trendy modern art 798 district. There are still some of the old hutongs left and they're entertaining to wander. These are the old lanes full of one-storey houses that once filled the old city centre. Much has been made of their ongoing destruction and those that remain look like they've been renovated or turned into trendy tourist shopping streets. The old houses have no toilets, so public ones are everywhere. In fact, they claim to have the most of all the cities in the world - handy in this cold weather and one boast to be proud of. There's a decent metro system and the city centre is huge, but we still end up walking a lot. Thankfully we've a decent and very cozy hostel to recover in.
This is the furthest north we're travelling, and at the end of the week we catch a night train southwards to get to Suzhou. As usual, the station's busy, there are the tedious baggage scans and the hanging around in the cavernous waiting halls before the gates are opened and the mad scramble to board first. We're on the train to Shanghai and it's full of rather well-off Chinese. We've got top bunks which means we can go straight to bed, and we nod off with the train announcements coming out of the speaker by our ears.

Travelling in ladies' underwear

2009-11-23T02:23:00.000-08:00

"Wo xiang liang zhang piao dao Pingyao!" It's another tongue-twister but we pull it off and the woman behind the counter gives us two train tickets to Pingyao, in Shanxi, a province near to Beijing. This little place has a well-preserved old walled town and it's been used in countless films, too many to count apparently. It's a long journey - a whole night and day on the train from Chengdu and we arrive in the dark. Even then we can detect huge piles of snow everywhere. Our guesthouse is in an old Qing courtyard house and we have a small but cozy room with a stone platform bed. It's no more uncomfortable than all the other rock-hard beds we've had in China, but the place is a little more atmospheric than we're used to.
And so is the town. In the cold light of day, very cold light, we wander the quiet streets and really feel like we've travelled back in time. No wonder the film crews like the place. Unlike so many other old places, this one seems to have escaped the excesses of the normal Chinese makeover. Inside the city walls are small paved streets, thankfully free of vehicles except those pesky electric bicycles that seem to be all the rage. They seem to make a real difference to our immediate environment though - no noise and no exhaust fumes (those are generated at the power stations elsewhere), but it seems a pity that no-one actually pedals anymore. One day they'll be wondering why everyone is so unfit in modern China.
Everything is grey in the weak winter sunlight, but that's probably because all the buildings are built in grey brick. Doorways into courtyards reveal snippets of daily life - washing on lines, bicycles being repaired, snow and ice beng cleared away. It is too cold though - a wind howls down the lanes and much of the time the buildings put us in the shade. We can only stand it for so long. Gayle spots a shop selling tights and gets a pair to wear under her trousers. They're one-size-fits-all so the next day I get a pair as well. Wow, what a difference it makes. Nothing can stop us now.
Our onward train to Beijing is another night train which we take with Silva, a young German who has also been staying at our guesthouse. Silva is teaching German at a private boarding school in Beijing. She tells us how the children get up at 6.30 am for exercises before classes begin at 7. In the evenings after tea, they continue studies until 9pm. On Friday afternoons they are collected by their parents and return on Sunday afternoons, but this free time is often taken up by further private tuition. It's a real insight into how much pressure these children are under to achieve. In one newspaper though, there is a discussion on job opportunities for graduates. Over six million students will graduate next year and there's a real struggle for good jobs. The worldwide economic recession has slowed China's growth rate and now the government wants to encourage the people to spend more money and consume more Chinese goods.
We talk about these things before finally turning in for the night in our super-warm carriage. I'm beginning to wonder if wearing ladies' tights is such a good idea after all....

Beach Time

2009-11-19T01:52:00.000-08:00

One of the locals favourite pastimes in Chengdu is hanging out at tea houses and drinking tea. The parks are full of tables and on the one sunny day we spend here, the scene is lively. Unfortunately the rest of the time it's a bit grey and chilly. Still, we are ready for a break from travelling and although the city's not the ideal place for some 'beach time' , there's no sea, no sand and no sun, we end up stopping for a fortnight. The time flies. There are a few sights to see and thankfully Chengdu's enlightened authorities have made them all free entry with a Panda Card. The Panda card costs 10 pence. So civilised. We visit a couple of museums that are located on the sites of two remarkable archaeological finds both from China's early Zhou dynasty (about 1100 to 700 B.C.). In China's typical grandiose way, the museums are on an epic scale, and the finds are well displayed. Sanxingdui is thought to have been the capital of the ancient Shu kingdom of China and most of the finds here are incredible masks, mostly bronze and some gold. They look like nothing we have seen before and are very large. There are a couple of life-size bronze figures too. At Jinsha, the finds indicate a later capital, as if the Zhou moved west. There are an inordinate number of elephant tusks found in the sacrificial burial mounds. What's excited the Sichuanese is that there is evidence of connections with China's central plains, which was the most developed area in ancient China. What excites us is not so much the history, but the sheer art and craft of some of the pieces. There is a large amount of jade knocking about these sites too - something the Chinese still seem to be partial too, judging by all the jade jewellery and carvings we see for sale everywhere.
Whilst we're here we also become acquainted with Sichuan pepper. Now we thought Sichuan was the place for spicy hot food in China, when in fact everywhere we have been seems to dollop chilli into the cooking. What is special here is the mouth-numbing peppercorn which has a flowery fragrance when you bite into it, just before its numbing properties spread across your tongue and mouth. I love it. Gayle hates it.
We have become very comfortable and settled at Sim's. It's great to be able to dip into a huge dvd library and pull out a few very good films - something we have been starved of for so long. But ultimately it's not a reason to prolong our stay here. We have got another 30 day extension to our visa and, despite the cold, Beijing calls.

Panda Heaven?

2009-11-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

The road to Chengdu, winding along the same river valley for 300 kilometres, is being rebuilt. The whole length of it at the same time. There's signs of the 2008 earthquake damage on some stretches - landslides and collapsed bridges - and we travel through new unfinished tunnels. Well, obviously they're finished, otherwise we wouldn't come out the other end, but they're crude, long, unventilated tunnels. For ten hours we drive along a buildng site. Along the way there's signs of new towns that have sprung out of the ruins of old ones.

Chengdu is at first appearances quite uninspiring. It's China's fifth largest metropolis, sitting below the mountains to the west and on the edge of the Sichuan basin that spreads eastwards around the Yangtze. The journey across town to the guesthouse seems endless. Everything looks like it was built in the last thirty years. It probably was. But Sim's Cozy Garden Guesthouse turns out to be just that - an oasis in this pitiless urban environment. Sim, a Singaporean, and his Japanese wife have created a wonderful comfortable hostel in an ugly modern building. There are two garden courtyards, lots of communal space and the rooms have been furnished for travellers. Look - hooks for clothes, somewhere to stash rucksacks, a DVD player. There's also a steady flow of punters of all types and ages e.g. the young Americans on a 3-week tour of China and South East Asia, an older Aussie/Canadian couple ambling through from Central Asia. We meet Jan who is cycling from the Netherlands to Australia. He's full of stories and enthusiasm and joy for cycle touring (it's his first time) and he scratches our cycling itch. Then there's Phil, a Brit, who's on a visit with his Sichuanese wife, Yan. While he's here he's buying chunky Tibetan jewellery to hawk back at home when he's not teachng English. We're also very happy to see Jurek again and having spent a few lazy days doing nothing but laundry and watching a few films we've missed whilst travelling, we're keen to get out and see the pandas with him.

On the outskirts of the city is China's Panda Breeding Research Centre and an easy place to see these wonderful animals. The panda is native to Sichuan, living in the mountainous bamboo forests - they eat a lot of bamboo. As their natural habitat gradually disappears so do the pandas. Their survival as a species is more remarkable considering their mating habits - pandas only get it on once a year and tend to live a solitary life. In an attempt to keep the species gong the Chinese have spent years on research and at the centre in Chengdu we learn a little of how they have successfully bred pandas in captivity. In an attempt to find compatible partners the scientists first placed small ads in the local papers. Next they organised 'Speed Dating' events. In a remakable example of diplomatic detente, a specialist from India was invited to help. Dr. Virender Sehwag runs India's leading matrimonial agency in Uttar Pradesh, when he's not opening bat for the Indian cricket team. After years of failure the Chinese scientists went back to basics, rolled up their sleeves and gave the pandas a 'helping hand'. So far, hundreds of pandas have been bred successfully by artifical insemination and none have been reintroduced to the wild. As we wander around with Jurek we can understand why. The place is really just a zoo. The pandas live in concrete jails and are ejected each morning to sit in their enclosures and chew bamboo for our enjoyment. They are lovely creatures to watch. One happy looking panda picks up a fistful of bamboo and as he puts it to his mouth rolls backwards in a universal gesture of satisfaction. You can almost detect the smile. We have been advised to visit in the morning to witness this morning ritual so it's disappointing to discover afterwards that we missed afternoon sports time. Apparently the pandas are encouraged to play ping pong, badminton and even kung fu in order to keep themselves in trim. Fooball had been tried too, but the pandas kept mistaking each other for the ball. The Centre is a green oasis in Chengdu, but it's hardly a substitute for their wild origins.

Wild West Frontier

2009-11-03T20:52:00.000-08:00

The early morning bus ride to Langmusi takes us across beautiful high-altitude prairie grasslands with grazing herds of shaggy yaks and horses. Snow-topped mountains brood in the early morning light. The landscape is unutterably beautiful. At least this is what Gayle tells me. I sleep through most of it, like the locals, who are always away with the fairies the moment the bus is in motion. That is, unless they are throwing up. When I am awake we pass by a truck that's managed to hit not one, but three yaks. He must have been really trying.

Langmusi is unfairly described as "enchanting" in our guidebook - a terrible misrepresentation of an ugly village plonked on the border of Gansu and Sichuan provinces. It is undoubtedly Tibetan - there are two monasteries here - and freezing pilgrims and locals go about in long coats from sunrise to sunset. They probably sleep in them too. At night the streets are virtually deserted. In the daytime young men ride into town looking like real cowboys from days of yore. Except nowadays they're riding Chinese motorcycles. They swagger into the noodles shops, doors left swinging in the wind, to slurp their dinner, picking out the vegetables from the broth in disgust. A beer is swigged and then Vrroooommm! they ride off in a cloud of dust.

There are snowy peaks close by and we once again plot a route and set off up the slopes in search of a sheep trail leading to the top. It turns out to be another great walk and we're lucky with the weather - clear blue skies and sunshine. No-one to be seen or heard. We climb up to a peak with prayer flags, snow and an impressive clutch of large wooden arrows tied together - the symbolism of which we know not. It's low season here but we still meet a few tourists in a traveller's cafe with apple pie just like our mums make. Well, sort of. We end up walking the next day with Jurek, a very jolly Czech who is going our way. We then travel souhwards together to Songpan, through more stunning scenery. Herds of yaks again, grazing the wide open flats and then an eventual descent into a narrow valley, passing some tidy and attractive Tibetan villages. New houses are being built in the old style. And then we reach Songpan itself - a disappointing town that's had an attempt at beautification i.e. a newly-bilt old fashioned pedestrianised shoppng street, red lanterns aplenty, and restored old walls. The weather has turned grey and Gayle has developed a Capstan on-Filter Cough - irritating to both her and me. Although it's still cold and a bit miserable (no heat in our guesthouse), we stay another day just to put off another bus ride. It's ten more hours down to Chengdu.

Yellow Hats

2009-10-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the state we're in when we get off the train in Lanzhou is Gansu - a province shaped by the desert of Inner Mongolia in the north and mountains in the west. It's early morning and a freezing wind tells us that winter has arrived - everyone but us is wrapped up to the hilt. We're heading to Xiahe but the provincial museum gets rave reviews so we detour there on the way to the bus station. It's modern, free and heated so we enjoy it all the more. There's a lot of Silk Road archaeological finds, including Roman and Persian coins and ancient ritual jade daggers and vases. One item is decorated with silkworms. We are accosted by students as we walk around and stop for the obligatory photos.
Then its back out into the biting wind and onto a bus that takes us into the mountains and drops us into a grotty town peopled mainly by Hui, Chinese Muslims. In the 1800s there were two major rebellions by Muslims in Gansu that ended in their almost total eradication, but some communities have survived. This small town looks like it's missing out on China's new growth - the buildings are sad and ugly, the streets are scruffy. Thankfully there's a connection to Xiahe. Our crusty but trusty bus plods into more mountainous landscapes and finally deposits us in a muddy yard at one end of the very long one-street town. The sun has dropped behind the mountains and the sky is ominously dark.

In the morning Xiahe looks a lot better than first impressions. The sun is late to rise - a reminder that we're just a little further west - and there's a chill in the shade. The town's main draw is the Labrang Monastery, one of the six major monasteries of the Dalai Lama's sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The majority of visitors are Tibetan pilgrims who come here to pay homage and walk the kora, the circuit of the monastery lined with prayer wheels, stupas and temples.

The first sound we hear on this morning is not the chanting of monks or pilgrims but the unison shouts of soldiers returning to barracks behind our hotel. In the grounds their riot gear is laid out - for inspection or easy access? The riots in Lhasa in early 2008 also sparked protests here. It's alleged that 19 people died, but some think more. It's hard to know what tensions exist here - all seems peaceful and tourists have been allowed back since last July - but the town is visibly divided into three parts. There's the old Tibetan side, the Hui Muslims in the middle and Han Chinese at the other end, where big new buildings are going up. There are CCTV cameras on the main street and soldiers' barracks dotted about the valley.

The monastery is a huge complex of several temples, college buildings and hundreds of monks' houses. There's a constant stream of weary pilgrims circulating, uttering prayers, fingering prayer beads and turning prayer wheels. The air is thick with prayers. Most of the pilgrims are in traditional Tibetan dress - layers and layers and thick (yak-skin?) overcoats with overlong sleeves. Many of the women wear striped aprons, heavy jewellery and a face mask - to protect from dust/sun/cold. It's a fascinating ancient ritual but the pilgrims look shockingly poor and scruffy, with thin weather-beaten faces, compared to the well-dressed monks in clean maroon robes, good shoes and their chubby well-scrubbed faces. But that's how it always is. We meet a young monk, Gedun, who wants to practise his English. He's from a herder's family in Qinghai, the province northeast of Tibet. He studies Buddhist philosophy, and will do for many years to come. We meet him for tea a couple of times and talk about life, the universe and, uh, Barack Obama. When we ask about the monks with gold watches, and mobile phones , laden with shopping or tucking into big meals in some of the nicer restaurants in town, Gedun explains that many come from wealthy families and have "business in China". This makes it even more difficult to watch pilgrims kow-towing to monks in the street.

The surrounding landscape is dry and almost treeless. There are grassy hills on both sides of the valley leading to distant snow-capped mountains. Farther off up the valley are vast expanses of grasslands, but it's late in the year now and the herders have returned to their villages. The weather is perfect for walking and we climb to a peak with prayer flags, in the middle of a horseshoe ridge that gives extensive views all around. From up here we can see a longer ridge across up the valley, which we attempt the next day. The days are sunny but cool, but it feels warmer up on the ridges than down in the town. These are our first long walks since we left India and they're wonderful. Sitting in the long brown grass, looking down on minuscule villages fills us with an exhilarating joy. We have found a beautiful and untouched part of China at last.Back in the monastery we meet Andrea and Gerhard, two German cyclists who have come across from Uzbekistan. They fill us with Bicycle Fever. Like all cyclists, they seem to be always eating. With them, we witness the daily assembly of monks, all in their yellow hats, for morning prayers. It makes for great photos. If only we could capture the babbling chants and conch shell hoots as well. At night it's freezing and we wonder how long Andrea and Gerhard can go on in this severe climate. We are struggling to cope with long cold nights in our hotel - it would be perfect if there was heating and reliable hot water, but only on our fifth and last night do we get both.

The Terracotta Hoax

2009-10-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

It's probably China's most famous archaeological find - an emperor's burial pits that contain an army of 6,000 life-size terracotta soldiers. The Terracotta Warriors now tour the world in displays to promote China's cultural heritage. The closest we'd been to this phenomenon was in 2003 in Sao Paolo. But the queue at the museum was snaking around the building in temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius and we couldn't face the wait. Never mind - we're in China now. So it came as something of a shock to discover that the Chinese Government admitted the whole thing was a hoax only a few weeks before we arrived in Xi'an. The timing of the announcement was interesting. On the day that the world's press was dissecting the news of Michael Jackson's demise, a government spokesman was announcing the arrest and trial of provincial heads for "intentionally misleading the people of the world". Apparently, Xi'an party bosses, searching for something to boost tourism and the city's prominence, dreamt up the idea of "discovering" the warriors back in the mid 70's. A local farmer was thus paid to dig for a well and, purely by chance, locate the very edge of the largest burial pit. To ensure the elaborate hoax was not called, the perpetrators also went to great lengths to make sure that each terracotta soldier was individually produced - the site is famous for the fact that no two soldiers are alike. Very clever. Indeed it appears that no-one outside of about twenty people realised the truth. Thus, UNESCO even granted the site World Heritage status in the 90's.We visited the huge site anyway. The scale is impressive - buildings have been constructed over the three main burial pits and work is "ongoing". In other words, only a small amount of the estimated whole has been uncovered, reconstructed (all of the soldiers are apparenty in pieces) and displayed. The soldiers stand in situ, in the pits, about five metres below the viewing balcony. This puts you at a distance from the pieces. The Chinese tourists' enthusiasm is undiminished though - group after group push through the entrance and crush up to the balcony. No-one appears to look at what is in front of them - the vital thing is to capture a few photos on camera or mobile before being shepherded off to the next building. There are four soldiers that have been put in display cases for closer viewing. They are magnificent, although none really show the colours that each figure was allegedly originally painted. On the way out we pass a hundred souvenir stalls all selling remarkably good replicas of the Warriors. Mmmm. Bit of a giveaway really.National press coverage of the hoax lasted for a couple of days only, and global coverage amounted to short paragraphs from Reuters and other press agencies. It's estimated that 10,000 people are executed annually in China, more than in the rest of the world put together. Recent death penalties in the news include two men involved in the melamine-in-milk-powder scandal last year, a couple of men trafficking children and nine men involved in the riots and deaths in Urumqi. Party officials involved in corruption seem to get lighter punishment - a proper telling-off and a hundred lines of "I must not take bribes". This might explain why party membership is on the rise. But for the hoaxers of Xi'an this might not be enough to save them.

The Start of the Silk Road

2009-10-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

Our 5-hour train journey to Xi'an takes ten hours. We seem to be stuck forever on sidings with nothing but a desolate landscape of flat land fractured by deep ravines. This is China's Yellow Earth - the loess blown southwards from Mongolia that makes up much of Shaanxi province. We are starving - thought we'd have arrived before lunch. Luckily Vivien stops to chat. She's on her way back to university and she has some french bread to share. She produces from her bag tiny little polythene packets of sweet white bread - the kind of crap you get on aeroplanes. We wolf them down, and in between chews, chat to Vivien about, y'know, life, the universe and everything. Well, no, not really. We only talk about China. Vivien tells us she wants to have a baby by a blue-eyed westerner with a "high nose". No marriage though. Her mum's divorced and she thinks men are not so good. Fair enough. She has a younger brother. It seems the one-child policy isn't uniformly applied. Exceptions are allowed for ethnic minorities and couples who are both single children. And some people break the rules. After visiting India and Indonesia it seems like the one-child policy is a critical social policy for development here. But it's also a frightening restriction on people's liberty and perhaps best demonstrates the state's control of lives.
Xi'an had become a bit of a Mecca for us since we seem to have traversed large portions of the old Silk Road on this journey. As the old capital of China, Xi'an was the starting point of trade with countries to the west along a variety of routes that stretched across the western regions of present-day China. Perhaps it was the start of globalised world trade. At its peak there would have been a huge amount of trade in goods and ideas and inventions between China and the Middle East and Europe. We still remember the silk cloth recovered from the ruins of Palmyra in Syria on display at the National Museum in Damascus, over 2,000 years old. It came from China and it travelled by camel from trading post to caravanserai right across Asia. In the opposite direction came Roman vases and glassware. Buddhism and Islam came with monks and traders. Why not the knife and fork? Eventually sea trade brought an end to the Silk Road and China's capital city moved further eastwards with successive dynasties. Xi'an is now a huge city once again and amazingly still retains it's impressive city walls around the centre. We walk most of their 14kms on a sunny day. There's not a lot of anything from olden days left here and surrounding the walls is another of high-rise buildings. But in the centre there are the grand drum and bell towers and an old Muslim quarter with a couple of mosques, built in Chinese pagoda style, and, more importantly, a couple of streets of food stalls and restaurants that get packed at night mainly by Chinese tourists looking for the L.S.D. Yep, that's right, it's the in-thing on your holidays here. Wherever you go, you must try the Local Speciality Dish. To be honest, I'm not sure what it is in Xi'an, but the fresh bread meat sandwiches are good, and the beef noodles hit the spot.We're hostelling again, but this time in a busier place that seems to be filled with mainly English people with northern accents. Bizarre. But kind of comfortable and very sociable. Hayley and Ben are travelling around the world with their young daughter. Their speed is dizzying to sloths like us. Before we leave, we take a bus out to a road junction on the west side of the city. In a little park area there's a huge stone sculpture of a Silk Road Caravan setting out. A little boy is clambering over the camel backs and heads of the traders. Down below an old fella is flying a kite about a kilometre above us. We give another old man in a greatcoat a fright - he takes one look at us and shuffles off quickly. If we wait long enough a tour bus will turn up for photos. Sure enough here it is. Out step the middle-aged tourists, to pose for photos, have a quick fag, then back on board and off. We will also be heading west, but only on a cheap and slow night train. This begs the question - what state will we be in when we get off the train?

On the road to Xi'an

2009-10-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

Luoyang's a little known city, unless you're into kung fu - the Shaolin Temple, home of kung fu, is not so far away. We've stopped off here on the way to Xi'an to have a look at the Longmen Caves, a UNESCO site of buddhist carvings and sculptures set into cliff walls along a river. The caves date from the 400's AD but the carvings have had a torrid time of it, what with anti-Buddhist movements of the past, theft by Western collectors, and then zealous Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Our guidebook describes them as ravaged. So it's a bit of a shock to find the entrance fee is about 11 quid each (no discount for holders of fake student cards either). It's a lovely sunny day when we get there and quite frankly, I'm not that bothered about looking at a few headless Buddhas. I'm reminded of a moment in my youth when on holiday in Scotland with my family I decided not to get out of the car to watch salmon leaping at nearby falls. I'd seen salmon leap before and pointed out that "when you've seen one salmon leap, you've seen them all". This comment provoked merciless ribbing from my father. If he made the suggestion to me again I'd go eagerly to watch this wonder of Nature. But getting back to the Buddhas - well, Gayle is keener than I, so we don't have to toss a coin to decide who goes in. While she wanders through the galleries and into some of the newly-built temples, I practise a few kung fu moves in the gardens.
We're staying in our first Chinese youth hostel here. It's in an office block near to the bus station and we appear to be the only punters. The bedrooms are big and comfy, but can't quite disguise the original purpose of the building. I half expect a secretary to appear with a sheaf of papers from the bathroom. There's an old part of the city that's had a slight makeover i.e. they've repointed the walls and painted the drum tower. Red lanterns are dutifully hung from the shopfronts along the main street. But it's not so touristy. A man with a street stall selling hot pork sandwiches tempts me. Gayle waits while I demolish my food. Only a little while later does she ask me if I saw what he chopped into the butty. I hadn't seen. "Pig's snout", she tells me, a little too cheerily. It may be coincidence, but I don't feel too good for the next few days.
We walk too much. We're just getting used to the spread of the cities. There's a Carrefour on our map, so we detour in search of fresh croissants, pain au chocolat, real coffee. Ha! On arrival it takes us twenty minutes to find something we think is edible. Where's the Rocquefort??? Where are the baguettes? There is lots of tofu and dried food and pot noodles and obscurely flavoured items like beef cookies, kiwi fruit crisps, red bean and coconut yoghurt. But there is fruit yoghurt and, on a tiny display of imported foods (pasta, jam, chocolate spread) I find the treasured coffee. Joy of joys. We've also become regular buyers of sugared puffed wheat, which is sold as a snack food in tiny packets. We can buy milk everywhere, so it makes for an easy cheap breakfast. And now there's real coffee too.
The city is fairly clean. So far, most of where we've been has been clean - cleaner than Manchester at any rate. At all hours of the day there are street sweepers in orange day-glow jackets keeping the pavements and roads spotless. There are litter bins everywhere, marked for recycling. There are also a large number of scruffy old folk who rummage these bins and look like they do most of the recycling. It would seem that anyone older than 40 has had a particularly rough deal of it in China - born into the chaos of the new People's Republic and Mao's dreadful policies like the Great Leap Forward and then too old now to really enjoy the fruits of the development of the country in the last twenty years. Saying that, working in a factory or on a construction site here can't be much fun, but the older people certainly look the poorest and most neglected of society.

Extension

2009-10-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

There are clear blue skies over Kaifeng when we arrive in the morning. It's a small low-rise city with old walls, a remnant of the days when it was the capital of the Song dynasty days about a thousand years ago. The ancient city was built too closely to the Yangtze though - and was repeatedly flooded. It now lies buried beneath the existing modern city. We've come here principally to get an extension on our visa from the lovely people at the local Public Security Bureau - it takes two working days rather than the usual five here - and it sounds like a fairly ordinary and manageable place to visit. So, first things first, we troop down to the PSB with our passports, photocopies and phrasebook. There's a dedicated desk for foreigners and the woman is cheerful and friendly and looks like she has nothing else to do. Bingo. She too has a phrasebook, and we manage to communicate the essentials well enough. Come back tomorrow to collect, no problem.
As the city centre has some surviving old hutong (alleyways), we decide to do what we do best - go for a wander. There's a fairly large Muslim quarter here and another sign that we've come north is the amount of fresh bread for sale. In northern China the diet is traditionally based around wheat, i.e. bread and noodles. On one long meandering street we pass a pagoda-style mosque, a big old church (looking disused), and a newly restored Buddhist temple. There had been a synagogue here too, but it's been replaced by the People's Hospital No. 4. Muslims and Jews came into China initially along the old Silk Road, traders and craftsmen who were encouraged to settle here. The Muslims, called Hui, look like Han Chinese, but the women cover their hair with a headscarf or what looks like a lilac baker's hat whilst many of the men and young boys wear muslim caps. Inside the temple complex we watch a grandmother lead her daughter and grandson in the rituals of prayer and incense-burning before a shrine. The old lady does so with gusto, whilst her youngsters follow clumsily.
There's a street market stretching for a kilometre selling housewares, clothes and fresh food. The socks are cheap, but last only one day. Fresh bread is being sold hot and up by the university students are queuing for bacon and egg sandwiches. Mmmmm. We head for one of the city parks and are glad we invested in fake student cards in Bangkok. There's a discount on the entrance fee. Entrance charges are applied everywhere in China and it's a real pain for the tight-arsed budget travellers that we are. We have paid to enter villages, temples, museums, and now a city park. And the fees are very high. This applies to Chinese tourists too and it can quickly add up. Out of necessity we are having to be a little more selective about what we see and where we go, which is no bad thing really.
The other highlight in Kaifeng is the nightly food market in the city centre where the main street is taken over by hundreds of stalls. We are mesmerised by the noodle-makers - young guys who are constantly kneading dough, stretching and pulling, twisting it and producing long strings of noodles that are then tossed casually into huge steaming pans. They're delicious.
We return to the Public Security Bureau to collect our passports with the visa extensions slapped inside. On we go......

Huoche / Choo choo

2009-10-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

- You're going to Beijing? We're only going as far as Zhengzhou.
- Lanzhou?
- No, Zhengzhou.
- Zhoucheng?
- No, not Zhoucheng, to Zhengzhou.
- Ahh, Yangzhou!
- No! Zhengzhou. In Henan.
- Hunan?
- No. Zhengzhou IN HENAN.
- Oh, Zhengzhou!!

It's only a couple of hours into our journey and Gayle is already chattering away with the other passengers with mixed success. We're in hard sleeper class, which isn't as bad as it sounds - with two top berths out of a set of six. The carriage is carpeted, air-conditioned and kept clean by an attendant, despite the best efforts of the passengers who at some point all seem to be eating sunflower seeds and leaving mountains of husks everywhere. Hot water for tea and pot noodles is available between the carriages. It all seems so civilised.

Most of the passengers are heading back to Beijing after a few days holiday in Hunan. They're well-dressed and look rather urbane after our three weeks' travelling on country buses with the yokels. A couple of older women in the other berths keep an eye out for us and a young man and his girlfriend, who both speak good English, come and chat in the evening. Three young girls tentatively say hello and half an hour later, as I nod off, they are huddled around Gayle who is using the phrasebook to ask them questions.

Walking around Jishou before we left we had noticed for the first time many people giving us a second look. It's the kind of place that sees few tourists, I guess. Sitting down eating noodles at a street stall draws a few comments from observers who are probably amazed anyone could manage to eat anything holding chopsticks like that. Some people smile, some poke their friends and nod towards us, and a few shout "hello". If we reply, they dissolve into giggles. This is nothing new now for us, and if it's not irritating us it's reassuring in a funny kind of way.

On the train it seems quite normal for folk just to plop down on a seat and start up a conversation with others. It's like we've all been invited to someone's house party. Maybe it's this particular carriage load, but everyone appears very sociable. We could never imagine anything like this in Britain. Meanwhile the scenery flies past, like a frenetic slide show, as we pass through hundreds of tunnels. Green hills, empty valleys, little towns, big rivers, high bridges all zip past in a blur. At about 9pm people finish off their card games or pot noodles and start getting ready for bed. At 10pm the lights go out. We sleep until the attendant wakes us at 1.30am - time to alight at Zhengzhou. We're both sleppy and light-headed and everything has a dreamlike quality as we stagger out.

Chinese railway stations are fairly bleak, functional and souless buildings. For a start, you can't enter the waiting rooms without a ticket. These halls are designed to cope with crowds, not to provide comfort, and on this journey we aren't even allowed onto the platform until the train has pulled up. The only platform action you get is a desperate surge of prospective passengers lugging suitcases and a week's supply of pot noodles towards a closely-guarded train. Each door is defended by an attendant in navy uniform, brass buttons, epaulettes and a "Don't even think about messing with me" look. And it works. People get aboard and the train leaves on time. But there's absolutely no fun or romance in it - none of that expectant excitement thinking about the next destination. No family farewell scenes, no platform hawkers, no wooden benches worn smooth by the bums of previous travellers.

At 2am we emerge outside Zhengzhou station onto a wide open square surrounded by tall neon-lit hotels and 24-hour fast food chain restaurants. Travellers come and go in dribs and drabs. Some are lying down and sleeping. A police officer cruises past in an electric golf buggy, eyes peeled. There's nothing for him to do - no drunks, no unsavoury characters to move on. Just a whole bunch of bleary-eyed travellers like us. And like them, we retire to the nearest McDonalds for a hot drink and a blatant kip at the table.

Ginger cracknell, anyone?

2009-10-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

Fenghuang looks like it's been seeing tourists for many years. The old town bares its wares with a weary sigh but still puts on a smiling face for the punter. Grey stone buildings all decorated with the obligatory red lanterns line pedestrianised alleyways and display their goods to the passing tourists. There are the local specialities - tea, rice wine in bamboo bottles, ginger cracknell (quality gear, this) and cured pork, including pig's faces, plus a whole host of shops selling scarves, shawls and trendy clothes, naff t-shirts, Communist memorabilia, and batik clothing. The old ladies who are selling jewellery (of both the silver and tacky plastic kind) have probably been doing this since Mao popped his clogs. Dotted amongst all this are restaurants, trendy cafes and bars that have live music every night - usually one man and his guitar singing James Blunt songs off-key. The feature of the old town, as with many places, is a murky river with a grand covered bridge and a few more basic wooden bridges and stepping stones. Men in boats will punt you downstream for a small consideration, but not small enough for us to consider it.. The river shallows are clogged with a kind of weed that I think we've been eating every day since we arrived in China - water spinach, is it?
The holiday spirit is still going strong here and we wander along the old city wall, dodging tour groups led by diminutive women holding flags and barking instructions through small loud hailers. "And on our right is the oldest Buddhist Temple in Fenghuang. Admire its pagoda style roof. It is now used as the local middle school. Now, forward march!" The groups shuffle onwards towards the antiquities stalls. Down on the riverbank everyone is photographing everyone else. There's the usual array of folk costume stalls and girls and boys dressing up for more photos. Despite the tourist tacky edge to the place it's still rather pleasant. We amble into the new town to photocopy our passports. It takes a while, with frequent asking, to find a place, but everyone is very helpful. The town, like all the other places we have visited, is incredibly clean and free of litter. This is incredible because everyone throws their rubbish in the street. On the buses, the window is the litter bin.
The weather is the only let down as cloud and occasional drizzle dampens the days and dulls our photographs.
We have a couple of days before our train journey northwards, so we move on to Dehang, a village in a "Scenic Area". It's still grey and wet when we arrive, and although the narrow valley and gorges with karst peaks are lovely, the village itself is far from scenic. It's plain ugly, really. It's not helped by the new buildings, including an open-air theatre, built for the domestic tourists, that line the route from the coach carpark to the village square. Our mood is not helped by the grotty accomodation options. We are shown one room with two beds that would only permit standing room for one person at a time. The room has only wooden latticework over the windows, but a large piece of plywood is provided if we want to close out the damp and the light. Fortunately we are rescued by a woman who leads us to what looks like a school boarding house. The room is clean, and despite damp sheets, we take it and quickly head off up one of the walking trails to look at China's highest waterfall. The waterfall has no water, even though it looks like it rains here every day of the year. It's one of those days. What are we doing here? we ask ourselves.
The next day is much better, with sunshine breaking through the morning mist, and we hike up another gorge and climb up a long set of steps to a viewpoint at the head of the valley. The view looking back is wonderful, but turn around and you can see a new expressway just being finished. It seems improbably high up and looks ugly and out of place, but I guess all big roads do at first. We hurry down and checkout, having resolved to spend a night in Jishou, the town where we catch our train. There's nothing to do there, but there's good street food stalls and the hotel room has it's own computer. Gayle quickly gets to work uploading photos from China onto Flickr - a slow task at the best of times, and a bit tricky when all the dialogue boxes on the screen come up in Mandarin. So how does everyone type Chinese characters then? Roland had told us that everyone has to type in pinyin, the romanised form of the language. The pc will then suggest characters to match the pinyin. Another day I watched a woman texting on her mobile phone. She had a touch screen, and with a long fingernail scratched out her characters. The phone then suggested various alternative characters and she chose one. It looked a slow process, but it works.

Five years old again

2009-10-14T10:12:00.001-07:00

It's still cold and damp when we leave Xijiang, but the scenery is quite pretty. Eventually we reach a town where we catch our first train in China. It's a four-hour ride and we can't get a reserved seat. In fact we have no idea what we're in for and the characters on our ticket give no clues. We join the milling throng in the waiting room as far from the smelly toilets as possible. At one end is a fence with four gates. Our train number is on one of them and in front of it a huge queue. A tannoy announcement is finally made, the gate opens and the queue pushes forward. We queue jump with five hundred other like-minded people. There's a hint of desperation about the crowd and I start to sweat although it's cool out, but out on the platform there is order and calm. And there are several uniformed women with white gloves on making sure it stays like that. They bark out orders and point a lot. We are directed to a short queue - one of many that has formed along the platform. When the train pulls in we are slightly out of alignment with a carriage door. We are instructed to realign before we are permitted to enter. It's a bit scary but then no-one needs to be clubbed out of the way - something we once saw at an Indian railway station melee. Of course there are no spare seats on the train and we stand and watch the other passengers in their seats - families playing cards, children eating pot noodles, young couples kissing and cooing. Unbelievably, several seated passengers stand up to stretch their legs. After an hour I'm exhausted. But I'm getting off at 2 o'clock. This lot are going all the way to Beijing.

When we do get off we have to reserve a ticket on an overnight train for a few days hence. We have researched the train numbers and routes and times, but when we try to buy the tickets the woman behind the glass screen just says "mei you". There are none. She says a lot more in Mandarin but I'm buggered if I know what she's saying and walk away in surrender. Gayle goes up to have a go and seems to make progress. There is another train we can catch. After a lot of scribbling and double-checking, the ticket seller showing us the choices on her computer screen (all in unreadable characters of course), we finally buy a ticket. But it's a crap deal. We'll arrive at 2am at a town that is only a transit point to our destination. Whilst I'm moaning and rolling around in anguish on the concourse floor a young student approaches us and offers his assistance. Too late!!!! Never mind - he's very nice and helps us get to the bus station for a bus to Fenghuang. Can we walk there? we ask. He tells us it's a 40 minute walk, better to take a taxi. We do. It's a four-minute ride to the bus station, just around the block form the train station. But at least there's a bus for us and seats. We get to Fenghuang at nightfall.

I've just read in a Bill Bryson his description of travelling in countries where they don't speak English. "I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only a rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses."

As we walk down the street looking for a hotel I feel like I'm five years old again. I can't read a single sign, it's dark and we're disoriented. Ahh, but we can recognise a hotel reception. Gayle suggests we try the first one we pass. Bingo. The room is clean and cheap and there's a woman who talks sense (or at least we guess she does, since it's all in Mandarin of course. Whatever. She looks like she talks sense). Out on the street there are stalls selling food. It's busy with visitors and there's a liveliness to the place. We pick a stall run by a family - mum, dad and daughter. They have a display of fresh vegetables and skewers of meat. You pick what you want for barbecueing or for the wok. So simple. One thing noticeable in a country with a policy to reduce the number of children, is how child-friendly everywhere is. Especially the restaurants and food stalls who have furniture that looks straight out of my old infant's school. Of course, it's hard enough trying to eat your food with unfamiliar utensils, but to do so whilst sat on a kiddies' chair at a table about one foot lower than your knees, is an act of contortion. Amazingly no-one notices my Mr. Bean performance and we have a great meal. As I try to extricate myself from my limbo position under the table though, I really do wish I was five years old again.

Saudade in Xijiang

2009-10-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

Saudade is a Portuguese word that crops up in Brasil a lot. It means something like nostalgia or a sense of loss or absence - I'm not quite sure because I don't have my pocket Portuguese dictionary on me just now. Anyway, you can hear it in many Brazilian songs. The feeling creeps up on us one day in Xijiang. We both are thinking of home. It's probably the grey skies and pending drizzle that does it. As usual when we get these feelings we start to talk about the people and the things we miss. It's probably not the best way to deal with it, but eventually we get on to the people and things we don't miss. And that does the trick. We've been enjoying our time in China so far, but the weather and Xijiang leaves us feeling a little off kilter.

It turned out to be an effort getting here. When we reached Conjiang, in Guizhou, to catch an onward bus, there were no tickets left for the 11 o'clock bus. In fact no tickets left for the rest of the day. We were stunned. This meant staying an unscheduled night in what looked like a one-horse town. Well, there's a river and a road and a bridge, and a lot of newish buildings. Later on we saw these were shielding little wooden houses up on the hillside. Undaunted we quickly did a tour of all the bus station hotels. There are plenty. One place said they had rooms, but when the manageress saw we were foreigners, she said no. Hotels have to be registered with the police to accept us - although we're sure we've already stayed in plenty that aren't. At another place the price of the room yo-yoed so much we gave up trying to pin it down. Everytime we tried to clarify the price it moved. The trouble is that hotels show rates that are ridiculously high, say 280 yuan, when the room can be had for something more like 80. Eventually we found an okay one at the Conjiang Broadcasting Hotel. Next we went to find food, and fell on our feet. A row of restaurants had tables of raw ingredients on display. You pick out what you want and it gets tossed about in a wok for a short while. The wok's usually so hot that the oil catches fire, but instead of everything coming out incinerated and burnt to a crisp, it's perfect. That little spoon of MSG probably helps it along too. If you're unlucky the cooking oil smoke blows past you, leaving you choking for breath and eyes watering, but the more sophisticated outfits have huge fans to disperse the smoke onto passersby instead. Like teargas. And that was it for Conjiang. Not much going for it at all. The onward bus the next day was a bumpy ride on a road half built. It was a long journey and we were delayed when the bus driver decided to pick a fight with a minibus driver. At one point in anger he picked up a rock. He knew it was a mistake almost straight away and the other man went beserk. Luckily there were plenty of onlookers to intercede and push the silly fools back to their respective vehicles. But our driver nearly totalled the bus and probably all us passengers too in trying to overtake the minibus.

So here we are in Xijiang, a very large Miao village (the Miao being another ethnic minority) and wondering what on earth went through the heads of the authorities when they 'tidied' this place up. It really is kind of awful how the main part of the village has been rebuilt, with a huge pedestrianised street down the middle, extra wide for the tour groups, lined with gift shops and hotels. New bridges have been built, and walkways introduced - it doesn't look too authentic even to our untrained eye. Chimneys on houses are cleverly disguised as trees - growing out of the walls. I couldn't find a single litter bin, until I realised all the tree stumps were bins. At some point it seems funny. Towards the end of the day some awful karaoke kicks off and can be heard all over the village. Then we realise it's the daily folk extravaganza put on for the visitors. Neither of us feels inclined to go and see. Nor do we go for the dressing up in folk costume - although it really is the thing to do in these places.

In the morning we head out of the village and into the rice terraces along a path that climbs and winds it's way into the mist. It's trying to rain and there's a chill in the air. It feels like Autumn. What a strange sensation. Later we notice quite a few yokels wandering into the village. There's a drunk staggering past and a street barber doing a roaring trade. These are the tell-tale signs that it's market day. At one end of the village there are stalls set up selling all kinds of clothes, food, bric a brac. Loads of folk are here, the women with their hair tied in another distinctive knot, the old women covering it with pink towels. In other places they use traditional woven cloth, but here the pink flowery hand towel is king. Even the Miao are modernising. We mooch about with all the locals - weighing up the farming tools, the vegetable seeds, the embroidery cottons, the underwear, the padlocks, the Hello Kitty sandals. Steamed buns are going like hot cakes, so we have a couple too. At the meat market there are puppy dogs for sale beside the chickens. Some of them look ridiculously cute. Oh well. There's a good range of vegetables for sale - baskets of beansprouts, bamboo shoots, leeks, tomatoes, cauliflower - this might be the best we've seen in a long while. In one corner some blue polythene hides the drinkers, but outside there's a stack of beer crates. We survey the bustling scene. There's not another tourist to be seen. Maybe they're all down in the new concrete plaza waiting for the folk extravaganza to begin.

The Huangzhou Amateur Photography Club Annual Outing

2009-10-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

It's the end of the day when we reach Zhaoxing, a large Dong village that is being tarted up for the national tourist trade. The main road is a dusty mess from construction vehicles ploughing through taking concrete and aggregate to the new expressway being built on the other side of the hill. Everywhere in China there is construction work, catching up for lost years. Around the village there are signs of new build and old houses being dismantled, but incredibly it still retains a charming atmosphere. The locals seem to carry on with their normal lives as they always have done. But everywhere there are groups of Chinese tourists with monstrously huge cameras and tripods, clicking away endlessly. It's hard to tell whether they are desperately trying to capture digitally a way of life that is shortly to expire or to photograph the new 'improved' parts of the village. And, excuse me, but why are you pointing that 3 foot zoom lens at me? I'm only sitting on this bridge and watching the world go by. Stop it!

Gayle has learnt her first Mandarin. "Wo neng pai ni ma?" Can I take your picture? Some of the locals look surprised. The Chinese tourists just point a long black lens and shoot. It seems very rude, but no-one seems bothered. The rice processing is carrying on in earnest here - laid out to dry and gathered up again each evening. Fluffy baskets of cotton hang in the sun. Old and young women stagger past with yokes laden with rice or grass feed or buckets of foul-smelling shit. Not sure whether it's human or animal - some of the houses look too old to have toilets. A farmer returns from the fields with his cow and calf, and leads them straight into his house. The older folk are wearing the dark blue clothes of the peasant farmer. Standard issue green plimsolls. Conical hats. The women tie their long hair up in an unusual knot. The youngsters are looking more trendy - drainpipe jeans, assymetrical haircuts. Occasionally young women pass in traditional costume, locally woven and dyed deep purple with a sheen. But the women are dressed to perform for the tourists.

The new buildings stand out because the varnished wood is nine tones brighter than the old wood. Brick and concrete is being used on the ground floors, with wood panelling to cover up. We're not big fans of the 'beautification', but no-one can mind the locals getting new houses, new footpaths and bridges, can they? Interestingly, many of the hoteliers do not look like local Dong. Just a minute, we're being photographed again.

We try and escape the photographers the next day and take a walk with Roland to a neighbouring village. The path climbs up a hill and onto a dirt track that twists ever higher. We are rewarded with lovely views, but come no closer to the next village. Roland asks locals who pass by the distance. It always seems to be another 3 kilometers. Hot, thirsty and hungry we eventually turn around, but after refreshments we take a path to a village we can actually see. It's very quiet, with a few men working below a drum tower, and at one end a group of men and women labouring to dismantle another house. No nails. If you move house you could literally take it with you. This village has old paths, a dirt road, dilapidated buildings, but no photographers - it's the real thing.

On the bus when we leave the next morning we drive through a landscape coated in dust. The villages, the fields, the trees, the people. For many miles we are never far from the new expressway being constructed high up on the hillside. Huge concrete pillars rise into the sky waiting to be connected. Lorries rumble back and forth spreading more dust everywhere. The sky is a flat white and for a moment it looks like it snowed in the night. I'm sure it'll be a great road when it's finished.

Mooncakes

2009-10-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Lutz is on the bus heading to Sanjiang. We'd met him on the walk to Ping'An, going in the opposite direction and instantly started chatting away like friends who've not met for a while. He's been studying Kung Fu for 9 months at a Shaolin temple and is travelling around China for before returning to Europe to start a new life. Roland, a Welshman who teaches English in Beijing and is taking advantage of the national holidays, is with him. We're all going to Chengyang - renowned for its Wind and Rain Bridge.

It sounds like a long shot - travelling into the countryside to see a bridge (it is a lovely bridge), but there are also a series of traditional Dong villages, the Dong being one of China's many ethnic minorities. The countryside is very pretty, a river winding through wooded hills and surrounded by rice fields - what else - with wooden houses huddled together around Drum Towers. These are buildings that mark the village centre, usually with a small square and a stage to one side. The towers have pagoda style roofs here and usually an open room below where all the old fellas sit to play cards, smoke, drink tea. There are several villages clustered near to each other and connected by a series of these 'wind and rain' bridges - ornate wooden bridges supported by stone columns. Many of the buildings are built without nails, just interlocking joints.

We love the area and are undeterred by all the other tourists - most of them daytrippers who hurry to take photos of themselves in every conceivable location, the youngsters holding up two fingers in the V for Victory sign. Or is it Peace, man? You can even hire local costumes from the entrepreneurial locals for a few hundred more photos. Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun and so are we. It's harvest full moon, a special day in the traditional Chinese calendar, and perhaps a greater reason for everyone to be on holiday. Special cakes are being sold everywhere and some are delicious - like mince pies without the fruit. Lots of pork suet and peanuts. Yummy. It's also Lutz's birthday and we celebrate with beers on one of the bridges as the full moon rises. Around us, from all the bridges, firecrackers explode intermittently, like a Triad gang shootout. In the moonlight the fields and villages are perfectly illuminated.

Another day we walk between the villages and over a pass linking two of them. The views are great and it looks like good walking country. Back in the village there's a pumpkin fight being held in front of the Drum tower. Roland wangles us up on to a balcony above a shop to watch as young boys from the neighbouring village attempt to drive out heavily armed women from beneath the Drum tower. It gets extremely messy and some of the crowd join in or withdraw from the onslaught. Lots of oohs and aahs. Great fun. It seems a shame to move on.

Wo is me

2009-10-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

Mandarin is allegedly a wonderfully simple language to learn. The grammar is very straightforward, verbs require no conjugation and it is pronounced as it reads.....in Pinyin (the romanized form of Mandarin). Aha, that's the catch. There are thousands of Chinese characters, but apparently you only need to know a few thousand to read a newspaper. I don't think we'll be putting that to the test. Instead I'll be thumbing through our phrasebook trying to find an essential word or two to get by. Apart from useful phrases like "How much is it?" and "I think it's the medication I'm on" there are others that we are unlikely to use such as "Do you know a dentist who's good with children?" or those that we may only need the once, such as "Is this the bus to Huangzhou?" (unless, of course, we go to Huangzhou twice.) Gayle is persevering with her tried and tested technique of speaking English and miming. Frustratingly for me, with my thumb stuck in my phrasebook, she can be very successful.

We venture forth from the safe haven of Yangshuo and to one of those beautiful Chinese locations given the typically poetical name of Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces. Catching the buses is made easier when you have your destination written in characters, but everyone seems helpful, and there's quite a few women working the buses. As everyone knows, women are much more responsible than men or rather, much less stupid. Sometimes we walk into a hotel and the man looks at us like we came from another planet. A mixture of anxiety and fear crosses his face. Can't even comprehend that we might want a room for the night. The woman meanwhile responds with a couple of clarifying questions, a smile and shows us a room. Chromosomes, eh?

The Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces are a couple of very pretty areas where there are um, lots of rice terraces. It's a classic scene and there are several traditional villages where you can stay and wander to viewpoints along traditional stone paths (built for the traditional tourists, but in keeping with the place) to take photos and admire the wonder of it all. The viewpoints have evocative names like "Seven Stars and The Moon", "Nine Dragons, Five Tigers" or the Zeppelin-esque "Stairway to Paradise". There are a few tourists around but plenty more hotels than punters. They remind us of the trekking lodges in Nepal. After a couple of nights in one area we trek across to the other. We are accompanied by a guide who leads us without asking along a quiet path, traversing the hillsides and climbing the ridges, just below the trees and just above the rice terraces. If we dawdle, our guide hurries back to look for us and if we stop for a break to admire the views, he whines. Now, as everyone who knows me knows, I don't like dogs. But this one is friendly and quiet and sticks close to us without getting under our feet. He looks very happy to be out and about. Small wonder, really, as they eat dogs in these parts. The night before, a Canadian recounted to us how two villagers picked up a dog in front of him and tried to kill it. They couldn't. In the end they put it in a gunney sack and smashed it with an iron bar. Later they were seen burning off the fur with a blowtorch. He appreciated that the killing was not a random act of violence - they were just sorting out their tea - but the method was a little upsetting. Our guide meanwhile runs ahead of us and leads us to a village that sees few tourists. It's tucked away in a small valley and the wooden houses look old and warped compared to the new tidy wooden lodges we've seen. There are few other tourists walking the path, and no Chinese. Eventually we reach Ping'an our destination. Before we enter the village we climb up to a viewpoint. Whilst we chat to an American, an old lady who is selling drinks catches our guide dog and ties him up with wire. The dog wails. I try and release him, but the old dear has a grip like a vice on my wrist and pulls me away. She even bears her ragged teeth in rage. It's futile. I can't look after this dog - I don't want to. But I have no doubt he'll end up in a gunney sack like the other one.

Ping'An sees a few more tourists than the other villages, and it's particularly busy because of the 1st October holidays. Sixty years ago Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Lots and lots of people are on holiday for a week or more and the hotels are responding accordingly. Our room costs 60 yuan for the night, but we have to change hotel for the next night because the price is rising to 220 yuan. At the weekend it will be 400 yuan. I wonder how much the word 'communism' is aired these days in China. We find another room in a simple little place that has no other guests. No TV + no air-con = no punters. We like the family who run it and we're invited to sit down with them to watch some of the celebrations from Beijing in the evening. Lots of singing and dancing and folk costumes and fireworks and extras forming huge colourful patterns for those great aerial shots. The Chinese can do spectaculars. Shots of the stony-faced Central Committee, in dark suits watching from their balcony. It goes on for hours. We go to bed.

In the morning we walk away from the village and the hotels advertising folk remedies and foot massages (one, the Li Qing Hotel, even offers blood-letting services) and the Chinese tourists who are huffing and puffing their way to a viewpoint. Half an hour away is another village, virtually untouched by the outside interest. Another world almost. In the fields the harvesting has begun. Farmers are cutting the rice and laying it out to dry on the edge of each paddy field. Once it's dried for a few days they then thresh it into a wooden box in the field and cart off the rice grains. These are then spread out on plastic sheets to dry for a few more days. The grains are then winnowed, leaving the grains free of their husks, and put out to dry again. It's a labour intensive process that we are to witness again and again in the coming days.

One evening we walk into a noodle joint and I start stammering out "Wo....wo.....wo..." (I would like two bowls of rice noodles.) Gayle meanwhile has pointed into the pan of steaming broth and the pile of noodles on the side, given the two fingers to the cook and sat down to wait. "Wo xiang liang wan mifen!" I finally spit out as the said noodles are delivered to us. Mandarin sometimes sounds like a series of tongue-twisters that are best attempted when drunk...........

China Lite

2009-10-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

The night bus to Yangshuo is expensive but luxurious - with plenty of space and leather seats. This turns out to be problematic when wearing polyester trousers - I have to use the seat belt (seat belt!) to hold myself in my seat. Yangshuo, in Guangxi, is possibly as touristy as it gets in China, although as one friend has pointed out, where isn't touristy in China? Famed for its fabulous karst landscape and river views, as featured on the 20 yuan note, Yangshuo attracts both foreign and Chinese tourists by the bus and boat load. We are greeted by an English-speaking tout at the bus station who invites us to look at his hostel. Sleepy and dazed, we ignore our wealth of experience and wander off with him. He seems put out when we go and have a look at another hostel on route, and insists on entering the place before us. Our alarm bells finally ring, and we ask him to leave us alone. In fact, we don't want to look at his hostel. He turns apoplectic and starts demonstrating a familiar knowledge of the English vernacular. His face turns purple and his hands become fists. I get angry but stay calm, and invite him to 'have a go'. I don't know why I do this but thankfully he just goes off in a huff. We walk back the way we have come and meet a woman who speaks no English. She has a cheap comfortable room with bathroom and a/c in her guesthouse. Ideal. We take it.

This place is a great introduction to China for us. There's plenty to see and do, there are locals who speak English and restaurants with English menus. On the other hand, this is a terrible introduction to China. Although there's plenty to see and do, the locals all speak English and the restaurants all have English menus. We hire bicycles and ride out of town and along the rivers, getting lost, going in circles, saying hello to farmers in their conical hats, haggling with ferry boat drivers to take us across to the other side. There are lots of other tourists doing the same thing but it's not overcrowded. In fact it feels quite sociable. On one day we decide to hike a stretch of river that is popular with cruise boats. We meet a young Chinese woman, Yun Fei, who is doing the same. She stands out a mile in tartan cords, a dayglo pink baseball cap and a pudding-bowl haircut. And she's only five foot tall. As we trek along the river bank and through fields of orange trees and rice and vegtables, she tells us that last year she cycled from her hometown in Chengdu to Lhasa on a cheap bike. She fuels our craving to cycle here. Along the way we are greeted with calls of "Hello! Bamboo?" by locals who have built bamboo rafts with an outboard motor to ferry tourists around. Yun Fei chats to everyone and at the end of the day we remark on how friendly everyone is. "Yes and no", she replies. "They just want our money, really. It's too touristy here." Another cruise boat drifts by, a loudhailer echoes off the limestone crags that jut above the riverside.

In Xinping we try and find the old part of the town to photograph. But the stone-paved narrow streets are full of shops, cafes and restaurants. It reminds me of the towns in the Lake District. Groups of Chinese tourists are carried past in small electric buses, to save them walking anywhere. In the new part of town the buildings are uniformly concrete and painted white. The place is tidy and clean and the electric motorbikes are great - no noise and no exhaust fumes. Now it reminds me of those new parts of towns in Spanish Andalusia. Even the Chinese tourists don't look Chinese. Where are the suits and the dull haircuts? Everyone's in bright polo shirts and shorts, trainers or sandals, although there's also an unfortunate frilliness about the women's clothes. I guess these tourists are China's lucky ones - they have money and time for holidays. In Guangzhou Eli told us that most migrant factory workers get one week a year off work and maybe one day a month. No weekends unless they work in a well-regulated city. At least the peasant farmers meet my expectations - dark blue clothes, conical hats, a bit dour and always as thin as reeds.

We stay a while in Yangshuo, lulled by the comforts of an easy environment, and plot our route north to Xi'an. On October 1st China celebrates 60 years of its totalitarian dictatorship. There should be some good fireworks. Mao t-shirts are selling like hotcakes. The country will stop for a week and travel promises to be difficult. Mmm. Things are about to get interesting.

Culture Shock

2009-09-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

The bus heads along the motorway past nondescript industrial scenes until we enter the outskirts of Guangzhou. It reminds me of Sao Paolo with its endless vistas of overpasses and appartment blocks, concrete everywhere. It's not noticeably polluted although the sunshine is hazy. At the bus station a friendly woman at the information counter tells us about onward buses. And food?, we ask, instinctively miming with our hands the act of pushing something into our mouths. Over the road, 3rd floor. We take a footbridge that leads us to a KFC and the Kung Fu fast food restaurant. Bruce Lee and Colonel Sanders look at us impassively over the heads of hundreds of hungry punters. Nonplussed, we decide to try our luck by the railway station where, sure enough, there's some cheap and cheerful little hovels serving noodles or rice and steam tray food. We plump for rice, veg and pork rind. Should've gone for the chicken. Now, how to eat rice with chopsticks? Despite Kenny's attempt to improve my technique in Singapore, I'm still learning. It's easier when I don't think about it. Unfortunately when I'm hungry I think about it a lot. Luckily, the bloke at the table next to us is demonstrating perfectly. Basically get your gob as close to the rice as possible and shovel. It works. Later that day we practice eating noodle soup with chopsticks. This is best done whilst wearing a multi-coloured patterned shirt.

We're Couch Surfing in Guangzhou. Couch Surfing puts you in touch with people who can give you a bed (or couch) for the night and perhaps provide some local knowledge. It's a great opportunity for some 'cultural exchange'. Our host is Eli, a 60 year-old New York businessman and self-proclaimed "wise ass" with a voice like gravel. He's straight out of 'Rhoda', and between cracks about living and working in China, he gives us shopping tips and places to find bargains. ("Haggle for everything!") It's a different kind of cultural exchange.

We take the metro, modern clean and crowded, into the centre for a look around. There are the ever-present 7-Elevens (which Gayle keeps calling 9-Elevens) and McDonalds. We even come across a Tesco's and check out the fruit and fresh produce. The apples look good, but we pass on the frogs, crabs, toads, turtles, eels and various fish - particularly the one that leaps out of its tank into the aisle in front of us and is quickly swept up by a cleaner and dumped straight back in. Not quite like home - at least here you know it really is fresh. In the old downtown area the streets are leafier and smaller and lots of cyclists whizz by. Instead of the shopping plazas and chainstores there are hundres of tiny shops, looking as untidy and disorganised as those we have seen in Bangkok's Chinatown. Everyone seems to be out shopping, just like every other Asian city we have visited, and come to think of it, just like London or Manchester. Shop shop shop. China seems on first impressions to be no different to anywhere else. This thought comes as a disappointment.

Guangzhou is China's third largest city and was it's biggest trading port before the Communist People's Republic opted to try Capitalism. The province is heavily industrialised and down on the river front you can see cargo boats and freight barges ambling past, whilst in the murky waters are groups of adventurous swimmers crossing the wide Pearl River. On Shamian Island, a piece of land conceded to the British and French, there's a clutch of old colonial buildings and churches. Some are still being restored. Young wedding couples pose in the gardens for photographs. Groups of old folk play cards or checkers or just sit motionless in the stifling afternoon heat. We succumb to the air-conditioned comfort of Starbucks. Inside there's a group of Americans with newly-adopted Chinese babies - apparently it's the place to do it - and various young and wealthy-looking locals, all busily tapping away at their laptops. We stay for two hours until our sweat-dripping clothes have dried out. Down Smooth Minaret Street is a smooth minaret. It belongs to a mosque that is believed to be China's first, established by one of Mo's uncles around 627 AD. Muslims only, unfortunately, but we can confirm that the minaret is smooth. Not far away is the city's oldest Buddhist temple, the "Temple of Filial Piety', about 300 years younger. The temple complex is in very good nick which means it either survived the worst of the Cultural Revolution or has been well-restored. We wonder how popular religion is these days in China.

Not as popular as shopping, based on a simple visual assessment. Down on Bargain Street things are hotting up. Discount shops have clapping sales assistants to entice us in. Or drive us away. Down a back street there's rows of food stalls. One advertises "Fresh New Zealand Mutton". Another sells kebabed grubs, beetles and scorpions. After shopping in Tesco's and drinking in Starbucks here is a great opportunity for us to submerse ourselves in China Proper. Go on, have a scorpion on a stick!

Putting it all on red

2009-09-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Being back in Bangkok is rather enjoyable - like a blast of fresh air, although after three days I am convinced that the normal environment is one of cold dry refrigerated air and the unnatural environment is that sultry damp sweaty feeling you get when you go outside. The city would be more enjoyable if it had a little less concrete and more greenery, less traffic and more space for people to enjoy. Mind, there's plenty of space in the air-conditioned malls. So we do a bit of shopping - kit ourselves up for China with guidebook, phrasebook, chopsticks and matching Mao suits knocked up by an Indian tailor down the Khao San Road - whilst we wait for our visa application to be processed. We also happily catch up with Fiona and Gordon and staying with them for a few nights feels like a real indulgence. They don't look at us as if we're mad when we explain that we've been looking for bicycles for cycling across China. Our plan is to visit for a couple of months, then return to Bangkok in order to visit Burma. We'd then return to Bangkok and with bicycles head up through Laos and into Yunnan. At the moment it's just an idea, but we get very excited when we pass an old shop in Chinatown with a display of Brookes' leather saddles. They look a little like some Victorian torture implement - which is in fact what they are. Anyway, we will be returning to Bangkok.........Our onward flight is to Macau - another cheap deal from Air Asia, Malaysia's answer to Easyjet. Like Hong Kong, Macau is part island, part peninsular. Since the Portuguese returned it to China in 1999 it has become China's Vegas - as a 'special administrative region' (n.b. no connection with SARs) with some autonomy, the authorities have invested heavily in developing the city as a gambler's paradise. There's a whole one-arm bandit's worth of glitzy, showy hotel-casinos littering the water front and filling in the marshy swampland is the showiest of them all - the Venetian. This complex is beautifully modelled on the canals, palaces and piazzas of Venice. Very tasteful it is too. Anyway, the plan seems to be working - Macau's casinos apparently take more money than those of Vegas. There's quite a lot of folk who like to gamble in these parts. We check out the roulette, the crap shooters and another table with furry dice inside a plastic dome in the centre where it looks like people are playing my favourite game when we were kids at Aunty May's, called 'Frustration'.The city itself has an odd European feel thanks to the Portuguese, not just in the array of well-preserved old colonial buildings and churches, but also in the layout and upkeep of the modern parts. It probably helps that there's only a population of half a million here. It's not really China, but we knew it wouldn't be. Our first evening we are passed by a van blaring out an election campaign message. At the weekend there are municipal elections. There are posters showing teams of candidates all glowing and shiny and probably air-brushed for the voters. Most shop and street signs are in Cantonese and Portuguese, the two official languages, so we can get around without a problem. Apart from good cheap food joints there's also some great bakeries. We don't need our phrasebook here, they are used to seeing tourists. On Sunday morning we head to the border gate with China. Strange really, that only now are we entering China proper. The border controls are uneventful. However there are thousands going back and forth - the busiest border we've been at. Out on the other side it doesn't look so much different - a bit more litter and a bit scruffier. We find the bus station and are quickly on a bus and on our way to Guangzhou, China's third largest city. China, at last.

All at sea - Blocked!

2009-09-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the lovely internet security folks of the People's Republic of China, one post from Sulawesi remains incomplete and will have to be finished some other day, when we are back in the Land of the Free.......
Thank you to Fiona for putting the subsequent posts up on our behalf whilst we travel through China.

Under and Over

2009-09-20T06:54:00.001-07:00

The driver of the car turns around and asks something. The student next to me translates for us. "He wants to know if you'd like to stop for lunch", she explains. "Yes, if we can?" we look at her doubtfully. It's still Ramadan and she is wearing a headscarf. The passenger in front has also been observing the fast. So too has the man in the back, but then he's been vomiting for the last two hours, so we don't expect he'd feel like eating much. The driver looks pleased by our response. He obviously could do with a bite to eat and a break from the long drive to Manado. But the student seems a little worried. "I'm afraid there won't be any fast food for you, just chicken or fish and rice". Sounds great, but blimey, do most Indonesians think all we eat is KFC and McDonalds?
Manado is our final destination in Indonesia, so it seems fitting that it's such a dreary and ugly place - we really haven't found a single nice town here. Fortunately, just off the coast, there are the Bunaken islands, offering respite form the urban sprawl and traffic chaos. Here Gayle can do a spot of scuba-diving and I can tackle our mobile library. The boat trip from the docks is only 40 minutes but it seems to drag for me - probably worrying too much about the awful sound the wooden hull makes when it scrapes over the rocks on the way out at low-tide. I catch the crew giving each other looks when we crunch our way over the hidden obstacle.
At our very comfy guesthouse we meet another lovely Italian couple, Sylvana and Fabio. It's quiet - already it feels like the high season is over here. We only have a few days left before our flight to Bangkok. We are thinking about China and the next leg of our trip but we also have time to reflect on our time in Indonesia. Travelling across Sulawesi has been one of the highlights, which is a good thing really - it's much better to leave on a high. But now China beckons. Have we got enough energy for it? Will it be as good as we hope it to be? Will we be able to tell our Ni Hao's from our Mei You's?

All At Sea

2009-09-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

Heading northwards through Sulawesi we cross the high central mountains and descend to Lake Pozo. These parts have had their fair share of conflict in recent years with fighting between Christians and Muslims, attacks on mosques and priests, buildings burnt and destroyed. It seems to have settled down and the locals are keen to show that their are no problems. Well, in Pendolo, nothing but the usual power outtages and water cut-offs. We have a nice bungalow on the shore of this huge lake and want to stay a couple of nights, but when we ask about the lack of water the friendly old fella who runs the place just smiles and points at the lake. Does he mean we should shit there or just wash? We move on to Tentena instead.
This dusty village is on the northern side of the lake. Ramadan has just begun but because there's a large Christian community it's possible to find restaurants open. It's a mixed blessing. The food's not great but it is food. There is rain, which makes a change, and we spend our extra day here despite there being absolutely no good reason to. The advantage of being in a large Christian community becomes a disadvantage when we try to leave on Sunday morning. There are no buses. After a very long while we manage to wave down a car and agree a fare to Pozo. Pozo bus terminal is derelict, isolated and virtually deserted. Like the shop owner in Mr. Benn, a man appears from nowhere at our elbow, eager to help us on our way. He speaks good English so we suspect he is used to seeing tourists coming through and getting stuck here. He is our only source of information about the local buses but we just don't know if we can trust him or not. So we don't. Instead we walk back to a road junction where there's a police post and ask them for help. They are game and soon start whistling down any public transport heading towards Ampana. But nothing's going that far. Eventually a guy in a car pulls up. He asks for a huge sum of money to take us. We laugh in his face and walk away. He follows us and we haggle seriously. It's obvious the cops want us to go with him, despite his rather manic appearance. Finally we agree a price and hurtle off. The driver has a young lad with him and tells us he is crazy, but they both look bonkers to us. He drives like a mad fool and gets us to Ampana in super-quick time. No food 'til sundown though. We're starving.

Ampana is the port for boats to the Togean islands which sit in the huge 'C' of Sulawesi. We take a loaded wooden boat full of people across flat waters to the nearest big island - a three hour ride - and get dropped at Poya Lisa, a tiny island just across from the village of Bomba. There's only four bungalows here and we are the only guests. The food is prepared in the village and brought over on the boat - it's all a bit rustic and simple, but perfect for us. The waters around the island are calm and clear and even I'm tempted to snorkel a few times. Fishermen paddle past on the look out for anything edible. The week passes peacefully and uneventfully, if you don't include the rat in the rucksack. Just before we leave we are joined by Emilio and Fabrizia. Emilio serenades us in the evenings with his violin whilst Fabrizia keeps us laughing with laments about Berlusconi. When it's time to move on, Ris, one of the staff, takes us by motor boat up the coast to Wakkai port where the weekly ferry calls in. The ferry is a small rusting bathtub, belching black smoke, and overrun with people either boarding or alighting, loading or unloading. The locals quickly grab the spare bunks, whilst some tourists go for cabins. We opt for the small open deck on the prow. After a delay at sunset as everybody breaks the fast with some fast and frenetic chowing, we chug off. We have three more stops before the boat finally pulls out into the open sea heading northwards to the town of Gorantalo. The moon is up, the sky is clear and the stars are out. This is the way to travel, we congratulate ourselves. We stretch out on the deck with a few others and fall asleep. I awake sometime later conscious of my head bouncing on the deck. I feel distinctly nauseous. The bow of the boat is rising and falling sharply, slamming into the water relentlessly. I stagger to the railing and cling on. The boat is rolling from side to side. A small girl has emerged from the lower deck and is fast asleep oblivious. Gayle and a French couple have now risen and decide to seek refuge inside at the back of the boat. Before they can get inside they join me for a collective heave over the port side. My legs are like jelly and I struggle to follow them, but eventually find a seat by an open window out of which I stare alternately at the horizon or the moon, depending on the tilt of the boat. Here I pass a sleepless night. After the longest night imaginable we spot land and reach calmer waters. As the sun rises so do the passengers. There are many green and weary faces, with tales from travellers who were stuck on the roof. Even the crew look relieved to reach port. A terrible terrible journey. Gorantalo, a sleepy town with a clutch of old Dutch buildings, becomes our favourite Indonesian town. We are so happy to be ashore.

Been to a good funeral?

2009-08-20T03:13:00.000-07:00

We backtrack to Kupang in West Timor and catch a flight to Makassar. It's delayed five hours and we arrive in the capital of Sulawesi at midnight. It's a huge city with a clutch of cheap hotels in the Chinatown. We find a room with air-con and fairly reasonable pancakes for breakfast. So far so good. There are a few old Dutch buildings still in good nick in the city centre near the port, but otherwise not much to distinguish it from any other Indonesian city. We are hard to impress.

Our escape route out to a not-so-far beach place recommended by others is thwarted when we find that after a two-hour wait at the bus terminal no vehicle is actually going where we want to. We return to our hotel to find our room has been taken. Thus we end up in a newer, nicer and cheaper hotel run by a garrulous Chinese Indonesian. We tell him of our plans to visit China, stopping in Bangkok for the visa. His eyes light up and he begins to wax lyrical about the joys and sights of Bangkok. "Ahh, Bangkok! So much to see there! Woman and Woman. Man and Man. Half and Half." (Half and half???) All of this is said with the requisite but unnecessary hand gestures. Funny though, he failed to mention the other infamous sex-show standard which is the ping-pong ball trick. I thought the Chinese are big on Table Tennis.

Our next escape plan almost fails too, when we take a bemo out to the bus terminal to buy onward tickets. After nearly an hour riding out of the city, we begin to think we might already be on our way to Tana Toraja, but then realise that there is some debate amonst the other punters and the driver. They laugh a lot and then finally explain that we have passed our terminal way back, but not to worry as the minibus will eventually return the same way. But Makassar's a big city, so we jump off and hop on another going back into town. Our little detour takes about an hour and a half. However, we do secure tickets for the air-conditioned 'luxury' night bus to Rantepao in central Sulawesi.

Rantepao is a breath of fresh air after the big city. It's a small place up in the hills and a popular destination for all tourists in Sulawesi. But it doesn't feel too touristy. The drawcard here is the local culture and funerary traditions of the people of the Tana Toraja region. Despite being nominally Christian (all Indonesians must officially have a religion), the Torajans have proudly continued to follow many of their traditional customs and beliefs. The most famous is the funeral season of July and August which is after harvest time. Should anyone in the family have died during the year, there is a quick small ceremony but the deceased is kept in the house, fed and watered and spoken too as if they were still ill. Then, when money has been saved and the harvest completed, a bigger public ceremony is held. Buffaloes are bought and offered by guests, slaughtered and cooked at the event, which can last a few days. To witness one of these events it's recommended you hire a local guide, which puts us in a quandary. We absolutely do not like to hire guides. We discuss this with Nacho and Adri at our guesthouse. Nacho too has a dislike of guides who like to point at a flight of stairs, for instance, and say "Here is a flight of stairs for going upstairs!" In the end they find a small group to join, whilst we decide to go for a walk and just enjoy the surroundings. The scenery is lovely - hilly,green, full of rice-paddies and small villages. The traditional building style has just about survived in some places - there are houses and big rice barns that are built in wood on stilts with long curving thatched roofs. The thatch is oftern replaced with corrugated tin these days. There's plenty to see - in other villages there are still tau tau which are graves cut into cliff faces. A wooden effigy of the deceased is carved and placed outside the grave. Every six days there is a big market nearby - busy with seasonal buffalo sales. The buffs can be expensive and are shipped in from other parts of Indonesia. The local albino breed fetch the best prices. We're surprised to find many groups of tourists here with guides. Who needs a guide to look round a market??

One night we eat in a crap restaurant. I have fried chicken and rice. Gayle thinks she does too, but hers looks like a fried rat to me. Still, it's all protein. Afterwards we find a better restaurant, so naturally we order a pudding - grilled banana with chocolate and cashews. At first the waitress will only let us order chocolate or cashews, but not together. But we insist we have them mixed and eventually she says okay. This is all in Indonesian by the way. We sometimes feel a bit smug because we speak enough words to get by and feel we get better treatment than other tourists who don't bother. Anyway, the bananas turn up, with chocolate sauce and, not cashews, but grated cheese. So much for our grasp of Indonesian. Mind, we eat it all up.

The Malae Part Two

2009-08-13T02:14:00.000-07:00

The other side of Ruben's work is being involved in a community-run project up in the hills of Emera. His enthusiasm is infectious and we go along with him to take a look. On our way we stop off at an orphanage run by Izza, an Aussie, and his Timorese wife Ina. Over a cup of local coffee we discover that Izza is an old traveller who settled here many years before. A local priest approached them with the idea of running the orphanage at an old school site. With limited resources they have built a dormitory for about 30 kids, with a dining room and outdoor kitchen. They have no regular funding but have somehow managed to keep the place running and the children fed for several years. It's a remarkable story of commitment. Whilst some of the children were orphaned through conflict, the majority of their parents died from TB. Some of the children have grown too old now for school, but there are few opportunities to leave.

Out of the city most of the people are subsistence farmers. Whilst the population had fallen, the average family now has about 7 and a half children - a frightening number, and it's no surprise to learn that Timor Leste has some of the worst rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world. The majority of the population are Catholic and the local church has agreed to support a policy of "birth-spacing" to help improve the health of mothers. Up at Bakhita Ruben takes us to the health clinic set up and run by a local committee and team of staff. Anders, a young American volunteer enthusiastically shows us around. Originally the clinic was staffed by volunteer doctors from Australia, but the government now provides some staff and training for the mid-wife. Field clinics are also delivered in more remote areas. Whilst we are there, two Cuban doctors appear from the nearest settlement. The Cubans have 300 doctors working out across the country. We are a three hour rough drive from Dili but it feels quite remote. The community have developed a second project to improve farming output, particularly coffee cultivation, with a nursery programme and planting of shade trees.

The first Malae we actually met was riding in the minibus with us when we crossed the border. Her name is Crystell, an Englishwoman working in the department of education to develop a teacher training programme. We read about her experience after we met her. The teaching she observed was quite basic. The only teaching tool used is the blackboard, and even then some teachers write too small for children at the back of the class. Most learning is by rote and often kids are sent out to play whilst the teachers chat amongst themselves. School hours are short. All of this reflects our impressions from state schools in Indonesia. One of the big problems is the lack of materials and understanding the need for literacy. Izza confirmed that hardly anyone has anything to read in Timor Leste and the kids have only a notebook for copying off the blackboard. If materials are provided they are locked away in the headteachers office to prevent them being spoiled! A new free magazine, produced in cartoon format primarily to spread public health messages, is very popular and read by everyone in the home - if they can read. But there's an even bigger issue to affect the education of the children and that is the government's decision to use Portugese as the national language. This is seen as folly by some. For a start Tetun is the majority local language. Then there is a large percentage of the population who learnt Bahasa Indonesia at school during 25 years of rule from Jakarta. Everyone watches television from Indonesia. But many of the ruling politicians are the rare few who received an education under Portugese rule. It's an interesting decision to say the least. All the teaching staff will have to learn Portugese before they can teach the children.

Our time here flies by in the sweltering daytime heat. At the weekend we head down to the Dili beach where people go to relax. There are locals and malae, with an almost imperceptible divide down the middle. Perhaps this is to do with the location of restaurants and parking? Beefy Portugese soldiers play games on the beach. A Timorese man splashes in the shallows with a whole class of schoolkids - except, wait, there's eight of 'em - they are probably all his children. Hundreds of malea jog along the esplande to the headland point where a statue of Jesus sits atop. (The bay behind this one is known as 'Jesus Backside Beach'.) In the evening the beachside restaurants are busy. Should peace and stability continue here then Dili at least will have the infrastructure for tourism that might just mitigate the effects on the local economy of the eventual withdrawal of the foreign workers.

We have our new Indonesia visa and it's time to depart. Once again we are sorry to say goodbye to good friends and kind hosts after only a short visit. But our brief time here has left a lasting impression on us, I am sure, for which we are very grateful to Val and Ruben and all the other Timorese and malae that we have met here.

The Malae Part One

2009-08-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

It's a wonderful feeling to be staying with friends again and Val and Ruben make us feel at home straight away. We last saw Val the day before we left home as she kindly offered to look after our car. Then last year she got a posting to Dili and so we're very happy to see her so far from home. She and Ruben are living in a service appartment block, along with other foreign workers, in the centre of the city - it's a comfortable place with a kitchen (two fridges - one for the drinks!) and a lounge-cum-office. There's a buffet breakfast provided and a laundry service. For the first time in two and a half years we don't do our own laundry. Almost as good as the G&Ts we are offered by our hosts.

Apart from seeing Val we also need to get a new Indonesia visa and so we plan to stay just over a week. Because there are many foreigners, or Malae as they known locally, working here and the country is using the dollar, prices are generally higher than Indonesia. The UK government advises against all but essential travel to East Timor, presumably because of the fragile state of things, but on the surface there's no discernable difference between here and West Timor. We are quickly drawn into an enjoyable social whirl of evenings by Val and Ruben and meet many of the other malae working here. Unsurprisingly there are few tourists around and we inevitably spend most of our days in the company of these malae. It's an unusual but informative experience.

Ruben has been working here for nearly five years for an Australian charity equipping and modernising the hospital laboratory facilities. There's a national lab, the main hospital in Dili and five regional hospitals. He's off on an overnight trip to Bacau for a training session so we take the opportunity to go with him. The journey along the coast is magnificent in the early light. We appreciate for once the need for all these large 4WDs - the road is in appalling condition, pot-holed and rutted - as we wind our way in and out of several coves and sandy bays. Bacau feels small compared to Dili and after Ruben drops us at a guesthouse we go for a walk around the old town. The focal point is the covered market, an abandoned ruin still awaiting reconstruction. Along the street are makeshift stalls with small collections of vegetables, second hand clothes and the ubiquitous assortment of Chinese-produced odds and sods. A fisherman walks door to door with fish bunched at either end of a pole slung on his shoulder. After lunch we walk the 4 kilometres down to one of the beaches below the town. The walk takes us through several sleepy hamlets. On the way back up we're glad of a ride in a bemo, serendaed by Rod Stewart on the sound system. He doesn't want to talk about it, is the jist of it. The next day we return to the coast, to another deserted beach. At the end of the road there's a small sign with a picture of a crocodile. Even we can translate the Portugese warning. However, the only unusual thing we do sight is the arrival of a bunch of Australian squaddies, with guns and backpacks. Some of them strip off to swim in the clear blue waters. It's very peaceful and they seem incongruous here.

At our guesthouse we talk with Lita, the owner. She and her husband both studied economics at university in Indonesia but only her husband has a job - with the government in Dili. We learn that her brother is living in Manchester with his wife, working at a supermarket for the past four years. She says they're happy there. We wonder what it must be like for them. Another relative is jobless - he shrugs with resignation - the only big employer is the government. Despite Timor Leste's oil reserves, unemployment remains a serious problem.

Back in Dili Val takes us out to a bar where a band of trendy young dudes try gamely to cover a few rock classics. Is that a Nirvana song? With us is Manuela, a local woman who works in the department of health with Val. Val's work is in Medical Stores, seconded to the government, advising on best practice and governance in the procurement, storage and distribution of medicines. Her experience has been frustrating at times. Her manager is young and inexperienced, her colleague a bit work-shy. Just before we arrived she handed in her resignation and Manuela wants the dirt. Val's cagey. Poor management. Office politics. It's a good reminder for us if we think we're tired of travelling.

East is East

2009-08-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

It's only a thirty minute flight from Maumere on Flores to Kupang in West Timor (we chickened out of the 13-hour ferry boat ride). From the airport we have to walk about one kilometre to catch a bemo on the main road. It is sunny, of course, and hot and dry. Luckily there's a bemo waiting and we are soon on the long ride into town. After a short while in Kupang we conclude that all the bemos are full of 18 year-olds and are being driven by 14 year-olds. As with Maumere, there are huge speakers underneath the bench seats in the back blasting out Indo pop or hip-hop. The minibuses are all decorated with stickers, windows obliterated with kitsch images and, in one case, the scene of the Last Supper. As we vibrate towards town it feels like we're joyriding with the local kids. Kupang is the capital of the region East Nusa Tenggara, which includes Flores, and numerous other smaller islands. We learn later that this is in fact Indonesia's poorest province. The town is full of students and sprawls outwards from the old waterfront and market area. It's nothing special, but in the evening one of the streets is closed to traffic and springs to life with food stalls and tables - it's a very sociable scene and reminds us of Malaysia. In one space there's a crowd gathering around a man with a microphone. Beside him stands a man tied up inside a sack, a large tin trunk awaits. An escapologist! We wait for a while but nothing happens. Next day there is an empty sack on the ground, so we guess he got out.

The minibus to Dili collects us at 5.30am. We then trawl the streets for the other pick-ups. It's Sunday morning and there is a football match taking place before the sun has even risen. We're half asleep as we head eastwards to the border with East Timor. In Bahasa Indonesia Timor means east. So East Timor may be the only country in the world with a tautology for a name. The Indonesians call it Timor Timur or Tim Tim, but it's official name is now Timor Leste. The roads are noticeably poorer once we have crossed the border, and one town has a few derelict buildings, otherwise there's little to indicate we've entered a new country. The British government currently advises against travel to East Timor unless it is "essential", but our friend Val has been working over a year here and we are sure it will be fine. We've been told that the UN presence is still large and we take a bet on how many of the big white vehicles with those famous initials we will see before arriving at Val's. Gayle guesses 20 and I go for 30. We stop counting when we pass 40.

There's a good reason for the UN presence. (Here's the contemporary history bit, folks!) In 1974 after the Portuguese had abandoned their colony and local political parties proclaimed independence, the Indonesian army turned up uninvited. The invasion plan was known to the U.S., Malaysian, Singaporean and Australian governments, none of whom made any objections, as long as it was quick. It was, but it was not painless and a guerilla force continued fighting the Indonesians in the mountains for the next 25 years. It is thought that over 100,000 died during this period, directly from the conflict but mostly indirectly from malnutrition and disease. When Soeharto's reign ended in Indonesia, the new leader allowed for a referendum on independence in 1999. It took place after a campaign of intimidation by a pro-Indonesian militia backed by the Indonesian army. 79% voted for independence and this same militia, with the army, went on a rampage, destroying Dili and other towns killing and displacing 200,000 people. Our guidebook describes the Indonesian's withdrawal as "scorched earth", and peace was only restored when a UN peacekeeping force of mainly Australians arrived.

When the Portuguese left East Timor after 400 years of rule there was less than 20km of road and no bridges. There were only about 50 schools. Most lived by subsistence farming and coffee growing. Ironically the Indonesian government invested heavily in their new province, building a large road network and providing education across the board. Coffee output did fall, partly due to neglect but also because of the ongoing guerilla war. Sadly on departure they destroyed almost everything positive they did, and many Indonesians who had come to work in government jobs also fled when the trouble flared up. The UN finally handed over administration in May 2002 to the new independent government, but only 6 months later there were riots in Dili. The government faced huge problems trying to build new institutions, and provide the basics of running water, electricity, employment, health care and education (most secondary school teachers had been Indonesians and had left.) This is in a country with no industry, but with off-shore oil and gas reserves. In 2006 the new government was cracking up. The Prime Minister sacked one-third of the army, which lead to more disturbances and fighting and instantly created an armed rebel group. Many UN and NGO workers left the country. But in 2007 there were peaceful elections, a new government formed, and the rebuilding process restarted. Assassination attempts on both President and Prime Minister on the same day in 2008 by the rebels were foiled, and both survived. More importantly the country remained surprisingly calm. The UN still maintains a peacekeeping force and is in the process of handing over policing, region by region. There is also a large presence of NGO workers and government advisers from outside who are all trying to help with the rebuilding process. Meanwhile the East Timorese have struck a deal with the Australians over developing the oil and gas reserves that they share, despite the Australians' best attempts not to, and despite being one of the most messed-up countries, it remarkably has no debt.

The Long and Winding Road

2009-07-31T01:52:00.000-07:00

Somewhere around these parts we cross an invisible 'line' where the flora and fauna changes from Asian to Australasian. The people on Flores also look different - less Malay, more Melanesian maybe, with broader noses and wiry hair. It feels like we're a long way from Java. (We are.) The towns are smaller and a little scruffy, but the people seem genuinely friendlier - probably because there are less tourists travelling here. I'd started to feel a bit tired of the journeys here and didn't feel that Indonesia was really 'grabbing' me. This might be because we've been travelling so long now, or that we're only getting out of it what we put into it and it's difficult to motivate ourselves when we're put off by the overcharging and the effects of mass tourism. Thankfully Flores offers enough to revive us, although it's only as we are about to leave the island that we actually find a place nice enough to stay more than a couple of nights. Indonesia seems to have a lot of charmless towns.

The cross-island journey is made easier by a freshly-tarmacced road and the use of travels. A travel is just a minibus or large car, which offers greater speed and more comfort than a normal bus. They are used by locals as well as tourists and are especially good for enjoying the views as the roads on Flores twist and climb over high passes and ridges, with rice terraces and volcanoes, coffee trees and sweeping coastal bays. The travels are often driven by young men with poor taste in music. Appropiately for a volcanic island, they all appear to chain smoke. Windscreens are also decorated with bright cuddly toys and 'trophy' wing-mirrors - each one presumably marks the demise of a poor unlucky motorcyclist bumped off the road. We almost leave the road one day as a combination of these factors come into play. Our driver is busy trying to find another lousy tune on his cd player, one hand on the wheel and fag in hand, overtaking a motorcyclist, when the rainbow-coloured stuffed caterpillar stuck to the top of his windscreen comes unstuck and obscures his view. We can see our own horrified faces aghast reflected in the multiple mirrors as we swerve towards the abyss.

From Bajawa we visit a couple of villages with Judith and Kent where traditional beliefs and customs are still followed, despite the spread of Christianity on the island. The houses are laid out in two facing rows, some decorated with carvings and buffalo horns (these reflect the status of the household) and in the middle are flat terraces with graves, crucifixes, standing stones and representations of male and female deities. Piles of freshly picked coffee and cacao are sitting out to dry. The villagers are used to tourists coming to take a look and some are selling vanilla pods and ikat weaving. At the end of our day trip we bathe at the junction of two rivers, one coming from a hot spring. It's the first hot water we've had for some time and it's lovely.

We spend a night in Ruteng to break the onward journey. I get a haircut while Gayle watches 'Titanic' in the restaurant where we have a late lunch. I learn from a man at the hotel that there's been bombs at two hotels in Jakarta. He seems less upset about the bombing itself than the fact that Manchester United have now cancelled their visit. Funny old place, Ruteng. Next morning we are picked up by another travel doing the rounds of the hotels looking for punters. We stop for two nights in Ende although there's no real reason to. Down at the seafront there's a sorry looking market with a cheerful bunch of fishermen and vendors selling their bits and pieces. A restaurant advertises its dishes with pictures of a pig and a dog on its awning. In one shop I buy new batteries. The man behind the counter advises me to take the Sanyo over the Sony. They are priced the same - what's the difference? The Sony ones are fake, he says. Everywhere we walk people shout out the all-too familiar greeting "Hello mister! Where are you going?" Big grins all round. Not much happens in Ende.

Another twisty road leads on to Moni from where we can visit the volcanic lakes of Kelimutu. It's one of those places that everyone visits on their way across the island, and early the next morning we can see why - three huge crater lakes at the top of the mountain in different hues. There are wonderful views and the surrounding landscape is green and lush. On our walk down we pass towering tree ferns and coffee bushes.

Our last week on Flores is spent at a lovely little guesthouse on the north coast, with just three stilted bungalows. Here we have a good time with Stephane and Marine, two French 'routards' who we first met back in Bajawa. They too want to rest up and Wodong Beach is one of those places where you can. The beach itself is shallow and black with volcanic sand, but the water is calm, the view out to the islands is great, and the guesthouse is peaceful. Well, almost. Most mornings the cockerels get rather vocal but they quieten down after seven. There's another French couple, Davide and Emmanuelle, and at dinner it's almost possible to imagine we are silent extras in a French film. Marine has a great laugh - reminds me of Sid James. A couple of times we hire a boat to go snorkelling off some of the islands - the water is crystal clear and there's coral reefs that just drop away. Even I finally get into the water, it looks so inviting. We both feel refreshed when we eventually leave - possibly from the ambience here but certainly from the company of Marine and Stephane, who's enthusiasm for travelling and for places they have been is quite infectious.

East of Bali

2009-07-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

Nusa Tenggara is the collective name for the islands stretching east of Bali. We head straight to Gili Meno, a tiny island off Lombok, where Gayle had been on her previous trip here about 18 years ago. It is one of three tiny islands that are now at different stages of tourist development. Meno is the quieter island: no full-moon parties or booming sound systems, except for the mosque, the only vehicles are horse drawn buggies and the greatest disturbance is the chorus of cockerels just before daybreak. We notice the cockerels more because we are staying in a stilted bungalow in the village and it sometimes sounds like their favourite spot. As a result, we actually catch a couple of sunrises during our 12-day stay. The island is the perfect place to recover from our travels thus far in Indonesia and prime us for the run to East Timor. Needless to say there is lots of sunbathing, reading, beachcombing and swimming. It might not be the perfect beach place, but it's one of the best we've found so far. We meet here Chris and his son Craig, from Newcastle, who are on a diving holiday and we meet up each evening to chew the fat and eat as well, accompanied by some very welcome duty-free vodka and tonics. They're great company and a good laugh. Chicken curry and rice hasn't tasted so good in ages, as Gayle and Craig will testify. During the day we can enjoy the white sandy beach, Gayle goes snorkelling with Chris and Craig, or there's the circumperambulation (?!) of the island. The time flies by too quickly. Gayle celebrates her 40th birthday - Chris and Craig rustle up some candles. We eventually say our fond farewells to our new friends, who are kindly carrying a parcel home for us, and who also donate a snorkelling mask to our travel kit.

We don't dither on Lombok but catch a luxurious air-conditioned bus all the way to the end of Sumbawa. Now this is the way to go - legroom for a basketball player, no loud Indo pop to keep us awake (it's a night bus) and just before sundown a pleasant two hour ferry across to Sumbawa. The reality comes at 3.30 am when the bus turfs us out short of our destination and we have to cram into the usual rusty tin-can minibus for the final two hours. But first we have to wait for two hours. There's a few other westerners going this way, including Judith and Kent, a friendly Canadian couple who are also heading to East Timor. Good company for the next stage which is an all-day ferry ride over to Flores. The weather is good as we pass by the infamous Komodo island, too far off to catch sight of those big flabby lizards. At last we arrive and find a 'cheap' hotel (it's high season and somewhat overpriced) and it feels good to shower and eat a good square meal.

(I don't want to go to) Kuta

2009-07-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

It's easy to love and loathe Ubud at the same time. We have a comfortable room in a friendly little guesthouse on the edge of the rice paddies. The place used to be a village, or a collection of villages and is now becoming a town. "Tourist Central" is how it's been described to us, and there are echoes of Thamel in Kathmandu. But step off the main roads and you can find yourself walking around a sleepy kampung, or amongst rice paddies. Not for long though. There's always an art gallery just around the corner. Balinese art seems to have evolved into the mass production of modern art, all of it looking rather similar. There are other more traditional arts and crafts such as stone and wood-carving, and these also seem to be mass-produced for the tourists. It's everywhere. Tucked away on a quiet lane we find a shop promoting the weaving of women from all the islands. It's a unique Fair Trade place and those involved have worked hard to revive traditional weaving techniques and local styles, particularly of ikat.

What's most striking and visible here are the daily rituals of the mainly Hindu population. Balinese Hinduism is quite different to the original Indian variety. It was only brought to the island in the 14th century by a kingdom fleeing a Muslim conqueror in Java. The religion was incorporated with the already strong animistic practices of the Balinese. And so ancestor and spirit worship fits alongside the worship of the Hindu trinity of gods. In addition, there is a single overarching god. Every building and every village seems to have a shrine or collection of shrines, where offerings are made and incense lit daily. The shrines don't feature any particular god, and are empty, although occasionally we see a Ganesh perched at a doorstep, or on a ledge. In front of every door and gateway are the tell-tale offerings of rice and flowers and incense sticks. It's the first time that I comprehend that Indonesia is a country made up of many different peoples and cultures.
One thing that remains constant is nasi campur (pronounced champur). This might just be the national dish, although it's a close run thing with nasi goreng. The latter is just fried rice with a fried egg, whereas nasi campur is plain rice with a selection of different meat and vegetable dishes. Sometimes you can get chicken, jackfruit curry, greens, and fried anchovies, all topped with fried peanuts, coconut and chilli. It's become our favourite dish and is usually available everywhere we go.

We don't attend any of the 'cultural evenings' in Ubud of dance and music, put off by the touts pushing tickets - there are perhaps five events each evening, some advertising 'fire dance'. We don't think we have the patience for a two hour show. Instead we shove off south and finally arrive in Kuta, a place we've been dreading. It's not so awful - just a very large beach resort for package holiday makers and surfers alike. Blackpool's worse. The beach is nothing special, in fact disappearing under the onslaught of big waves. And it's the waves that attract the surfers. We have come to see Greg, our friend who we last met in Varanasi. He lives here, and like a true Californian, loves the surf. Kuta has expanded considerably since he first came here and it's become more built up with shops and swish restaurants, bars, clubs and one large traffic jam. Height restrictions have stopped the building getting out of hand, but the place is spreading with development. The place is full of Aussies on holiday and some of the local touts greet us with a "mate" tagged on. We are very happy to catch up with Greg, who has just returned from the States, and we have a couple of nice evenings with him. One night he takes us one at a time on the back of his motorbike to eat. I think it's fair to say he cannot drive like this in the States. When it's time to get off I have to peel my fingers off the pillion I've been gripping. Gayle is treated to a short ride up on the pavements mid-journey. You can pay to ride pillion like this with motorcyclists, called ojeks. I swear after this that I will never go near one.

Greg's charms and hospitality can't hold us in Kuta though and we want to move on. We are about to hunt down a bemo, a local minibus to take us to the bus terminal when we pass a travel agent offering private transport for tourists. We finally crack. We pay what feels like a large sum but probably isn't for a transfer out of Kuta and off Bali by boat to the Gillis - small islands just off the north west coast of Lombok. We're in a rush to get away and find a quiet place.......

Bounty

2009-06-24T06:42:00.001-07:00

Tropical Paradise? Tourist Honeypot? To be honest, we don't have high expectations of the island of Bali, if only because it is Indonesia's most popular destination, although we aren't so certain when we step off the ferry and find our way to the bus terminal. There is a languid air about the place and of the twenty or so people there, only four look like they are waiting for transport. Then we spot a minibus going in the direction we want, but it's jammed tight, and we aren't tempted. Soon after it leaves. And so does our hope of any further onward travel today. It's only just gone 4 on a Sunday afternoon, but there's not much action going on. What little there is focuses on the Bakso Man. We succumb. There's not much else to do but chew on the rubbery little meatballs. Time passes. We keep on chewing. What we need are other prospective passengers to fill up another minibus, but there's more chance of a snowstorm. Just after 7, whilst we're considering kipping down for the night on the benches, three lads appear. There's now 9 of us, and after a quick conflab with the flabby ~~conman~~, I mean driver, where everyone agrees to pay a bit more (except us two, because the driver forgets he'd already quoted us a higher price than everyone else) we finally depart for Lovina, a quiet beachy place on Bali's north coast. I'm convinced it's snowing as we leave the terminal, but it could be a bakso-induced hallucination.

We spend a few days lounging in Lovina, a fairly peaceful place, where a few tourists come to escape the party scene in the south. There are more hotels than tourists. I'm not sure if this is a reflection on the tourists, or the optimistic locals. However, we are thrilled to have a room big enough to play frisbee in and an attached bathroom that's larger than most of the rooms we normally get. The Balinese are renowned for their friendliness and openness. So many conversations start with a hello, how are you, where are you from, where are you going? but too many end with the conversation-killing you want transport? Every shop and cafe has a blackboard offering the same services - tours, transport and laundry. One entrepreneur is even offering "laundry transport" - presumably to save you taking it down to the shop yourself. We head on to Ubud, stopping on the way in the hills to visit a small Hindu-Buddhist temple dedicated to the goddess of the waters, Dewi Danu, worshipped by all the farmers. Bali is after all a big rice-producer and there are paddies everywhere. However, we have heard that less and less people want to farm on the island, presumably as tourism is recovering from the 2002 and 2005 bomb attacks and there are other,easier, ways of earning a living. (One popular way is to stand around around on street corners, offering transport. Another one, the woman at our hotel was thinking of starting, is a laundry service for "the prostitutes that come here from Java". Hmm.) It's at the temple that we finally come face to face with Bali's mass tourism. Coach after coach disgorges tourists from other parts of Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore, Europe, Australia and the US of A. The temple is built in Balinese style, with a series of thatched roofs, on a small island in a lake. Most of the tour groups don't stay long, unless they have opted for the boat ride around the lake. It's fresh up here and we have a chilly evening at our guesthouse chatting with a friendly Dutch couple.

The journey to Ubud seems strangely complicated. First we have to take a bemo to Denpasar, Bali's capital, then another across town between bus terminals, and then a third to Ubud, which is a little bit northwards. (If you're wondering why I'm always writing about the transport on these pages it's because it sometimes comes back to haunt me and writing is a cathartic process. And besides, this is a travel blog.) At the first terminal in Denpasar we seem to hit an invisible brick wall. There is a bemo lined up to go to the next terminal but it is empty. There are no punters waiting, just the strong smell of urine, which reminds us nostalgically of India. No problem, we can wait. We wait over an hour and a half, turning down a few offers of a "special" bemo, or seats on buses going "close to Ubud". We see only one other foreigner in this terminal and we know it's because so few actually use the public transport network. Of course, we are starting to understand why. You need the patience of a saint, and we ain't saints. Mind you we have legs, so we get up to walk. Just as we are striding off a driver catches up with us with a tempting offer to take us to Ubud. Sixty thousand. Thirty each? we ask, and he indicates to us to get in. It's double what we were going to pay, but it's still the best offer we've had. We say yes and finally depart. It all seems too good to be true, and we both have our doubts when the driver tries to dump us on the edge of Ubud into the hands of waiting hotel touts. We ask him to take us to the centre, as agreed. A couple more times he tries to offload us, but we finally reach the gridlocked centre. We pay him the fare and get out. He shouts after us. He wants another 60 thousand! We stride off down the street, ignoring him, and only afterwards do we start to wonder who ripped who off? We're convinced we agreed 60 thousand for two, but maybe......No, we're certain. However, as we walk down the street and merge with all the other tourists, we realise that as long as we're here, there'll always be a bounty on our heads. A man smiles at us as we pass him:
"Transport?"

The Big Smoke

2009-06-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

"Bromo?" "Bromo?" "Bromo!" A chorus goes up from the touts as we approach the minibus stand. "How much is it?" we ask in perfect Bahasa Indonesia. "25 thousand" "Oooh, that's too expensive. The usual price is 15" "Ahh, you'll bankrupt me!" says the driver. This dialogue is almost word for word from our scripted conversation from our language course notes. There's a couple of local tourists stood to one side. We ask them quietly what they're paying, but they too have been quoted the higher rate, so they're waiting to see if the driver will drop his price. We wait with them, and are joined by Francesco and Matteo, the two Italian brothers we've already met. After an early lunch and the appearance of more local punters the minibus is about to leave. We are offered twenty thousand. We take it, and are about to drive off when the driver notices the other two guys hanging back. Eventually they too agree a price and finally we're off up into the hills and are soon climbing up a good road through farmland on the edges of a huge volcanic caldera. At the top is a small village where we are turfed out. We have a magnificent view overlooking the 'sea of sands' - a vast pit full of volcanic sand in the middle of which sits a small perfectly coned volcano and another flatter crumbled cone which is belching smoke. This latter is Mount Bromo. But we are stood on the edge of what was a much larger volcano, about 6 kilometres across. Volcanos within volcanos. After the larger one had blown its top, new ones emerged in the ashes. It's a fabulous view. But the best view, we are told, is from the high point around the rim and we can go there by jeep early next morning for sunrise. Of course, there's the small consideration of a fee.
With the Italians we join the two Indonesian guys and two young Indonesian women in search for a cheap hotel and all take rooms in a simple losmen (guesthouse). Whilst the Indonesians are keen to take a jeep the next day, we decide to take the path that climbs up the ridge. Francesco and Matteo are keen too so we arrange to set off about 4 am in the dark. There are still a couple of hours of daylight so Gayle and I wander down onto the 'sea of sands'. It's only a half hour walk across to the foot of Bromo and we are soon peering over the edge into the pit of the volcano. A continuous cloud of sulphurous fumes are streaming out of the centre. Enough to put us off boiled eggs for a month. On the way back we are offered horse rides, jeep rides, motorcycle rides. "Jalan jalan" we say, just walking. But after a while there's only so many "jalan jalans" we can utter and we end up ignoring them. As the sun drops so does the temperature and there's a strange feeling of relief as we actually begin to feel cold. And colder. We're so happy to have our sleeping bags. The locals are walking around the village with towels and shawls and hats and scarves. Down below it's probably about 24C at night.
Although Bromo is quite small, it is also quite big. Big business. We haven't seen many tourists around so the next morning comes as a bit of a shock. After a good walk up the ridge we come out onto a road that is lined with old Toyota jeeps. Hundreds of them. At the viewpoint at the top there is a mass of tourists, all wrapped up against the cold. We are probably the only four people who are toasty warm. As luck has it, the sun immediately appears on the horizon, and the crowd emits a united "Ooooooh" as it lurches eastwards to the barrier to get that all important photo. About an hour later they've all gone. We can see where as down below on the sands the jeeps reappear in a cloud of dust to eject their passengers at Bromo's foot. Peace at last. And fabulous views. On the edges of the wider crater the land is green, thick with vegetation and fields of crops. Within it's a dry and fairly barren place. In the distance are other volcanic peaks sticking up above the clouds. Bromo's smoke drifts benignly across the panorama.
Later we retrace our steps down to the hot lowlands and spend a sultry night in a motel-style place near to the bus stand. It's a charming little place that looks like they'd rent rooms by the hour. But it's convenient for us - tomorrow we need an early start to Bali.

Solo (Together)

2009-06-20T05:28:00.000-07:00

The city has another name, Surakarta, but is known as Solo. Coming out of the train station we are met by some cheery becak and taxi drivers who smell fresh blood. But we decline their kind offers of lifts to the city centre and catch a bemo instead. The banter has got us a little excitable and Gayle sticks her tongue out at them as we drive off on the minibus, to the amusement of bystanders. Our moment of triumph is short-lived when we realise it's going the wrong way. Nevertheless we're happy to escape all the unwanted attention and it's only a couple of kilometres out of our way. We have no high hopes for the city itself, with a population of over a million and a half, and counting, but it's a stepping stone in the right direction, eastwards, and there's usually good grub to be found if you look hard enough. Sure enough we find a street stall in the evening that has an inspiring number of local punters and a large team of staff to rustle up steaming bowls of seafood noodle soup. We even to get to try out our basic Bahasa Indonesia with the owner, a smiling elderly gent who turns out to speak more English than he initially cracks on.

Out of the city there's one of Java's last Hindu temples, built in the 15th century even as Islam was sweeping the island. Candi Sukuh sits on the flanks of a volcano, and is notable for it's 'erotic' carving. In fact, the carving perhaps reflects the animist beliefs that most Indonesian Hinduism overlays, and the temple is reknown for its fertility symbols and powers. At least it was. The large, and judging by the photos rather graphically carved, lingam over which childless women are said to have jumped in order to improve their odds, has been removed to the national museum in Jakarta. We see no leaping ladies today. However, there is the main temple still standing amongst the trees and in the clouds, looking a bit Aztec, and several statues and carved reliefs featuring such an array of characters we haven't seen the like before. Some remind me of chucking out time at the Whitworth. (That's the pub, not the art gallery.) To add to the mysterious ambience of the place, it starts to rain and we seek shelter with two young Italian brothers, Francesco and Matteo, and about a hundred Balinese teachers who have arrived in a fleet of buses just in time to put their coats on and buy snacks from the Bakso Man. The Bakso Man looks rather unfazed by this, but he's making a killing on what looked like was going to be just another slow Wednesday morning. (Bakso is a delightful concoction of minced meatballs that are boiled until they lack almost all flavour, but at the same time retain their compacted chewy texture. They are usually served in a broth so watery it makes consomme look like porridge. This Bakso Man is serving his in tiny polythene bags with a toothpick. To be fair to him, it's a tricky operation when all your supplies and equipment are racked up on the back of a rusty old bicycle.)

After the rain has stopped we take a track that winds around and down the mountainside, through steep farmland, every fertile inch of which is being cultivated - mostly maize, potatoes, carrots, onions and enormous cabbages - not what I'd have imagined for a tropical island. Dotted throughout the verdant landscape everywhere we look are clutches of houses with tiled roofs or rusting corrugated iron. There are lots of villages and lots of people. The farming looks tough - done by hand on steep terrain - but there's no sign of extreme poverty here, that you might see in India for instance. We greet and are greeted by people we pass by and are helped along our way with directions at the various road junctions. Sometimes it's handy to be in an overcrowded country - otherwise we might still be on that mountain now looking for the right road down.

Shaken but not stirred

2009-06-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our new and improved blog with the added benefit, thanks to Google's new microbiological computer interface, of Scratch-and-Sniff (c) technology. Just click on this symbol # and scratch and sniff away.

There are over 240 million people in Indonesia and half of them live in Java, which is about the same size as England. It's kind of crowded. Sometimes it seems that everyone owns a motorbike too, especially when you're trying to cross the road in Yogya. This isn't a big city by Javanese standards, so we go for a walk around, eschewing the multiple offers of a ride from the becak drivers who are everywhere. The becak is a three-wheel cycle-rickshaw, and at each one we pass we are hailed with a "Hello mister, where do you want to go?" Away from you, is what we want to say. Down at the kraton there's a traditional puppet show going on for the visitors, accompanied by a gamelan orchestra. I'm not quite sure how to describe gamelan, which is a complex music created by striking various brass gongs, upturned pots, and vibraphonic thingummyjigs in a harmonic and rhythmnic fashion. After a while it starts to sound a bit like Pharoah Sanders' backing band. You hear this Indonesian music everywhere and it can be at turns hypnotic and/or mildly irritating. The puppet show itself is rather slow, with one man handling the two-dimensional puppets and speaking all the parts. After a long period of inaction there's a quite dramatic fight scene, which would have impressed anyone who was brought up on Sooty and Sweep. The kraton itself is a rather dull affair - a series of walled compounds with covered tiled sitting areas and some small rooms full of the kind of bric-a-brac you'd see on Antiques Roadshow. There's also plenty of batik on display. Back on the narrow maze of streets surrounding the kraton we pass by the bird market # . There's a variety of songbirds in wicker cages, alongside roosters and pigeons, bats, and boxes of writhing grubs and other critters. A flim-flammer approaches us and in his chat-up he claims to have met Prince Charles in this same bird market last year. We look suitably unimpressed.
Another morning we have a 3-hour introductory class in Bahasa Indonesia with a young student called Curri. The language seems incredibly simple as there are no verbs to conjugate, no tenses and phrases are often distilled to their core words. Mind you, there's four ways to say hello, depending on what time of day it is. After one hour we're already constructing some simple questions and phrases. After two hours we are learning numbers and carrying out some simple interactions. But after two and a half hours the heat and effort is taking its toll and soon after we find ourselves in a rather sparse market with glazed eyes and sweaty brows trying to haggle for fruit # that neither of us wants. We eventually escape with 250 grams of (undiscounted) peanuts. As we depart Curri encourages us to practise practise practise.
Not far from Yogya are the ruined Hindu and Buddhist temples of Prambanan. They are UNESCO listed and thus attract a high ticket entrance fee. We feel slightly disappointed to find then that the most impressive temples, inside of which, according to our guidebooks, are detailed carvings of scenes from the Ramayana, are currently closed for repair work following an earthquake in 2006. (We had to be in earthquake territory - Indonesia is comprised of so many volcanic islands.) Our disappointment is tempered with the knowledge that we have used our fake and out of date ISIC cards to get in for half price. The temples we can access are still mildly interesting, and stand in green shady surroundings, and hungry for more we wander off along a side road to two more remote structures surrounded by paddy fields.
We now embark on a 3 day whirlwind of a journey that takes on 12 buses and a train, heading first into the hills to Dieng Plateau where there are the oldest Hindu temples in Indonesia. The setting is more impressive than the temples themselves, as we climb to over 2,000 metres to the plateau, which looks more like the top of a vast collapsed volcano. As all over Java, there's still plenty of people around, and no surprising, as this is prime farming country. Every inch of available land is cultivated, and the main crop looks to be potato. A good walk takes us around a sulphurous turquoise lake and to a steaming vent of broiling bubbling mud.
From here we return to Borobudur, Java's finest temple ruins, and a claim to be the world's largest Buddhist complex. Built around the same time as Prambanan, between 700 and 900 AD, the temple is laid out like a mandala but in the shape of a vast hill, built from millions of stone blocks on a large plain. The effect is of one big stupa. Get up close and each tier surrounding the structure is covered in fine relief carving. At the top are three tiers of small stupas, each containing a statue of Buddha gazing out over the land, with a larger stupa at the pinnacle. It's a fantastic construction and we are happy to see the fine carving detailing a huge variety of religious and other scenes. Worth getting up at sunrise for, and this is quite a rare sentiment coming from me. When the temple was uncovered it was quite badly damaged, and the reconstruction is impressive. A lot of reinforcing concrete has been poured into the foundation walls to protect it from further earthquake damage.
And now another sweaty journey # as we head east to Solo.

A cup of Java

2009-06-09T02:33:00.000-07:00

The trouble with travelling for a long time on a budget is the risk of losing perspective. We arrive in Jakarta late afternoon and after a long bus ride into the centre find a guesthouse down a quiet alley. The only room they have is air-con and it costs 120,000 rupiah. One hundred and twenty thousand! So we try the place next door and are shown a room for 60,000. We take it and go out to eat. When we get back to the room we instantly feel depressed. It's gloomy, sweaty and miserable. And so are we. But hey, we're only paying 4 quid. Uh oh. That means we just turned down a spotless air-conditioned room for just 8 quid. What's wrong with us? The next morning we quickly change guesthouses.
Jakarta's bigger than London and without the attractions - not the kind of place most people hang around in. We take it easy and explore the old port area of what the Dutch called Batavia. It's a tad shoddy and a bit sad. There are a few old colonial buildings still standing, some at the point of collapse, and a small number beautifully restored, but over the years the city has grown into the Jakarta of today, sprawling inland in a jumbled mess. Amidst all the big concrete buildings there are still the old kampung houses, and from the elevated train you can see red-tiled roofs tucked behind all the main road facades of shops and offices, but there's no sense of a centre and all the new growth and wealth is out in the southern districts. Down by the port the canals built by the Dutch are now stinking open sewers. The fish market is surrounded by a warren of houses and market stalls, some on stilts above the waterways.
We check out the national museum, which costs only 5 pence to enter, and we get some vfm (value for money) with exhibits on the traditions and customs of the country's varied island communities. Disappointingly, there are no shrunken heads on display. There's also a huge amount of Tang, Song and Ming dynasty china which demonstrates how long there's been trade across the South China Seas. Back on the sultry streets we soon decide to sell our souls and have an air-conditioned ice cream in McDxxxxds. Inside we could be in any country, except there's a prayer room beside the toilets.
To escape the big city we visit the botanical gardens of Bogor, a small city. But we need to move on so the next day we take an air-con train to Yogyakarta in Central Java. Actually it's more like a refrigerator with windows and I get off after 8 hours with purple-blue toes. Much longer and frostbite might have set in. But it was worth it for the scenery as we passed volcano after volcano with the vivid green foreground of rice paddies. Farmers bent double working in the slush wearing the classic conical hat of South East Asia.
Yogya is a quieter place and the cultural centre of Java. It holds a special place in Indonesia as the centre of the fight for independence from the Dutch. The sultan still governs here from his historical home, the kraton, a palace courtyard complex surrounded by low-rise houses. In fact not a high-rise is to be seen - are we in earthquake country? On our first night we catch up with Marc and his couch-surfing host, Charlie. We last saw Marc at Bishkek Open Prison, aka Nomad's Home, last June and now we are passing in opposite directions. Charlie takes us for a traditional local meal of gudeg, a stew made with jackfruit and garnished with, buffalo skin I'm sure he said. This is followed by a coffee on a street where the pavements are covered in mats and the mats are covered in students. The coffee is served with a lump of hot wood charcoal, like a smoking black ice cube, which gives the coffee a treacly flavour. This is a country famed for its coffee, but I'm not sure this style would catch on. One for the barbecue perhaps?

KB to KL

2009-06-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

Back on the mainland we catch a bus to Kota Bharu, a provincial capital, with a handful of old colonial buildings and traditional Malay wooden houses now surrounded by modern concrete high-rises. We find a cheap room in a guesthouse with partition walls and shared bathroom - this seems to be the norm in Malaysia and is a bit of a comedown after India, especially as we're paying more. But the street food is cheap and cheerful and although there are a few tourists here, there's no hassle and no-one pays us any attention. The town is known for its central market, which is housed in an ugly modern building. Inside it's a warren of stalls selling bright colourful clothes, with fresh food on the ground floor and an endless amount of dried fish and dark jelly-like substance on another level.

Our nightbus to Kuala Lumpur is uneventful, despite the driver's frenetic driving, and we arrive in the city before daylight, meeting Daniel and Alice again. They're heading back to India before their trip ends and we do a book swap with them. We feel that Malaysia has been a good holiday destination because it's ordered and comfortable to get around, but it's also rather dull if you're travelling for a while. This is inevitable I guess after being in India for such a long time, but we have hopes that Indonesia will be a bit more lively. What we have enjoyed here is the food, especially the variety, and the fact that you can eat at anytime more or less and without any fuss - most eating places are simple cafes or street stalls with tables on the pavement.

Our first task in KL is to get our Indonesian visa and we traipse out to the embassy only to find that I am not allowed to enter. The security guard points to a sign that depicts no t-shirts, shorts or flip-flops. He thinks I'm wearing long shorts, when in fact I'm wearing short trousers, but his opinion is the one that counts. While I stew outside Gayle sorts all the paperwork out. Do you have an onward plane ticket? No, not yet, she replies, because we haven't decided where we'll fly from. There's a pause. So Gayle produces a copy of our bank statement to show we're not down-and-outs. Is this in Euros? No, pounds. Ahh, then that's fine. We collect our passports later that day with a 60-day visa. This should get us to East Timor.We spend the rest of our time here doing a spot of sight-seeing, including a visit to the Islamic Arts Museum, which is fantastic. There's a section on architecture with scale models of classic examples of great mosques and mausoleums across the world: Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Edirne, Isfahan, Bukhara, Samarkand. Apart from Mecca and Medina, we recognise most of them from our journey, and hope to see the one in Xi'an soon. There's also some great textiles, most from Central Asia and Iran. KL is known for its twin towers, now no longer the tallest in the world, and there's not much left of the old city - a few old colonial buildings in a moorish style, including the Friday Mosque. The new National Mosque features a blue/green origami-style roof, rather than a dome, and looks kind of groovy in a sixties way. But the predominant buildings now seem to be the 7-Elevens, KFCs and McDonalds dotted around everywhere. Anyone for a Kenny Rogers Roaster???

Beached

2009-06-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Having escaped a caution for wearing an unironed shirt in Singapore, I'm happy to be on a bus heading up the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. We stop off at Kuantan and Kuala Terreganu, two sleepy towns with not much of interest except for the day-to-day life of Malaysia. We're heading for the Perhentian Islands just off the north-eastern coast for some beach time. If we're going to be hot we might as well be somewhere where we can jump in the sea. We get off the boat at Coral Bay and feel slightly underwhelmed by the view - a small bay littered with beach cafes, boats, bungalows and dominated by a huge concrete pier reaching out across the view back to the mainland. It's not too busy or noisy but I groan when someone's sound system starts cranking out the old Bob Marley. It's not quite the haven we were looking for. Undeterred, we head along a path in the jungle to a smaller beach with just a clutch of primitive beach huts on stilts where a motley bunch of people are hanging out. Everyone looks like they've been here a while and we understand why - it's quiet and relaxing and there's good swimming off the sandy beach.After a few days here I'm beginning to think the place would be a great location for a sitcom. The place is run by a Thai-Malay couple with help from three young Thai men who, when not mooching about on the restaurant veranda, appear to be relocating half the beach to a garden at the back. At meal times they also help Madame Zee in the kitchen. Mister Ahar meanwhile spends a lot of time going back and forth to the mainland in his little boat. On our first day here a crew appear to do a catalogue photoshoot. The considered collective opinion is that it's a cheap do - but it keeps everyone amused for a while. The highlight of the afternoon occurs when the model tips over off some bamboo contraption into the sea.
Then there's the other guests. Hanke & Antje look like they might live here, and have got to the point of naming the different cabins. ( Eg. 'The waiting room' - the new arrivals take this one before switching to something better when it becomes available.) We get chatting to Jessica & Calum, a lovely couple from Edinburgh, on a short holiday here. After they leave, Per asks us "Are they posh?" and we say, yes they are, but nice posh. Per is a huge friendly American with a dodgy achilles heel. He regales us with fantastic tales of goalkeeping in Pakistan and coaching in Bhutan. He just might be the first American we've met who not only plays football but calls it by its proper name. He demonstrates his skill with his hands to a young German who keeps prodding Per's achilles heel. Every day he works on rehabilitating his ankle by treading water and going for walks along the jungle paths, inviting everyone to join him. There's also jittery Adrian, who seems to swallow the ends of his sentences like a Hungry Horace, and always looks a little nervous. Now and again others arrive, but don't stay long, in search of a little more comfort perhaps. The huts come with 'residents': large colourful geckos, squirrels that chew through bags to get at food, soap-eating rats. One morning I disturb a long thin snake sunbathing on the rocks. Another day a large monitor lizard lumbers across the beach before sliding into the sea and swimming off around the rocks.
Sadly all good things come to an end, and we have to move on before a block booking of 60 schoolkids and 20 teachers turns up. By this time there's only us and Phillipe, a very funny Frenchman, left to enjoy the surroundings.
Back at Coral Bay we meet Alice and Daniel who have been travelling for a while too. Our last day on the island is a rainy one spent with them in the shelter of a beach cafe talking about Indonesia, novels, conspiracy theories, food, films and everything else (not) under the sun.

we were too timid to ask what they were selling