China

On to China, where I feel like my trip really begun. I took a train to Guangzhou and was greeted by someone who appeared to be helping me, calling up the train station to see if there were any tickets to Kunming. "None" he says, for today, tomorrow or the next day. Flights cost around A$200, perhaps a bit pricey .. but then there's some commotion with someone else and he says he has a friend in the train station and can get me a ticket for tomorrow if I just stay here overnight. Then he suggests this hotel. I was waiting all along for this, as although he said "Tourist information", he was working from behind a hotel desk. I took his card in case, then made my own way to the train station to see for myself. The taxi to the station was going incredibly slow and I only had an hour before the train to Kunming left. It looked like he couldn't put the car beyond 2nd or 3rd gear. About half way there the car completely packed it in, broke down in the middle of the highway. The guy didn't look happy at all, but was kind enough to let me out for free. I got another taxi in seconds and had a great old chat with the driver. Looks like the Chinese has survived somehow.

Arriving at the train station, there's about 1,000 people milling about outside and queueing up at various windows. It's over 30 degrees and I'm hot as hell. I can't read anything unfortunately, characters were the first thing to go, so I just try to get in to the station. After a few minutes of queueing, I find out I need a ticket, so join a separate queue for a few minutes before heading to yet another queue. Now I have about 30 minutes before the train leaves. (Only one leaves per day) And yes of course, when I do finally get to the ticket booth, there are no seats available for the next 3 days. Unbelievable I think, remembering the number of people they packed into the hard seat section last time I was in China. I have only 1 week here, so staying in Guangzhou is not an option, even one night would be a waste. So I jump in a taxi and head straight to the airport. By 9pm I'm in Kunming in a beautiful hostel drinking 50c beer.

I met this funny German guy, who had been studying in China for a few months. We managed to speak half English half Chinese to eachother. Just as I'm thinking he looks incredibly gaunt, he tells me he just came out of hospital. Apparently he had a bit of a cold, so he went to a Chinese hospital where they proceeded to give him four blood infusions. This guy was clearly crazy, he had this glint in his eye whenever he talked about flowers. I hung out with him for the next day, which really tested my patience. It took him 15 minutes to decide whether or not he wanted to buy a map, while he kept trying to ask the guy about all the pictures and bargain him down. Fortunately, while he had a much larger vocabulary than me, I seemed better at understanding and speaking. So while he was looking confused at the map I was cheekily making fun of him with the map seller. Finally after another 5 minutes of the German insisting he lower his price from $1.50 to $1, even though the price was printed on the map as $1.50, the seller gave it to him for $1.40 and we were all happy. Normally I enjoy putting myself in other's hands when I travel, as it lets you see a city from an angle you wouldn't normally have approached. Unfortunately it's not always rosy though, the highlight of the day was a trip to the zoo where we spent an hour looking for the butterflies. By the time we found them I was fed up and decided sitting by the stench of the drop toilets alone would be more exciting than watching Thomas gaze at butterflies. I shouldn't be so harsh, I did enjoy the gibbons in the zoo, I could have spent hours watching them chase eachother with their funny long arms. Thomas and I made a pretty good team with our Chinese too.

That night I took the overnight 'sleeper' bus to Lijiang. I walked to the station and thought I was about a block or two away so I asked a lady where the gonggongqichezhan (bus station) was. She told me it's way too far to walk and I must jump in a cab, as she started screaming to a group of guys behind her with a big grin on her face. Luckily I didn't trust her, the grin gave her away and I had enough conviction in my map reading skills to at least continue to try. Sure enough it was about 100 metres down the road, I kinda steamed at the thought of this woman thinking she was funny and making some money off me, not knowing what a horrible impression of Chinese people she was giving me. It's a shame, there's some really nice Chinese people around that are genuinely very helpful, but it only takes a few bad eggs for it to be really difficult to trust anyone. The bus was pretty interesting, they stack three rows of bunks in, the head slightly elevated above the legs of the person behind, allowing you to lie down for the entire journey. Unfortunately I was in the front seat behind the driver who lit up a cigarette every 5 minutes, burning my nostrils with his acrid smoke. Then there was the music VCD they played for the first few hours of the trip which stuck on one song repeating it 10 times until someone in the back of the bus started yelling at the bus driver.

After 10 hours we eventually arrived in Lijiang and into one of the nicest hostels I've stayed in. "Mama Naxi's", she was a classic, she cooked the most impressive meals I've ever seen and would continually stuff food down your face until you rolled away from the table. One guy said he didn't want to eat, so she brought out an egg dish thinking he was vegetarian. He still refused, so she asked why he wouldn't eat, to which he replied he was feeling a little sick. Next thing she's brought out 5 multi coloured tablets and demanded he eat them, it was either that or the food! So after a huge banana pancake to welcome me from my bus ride, I decided I'd like to ride a bicycle around to get a feel for the town. The best thing about Mama's is that she brings everyone together around the table to eat at set times, her food is so great everybody comes for the meal. So after breakfast we had a group of about 7 people keen for a ride. It was funny when people asked us where we were from as we had a Swiss guy, 3 French people, a German, a Canadian and an Australian. Interesting hearing the mix of French, German and English being spoken too.



The bikes we hired were terrible. Two chains broke, we managed to fix one of them well enough to ride home but we had to resort to a pulley system to get the other bike back.



That night I hooked up with a couple of french girls and a couple of Czech guys. It was a night of Baijiu, guaranteed to end somewhere interesting. The Czech guys showed me their pick of the Baijui, a red coloured, sweeter, slightly herbal tasting spirit. I think it was only 30%, which made it slightly more palatable than the other 60% varieties. We wandered through the old town of Lijiang, one of the most beautiful Chinese towns I've seen, even if it was completely jammed with Chinese tourists.



We had fun running up behind them just as their photos were about to go off, the reaction was hilarious, initial outrage quickly turning into fits of laughter and beckoning us to join them in a proper photo together. Actually, I found there were still some Chinese that asked if they could have their photo taken with you, I always wonder what they do with these photos, or tell their friends. Once we'd finished exploring the old town, we found ourselves in a supermarket exploring some strange looking green coloured baijiu. With both my pockets now full of rocket fuel, we stumbled into a taxi and asked the driver to take us somewhere we could dance and listen to music. We surprisingly ended up in a great club, the music was fairly up beat electronic, and there were quite a few people dancing and milling about. The drinks were about 10 times the price outside, but we had a fair stash of baijiu to keep us going. I headed straight for the toilet and found a group of Chinese guys snorting white powder. Dancing was lots of fun, I think the Chinese were a little unsure of how to take us though. The only problem was the DJ that kept stopping the music every 5 minutes to yell something in Chinese. Occasionally I heard him say Americans, so I spun around and yelled at him that we weren't Americans. He then told everyone that yes, we were Americans! Eventually I think he heard over the loud music that we were French, Czech and Australian. I have no idea what time we came back, but I know it was many hours after our midnight curfew. I think I had about 2 hours sleep before having to get up and head off to the "Tiger Leaping Gorge" for a 2 day hike. I stumbled downstairs, wolfed down some food then joined some of the gang from yesterday in a 3 hour bus ride to the gorge. Sitting in the bus I realised I couldn't remember how I got home last night. I'd also managed to lose my toothbrush, it was nowhere to be found in the morning. To make matters more interesting, my pants were covered in toothpaste. I was completely baffled! This one has ended up as one of the world's greatest mysteries, I did manage to catch up with one of the Czech guys in Kunming a few days later and asked him what happened at the end of the night and had he seen my toothbrush? Apparently on the walk home I found a Chinese guy that was staggering as badly as me and we walked the whole way arm in arm. I spoke nothing but Chinese the whole way.

The hike begun, I was packed for all occassions, I had with me .. a hat, and an apple. The apple was kindly carried by Sabine all the way around in her pack and never eaten. It only took about 10 minutes before we were blown away by the amazing mountain views.



This could end up just being a huge list of photos with which I attempted to capture the immenseness of the scenery. The hike itself involved a lot of hard work as we climbed hundreds of metres in the hot sun, the whole way with a guy dragging a horse behind us, occasionally asking if we'd like to ride it, usually whenever we were looking particularly tired. Then there was a massive stretch where the fauna chagned dramatically every half hour or so. You can see the path going through the waterfall here.



We reached our destination, the Halfway Guesthouse just as the sun was setting.



Over the other side of the huge mountain range we'd been viewing the whole day came the most amazing thunder I've ever heard. Each strike reverberated and echod for nearly a minute, it sounded like some giant beast was eating its way through the hill. We had a lovely meal, then I tried to roll up some green plant we'd found on our hike.



Maybe it made me a little relaxed, but more noticable was the thumping headache it accentuated. The next day involved more beautiful scenery.



Eventually we walked down off the high path and rejoined the road, where we encountered a Chinese man on the bridge. He was far too much like the troll under the bridge for my liking. He informed me that the path onwards was dangerous and very difficult to follow unless we hired him as a guide. The others didn't want a bar of him, so we told him we wanted to go alone, then managed to make complete fools of ourselves barely finding the start of the path, then wandering off it immediately. He warned us again, saying that there were dogs down the way we were going. The group split here, the majority of the team wanted to continue along the road, the most direct route to Walnut Grove, as they needed to get a bus later in the afternoon. Sabine and I decided to go on the low path, which was clearly marked, and involved climbing down to the river, but required paying multiple fees to the locals who have set up toll gates along the way for 'maintenance' of the path. Admittedly the paths were amazing, you can see the cut through the cliff in the background here. If you look closely, you can see the Chinese girl blocking the way until you pay her the $2 or so to get past.



I'd like to link about another 20 photos in here but this is probably enough, I'll send everyone a link to all of my photos when I get a chance later. The end of the walk had us hiking back up another hill to Walnut Grove, which was amazingly peaceful and relaxed. I could spend a week here just chilling out in the guesthouses, eating delicious food and staring at the mountains. Found this on the menu too: "Baba bread with Ganja butter". An American guy sitting behind us was questioning them about it, asking:

"What's this Ganja butter? In my country it has a .. ceratin meaning"

"This is a mineral leaf"

"Mineral leaf! I like that one" Says the American as he chuckles. Didn't order any though. We shared some amongst 4 of us, I certainly felt relaxed on the bus trip home.

After another fine day in Lijiang spent wandering around the Dragon King's palace and gardens, then climbing up the biggest hill we could find again, I jumped on another overnight sleeper bus back to Kunming. One last day in Kunming wandering around gardens and markets. Check the meat display here, nice of them to leave the tail on.



Then a lovely night drinking too much and playing pool. The next morning I had just enough time to wander around a final park where we found this guy making fairy floss with his bicycle.



Then it was a final goodbye to my favourite of all toilets in the world, this one had 6 open air cubicles with a queue of about 5 Chinese at all times staring in to check when you were finished. No toilet paper either of course. And off I flew to Shenzhen, then in to Hong Kong. Finally finished, hope there weren't too many big pictures for anyone that's on dial-up. I had an amazing time in China, and the best part was that it was all crammed into just one week. I did spend a lot of time travelling for just a few really juicy moments, but it was completely worth it.