Yingshan – Pleasure and pain tightrope

This is a town sometimes described as chinaLite because it is an accessible small town that offers a huge range of more-or-less authentic chinesse experiences, Here are a few:

Bamboo rafting – a man steers a small raft down a lazy river with artificial rapids and floating merchants. The chairs have a sun shade umbrella attached and the beer is fairly cold (ping). The man steering the raft likes to be paid not only in cash but in beers, and beers are copious, this explains how he occasionally misses a rapid and or giggles uncontrollably. It was a very enjoyable experience.

Chinese Torture – While i have it on good authority that the massages where infact excellent, I opted for a little extra pain. Stick me full of needles? Sure! Ohh you want to stick burning banboo onto my back and let it bruise my back so i can’t sit anymore? Yeah I’ll pay extra for that. Acupuncture turns out to be more painful and less beneficial than soapless hippies would have me believe. Cupping on the other hand uses heat to suck all the ‘poisons’ (read:money) from tourists right through their skin, it leaves you bruised soar and wincing every time someone touches your back. While the pain and cramps from acupuncture subside after a day or so the bruising from cupping lasts 2 weeks, I am told. From now on i think it’s western medicine for me.

Bike Riding, walking, caving – single and tandem bikes are a pleasant way to get around the countryside. The traffic in the city on the other hand is a force to be feared, respected, and occasionally to be cowered at in a corner somewhere. Once away from the fearsome driving you can climb mountains, boat swim and walk through impressive caves, and eat traditional food.

Other – Tai Chi & kung fu in the park, light and dance shows, cooking classes and many more activities I struggle to remember. Good times!

Yangtze – The Golden river

3 days on board a Yangtze cruise was EXACTLY what the doctor ordered after a few busy days Beijing, Chengdu pandas and emai shan budda not to mention the long train rides. We spent time lazing, drinking, eating, watching TV, enjoying each other’s company and of course enjoying the scenery of the Yangtze and 3 gorges.
This would also be a good time to mention the ping PJs there are people selling beer water or other necessities everywhere. Climbing a mountain, scaling a wall, rafting down the river, riding a bike, always will someone be there to sell you a cold, or at least only luke warm, beer. Pictured here is greg with a can of camouflage beer, perfect for when you want a beer but the missus dosen’t

Why is the gold river so rich? The awe-inspiring scenery? the trade routes? The cultural heritage? No, It’s cos it’s got two big banks... Haha – thanks 3 gorges dam guide.

Chendu and szechuan province – more than pandas.

Our 16 hour train journey turned into a 34ish hour journey thanks to heavy rain and flood. It’s difficult to gather the extent of the flooding (worst since 1998) but we were reassured by the TV reports that “Everything is fine, thanks to the police and military. Nothing to worry about, everything is fine”. I can say it took out 5 seperate sections of track, the road, and caused at least 100 deaths in the neigbouring prvince.

Hot pot to Hot bot in no time! (-Greg 2010)
Up to this point our group was still adventurous with our food and at the question “you like spicy food?!” was followed with a resounding “Yes” by most of our group. I myself had enjoyed a spicy dish with seeds that numbed your lips to the point of quivering just hours before. Sesuan famous for it’s spicy food (and spicy women) lived up to it’s name when after a delicious hot pot – a kind of fondue style oil & chilly bath into which you dunk vegetables – we all were worried about the bus trip and no one wanted an encore of Johnny cash’s porcelain hits (It burns burns burns...)

Panda Sanctuary

Chengdu, Sichuan is also the resting place of the pandas. The panda reserve/breeding center here is world famous for it’s black and white attractions. They are also very keen on sex, panda porn, and methods of artificial breeding. Maybe this is why 'pandaring' is one of the legally correct names for pimping. It’s almost impossible not to turn into a Japanese tourist at the mere sight of the giant panda - cameras materialise and you need to take at leas 300 pictures of each panda, even afterward you feel guilty for each panda picture you want to delete... so i now have hundreds of panda photos.

Mt. Emai – Monkey Temple of Doom!
Staying at a Buddhist monastery and climbing mountains. The bus ride was like a rollercoaster ride full of uhhh’s and ahhhh’s as our crazy (but skilled) bus driver overtook everything on scary downhill slalom course. Like everything made in china the temple and monuments as well as concrete wall carvings were constructed about 6 years ago giving it a bit of a movie set feel. However, the clouds rolling in over, around, and under us made for a dramatic backdrop. All the time we were warned about the vicious man devouring monkeys – so, armed with sticks, but told not to hit the moneys even if they charge, for fear of being overwhelmed by the monkey hordes – we waded into the monkey retreat. I think they were having a day off, or had eaten enough tourists, as they just sat around looking cute and nibbling seeds. China is a very big place and i have no doubt there are untouched wilds, but there are also a lot of tourist attractions built predominately for the Chinese tourists.

Xi’an – The world’s largest jigsaw puzzle.

The terracotta warriors turn out to be a giant jigsaw puzzle. Today you can see 3 pits containing several hundred warriors. Unfortunately due to the looting (the peasants didn’t like nasi goreng) they are smashed into tiny pieces. Only one is complete the rest take an average of 1 person 1 year to reassemble. All up there are an estimated 2 million soldiers in 60 pits plus a morseleum all to be unearthed in the future. Other activities in Xi’an include Gorging yourself on dumplings and bike riding over the city wall (14km loop) as well as an amassing fountain/light show where you can join like the locals and run through the display and get soaking wet (though this too will earn you a black cross and a wagging finger from the tour leader).

The Great Wall – Uhm it’s great! And it’s also a wall.

That should be a song. It dosn’t matter how many times you have seen postcards or how many people have seen it before or whether you can see it from space (You can’t) - It’s F***king Great! Stretching for hundreds of kilometres across seemingly impossible terrain. This monolithic construction did of course fail in its original task - built by the first emperor of China Emperor Nasi Goreng to keep the rabbits at bay. Yes, there are rabbits in china sometimes on the menu.
I also got into trouble for scaling the great wall but the view and 5 min peace and quiet on the wall was well worth it.

Peeking in Beijing

One of my first impressions is “WTF is the deal with the pollution”. If someone (eg the government) told you the sky was red or white or green with pink pokadots you would simply have to believe them. It has been 6 days in china and i have not seen the sky.

A few quick definitions:
Farmer – a person who, or who’s ancestors, once leased a piece of land that could be used for growing food or similar or at least you know someone who did. These people may now own restaurants, hotels, sell souvenirs, or are tour guides but they are still Farmers.
Town – a few hundred thousand to about 5 million people is called a town. There seems to be some debate about the exact size but
City – something with 10-32 million people will generally be called a city.
Ping (cold) – as in Ping BeeJoe (cold beer) the more ping the better.

One of the best things i saw in Beijing was the astronomy museum (i know, i know NERD right?) ancient tools of astronomy set up and you can play with them. Also the food was good from duck (peeking of course), hotpot and dim sum, and random fast food places. Of course there are also hundreds of temples palaces and parks (one of which we went dragon boat racing)

I like to think (or kid myself sometimes) that i am a cultured man so i went to see an opera. If anyone invites you to a peeking opera... hit them, then run very very fast in the opposite direction. A peeking opera, unlike normal opera, involves men painting their faces putting on a dress and screeching at you - like a old female cat having its tail ripped off - for several hours. My personal theory is you are supposed to come out of it feeling happy to be alive (thank god that’s over) like jumping into a ice lake (say Baikal).

Moving on

Always a difficult time to leave one group and join another. I would like to thank all of my Russia and beyond group for being bloody awesome! It has been an honour and a privilege to travel, eat, drink, laugh and cry out in anguish with you guys.

I would like point out at this point that I obtained the services of an editor to my posts to fix my shall we say grammatical eccentricities... uhm she read my posts laughed (probably more at than with my posts) and quit several minutes later mumbling something about a lost cause (thanks Theresa) – But you can’t say i didn’t try. At least it's not chinglish!

I should also thank the Chinese government for graciously saving me the hassle and inconvenience of potentially incorrect information from sources such as Blogger, facebook, cnn and of course international phone calls, by blocking them. This also (partly) explains my lack of posts.

Mongol!

Mongolia is a land of change. The traditional Yurt based lifestyle is meeting the western worlds seductive charms and promises of wealth and ease of living. As a newly reformed country this sparkly populated ex-Russian powerhouse and warrior state is struggling with its identity.

As a consequence the rapidly growing city of Ulan Baatar is a hodgepodge of badly designed living spaces with little or no infustructure. This developing country has definite advantages for the visitor – pint of beer will set you back about $2-4 and meals range from $1-15 depending on how classy and how many courses you want to go. And speaking of the food: again fantastic – everything from beef hourse to goat tasted great. As the lonely planet puts it if you are a vegetarian you will struggle, if you are vegan either reconsider your A surprisingly large number of people speak English and signage and menus are also commonly in English (unlike in Russia). Rather than a “build it and they will come” philosophy they have adopted a “come and build it” approach. As a consequence the city is a loose conglomeration of slums, buildings and yurts, connected with a vuage network of crumbeling, oft flooded, streets that have names but not street signs.

After watching the nandam festival, known as the ‘mongolian olymics’, we tried our hand at all 3 sports and discovered that Mongolian people are very strong. Archery is done on a lightly recurved bow with wooden arrows. As a result they are short ranged slow projectiles that take a lot of strength to use. Horse riding is done on a wooden saddle that will either cut into your thighs or neuter you at an in opportune moment. Having to stand the whole time gives you an appreciation of just how fast these horses can move on uneven ground, firing arrows from the horses is best left to the professionals. Wrestling too is not for the faint hearted... let’s just say that I ended up upside down within less than a minute. Even our strongest warrior (that’s you Duncan) fell to Mongolian horde (that sounds better than admitting some 15 year old kid beat the lot of us)

Lake Baikal

Alpine Hikes, Swim in freshwater lakes and streams, bake in Russian saunas, horses and feast on the fat of the land – At lake Baikal you can do it all! We stayed at a family homestead on the edge of the world’s largest freshwater lake, lake Baikal. Each night, morning and lunch we eat like kings, fresh lamb, sumptuous salads prepared with forest specialities, handmade jam cream and a host of delicious oddities.
The Russian ‘banya’ experience is one not to be missed. It consists of getting into very hot sauna and being hit by leaves and branches then jumping out and pouring a bucket of ice water over your head... oddly this is a very pleasurable experience and we were all left wanting more – maybe not having a shower for a week had something to do with it but we felt as clean as we would get.

Treks though forest and across fellfield and grassy meadows worked up a hearty appetite for more of the fantastic local food.

The Trans-Siberian

We find ourselves on a train for 4 days (90 hours) covering 5000+ km through 5 time zones and wondering what will fill our time. Well there is staring out the window, reading, listening to music, eating (mostly instant noodles), talking, more staring out the window, and of course everybody’s favourite Drinking. There are also the occasional stops where you can streach your legs for 20 min and take photos such as ‘Novosibirsk ‘ the divide between Europe and asia. The Vodka culture is alive and well, though as it turns out there is rather a big diference between the vodaka that cost $3 a litre and the real McCoy. A decent bottle will put hair on your chest, The bad stuff will toughen your guts and put hair on your bum, while with the good stuff you’re guaranteed to get your vision back after 3 days, no problems. We all developed a taste for good vodka. When drinking with the locals it is customary to have 100gramms of vodka, to show that we are friends. So you think to yourself, right 100ml/4people that’s a shot each... wrong, it’s 100ml each. NASTAROVIE, now the drinking can start!

Moscow Moscow.... de de der de der dede

Just a quick update to let you know i may not be able to post much until china (2 week+) as i will be on the trans-Siberian and then in the Mongolian highlands. If it works in china as facebook and bloger may be blocked


Russia is great the sights are grand and the people are, if not friendly then at least not offensive/aggressive. The weather is great, though a bit too hot and humid! Seen here are a few morsels of my sightseeing so far.

Tommorrow i'm off to see my old mate, Lenin!