August

Ulan Bator Mongolia

Posted from Ulaanbaatar, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

The train to Mongolia.
We were finally ready to leave China and hop on another long train ride to Mongolia, 14 hr it would take the train, but it was sure worth it. The sky in Beijing is most of the time grey, full of smog and clouds, it’s horrible. As we exited Beijing, these gradually cleared and the train line followed a beautiful mountain river system. Once again we were rushing through tunnels then existing into amazing countryside. Wow, do the Chinese like corn and rice. They don’t grow it like in Australia, where the fields of one crop are massive. They grow small fields of each crop interwoven; even double cropping the same paddock with sunflowers and corn sometimes. Not very efficient if you are machine harvesting, but we never saw a machine harvester the whole time so we figured it was all handpicked. The Northern Chinese landscape was so dramatic and wonderful we were all so glad we hadn’t missed it. Night arrived and we were at the border to Mongolia and a 3 hour stop, as they change the trucks on the train. (Different track widths – one of the more stupid decisions of mankind to not standardize train track widths…. Even in Australia we have different widths in different states. It’s ludicrous. )
So… we just get off at 11 pm and wait for three hours with kids in the middle of the night. These are the only few times when we ask our self “are we mad”. We found a big supermarket with lots of chocolates for the kids and a couple of beers for us, which helped pass the time. It wasn’t so bad… but we were dreading the next part. Drive 500 meters on the train, get off and process entry visas into Mongolia. Coming into China we had to lug all our bags off, run them through a scanner, process our entry visas… not such a fun thing to do tired, with kids now back asleep. The train did drive 500 meters, and then someone came and asked for our passports. I dozed waiting for the fateful moment when we would have to do the lug stuff thing…. But it never came. About 40 minutes later our passports were handed back and we were on our way. The Chinese were more concerned about checking under our beds when leaving China to make sure no one was escaping, than the Mongolians were about us bringing in illegals or contraband.
The rest of the trip was uneventful and we slept well until we arrived in sunny Ulan Batar. Nici had tried to book a hostel without much luck and also contacted a friend of her mum’s to try and sort some tours and accommodation. We’d pretty much not heard back from anyone so were a little surprised when someone tapped me on the shoulder at the train station asking if I was “Mr Bruckner”. I replied yes, he said come with me. We weren’t sure what the deal was, but a quick phone call later and we realized Nici’s mum’s friend had come through.
We stayed the first night in Nici’s mum’s friend’s friends’ guesthouse…. pretty basic but fine for us. We had thought we were leaving the next day at 7am to go into the countryside…. But 7am came and went, so did 8 and 9 and our lift did not arrive. Then we were told there would be a delay, and we were leaving at 2pm then not till tomorrow. Things were not looking so great anymore, but there was nothing we could do but wait. We used the time to buy some jackets for the coming European winter(awesome quality and prices) and some odd ends. We were not confidant we would in fact be leaving the next day but were hopeful. Our hostess who spoke about 50 words of English, offered to play tour guide for the afternoon. Apparently it never rains in Mongolia, but it bucketed down during our afternoon. We were unprepared and were soon getting pretty wet. If you want a cab in Ulan Bator, you just waive your arm at a any car. They might stop, if they do, you negotiate a price and then off you go,simple. We did this, and got to….. the former Mongolian Palace now museum.(Worth the trip) instead of the train station to buy tickets. Apparently our new friend the guide had been confused about this point and forgot we needed to buy tickets to Russia/Irkutsku. Oh well, it was not an emergency… yet.
The next morning none too early our driver arrived, with 3 others, an interpreter who was 16, a driver and a tour guide. Big crew just for us little Aussie family. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to work out what we would do and for how many days, and finally settled on 1 night at a tourist camp(still in a ger) and 2 nights with a local family at their ger(cheaper, not as swish but more authentic). Our new team took Nici shopping to the wholesale supermarket and to the train ticketing office(which was not at the train station, we would never have found it without them) and we got our onward journey tickets to Russia sorted and soon we were on our way to the Mongolian Steppe.
The trip out there was pretty straitforwad. Our driver spoke about 20 words of English, but was clearly a good guy. Traffic was a nightmare and I was in the front seat sans seatbelt so I was none to relaxed but everything went fine. When we explained to Orlando where we were going he was a bit concerned there would be nothing to do. I told him kids lived out in the countryside where we were going and we would find out what they did, and do it. He remained concerned he would be bored. On the way we stopped and the kids rode on double humped camels whilst I held a huge eagle (apparently his bigger friend was not around but this one was big enough!) and drank some fermented horse milk (tastes like a cross between blue vein cheese and feta cheese with a bitter after taste – takes a bit of getting used to but I Soon really liked it, I can’t say the same for Nici).
As we exited Ulan Bator the landscape became sparser and sparser in every way, less houses, less gers, less people, animals… less anything, just rolling grassy hills, no trees. People selling berries, furs and food of some kind. We arrived at the tourist camp and were suitably impressed. The trees had returned and the mountainous landscape was magnificent. I threatened to climb one, a threat which I never did make good on. Our hosts settle us in to our Ger (spacious and comfortable) and then announced we were going horse riding. Awesome! I had heard about Mongolian mountain ponies and was looking forward to riding one. Then oops, spanner in the words, Ayesha has brought no shoes. Sh….t. We went anyway, Ayesha in thongs… and she was presented with Chaps(not dudes, ankle leathers that buckled around her feet.) which meant she was going to be ok.
Our ponies were small, tough… and none too keen to do more than walk single file. Ayesha’s had a little spirit, mine less, Nici’s none and Orlando had the quietest pony by any measure. He was led at first, than had a little Mongolian girl sit on with him… him in the saddle, her on the horses back. He was well unimpressed but it looked cute. Oh, the saddles. Cushions on a metal frame over a piece of wood tied on with rope. Stirrups? Pieces of rope, and far too short at that. Riding hats. Bah. It was pretty basic. I don’t remember signing an insurance waiver which was reassuring… hehe.
I had a bit of excitement. We went with this group of Koreans, and most of them had never seen a live horse let alone ridden one. One of the girls lost her guide rope (you are supposed to hold it along with the reins…. Oh… then reins were just plain rope) and she was panicked because her horse was tripping on it. I tried to mime for her to pull on her reins to pull her horse up… but she just didn’t get it. Finally she worked it out and I grabbed her guide rope and passed it to her. An hour later and this young Korean guy who had no control of his horse(it was just following mine and I was booting mine on as fast as I could!) hit the dirt. We were going down a pretty steep hill and instead of leaning back, he tried to hang onto his horses neck. Over he went, spooking the horse which then proceeded to pig root, buck and kick only a meter or so from him. I tried to motion for him to roll away but he just sat there stunned. Finally his horse calmed down enough for me to ride over to it, dismount, make some calming noises, untangle it from its reins which were now around its front legs and motion to the Korean Guy to come and get back on. Then I noticed the saddle was almost off as the rope was loose, the horse guide guy tightened it and then rode off… leaving spooked Korean guy with spooked horse with about 70 metres of steep terrain to negotiate, then the final run for home(all trail horses bolt near the final paddock).
Was surprised when the young guy got back on but he seemed determined to get himself back to the paddock. I mimed for him to lean back instead of forward down the hill and he understood and we safely got down to the bottom. At the bottom I held my horse up for as long as possible to ensure he was down the hill and pointing in the right direction and gave my horse its head and off it went at a fast canter. I heard screaming and yelling from behind and a yelled out reassuring words whilst miming “hang on the saddle handle” which he did or didn’t do, but either way, we made it back to the final paddock both on our horses. He was clearly exhilarated by the experience at the end and it was all very funny.We had dinner that night at the campsite restaurant, food was meaty and good. At sunset, Nici and I climbed a steep rise up about 400m to overlook the valley, magnificent. The Koreans saw us doing it and all 15 followed, about 5 made it to the top. We had been warned the dogs in Mongolia are working life stock guardian dogs. They are nto treated as pets and do not necessarily respond well to attempt to pat them. Our kids had been warned not to approach them. The first exception to this rule was a black dog that presented itself to us for pats at our Ger, and then after receiving some Salami from Ayesha, proceeded to guard our ger and wait expectantly for more. We had juvenile Yaks all around our ger, some of whom let us pat them. They are very fluffy. SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE!
Sleep came easily that night.
Please note. Mongolians don’t knock,if they want to come into your Ger, they do. The next morning housekeeping came in twice. Opened the door, and walked in. Not sure why, maybe to get us to leave… but there you go. We eventually arose, had breakfast, showers and went horse-riding again. This time, Ayesha in Nici’s shoes, Nici in mine, me in my crocs. We got far better horses and it was just us. Even Orlando’s horse had a bit of spunk and he was soon cantering across the plains, pretty amazing for a non-rider. I had been concerned but need not have been. We stopped for 15 minutes so our guide could chat to his mates. They were all in high spoirits and were mucking about. One lassoed me, and tried to lassoe Ayesha but she growled at him and he ran away. The ride back was even faster than the ride out so we finished the ride well pleased.
We left the tourist camp to go to the family guesthouse around the corner. Our new host(no English speaking man – name escapes me) and his daughter(Naming – spoke pretty passable English) collected us.
Our new Ger seemed fine but the beds? HARD. Harder than thin camping mattress hard. Our new host family were awesome. Showed us all the area, made us feal really welcome. They had their extended family staying so there were lots of kids for our kids to play with. There was a Mongolian boy of 6 who spoke no English and another of 4 who spoke even less somehow. But they spoke the international language of boy fun, so Orlando wrestled, played soccer, bows and arrows, Frisbee and all manor or fund games with them. Our English speak 11 year old translator was playing with Ayesha… but had to leave for a bit to round up the cows on her horse! She arrived back with a juvenile hedgehog which was very cute and entertained us for some time.
Our hosts had a large dog that was the 2nd exception to the rule re Mongolian viscous dogs. Could not have been sweeter and SOOO loved a pat. Still a livestock guardian dog… but a people friendly one. Nice.
Our first nite was a busy. Ayesha came down with a vomiting diarrhea bug, the beds were hard as rocks and some boys stayed up late drinking and singing near our Ger. Ayesha managed to projectile vomit across the Ger and needed several trips to the toilet. 100m in the dark across a cow paddock to a pit toilet, the squat variety. She almost fell in apparently as she was cramping.
The next day she was on the mend by lunchtime, but Nici and Orlando went for a walk without us anyway as she was a bit fagged. Ayesha and I were treated to the slaughter, and butchering of a goat. It was brutal, but without pain or mess. A quick blow to the head, then a cut below the heart and a hand reached in to stop it beating. The gut contents quickly emptied, separated and prepared by the women. Nothing was wasted. The Stomah was emptied, then the lining removed. Intenstines were emptied and cleaned, liver and kidneys separated. All the hair was burnt off with a blow torch, then the goat butchered and boiled. Pretty happy Orlando missed it, though he was disappointed. We sat around and admitted the work, and drank fermented horse milk.
Through our interpretor, we had a good chat with our matriarch host, and patriarch family patron who was staying in the Ger next to ours. He is a doctor in the local hospital and was charming and welcoming. We shared another fermented horse milk. Lucky I liked it.
It was so good. Meaty, fatty, gamey goodness. Our hosts proceeded to stuff us with massive meal after meal of wonderful food. Meat filled fried bread, eggs, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, pickles, dumplings, goat goat goat.. Oralndo who had been concerned about how we would fill out time was now making it clear he thought we should get ourselves a ger here, and stay forever. It was pretty much Orlando land. Boys to play roughhouse with, wild horses to ride, animals everywhere and meat with every meal. Warm blue skied days, then a fire to light and play in at night(though he did manage to burn his fingers at the end which was a bummer but he now does understand that fires are fun and dangerous as well so a hard lesson learned.)
We were very sad to leave it was way too short. Our hosts were sad to see us go too I think. We got a lift back to town, picked up our stuff from the guesthouse where we finally met Naptcha, who had organized our “team” who had put our wonderful adventure together. She had been worried that it had not worked out as she’d had no notice, got the wrong numbers for our final guides and could not contact us at all till we got back to the guesthouse. She was very pleased when we gushed about how wonderful it had been. Everything we had hoped it would be . Beautiful countryside, wonderful people, playtime for us and the kids, some real Mongolian people and living.
We did a final shop and made our way to the train station and all too soon were saying goodbye to Mongolia and on our way to Russia.

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July

Beijing ( Mongolian Visa)- China

Posted from Beijing, Beijing, China.

Bullet train in China? They go like a bullet. Fast, and straight down a chamber. Sure, we did see some countryside on the way to Beijing but we also saw a hell of a lot of tunnels, some of them must have been many km’s long. The train was comfortable with nice beds, tv for every bed, power, aircon, pretty swish, well above our standard.
Kids wanted to immediately plug in and watch TV, play Nintendo’s etc. but we convinced them school was calling so we did almost 3 hours of school work. They grumbled at first being out of the swing of it, but soon got into it. I am doing year 7 math’s with Ayesha to make her entry back into school easier next year, Nici did a mix of writing, spelling, math’s and drawing with Orlando. Both of them did really well, note to self – more school work in Beijing. As I sign off I am not sure if its night, or we are in a tunnel, or both…. Oops… bam… lights outside on its night…. Lights out… bam… back in a tunnel.
Beijing here we come. We were going to do the terracotta warriors at Xian because its listed as one of the important things to do… but in end it didn’t fit with our schedule and having come from a country with so many terracotta painted marvels in people’s front yards we decided we would skip the warriors and spend more time on the wall, the forbidden city and get into Mongolia.
The night train arrived on time, to the minute. Very fast, very efficient. We decided with all our packs to catch a taxi to our hostel. Big mistake. Huge line in underground parking lot, no aircon, so about 40 degrees and 90% humidity. Lots of touts trying to sell us cabs for 200 rmb(we knew the fair would be closer to 40). Finally got to the front of the line, and the cab driver would not take us, too many bags so we needed to get 2 cabs. Neither driver spoke English, both seemed unsure where they were going but in the end got us there. Traffic was not quite stationary for most of the way.
Hostel (9 dragons) was average and cheap for Beijing, Tried to convince them we wanted a family room, they gave us a double with two portabeds and no floor space at all. We got rid of one of the portabeds and Orlando slept with Nici in a single. Oh well. It was cheapish at least. We really came to Beijing to visit some old friends from Australia, but as luck would have it they had returned to Australia and we couldn’t wait any longer in China because of our Russian Visa. So we went on to enjoy Beijing.
We started the process of getting train tickets and Mongolian Visas. Neither seemed hard at first, we sorted where tickets were bought from, raced to the Mongolian embassy but got there too late to be processed. Still, it seemed no real problem. We were leaving Wednesday, one day processing, we could get them Monday. We spent the afternoon almost buying junk in Simlim square… in the end we bought a little bit but MAN were their aggressive. Nici was called a “Black Mother” for not buying a watch she did not want, I was literally dragged into a handbag stall… I mean.. come on… do I look like I want a handbag? Damn… that’s right… I’ve been wearing earing in both ears lately… got to revisit that.
Ayesha bought a knockoff bag, we bargained from 350 down to 100 and still paid too much probably. The next day I worked whilst Nici and the kids went off to a science fair/amusement park and did a mix of science( fun schooling) and rides. Sort of my idea of a great day so was a bit miffed to have missed it. I did get some work done so that was fine. The day after we went to the part of the Great wall of China, the “not too touristy” part apparently but on arriving it was pretty touristy with lots of stall selling overpriced pap. I wanted 2 umbrellas and a hat, it started at 290rmb, we in the end paid 50. The wall itself was amazing. You can just imagine the guards awaiting the Mongolian Hordes from the North to come charging into view…. Or at least to come slowly climbing into view… the wall itself is pretty much always built in the most inaccessible areas. We took the cable car up, and the go cart/sled down. Going down would have been more fun if we did not have the damn sissies in front of us that wanted to hang onto their brakes the whole way. We gave them an enormous start but still caught up with them quickly. We kept waiting for them to pull ahead then went screaming after them (literally in every way) but we could not get them to speed up. Grr.
The next day(Monday) we went to the Mongolian Embassy again to try and get Visas. We got there with 2 hours to spare this time but were dismayed to see at least 50 people in the line ahead of us and there was no chance we were going to get through. Damn. Buying those $600 nonrefundable tickets was no longer seeming like a good idea. Nici kind of elbowed her way to the front after an hour or so and worked out what was going on. The embassy dude only spoke English and Mongolian, most of the applicants only spoke Chinese… and the process is not a simple one. He was processing about 1 visa every 15 mintues. Nici somehow got to the front to explain to the guy on the window our predicament. He remembered Nici from Friday so he cut us a break and said wait till the end, he would process out application and she did receive some very strange looks from other desperate travellers. Meanwhile I chatted to a Russian girl, trying to befriend her and trying to get her to hand our passports in. She was not keen for whatever reason…. And for whatever reason though she had waited for 3 hours she waited in vain, her visa application was rejected.
True to his word the window dude shut the window at 11.30am on the dot… and then nothing happened for 10 minutes. People started cursing, and walking away. Then the window opened briefly, the dude motioned to Nici to give him her visa applications which she did, and then the window closed again. A little while later, window opens, a receipt for the applications is handed over and we are told to come back tomorrow at 4 for our visas. We thought we were home free. But no, wait there is more.
The following day we went to see the Forbidden City. We recognized much of it from the movie the last emperor. We paid a guide to take us through, his English was average but it was OK. He also took us to a little café for lunch which was nice. We met up with a South African chap by the name of Hugo and chatted with him as we walked around. At 3.00pm we all said our goodbyes and we started on our way to the Mongolian Embassy. OK… so we were not sure where to go so we just started walking. Did not really matter where, every train station seemed to be about 2 km’s away. Our pace was slow, multiple toilet requirements, chatting with touts wanting to give us rides etc etc, Against our experiences, we decided to get a cab(the underground is fast, cheap and trains run every 2-5 minutes) and after 15 minutes hailed one. 3.50pm. Its all good, Mongolian embassy is open till 5.00.
20 minutes later, we had gone 3 blocks. We could have walked faster. 4.10 and we had been literally stationery for 10 minutes. Nici jumped out, and headed away to find a train station. I sat in the cab with the kids, stationary, for 15 more minutes then threw some money at the cab driver and headed off to also find a train station. The traffic of course started to move as soon as we got out(bugger) and somehow we raced past the entrance to the train station which was only 50m away and went 400m the wrong way before realizing(double bugger) but finally we were in a train station. Ayesha used her marvelous, new Beijing underground skills and got us on the right train, then the right transfer and we exited at the correct train station 12 minutes after entering the first one. Parched and dehydrated from running I bought a couple of bottles of water and we raced to the Mongolian Embassy to see Nici…. And our hearts fell when we saw she was not there and the line was again, lengthy.
We saw people in the line from the day before who told us Nici has raced to the bank to deposit the visa fee. Apparently, you can’t pay for your Visas at the Mongolian Embassy, probably too much corruption. You have to deposit the money into the bank. Great. The window dude failed to mention this yesterday and now the banks were likely closed. Nici had raced to the bank, her directions were less than ideal, then follow up directions from a cop on the street were in fact totally wrong. She made it to the “bank” just before close to be told at the counter… it was the wrong bank and that the right bank would be closed.
We saw her turn the corner about 150m away 10 minutes later, shoulders slumped and this told me everything I needed to know, and it was not good. Then good old corruption came to our rescue. A lady we had met at the ticket office, and again the day before in the line told me she could not personally help me… but if I really really wanted the visas processed there was a man in the line who could help. For 500rmb he could get around the deposit the money rule. This all sounded too good to be true. We were about to lose 4200 in tickets and be delayed a week… and for 500rmb our problems could be solved? It turned out to be true, and he didn’t even need the money in advance. He did it without any issues.
Look, it could have been one huge scam. Maybe we could have convinced the window guy to accept our cash instead, maybe the window guy didn’t tell us about the bank deposit requirement on purpose. Who knows? Who cares? We had out Mongolian Visa, which twice now we had all but given up hope of even getting when Mongolia was supposed to be one of our highlights. We were going to Mongolia!

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July

from Yangshuo to Mt Emai-China

Posted from Xianyang, Shaanxi, China.

We left early in the morning on the 4th day to get a bus to Guilin as we had to head north, and to search for a train to Chengdu near Mt Emai which we decided would be our next deitination. We knew there was bugger all chance of getting a train since it was still summer holidays and this proved correct… but we looked at the train station anyway. No trains for 10 days. We booked a sleeper bus, were promised one with a toilet and long beds(we got one with short beds, broken locked toilet, and Orlando got a 3 foot mattress on the floor…. It was pretty funny). The bus driver was stopping people taking their food onto the back of the bus. Not sure why. Problems with space? Didn’t want a mess? I don’t know. He grabbed one old guy and argued with him for 5 minutes. The old guy got through with his bag. I gave the bus man my best ”don’t fuck with me, I am the bad arse whingy westerner and he let me through with my large bag of food.”
Ayesha needed to pee only 40 minutes after getting on the bus so I made them do an unscheduled stop. They would not till I mimed if they did not stop, I would have her piss on the floor. They stopped. Then I noticed the bus driver had a bucket of yellow water under his seat… Gross! An hour later and Ayesha needed to go again. A cranky bus driver and his assistant again stopped the bus for the stupid white guy and his daughter and we did our business. He was yelling at us and motioning for us to hurry up… I yelled back and motioned at his broken toilet and my wallet and he nodded smiled and shut up. Nici has decided when Chinese people yell at you,which seems to happen a lot it’s important to yell back. Whether it’s a taxi driver, cleaning lady, tout, hotel person…. Chinese people seem to think yelling intimidates foreigners and if you yell at them they will do what you want. But what they don’t know is that yelling at Nici is like a red rag to a bull. Big mistake. Anyway, I have taken a leaf from her book and realized yelling when yelled at is usually effective.

We had to kill 3 hours in Guilin which was a bit painful as its pretty shitty, damn hot and humid and almost nowhere has air conditioning. We bought some essential items of clothing(undies seem to disappear like magic from our packs) and food for the bus trip. We visited an underground shopping tunnel that went for miles… no shopping for us there as we were using it as a shortcut and were running late… but it seemed cheap if a little(lot?) stinky and smoky.
PS. Chinese men smoke. Everywhere. All the time. Chinese women, don’t. Ever. OK, in 3 weeks in China there were some exceptions to this rule, but it can be broadly applied. So…. If women on average live 7 years longer than men, and smoking on average takes 10 years off your life? China must be a land of single elderly women so if you are male, over 65 and looking for love then China is the place for you.
The bus only went to Xion Ping, there we had to find another bus to Chengdu. More touts on arrival trying to scam us… but also really nice Chinese people wanting to help. In our time in China we were definitely taken advantage of… but I am happy to say, on far more occasions people helped us out of the kindness of their hearts.
The “2 hour” bus ride to Chengdu was in fact a 5 hour ride, this on top of our 13 hour trip to Xiong Ping being a 18 ½ hour one…. With 3 hours in between…. It was a LOOONG trip. We arrived in Chengdu with another couple we had befriendet in Guilin and we all resolved to try and find our way to Sims Garden Hostel.
At the main bustop, we were obviously looking puzzled and lost when this lady with her husband and small child in tow took us under her wing, sorted out what two buses we needed to catch and took us to the first bus stop. She even told us how many stops we needed to go before changing and what stop to exit at. Everything would have been just dandy were it not for 2008 Lonely Planet, a fire and two sets of directions.
You see… Sims burned down and moved. My lonely planet had the old address. I got some very clear instructions to it… which we messed up anyway… and then when we finally stumbled into a mcdonalds to get the free internet and looked it up… we realized what had happened. 2 hours burnt though, after 36 hours of travel. Grrr. We love our kids that they put up with our insane travel plans all th time. So in the end we said Bugger it, we got separate cabs(in China ALWAYS make sure you have the address in Chinese) and managed to instruct our respective drivers where to go… only to arrive and find there were no rooms! Luckily, the hostel was so popular other cheap hotels had sprung up around it and we got a cheaper room next door, whilst making use of the cool bar, restaurant and free wireless of Sims. We booked about 5500 chinese yuan worth tours and train tickets through their booking office so we did not feel too naughty.
I turned 42, so decided for such an important birthday there should be a day of celebration for each day over 39. No point in life beginning at 40, and not really living it up eh? So for day one of my birthday I booked us into the Chinese Opera which was a lot of fun. Some music, some theatre, some amazing mask and costume changing…. But it was the puppetry and shadow puppetry that were the winners in our eyes. I’d never seen anything so amazing in the world of puppetry, it was incredible.
Day 2 the Giant Panda research centre. The pandas are amazing….. amazing that they still exist. They are fossils, dating back over 8 million years… most species don’t last anywhere near that long. They are not great parents, have shrinking habitat, are not overly fertile(the men have short penises the girls have long vaginas) and they are a carnivores that have chosen to instead eat bamboo without having the necessary digestive system to get much nutrients from it. So they need to eat a heap more than a proper herbivore would, and use less energy… so they are basically eating machines for 16 hours a day, and sleep the rest. When they eat, they laze around, barely moving anything but their mouths.The cubs were funny and playful with their keeps and their mothers…. but far less so than your average puppy. So… amazing creatures… but in reality the amazing part is that they actually exist, not the actually watching them part. But we were in China, and we went and saw Pandas.
After the Panda morning, we took a bus ride to Mount Emei for some mountain forests, temples and cable car rides.We had planned to stay for 2 nights. We left our large packs behind and took day packs only. Luckily, this was only a short bus ride(2.5 hours) so no more shitty sleeper buses. We arrived at the bus stop, were offered an overpriced private ride to our hostel but got in cab for 2/3rds the price which was fine. The hostel was ok, not too flash compared with Sims… but Andy our host was the bomb. He helped us choose what bus to take, what time to go, what things to do on the mountain considering our time frame and kids in tow… awesome… We never would have mapped his itinerary and would have either tried to do too much and failed, or missed out on heaps of good stuff.
SO!The next day we took the 8am bus to the highest bust stop on the mountain, pretty steep hike of about 750 metres to the cable car, then a hot but wonderful ride to near the top. Ayesha an I were witness to an amorous couple in the cable car ahead of us. I think she must have dropped something on the floor of the cable car and was down on her hands and knees looking for it for about 10 minutes – I could not see exactly what she was doing…. He seemed very happy at the end of the cable car ride that she had found it….
We reached the top hopeful to see the sea of clouds which apparently is marvelous but rare as the sun needs to be just right and the clouds just right… instead we saw… a white out. No view, not able to see more than 50 metres off the mountain and no sea of clouds. Oh well. Orlando and Ayesha were mobbed by Chinese tourists starved of their chosen photographic target(the sea of clouds) and spent 15 minutes getting their photo taken with different groups. Finally, I bustled them away… none too soon for Orlando. Nici took lots of photos but was disappointed we had no real view to speak of. We’d packed warm clothes as we’d expected it to be much colder but as we’d changed our itinery we never got near the cold weather so we had to lug our heavier than necessary packs for the day.
We decided instead of taking the cable car to walk down. Hmmn. Seemed liked a good idea at the time and it still did a few days later but after 6 klms of steps, with everyone in similar degrees of pain, the adults each with a pair or swollen knees… there were times we thought we were crazy. The kids thought we were plain mean. But we made it down to the busstop. Many of the Chinese tourists were happy to try out their English on us and we were happy oblige them. There were many massively calved men offering rides down the mountain in a contraption you’d expect to see a Pharoah in. We declined their offers… though the kids were very keen for the experience even if only for a few metres. I was concerned once in, they would not get out.. The food on the mountain was pretty ordinary and expensive but we ate it all the same.
Bus ride to the bottom was… pretty disgusting. We were clever enough to be near the middle/front where the bus sways the least. The people up the back? Not so smart. Vomiting started about halfway down, which set a few other off and soon it was like a 18th birthday party up the back. Add to that, this old lady right a the front decided she needed to hawk up the contents of her muck filled lungs every couple of minutes and spit it on the floor. I was disgusted… but not prepared to show it.. nici on the other hand was very vocal and making it clear how disgusted she was and a gentleman two rows back passed a plastic bag down for the lady to spit into. Slightly better, but not a whole lot more. Then after about 30 minutes of looking down hawking into her bag old lady muck started vomiting into her bag if vile, and then on one particularly large heave, let out a huge fart. A mere 2 rows from us, we were hit by the dual smells of her vomit mixed with toxic spit, and the rottenness that could only be an elderly person’s fart of death. My stomach is cast iron but for a moment I tasted metal in my mouth as my stomach tried to exit me through that same entrance.
I walked into a shop to buy icecreams as a reward and made the fatal mistake of opening one before asking the price. Icecream open we were at their mercy and a $3 icecream had become $7. One lady had said $3 when another yelled at her$7 and then insisted I pay it. Beware the chinese shop with no prices! I paid up for two more whilst Nici blew up at the shop lady at the price. The shop lady just laughed and then followed us up the street for 500 metres trying to sell us accommodation. In the end she got the message that having ripped us off with icecreams, she’d blow her chances of getting us into her accommodation.
We cable carred us to another part of the mountain and we commenced the walk down to where we hoped to find accommodation.Our knees where killing us. The walk through the forrest really contrasted the walk at the top of the mountain. Apparently cicadas, many birds and monkeys don’t like the altitude so all the action and noise was down low. The forest was very different to look at as well. We were starting to not feel too much of the magic though, because of the less than magical feeling in our legs. When this little lady offered us a bed in a monastery we jumped at it. She took us a short cut way.. which was shorter… sure…. But about 3 time as steep as the normal path. Nice…. Our knees groaned. At least the short cut way had no monkeys.
The monastery turned out to be a shabby hostel so we declined, so she took us via another track to another hotel. We argued we wanted to stay in a monastery but by now were too tired… so we instead bargained the price down by 25% and stopped for the night. We were all drenched in sweat, exhausted and the shower never felt better. The room was pretty crappy, but we were tired and it served its purpose. Dinner was funny. No English menu, non English speaking staff, we made a phone call to a translation service, gave our order who translated it for us. Worked fine, we got what we ordered.
Down to our last 70 yuan luckily breakfast was pretty cheap. I had thought the walk out to the bustop at the bottom would take us 3 hours, but it took us only 55 minutes. Really amazing walk, a damn dug straight into the mountain, beautiful temples and scenery. Stunning. No monkeys which was great. Orlando hates monkeys. The trip back to Chengdu was uneventful, other than a taxi driver who seemed happy to take us around in a few circles. He did not understand English until I started motioning he was taking us around in circles and frowning at him saying Police, Police. All of a sudden, the hostel where our large bags were waiting appeared. We’d probably been within a klm of it for 15 minutes. We picked up our bags, sorted some internet time and booked a hostel in Beijing.
We jumped in cab, made our way to the station where again, nothing in English. To our rescue came some helpful locals who guided us to the correct area. Getting on a bullet train is like getting on an airplane unbeknownst to me, and I lost my spray can deodorant. Bummer, should have stuck it deeper in my bag. Not sure why it was they are considered a problem – we got one with a pretty serious knife and 4 other cans stuffed deeper in our luggage…
Bullet train in China, just a few days after a bullet train had smashed into a slower train disabled by lightening. Oh well, we weren’t scared, everyone knows lightning never strikes the same place twice… only problem was we were travelling in a different spot to where the lightening hit before… Bah… it will be fine.. far more dangerous driving around asia. Some guy had taken possession of our beds but after some explaining we convinced him he was in the wrong spot and 10 mintues later we were in and on our way.

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July

Cormorant Fishing- China

Posted from Finland.

Cormorant fishing
These old dudes paddle down the river just after dark on bamboo rafts with a light on the front. 6-9 cormorants accompany eveyr raft, eah cormorant has a string tied around its throat so its not possible to swallow the larger fish.

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Time and time again the dived into the water and came up with a small fish, which they juggled then swallowed… so they got the lion’s share of the catch. Occasionally one would come up with a larger fish and not be able to swallow it. Once a cormorants neck was bulging the old dude would haul the cormorant in with a stick and “milk” the fish out of it’s neck. No real discomfort for the bird. Occasionally a female would jump onto the raft for a rest, and a male would hop on and do some sort of territorial/courting display. The old dudes were having none of this and quickly swatted them off the raft into the water with his paddle. None to gently, but not to roughly either.
We parked on the shore and got to take photos of the birds as they sat on us. My tip is, don’t look a the birds. Ayesha eyed one and it promptly pecked her nose scaring the crap out of her and leaving a mark. Great. Now we have a boy scared to death of monkeys and a girl scared of birds.

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July

Yangshuo – China

Posted from Guilin, Guangxi, China.

arriving in Youngshou -China after Hong Kong

Many uncomfortable hours later we arrive in Youngshou and are dropped off in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of town. This is a scam which is run by the local touts in company with the bus drivers. You are effectively at their mercy as its 5am, there is no clue as to where to go. The bus then drives into town, and drops off the Chinese people who can easily walk to their hotels.
We didn’t learn about this till much so we piled into a Tuk Tuk and drove to a hotel. A guy(Robert – his English name anyway) accompanied us and told us he was the hotel manager.(Um no – just a professional tout). Room was 150Yuan and on the 6th floor. He says it’s a great room we should look at it. I complained 6th floor? The internet would not work that high and my knees were no good. He convinced us to look, I made it to the 3rd floor and said nup, bugger this and walked back down. Nici went up, to find from the 6th floor she could see down the back lane… we were in the shitty part of town very far from the river. This was really NO good as we had nice plans for here and we just wanted to relax with a nice view of the river. We said no to Robert dismay and our tuk tuk driver then went to the river, where we tried to find a few more places, but none had 3 nights available in a row. The the tuk tuk driver recommended a place on the river about 1klm away, we looked at it and though it was smoky and dirty from the previous occupants, we took it as it was right on the river and had a lovely view.

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So if you ever want to travel to these regions its important to be aware of these tout and there scams/storys.
Robert tried to book us in for 3days of tours right away, but we said we are too tired and I ( Nici) was getting really pissed off with his pushiness, we wanted a rest day… he went on to tell us it was due to rain in 2 days so we needed to get organized. He would give us good discounts. I excused myself to go upstairs, checked the weather forecast for the next 3 days(fine). Came back downstairs and started negotiating. Robert’s tour prices ended up being halved; after we told him we knew the real price of the tours, and were happy to book them direct ourselves. We could have got them cheaper if we organized them ourselves, but were happy to book them through Robert as we knew that with our pushed schedule, he would likely be able to get it all organized faster and in the best order, which turned out to be true. He did a bang up job in the end, organizing all buses, connecting tuk tuk rides, boat rides, he gave us a guided tour of the surrounding farmlands which was perhaps the most fun(he did need to be reminded that he’d promised this… he thought at first riding past some fields and waving a them as we sped past on the way to the river rafting constituted this farmlands tour till we explained, actually, no, it didn’t).He also booked us Cormorant fishing tickets(Richard loved this… yes yes, its exploitation of animals but we eat Pork so i(Richard) can’t claim to much righteousness when it comes to animal welfare.) The only time he stung us really was when we went to a restaurant and we bought lunch… from the English menu. The next day we ordered similar food from a better restaurant for 50% less. Even their English menu was 30% less and when we got the Chinese menu, it was a hefty 50% less. Oh well. You can’t stay on your toes all the time – it hurts your feet to much and spoils your adventure.
Youngshou ended up being everything and more than we hoped for. Its a beautiful place that you could easily spend a couple of weeks at. Ayesha and I also got to see the most amazing light show on the river involving 600 cast. I was totally blown away since I love things like this. The Chinese don’t do anything halfhearted. We also spend a day bamboo rafting and the kids got water shooters that kept them very happy.

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July

Hong Kong

Posted from Tai Mo Shan, New Territories, Hong Kong.

Lucky for us, we befriended Snake and Vincent from Hong Kong and Gayton and Morgan from France on the train. Snake and Vincent helped us when we got to Nanning since nobody could understand Chines and no signs were in English. It’s pretty daunting when just the simplest thing, like finding a public toilet becomes impossible. Anyway with our new friends help we were able to find our way to HK. We cued for 1 hr to find out the only train tickets were hard seats and no sleepers. Instead we found and booked a sleeper bus since we needed to travel overnight. (The whole thing was pretty funny as you sleep at about a 20 degree angle which is not so comfortable as I am a side sleeper. Oh well! We learned later that this was in fact a pretty good bus and we were lucky to have Chinese speakers that got us the right price on a good bus. Later we would get older buses, smaller beds, and no toilet. We spend the rest of the day being shown around Nanning and going to real Chinese restaurants.

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We arrive in Sheng don early and with the continuing help of Snake and Vincent we got train tickets into Hong Kong, bought octopus passes (used for travel and small purchases)and got ourselves into Hong Kong . There is no English anywhere in China, and pretty much no one speaks it. We were becoming the masters of mime. Hongkong however was very different lots of English speakers.
We were immediately met by touts trying to sell us their accommodation, and the cheap accommodation in Hong Kong is expensive and tiny. We were going to see our friend Natalie, but wanted to make sure that Gayton and Morgan also got a good place to stay, so we stayed with the group hunting for a hotel room for 5 hours. We spent a long time camped in McDonalds, eating shitty hamburgers, drinking cokes, using their free internet to search for places then going in and out whilst someone minded the bags. Hong Kong is busy, hot and at the time raining so no one felt to drag their backpacks around whist we looked. 5 hours of looking and nothing appealed than Snake offered his parents family home for Morgan and Gayton and they went to stay with him. I was so thrilled as I knew now they would have a Hong Kong experience.
Nat was busy working and doing gym classes so we dropped our bags at her work, said a quick hello and then went out for a few hours to see Hong Kong. Nat met up with us just as the light show across the river started the light show was OK but the one in Singapore is the winner so far. We finally made our way to Nat’s lovely abode, 2 trains, a stop at the supermarket and then a taxi home. It was so lovely to finally catch up again and get updates on the last few years and soon it was like the good old times. It had been 5 years since we last saw Nat and it had been 10 years since we lived on the same property in Eureka.
Our Hong Kong experience was a mix of shopping, eating, boat rides and beaches. The beaches are nothing like Byron Bay but still heaps of fun. Nat and her friend Kitti took us to a place out of town where we ate heaps of seafood yum yum.Hong Kong is a beautiful sight at night
We left Hong Kong after 5 days ,sad to say good bye again to Nat. We were appreciative of its big city appeal, but happy to leave. It’s too damn crowded. Even the impressive underground, ferry, bus, tram and taxi service cannot cope with the fact that there are still 8 million odd people in such a small area.
Back to China, of course no trains available for at least a week, so we booked a sleeper bus to Yangzhou. This time, the beds were a mere 160cm long so we slept not only at a 20degree angle, but also at curled up in a ball. Most uncomfortable. Oh… and no toilet. There were many toilet stops…. but there are plenty of road side places where the toilet is merely a 25cm trench that runs the length of a 8-10 metre or so building.
• No cubicles over the trench. You do your business with your arse to the wind.
• Wee and poo everywhere on the edges so nowhere to stand without fouling your shoes.
• The trench itself, is flushed once an hour, or in some cases, once a day. So you are looking down at the results of peoples business for the previous appropritate time period. I think its rather worse, in the girls loos for reasons your imagination can fill in.
Needless so say wherever possible we held on, but sometimes it was just not possible(for me) so though I can’t claim to have truly mastered the communal, festy poo, but as a novice I can find my way in the world.

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July

Entering China and our first impressions

Posted from Nanning, Guangxi, China.

Nici’s first impressions of China was it was much like the old East Germany,good old communism.Lots of Square concrete buildings with no paint. Lots of farmland. Lots of obvious poverty. The poverty started to fade away in Nanning though. Having travelled through several Asian countries and found many people who spoke English, we were struck by just how few people in China spoke English. Like most, speak none. That includes shop assistants, information, tickets sellers, cab drivers,. None. People openly stared at us, even taking photos. Ayesha who is going through a self conscious phase was not happy about it and gave many the evil eye, Orlando got his usual amount of “Oh very beautiful” with people pinching his cheeks and stroking his hair. He just smiles and is gracious about it, though deep down I know he is both pleased with the adoration, and peaved at the physical contact.

Note. Apparently its bad manners to pick up a piece of chicken bone in a restaurant with your fingers and eat it…. If you must…. Use tissues….. buts its OK, to hawk up a big gob of spit and hack it into the corner of the restaurant. Go figure that one.

True to form going into a new country without yet knowing the prices, we got ripped of pretty much straight away. I paid about 500% above the going rate for fruit. Nici paid a high price for a bag that started to fray after 1 hr. But since we were hanging out some of the day with Snake and Vincent, we paid Chinese prices twice for food, so that probably made up for it. As i write this we are travelling towards Hong Kong on the sleeper bus.

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July

Good Bye Vietnam- Hello China

Leaving Vietnam was…. As all country leavings seem to be for us…. Somewhat eventful. Our Train was leaving Hanoi at around 10pm and on our way to the Train Station we realized that we had run out of Vietnamese Dong. Though we’d thought US dollars would be fine as that has been the case in many parts of Vietnam our Cab driver was not happy to accept them. But accept them he did after 10 minutes of arguing over what they were worth, and when he realized we had nothing else.

Then.. the “International train station” we went to, turned out to be a bit of a back street dump. We needed to get some more supplies for the train but there was no café, no shop, nothing but a couple of overpriced street stalls. The stalls wanted 30 dong for water (about 3 1/2 times the going rate). We managed to bargain them down to ten and get some meager food and away we went.
Of course, the waiting room toilet had neither toilet paper or a squirter….. I deeply regretted the extra hot chilli I had added to my dinner earlier several times in the next 24 hours. IN fact… it turned out to be a day when the toilets got progressively worse.

a. Street side dinner and beers before we left I used a squat toilet that was filthy but at least had a squirter.(That I did not need to use thank god as it was filthy).

b. On the train, squat toilet, no paper, no squirter… everything just drops down onto the tracks.Hhhmmmm!!!

c. Toilets at the Border crossing to China, squat, no toilet paper, no squirter, doors did not shut properly, poo everywhere.

d. Toilets in two restaurants in Nanning(China), pretty dirty, no toilet paper…. But a dirty squirter in one of them.

e. Children weeing or pooing anywhere-into bags – onto footpath and so on

f. The coup de gras – just before we got on the sleeper bus in Nanning(China), toilets were a 20 cm trench that ran the length of a bank of toilets, no paper, no squirter, no doors. So you squat there, shitting, watching other peoples poo float down the trench, arse to the wind as people walk up and down the toilet building past your cubicle. (vomit!!)

Oh and remember… I’d had an overdose of chili right? Nicis experience was even worse apparently as there was this lady and …. Oh never mind.

The trip itself was pretty tiring, as we never like to have to get our kids up in the middle of the night. We stop at the border at around 11pm, get out and hand over passports and get our departure stamp for Vietnam. Than we get back on go another 10 km,and the train stops again. This time we get out, take all our bags and tired children and hand over passports, eventually after being checked carefully we are allowed back on, by now it’s 12.30am and our kids can go to sleep finally… we wait for 90 minutes for train to be…. I don’t know why we had to wait we just did….. we arrive in Nanning at 9am.

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July