Glenn and Denh in Asia

Due to the closure of the Three Gorges Dam to all tourist boats, our Geckos guide had to re-organise our itinerary. This meant that we now had 2 full days in Chongqing (chong-ching). Most people would find this a let down, but for us it sounded like a good idea. This is because a colleague of mine, Peter Fielding, had lived in Chongqing and had told us quite a bit about the town. It was also the home town of our Geckos guide.
The first thing I noticed when heading into Chongqing was that it was an extremely dark city. There were these huge housing skyscapers on the outskirts of town which were either unoccupied or everyone was in bed with every light out. I suspect it has something to do with China's electricity shortage.
When we got closer to the actual city it was almost as if the city was split down the middle by the Yangzi River. One side had huge buildings and the other side seemed to be the old town with run down looking housing.
We arrived in the newer part of the city and went straight to the lantern festival. This was a collection of lit up blow up creatures including dragons, pandas and even penguins. The highlight was probably the lights coming from one particular city building. With the grey smoggy sky the effect was very sci-fi. We also had a nice view over the river to the neon resturants on the other side.
We then went back to our hotel, which was located in between 2 car delearships, and had showers before returning to the centre of the city. Massive buildings and advertising everywhere, and heaps of people. Our guide had promised to take us to his favourite hotpot restaurant. I was really looking forward to this after what Peter had told me. He had become addicted to the hotpot resturants when he was living here.
On our way up to the restaurant they had their specials on display. These inlcuded delicacies such as fresh bull's penis..tasty! The place was absolutely packed and there was only about one table free, which had obviously just been used as there was still the pot and bowls and beer bottles everywhere. Our guide instructed the waitresses to clean it up for us. We literally slipped into our seats as the floor was covered in oil.
Our guide ordered everything for us. We had a half-half pot, where half contained normal broth and the other half contained the chili-laden broth. The pot was brought out by a chef covered in splattered oil and other substances, and placed over our lit gas burner in the middle of the table. The waitresses then bought out many plates of raw food including beef, lamb, pork, fish, tripe, intestines and chicken's stomach. What a feast! I actually tried the tripe, intestines and chicken's stomach. All of them were extremely chewy and just tasted like the chili broth, thankfully. The stomach was actually quite crispy. The taste of the chili-broth was absolutely beautiful, I can understand how Peter became addicted. The other part of the hotpot is that after the food is cooked in the boiling broth, you dip it in a mixture of sesame oil and garlic. A great way to put on the pounds, except you sweat so much that you burn it right off. Overall I was very satisfied with out hotpot experience.
The next day we explored the city and dealt with the massive crowd of people. It was China's national day holiday, which actually lasts for 7 days, so people were everywhere. That evening we took the cable car over the Yangzi to the other side where many HUGE neon restaurants residing either on the riverside of actually on the river. We sat down in a bar on the riverside to have a few beers and watch the monstrous floating seafood restaurants with their glass elevators. Later we ventured a bit further along the riverside to a restaurant where almost every dish we ordered off the menu they didn't have. It was also quite intersting as we tried to order from a chinese only menu using our very limited mandarin. There is a whole heap of buskers in this area, many who play electric guitars with their amps strapped to their back.
Overall I would say Chongqing is a very liveable city. The only problems being the pollution and the weather (i believe it is very often around 40 degrees celsius). The people seem laid back and friendly, and there is everything you could want available within the city.

(Denh: Cant believe he forgot to mention my panda)
We ventured to the Chongqing Zoo because other than the Panda Research Centre, CQZ houses more pandas than anywhere else in China. They are beautiful creatures and oddly human like in their movements. They were mostly sitting around like human infants would chewing on sweet bamboo which they held by their front 2 paws. Chinese in panda costume?? After musing over them to no end, we spotted tourists being allowed 1 at a time into an enclosure to pat a panda. I could not have run faster had my pants been on fire. Lets say it was a definite highlight of China.

We boarded a plane in Kunming in order to fly to our next destination, Guilin. Travelling by plane was a nice change from an overnight train, and after a very speedy landing (I believe our Pilot came in WAY too fast) we arrived in the very impressive Guilin airport.

Our guide raved to us about how beautiful this part of the country was, so we had high expectations. We weren't actually staying in Guilin City, but rather Yangshuo. The transfer from the airport to Yangshuo gave us our first taste of the beautiful countryside, which was full of limestone karsts much like Halong Bay in Vietnam.

We arrived in Yangshuo and checked into our hotel, which was just beautiful, and the sink in the bathroom was a very fancy clear glass masterpiece. After a quick tour of the town our guide took us to a rooftop restaurant/bar known as Monkey Jane's, where a girl who calls herself Monkey Jane (I have no idea why) works. I immediately tried the local specialty of Beer Fish, which is not fish in beer batter but steamed or grilled fish sauteed in beer and other tasty stuff. It was delicious but extremely difficult to eat, as it was chopped into small bony chunks. After a few games of pool (in which D and I rained supreme) we retired to our nice hotel room.

Of course we had to get up early the next morning in order to prepare for yet another day of cycling. We had an interesting breakfast which took over an hour to come out, which of course made us late for our cycling tour. We wandered down to pick up our bicycles, which our guide had promised were very 'sexy' compared to our last crappy rust buckets in Dali. Sure enough, the mountain bikes were very shmick with 18 working gears and all. This time they made us wear helmets, which is an unusual safety measure for China. We also had a local guide to ride with us and show us the way.

We set off at snail's pace, and unfortunately our guide continued at this pace for the entire trip. This made it very frustrating, as we had these shmick bikes and we weren't even getting out of first gear. Luckily the countryside we were riding through was beautiful, with lush green rice fields, other crops and foliage, bordered by the limestone Karsts and bathed in a sort of permanent mist (naturally occurring, not a result of pollution according to our guide...hmmm).

After a short while we came to a section of the Li River. Here
we boarded a 2 seater bamboo raft and enjoyed a sleep inducing trip up and down the river. The raft was powered by a skinny chinese man (who happened to speak mandarin, cantonese and a local dialect) who used his long bamboo pole to push off the bottom of the river. The exitement hit fever pitch when we went over the 2 foot waterfall and got stuck, requiring our boat man to get out and push.

Later in the afternoon we came to Moonhill Cafe where there is a
strange hill with a hole right through it, which supposedly resembles the moon. After a tasty but greasy lunch we headed back to our bikes where hoardes of old ladies where desperate to sell us a cold drink or something else. One guy from our tour decided to give out some small Australian coins to a few of the ladies. Soon he was overcome by a sea of wrinkly hands all wanting their coin.

The next day we started with a minivan transfer to another, much larger, section of the Li River. We boarded a small boat for another tranquil cruise up the river. The scenery was again lovely, with a glassy river reflecting the flora and the Karsts.

Later on in the evening, after finishing up some final shopping in Foreigner Street, we got into backpacker mode and slung our full back packs on for a LONG walk to the bus station to catch a train. At least that's what I thought. We ended up cayching a bus for a couple of hours or so to the train station in order to catch a train for 14 hours.

After the fun, fun, fun of the train we transfered back onto a bus for a 4 hour trip to the port where we were to board our boat for the cruise on the Yangzi. During the bus trip we stopped to check out the Three Gorges Dam project. All we could see at night was the Dock which was horrendously big, and could easily fit very large cruise boats or transports. More on the controversial Three Gorges Dam project later.......

If you hadn't guessed it, we had a quiet afternoon today (28 September) so we have posted a lot of blog entries.

Li Jiang is where we stayed for 2 nights surrounding our Tiger Leaping Gorge trek. It is a REALLY touristy town, mostly Chinese tourists as opposed to foreigners. There is a big square where some traditional dances take place and you can pay to get a photo taken on the back of a horse (incredible!).

We stayed at a bit of a back-packer joint with communal toilets and showers. It wasn't too bad even though the toilets were squats, which we were becoming quite accustomed to by now. The showers had water which was a nice temperature, that was until the cold water ran out! There was also a very cute puppy who lived there, and who we played with as much as possible of course.

For our free day in Li Jiang we visited Black Dragon Pool which is a beautiful lake that reflects an old arched bridge, surrounded by nice gardens. The entrance fee is a bit steep though ($14).

We also got to see a performance by the local Naxxi (Nashi) orchestra. This was very entertaining I thought, as they went through a number of vocal, instrumental and dance routines. There was even a calligraphy section where a member of the audience was asked to translate the ancient hieroglyphics. The particular audience member who did it was so stoked that he got up on stage and took a few bows, and didn't want to get off!

Several of the streets in the old town were lined with 2 storey restaurants on each side, and are open (i.e. no windows) to the street. The tradition here is for a group of people in a restaurant on one side of the street to sing a traditional Chinese song (but change the words in a witty way) to a group of people in a restaurant on the other side, and end it with the Tibetan chant 'Yasoo, Yasoo, Ya-Ya soo' (or whatever it is meant to be). It's sort of a 'who is loudest wins' thing. Often it is a bunch of guys vs a bunch of girls, and the girls win every time (with those piercing voices).



On our last night after a few very quick Dali beers (670 ml), four of us decided to give this thing a shot. After plucking up the courage we challenged a loud group of Chinese men across the street by yelling at the top of our voices 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie....Oi, Oi, Oi...Aussie, Aussie, Aussie....Oi, Oi, Oi...Aussie....Oi...Aussie....Oi...Aussie, Aussie, Aussie....Oi, Oi, Oi...Yasoo..Yasoo..Ya-Yasoo...' etc. We were given a standing ovation by some Chinese in our restaurant but not so much more than a raised glass from our rivals across the street. We just didn't have the strength of numbers.

Down on the street some western tourists had heard our war-cry and were giving us cheers. So we decided to invite them up to join in. Also a couple more members from our tour arrived so we got back in the game. We threw everything from Madonna's 'Like A Virgin' to Queen's 'We Will Rock You' at our rivals, and ultimately we reigned supreme and they gave up! We were all stoked and managed to down more Dali's until we just couldn't find our mouths anymore...

No, not the smokeable kind, but Kunming is a bloody big city. We were there for 3 days in total, 2 before we went to Tiger Leaping Gorge and 1 after. For the first 2 days the weather changed a lot, and it was pissing down for quite a bit. Needless to say, the first thing I purchased was a raincoat (a shmick one for 50 Yuan). We bought a new backpack also for the gorge trek, as my little day pack didn't quite cut it.

There is a plethora of shops in Kunming, including some major fashion and sporting stores. Nike, Addidas and Puma was everywhere, as were their imitations. There was also many camping stores, many of which sold camping/hiking shoes. I was stoked on the final day to pick up a brand new pair of (genuine) CATs for around AUD$76.

We stayed at a reasonably shmick hotel known as the Camelia. The first night we got there, after the shocker of a bus trip, we were screaming for a shower. They put us in a nice room with a lovely looking shower. Unfortunately, the bastard thing didn't work! We called the front desk and they eventually sent up a plumber. After stuffing around for half an hour he couldn't fix it. We were given the option of a 'cheaper' room for the same price, which we again declined.

They ended up sticking us in another room, which wasn't as nice, but at least the shower worked. By this time it was too late to order any food which sucked because we hadn't eaten for 12 hours. We ended up just going to bed after a crappy day and hoping for better luck for the rest of the trip.

On our last night in Kunming we went out as a group to a Chinese (what else!) restaurant to try the local speciality of over-the-bridge noodles. This is basically a huge bowl of chicken flavoured broth into which you place numerous very thinly cut slices of meats, fish and vegetables and then dump in a huge bowl of noodles. It is actually quite delicious, just a bit scary as the food is raw when you put it in. We complimented this with warm local beer.

We said goodbye to over half of the group who had completed their 'Yunnan Encounter' and it was a bit sad as we made some good friends.

Other highlights of Kunming were the Aquarium Shop, the food (most of it anyway), the Pet Market and the Supermarket. The lowlight was the toilet in the last pub that we went to - nasty, nasty, nasty.....

We enjoyed our last breakfast in Sapa at the Mountain View Hotel without any mountain views, as it was very foggy. Our transfer to Lau Cai (small town on the border of Vietnam and China), which we had gone to great lengths to organise, was waiting in the lobby.

It was a small mini-van and another Vietnamese girl hopped in with us. Thinking nothing of this, we threw in our luggage and took a seat. Soon we stopped at some little place and picked up some Choco (a vegetable that is a bit like a cucumber). Fair enough we thought, the driver and his mate might want to bring some back to Lau Cai. Then we stopped at someone's house and waited for a while for something. Soon enough, some other bloke jumps into our car. This is a bit strange we began to think.

Along the way we pick up several other people, including some minority tribe people, all of them locals, and it dawns on us that we are actually financing the local bus from Sapa to Lau Cai. By this stage we are running 30 minutes late and have 15 people in the mini-van! We pass by some police and the driver suddenly pulls down the sign that says 'Lau Cai', obviously because he doesn't want the cops to know about their little scam.

After we drop off everybody else, most of them at the Lau Cai train station, the driver finally drops us off at the restaurant where we are to pick up our bus tickets which will take us from Hekou (the Chinese border town) to Kunming, where we will start our Geckos tour of China.
Again, much organisation had gone into arranging the bus tickets.

Sure enough, when we get into the restaurant and ask the girl for our tickets her response is almost 'what tickets'. She goes to the back to check something and comes back and tells us that the tickets have not arrived and that we will probably have to get the later bus, which just happens to be 6 hours later!

After much furore she goes around the corner and we think that she must be contacting someone to discuss the situation. Sure enough she is sitting around the corner having a nice old chat to her friend. Denh politely tells her to get off her ass and call someone about these tickets!
Frustration was building and considering the transfer fiasco, I got on the phone to find out about the tickets. Eventually I got through to the girl who had organised the tickets for us. I tried to explain the situation but decided that the best course of action was to get the two girls talking.

After a bit of that I again got on the phone and the girl apologised saying that all we can do is wait and hope that the tickets arrive in time for us to catch the correct bus. Fortunately, shortly after a young guy on a motorike pulls up to the restaurant with the tickets in his hand. This calms me down a bit and we both jump on a motorbike and head for the border.

After exchanging some money we painlessley go through the checkpoint. Of course, the lady on the Chinese side thinks Denh is Chinese so starts talking to her in Mandarin, which of course she doesn't understand. Once we're across the border we hop on a small transport (a bit like one of those kids trains you see in shopping centres) and pay 2 Yuan (about 40c Australian) for a trip around the corner to the bus station.

We line up at what we think is the counter when a skinny man in some shabby clothes (but nice shoes) walks up to us and starts to talk to us in English. He explains that he is the manager of the station and invites us into his office, which is just a partioned off little room full of crap.
He asks us to sit down, which I decline to do. He explains that we should leave our baggage in his office and walk around, another offer which we decline. He says he has one question for us, and asks what we are going to do for food and water for the 10 hour trip to Kunming, and then states that we should buy lots of snacks and water from his shop. We thank him for his advice and walk out of his office and sit down to wait for the bus. Since we have no water, I buy one bottle from the shop outside the manager's office. I give the girl 5 Yuan, and she gives me a look of disgust, then tells me in Mandarin that it is 10 Yuan. Another little rip-off!

Later, when it is getting close to our departure time, the 'manager' asks us to load our large baggage into the back of the bus. He tells us that we now have to pay 50 Yuan for each bag. I impolitely tell him that this is BS, and then he directs me to 'the boss' a middle aged Chinese woman. After arguing very poorly, I reulctantly pay the 100 Yuan (about $20 Australian) for our bags. I walk to the toilet before boarding but some old codger sticks up three fingers telling me that it will cost 3 Yuan to use the dunny. Stuff that I think, and decide to hold on.
We board the bus, which soon becomes very full, and get to enjoy a bus full of Chinese men constantly clearing their throats then spitting it out of the window, along with most of them chain smoking, for the next ten hours. Welcome to China I thought....

Just a small one to mention the beer and coffee here in Vietnam.

Both are actually fantastic!

The coffee is served in many different forms, but I think the coffee itself is largely the same. It has a kind of liqueur taste to it and is normally very fresh. The Vietnamese prefer it with ice. They give you a glass of ice and a little perculator which is dripping the coffee into the glass of ice. You then add sugar and grind up the ice with a spoon. Pretty darn tasty, but I still preferred it hot with a touch of milk. When you ask for milk though, it's a bit of a raffle to see what you get. Sometimes (and quite often) it's sweetened condensed milk. Sometimes is carnation milk, and I believe I even got goat's milk one time.

As for the beer, it's superb. They do serve it very cold here too, I haven't been served a warm beer, except for maybe once. There is many locally made beers, including Tiger, Saigon, Halida, Larue, Huda and Hanoi. They also serve Carlsberg and Heineken in most places.
Larue used to be brewed by Fosters, and is a nice draught beer. My favourite was Huda, which is found mainly in Hue. It's a 'Belgian like' beer that is very smooth and flavoursome. There was a Belgian guy who ran a bar who had it on tap and it was superb. I drank quite a bit of Huda on our one night in Hue.
Halida is also a European style beer which is also superb. Tiger is the equivalent of Carlton Draught or VB, and is found everywhere and tastes great.
Last but not least is Bia Hoi, or the fresh beer you get in dodgy little places in Hanoi. It's really 'hoppy' or something, but tastes fantastic. The price is about 20 cents for a schooner sized glass so it is absolutely fantastic value. It's great because you sit out on the street corner on these little plastic chairs and watch the entertaining night life of Hanoi.

Most of you won't get the title but don't worry.

Whilst we were in Hoi An, we found that we were walking about 2 KM in the 35 degree heat to and from town every day. We also wanted to go to the beach which was about 5KM from where we stayed. So we decided to take the plunge and hire a motorbike.

I insisted we get a manual (as opposed to an automatic), even though I had never ridden a motor bike before in my life (apart from a Pee-Wee 50). It wasn't a speed machine but it took me a while to get the hang of it, especially changing down gears (as the pedals were designed for little feet) and stopping or parking, which often involved riding up onto the footpath via these tiny little ramps. My stopping usually meant stalling first, then turning the bike on again and slowly changing down to neutral.

On the day we decided to go to the beach, we went for a swim early in the day, rode back to hotel, and decided to ride back that night for a nice seafood dinner. We arrived at the beach and I parked (with slighty improved skill) and removed the single key from the ignition, and put it in my pocket.

As we strolled along the beach towards the restaurant, I tried to put my glasses into my pocket, which already had my wallet and the motobike key in it. I removed the wallet so that I could put the glasses in and continued to stroll to the restaurant.

We had a delicious dinner of steamed fish and prawns, along with a few Larue beers. After dinner, we went down the beach to hang out by ourselves and enjoy the cooler night. After some terrible beach dancing and a game or 2 of tug of war, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel.

As we were walking up towards where the motorbike was parked, I reached into my pocket for the single key, and couldn't seem to find it. I searched all my pockets and still couldn't find it. I began to panic a bit at this point, and started to imagine how I was going to explain this to the guy that I hired the bike from.

It suddenly dawned on me that, when I put my glasses back into my pocket, I must have pulled out the key by accident when I pulled out my wallet. After moon-slapping myself I started to search along the strip of beach that we walked along to the restaurant. We really had buckleys of finding it, as it was very dark and we had no torch. We were just looking for some sort of relection from the ground somewhere.

After a while Denh suggested I should go to the restaurant just to see if I had perhaps dropped it there, and to ask if they had a torch. I ran back to the restaurant which was now closed, so I ran up to the house of the family that ran it. Luckily the old father (who was the fisherman of the family, and didn't speak a word of english) was still there. I explained my situation which he somehow understood, and he turned the restaurant lights on for me. I couldn't find the key anywhere so I again tried to ask him for a torch. Remarkably, again he understood and went back into his house, to soon return with torch. I said I needed to have a look down the beach and promised to return the torch as soon as possible.

When I got back to the part of the beach where I thought I might have dropped it I turned on the torch and began to search. It was still going to be a one in a million thing to find it, as it had probably been buried in the sand. I persisted though, possibly because of the thought of the consequences that might occur if I couldn't find it.

When we were close to giving up hope, my eye caught a reflection
coming from the ground. Looking closer, I saw what looked like a ring poking out of the sand. I pulled the ring up and sure enough, af the end of the ring was my single, tiny, motorbike key. I said 'no way' to Denh and showed her the little miracle. She was amazed and after a little celebration I ran back to the restaurant to give back the torch. The old man was waiting for me. I gave him 5000 VND for his help (about 50c) and he was stoked.

I returned to the parking area, we got on our bike and rode off into the night...

We just finished dinner, which wasn't bad, but we had to endure Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" on repeat for the whole hour or so we were there! Painful!!

Today we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels which was pretty cool. Denh had no trouble crawling around in the 1 metre high tunnels but I almost got stuck a couple of times. It is pitch black down there in parts. After the tunnels we were taken to the shooting range. Milani, if you're reading this it costs 100,000 Dong for 10 bullets, that's less than 1 aussie dollar each. We decided to refrain but were still deafened.

In the afternoon we went to the War Remnants museum which is pretty horrific actually. We also got a tour of Saigon by 'Cyclo' which was pretty cool except for the pollution and dirt that gets in your eyes.

I have tried 3 of the local beers so far and I think Halida is by far the best (out of Tiger, 333 and Halida). I think it's best I sample them all though, just to be sure.

And lastly, HAPPY FATHERS DAY NELLO & SANG!!