China - bringing out the worst in us!

I'm not sure if our loyal blog followers out there have detected a change in tone in our last few posts? Just in case you have I thought that we might owe you an explanation.

We have been in China for a month now and I think that we have a developed "China Sickness", this disease is caused by a combination of factors, including but not in order of importance:

• the pollution
• Shanghai zoo
• having a sick belly most of the time
• the inability to speak the language
• being pushed out of the way
• being stepped on
• the sound people make before they are about to spit
• the sound people make as they spit
• slipping over in peoples spit
• China Dailys (newspaper) view of the world according to the party
• people staring at you
• people ripping you off
• being poked in the eyes with umbrellas
• oily Chinese food
• CCTV9 the only English TV station
• taxi drivers pretending not to understand you when you only want to go a few km's
• weird STD lotion sachets in hotel rooms
• smoking, especially in internet cafes
• not letting people off the train before you get on
• the little green man not meaning that its safe to cross the road

In order to combat "China sickness" we have in turn developed a few strategies to make ourselves feel better, including and not in order of importance:

• eat lots of steamed buns
• keep your elbows out at all times
• lower your shoulder when anyone walks into you
• if someone whacks you in the head with their umbrella, whack them back
• laugh at the badly translated English signs eg "*$%# the vegetables" and "carefully slipping"
• take it in turns to be sick
• cry at the post office
• see Kungfu Panda at the movies
• say "nehow" to little kids that are obviously dying to talk to you
• make friends with little girls on overnight trains
• eat sunflower seeds
• spit whenever/wherever you need to
• visit sights where there are no Chinese tourists
• drink Carlsberg beer in a Aussie sports pub
• drink Aussie beer in an Irish pub
• eat home cooked lasagna served with mash potatoes
• Starbucks and KFC

Despite all these measures after a month in the country and visiting 3 big cities in a row unfortunately "China sickness has taken a grip on both of us, its kind of like when the "nothingness" destroys Fantastica in the Neverending Story. I can think of no other way to describe our helpless situation.

I had a little altercation with a lady and her umbrella in my eye yesterday at the Terracotta Warriors, just in case you were wondering no it was not raining! This was the last straw for me. I do realise that in a country where the population is over a billion getting what you want could sometimes be a tad difficult. It seems that people here are so obsessed by the fact that they are one of a billion that they have somewhere along the line forgotten that they are one of a billion (ie that other people exist too). They are too obsessed with pushing everyone else out of the way to realise that other people matter. Not to mention the spitting.

So what to do? I think the Village People had the answer when they sang "Go West". So tonight we head off on a mega train journey (36 hours) from Xian to Turpan in search of blue skies and a Chinese tourist free zone.

Don't get me wrong here, we are having a great holiday. However dear reader please realise that the cultural awareness that we have developed in China has bought out the worst in us.

But as they say "if you can't beat them join them!" (imagine the sound of me hocking up some phlegm in the background).

The Great Wall, Simatai, China

What holiday to China would be complete without a visit to the great wall?

We thought ours would so we traveled 3 hours by mini bus to the Simatai section of the wall. I had heard from a whiny American tourist that it had taken her 3 hours to climb to the top of this section and it was the hardest thing she had ever done, once I got a look at her trashy make up and her stick insect legs I figured that it couldn't possibly be that hard. I was almost wrong.

We started climbing at 9am at the car park and made it to tower 12 (the top) at about 10.45am. It was almost 2 hours of very hot sweaty slogging up uneven steps or very slippery ramps. Luckily we were aided by Action Man and his friend, middle aged farmers from the village down the road. The local farmers earn some extra cash by helping tourists up and down the wall and then getting them to buy souvenirs from them at outrageous prices.

Action man had the biggest calves I have ever seen on a Chinese man, his real name was Li Cheng Jun, he was Brock's mascot for the day and thought that I was incredibly beautiful, even when I had a big sweat patch on the arse of my shorts! He did a great job at taking photos of both of us posing all over the wall though, thanks Action man (Mr Li).

My mascot for the day was his friend the lovely Wan Xuo Ping. Who held my hand up and down all the steep bits and kept asking me if I was OK even though she was puffing and panting more than I was. I swear by the time we reached tower 10, I could hear her heart beating. I was a little worried that she was going to have a heart attack and we would be carrying her down to the cable car.

No one had a heart attack and the view from tower 12 was pretty amazing. But I'm not sure if I have ever sweated that much before. Eventually we bought an over priced T-shirt that says "I climbed the Great Wall" and very over priced post cards from our mascots and then took the flying fox across the lake back to the car park which cut a whole 10 minutes walking off our journey - yippee! Actually the flying fox was very exciting mainly due to the fact I though I was going to plunge to my death as they hadn't screwed my carribeena closed! They have different standards of OH&S here in China, that and hygiene and personal space.......the list goes on but I shan't continue.

The great wall was a wee ripper, I also won't mention the smog that it was shrouded in as I think Brock already has that covered.

The great [ed.] American President Mr R. Nixon himself on his historic 1972 visit to China also managed to take in the sights of the great wall, although I'm sure he would have gone to the Badaling section as that is the more touristy bit. He was here on a 8 week public relations extravaganza with his wife. When asked to make a comment about the wall he said "I think that you would have to conclude that this is a great wall," I think that he was pretty on the mark with that one, and then to top it all off "and it had to be built by a great people." I'm not sure if he knew that Emperor Qin who ordered the wall to be built and also the construction of the terracotta warriors in Xian was a tyrannical megalomaniac or if he just didn't say so because it would have been bad for PR!

President Nixon and the "Week that changed the world"

Zaijian Beijing

Today we say goodbye to the host city of the 2008 Olympics and the centre of the entire Chinese universe, Beijing. Whilst we have enjoyed some parts of it, the pollution in this city is enough to make someone want to stop breathing, or at least write a few ranting postcards (sorry HB).

We have had a great time trying out the local delicacy of Beijing Duck (Peking Duck as we know it), shopping for iPods and cool looking jackets at the fake markets, climbing the great wall and meeting up with mates to watch the footy, but everything we have done has been shrouded in an ever present cloak of pollution - a think hazy smog that reduces visibility to about 500 metres on a good day and about 100 metres most days we've been here. Ask any local about it and "Oh that's not pollution, it's just the weather here" or "it's a haze due to the heat and some cloud" or some other line of rubbish they are fed by the local media or party official.



In fact it is largely man made emissions made up of vehicle exhaust (mostly nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide), volatile organic compounds (aldehydes, benzine, hydrocarbons produced by things like building materials, paints and smoke) and direct sunlight that reacts with the other 2 emissions in a complex ballet of chemistry that someone other than I can probably explain, to produce ozone. The ozone merrily hangs around in the air and staunchly refuses to dissipate until something like rain or wind turns up to clear the air. Beijing is at a natural disadvantage when it comes to airborne smog as it is partly encircled by mountains that are effective at keeping the wind away in summer. Basically until it gets windy or starts to rain the smog will sit around over the city slowly but surely killing it's inhabitants and friendly tourists, like Michelle and I.

And this is the impasse I have arrived at in Beijing. It is a huge city, literally falling over itself with magnificent, ancient cultural relics, steeped in history and should be on the verge of becoming one of the great cities of the world. But it is completely miserable because you can hardly see your hand in front of your face at noon. Anyone who has been in Melbourne when there is a really big bushfire going around Victoria will know the feeling of looking up at the sun and seeing its pale gold outline through the smoke. Beijing has been like this for the last 5 days and will remain so until it rains. Perhaps I'm being harsh, judging the city on a such a brief stay but I am here with their Olympics pollution controls in full effect and I can't wait to leave. The rest of the world will no doubt judge Beijing on the 2 weeks of the games and if it doesn't rain and get windy soon all anyone like me will talk about is the fact that you could hardly see any of the events for the pollution. Frankly I think they are on a hiding to nothing - I mean there's a freaking coal power plant the size of Yallourn B and Loy Yang put together 10 or 15 km's from the centre of the city so they could probably take every car off the road and ban people from burning anything (they use coal for cooking!) and the smog would still come...

As you can probably tell this place is getting me down, but things are looking up. We have officially started the 3rd phase of our trip with the joining of the tour along the silk road. From Beijing to Tashkent in Uzbekistan we will travel about 50,000km's by train heading west into Central Asia.

Tonight we board a 12 hour train trip to Xi'an, which is the home of the terracotta warriors and the ancient capital of many of the Chinese Dynasties up until the 14th Century. Apparently the cloud of death extends down there as well, but it's meant to be a super place so I'm looking forward to the change. And from there, we strike west again on a 36 hour train trip to the Gobi Desert and Turpan and Kashgar. Apart from actually being in China these places have almost nothing in common with the China we have seen so far which is extremely exciting!

We have heaps more unreal adventures to blog about so stay tuned for some more stories about our excellent adventures!

Beijing Pollution Links and reading for those interested

Pollution China
Age story about Chinese Pollution

Giant Panda Research and Breeding Facility, Chengdu

We chose to make Chengdu in Sichuan our stop off between Yunnan Province and our Yangtze river cruise. It was a relatively short train ride (4 hours) to Chongquin the starting point for cruise, but more interestingly its the best place in China to see the Giant Pandas in captivity.

We headed out to the Panda park at 7.30am to get there in time to see them feeding. The first Pandas that we saw were a group of juveniles that were between 2 and 4 years old, two of them were sleeping and the third was running around poking them trying to get them to play.

The next group of Pandas we saw were 4 adults who were of mature breeding age, they were munching on their bamboo and having a great time wrestling and pushing each other into the ditch that surrounded their enclosure.

What stole the show though was the enclosure with the 1-2 yer old pandas. There were about 10 of them and they were all very keen to play, they chased their keeper around the enclosure and wrestled and chewed on each others ears. It was very entertaining stuff, we could of watched them all day except they don't play for much of the day, they mainly eat and sleep so I guess that would have got a bit boring eventually.

We checked out the Red Pandas as well, which kind of look like a bear crossed with a racoon, they are about the size of a medium dog but their long tails and striking markings make them very beautiful creatures.

There are abuot 2000 Giant Pandas left in the world, 500 of them are in captivity. The Chinese have set up a sucessful breeding programme and now have an almost 50% survival rate for cubs born in captivity (in the wild it is much much less). They use artificial insemination in most cases as Pandas will not mate unless they are "in love". So a Panda in the wild that does not meet its ideal mate and fall in love will just live and then die a solitary life. Another problem that faces the wild Pandas is habitat, every 20 years or so the bamboo that they eat flowers and dies, this destroys vast areas of bamboo and if the Pandas are not able to find another bamboo forrest they too will die. Because the Chinese have cleared so much land for buildings and farmland it is nearly impossible for the Pandas to move from one area with bamboo to another as they just aren't connected anymore.

We were very impressed by the breeding programe that they have in Chengdu and the Pandads seemed very happy in their enclosures, even with all the smog around them.

We got some excellent photos, enjoy! (click on the panda - he's a link to the album)

Chengdu - Panda Park

Halfway!

Hi Everyone

Well today (or perhaps last Wednesday..) is our halfway point in the trip! We've now been in China longer than any of the other countries and geez do we know it. China is great, but it's hard work.

The blog is coming along nicely, you will no doubt have noticed the slideshow on the right hand side with a link to all the photos we have uploaded so far. We've recently begun to put captions on the photos, and there's some pretty funny stuff let me tell you.

We've also added a map with places we've been and a rough timeline which I think is pretty cool so check it out! Eventually I may cross reference the posts with the little markers and embed some photos, but not today.

As a brief non in depth update on what's been happening, we're currently in Shanghai until the 22nd of July whilst our visa's get an extension. I guess 5 working days means 5 entire working days to the Chinese Bureaucracy...

After the bus trip from hell we spent 3 days in Kunming (check the map) where we walked around and went to the movies twice and then got a bus with a very sleepy bus driver to Dali which is a nice old city. We spent about 2 days there and then travelled to Lijiang where we checked out the sights, went on a death march around town and then walked Tiger Leaping Gorge - post from Shell coming soon ;)

At Lijiang we had organised a cruise through the 3 Gorges along the Yangtze river starting the 11th July so we saved oursleves a couple of days travel by flying to Chengdu on the 9th. We went and saw the Panda's, learnt to play Mahjong and hung out and then got the train to Chonqing where the cruise started.

The cruise was pretty ace (deserving of its own post) and we made some excellent friends including Sandra and Camilla from Denmark and Dan and Andrea from the US, who live and work in Tianjin and bought a cot off my cousin who is the principal of the school where thier children go. My aunty also teaches there.. small world, eh?

Once the cruise was up we got a 25 hour train from Yichang to Shanghai (post on the way from Shell!) and now we are in Shanghai, staying a little out of town in a pretty crappy hostel. We thought we'd be here for maybe 4 or 5 days but that got set to 7 by the PSB who currently have our passports while they extend our visas.

Our chinese is coming along nicely, we are a bit sick of the oily food and the spitting and general manner of the man in the street is different to what we are used to. Which is strange as every time we've had the chance to talk to someone they are all really nice and extremely interested in what we are doing and do we like China and all that sort of malarky. Yes China is a strange place. But I'm coming around to it....

The First of Many Great Chinese Sleeper Train Journeys - Yichang to Shanghai

After 3 days relaxing on the Yangtze river in style aboard the President number 6, we rushed to the train station in Yichang for some ancient Chinese "sitting in plastic chairs and waiting for the train" torture only to find all the chairs were taken yet again so we had to settle for ancient Chinese "siting on concrete floor and waiting for the train while everyone stairs at you" torture instead.

The Chinese seem to have got in their heads that catching the train is like catching an international flight. They all rock up half a day before their train is due to depart and just sit around waiting, which is not at all my idea of fun, however seeing the hoards of people sitting and waiting for a train that is due to leave in 5 hours is quite a phenomenon.

On this occasion there was no friendly university students wanting to practice their English on us so we just sat on out bags, had staring competitions with the hoards and waited. About 45 minutes before the train is set to depart people get up and start queuing at the designated gate in the waiting room which is also quite a phenomenon. We choose to wait till the gate is open and then just tack on the end of the line and walk straight thought the gate and onto the train, but hey what would we know!

Once our gate was open we headed for the train, which was about 800m long, it was amazing. We had tickets in a hard sleeper carriage, bunks are 3 beds high, 6 beds per section and 66 beds per carriage with toilet at each end, wash basins and hot water and a friendly lady conductor who did her best to keep the toilet smelling nice, the bins empty and swept and mopped the floor so many times that we lost count.

We boarded the train at 1407 and found that somehow due to the lack of our ability to read or speak Chinese we had 2 top bunks in different sections, we sat on a lower bunk for as long as we could but as the train got fuller and fuller were evicted from our relatively comfortable positions.

We retreated to the little seats along the ailse and started playing connect 4 (thanks Nicole) a young Chinese guy (now known as YCG) who had a bed opposite mine invited himself to play with us, so Brock taught him the game and then I played him for the next 3 hours untill he started to beat me!

At this point where my game was faltering the 10 year old Chinese girl (who will now be known as Kylie - I'll explain this later!) who was sharing a bed in Brock's section had got out her how to speak English reader and was staring at me longingly. So I ditched the connect 4 and YCG and engaged in some impromptu English lessons with Kylie, the whole carriage was fairly well entertained by our English lesson, people walked past and smiled, others stared and the condutor lady stopped for a chat and to watch for while. Once we had exhausted the possibilitys of the Engish reader we did some maths which Kylie was exceptionally good at, she was faster at working out multilication than I was at checking her answers!



Once we were exhausted with sounding out words and arithmatic it was time for dinner, everyone filled up their paper prepackaged noodle soup bowls with boiling water and slurped away. Kylie was so pleased that she had bought the same green packet of chicken noodles that I did. It was sweet of her to get so exceited over noodles that wern't that great because I could taste the MSG, but for 80cents for your dinner you can't really complain too much I suppose.

After dinner we took some very funny photos, Kylie took care of the fingers protruding from the back of peoples heads in every photo. Once again the friendly condutor lady stopped to have a look at what we were doing and a giggle. After the photos there was free food, from YCG - the trumpet NBA chips were the best. And from Kylie and her grandma we got given little jelly fruits things that you suck out of the packets, fresh peanuts that Kylie shelled for us, sponge cake covered in chocolate and rice crackers.

Kylie insisted that we give her an English name as she didn't have one, so I picked Kylie as its such a good Aussie name. Her actual Chinese name is Luo Yan Ran, Brock and I have a terrible memory for Chinese names so we were pretty happy when she wanted and English one. We asked her to give us Chinese names, so for me she picked Li Li (beautiful, beautiful) and for Brock she chose Nan Nan (man man), I guess the names sum us up pretty well!

At 9pm we reatreated to our bunks at the top and slept very well suprisingly. In the morning I stayed in bed for as long as I could before I had to get up to go to the toilet which was still astonishingly clean. Then it was more fun and games with Kylie and another pretty little girl Arty, who was 5 but unfortunately had rotten teeth (we have seen lots of little kids like this!). We made paper cranes and drew pictures, and had more snacks. I thought the train was going to arrive at 10am in Shanghai but when 10am came and went ant we were still chugging along I went back to bed for a couple of hours. I woke to find Brock reading his book with the two little girls perched up on his bunk jabbering away at him in Chinese.

We had time for a few rounds of thumb wresting before we reached Shanghai at 2pm. We said goodbye to our new little friends and headed off to Blue Mountain Hostel for a very well earned shower - yes we both smelt very very bad!

The Bus Trip from Hell, part 2

We are sitting around waiting for a Typhoon to hit Shanghai after having had a great time in the last couple of days and a lazy Saturday morning in bed reading Huckleberry Finn and the paper and eating Wontons. Lovely. So I think I can again bring myself relive the horror of the Laos Bus Trip!!!!

So where was I?

That's right - blazing through the Laos roads (I refuse to call them highways so as not to offend real highways throughout the world) at warp speed but not actually getting anywhere. On and on we went. Around and around. Up and down and just generally jerking to a fro in a rather unpleasant manner.

Finally at about 11 am the bus driver thought it was time for a piss and simply stopped the bus in the middle of the road on the side of some mountain and the boys got out and went to it. This wasn't too much of an issue for me, what with me being an old hand at pissing in public, but for Shell it was a bit much. We were, as I said, parked in the middle of the road on the side of a mountain and there weren't any of the facilities one would generally associate with a bus toilet stop. There was the road, a mountain, some jungle, a bus and 12 leery Chinese guys trying to get a glimpse of a white woman's arse. All the blokes got to weeing on the mountain side of the bus, so poor Shell was out the cliff side and had to tramp through the jungle to get to a spot out of view of the said 12 leery Chinese.

I finished up and got on the bus, where Shell had returned in a bit of a state. To top off the stresses of having to go to the toilet off a cliff with these guys staring at her, a leech had managed to make it's way onto her shoe. She flicked it off and then couldn't find it until it reappeared on her leg! Again, she flicked it off and I heroically squashed it, but now we had to check her bum for leeches as she was convinced she'd picked up millions of them whilst taking a whizz. We did that and there weren't any but it was overall pretty difficult way to stop to go to the toilet and did nothing for Shell's parlous state of mind at the time.

By and by we got to a town called Odomaxy (or something) and stopped for lunch. The Chinese guys (from herein referred to in the non racist form of the collective noun Chinamen) jumped off the bus and stormed, or perhaps ransacked, their way into another Chinese restaurant where they proceeded to order by barging into the kitchen, shoving each other, pointing at vegetables and shouting orders at the poor waitress. We stood by watching in horror. Finally after the scrum had died down we got to ordering some fried rice and a can of Coke and sat and ate our lunch, again a bit shocked at the way these people behaved.

After about 1/2 an hour it was back on the bus and back to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which allowed us some escape from the cold, hard reality if the bus trip. So far we were about 6 hours into our bus trip and had covered maybe 120 km's and still had about 60 k's to the border which shut at 4:30pm. The road seemed to improve but I think it was just the mountains were a bit smaller and easier to navigate and by about 3:30pm we were close enough to the border to get boarded a couple of time by Laos PDR officials seeking some loose change off Chinamen that didn't have their papers in order. The bribing seemed to take a while and there were some heated arguments in a number of languages that seemed to be about the buses insurance. The Laos police didn't seem to worry about us too much but the Chinamen copped it, until finally they dragged a couple of them off the bus and machine gunned them on the ground to the cheers of all the decent people in the world!

No, wait, that didn't actually happen. That was the dream I had, having fallen asleep waiting for these clowns to get us going again. Finally we got to the border where the Chinamen all pushed in front of us at the immigration desk and then got shirty when we were the last ones to have our passports cleared, for apparently we were taking too long. This was a bit much and we called them some names in English that they didn't understand and I wont repeat here, but I think the border guard thought it was pretty funny.

So back on the bus and through the Chinese customs and immigration which was where we met the first nice Chinese person of our trip, in the guise of the guy who checked my bag for contraband and Lonely Planet guides: seriously, they confiscate LP guides as they don't include Taiwan in their map of China. Anyway I'd done a pretty good job of hiding our copy and he didn't find it, but they unwrapped everything in Shell's bag and it took a little while to get it all over with.

By and by we were back on the bus and the change country's was as stark as it was instant. All of a sudden there were 2 lanes either way on the roads and actual cars and trucks and then we drove over a bridge and through a tunnel! Amazing stuff and the next 50 k's took us about 40 minutes as opposed to the 97 hours it would have taken in Laos.

We stopped for dinner at a town called Mengla and had some nice food and a beer and a welcome break from the Chinamen, who we thought probably aren't going to rob and kill us anymore. We had dinner and went back to the bus where some females joined our intrepid crew which had a bit of a civilising effect on the Chinamen. About 8 we were back on the road and it was back to HHGTTG on the iPod. We'd now listened to about 10 hours of radio play and luckily the batteries were holding up well. Zaphod and Ford had just stolen a spaceship from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe when we both sort of fell asleep as the sun set.

The next 11 hours passed with out me really knowing what was going on or having any conscious thought, but my addled mind recalls some weird stuff.

A bus/truck parking area with perhaps 1000 trucks all sitting there idling. We stopped to put more water in the bus. I have no idea why but each time we stopped the driver would get a hose and put lots of water into the bowels of the bus.

Another toilet stop that, again, didn't have any toilets but plenty of trucks and buses to hide amongst while you did the biz. This one was good as when we were walking back to the bus the driver lit the engines and took off with about 15 people not actually on board. Apparent;y he was just moving off the water point 30 metres but it caused a decent amount of excitement in everyone who wasn't on board.

And a market along the side of the road where we stopped for about 20 minutes for no other reason I could see than the driver wanted to smoke a few cigarettes. The market was strange as it was right on the highway, like pretty much in the overtaking lane, sold junk like t-shirts and some food and was fully staffed by people at 3:30 AM.

After that I fell asleep good and proper and didn't stir until Shell woke me up as we pulled into the Kunming bus station. We got the hell off the bus and vowed never to take another overnight bus as long as we lived. In the end, the sum of the parts of this particular bus trip were much greater then the individual events. Taken in isolation there really wasn't much to it, but put together and placed on a bus with the 12 Chinamen it was all a bit much. Put that bus in Laos and China and it was THE BUS TRIP FROM HELL!!!!!!!

Shanghai Zoo

I'm not going to say too much otherwise I will start crying. What I will say is under no circumstances go there. No actually I won't say don't go there. You read what I have to day and then you can decide yourself if its worth the visit........

After seeing the Giant Pandas at a very slick operation in Chengdu we figured that the zoo probably would be a "fun day out" as described in the Lying Planet. We wanted to get another glimpse of the Giant Pandas and there are some crazy monkeys and bright yellow mountain goat things that are native to china that we thought might be worth a look see.

So yesterday we toddled off to the zoo, we took the metro to the end of the line and then were going to walk the rest of the way. One of us forgot to pack the map which we thought would be OK as we knew we just had to walk south form the metro station. After we had walked for long enough in the blazing sunshine and 37deg heat that we thought we might like to kill each other, we hopped in a taxi and drove the rest of the way. The zoo was 40 Yuan entrance fee (about $7.50) which we thought was pretty cheap compared with Melbourne Zoo's extortionate prices. Little did we know that it was going to be cheap and crap!

Highlights or low lights of the zoo depending on how you look at it were:

• Seeing Siberian tigers
• Mislabeling of the panther and leopard (this made Brock very mad)
• the concrete waterless prison cells for pet dogs and cats including: poodles, Maltese, collies, Persians and other very sad companion animals
• seeing a boa constrictor eat a chicken
• grown man banging the glass in the aquarium to get the sea turtles to look at him
• parents forcing their children to climb the enclosure fences to get a photo closer to the animals, man eating or not
• large gonaded mice running around oblivious to their fate in the snake enclosure
• seeing the golden mountain goats that you find in north of China
• seeing Eastern Grey kangaroos (labeled as Pademellons!)
• watching a woman pour a whole bottle of lemon ice tea into the mouth of a sun bear
• watching a grown man and a small boy feed potato chips and biscuits to the golden monkeys
• the giant pandas that looked like they were so hot an miserable they would rather die

Just when we had seen enough misery and careless/ignorant human behavior, I plucked up one last ounce of courage or stupidity and went in search of the big lipped monkeys that are found in Yunnan province. We didn't find them, what we did get to see as our parting glimpse and memory of the Shanghai Zoo was 6 small Grey monkeys fighting over an empty coke bottle and a pink plastic bag that had been kindly thrown into their enclosure by a very generous passer by!

...........so you still want to go there?

The Bus From Hell - part 1

Well I promised a post on this and it has been almost two weeks, so I think I can now face up to the horrid memories of our arrival to China on - dum dum de dum - THE OVERNIGHT BUS TO KUNMING!!!!!

Frankly, looking back now with 20/20 hindsight, it seemed like a smart move. As regular readers of our adventures will know, our unexpectedly early arrival to Luang Prabang had given us some easy time in Laos and we got used to things working out. Perhaps as a result of our good fortune we wandered down to the local travel agent in LP and asked about a famed and mythical flight from Luang Prabang to Kunming in China, our next major destination. I say mythical because, although it appeared on a couple of websites and advertistments we had seen, we hadn't actually seen any proof of these flights taking place - you know, a website that would allow you to book the flight, that sort of thing.

We were keen to get on to the flight, as it would have made things super easy for getting to China. It takes just 1 1/2 hours, the planes are reliable (in warm, non icy conditions) and, for those unaware of Laotion geography and road conditions, would have prevented us having to experience first hand the untold agony of bus travel over a extremely mountainous country that doesn't have the money for expensive government spending like repairing roads built by cash from other countries.

So down to the travel agency we went and asked about the flight. "Oh no" said the lady, "that flight only operates in the busy season", which we knew we weren't in as we hadn't had to wait for anything yet in Laos (except more tourists for a tuk tuk to the waterfall).

"There's a bus direct to Kunming", she offered, which actually suited us quite well as it would have dodged the numerous problems involved in booking tickets on local buses and crossing foreign borders with no one to point us in the right direction. The only catch was that the bus took 25 hours and left at 7:30 am in the morning.

"Deal" we said and handed over the cash, to which she responded with numerous phone calls and conversations with various people in the office and standing outside on the street. Eventually we got a bit of paper and she says

"The bus leaves from the Chinese restaurant and a tuk tuk will pick you up at 6:10 AM".

Ok we said and walked off with our tickets. Only later as we walked around town did we think about what had just happened:

1. Why does the tuk tuk need to pick us up at 6:10 for a 7:30 bus? Hmm
2. Why does a international bus leave from the Chinese Restaurant? Hmmm
3. How could a 800km trip take 25 hours? Hmmm

With other activities like hill tribe treks and boat rides on the Mekong to distract us we didn't really worry too much about any of these questions and got on with life.

Until the bus trip day.

We got up early for our appointed pick up at 6:10 AM and checked out of our nice, friendly hostel and jumped into the tuk tuk that turned up pretty much on time. Now having considered the question of why the pick up was an hour and a half before the bus left the previous night a few solutions were offered. Maybe the Chinese restaurant was heaps out of town. Maybe they were going to cook us a nice breakfast before our long ardous trip. Maybe the tickets we had didn't gaurantee our spot on the bus and the only way to make sure was turn up really early and make our way onto the bus by force. Bingo!

We arrived at the Chinese restaurant at 6:20, which included a detour to the office where we had booked the tickets (thus denouncing the first theory). We walked into the dining area that was a kind of open air restaurant with a roof. Now allow me to describe the scene we were greeted with: It was a bit like a bar in an old western movie, with lots of gruff, in this case chinese guys, sitting around smoking and playing cards. At a table were a couple of mean looking guys with phones (instead of 6 shooters) and a girl with a small metal box who appeared to be the bursar for this operation. At the front of the restaurant there were about 6 big, clean looking buses with Luang Prabang - Kunming written on the sides, so at least that much was promising, but instead of seats they had beds, which we didn't know when we booked the bus.

Anyway no one really paid us any attention at all, including the waiting staff, so we sat down and watched a strange ballet performed by the gruff looking men with phones and our tuk tuk driver who immediatly got into a loud and protrated conversation in Laotion, apparently concerning our tickets for the bus, that involed many loud shouts and gestures, puncuated by frequent phone calls. We were midly concerned but we'd paid our money so we thought there wouldn't be any problems. I was hungry so set off down the street in search of some sticky rice for breakfast since there didn't seem to be any chance of anyone at the restaurant serving us. That much was easy and I got some rice and returned expecting Shell to have the tickets but no dice. Still the tuk tuk driver argued and made funny facial expressions and still the gruff Chinese guys talked loudly and smoked cigarettes.

It was getting on to about 7 AM now so we were starting to get a bit anxious. Finally the tuk tuk driver came over smiling and handed us our tickets saying we had seats 7 and 9 and with that he shot through. One of the gruff men had started to put one of the buses through its warm up paces (which include filling part of the undercarriage with heaps of water. I have no idea why...) so we thought this might not be that hard after all.

About 7:30 there seemed to be more Chinese guys materialise and head for the bus so we followed and got on board. Now here I need to explain the sleeper buses are a bit strange. They have a sort of bunk array with beds that are about 5' 9'' in length with a sheet, a small doona and a small pillow. The left hand side of the bus was double beds, about 4 foot in width and the tight hand side was single beds that were maybe 2 1/2 feet wide, both sides with a row of top bunks that were just low enough to prevent a human sitting up.

Maybe here I should introduce our China bus companions. There were 10 stinky, fat middle aged Chinese guys that smoked incessantly (in the bus!) and talked loudly with plenty of leering in our direction. We were, again, a little bit worried but didn't think too much of it. We took our double bed/seat and, with the iPod and some books at the ready, thought we were good to go.

But we didn't. We sat there for 20 minutes while the stinky guys carried on until eventually, about 8:40 AM a tuk tuk turned up and 2 more fat, stinky, middle aged chinese guys got on the bus and allowed us to leave. Thanks for being on time guys!

The bus took off at warp speed through the crowed streets with some really amazing driving. This bus was obviously far more powerful than the avarage Laotion tractor or bronze age, kerosene powered mini bus and this guy made full use of it. Flat out on the wrong side of the road around every blind turn, overtaking through crowded market places and generally keeping the trend of the morning going. It did, however, have a calming effect on the passengers and at least they shut up and stopped smoking for a bit. We were both feeling a bit too ill to do anything other than lie there so I put the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy radio play on the iPod and we both zoned out.

The bus carrerred onwards through the Laotion mountains.

Coming up next in part 2 of the bus trip from hell, the bus stops for a toilet break in leech infested mountains, we stop at another Chinese Restarant for lunch and we hit the border!

We are both hungry now for a Sichian hot pot so I will finish this some other time....

The rain in China falls mainly on the plain, and the mountain and the valley, and the plateau

Rain, rain, rain and guess what? More rain!

Today is our 5th day in China and it's the 5th day it has rained. Not Vietnamese monsoonal rains, but constant drizzly Melbourne in May or perhaps October rain that is ever present and very wet. We are in Yunnan province which is one of the southernmost areas of China and home to Tiger Leaping Gorge, lots if Ethnic sub groups and the totally excellent Brothers Jiang restaurant in Kunming where they serve the best Across The Bridge noodles (named across the bridge because the guy that named them had to go across the bridge from his house to get them...) either Shell or I have ever tasted.

We got here via a 25 hour overnighting bus extravaganza from Luang Prabang which has set the standard in terms of painful and surreal travel experiences. Whilst it's probably deserving of it's own post (in the near future - coming soon!) it's suffice to say that anyone who reckons it's exciting or adventurous to cross remote land borders is either

a) an idiot;
b) a masochist; or
c) both

Maybe I'm being harsh but the pain is still fresh in my mind.

Anyway, getting back to China, what we have seen so far is great! I am now a great admirer of the Chinese Road and Rail infrastructure. The toilet infrastructure, in general, needs some prompt attention.

We got to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, at about 8 am in the morning and went straight to our hostel where we managed to wash the stench of the bus ride off us and go and do some exploring around town. Yunnan is on the footstep of the Tibetan plateau, averaging about 1900m elevation for most of the middle and northern parts of the province. The higher altitude gives the benefit of milder temperatures, which when mixed with incessant rain and spending a month in the tropics means that we are cold. As for Kunming it is a standard big city with traffic and a nice park that we walked around and also a nice cinema where we watched Kung Fu Panda one day, and then Hancock the next.

Not terribly exciting, but it did have the Across the Bridge noodles at the Brothers Jiang restaurant which gave us our first real view of Chinese manners in a busy situation: There are none! This restaurant basically just does these noodles (actually a noodle soup) and the locals love it, so much so they arrive in their thousands at midday and wrestle each other for seats. The way it works is thus:

1. Pay for your food outside, sight unseen and, as every thing's written in Chinese, possibly not what you are after. But pay nonetheless
2. Enter the dining area, which is roughly equivalent to a rugby scrum, and try and find a non existent seat
3. Get dragged by a waiter into another section of the restaurant, where he tries to claim some seats for you but with no luck
4. Stalk people who look like they might be finishing their food, getting ready to pounce on the seats. Just like a really busy carpark at Chadstone
5. Panic, telling yourself (or your husband/wife) that you don't understand how this works and we will never get our food and do you think they will give us our money back...
6. Finally get waved down by a good Samaritan who gives you his seats as he and his mate leave
7. Have a waitress snatch your receipt from you and replace it with 1 large plate of raw meat, 1 small plate of vegetables, 1 small plate of nibblies such as cashew nuts and pickles, and a bowl of the freshest noodles you have ever seen.
8. Have same waitress dump a 3 litre pot of boiling stock in front of you.
9. Add meat, followed by vegies and noodles
10. Enjoy!

It was really stressful, but really good food. We also had another top shelf meal in Kunming but as for the rest of the food, the oil the Chinese put in EVERYTHING is starting to take it's toll on our health and sanity when it comes to eating. Other things that are weird are the mass spitting that takes place in all public places by Chinese people. Everybody, and I mean everybody, lets fly with a big hock and grolly combo at any and every opportunity. Yesterday Shell and I were having a quiet cup of tea in Dali and a little 5 year old kid walking along with Grandma pulled out a beauty and Nanna didn't even bat an eyelid. Very disturbing.

But it's not all bad. We are enjoying ourselves, having spent a couple of days in the Ancient Bai capital of Dali which was pretty and had wicked walls surrounding the old city. Also our mandarin is coming along nicely. Between the two of us we have mastered:

• Hello
• Goodbye
• Thankyou
• Yes
• No
• Excuse me
• Steamed Rice
• Bill (as in restaurant bill)
• Toilet
• Numbers 1 - 99 (more or less)

It's quite a lot of fun. Well that's enough lists and anecdotes from me. Hopefully the rain clears up and we can walk Tiger Leaping Gorge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Leaping_Gorge) on Monday and Tuesday and then after that we head off to Chengdu to check out the Pandas.