Transportation

End of the Burma Road

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Sunday Dec 1-3 2002
Arrived at Kunming from Guilin after 23 hours on the train. We had gained considerable elevation throughout the night. We took a taxi to the Camellia Hotel where we booked a triple room. Driving through the city�s nice clean wide streets in the cool fresh air at high elevation, we were reminded of Denver Colorado.

Jana went to the Kunming Museum. She was given some pictures and documents by a former co-worker that his father had saved from thetime that he worked as an engineer on the Burma Road…the road ended at Kunming and Jana thought there might be a depository of artifacts in the museum. This was the famous 1000km dirt road that was carved out of the mountains from Lashio Burma to Kunming in 1937-38 during WWII with virtually no equipment. It would provide the US forces, in a bid to keep China from falling to Japan, a way of getting supplies into China. Today, Renmin Xilu marks the end of the road in Kunming.

Jana was invited to an inner office to talk to the curator who was very pleased with the addition to the museum collection and of course Jana was extremely pleased that her mission was successful!

At a nearby Pizzeria/used book/cafe for dinner and I found �Behind The Wall,� a travel book about China in the 80�s by the British author Colin Thubron.

Wednesday Dec 4
We feel we have yet to experience local Chinese peasant life…the large cities of Guangshau, Guilin and Kunming are very western cities full of commerce and big upscale hotels and restaurants….all close to the business centers of Hong Kong. We are anxious to get into the countryside. We have seen very few Western tourists-certainly no Americans-but there are many Chinese tourists.

Yangshuo

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Friday November 29 2002
The annual Fish Festival began today. The fish festival celebrates the Cormorant fisher birds who dive for fish from fishermen’s boats they perch on but because of their small throats and a metal ring put around the throat by the fishermen they cannot swallow the fish. The fishermen then take the fish out of their mouths; it is amazing that the birds don’t fly off with the fish.

There was a dragon parade through the town; Jana and I watched some Chinese rock singers and a beer drinking contest; guy from Britain entered but didn’t win, he said, because the beer was warm and hard to swallow. We will run across him a couple more times on the tourist trail. We watched great fireworks in the country that invented them late into the evening on the roof of a restaurant.

One of the many signs for English teachers seen in China: Wanted teachers of English, ASAP, for one month to one year, free bed, food, air ticket, free Chinese lessons, 2500 to 4000 Yuan a month payment, work visa, call 1-390-773-7533 Contact Owen at Buckland College.

Saturday Nov 30
Walked to the bus station with our backpacks to catch a bus back to Guilin so we could catch the train to Kunming by 11:30am. The “Hard Sleeper,” which was about half the cost of a “Soft Sleeper” meant six beds in a compartment with no door. There is supposed to be no smoking on the trains in China but the men smoke anyway and the smoke drifts into the compartments. Our compartment contained a Chinese couple (he with cell phone and large voice) and a nice Chinese guy (all with no English) on one side and Bob, Jana and I on other side.

A friendly Swedish couple in a nearby compartment was good for some interesting conversation about their socialist government which they said works very well there. In the compartment next to us was an older mother and a child with it’s grandparents. The child wore knitted garments with a split crotch for potty-going. No diapers are worn by babies in most of Asia. Maybe we should ask Asian mothers about potty training…probably wouldn’t work in the West, however, because Asian mothers keep their babies with them constantly.

That evenng we went to the dining car for dinner. After ordering (and paying before the meal) we waited a good hour for dinner. When the train made a stop and the waiters debarked we became concerned and asked the new staff for our dinner. They were prepared to ignore us until a nice Chinese man eating at the next table spoke rather strongly to the wait staff about our situation. We think the old staff worked a scam…taking off with the money themselves. We ended up with a nice meal but don’t know if the new staff was stuck with the cost of the meal or not…one of the many mysteries we will witness in China.

The next day as I was walking back down the aisle from the filthy and foul smelling squat toilet at the end of the carriage, I heard hacking, caughing and spitting. I looked up to see the old grandfather next to us spitting on the rug in the aisle. Grossed out again!

To Guangzhou China

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Friday November 22 2002 Hong Kong to Guangshou
Across the street to noodle shop for breakfast. Sat with woman who worked as a buyer for a British department store & whose English was very good.

When Bob tried to get Hong Kong dollars from an ATM the message he received was that his account was empty eliciting possible cardiac arrest; went to internet again and, panicky, checked his account through the internet. All was well.

Picked up our passports with Chinese visas right on time from the hotel receptionist and checked out…no messing around…the maid was right there at 12:00 sharp asking us to be out. Think these places have been conditioned by unscrupulous backpackers.

Took taxi to train station for new fast two-hour train to one of mainland China�s big cities of commerce, Guanzshou in neighboring Guangdong Province.

Three China Travel Service (CTS) guys met us in the Guanzshou train station; Biggest Professional Hustle we�ve seen yet; with great confidence and aggresiveness they took us to a desk where they explained the train route from Guanzshou to Guilin; they took us to CTS office (state sponsored China Tour Company where they ran in and bought our train tickets… on the way telling
us they had a cheaper hotel on Shamian Dao Island-the tourist section-but we declined. So they took us to a modest Chinese run hotel near the big international hotels. Probably paid a commission for the train ticket but it would have been a big hassle to try to communicate to the railroad ticket seller which ticket we wanted and the ride to the hotel was free so all in all we felt OK about being touted that day.

The ($30 hotel room had three beds, worn carpet, but had TV with no English programming and a telephone; the bathroom was grimy with mold on the floors and walls. All they had to do, Jana and I told each other, was douse the whole room with bleach! A lady at a desk outside the room kept our key and gave us hot drinking water in a thermos for tea (as they do at all Chinese hotels).

Saturday November 23
Buffet Breakfast at upscale Garden Hotel; I looked for American Press and Cultural Club that was listed on a hotel kiosk but couldn’t find it; we laughed-thinking the club was a cover for the CIA!

Took taxi to the Shamian Dao Island-the tourist area with shops and cafes. Bob made friends with Sherry at Sherry’s Place and bought two T-shirts (one saying “No Money” and the other saying “Love” in Chinese) and cap with Chinese lettering saying Macho Man (Hero). What else is there to say? Saw kerchief with marijuana leaves on it…we laughed and told her what it was…she looked it up in her Chinese dictionary and was mortified.

On the street in front of the shop talked to a friendly outgoing older guy with suspenders and pot belly from Indiana and his young Chinese wife he met through a friend living in China; he had written to her for awhile and then made the trip to China and brought her over on a fiance visa…married 7 years with a 4 year old boy. The 65 year old gu said he had the easiest job in the world at Chrysler (probably sales) and had no plans to retire. Wife used to have a shop in the upscale White Swan Hotel on the island where Communist Party heads used to meet.

Orange squash drink and iced coffee at Lucy’s Cafe; Bob made friends with Paula the waitress. Bob and Jana entertained a group of school girls 17-20 who wanted to practice English.

Watched large group of young kids…some with wanna be baggy pants and stocking hats… all waiting to enter an MTV karaoke hall.

Practically every male smokes…difficult to get away from it.

Westerners Go In The Back

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Thursday November 21 2002
Reading “The Coming Collapse of China,” a book written by a Chinese American economist…a dissenting opinion…he gives China five years to get their banking system in order…which he doubts will happen.

At breakfast at small noodle shop up the street in Hong Kong, seated at back table again. Waited for the waiter to clean off all the surrounding tables and then he finally came to take our order…hmmmm.

Arranged for Chinese Visa; Bob told the ladies that he picked Jana and I up off the street; another lady who heard this stuck her head out a door to see who it was that was picked up! Bob’s sense of humor will get us into trouble yet.

Took the Star Ferry from Kowloon across the bay to Hong Kong Island and took a cable car to the top of Victoria Peak for an incredible view of the city. Rode a double decker bus on it’s route through the city center; got off and tried to find a dim sum restaurant…but Bob was steered to a Japanese sushi restaurant instead so we figured he must be pronouncing dim sum wrong. Finally found dim sum (pronounced din sin in China) restaurant. Managed to order a few dishes from the waitress but never did get the rice.

By the time we boarded the ferry back to Kowloon it was dark and the buildings were lit…Christmas lights beginning to go up…rivals New York & San Francisco.

Hong Kong

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Wednesday November 20 2002
We flew to Hong Kong from Bangkok on China Airways at 3pm…a one hour time change. We noticed the metal spoon and fork that came with our food service but with plastic knife instead of a metal one…

I am always forgetting to fill out departure and arrival cards and you would think I�d have memorized my passport number by now! Difficulty finding information about bus and train to Hong Kong; finally found an ATM after a fashion. On the way out of the airport we saw guy in suit squatting, talking on his cell phone: past and present.

A very plush train took about 15 minutes to travel to Kowloon Hong Kong (vs. the bus that took one hour) but was about $10 each. A young professional woman with a badge walked very slowly through the train carriages casing everyone…watching for what…?

Garden Lee Guesthouse Cameron Road
We had made a reservation via email with Charlie Chan, the manager, for a Y400 (8 Yuan to the dollar) a night triple but when we arrived we were informed the triple was not available so they gave us two doubles for the same price. We were given a handful of keys…key to street enclosure; lift to eighth floor; key to hall door in entry; key to room just a little larger than a double bed; key to valuables drawer…

Applied for a multiple entry 90 day visa through the guesthouse. Then we got something to eat at small noodle shop up the street; were taken to the very back and seated.

Impressed by cleanliness and orderliness of the city; was told that plain clothed police patrol the tourist areas and fine anyone tossing garbage Y600. Little old ladies with brooms and dustpans keep the gutters clean just like the cities of SE Asia.

Bob and I sat on the steps of guesthouse and waited for Jana who came in from the airport on the bus about 11:30pm. Then went across the street to noodle shop so Jana could get something to eat; seated at the very back again…

Siem Reap

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My original plan was to take a boat up the Mekong River in Cambodia to the Lao border and then on up through Laos but I kept hearing reports about the opening and closing of the border and you have to pay off the guards to let you through and someone reported they had to pay $200 and if they don’t let you through for some reason that day and then you are faced with coming all the way down the Mekong back to Phnom Penh and starting over in another direction so I said the heck with it and decided to do the “tourist route” to Siem Reap instead.

Siem Reap
While Bob took a bus to the Thai border and then on to Bangkok, I took a fast boat down the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) to Siem Reap, a sleepy village famous for it’s many wats (temples and monasteries) especially the biggest-Angkor Wat-but fast becoming a major tourist destination. Most of the people sat on the roof of the boat for the four hour trip through marshes and past entire villages on stilts.

I spent an entire day on a motorcycle taxi going from one temple to another that was built between the 9th and 14th centures in the middle of the jungle when the Khmer civilisation was at the height of its creativity.

Angkor is one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. Stretching over some 400 sq. km, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century. These include the famous Temple of Angkor Wat and, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple with its countless sculptural decorations. UNESCO has set up a wide-ranging programme to safeguard this symbolic site and its surroundings.

You could easily spend a week or more here seeing all the monuments. Most temples are actually little more than ruins…blocks of carved volcanic and sandstone rock lying in piles at the foot of the remaining structures. Much of Angkor’s finest statuary is stored inside conservation warehouses because of the danger of theft. In some monuments such as Ta Prohm, where a French movie company was filming the few days I was there, the jungle has stealthily waged an all-out invasion with bare tree roots spilling out and over the walls.

I had a Cambodian roast chicken and vermicelli salad late lunch at Les Artisans D’Angkor, a small artisan shop and cafe amazingly situated directly opposite Angkor. I thought of my friend Jana who visited here in the 60’s and wondered how the town had changed since then. My day ended taking pictures of the sun setting pink on the face of the dark stone of Angkor Wat.

I had had my fill of war museums in Vietnam and Phnom Penh so I avoided the War Museum in Siem Reap with an exhibition of Soviet and Chinese Mi-8 helicoptors, Mig 19 destroyers, T 54 Tanks and US 105mm artillery. You could also see an artificial minefield here, the brochure says. My motorcyle driver did pull onto the grounds of a Buddhist temple on the way back from Angkor that displayed a glassed-in pagoda filled with bones and skulls that could be viewed from all four sides.

Back in my hotel I spent some time organizing photos on my computer…we have some really wonderful ones of people…especially women and children. I gave a two hour English lesson to one of the Khmer girls that worked in the kitchen of the guesthouse where I was staying.

Finally, after five days, it came time to leave Siem Reap so I regretfully said goodbye to Arnfinn and his Khmer staff and left the simple and elegant Earthwalker Guesthouse that was built and managed by a young Norwegian cooperative and made my way down a dirt road out to the highway with my pack on my back to flag down a motorcycle taxi for the 10 minute ride to the airport. The young guys working in the airport laughed at my hair when I walked in. “Motorcycle Hair” I said laughing! The $100 Lao Aviation flight that took me to Vientiane Laos had no safety card, no airline magazine, no safety demonstration by the hostess and no floatation device under the seat…and I doubt if there were oxygen masks…but we did get a sad little hamburger patty and bun with a packet of catsup.

Hanoi City Tour

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Wasn’t excited by the city bus tours so spent an entire day riding behind a motorcycle taxi guy to visit the One Pillar Pagoda, Temple of Literature and the Martyrs Monument erected to those who died fighting for Viet Nam’s independence. The Ho Chi Minh Museum, and History Museum was full of propaganda but contained interesting artefacts from Vietnam’s hundreds of years of feudal and modern wars against the Chinese, the Khmers, the French and finally the Americans. Could have spent a half a day in the excellent new Museum of Ethnology.

Visited the Fine Arts Museum and loved the compelling feudal statuary with robes flowing…the folds of the bottom hems rhythmically rising into the air. A statue commemorating the victory over the French at Diem Bien Phu in 1954 is not unlike our statue in Washington DC of the men pushing the flag aloft during World War II except that this memorial was of three people including a woman and a child. There were pictures of demonstrations of Buddhist monks who demonstrated against the South Vietnamese Thieu administration…and pictures of the conflagration of the two monks who set themselves afire in the middle of a Saigon street in front of a pagoda…

The Women’s Museum was arresting..and illuminating. Inside the front door you are met by a 15 foot high Vietnamese mother in overlit blinding gold leaf. It is designed to depict the mother of past, present and future…very feminine and elegant…representing the combination of traditional and modern beauty…strong…her right hand wide open and palm down signifying all that is difficult in her life and a child on her shoulder representing the responsibility and happiness of the mother toward the family and her people…the child with arms raised in the air representing the future generation and a prosperous future. A huge piece of glass stood behind the statue…etched with mountains showing the strength of the father and a stream of water flowing down from the mountains showing the source of the mother’s strength…have to admit I had to swallow a catch in my throat…

After this wonderful introduction to the museum, however, you then walk upstairs to the first floor where you see grizzly pictures of women’s contributions to the war effort against the Americans where they fought equally in all capacities alongside the men…heart rending pictures… one of a nurse who saved a child’s life by nursing it when it’s mother was killed by a US bomb. (I thought to myself, yes, this is what the Communist Party want us American tourists to see.)

Another picture was of an agonized mother hugging her son who had spent 10 years in the South Vietnamese Con Dao Prison. She had just heard he was sentenced to death by the enemy in 1975 after the fall of Saigon because of his rebel activities. There were pictures of Vietnamese film star Tra Giang and “Hanoi Jane” Fonda taken together during the American actress’ visit in 1972…pictures of women lying torqued on the floor with this caption: “The barbarous tortures women had to suffer when imprisoned by US aggressors and their lackeys.”

Another picture showed a militia woman escorting William Robinson, an American Prisoner of War and another of a female artillery unit firing on American warships in 1968-9. More pictures of female guerrilla groups…their faces hard. I felt sick to my stomach as I stumbled out of the building and entered the street full of light and the living Most people in Viet Nam were born after the war…not giving the past a thought as they were now concentrating on making the market economy work in their country. Somehow I am not surprised that the people here seem “harder” than the people in Thailand.

The Ho Chi Minh Museum was the most facinating…post modern design where you start in the “Past” and walk clockwise through the “Future” to view displays with a message…peace, happiness, freedom…the 1958 Ford Edsel bursting through the wall apparently symbolising the US commercial and military failure knocks your socks off. I skipped viewing Uncle Ho’s shriveled body at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum next door.

That evening I treated myself at a lovely outdoor garden restaurant where my waiter (who was a university student by day) described the effects of an American bomb that fell on a Hanoi city street… and where the memory of the people killed are still celebrated each September. “I am afraid of war,” he said, but what put the goose bumps on me was his curled lip. Then, I thought he was going to cry as he said “why can’t they sit down and discuss?” But then, apparently feeling bold by my eagerness to hear what he had to say, he said “Mr. Bush lies…Hussein is a good man”…at which point I lost my composure. Don’t know which made me sicker…his statement or the white haired man in his 80’s fondling the legs of the 15 year old Vietnamese hooker sitting at his table. I asked the waiter how he knew this. “But I read in the paper…” I even don’t believe everything I read in the paper here or at home…I replied in muted desperation. Bush may be lying but Hussein certainly isn’t a good man either.

Hanoi

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September 24 2002
Bob left Hanoi right away on the train for Sapa near the Chinese border to do some trekking among the colorful minority villages and then to spend three days in Halang Bay learning to kayak. We are traveling separately until we join a friend in Hong Kong on November 20 when the three of us will spend two months in China before going back to the US after the first of the year. Bob is presently somewhere between Hanoi and Saigon and I will meet him in Saigon on Monday for a flight to Phnom Penh Cambodia.

Flying into Hanoi felt very strange after watching years of television during the “Vietnam” War in the 6.s and 70.s. (The “Vietnam War” is called the “American War” here.) The first night in Hanoi I ate a dinner of pork with pepper sauce and french fries, a wonderful break from the Burmese and Thai food, on the deck of a popular cafe while watching the lights reflect off Hoan Kiem Lake near the Old Quarter.

I stayed at a small charming hotel called the “Classic Street Hotel” in the Old Quarter which is full of narrow winding streets with tunnel or tube houses so called because their small frontages hide very long rooms that were developed in feudal times to avoid taxes based on the width of the frontage onto the street. At the time they were only two stories high but over the years stories have been added so the buildings are now very narrow and very tall.

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My cozy little room had a little veranda where I could stand and watch the busy street scene below.
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I loved my little neighborhood for the five days I was there…early mornings the same ladies in the same clothes and cone hats came to sit on the street below me with their big shallow baskets to sell small silvery fish and vegetables…one morning a young woman at a street stall angrily chewed the heck out of one of the women for some reason and chased her away…every day in the early afternoon I ate a huge bowl of duck noodle soup for about 30 cents at a food stall down the street….sitting on a little plastic stool at a two foot high wooden table with my knees under my chin……the same old man and his wife with kind faces welcoming me like old friends each day.

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Across the street was the A to Z Queen Cafe which was a kick-back comfortable budget backpacker hotel with dorm beds for $2.50 a night and free internet if you bought something at the bar…otherwise you donated a few dong via honor code in the little plastic boxes sitting on top of each terminal. Every night the guest house showed a war movie to the mostly young males from around the world, many of whom are Israeli by the way. An Israeli guy told me that every young man has to spend three years in the military…and then they take off to travel to clear their heads.

Nearby was a street market where the women did all the selling and the men sat on the sidewalks drinking whisky and playing board games. As I walked by, the women laughed when I gestured and said to them…look…you work…they play…

Down the narrow street and around the corner the local street kids pestered you to buy postcards…just buy from me today…I am lucky you are my first sale today so I can buy some food…old ladies glided along in slippered feet carrying two fruit-filled baskets one on each side of them that was balanced like a pair of scales across their backs with a long flexible blade of bamboo who wanted to sell you exotic fruit…pumalos that have to be picked a few days before it is eaten so it has time to “forget the tree,” custard apples, durian so stinky it is forbidden in the hotels, green dragon fruit, guavas, jackfruit, longan, lychees, mango-steen, rambutan, starfruit and juicy persimmons.

Then you could escape all this by ducking into the Tamarind Cafe & Fruit Juice Bar where the Handspan Adventure Travel Company sold tickets to Halong Bay and Sapa in the back. Bob took a three day excursion to incredible Halong Bay and claims it is one of the very best experiences of all time. Here you were sure to find fellow foreign travelers to trade stories with…not just a few of whom…to my amazement…or maybe just never noticed before…were women traveling alone. In happy solidarity I invariably urged them on…

Kalaw…British Hill Station

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In a monsoon rainstorm we climbed off the train in this cool wooded hill station built during the British occupation. The locals laughed (with me) at my little paper sun umbrella I carried that I had bought at the umbrella shop in Inle. Only transpo available was in a partially covered horse cart driven by a kind old man. Off went the horse clip-clopping with us along to the ironically named Dream Villa Hotel a few blocks away in the center of town. It was off season and we and a French couple were the only tenants in the second floor room in the very friendly hotel painted white with verandas and windows open on two sides.

I looked down into the street to see a common occurrence in Asia that we hardly see in the West…males touching each other…often holding hands while walking down the street. On this day three boys stood one behind the other looking out toward the street, each with hand and arms around the boy in front and finally the one in the back reaching to the boy in front, lovingly cradling the boy in the middle…it was done spontaneously and naturally and lasted only a few seconds. Refreshing I thought.

We explored the rotating market that happened to be in town the following Saturday…we have wonderful pictures of the goods that the colorful tribal hill people bring to town to sell; flowers, fish including eels, perfect looking leafy green vegetables of all kinds, cigars, prepared food of all unidentifiable kinds. Everyone wears flip flops; heels cracked and calloused. Babies in Burma are not diapered…the child is just held out in the air at the right time and whatever wants to come out comes out. One mother in the seat in front of us on the moving train to Kalaw held her baby with bare bottom out the window for this event.

We stop by a tea shop (patrons are almost always men and they all stare at me; women stay at home as they did in Morocco, Egypt, Africa, India, Greece and Thailand) to rest and watch the street scene. There was cheap clothing brought in from China…some of the tables piled with used plaid shirts, levi jackets and 501’s. So this is where the young Burmese university students get their levis I thought…you know those levi trucks you see in the supermarket parking lots at home?

Schwenguan

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We took a taxi back over the mountain from Tounggye to Schwenguan where we were to catch a train for the three hour ride through beautiful terraced rice fields and vegetable patches to Kalaw-a mountain hill station used by the British. But as with practically every government runvenue they wanted to be paid in dollars. I had a $20 on me but the fair was only $4 for the both of us (foreigner rate-foreigners pay many times more than the locals for everything). Bob refused to pay the $20 so there we stood. I gave some kyets to some teenagers to take me to find a money changer but no luck. By the time I got back Bob had dug $5 out of his backpack. We’re on the train!

At HeHo for lunch we reach through the train window and pick out boiled peanuts and deep fried mashed potato balls from the big round shallow basket a pretty woman holds on her head. We took a great picture of the small girl with arms crossed in disappointment who had only small raw potatoes to sell which no one was buying of course.