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!

Mobbed at Yangshuo

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Southern China Guangxi Province
Tuesday Nov 26, 2002
At Yangshuo we were mobbed by women selling hotel rooms. I stayed with the backpacks while Bob and Jana looked at a few rooms. We chose one with a veranda overlooking the main tourist walkway in the shop and cafe area.

Yangshuo is a small village set up against beautiful limestone pinnacles called karsts that jut straight up out of the ground…some lit up beautifully with green lights at night. There are two mainstreets…one being the main artery leading to Guilin and the other, Xi Jie, is known as �Foreigner Street� because it is a pedestrian mall lined with Western style cafes, hotels and tourist shops free from bicycles, traffic and the infamous Chinese tractors.

Later, Jana and I took a walk for several hours with Esther, our tour leader, to Moon Hill Village and Moon Mountain, so-called because the mountain has a moonshaped hole in it at the top. Esther fixed us a lunch of egg and tomato, pork and vegetables and rice at her home in the village. We visited with a group of Chinese middle school children and they eagerly let us take their pictures.

Esther had a hard life. She said her educated parents-her father taught college in something like engineering-were killed during the Cultural Revolution (as many of the elite educated were) when she was five At the time there was also much starvation. The family had seven children…one died as a baby…which left three girls and three boys. Her younger brother and she were kept in an orphanage and had to workhard as a child…no school…she kept apologizing for �no education.� She said her husband was 67-much older than she-and that he doesn�t treat her well-plays cards and drinks. She said he is very angry with her because she bore him three daughters and no sons. They have three
daughters…her two oldest are in college in Guilin and her youngest, who we met, is in middle school.

After lunch Esther walked us out to the highway and flagged down a very mini bus for us which we took for ten cents the few miles back to Yangshuo.

In the meantime Bob had rented a bicycle and rode around the area by
himself…being lost most of the time.

Wednesday November 27
Jana and Bob went on a bike ride to Moon Mountain with Mo She Feng-another guide. They rode on the opposite side of the valley from the walk the daybefore. At 42 years old She Feng (the given name is written behind the family name) was in great shape. She cooked three dishes…egg and tomato, pork and vegetables and rice. After lunch they crossed the highway and climbed the 800 plus steps to the arch of Moon Hill. Raining on the way up, the steps were very slippery but at the top there was a 360 degree view of the whole amazing valley full of karsts.

That night we ate dinner at an open-air restaurant in a street market outside the tourist area…marveled at the tubs of live fish andtables of cut up meat and vegetables that were thrown into huge woks for stir-fried dishes. The tables were covered with cloths that were then covered again with thin clear plastic. When the diners were finished a new piece of clear plastic was put over the cloth as is also done in some other countries.

Thursday November 28
We had T shirts made with our email monikers…mine said Laughingnomad China 2002-2003 in English on the back and in Chinese on the front. Jana�s moniker is �Gaia (earth) Traveler.� We laughed about some of the shirts hanging on the walls like �Minnie Mao� with a picture of Mao Tse Tung! Another had a list of things in Chinese and English that Chinese people shouldn�t do to the foreigners like �Don�t Spit� and �Don�t Use Foreigners to Practice English.�

Ate that night at a used buy/trade book shop/cafe that was owned by a nice young Chinese guy with excellent English who seemed to attract young Chinese guys who wanted to practice their English. Bob bought a couple used books-�The Sheltering Sky� by Paul Bowles who died recently in Tangier Morocco and �Riding the Iron Rooster� (train trips across China in the 1980�s) by Paul Theroux.

While we ate we visited with some young Chinese students who pulled up their chairs to our table and wanted to practice their English. Then two guys from
Montreal came in and told us the run-down on Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge
that we will visit soon.

Adoptions Of Chinese Children

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In Guangshou we moved to Shamian Dao Island and stayed in the Shamian Hotel…right across the street from the White Swan Hotel where Communist dignitaries used to stay.

Of course we had to scope out the hotel and found about 20 American couples in the lobby all holding darling little Chinese girls they were adopting. China has a one-child policy and parents are fined heavily for any additional children. Consequently, since all Chinese families want boys, the little girls are often dropped off on the steps of government buildings and other public places. We have read that in the past they were often drowned and that is probably still going on in the countryside where there are few options.

One family told us it was about a two-year process which usually takes more than one trip to China and ends up costing about $20,000 per adoption.

I told Bob I wanted a little girl but he just gave me a cross look.

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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Video

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…

China’s Secrets I Will Never Know

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Major Cities We Visited

“The opening up of China is a stirring idea,” Lonely Planet says. A foreigner traveling alone today is privileged to see more of China than almost any Chinese has seen in his or her lifetime. I wondered what we could learn-traveling alone. Our images and ideas of China have surely been contradictory and distorted over time.

In the years of the Cultural Revolution after 1966 tens of millions of Chinese had become the instruments of their own terror…a million were killed and some 30 million or more were brutally persecuted and displaced or starved to death. How could so many people be so led?

China has a billion and a half people now. And even now cruelty continues…in a book entitled “China’s New Rulers,” the authors recently published some secret Communist Party documents that admitted to 60,000 Chinese killed by police while fleeing between 1998 and 2001…or 15,000 a year. 97% of the world’s executions take place in China, the book says. It is a historic change that China’s people are becoming less and less afraid of the government than it is of them. For example, 54 year old Mrs. Ma wanted her name published when she told about how she was tortured recently in Zhongxiang, near Shanghai, while her son was tortured in the next cell because the Party wanted her to disclose the names of the people in her church or renounce her Christian faith.

China is a big country. In the two months we have left for travel in China, we have chosen to see Yunnan Province in the southwest…the most varied of China’s provinces ranging from tropical rainforest to snow-capped Tibetan peaks. It is home to nearly a third of all China’s ethnic minorities and nearly 50% of all its people are non-Han Chinese.

Historically, Yunnan, in southern China, was always one of the first regions to break with the northern government in Beijing. During China’s countless political purges, fallen officials often found themselves exiled here, which added to the province’s rebellious character…and probably why it has been so attractive to the countless foreign backpackers who blazed the original trails through it.

I wanted to see China for myself…and now that I am here I feel that every individual Chinese I see is harboring a secret I will never know…

Lovely Lao

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My favorite country so far…the people are sweet but very natural and direct. Flew from Siem Reap Cambodia to Vientiane, the Capital of Lao. The “s” was added by the French so many travelers now use the word Lao like the locals do. I stayed a couple days in Vientiane and then flew north to Luang Prabang in the mountains where I stayed in the new Mano Guesthouse for a couple weeks at $5 a night…a home away from home…having many wonderful conversations with newfound traveler/ friends coming and going again.

I was usually the only foreigner in the morning market getting my noodles for breakfast at 7am. Lao massage, and herbal steam bath down the street at the local Red Crosswas $3 an hour. Heaven. I began to think maybe this is all I needed to live a good life.

Bob, in the meantime, had worked his way to northern Thailand from Bangkok and took a slow boat for two days down the Mekong River to meet me in Luang Prabang. A few days later we flew back to Bangkok where we would spend time running errands and getting ready to fly to Hong Kong.

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.

Cambodia Today

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Pol Pot, the architect of one of the most brutal and radical revolutions that had its origins in Beijing China, was never brought to international justice. He died in 1989 from Malaria (or some say a massive heart attack). Some of his cohorts are running free; some are in jail in Phnom Penh.

The guesthouse where I was staying offered motorcycle tours to Pol Pot’s house and grave about four hours from Siem Reap but knowing that there are still a few thousand Khmer Rouge out there and knowing they hate the Americans I decided to stay put. Today Hun Sen of the Cambodian People’s Party, who destroyed all his opposition with political guile and cunning and likes to be called The Strongman of Cambodia, was elected Prime Minister in 1998, amid rioting and demonstrating, but recently seems to be a force for stability. There will be another election in 2003.

The People
Even though the country is very poor, the Cambodian people are surprisingly open, cheerful and friendly…busily going about their business on bicycles and motorcycles…scars lying just beneath the surface by years of conflict and the legacy of an estimated four to six million landmines dotting the countryside awaiting new victims. As many as 40,000 Cambodians have lost limbs due to mines…the highest per capita rate in the world…about one in 250 people. But they are reserved and guarded with foreigners…those human ATM machines.

At the Goldiana Hotel in Phnom Penh, the desk folder contained 7 double sided pages of Non Governmental Organizations with 35 NGO’s listed on each page…all attempting in one way or another to undue the ravages of war…providing over 70% of the income of the country.

It is heartening to see children gleefully playing marbles in the street and friends laughing over a beer in a sidewalk cafe…life bravely continuing on. We still prefer to eat at sidewalk food stalls, many of which are really extensions of the family kitchen that is all moved back inside at the end of the day. We did stop in one restaurant for Bob’s favorite drink, iced coffee and my favorite drink, Lemon Juice, to find that as many as 35 older children from the countryside lived and worked there so of course Bob entertained them all with his camcorder…their giggling and laughing…