Trip to the West

This is the end, my friend....

From here on, the Trip to the East has come to an end and I'll next be heading West from Beijing to the UK by (a decidely unadventurous) airplane this coming Wednesday. I feel it's a cop out to fly back, but my stamina for enjoying overland travel after seven months on the road is not sufficient to sustain the six-day non-stop train ride to Moscow and then dealing with another alien culture, language, system etc So, the trans-Siberian Express will have to wait for another time

Anyway, to recap on the movements of the last week or so:-

There were lots of pandas (both giant and the small red version) to video at the reserve at Chengdu. Then it was the train up to Xian, the ancient capital of dynastic China. This was the final destination of Marco Polo, I've been following his footsteps for large parts of my route, and it is also the classic endpoint of the Silk Route. The famous terracotta army is nearby to Xian, so we joined with the hordes to take that in. Definitely a must-see.

Then from Xian we took a very plush deluxe sleeper train to Beijing - the only tickets left. It was expensive , but having in our berth just the two beds, an armchair, individual bed TVs, private bathroom, thermostat control and, most importantly, a bonzai fern over the sink made it all worthwhile.

So, in Beijing we've been doing the tourist things - Forbidden City etc. Yesterday we took the bus 1 hour away up to the Great Wall - yes, it really is as amazing as I had anticipated. It's huge and goes winding off into the far distance along the top of the mountain ridges. I walked up and down it (Peter taking it easy) far enough away to where the crowds thinned out.

China has been a fascinating experience and I've very glad to have seen this economic giant in its emergent stages. There is a phenomenal amount of construction and change going on all over the place - further galvanised by the prospect of the 2008 Olympics, which is trumpeted everywhere you look.

The people here in China have generally been very friendly and helpful - you even forgive them all the spitting and gobbing on restaurant floors that goes on.

So, this is probably the last post I'll make whilst abroad. The Trip to the East has been a fantastic experience. There have been downs as well as ups, but in general it's been a real sense of feeling alive. Even when some of the events along the road have been unwelcome (as they often are), there is no 'off' button on a remote control and you just have to deal with them.

Over and out (for now),

Gareth

Slowly up the Yangtze

Guilin is located in the area of China made famous by artists who come from al over the country to paint emblematic high domed karst limestone formations. Add in a couple of thickets of bamboo to the foreground and the inevitable mist swirling around the upper half of the tree-covered dome and you have the classic traditional Chinese watercolour. The downside is that the areas dramatic beauty is no secret and has longer been a tourist attraction - reflected in the exhorbitant prices charged to hapless visitors.

Then from Guilin it was on by a surprisingly comfortable 'hard sleeper' (it wasn't at all hard) train for 14 hours north to Wuhan. This is another multi-million person city that few outside of China have heard of - 8 million people to be (roughly) precise. Peter went of in a taxi to look at the centre. I, feeling jaded of amorphous big Chinese cities, lingered around in the hotel room, watched Kevin Costner being tough in 'Wyatt Earp' on cable TV and then eventually ventured forth a couple of hours later.

I was adopted by a local 14-year old boy (he looked at least 20, being about 5 foot 10 with a moustache and confidently articulate in his perfect English). We swung by his cousins flat, picked her up and proceeded onto the Yellow Crane Tower (too expensive to go in) and then onto the huge bridge over the Yangtze that connected to the city centre. In the smog-filled air, a gloomy grey sky arching above and an inhuman skyline of vast grey oncrete blocks, it looked like a vision of hell. We walked across the 110m high, 2km long bridge and got a bus back from the other side.

The next morning, it was a five hour bus ride along the Yangtze up to Yichang to find a boat ride upriver. That went smoothly and we were booked on for the next morning. So, then it was three days and three nights of cruising upriver. A very pleasant interlude. The first day of river trip included an excursion to see the Three Gorges Dam, that is now almost completed and has displaced 2 million people from their flooded homes. On the upside, the flood control provide should avoid a repeat of the one million deatsh from drowning that have happened from the Yangtze bursting its banks over the last few decades.

It was dripping rain and quite misty, but we got a blurry view of the concrete behemoth rearing 600 ft over us. Then our boat made the labourious, 3 hour journey up the series of 5 huge locks to the 500 km long reservoir above this dam - the largest in the world.

We passed through the flooded, but still dramatically beautiful Three Gorges and then we came to the upper Yangtze with its million-plus soul cities - disgustingly ugly concrete jungles all, belching factory chimneys and non-stop coal barges sending fuel downriver to the energy-hungry coast.

Our cruise ended at the city of Chongqing. You've never heard of the place? What?! How can you not have heard of the biggest city in the world - 30 million people!! More gigantic concrete apartment blocks and giant bridges spanning the Yangtze. Really, China has some very beautiful countryside, but the big cities have all frightened me in their look of despair. The surprising thing is that the inhabitants seem unaffected by their surroundings and they are frequently very friendly and helpful.

So, tomorrow we're off to a reserve to hopefully see some Giant Pandas

All for now

Nanning and Guilin

Peter and I have got as far as Guilin, on the way up to Beijing.

We stopped in Nanning for a couple of days, being shown round by Ar Ping, a local girl we met on the way up from the Vietnamese border. Went out to Guangxi medical herb park, which I suspect my brother (an acupuncturist and chinese herbalist) as visited on one of his many trips to China

China so far doesn't at all give the impression of a 'third world' country. 'Developing' is more accurate, as everywhere you look there is frantic construction and modernisation going on. The cities seem clean and well-organised and light on traffic (for now!). The countryside appears less prosperous, but still unlittered and tidy. Quite unlike India, for example.

We've been looking round the caves and limestone karsts of Guilin today. These are the very tall dome-like rocks you see in the classical Chinese paintings - all very beautiful. The hotels (so far) are cheap, but everything else in China is pretty expensive - verging on European prices.

Very little English is spoken here, so the primary challenge in the travelling is just being able to communicate one's needs! (eg getting an edible meal)

Bye bye,

Gareth

can anyone read me?

Well, I can't see my blog with the www.tripeast.net (something about firewall protection issue), so I don't know whether anyone else can???

So, Huong came up to Hanoi and then we went on a cruise in the beautiful Halong Bay. We kind of had a good time, but communication between us was difficult (sparse English) and now Huong has departed back down south towards Saigon.
I've now teamed up with a Kiwi by the name of Peter and we've been up on a very pleasant jaunt to Sapa in the hills and will be heading off the border into China in a couple of days.

All for now.

Nha Trang - the real post

This blog host site is not letting me review past posts and doingother strange things, so kindly forgive me if my repeat myself or strange-looking posts!

The journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia was very long, but we had a breakdown and spent time in a garage on the way. Three Ukraine guys got fed up with the bus and hired a taxi for 30 dollarsbetween them and got to Siem Reap 3 hours before us. We got there at 10pm, it should have been 7pm or earlier! Angkor Wat is truly one ofthe wonders of the world - up there with the pyramids of Egypt and (inmy opinion), easily eclipsing the Taj Mahal.

So, after Angkor Wat, it was down by bus to Pnomh Penh, capital of Cambodia and then by boat to Saigon. Then from Saigon it was a verycomfortable and clean sleeper train up to Hoi An. Seventeen hours,though. Not sure why I went to Hoi An, it just seemed to be on the tourist trail, I was a tourist, so I didn't question it.

The most interesting thing about Hoi An is that its name is an anagram of Hanoi.

I wandered about for an hour or two obediently looking at the'sights'(tedious Japanese bridge, tedious old house, another tediousoldhouse) until I realised the foolishness of it all and went back tothe hotel and asked for the first bus out of the place. North? No,back south. Sight-seeing was becoming a real bore and decided I needed to 'do' omething other than just observing.

I had regretted that I'd missedout on learning to scuba dive in Thailand and didn't realise I coulddo it in Vietnam at Nha Trang. I now found out that I could, though going to Nha Trang involved a 12-hour backtrack on my journeyback theway I'd just come. The next day found me signed up for a 3-day PADI Open Water Divercourse at NhaTrang( on the coast up from Saigon). The scuba crowd werefriendly, even though a bunch of 20-somethings talking about getting pissed, pulling birds etc etc

The PADI cert now lets me dive unsuperivised anywhere in the world. I was pleased tofind that my tired, addled brain was keeping ahead of the20-somethings when doing the exams etc, even helping the examiner workout the answers to the decompression time questions. The scuba course has been very satisfying.

Man cannot live onsight-seeing alone - involvement, doing, action, etc is needed to feel connected. I now believe that cuttle fish come from outer space!

Well, I think my time here is drawing to a close, so may have to tearmyself away from the beach and head up to Hanoi. It was cold up there recently, according to traveller reports.

The hotel receptionist here introduced me to his aunt, Huong. She's here on holiday from Saigon. We've been getting on well (despite theEnglish being a struggle for her) and if she can get the time off work, may be keeping me company up to Hanoi. Have to see - it would certainly be good to have a travel companion for a change....

Missed Saigon

Sorry about the stupid, corny titles of the postings, but I've got into a habit I'm finding it hard to shake....

Well, my last day in Siem Reap involved hiring a bicycle for a day and making a third visit to Angkor Wat (correct spelling). Re-visited the amazing main temple and dropped beads of sweat over the watercolour paper as I tried to make a sketch in the sticky heat.

Then it was a bus ride SE to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. It was weird to find myself staying in the middle of the city of 1 million in a rustic wooden 'beach'-hut type of affair built on stilts over the large Boeng Kak Lake with floating islands of hyacinth drifting about. The traffic was inaudible there and you could imagine you were miles away from the city. A storm blew up on the second night and rain sheeted it in thru the quaint lake-fronting restaurant and lightning and thunder did their bit nearby.

I did the obligatory visits to the killing fields (Choeng Ek) 14 km outside town where about 20,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge (skulls on display for photo opps) and a long visit to the S-21 prison in town where the KR imprisoned and interrogated those victims for a few months before their deaths. Mixed feelings about the importance of knowing about history (eg Angkor Wat and then here), but it also felt like a peculiar type of tourist attraction. Nearby to Choeng Ek is a firing range where those tourists so inclined can loose off a few rounds from the kinds of guns used by the Khmer Rouge. Harmless fun.

Then it was leaving PP on a boat down the Mekong river to Chau Doc in Vietnam. On the speed boat, I tried to cut a dash as Martin Sheen looking for Marlon Brandon on the P2 boat out of Apocalypse Now! There were plenty of Americans with me on the boat, but it was all stretching the imagination a bit too far.

Then a very long min-bus ride to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) where I'm slacking on the sightseeing and mostly enjoying my relatively plush hotel room with cable TV and air-con. I wasn't really expecting to find the meaning of life on this trip, but sightseeing in unlimited quantity is certainly not it. 'Helping people' along the way, even if only sharing some moisturising cream with them, has some meaning, I guess. But it doesn't really cut the philosophical mustard, does it?

Anyway, back to discussing the hear and now......

It all seems a bit strange to be in these areas with their dark pasts that don't seem that long agon to me. Most of the backpackers on this well-worn circuit are in their early-twenties though, and to them those dreadful times must seem as remote as the horrors of Germany and WWII does to me.

Well, I think I'll be taking a train up the Viet Nam coast, probably halfway up to someplace I can't remember the name of.

I was sad to part with John-the-guitar, but I have to say that travelling is *so* much easier without him. From being the heaviest-laden passenger, I'm now the lightest with my two modest-sized bags. On that flight from India to Thailand I was on with cabin baggage only!

Enough rambling, I've got cable TV to be watched

G

Swimming to Cambodia

So, I am in Siem Reap now, the nearby town for Angkor Wat. It was a 14 hour journey from Bankok, which is ridiculous as the distance is not far at all. But the road is in a terrible state and mostly unmade. So it made for a dusty, bone-shaking ride.

Siem Reap is touristy, but fairly civilised and I'm in a very nice, clean hotel. I've been to the temple complexes these past two days on back of a motorbike taxi. I've been to a few historical sites in my time, but this has to be one of the most amazing!

Went to the privately-run Landmine Museum today, started up by a local who was forced into the Khmer Rouge army. An astonishing collection of mines and other ordnance that he has dug out of the ground, after probing about with a pointed stick.......