Final few days: Hong Kong

I reached Hong Kong this morning and it means I have reached my final destination for the trip. I wanted to come over so that I could meet up with some friends and also to go to church for a Sunday. Somehow, one Sunday probably will not make up for the months or years of neglect of my spiritual life but at least it is a try.

Anyway, Hong Kong and its previous British rule means no more toilets that can't take toilet paper, no more spitting everywhere, no more smoking in the buses and those are very welcoming thoughts. Also, with all the Falun Dafa protesters in the Kowloon harbour area means I am kind of out of China.

I checked in to another el-cheapo Mirador Mansion beside the infamouse Chunking Mansion because it was cheap. It was also rather sleasy - about 10 bunk beds cramped together in a little room with 2 toilets in the side. After I agreed to the place, I was wondering why I had to sleep in a sleasy place like this since my flight is only 3 days away so I promptly checked in to the YMCA beside the Peninsula hotel. Now, the Peninsula hotel would be nice but the price of one night would be equivalent to another China trip.

Today there is a level 3 typhoon warning in Hong Kong and the walk around the Tsim Tsa Tsui promenade was nice and breezy. Hopefully, the level would go up a little so it will get a little breezier in Hong Kong.

Day ??: Guilin & Yangshuo

Guilin had a beautiful 7-star park. I was pleasantly surprised when I climbed up the Sky Pavilion to see a gorgeous view of Guilin. Also, since the pavilion isn't heavily touted on the tourist map or the lonely planet, there was only one other person there. Guilin definitely has its charm - gorgeous scenery and interesting food. I was thinking that some of the small limestones hill can be compared to Ipoh but Ipoh doesn't really have much to snare the tourists. Too bad. My hometown should be more interesting. Yangshuo lies an hour and a half south of Guilin. Another gorgeous little town, absolutely catered to the tourists. I knew I was going to face a rough time with the touts, when an 'Auntie' followed me from the bus and down the whole of West street - their most touristic street- despite numerous demands that I wasn't interested in whatever rooms she had. I did a little cycling around the vicinity of the town to the some scenic spots and the place was very interesting. We passed through padi farms and little lakes to reach the popular Banyan tree and Moon Hill. I'm glad the French tourists that came along with the trip didn't want to do the parks nor the bamboo rafts nor the caves, as I did not want to get wet at all. I did not have a guesthouse or clean clothes so I wasn't very interested to take the bus to HK all grimy and muddy. Maybe I did miss some interesting sites, but then Yangshuo is really near to Singapore/Malaysia and I can always come back for a prolonged weekend trip. Anyway, after the bicycle trip - I was all sticky and grimy so I would have to look for a shower before the bus trip. Maybe drop down the local Giordano and get a cheap t-shirt.

Day ??: Kunming & GuiLin

I have lost tracked on time so I am not sure what day it is but I did zoom past Kunming and will likely fly pass Guilin just the same. Anyway, Kunming was a nice change after some days in small cities. The city has almost the same type of shops, like Singapore - Carrefour, Giordano, U2..., so I guess I am not missing too much. It seems like I might be rushing a little if I am to make it to HK. That will depend on whether I can contact some friends else I will have 2 more days to spend in Yangshuo. Tried some Kunming food which was quite good but really didn't do the city justice as I stayed only 1 day. The same will go for Guilin. All I did so far was had bad food in Guilin which was supposedly a very good place for food. It seems like with their menu I can only read the simple dishes and the stupid waiters can't understand me enough to make recommendations so I end up with really plain and horrible dishes. The next time I will just do what I normally do and point at what the locals are eating but first I have to find the places to eat. GuiLin does have really nice lakes, rivers and mountain backdrops. Also, at night they block off the main street for a night market. However, it seems like there don't seem to have a large backpacker crowd here so I had a hard time looking for a cheap hotel. I ended staying in a 100 yuan room, which was quite nice but it has been the most expensive lodging I have paid so far. Also, I took the 25 hour train from Kunming to Dali. Wanted to fly but they didn't have a discount so I decided to savour the experience of taking a China train. I can't visit China and not take the train. The trains were more comfortable than the buses and there were attendants cleaning every so often and reminding the Chinese not too smoke in the cabin. Not too bad but the place was really packed with people and I had to worry a little about losing my stuff. For your info, most internet cafes in China block blog sites so I haven't been able to look at any of the blogs I have written or reply to any comments.

Day 13: Dali

I reached Dali in the afternoon and there was a little rain. The horse carriage that was suppose to send me to my guesthouse stop me in the middle of the city and I had to make my way to a guesthouse that I had in mind. Unfortunately, I was sidetracked by some of the touts along the way and stayed in another guesthouse that was affiliated. I found a Swiss guy, Patrick, that was on my bus from Lijiang staying at the same place and so we decided to share a room and cut the cost.

Dali (Old town) is a neat town, built somewhat like an ancient Chinese fortress built with four main gates. I suppose in more ancient time a wall would have surrounded the city but now only the gates remain. Also, there is a huge inland lake right beside the city. The main hotels are all in a satellite town to the south, Xiaguan, so there are not a lot of local Chinese tourists with their little flags crowding the streets.

I liked Lijiang better as Dali is a little more 'Chinese' which means it is a little dirtier. However, it does not mean that Dali is not a charming city. I had a really good time taking the chair-lifts to the top of Zhonghe Temple and there were no tourists once I hiked up the steps a little more. I found a great cafe on the top and had a really good time just reading and chilling out. I also did a little tour of the Lake in the rain but the places the boat took us to was not that interesting. The boat trip was nice as the rain made the trip very cooling and the raindrops dropping on the lake was very serene.

Day 11: Lijiang

I finally reached Lijiang after grabbing my bags from Qiaotou. It would be nice to stay in a place for a little longer than the short hops that has been happening. China is a big place and even in little places, it takes a few days to visit some of the sites.

Anyway, the old town of Lijiang is a very interesting place. The place is very nice and has a lot of friendly people. However, after a while you will see that the place is full of tourist. The old town is a little like a theme park with everything catered for tourism, which was fine with me since I am a tourist. This also means that there were clean toilets and the public toilets were impeccably clean. It was definitely cleaner than my guest house toilet so I paid the 5 jiao to use the toilet beside my guest house.

It felt a little touristy but I loved the place. The old town had 3 little streams running across the town and the water was clear. Staying a little longer just chilling out seemed more like a holiday than the bus rides but each journey has its own beauty.

Day 9 & 10 : Tiger Leaping Gorge

It has been a few days of just moving quickly through some really nice Tibetan-Chinese towns. The bus moved through some magnificent mountain passes and scenery was absolutely beautiful. However, the bus rides were not very fun. 7-8 hours of bus rides on the average everyday, with a bus full of smoking and spitting Chinese is not an enjoyable journey. Some kept talking to me despite my crappy Putonghua and I really had difficulty understanding their Sichuan hua, which is something like a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese. Anyway, after a few days of waking at 6am to catch the bus was quite enough for me so I was glad when I reach Qiaotou, the start of the trail to the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

I stayed one night at the Gorged Tiger Cafe which was run by Margo, an Australian lady. The Australian and American ladies that were travelling with me seem to think she was crazy but I thought she was really nice. Also, she gave us accurate advice on the conditions of the track and advice on what to take and wear for the track.

We took the upper road and found very few travellers, maybe because it wasn't the peak season. Six of us started out together and we planned to reach the Walnut Garden about 8 hours walk away. I really liked the trail as the view was gorgeous. Along the trail there were magnificent mountain backdrops, waterfalls and sharp drops down from the cliff. What didn't help was my el-cheapo shoe that seem to have no traction at all when we were walking through wet areas. The gorge trail was one place I didn't want to slip because one slip and quite likely my dad could collect on my travel insurance. Slipping wouldn't be fun. As we walk along, the ladies kind of rested for too long and by nightfall only Neal, a british traveller and I reached the Walnut Garden.

Also, Neal made some adventurous decision that kept getting us lost. First was deciding to go back to the trail from the road at 7:15pm when we were 30 minutes away from the guesthouse we were planning to go. So we had to track in the dark for a while because the path wasn't very clear in the dark. On the next day, we track down to the river and we decided to come up through the landslide. We quickly found that we could get lost even in short bushes. Walking through thorns were not very fun, we found out soon enough but managed to find the trail back after half an hour. Of course, we were never in any real danger because we could see the river below and the roads not too far ahead of us. It was tiring, getting off the trail, but it was fun.

Day 6 - Litang

Ok I am not going to be long as I have splitting headache from the altitude here about 4000m above sea level. Anyway, I am in Litang and will be making my way to XiangCheng on the way to Lijiang. Also, some technical glitch happen with my harddrive backup machine and I lost all the pictures from the first day till today. Will write more when I get more comfortable.

Day 3 & 4 : Emei Shan & Le Shan

I did a rush rush job to see both Le Shan Giant Buddha and Ermei Shan. There were a lot of construction going on in both places. Particularly, the summit of Ermei was closed due to construction so that was a little dissapointing. Ermei is a beautiful place but I did not get to see as much as I did not hike up. Most of the places are only accesible if you do a few hours of walking. The day I thought was really cloudy because I couldn't see many of the surrounding peaks but I overheard some other tourist say that the day was especially clear. I managed to stay up at one of these guesthouses to catch the sunrise and thankfully a screaming and rude monk awakened me by screaming for the receptionist at 6am in the morning. With most of the Chinese places I have seen, too many places have been artificially touched up or reconstructed. The museum at the foot of the mountain was nice as well. Whenever, I look at something like that and realise how young Singapore and Malaysia history is. History here goes to the BCE era whereas Malaysia history goes to the 16th century.

I also had to rush Leshan because I decided to do a detour in the route and go west toward Tibet before heading towards east again. The detour will probably eat up 5-10 days of my time so I will probably be in a rush for the remainder of the journey and probably have to fly in to Hong Kong. Tomorrow, I will head to Kangding and then to Litang near the Sichuan-Tibetan border.

Day 2: Chengdu city

I was overjoyed when I landed in China. It seems at last I have made my
way to China, the homeland of my forefathers. Some friends that I met as
I made my way to Chengdu asked me if I was going to kiss the ground. I
pondered on the idea for a while and then decided it was a little out of
character for me to kiss the ground. Also remembering that I do not have
a hepatitis jab, kissing the ground might transmit some unwanted
diseases. I expected the place to be a bit wilder with cars not obeying
traffic rules and everybody trying to get a few more of my hard-earned
dollars, but I was pleasantly surprised that people it Chengdu were
generally honest and traffic abiding. I was expecting India but guess
nothing really beats India.

One of the first thing that I noticed very blatantly was that my Chinese
is not enough for me to communicate. Yes I could manage 'Where is the
toilet?' but how many times does one have to make their way to the
toilet. Anything more than that I found rather unmanageable. Luckily,
the friends I met will still be in Chengdu for 1 day before flying off
to Lhasa. I can still let them do all the haggling and taxi and the
ordering of food till they leave tomorrow.

Chengdu is a beautiful city - the most beautiful chinese city I have
seen. It has to be since it is the first Chinese city I have been to.
The food is on the spicy side and I got to visit a few cultural temples
and parks. The city is very old and historical but with my kindergarten
level of Chinese I did not get to understand too much about what is
going on. Tomorrow, I will try to make my way to Ermei Mountain on my
own and have not decided whether to walk up the mountain or to take the
bus. Judging from what the others say, I'd probably take the bus or the
cable car up.

Day 1: Cheng Du + flight delayed

The flight to Chengdu is delayed for 2 hours tentatively, possibly a little later. Fortunately, there seems to be quite a lot of shopping and free Internet stuff to distract me from all the wait. I am walking around a little like a zombie because last night, I started packing at 1am and finished packing at about 4am. Usually I am quite a fast packer but I was distracted by the laundry and trying to sort out my first aid bag so I spent a little more time. Also I had to clean up my room before my Austrian friend, Ulfred, takes over my rental room. So by the time I went to bed, it was something like 5am.

Anyway, the airport free Internet service here limits me to 15 minutes. Quite interesting - it does make me more productive in churning out one of these blogs. Maybe I should organise my life similarly, in chunks of 30 minutes. I'd get so much done or spend all my time trying to update my organiser.