Dam Good*

* - Second hand gag from Yangtze cruise guide!

Every country has its
"must do" list of things to do for visitors, and for China perhaps
number 2 on that list (after the great wall which we haven't seen yet),
is a journey down the Yangtze river. Getting the facts and figures out
of the way first, the Yangtze is Asias's longest river (3rd in the
world after the Nile and the Amazon), features the worlds largest dam
(in terms of width), the largest fresh water lock system, the largest
hydroelectric power system, and as a result of the dam, required the
relocation of a staggering 1.39 million people (more if you believe non
government figures). Perhaps the greatest reasons for visiting are the
three gorges sections, which are dubbed as China's grand canyon.

Arriving in the monstrous urban conurbation of Chongqing (30+ million
people), we had a couple of days to site see before joining the boat. I
personally found Chongqing a difficult place to like - its busy and
smelly, and has shocking air polution (apparently by EU standards,
99.9% of Chinas urban residents breath in air of unnaceptable
standards). One of the highlights of a visit to the city is supposed to
be the local favourite dish, which is "hot pot", where you place your
ingredients into a hot bowl of spicy broth, and then when cooked, eat
with chopsticks. Unfortunately we must have chosen the wrong
restaraunt, as all our chosen ingredients arrived already cooked in a
bowl, everything tasted weirdly of soap, and we both had to spend ages
picking the chilli seeds out of our teeth afterwards. (Fortunately, we
have had much better hot pots since). On the plus side, the staff at
the hostel were as friendly and helpful as ever.

We both had a great
time on our cruise ship, and felt guilt free at doing practically
nothing for three days other than watch the view from the deck. The
three gorges themselves were great, but the highlight was the excursion
to the lesser three gorges on the Dani river, which had almost vertical
cliffs many hundreds of metres tall. The dam itself was also
impressive, as were the massive ship locks (each 250m long) that the
cruise ship squeezed into, along with ships carrying coal and other
freight.

Please close the door - its freezing!

For the past 6 months we've had our return flights booked from China on
the basis that we would sort out the travel arrangements on the way. It
was looking likely we would need to rearrange our flights as web
searches indicated we needed to apply for the China visa from our home
country, and the Chinese embassy in Hanoi said we had no chance (in a
nice way!) Getting back to the hostel in Hanoi after visiting the
embassy, we said in a more or less last resort way that were trying to
get into China, when the hostel staff replied that it would be no
problem, and that they could book us a train ticket (1st class
sleeeper) and a taxi to the train station. All we had to do was hand
over the passports, and five days later they came back with all visa's
stuck to the relevant pages - easy!

The train left Hanoi late in
the evening, and we found that we were sharing the four berth cabin
with a Chinese lady from Beijing , who's English was perfect. It turned
out she had lived in Vancouver for 10 years, before returning to China,
no doubt to take part in the exceptional growth that the country is
enjoying at the moment. She gave us some excellent tips for places to
go and things to do, as well as helping us through immigration in China
(at 2 in the morning after 3 hours sleep). This was a trend that was
set to continue as all the Chinese people we have met (bar one) have
been exceptionally helpful, and are very keen that foreign tourists
like us enjoy their trip.

The train terminated in Nanning, which is
as the guidebook says a provincial town with little to do other than
ramble around. Its also massive, and crowded (perhaps not surprising in
a country with 1.3 billion residents), but perhaps the greatest
surprise to us was being openly stared at. This is common for western
tourists in China, but seemed especially true in Nanning where few
tourists visit. Its not an aggressive or unpleasant stare, just a look
of curiosity, which if met with a smile is usually returned the same
way.

We'd heard lots of stories of difficulties with communication in
China, and we found our experiences no different. We booked our onward
train travel without too much of a problem (after working out which of
the endless halls of the massive station sold tickets) by simply
writing down the name of the town we wanted to travel to (Gui Lin) and
then a date and a time, but finding food was more tricky. Lunch was ok,
as we found a noodle shop in one of the endless shopping malls that had
pictures on the wall we could point at, but dinner proved difficult.
Eventually we found a restaraunt which had quite a few people eating,
and prepared to point at what they were having, when we were
unexpectedly handed a menu with english text (even restaraunts in some
of the hotels we had visited didn't have this). We wouldn't have
starved of course, as Pepsi co and Macdonalds seem to be on a mission
to take China's high streets over, with fast food everywhere.

Getting
to the relatively close town of Gui Lin (a modest 6 hour train ride
away - China is the size of the USA after all), we checked in to the
friendly "Wada hostel" and walked around the city which has stunning
"Karst" mountains everywhere. From here we carried out two excursions:

The imaginatively titled Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces are an amazing
feat of engineering where "steps" have been cut into hillsides (some of
which are 1000m high) to allow rice to cultivated. The effect is both
impressive and beautiful, even in the misty conditions we saw. To get
there we had to take a couple of local buses, and were met by a local
lady who ran a hotel on the side of a mountain, who helped us get on
the right bus. Needless to say part of the deal was that we followed
her to the hotel, but as everyone seems so trustworthy we went with it.
The bus journey was quite an experience, as to get to all the local
villages, it made a frankly terrifying detour up a series of crumbling
dirt roads improbably cut into some of the most unstable hill sides I'
ve seen in a while.....

The Tian Ti hotel turned out to be one of our
favourite stops. The lady who bought us there proved to be a real human
dynamo, who led us up the hill, cooked our massive dinner, sorted the
rooms and made us breakfast, all for less than £20. The only problem
was the cold, as like almost everywhere in China, it appeared that
heating as well as sealed doors and windows are a scandalous western
bourjois invention, and the whole place was constantly freezing. All we
could do was put on all our clothes, and borrow duvets and blankets
from the unused other bedrooms.

Our other excursion was to the town of
Yuangshou, which has perhaps the most scenic location for a town I've
ever seen. We had a great time here despite the constant hassle from
touts, and everything here was easy, as to suit the many tourists there
are western menus and food everywhere. Sadly on the bus back to Gui Lin
we had our worst local encounter on the trip so far. As I moved my
backpack half way through the journey, I saw the hand of the youth in
front of us slipped between the seat in front, evidently having been in
my backpack. After a slightly heated exchange with neither of us
understood what the other was saying, my camera which had been in the
backpack "accidentally" dropped on the floor (as well as the travel
power adaptor rather surprsingly). At the next stop he got off the bus,
along with the person who had been sat behind, evidently they had been
working as a team.

Chinglish

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of China......

Too Many Zeros

Singapore and NZ - about 2 currency : 1 GBP
Auz and USA - about 1.6ish
dollar : 1GBP
Malaysia - about 5 Ringits : 1 GBP
Thailand - about 50
Baht : 1 GBP
Camodia - everyone uses dollars, the Riel is fixed to the
dollar at approx 4000 R : 1US

So far its been pretty easy to do a
quick bit of mental arithmetic to get and idea of costs, so its a bit
of a shock when arriving in Vietnam to find that there are approx 31
000 Dong to the pound. Simply ordering a coffee entails counting the
zero's on the menu, a situation not helped when some cafe's and
shopkeepers "help" by ignoring the last three zero's on the ubiquotous
pocket calculators that are used to show the prices of goods to the
linguistically challenged tourists. Even the shortlived thrill of
becoming a millionaire every time you visit a cashpoint wanes as you
try and count a thick wadge of 50K notes.....

Much as its great to
immerse ourselves in a dynamic and exciting city like Hanoi, sometimes
the frenetic pace of life can get a bit too much. The city is home to
what seems like millions of scooters, and it becomes almost impossible
to even cross the road. The only resort left is to do as the locals do,
and cross the roads one lane at a time, often with cars and bikes
whizzing past on all sides. Several times we ended up being helped
across the road by friendly locals without whom we might never have
made it back to the hostel!

Vietnam has taken to selling tourism with
a zeal that is remarkable, even by the high standards set in other
parts of south east asia. Every other business seems to be a tourist
biased restaraunt, tour company or trinket shop, and the sales
techniques are undeniably pushy, with touts making the presence felt
virtually 24/7. At one stage Ursh was even offered a small (surprised
looking) child, to take home as a souvenir!

Through the deservedly
highly rated "Little Hanoi Hostel", we booked our onward travel to
China and the relevant Visa's. As scams are rife, we decided to use our
trusted hostel to book everything, so while waiting for the visa's to
be processed, they also arranged our three day tour to Ha Long bay
marine park.

Ha Long Bay is home to thousands of islands, the vast
mojority of which take them form of peaks that seem to rise vertically
from the sea (Karst geography apparently). There are also endless caves
present, and whole area is simply stunning, especially when viewed from
on board one of the boats that tourists can stay on. In addition to
staying on the very comfortable boat, we got to do some canoeing, and
also managed to get some walking in on the mountains, all of which was
a great antidote to Hanoi's mania.

More than worth the hype

Cambodias Angkor Wat and adjacent temples are by far and away the
countries biggest tourist draw, and we were keen to put the irritations
of the border crossing behind us and get to the town of Siem Reap
(following a 3 hour bus journey) which everyone uses as a base for
visiting the temples.

Siem Reap is an unashamedly touristy town, with
lots of accomodation (we stayed at the excellent, friendly Rosy's Guest
house), and stacks of ood value places to eat, with Kymer (ethnic
Cambodian) and Western options on every street.

The temples
themselves are of largely Hindu origin, and range from 900 AD to about
1200AD. There are hundreds things that set them apart from other temple
visits but the most noticeable are the size of the temples, and the
number of them. I'm sure that it would be possible to spend weeks in
the area and not see the same temple twice.

Needless to say the most
centrepiece of the area is the Angkor Wat temple, which is of course
massive in floor plan, and is also set of four levels, which are
accessible via seeming vertical staircases. For many however the most
impressive feature are the wall carvings on the interior of the temple,
which feature scenes from Hindu Legends.

As well as battle scenes,
there is also a depiction of the "Churning of the Sea of Milk". In this
scene, a giant serpent is used to churn a sea of milk into an elixir of
life (there are hundreds of people holding it either end, and the sea
is full of fish and crocodile like animals). Its such a far out story
you can't help but wonder if it has been concocted by some over zealous
tourism officials......

After visiting Angkor Wat, the next big
tourist draw is Ta Phrom, which is a temple that has been partially
restored, but also where much of the forest vegetation has been left
insitu. The result is that there are enormous trees everywhere, growing
in a scarcely credible manner around the rocks placed by people almost
a millenia ago.

To get around we hired a couple of bikes from the
guest house, and not only did we get very cheap transport, but we also
got some excercise as well. To get to the further temples we travelled
with Mr Thorne, who expertly drove his lightweight 125cc "moto",
complete with trailer and three westerners on board for $30 for an all
day trip. He also took us to the Cambodian Landmine Musuem, which
proved to be a very moving tribute to victims of the "Killing field"
period of Cambodian history, and also to the victims of the legacy left
behind in the form of still present land mines and unexploded
ordinance. The museums founder is a Cambodian called "Aki Ra", who as a
child in the 1970's was a Kymer Rouge soldier (whilst I was having fun
in london at a similar age....), and has spent the past twenty years or
so trying to rid Cambodia of the mines. As you can imagine the "I'm not
worthy" feeling was difficult to avoid.

A couple of thanks are also
due now:

Elisabeth who was also staying at Rosy's Guest house allowed
us to tag along on a couple of days, and proved to be an excellent
impromptu tour guide, much more organized and knowledgeable than either
of us!

Chuckles - thanks for sorting out the remote link to the blog.