Richard's Travel Blog

It’s hard to believe that except for a day shopping in Ft. Lauderdale during a stopover that I haven’t been in the US in over three years. I had to check this site to remember when. I still can’t believe it. What am I forgetting, besides everything these days?
Well, my best friend there is having surgery, and I’m going to hang out with her and do some stuff before the surgery and after she’s fine alone. Despite having nothing pressing to do there, I find myself looking forward to visiting people, buying some things that are expensive or unavailable in China, checking our my rentals and eating Western food for a while. It’ll be fun.
As you can see, I don’t write much when I’m not on the road. Last time I went anywhere was Nepal. Nothing much has happened since then. The news is just plain boring, I think. Life’s good, though. I am fairly domesticated, still, which feels alright. I can and do go places every three months, and that keeps me from feeling trapped.
I am leaving March 19 and returning April 20. Maybe I’ll have something to blog about next time. Until then, I was just checking in. Be well, all of you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! For those of you who read this after the holidays, I hope you and yours had a great holiday season.

I returned this week from four weeks in Nepal. It was just about everything I expected and wanted. For sure, the experience I had was much different than one would have had thirty years ago when Nepal’s mystique began to rapidly develop. It’s modernizing as is every other country. Most notably, the tourist industry is well developed, and along with that comes tourist ghettos, somewhat jaded Nepalis at times, and the westernization of traditional culture. But isn’t that true everywhere? If one went there thirty years ago, likely he would say it wasn’t the same as before. Thirty years from now, people will say it isn’t the same as 2011. It’s the way of the world. The natural beauty of Nepal is it’s main attraction, and that isn’t going to change much any time soon. Besides, for many Nepalis who live out of the way, life hasn’t changed that much. The political strife has jerked many of these people into the modern world, but Nepal is a developing country where fire is still the usual way of cooking and heating, brute labor and use of animal power predominates in many areas, cultural and spiritual practice remains traditional, and so on.

My trip was not much of a cultural experience. Most of it was a 16 day trek around the Annapurna mountain range, on a 150 km trail known as the Annapurna Circuit. The first few days were in the capital, Kathmandu. Then came the trek, followed by a few days in the tourist capital and jumping off point for most treks, Pokhara. My last day was in the old city of Bahktapur. So, that is what this blog will be about.

When I first got to Kathmandu, I met up with my friends, Ale and Marcella, who you may have read about in my last two blog posts. After visiting with Myung and me in Chongqing, they went different places for a month or so, then had spent a month or so together in Nepal. Meeting up with them removed all the need for thinking on my part. They were familiar with Kathmandu, and my experience for the couple of days we were there together before they headed for Lumbini and India was going around Kathmandu with them while they took care of some stuff and met up with other people they knew. Kathmandu isn’t that interesting as a tourist destination, anyway, except that you do get an intro to Nepal where all roads lead to Kathmandu. We happened to be at a temple site near where they had to go for something, and here is a picture of us.

Late afternoon of the second day, we met up with people they knew, a Nepali named Stamdip and a Croatian who was hanging out with Stamdip, Alex. We went to a local dive and had some local fermented grog I forgot the name of. It’s fermented millet served in a bamboo mug. You pour hot water over this and suck it up through a straw, adding water as you polish it off. I added water maybe one or two times too many. It kind of snuck up on me.

It was nice to see Ale and Marcella again. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see each other again somewhere. I’m already thinking I might make my March visa run to Nepal again, and Alex wrote me a few days ago that she might be there again about then, And Stamdip will likely be there. So….

Like I said, Kathmandu isn’t particularly interesting from a tourist standpoint, unless you are a newbie at visiting developing countries or have a particular interest in Nepali culture. Next time, maybe I’ll learn more. The main thing you can’t miss is that the two religions are Hinduism and Buddhism, Hinduism being the more common. I’m more drawn to Buddhist stuff. Here are some pictures from a Buddhist temple in Kathmandu. It’s distinctively Nepali, while much the same as Asian Buddhist temples elsewhere…

…including the presence of monkeys…

…and of course the ubiquitous souvenir hunting opportunities. Here are all the little Buddha statues you could ever want.

That’s about all I have to say about Kathmandu. The rest of my time there was spent snarfing down western food which is difficult or impossible to find in Chongqing, like decent BREAD! and getting a few things I needed to start trekking.

My trek around the Annapurna Circuit began where most trekkers begin, Besi Shahar, about five hours by van or six or seven hours by bus west of Kathmandu. Besi Shahar is little, and the end of the line for public transport drops you right in front of the trail check in. You have to get a $40 permit to go in there, and there are several checkpoints along the way. From there, it’s a one minute walk and you are on your way.

One thing I hadn’t expected was electrified villages and towns the whole way around. There is a halfway decent dirt and rock road for the first maybe 25 kilometers. Then for the next 25 or so km there is a very bad 4 wheel drive road which is almost unused. Especially for the first part, the trekking route is either on the road or near it. My first idea was to just go it alone. Then, on the second day I was still strolling along nearly flat farmland at only 800-some meters elevation when a village guy came up to me and offered to be a porter for my pack for $9/day. I wasn’t tired, especially since I had lightened what I needed to about 11 kilos, but all along I was thinking about the climb to 5416 meters (17,778 ft) ahead of me, my rather bad balance, my tendency to fall down and my weak knees. He said he had done it four times, so I decided to take him up on it. We went to his home, whereupon he introduced me to his brother, Ganesh, and asked if Ganesh could go instead, even though he had never done it. Ganesh is college educated and speaks English quite well. With that in mind, I accepted. An hour later, he had is 2-3 kilo daypack packed, kissed his new wife goodbye, and we were off again, him carrying my big pack and me carrying his little one. All on all, I’m glad I chose to do it. Ganesh is a really nice guy, was good company, and was helpful along the way, especially with communicating. He is ethnic Gurung, but the Sherpa, Tibetans and others in that region speak a common Napali.

For me, this post is getting a little wordy. Let’s go to some pictures. Here’s Ganesh. My pack looks huge, but he’s only 160 cm (5′ 3″) and the pack space is mostly taken up with a fluffy non’down sleeping bag I rented and my bulky non-down warm jacket. He got by with no sleeping bag and less clothes he washed as he went. The guesthouses all have blankets enough.

Instead of giving all the details of all the villages and specific views and mountains, I’ll just post the photos with as much discussion as seems worthwhile or I have energy to write about, and see how it goes. Those of you who know me know it’s one take and onward, correcting only for spelling. Looking back ain’t my thing.

After a couple of days, the trail starts going up. Most people take this counter-clockwise route because it’s usually a pretty gradual ascent, rather than taking the steeper clockwise route. The well-worn trail is nearly impossible to miss, as many thousands of people have gone before on this best known of all Himalayan treks. As I said, I was surprised at the advanced state of the route and villages along the way, with proper guesthouses and electricity in anything like a significant village or town. Still, soon people and pack animals are the means of getting there and conveying goods. There are about twenty bridges like this we would cross before it was over.

Most of the large quantities of goods are transported by mules and horses, but there are many short, one or two day hauls by people. Of course, individuals and families often carry their own stuff. this woman would consider carrying my pack to be practically a day off.

A lot of pictures I have are just random shots of this or that thing that looked picture worthy. Here’s a typical village we must have passed early because it’s early in my list of pictures and below the tree line.

Most villages along the trail have a gateway or arch like this.

Here’s one of the dozens of waterfalls.

Here’s another little one, hardly worth uploading, looking at it now. You get a little blase after a while.

Some of the guesthouses are basic.Some are quite nice. Often they have solar hot water which is just right at about 3 PM when we usually stopped walking. Rooms cost between 60 cents and $2.50, often with attached bathrooms. That’s if you agree to eat there, too. The porters sleep and eat for free until more than halfway down the backside.

There’s a menu for the tourists, usually having noodle dishes, rice dishes, spring rolls, yak or cow meat and other stuff for lunch or dinner. In the morning, there are usually eggs, bread or Tibetan bread, yogurt, sometimes meusli, always oatmeal, maybe potatoes and various cold weather, high altitude veggies. The mainstay in all of Nepal is dhal bhat, which is much like Indian thali. That’s a platter with a heaping pile of rice, with veggies, or meat if you want, plopped around it, and of course dhal, a thin lentil based soup. Nepali’s never tire of it. Ganesh ate it even when he had a choice, which he often didn’t if he was to eat for free. I thought he’d want something else, but he was happy with that twice a day.

As you get higher up, the peaks start appearing, mostly as you look up ahead above the river valley you are more or less following. I remember this was one of the first views.

That was looking back. It gets better.

Here are, I believe, the gateway to Lower Pisang.

From Lower Pisang is the first hard set of switchbacks going up about 300-some meters to Upper Pisang. You can follow the river, but this way is much more scenic. This is where Ganesh started to really earn his pay. I remember how bad the food was at this Sherpa restaurant we arrived at. A two day old brick of cold rice and potato dhal. The veg curry was alright.

But the view was good.

I wouldn’t want to be in one of these buildings in an earthquake.

Here are a couple of other scenes around town.

I guess I got a little trigger happy with my camera there because it was starting to get interesting.
Anyway, we left out of there after going up to a monastery (this white building)…

…heading toward the district “capital”, Manang. It leveled out again and we met up with the river again.

Manang is at 3550 meters, so both of us were getting a little winded. Everyone recommends you take a day off at this point, not only to rest up for the nearly two FULL day 2000 meter push through the pass, but to minimize the risk of elevation sickness. Ganesh was knackered totally, though he wasn’t the only one. These tea stalls pop up just about when you need one.

The next two days was going to be long and hard, so we basically chilled out at the most popular guesthouse, the Bob Marley Guesthouse, actually the only happening guesthouse in Manang in December after most of the tourists have left Nepal for warmer climate. You can guess what the favorite way to chill out there was. Like India, if they care about dope smoking in Nepal, you wouldn’t know it, at least where westerners go. On our day off, we went up the side of the mountain a bit for a look around. That little glacier used to come all the way down. It’s disappearing, like most of the others in the world. It’s quite dry up there now during the dry season, but people say it’s even drier than normal this year. In Kathmandu, all the power is all hydro and with the rivers running so low, there is electricity only about 50% of the time.

Ganesh just wasn’t going to make it all the way with my pack, so I hired another porter to the top. When we met him in the morning, he had a pony. Now, that’s the way to do it. He said we could ride the pony if we got too tired, but both of us would have none of THAT. We have our pride.

The first night, we stayed at low camp, Throng Phedi, at 4450 meters. There was a comfortable guesthouse open there. Here is my room.

In the morning at 5, we started up, the trail illuminated by our reading (mostly) head lamps. The worst part was up the switchbacks right out of bed. The good news was that by about 7-something the steepest part was done. From there is was a steady climb over the top. The view wasn’t particularly spectacular. I didn’t take any pictures. The other factor was it was so cold. It’s hard to say what the temperature was, maybe 5 or 7 C. (40 or so F.) but the wind was blowing at least 50 kpm. We were basically making for the tea shop at the top. After warming up in there, we went out for the obligatory photo shoot. Here we are, engulfed in prayer flags in front of a sign in English which says something to effect of congratulations for reaching the top and enjoy the walk down.

Already leg weary, my knees didn’t like the rapid 1600 meter descent too the first village on the back side. Thankfully, not too much of it was scree.

Finally, we got to Muktinath. It’s famous for it’s monasteries and a nunnery.

A few trekkers turn north into the deep Himalaya, but the $500 permit keeps that number to a minimum. We headed on south and, as they say, it was all downhill from there. There was only one climb of about 200 meters. There were several cute towns, these all linked by a passable dirt and rock road, with public transportation if you choose. Here’s a town photo. There are lots of these kinds of places.

One last mountain peak photo. This is Dhaulagiri, to the west. At 8167 meters high, it is the seventh highest peak in the world. To the east, maybe 20 Km away is Annapurna 1, also over 8000 meters. (Everest is about about over 300 km east of there.) You look up at these, even from the higher parts of the trail, and you think it’s not so far away or so high. Obviously, looks are deceiving. Daulagiri wasn’t climbed until 1960.

From there it was about a two day stroll down to Tatopani, which means “hot springs”. Going in the springs was a nice end to the trek. When I went down, I didn’t bring my camera, so no pics. It didn’t look like much, but it was just right. There were showers with the hot spring water and two cement pools about five meters across, one warm and the other hot. There was a little restaurant. Very nice. It cost 60 cents to enter.

Many trekkers continue on to the last leg of the Annapurna Circuit, to at place with a good overall view of the whole Annapurna Range called Poon Hill. I had to choose whether to do that and have a day or two in Pokhara, or go to Pokhara for a few days, as many suggested would be fun. I chose the fun in Pokhara, so we took the bus there from Tatopani.

In Pokhara, Ganesh did some shopping, went out for a steak with me, then went home the next morning. He’s a good guy. I wouldn’t mind hooking up with him again if I go back. There is no computer near his home. Emailing would be nice.

There are many short and few day walks around Pokhara, but I was finished. I could have gone to a few places with views, but it was socked in with fog and clouds the whole time I was there. It’s not particularly picturesque itself. No pics. Basically, I ate great food like there was no tomorrow. Steaks, Mexocan food, gourmet pizzas, the works. Finally I returned to Kathmandu.

I had one whole day to kill before returning to Chongqing, so I went to the old city of Bahktapur. It has a long history you can google if you want. It’s very photogenic and well preserved, maybe in part helped by the $15 admission. yow. Here are the pictures.

That’s it. I came home and I’m living the domesticated life again. This Nepal trip was a satisfying break, and now I’m happy to be back. Christmas isn’t much in China, but again I hope you all are having or had a wonderful holiday, and be well, all of you.

By the way, I shaved off my cold weather face blanket when I got home.

Marcella and Ale, who went with me for the first half of my Mongolia tour, came to Chongqing with their friend Carl and stayed with us for about a week. Here we are having dinner. Ale is the guy in the red shirt.

They put their pictures from Mongolia on Myung’s computer before they left, and I’m just getting around to posting them here. Not surprisingly, most of their pictures are a lot like mine. I won’t narrate them all, as I described a lot of this in my last post.

Here’s one that can use a little explaining. Turtles have special significance to Buddhists. I am copying and pasting this from Wikipedia because it summarizes the symbolism more succinctly than I can.
“Life in the world of humans is known as “the precious human rebirth”. Born close to the pivot point of happiness and suffering, humans have a unique capacity for moral choices with long-term significance.
The human rebirth is said to be extremely rare. The Majjhima Nikaya (129 Balapandita Sutta) compares it to a wooden cattle-yoke floating on the waves of the sea, tossed this way and that by the winds and currents. The likelihood of a blind turtle, rising from the depths of the ocean to the surface once in a hundred years, putting its head through the hole in the yoke is considered greater than that of a being in the animal realm, hungry ghost realm or hell realm achieving rebirth as a human.”

These are wooden tablets hundreds of years old containing the teachings of the Buddha. Not all monasteries have these, of course, so they are to be cherished and protected, as you can see.

This one takes less explaining. I’m taking a leak in a Mongolian toilet.

Hopefully this doesn’t require me to come right out and say it.

That’s it for the pics.

Nothing much has been happening around here. Myung’s still got her shop and I’m still doing pretty much nothing. It’s time for a visa run, so I’m going to Macau in two days to do that. I’ve never been there and I’m tired of Hong Kong. They say it’s not too interesting, but at least it’s different. Maybe in November I’ll go to Nepal for a month. It’s supposed to be nice there then if you aren’t to high in the mountains. Marcella’s there now and Ale is joining her next month. She emailed that they might work for a tour company, so maybe they’ll still be there when I get there.

So, that’s it from Lake Wobegon. Be well, all of you.

It’s been a while, I know, since I blogged. Since returning from Myanmar, I’ve had a very settled life. Myung and I still live in that same apartment In Chongqing. She still has her cosmetics shop and part of a shop at one of the universities. There isn’t much exciting about that, except she installed an air conditioner. That will make the place survivable for non-native Chongqingers like us, who suffer during the long, hot, humid summer here. I do little. I hang out with my computer, do most of the cleaning and cooking, study Chinese off and on, and watch a lot of baseball streamed on mlb.com. Often my big outing is taking Myung dinner at about 7 PM. Her employee gets off then, then we have dinner and hang out till 9-something. We see friends a couple or few times a week. That about sums up our life here. We’re very domesticated.

Every three months I have to leave the country to get a new visa. Last time, I went for a month to Myanmar. This time, I went to Mongolia for a month, returning last Saturday. All in all, it’s a lot different going from crowded, smoggy, comfortable Chongqing to thinly populated, clear and uncomfortable Mongolia. If change is good, this trip was great.

I didn’t have much of a plan when I left. I would have bought an English language Lonely Planet, but none were to be found in Chongqing. There isn’t a whole lot on the internet. After reading what was on there, I reserved a hostel bed on the internet, and headed out. My flight had an overnight stopover in Beijing, so I slept in the airport. Then the flight to the capital, Ulaan Baatar, was delayed 10 hours. I did finally get there about 11 PM and my bed was waiting for me, so all was well.

Ulaan Baatar is not all that exciting. Half of Mongolia’s population of 3 million live there, and it has just about everything anybody might want. There’s internet access, many accommodation choices including the $6 dorm beds I opted for, food from many places in the world, and stores that sell whatever you need. Outside UB, it’s a different story. The next biggest city has 100,000 people, and the next after that has about 30,000. Internet is in those cities, but the markets have little. What I enjoyed best about UB was you could get scrumptious steaks and other meat dishes that cost an arm and a leg in Chongqing. And there are supermarkets that sell what just about anything anybody is used to. Before I left, I loaded up on coffee, which I haven’t been able to find in Chongqing. We were running low on what I brought from Myanmar.

There are few sites in UB worth mentioning. It’s developing, but is in may ways just a big village. Even in UB, a significant fraction of the population lives in gers. I other parts of Asia, these are also known as yurts and other words.

Here is modern Mongolia, gers and modern but equally modest homes

Gers are basically round tents with wooden skeletons, covered with horse or camel felt and a canvas-like waterproofing. There’s a wooden door and a hole in the top for ventilation and through which the stove pipe sticks out. The inside is floored and usually carpeted. Furniture is arranged around the outside. During the bitter winter, people spend most of the day in there. At that time, the air in UB is said to be awful. I can imagine. A few hundred thousand people using wood to heat. I’m sure it’s incredibly toxic when the wind isn’t blowing. During the summer, though, the air was a wonderful relief from the air pollution in Chongqing.

Normally, I write about what I did in more or less chronological order, but as long as I’m on the subject of UB, I’ll put in some pictures of the big temple there which I didn’t visit till the next to my last day in Mongolia. The Russians tried to stamp out Buddhism during the 70 years they were in control. Since Mongolia got electoral democracy in 1990, it’s made a big comeback. Even the nonreligious, which are the majority after that time, are proud of their heritage and retain much of their traditional Buddhist and shamanistic culture. The dominant Buddhist tradition there is Tibetan Buddhism, specifically the Yellow Hat sect. The rituals, prayers, temples, art, etc., are very close to Tibetan Buddhism practiced elsewhere. I went in the morning and sat in on the service. It had the drums, cymbals, tea and queue past the senior monks for blessings that characterize the services I’ve experienced elsewhere. Like elsewhere, I did not whip out my camera inside. Before going in, though. I took these pictures.

Disclaimer: The screen on my camera failed about 10 days into a 20 day four wheel drive tour I went on before returning to UB. I’m surprised my pictures are as good as they are, considering I could only aim the camera in the general direction and push the shutter. There was no way to set anything, so they are what they are.

I was in UB about four days before going on tour. For a couple of days, I hung out with my roommate in the first hostel I stayed in. She was a crazy Mongolian artist who had lived, I think, 19 years in Germany. She had some kind of ADH with autism, I think. Whew. She had a good heart, I must say. One day we toured art galleries and studios. That was a pretty interesting way to get my first look around UB. Her friend has a car, so we then went out to see her crazy artist friend’s environmental art. He had carved and painted pink bunnies into the stumps remaining after the hillside was mostly denuded of trees.

Unfortunately, his most of the bunnies were also chopped up for firewood. Oh, how sad it was, this statement he put much effort into for three months, mercilessly desecrated by unappreciative, freezing poor people who obviously do not value art. Crazy Sarah’s friend cried himself a river. Sarah documented the tragedy for posterity and empathized as only true artists can. Vodka should not have have been the med of choice for this guy.

We also went to Terelj, a national park about an hour’s drive from UB. It was fine, but nothing as great as what was to follow on the tour.

Here’s a monastery there as the view from up the hill near it.

In May, there aren’t very many tourists in Mongolia yet. My idea was to hook up with a group and share a three week tour through Mongolia. The easiest and by far most common way to travel is in a four wheel drive van or SUV with a group, sharing the expenses. These vehicles can accommodate six people, plus the driver and a cook/translator/guide. I casually went around hostels for a couple of days, looking for anyone who was going on a long trip. I was beginning to think I’d have to search longer, but I went to one place and ran into three people who had just arrived on the China to UB leg of the Trans Siberian Railway and were planning a 20 day trip offered by this and other hostels. These were a couple of middle aged office workers from Perth and a Dutch university student they had met on the train. I seized that opportunity. Shortly after meeting them, an Italian/ Australian couple staying at the hostel decided to join us for the first 9 days through the Gobi desert.

If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have chosen the desert portion of this trip because I have seen many deserts, but the others wanted to go. As I was saying, there weren’t many people there and this was the tour that was leaving the next day. That said, the Bobi is about as nice as deserts get. There are a few pretty places, and the desert landscape generally keeps your attention.

This last picture is of Flaming Cliffs where many of the famous dinosaur finds Mongolia is famous for were discovered.

We made a couple of stops on the long haul over dirt tracks to the south of the country, but the small isolated temples weren’t really worth photographing, mush less uploading, so I’ll skip to the sand dunes in the south. Namibia it’s not, but pretty. A steam flows into the area, so there is water, making it a suitable destination for us and home for a smattering of locals who raise horses and the two-humped Asian camels and achieve some prosperity catering to tour groups.

Four of my companions climbed a dune and tried to sled down on a piece of flooring. One of the office workers and I opted to watch. They didn’t have any luck, as the flooring sagged to much in the middle under the weight.

The tours include transportation, food, accommodation mostly in gers but sometimes in a building, and a few activities. Here was our ger camp down there, and the Russian van we rode in. This was the typical scene where we would stop for the night.

One activity is the obligatory camel ride. So we saddled up and went for a few hours.

Even camels need a rest.

Here are three pictures of a pretty spot at the edge of the desert.

One thing there is no shortage of in Mongolia is domesticated animals, goats, sheep, yaks, cattle and yak-cattle mixes called dzo. The dzo are sterile, but the females are fertile, so they can have very different looks. This first one is one ugly creature.

After about 7 days of maybe 1000 miles in the desert, we finally swung northward into the mountainous central area. Her is one of the main north-south arteries. All it is is a wide swath of the usual dirt tracks.

Here is a pretty little monastery we stopped at.

Everywhere in the Tibetan Buddhist world are prayer flags. Prayers and wishes are written on these flags so they can be carried by the winds into the heavens.

The last place all six of us were together was Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol empire. From there, the Australian/Italian couple split off to do their own independent thing. Nothing much is left of the original Karakorum, as the Ming dynasty destroyed it after conquering most of Mongolia after the Mongolia empire collapsed in the 14th century. Slowly, it is being reconsrtucted. At one time, this area in these pictures was full of buildings.

After leaving the desert, there are real cities. The second biggest city in Mongolia has 100,000 people. The rest are in the 30,000 range. This is what a provincial capital looks like, just a big village with dirt streets and most of the people still living in gers with pit toilets in the corner of their plot.

Here’s city center in one of them.

The next big stop for the four of us remaining was a place they call White Lake because it’s white with ice for about seven months of the year. Here’s our camp and the lake.

I know most of you would like to see pictures of the Mongolian people. It’s just so hard for me to poke a camera in anybody’s face, even though in Mongolia they don’t seem to mind it. Sorry. I was going to start taking some people pictures, but that’s when my camera screen failed. Before it finally died, I had to guesstimate how the rest of the picture would look. After that I could change my settings or shoot straight. That added to my disinclination to take portraits. It’s a miracle any of the pictures I have after that aren’t totally skywonkous.

As is obvious, the infrastructure in Mongolia is rudimentary outside the capital. Here’s a bridge we drove over. The driver got out and checked it out for quite a while before hazzarding the crossing.
We all got out and walked.

The next to last group of pictures is of around Khovsgol Lake, in the far north about 100 km below the Russian border. That was an interesting and beautiful area. The ice on the lake was rapidly melting. In just the four days we were there, it melted about 75%.

The featured activity on our itinerary was supposed to be a three day/two night’s camping horse trek up the west side of the lake and I presume back through the mountains which rise just as you get away from the shore. That didn’t happen because it was clear to the cook/translator and the driver that the other three couldn’t take it. They had really bitten off more than they could chew. Though they knew we would be sleeping in these glorified tents, which actually had semblances if beds so we didn’t have to sleep on the floor, had a stove for heating, a little table and stools, they were quite uncomfortable. Who knows what they expected? A couple of days before getting to Khovsgol, they were already worried about how they were going to sleep in basic tents, on the ground, with nowhere to array their nightly needs around a bed. And after a half day on a horse, it was clear they couldn’t have tolerated three whole days of riding. So we were offered three day trips, returning to proper gers in the late afternoon on two of them and going out for a half day the third day. They couldn’t even do that much, and didn’t go or walked a lot of the way. That was the most disappointing thing about these travel companions for me. I was looking forward to that. Oh well, the day rides were quite nice for me.

One of the things they show the tourists is the reindeer people. These are true nomads still, in a country where nomadic life is vanishing. Most of the reindeer people have headed for the mountains for the summer, but this family and some others, no doubt, stick around for the tourists, selling souvenirs and trying to charge for photos. I took these before I knew they wanted money for photos.

I get asked about the food. Well, Mongolia has some of the most boring cuisine I’ve ever encountered. Here it is: dry pasta, rice, potatoes, carrots, bell peppers (capsicum), tomatoes, pickles/cucumbers, onions, wheat which they make dumplings and great bread, cabbage, apples and imported bananas, dried fruit, canned food of limited variety, dairy,and loads of mutton, goat, yak/beef/dzo, and horse meat. Meat is very cheap, as this is definitely a country where grazing is the obvious thing to do. Almost the only flavoring is salt and black pepper. When we left Ulaan Baatar, we thought the company was being cheap about their food budget. This was to some extent true because there was room in the van for some other foods which are available in UB, but after seeing a few food and shops, it was evident that those were the choices and those are what everybody eats day after day, year after year. Need I say, that was the subject of incessant whining by the three travelers I was stuck with after the couple left? One of them brought a suitcase on wheelies full of food from Australia. In her mind, she was prepared for Mongolia, you betcha.

The last place we stopped at on the way back to UB was this monastery.

Yes, that’s the same photo as at the top of this page.

I’ve got a couple of uploaded pictures left. Here’s the village supporting tourists at that temple above.

Here’s one of what are called deer stones. During the bronze age from about 800 BC to 500 BC, also called the Scythian age, the people here believed they would be carried to heaven by a deer when they died, so they erected about 600 of these stones. Most are in Mongolia, with the rest in nearby Russian Siberia. Some are in good shape, considering they’ve been exposed to harsh climate for over 2000 years.

So, that was how it went this time. It was hardly tough traveling, having been babysat on this 2000 mile package tour the whole time. With all the time in the world, I’m not sure I would have done it any different way. Logistics are hard in Mongolia. Maybe I would have done this and some independent travel as well.

When I returned to UB, I basically just hung out waiting to return. I enjoyed three steak dinners. The western style steaks there are fine, and quite cheap. Ever since then, I’ve really been appreciating the food in China and what we make here at home.

I’ve been exchanging emails with the Australian/Italian couple. They are going to come by here and stay with us in somewhere between two weeks and two months. I’m looking forward to that. They were cool and supplied the positive energy in the group while they were there.

With that, I’ll wrap up this edition of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Maybe I’ll blog again before going somewhere on a visa run, but if I don’t, be well, all of you.

Hi everybody

I just spent a month in Myanmar on kind of an extended Chinese visa run. Before that, I was in Kunming for several days to get the Myanmar visa. It felt good to be on the road again. That life suits me and it was time to get out of Dodge. (Excuse the American slang.) Besides, Chongqing was so cold when I left, I was looking forward to some warm weather. The weather in Myanmar was just lovely, usually about 30 degrees C in the daytime and in the teens at night, no rain and rarely a cloud in the sky, as it is the dry season down there. The timing was good, as it is now nice in Chongqing, about 20 degrees in the daytime.

My friend told me she read where Kunming is supposed to have the happiest people in China. Maybe, I don’t know, but I find the vibes nice there. I stayed at the same hostel Myung and I stayed a couple of years ago. It’s called Cloudland. If anyone is going to Kumming, I recommend the place. It’s in all the guidebooks. I didn’t do much while I was there. It was cold and rainy, so I hung out a lot at the hostel. I did get out some. Here’s a place called Bamboo Temple.

Remember, click on the picture to make it bigger.

There’s a lake park near the hostel. It’s your basic nice Chinese park…

…and it’s claim to fame is thousands of seagulls. At least hundreds of them fly around the periphery like they are on a race track, snatching pieces of bread tossed into the air, or even from the fingertips of people holding it out, without touching the people. How they snag that without even touching the fingertips is amazing.

That’s about all I have to say about Kunming. From there, I flew to Yangon (Rangoon) Myanmar. I spent a few days there waiting for my China visa. It’s a city of about 5 million people, but it’s not much of a tourist destination. I got my feet wet, though, and began to see first hand what Myanmar is about. It wasn’t exactly what I expected. I expected a totally backward, impoverished country with military presence everywhere. I heard the plainclothes bulls are all around, as well as co-opted civilians, but the overall feeling for the tourist is not that of a police state. It’s definitely poor, but there is basic infrastructure in the cities. There is running water in the cities and electricity most of the time. Due to international sanctions, there are no ATM’s and the banks can’t give cash advances on a credit card. Foreigners have to bring all the cash they will want in US dollars or euros, and change them. Actually, you can use dollars a lot of the time, if you want, though small purchases like your 50 cent lunch have to be paid in Myanmar currency. Internet though Yahoo and Hotmail only works from about 7 AM-9 AM then after 9 PM. For some reason Gmail works better. I don’t have Gmail, so my internet connection was sporadic. It had to be during those times and when the electricity was running or I was at a place with a generator. Profitable enough places and homes of the middle class all have generators, as the electricity goes off several times a day. My guesthouse in Yangon was big and had this big generator.

The one definite must see in Yangon is the Schweggadon, a temple complex nearly rivaling the royal temple complex in Bangkok.

It’s especially nice in the evening when they light it up.

Like Thailand, Myanmar people are Theravada Buddhists which means, among other things, that they are way into earning merits so they can return to a better life next time. At all Buddhist temples everywhere, visitors must go barefoot. This means the grounds are almost always kept quite clean. Believers can earn merits by cleaning the walking areas. Small armies of broom pushers are all over the place sweeping. Also, sweeping has special significance, as it symbolizes sweeping away the past in our ever transitory existence.

Here are some tourist monks who were taking pictures like the rest of us.

From there, I took the sleeper train to Mandalay, about 750 Km and 16 hours north of Yangon. The tracks and trains are left over from when Myanmar, then called Burma, was a British colony. As you can probably guess from the amount of time it took to cover the distance, it’s really slow. Mostly that is because the tracks are in such disrepair and uneven that if we went any faster, the train would leap off the rails.

Mandalay isn’t much. I didn’t bother uploading any pictures from there except this one of a street scene…

…and this one of a gravel carrier.

The best thing in the area is about 25 km south. In that place, Amarapura, is a 200-something year old teak bridge. At 1.2 km long it’s the longest teak bridge in the world. Here are some pictures of and from it.

The thing to do there is to take a boat out at sunset and photograph the bridge with the sunset. With no clouds, the sunset wasn’t brilliant, but here are the pictures. Imagine a sunset backdrop.

Here we all are in our boats, getting ready for the sunset photo op.

There are, of course, many things to see anywhere in the country, but it’s regular basic Southeast unless you go below the surface, which I didn’t. Having spent now about 1 1/2 years of my life in Southeast Asia, I didn’t feel the need to fully appreciate Myanmar specific village life. I stuck almost exclusively to the tourist route. Mind you, much of Myanmar is off limits to foreigners, so travel is slow, circuitous and sometimes only by air. I have something of an excuse there. Also, the visas are only for 28 days. Unless I wanted to do the “This-is-Tuesday-so-it-must-be-Mandalay” thing, destinations had to be limited for me. I can’t bring myself to move along quickly.

From Mandalay, I took this pick up to Pyin U Lwin….

From there I took another bus up to Hsipaw. I’ll skip to Hsipaw for now to show you some village pictures. From Hsipaw, I took a little half day boat ride up a nice river…

…and along the banks were villagers doing their village thing. This village is upper middle class by Myanmar standards. These particular villagers see groups like us every day, but people and places like this are everywhere.

In case you are wondering, houses in Myanmar, like most of rural Southeast Asia, are made of bamboo with palm frond, thatch or corrugated galvanized steel roofs. Natural roofing is better because it keeps the heat out and isn’t loud in the rain, but it has to be replaced every two years. The skeletons of the houses are bamboo poles and the walls are differently designed layers of the concentric circles which form the trunks of the bamboo. Here is a guy making a wall. They need upkeep, too, as they get broken pretty easily. You can kick a hole through walls like this.

Here is a furniture maker.

I believe this guy is sharpening that knife.

Back to Pyin U Lwin. There isn’t much to see there except a beautiful lake park you wouldn’t expect to see in Myanmar. I’ll bet it is especially beautiful when everything is in bloom. There is the lakeside, hill paths through the woods, elevated wooded paths over the forest and swamp, many deer, gibbons, and other animals and birds. I wasn’t able to get any good monkey pictures.

I got a kick out oft his fake Safeway on the main street in Pyin U Lwin. Notice, the sign is an exact copy of a Safeway sign. Yes, for sure, inside was a regular little general store.

After Hsipaw, I took a train back to Mandalay, as foreigners are only allowed to go one more city north of the road. As clunky as the trains are, they are better than the pickups. They are often crowded, always slow, and usually uncomfortable. On one ride from Bagan to Meitkila, I had to maintain squat potty position for about seven hours and nearly couldn’t walk afterward. I forget where this other ride was, but that truck was on it’s last legs. We stopped 5 times for oil and overheating. Note, mine was not the only clunker.

one of the least This country has one of the least number of proper petrol stations I’ve been to. Gasis sold from 55 gallon drums along the sides of the roads. It’s measured out in 4 or 5 liter cans and funneled into the tank.

The train ride down to Mandalay was pretty. My gorge pictures are terrible, though. at one point we crossed the gorge over what was atthe time the British built it about 60 years ago, the highest train bridge in Asia.

Here’s the seating and people inside that one.

It doubled as a freight train, naturally, which stopped a couple of times to take on freight. Let me tell you, this stuff was heavy. Those pum[kins weigh about 5 kilos each, and those guys were laboring.

I uploaded a number of pictures taken along this and the other train rides. Here are the scenes.

.

I only spent the night in Mandalay. The next morning I took the deluxe tourist speed boat down the Ayerawaddy (Irrawaddy) River to Bagan. I was hoping the views would be good, but it was just sandy banks almost the whole way.

Bagan is the one, incomparable site to see in Myanmar. Like Angkor Wat, tourists with the money fly in directly from Bangkok just to go here, and then leave Myanmar again. Bagan iis an area of about, I’d say, 40 square kilometers dotted with hundreds of temples and stupas, also called chedi in Tibet and Ladakh, pagodas in China and Vietnam and, in Myanmar, zedi. Some in Bagan are only a couple hundred of years old. Most were built during Burma’s heyday from the 10th to the 13th centuries. Most of the big ones have been reconstructed, especially after a 1990 earthquake, but it’s still great. My pictures don’t do it justice.

Most of the temples and stupas are situated within about 5 kilometers of what is known as Old Bagan. Many are accessible by paved road, but the best way to see them is by walking or riding a bike along the network of dusty lanes among them. Another good way is to go by horse cart if you aren’t up for many kilometers of self propelled movement. During the hot seasons, that would definitely be recommended.

Oh, you can also get around on the decent surfaces on bicycle trishaws, like these and the one in the Mandalay street scene picture.

Here are some of the temple pictures. For really good ones, search “Bagan”. Unfortunately, the only way to get an elevated perspective is to go up this incongruous tower the government built, which costs $10 and isn’t that high anyway, or to take a $300 balloon ride, which I also skipped.

Somewhere in here I need to tell those of you who don’t know, what that is on the faces of the girls and women. This girl was walking along a dirt path in Bagan.

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It’s sunscreen made from this soft wood you can buy for next to nothing anywhere in Myanmar and much of Southeast Asia. You buy a length of branch, usually about 8 cm in diameter, simply wet a flat surface and smear the end of this very soft wood in the water to form a slurry. Then you wipe it on your face. Often, they like to make designs. Almost all women there do it, and some men.

I broke up the 12 hour ride from Bagan to Inle Lake by stopping overnight halfway in Meitkila. there is nothing much to say about that place. It’s known to westerners as a crossroads between the east-west Bagan-Inle road and the north-south Yangon-Mandalay road. Hardly anyone walks around there and, even though there are maybe 20,000 people there, it’s one of those places where the people look at you and your blue eyes with curiosity, the kids want to touch you and the dogs snarl at you. I only mention it because I uploaded a few pictures from there. One is the view from the porch of my guesthouse, one of the nicer guesthouse views I had.

I have this picture of some guys who made no bones about their distaste for the government. Maybe they were a little too drunk.

They wanted me to agree with them that the government is terrible, which I do but was very circumspect about what I said while I was there. A very young, uniformed, low level government guy on a motorbike pulled up in front of where we were sitting. These guys pointed right at him, right in his face, and told me what cocksuckers he and the rest of them are. The government guy did nothing, just looked down and decided to go somewhere else. I’m sure he didn’t understand what they said in English, but he got the drift.

Here’s as good a place as any to put in pictures of typical eating establishments are in Myanmar. By far, most people eat at sidewalk eateries like this or as you saw in a couple of the railroad photos like this one which I put again second.

I was almost entirely in the states of Burma and Shan. Burmese food is a blend of food sort of like Thai and Indian. Curries are popular, as well as real Indian food. Of course, rice, noodles and stir fry are popular. Besides the curry, I couldn’t tell you about the spices. It isn’t very spicy, though, compared to Thai or even Indian food. In Shan, the staple is Shan noodles, which is noodle soup made of noodles shaved off a block of rice paste/starch. Typically, any kind of greens are added. The taste is a little more pungent that most Asian food I’ve had. Night markets with many barbeques and boiling pots of this and that are social venues all over Asia. The night market in Meitkila was nice. It’s all good. I always say I’m on a “see food diet”. If I see it, I’ll eat it. Actually, that’s a plan most travellers use. Menus are rare, so you just look at what people are eating and point at what looks good to you.

Of course, you can eat western food, too. At this Italian place at Inle Lake, you can bemuse yourself looking under the wood-fired pizza sign from your outside table at ancient stuoas down the block. I’ve eaten enough foreign food over the last few years that I have NO problem with pizza when I feel like it. It was good at this place.

After Bagan, the second most popular tourist palce is Inle Lake. It’s very tranquil, like almost everywhere in Myanmar. The main town has a few thousand people, and that’s it except for scattered villages. I was ready to go home, to tell you the truth, so I decided to chill out there for a few days until my flight out of Yangon left.

Here is the view from my guesthouse in the town, Nyaungswue.

“The thing to do” there is to take a boat tour of the lake. You can get a cheap ride all day for $12 from the fisherman who can make more taking tourists around than they can selling fish. They park their boats in a side canal for shelter during the night.

You go from town down the main canal to the lake itself. Here are photos along the way and in the Lake.

After going along the canal, you emerge into the lake. There, the fishermen are doing their thing. The poorer fishermen and other boaters propel their longboats with an oar managed by their foot, using their upper thigh and hip as a fulcrum.

There is motorized commerce, also.

The first place all the tour boats stop at is called the floating market. I forget the name of the village. Myanmar is experiencing a drought, so there isn’t much floating at the floating market. This is what there is of it. This season, it’s little more than where the boats put in on the bank.

The village there is in a maze of canals, as the villages there are nestled in groups of islands in the lake. They are connected by bridges, the bigger ones like the one below. Others are narrow footbridges.

On shore, there is an unremarkable temple and a market. Part of itis the usual market, and part sells tourist stuff. Here are some pictures of around there.

You can go anywhere yu want, as you have rented the boat and the boatmen for the day, but there is a well traveled route you might as well take since you don’t know anything yourself. Another stop is a “factory” where they build the long boats generally used. This guy is putting the finishing touches on a keel.

Here, the girls are making cheroots, a kind of very green cigar popular in Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia. They come in different flavors. The outside is some kind of leaf I forget. The inside is tobacco and various flavoring, such as honey, fruit, salt, spices, etc.. I smoked one part way. It was surprisingly okay, not as harsh as they look like they would be, and definitwly sweet.

Another stop is the “jumping cat” monastery. I’m not sure if teaching kitties to jump through hoops like circus lions is a path to enlightenment, or a way to get donations from visitors. Both, I guess.

Last on this tour was to see some long-necked Karen imported, of course, for the tourists. Brass rings are added as the girls grow up until it looks like their necks are stretched so far. Actually, the shoulder bones are shoved down. They never take them off and, if they did, they wouldn’t be able to hold their heads up. There are at least a couple of stories why they do this. One is in some ancient time an invader defeated their tribe. The men wanted to make the women unattractive. Another story goes, the invader was cutting off heads and these rings were maybe magical maybe real protection against that. I could swear I saw that same woman in the first picture years ago in Mae Hong Son, Thailand, which is actually closer to their homeland.

This, boys and girls, finally gets to the end of this tome. After Inle Lake, I returned to Yangon for my flight back to Chongqing. After my month in Myanmar, I felt ready to be home. It’s nice to be with Myung again. I hurt my leg and foot falling in Bagan, got cellulitis, but now it’s healing well after getting treatment and antibiotics here. Internet is awful in Myanmar, so I’m catching up on my emails and news. Myung’s shop is going pretty well now that the weather is better. Otherwise, things are normal here, just about how I left it. I think I will like being free with a home to return to.

With that, I will bid you adieu. Be well, all of you.

I hope you all had a happy holiday season, had an opportunity to be with friends and family, had fun, and could share food and good will and hope for the new year.
Man, this year went quickly. I know everyone always says that, but for me it’s difficult to imagine it was December of 2009 when Myung and I rented that apartment in Buenos Aires. Maybe it’s a function of being busy, but considering the slow pace of my life in Chongqing, I don’t think that’s it. Getting older? Maybe. In any case, here’s to life and phase two of lumpy gravy.
Now, why did that Frank Zappa reference pop into my head? That one is even more tangential than usual. In the spirit of blogging in one take, I’m keeping it, on principle. Is it just aging or am I leaving the world? For some reason Zappa has been in my head for a little while. Thinking about it… Maybe it’s because I have become quite a news junkie. I look at the developments in the US, a safe distance from Tuscon and Wall Street, and remember Zappa singing in 1973:

It can’t happen here
It can’t happen here
I’m telling you, my dear
That it can’t happen here
Because I been checkin’ it out, baby
I checked it out a couple a times, hmmmmmmmm

And I’m telling you
It can’t happen here
Oh darling, it’s important that you believe me
(bop bop bop bop)
That it can’t happen here

Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in kansas…
Kansas kansas tototototodo
Kansas kansas tototototodo
Kansas kansas
Who could imagine that they would freak out in minnesota…
Mimimimimimimi minnesota, minnesota, minnesota
Who could imagine…

Who could imagine
That they would freak out in washington, d.c.
D.c. d.c. d.c. d.c. d.c.
It can’t happen here
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
It can’t happen here
It can’t happen here
Everybody’s safe and it can’t happen here
No freaks for us
It can’t happen here
Everybody’s clean and it can’t happen here
No, no, it won’t happen here
I’m telling you it can’t
It won’t happen here
(bop bop didi bop didi bop bop bop)
Plastic folks, you know
It won’t happen here
You’re safe, mama
You’re safe, baby
You just cook a tv dinner
And you make it
(bop bop bop)
No no no no

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/it-cant-happen-here-lyrics-frank-zappa.html ]

Oh, we’re gonna get a tv dinner and cook it up
Go get a tv dinner and cook it up
Cook it up
Oh, and it won’t happen here
(no no no no no no no no no no no
Man you guys are really safe
Everything’s cool).
Who could imagine
Who could imagine
That they would freak out in the suburbs
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool.

And they thought it couldn’t happen here
(duh duh duh duh duh)
They knew it couldn’t happen here
They were so sure it couldn’t happen here
But…

Suzie…
Yes yes yes–i’ve always felt that
Yes I agree man, it really makes it…yeah…
It’s a real thing, man
And it really makes it
(makes it)

Suzie, you just got to town,
And we’ve been, we’ve been very interested
In your development,
Since you first took the shots.
Forget it!
Hmmmmmmmmm
(it can’t happen here)
(can’t happen here)
(can’t happen here)

I may have diverged from the spirit of good will and hope for the new year.
I was going to talk about how it’s going in Chongqing. This is definitely a new phase. I haven’t been so stable in one place for over 4 years. If the first six months of 2010 in South America seemed to go quickly, these last six in China have gone even more quickly. Myung’s cosmetics shop is up and running, though rather slowly here at the beginning. That was keeping her busy and me somewhat occupied. Now, it’s almost on autopilot. At first, Myung was spending all but two hours of her 10-9 open hours there, doing the myriad things you can easily imagine she had to do starting up. In English, you might say I was a “go fer”. Here we joke that I’m a “pang pang”, which is that guy you’ve seen in the travelogues who balances a load in two parts at the ends of a pole across his shoulders. Now, Myung either opens it up and stays till about 1 PM, then comes home until about 7, then leaves it with her employee, Shao Jhang. Or, she lets Shao Jhang open up, then goes in about 11-something, comes home till about 7, then stays till closing time. Any way, it’s quite settled. On Monday’s, Shao Jhang’s day off, Myung goes all day. I make some one pot hot dish for lunch and dinner and bring it to her.
When Myung’s at work or occupying herself at the computer in the the from bedroom, her office, I spend a lot of time hanging out at my computer. I am now the consummate couch potato. There is no heat in this apartment, so it’s about 40-something degrees Fahrenheit in here during the day. I curl up on the couch with a blanket over me and an electric heating pad under me, and cuddle my notebook computer. I cruise the news and all that, do emails and every day do something, however little, at my Mandarin lessons site. I used to cook more, but now that Myung is home more, she cooks, too. I still do most of the shopping. This and lots of other life details get me out of the apartment.
Christmas and New Year’s has come and gone since I last blogged. Christmas is well known in China, and is a minor celebration. The TV has specials on educating people about what it is and showing videos of people singing carols, riding in one-horse open sleighs, decorating trees, giving presents and a few are adoring the baby Jesus. The store, which like anywhere, needed no excuse to have promotions. Myung decorated her place. There is a little gift giving, but Chinese do that anyway. Besides, Chinese New Year of the rabbit is coming up Feb 4. People are gearing up big time for that. Bunny this, Babbit that, everywhere. All kinds of groups are practicing dance routines, traditional dragon parade stuff, singing, etc.. It’s all starting already, almost a month ahead of time. The train ticket offices are stuffed all day beginning at 6:30 AM, selling tickets to people who traditionally return to their hometowns and families at this time. This included the couple of hundred million migrant factory workers who get to have a good long holiday at this time. It’s a zoo, trust me. The crowds at the stations are, as I often say, “real India”.
I’ll be in Myanmar during New Year, from Jan 22 to Feb 19. I go to Kunming on the 12th, two days from now, so I can get a visa into Myanmar at the consulate there. It takes them 5 working days to issue a visa. I haven’t decided on an itinerary for either place yet. Myung and I went to Kunming and Yunnan Province a couple of years ago. We liked it and I have some fairly vivid memories of the city, the countryside, and all the minority people. I booked a bed in the same hostel we stayed in before. When I get there, I’ll play it by ear. Same goes for Myanmar. I booked a place in Yangon through the Lonely Planet website. I’ll figure out what’s up via the backpacker grapevine there, then head out after getting my return visa to China. The general plan is to head north but I might go south. On Feb 17 or 18, I must return to Yangon, as I have a flight out of there to Chongqing on the 19th. For at least several weeks, I won’t be a couch potato anymore.
Learning Mandarin is turning out to be a bit harder than I had hoped. It’s coming along. More and more I’m picking up what is being said around me. When I have the vocabulary, I can translate it. The is that, by then, they are three sentences on and I’m left smiling my nice have pity on me smile. I also talk 98% of the time with Myung in English and I’m lazy about letting her do the talking when we’re out. Also, I can understand her Chinese pretty well, the same way she understands my English. Faced with a Chinese person I struggle mightily, a bit like Myung does when she tries to understand someone else in English. One day, though, I have hope things will coalesce.
You may notice there are no pictures in this blog post. I haven’t taken any photos since last entry.
I think that will do it for now. I will likely write again after returning from Myanmar.
Be well, all of you.

May all of you in the States be having a happy Thanksgiving, and may the rest of you be having times you can be thankful for.
November has been good to Myung and me. The Giants won the World Series. After waiting since the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, I am happy, let me tell you. I was able to watch the whole postseason on the internet. The other good thing is that Myung has opened her cosmetics shop. I have a new appreciation for anybody who has done something like that. It was especially arduous for Myung, of course. She worked every day for at least two months and much of the time since we got to Chongqing.
It took the longest time just to find a good location. You can see the walking street the shop is on in my last blog. Here are pictures of the place before and pictures of it now.

She decided to be a franchisee for Kalakala, which is a Korean owned cosmetics company with 160 stores in China selling “Korean” cosmetics manufactured in China. Chinese people love just about anything Korean, and Myung is told that almost all of the other stores are quite profitable. Hers is the only one in Chingqing. Her hope is that there will be more Kalakala stores in Chingqing, all hers. For now, she would like this one to be profitable. It’s been open a week and the signs are promising. She’s already paying the rent, the utilities and the help, plus a little profit. With luck, it will grow from here. She already hopes to make enough to live on as well and start taking bites out of her capital expenses, then open another. Yes, yes. first things first. Right now she’s working out the kinks. Some things are easy in China. The bureaucracy for opening a business is easy, even for foreigners. Getting things done right isn’t. In general, workmanship here is shoddy. In general, “good enough” is all Chinese expect. A lot of things aren’t built to last. That doesn’t work for Westernized people. She’s had to compromise on some things but, all in all, things are adequate now.
This adventure hasn’t been a drag. It was fun in many ways. I’ve had a good time doing it with Myung. Looking for a location was interesting, up to a point, as going around town considering locations not in the area we live showed me much of everyday Chongqing. And it was a learning experience, learning about property values, rents, consumer traffic, etc.. She finally, and I think wisely, settled on this place walking distance from our apartment. Figuring out what was to be the interior and how to get it done was another learning experience. Working out the kinks is another ongoing concern.
Here are some more pictures. First is Myung and the company rep from Beijing who came down for a week or so to get this off the ground.

Here are more.

That make up corner has proven very popular. customers can come in and get their faces done for free. Myung has a laser/ultrasound/massage machine they really like. Sometimes they want to buy that, but it isn’t made in China and is expensive even in Korea. Importing it would be prohibitively expensive for all but the upper crust Chinese. Myung is looking into trying to figure out how to bring them into the country somehow. Often they like the products, so after trying the stuff, they buy something.
At first, Myung hired two young women to work there. The first one didn’t work out. The second, Jhang, is working out very well so far. She gets to use all the products she wants and comes in early to get dolled up. She likes that. Besides, she is a good worker. Myung is thinking about giving her a raise already.

Enough of that. You’ll be hearing more. It’s what we do now. Myung is there or doing something related 11-12 hours a day, 7 days a week. I go there and back, bringing her food, a running errands or hauling something. I do what I can whatever suits my talents.

The pictures of the front with the mops and brooms, was before we put up the grand opening gala balloons.
When I’m not doing something in connection with the shop, my main endeavor is learning Mandarin. Oh, it ain’t easy getting old. I used to have an aptitude for languages. That went wherever my memory went. But, if I stay here long enough, it’ll come along. I hope. I’m also kind of a house husband. I shop, cook and clean. It’s alright. I get time to myself and it’s got to be done.
So, that’s about it for now. Maybe not so much time will pass before I blog again. Maybe I’ll actually ramble about something else. Until then, be well, all of you

“Ni hao” is Mandarin for “hello”. I don’t think I can safely say my Mandarin is coming along. I wish I could say it’s coming along well, but it’s slow process for my aging brain. That said, I am beginning to get the sentence patterns, am slowly learning some vocabulary, and am understanding a little bit more every day. A very little bit, but it is improving perceptively. In about two years maybe I’ll be able to function on some kind of meanful level. I work on it every day.

China is feeling like home these days. I have a yearning to travel more, but for now I’m enjoying making a home here. Hey, Mt Rushmore is in a park across the street, so why go back to the States?

Okay, it’s a petit Mt Rushmore, but I cannot think of a place more like South Dakota than Chongqing, can you? There’s also a mini David, a normal sized Aphrodite (I think), a mini Notre Dame and more beyond this neoclassical park entrance.

And now that we have a near proper kitchen with a toaster oven, I can make some of the foods we eat back in the States. I’ve made oatmeal cookies and pizza so far. The other day, our friends Pi Pi, Xue Xue and their baby girl, Meow Meow, came over for some meatloaf with Heinz ketchup, rosemary potatoes and salad with thousand island dressing. Of course there was kimchi, too. And since it was just after China’s mid-autumn festival, or harvest day they call it in Korea, we had scrumptious moon cakes they brought. Everybody, and I mean everybody, eats these at this time of the year. They are basically pastry sweets with traditional designs molded into the top. Yum.

I wrote last time that Myung is starting up a business. She’s going to have a store selling Korean cosmetics. Korean stuff of any kind is very popular in China. The rage hasn’t maxxed out the market out here in Chongqing, so we think she has a good chance of succeeding with it. She’s been busy with the planning. On October 6 she is going to meet with the distributor in Beijing, then go to Seoul to make further arrangements and pick up some stuff to bring back. The store front is nothing to look at now, but she’ll have it remodeled. She wants me to wait to show a picture of it till it’s done, but here is the pedestrian mall area in which it will be located and the typical stores around where she is.

In the following picture, her place is the black K-3 place. K-3 is a popular Japanese backpack brand. It’ll look a lot different when she’s finished.

She’s hoping to be able to advertise in the space above where the dance studio currentlly has that big display. I think it just might work, especially with a real Korean running it.

Now that she has settled on a location, we aren’t running around all over town looking for a place. She’s doing her own thing now. My days pass routinely. We get up and have instant coffee and breakfast together, usually western food like oatmeal or fruit with meusli and yogurt or eggs and toast (from our toaster oven). This morning we had Korean food, though, squash porridge. We watch some morning TV news, then look at the computer. Then usually we go somewhere, often just the store. Then she does her work on the computer while I study Mandarin. Then there’s the continuing effort to clean up the crud around this apartment. Lunch and dinner happen. For me there is a lot of down time. Myung usually goes out for a walk. Evenings are whatever. Exciting, eh? What a homebody I’ve become. It doesn’t bother me, though. I’ve been active enough for the past four years. I don’t mind hanging out.

That’s about it for now. I’ll write again when there is something to talk about. Be well, all of you.

Hi everybody,
Well, we decided to stay. Myung is seriously working on her business plan, so we leased an apartment for a year. It’s over the railroad tracks and down a block from where we were before. It’s a much better place, as you would expect for taking a lease, a little under $200/mo. It is about 100 sq. meters, about 900+ sq. feet, has two bedrooms, two bathrooms (a sit down toilet and a squat, whichever way floats your boat, and one has a tub and shower.), a nice living room, a better kitchen, a balcony, a washing machine, and is fully furnished. What an improvement! The downside is it’s a little noisier, it’s not right in the middle of the main shopping plaza, and it is pretty filthy. Chinese fry everything and often never clean up the grease. This was the case here, but after maybe 10 hours of work we got the kitchen so you feel like cooking in there. There are still a few days work ahead but, as I always say, I’m not that busy.
Most Americans would go ho hum at this place, but I’m looking forward to staying put for a while. If I stay a year, it would be the longest I’ve stayed anywhere in four years. The next longest was seven months in Yangsan, S. Korea from July 2008 to January 2009. The only other place at all was Buenos Aires for two months. We bought some decent kitchenn stuff and will get a toaster oven. How domestic, eh?
Here are some pics of the place. Here’s the living room and entrance by the dining area.

Here’s the kitchen. It’s rather big by Chinese standards. You can’t see to the left, but there’s big refrigerator, which you don’t often see.

Here is the big bedroom in the backwhere we sleep. There is a nearly wall length closet to the left.

Here is the little front bedroom which is our office, where I am typing this now. Check it out. More closet space.

Now, here’s a little commentary. You always hear how the Chinese are building up their infrastructure and accumulating foreign reserves while increasing the standard of living for the people. Quite amazing, to be sure. But they have a housing bubble that’s going to burst worse than the one in the US did. They are having all the same bubble symptoms the US had. So when growth slows, like when they can’t export as much and the government decides not to blow all it’s reserves on stimulus, the people will need to access their wealth or at leastnot be upside down. Here’s a problem they have. US property is of much, much higher quality. Even the worst built houses thrown up during the boom and sold for big bucks will hold up probably 50 years if they aren’t in an instant slum. The best places here start falling apart in 10 years, are barely habitable by our standards in 20, and are tear downs at 30. Not only are the properties poorly made, sometimes without even thought about, say, access to the pipes for plumbing work later on, but I’ve noticed the Chinese seem alergic to doing the maintainance they could do. If the hot water doesn’t work, no problem, cold is alright or they’ll rent it out and make their payments. When the properties no longer have intrinsic value, they will be stuck with slummy buildings with no water, etc.. That will exacerbate the bust. Of course the Chinese media is all about how great things are, like when the US was going to balance it’s budget during the Clinton years. And the other thing is, the Chinese really don’t see anything coming in that regard. They’ve only been in a market economy for 30 years and think everything just goes up and up.
Take this place. It was built in 2002. The water in the back bathroom sink doesn’t work. The landlady says, no problem, it works in the front bathroom. And she’s not about to spend any money on repairs because she gets enough to cover her mortgage from us. That’s one reason it’s cheap. Also, the faucet that you turn on to add water to the front squat toilet doesn’t work. No problem. You just fill the bucket and pour water down it like out in the country where most of them came from, so they see nothing wrong. And you can’t get to the pipes to repair it because they are behind walls with no access. You see that kind of thing again and again. When the wheels come of the real estate boom here, it will be ugly.
Whew, that was long. And all I wanted to do was introduce my pictures of the views outside. Here is one to the left as you look out from the living room balcony. This building is identical to ours. Looks okay, actually, from the outside. The fountain doesn’t work anymore, of course, but I did see a couple of guys there fiddling with PVC a couple of days ago.

Here’s the view off to the right. That building in front is probably 15 years old.

Likely some of those apartments’ water doesn’t work at all. No problem. They are used to carrrying water. Most rural Chinese do.
Out our little kitchen window is this building. It’s probably 20 years old. Yes, it’s by the railroad tracks but it is typical of thousands and thousands of other residential buildings all over China. The garbage piles are probably 10 years old!

I think I have now offended any of my Chinese friends who may read this blog. To my Chinese readers: Remember, the bottom line is as I have always said. I like Chongqing. I really do. Myung and I have been in many cities and towns in many countries. For all the reasons I have given before, we decided to give Chongqing a whirl. Myung thinks it will be a good place to make money. I agree. Opportunities are all over the place. It’s not jaded about foreigners like in many other cities. If I wanted to be around Westerners, I’d choose someplace else. People are more genuine here than in most cities. The nice people we met that drew us back here are still our friends and still nice. Now we know a few more people. It’s even less expensive than in most big cities. It’s good here. At least is is for me so far. And no, obviously, I did not get swept away in the floods.
So, what am I doing? I wonder a little bit myself. The days pass quickly, I know that. This last month has been so hot, I ventured out of our air conditioned apartment as little as possible. Myung and I walk around, ducking frequently into air conditioned buildings. There are a couple of English language shows on TV we watch. I’ve read a lot. I’ve started to do an online Mandarin course, but I must admit I’ve been lazy. It’s a bit daunting. That said, at least I can hear it most of the time. Little bits are making sense to me just because you will never hear English here on the street. One curveball is many people here speak Sechuanese. EvenMyung struggles with their accents sometimes when they try too talk in Mandarin. After cleaning this apartment some more for a few days, I’ll get going. Really. I have to. Our Chinse acquaintances are trying to get me to tell them what I’ve learned. It’s about time.
Oh, since I stated this blog entry, our new high quality Korean pot and pans set got delivered and Myung used them to make dinner. We are almost officially domesticated. When we get the toaster oven, I plan to use that as much as it’s possible to bake things. Baked stuff one of the things I miss in Asia. I think Myung is getting a little tired of cooking dinner, anyway, though I usually make breakfast and lunch. Breakfast in usually oatmeal or fruit meusli (expensive import) yogurt. With one of our new flat frying pans I can fry eggs. We only had a wok before. Myung still likes the sandwiches she got used to in Africa. She’s now almost an honorary American. Well, almost. She eats them her way sometimes.

Remember, there is a show about Chongqing in CCTV (China Central TV). Click on my CCTV link, Click on “Travelogue” and enter “Chongqing”. If I can remember how, I’ll adjust my map of southern China so you can see where Chingqing is. If I can’t or don’t do it right away, go to the map and just move it down a little. Chongqing will be in the upper left.
Be well, all of you.

Hello again from Chongqing. Myung and I were here in March of 2009. If you want to see pictures of Chongqing and some of the people we have met here, click on the March 2009 link on the right side of my home page, right to the right of where you are reading now. Of course, other China pictures will be in the surrounding months, if you are interested in that.

Also, I still suggest you click on my Chinese television link to CCTV, the government TV network. Though the news is hard to swallow, there are loads of interesting things on that site, including a program on Chongqing in the “Travelogue” section. Or just Google “CCTV” some other time. Wikipedia on Chongqing is interesting too.

One last thing about communicating, Facebook and YouTube are still blocked here, and likely will remain blocked for the foreseeable future. Anybody who reads this and wishes to contact me through Facebook should email me instead.

Western mouths should just pronounce Chongqing as Chong ching . It was formerly known in the west as Chungking because it’s the home of the fantastic canned delicacies which used to come with a pastry on top of the can you could ladle the contents onto. Just kidding, of course. Chongqing, formerly Chungking, is a city of about 10 million in south central China. It used to be part of eastern Sichuan Province but in 2007 it became the center of a small “municipality” of it’s own. By “small” I mean the municipality has “only” 30 million people. It’s most famous for being the WW II capital of the Kuomintang government, which ruled much of China from 1928 to 1949. There are interesting sites here, for the WW II buffs or if you are interested in this being the place where the southern Song dynasty held out for 32 years against the Mongols in the 13th century. Other than that, there is not much here for the average tourist other than it’s sort of on the way between southern China’s tourist spots and Chengdu, Sichuan, and it’s pandas. Chengdu is about 3-4 hours west of here.
We’re here because we liked Chongqing before and met some friends here. You can see some of them in that March 2009 post. Since then, Pi Pi and Xue Xue have had a little girl. Here are Pi Pi and Myung, then Myung with Xue Xue and her daughter, then Xue Xue’s father, grandmother and daughter.

We’ve met some other people, but I don’t have any good pictures of them. Here’s a bad one I took at a restaurant. There are the usual suspects. To Pi Pi’s right is Lu Lu. He’s been great help to us in getting organized here in this apartment, especially with some internet glitches we had. The two Europeans are an Austrian/Slovakian couple we met in Gyongju. They are now traveling around China and came here to visit and start their Three Gorges river tour from here. Oh yeah, that’s the other reason people come to Chingqing.

We’ve rented an apartment here, right in the middle of the main plaza of one of the districts of Chongqing, called Shapingba. Myung’s thinking about maybe doing some business here, so it’s cheaper to rent a place than to stay in a hotel all the time. If we stay longer, we’ll probably get cheaper digs than this, but this suits us for now. It’s certainly centrally located. Here’s the view out the window and from the plaza below.

Here’s the place inside. It’s newly renovated, but like many things in China, they don’t get it about some of the basics. One thing is they put a western style sit down toilet in, but the shower drain is higher than the middle of the room. Asian bathrooms often don’t separate shower from the toilet/sink area. This I can deal with (reluctantly), but why create a lake? My only guess is that the lake used to be around the squat toilet and one was to push the shower water down that. But the drain on the side surely isn’t new. Who knows? Welcome to China. Also, the walls are new, the place is nicely though minimally furnished, including an HD digital TV, but they didn’t do anything about the microscopic kitchen, with it’s little sink and one burner gas burner.

Oh well, it’ll do for now. We may be getting another place in 2-3 weeks anyway. Here’s the rest of the inside.

Here’s the grub Myung was making. Because of the kitchen situation, prep has to be done on our little table. Here it is served on our little table. Stir-fried black mushrooms with minced pork with garlic oyster sauce, stir fried green beans with maybe the same sauce, I can’t remember, and rice. Fortunately, we have a rice cooker. Myung does almost all of the cooking now. She has skills with the food that’s available here, at least at a areasonable price. This layout cost no more than a dollar. We can both do without my cooking, for the most part.

Here are some shots of the plaza below. For the most part, it’s a six square block pedestrian walkway. We live on the 17th floor of the tall building in the center of this first picture.

The rest of the pictures are of various areas within a couple of blocks.

Underneath all this is underground shopping. This is air conditioned and a nice route to go here and there when it’s 40 degrees (over 100 F.) outside. Usually, under those multistory department stores, malls, office buildings and condos are two basement floors of shops and garages. They build down as well as up.

What are I doing here. Well, I’m enjoying the rest from backpacking. Only in the last week or so does it feel like my body has recovered from the grind. I often wondered if traveling like that would add years to my life or take them away. It’s true I have gotten loads of exercise, a reasonable amount of which was aerobic. And I’ve generally had good nutrition. And I am at peace with where I am in life and have healthy company in Myung. But… I’ve learned my body can only take so much. You see and hear about all kind of older people who can do phenomenal things with their bodies. I’m pretty good for my age, but I can tell I’m going to have to take into consideration what is possible for me. Building up so that I can do what the young guys do doesn’t seem possible in my case. Some things, like my knees especially, are wearing out. My other joints feel the stress, too. There are other things, too, like my balance is even worse than it ever was. I’m thinking, like father like son, I’m going to kill myself in a fall, only I won’t be 93 when it happens. I’m having to be more and more careful not to injure myself rock hopping over creeks or hiking along ledges. Shoot, I’m already the absolute slowest walker down an uneven surface. Anyway, finally my knee and right middle finger are feeling nearly normal after my bicycle mishap on “The World’s Most Dangerous Road” in Bolivia, (and I wasn’t even going that fast, like the extreme riders I was with.) I’m fine with kicking back right now. While myung is doing her thing, I may really try to learn Mandarin and write my memoirs or something.

I guess that about wraps it up for now. Next blog will probably come when we decide what we will do next, if we stay here or go somewhere else. That’ll be in a couple of weeks. Until then, be well, all of you.