Richard's Travel Blog

As any of you who follow along with how I travel know, time is not of the essence. I’m not that busy. This trip may turn out to be another long one, so there’s no need to hurry. I learned long ago that it gets too tiring to fill every day up. It’s better to do one or two things, and conserve energy and enthusiasm. Mexico City is daunting enough, with so many places to see and things one can do, so I’ve been taking it leisurely.

Much of my second week here has been taking in Mexico’s history. I visited the wonderful Museum of Anthropology twice, as it is too much for a single visit, the Historical Museum at the castle in Bosque (woods) de Chapultapec, the pyramids in Tuatihuacan, the Palace of Fine Arts, Leon Trotsky’s house and a couple of small museums.

The anthropology museum is world class. It has pieces many have seen in coffee table books, it’s informative, well laid out and aesthetically pleasing. If people were coming to Mexico and planning to make a beeline for Oaxaca or the Yucatan, as many do, I would advise them to stay at least one full day and see this museum. It would help them to appreciate the things they see later, and the learning experience would be far from dreary.

This place takes you from pre-history to the Spanish conquest, and there are large exhibits about indigenous people who still live in some areas of the country. There’s no chance I will retain most of the information presented, and I will not bore you with stuff you likely know or could google. For example, I could have written down what these two statues are, but I didn’t, and I doubt many would really care. This three legged one on the right is interesting. My photo almost looks like a postcard, doesn’t it?

I liked this museum so much, I uploaded a bunch of pictures. The exhibits are on two floors, around a central open space. The main feature of the courtyard is a pretty fountain.

Around the outside are replicas of notable ancient buildings in a jungle-like setting. You can go in and out of the building at several points.

Here are some pictures of the inside. Some room have typical arrangements of exhibits, some are dominated by large replicas or maybe dioramas, living quarters, burial sites or whatever. Like, you get the idea of what these cave painting would look like if you were in this room and looked up.

The exhibits come from all over. Some come from the nearby Teotihuacan archaeological site. Teotihuacan was the principal city of the Teotihuacanos from about 200 BC to 600 AD. Their high point was from about 100-200 AD, and it was during this time these pyramids were built.

I’ll just post these pictures in the order they were taken. When you walk through the entrance and make a left turn, this is what you first see. The Pyramid of the Sun, here, is one of two. To get perspective, I think I read that both pyramids are 60-something meters high.

When you first come in, right in front of you is the base of the main Temple of Quetzalcoatl, but it’s nothing to look at if you aren’t in the field. The total area of the excavation is quite large, but most of it is foundations, half high rooms and sort of organized rubble. Here is some of that.

As is often the impression, you might wonder how they ever found anything worth mentioning, especially when you consider that in the 19th century, when archaeologists started to do expert digging, the pyramids and everything else was covered with soil. One photo at the information center showed what one of the pyramids looked like a hundred years ago. It was basically a tree covered hill. Many Mesoamerican temples are buried in deep jungle to this day, and accessible only to the hardy trekker. But, there were burial sites, tunnels and other underground places where treasures were found. Even at ground level, some things were found. Over to the right from where that last picture of low ruins was taken is this wall painting of a puma. As always, tender, loving care was needed to restore this 1800 year old painting.

As you walk along the Street of the Dead, the Pyramid of the Sun looms larger…

… and straight ahead is the Pyramid of the Moon. This is a hot walk on a hot day, but it was a lovely 25 degrees C. on the day I went. I like how the mountain behind frames the pyramid.

Which reminds me, I’m going through a lot of sunscreen. The climate here is nice all year, though there is a rainy season during the summer. Unlike Chongqing, where smog prevented seeing blue sky 350 days a year and there are only about three months of weather that isn’t hot or cold, you feel like enjoying the outdoors here. Mexico City has bad air, but not toxic 350 days a year like Chongqing

You can climb these stairs about a third of the way up the Pyramid of the Moon. It’s easy, as there is a proper stairway and a PVC covered aircraft cable handrail.

Here’s the view back to where you came from.

Then I went up the Pyramid of the Sun, which you can climb all the way to the top…

… from where you can look back the Pyramid of the moon.

That whole excursion soaks up about 5-6 hours, counting the hour bus ride each way from Mexico City. You could hang out if you wanted to make a whole day of it, have lunch in one of the shady patches or in a dining room people used a very long time ago,  or shop for a souvenir sombrero or puma call. Plenty of hawkers there. Everywhere you go, the guys are selling, or trying to sell as business seemed bad, puma head carvings that if you blow through them make a fairly impressive growl. I heard lots of lions, and it works pretty well.

Continuing here on the History Channel, let’s skip a couple of days of my doing other things and visit the castle. It houses the Historical Museum, which presents the history of Mexico from the conquest to the 1910 revolution. I don’t want to go into that, only to say it was interesting to see European royalty mimicked here. A Hapsburg, Maximillian, even ruled here for a few years before he was overthrown in a revolt and put in front of a firing squad. The museum is informative enough, but the finery of the rulers of the day, including Porfirio Diaz, really demonstrates the opulence of the Western elites.

I didn’t take any pictures of the stuff they had. You’ve seen it all before, anyway. I did upload pictures of the castle and the view from the hill in Bosque de Chapultapec where it is located. Here’s the front of the place.

Around that level where that picture was taken are the bedrooms, studies, dining rooms, conference rooms and all that. Then, on the top, it looks like this.

Okay, that’s it for me for now. I did some other stuff, but this post has been all about national history, and it seems like like a good unit of blogging. There’s one more notable archaeological site right next to the cathedral, called Templo Mayor. I showed you a picture of it from outside in my last post. I’ll go there, but I don’t think it’s very photo worthy. We’ll see. Tomorrow I’m going to Xochimilco. It has many canals, like all of Mexico City, and may be photo worthy, although I heard it’s way touristy. We’ll see about that, too. Wednesday is Frida Kahlo’s blue house, which is now a museum, too.

So, be well, all of you.

Greetings from Mexico! It’s been nine days since I arrived here, and I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf. Instead of waiting weeks to post on this blog, I hope to be more current. As long as I’m not too busy or somewhere without internet, my plan is to write and post pictures every week or so. Anybody who has followed my blather knows that quite often, a long time passes and I end up summarizing so many things it is just to general. Also, I want to post more pictures. The good news is there should be more pictures. The bad news is I’m still a crummy photographer and I can’t so easily cherry pick only the decent ones.

So, what did I do? Well, my first couple of days here I had jet lag after 30 straight hours of travel from Chongqing to Mexico City, plus I had a cold. The first day, I did nothing but rest and get a couple of bites to eat. The second day, I was recovered from jet lag and felt well enough to walk around.

I’m in an area called Zona Rosa, or Pink Zone. It’s been called that for a long time but, I suppose coincidentally, it’s also the heart of the gay community. It’s lively, with many clubs, bars, restaurants and so on. Just near here is the slightly more upscale area called Condesa. Most of the tourists stay in these areas or near the historic center.

That first day out of the hostel, I went up Paseo de la Reforma, about three blocks from here, where this famous Angel of Independence is, about four blocks up Reforma. It’s famous and many of you may have seen it, if not a picture somewhere, maybe in person. I have to remember, now that I’m in Mexico, so close to the US, at least the Americans may have been here.

Feeling like gee whiz I’m not in Kansas anymore (Forgive my use of American idiom), I kept on walking till I got to the historic center. I didn’t do anything but walk. I finally got to the Museum of Fine Arts, Palacio del Bellas Artes, which I will go into before leaving Mexico City.

From there I headed up the main pedestrian-only street toward the center of the historic center…

…and took a rest in this little park which was billed as a Japanese garden.

Across the street there, in about the middle of the photo, you can see a tiled dark grey building. On a balcony, as woman was singing opera over a loudspeaker. I chilled out and listened to her for a while.

All along the way are buildings like this, often is disrepair, with wrought iron ornamentation. Many of them seem abandoned. I’m hoping they don’t get condemned and Mexico comes up with the money to rehabilitate them. It could look something like the French Quarter in New Orleans if they fixed it up.

After several blocks of this, you get to Zocalo, ground zero of the historic center. This plaza is surrounded by 19th century classic architecture, mostly monumental but uninspiring. The cathedral covers the square block on the north side of the plaza.

I went inside, but I must say, it wasn’t particularly dazzling. Maybe I’ve seen to many churches. Besides that, it’s Easter today and on that day the cathedral was packed with worshipers and a mass was going on.

Outside was, as you might expect, a lot of vendors selling food and every kind of tourist and religious thing.

Some of the vendors were dressed up as Aztecs. Yes, very tacky.

Behind the cathedral is an archeological dig called Templo Mayor. I just looked at it from the outside, as I was getting kinda bushed. there’s supposed to be a nice museum associated with it.

The next day, or maybe that night, I befriended this guy, Stirling, from Los Angeles. He has been coming down here regularly for ten years when he has a break from school teaching.

We ended up spending much of the next few days together. He was a wealth of information for a newbie like me. He showed me around the nearby neighborhoods, showed me where stuff, like a supermarket, etc., was. We went to the large park down the street one day, and took in part of the large zoo there and looked the critters including pandas. The best part of that place was the enclosed butterfly house.

We basically hung out together, though he liked to go out late at night, and I’m not a night or party person. I am really glad to have made his acquaintance.

He went home yesterday. I went to the park again, checked out the Museum of Modern Art there, went around the botanical garden, and basically joined the throng enjoying the Saturday before Easter in the park. The word class Museum of Anthropology is there, so I’ll definitely be going back. It’s so close, anyway. It should be a lot less crowded after Holy Week. I may need a retreat if it’s hectic. This week has been dead as a doornail because of Holy Week, and I guess things will return to normal tomorrow.

Today I took the subway back to Zocalo. 90% of the shops and whatever were closed up, of course, which made it mellow. To the east side of the plaza is the National Palace, which covers another entire block. The main thing to see in there, as the building itself is monumental but boring, are the large Diego Rivera murals. Here are pictures of one of the courtyards and a couple of the murals.

After that, it was out and about more of the historical center.

The last thing I did today was go to a concert of violin and piano concertos by Handel, Mozart and Mendelsohn

That was pleasant, and I got to sit in a nice setting for music. It was cute in that there were a lot of birds in there, singing along, you might say. When I was in Chongqing, I was always remarking how few birds survive there. Mexico city has lots of birds.

That’s about it. There’s no need, if I stick to my word, in saying some kind of farewell like I’m never going to see you again. Really, I mean to come back soon. So, be well, all of you.

Well, the time has come. I leave for Mexico City this Friday the 22nd. It’s almost hard to believe my stay in China is just about over. I’m all ready to go, yet it doesn’t seem real that I will spend Friday night in Mexico.

It’s not without some ambivalence that I go. The main thing is Myung isn’t coming with me. She is planning to join me at some point, but there is no time frame for that. She’s planning to come whenever she can get someone to take over her lease, but she has had very few nibbles. Maybe there is a way to speed up the process, but so far she hasn’t done that. One of her considerations is she doesn’t really want to backpack endlessly and would like me to settle, more or less, in a spot. I have a few ideas where might be good, but I plan to head out and see where the wind takes me. I’ll keep an eye out for places I like and play that one by ear.

Meanwhile, I booked a room in Mexico City for a week, and will stay till I’m done with that place. It could easily be more than a week, as I will just be getting my feet wet and figuring out an itinerary. So far, I think I will maybe visit the south and the east coast before the hot, rainy season kicks in, then maybe go toward the highlands where it is relatively cool. I’ve got the Lonely Planet e-book on my computer and e-reader, and have been reading up. That’s all I know. I’ve hardly been to Mexico, even though it’s next door to the US. Hard to believe, but true. I drove down to Guaymas with my, then, wife, her brother and his wife in about 1972, made a couple of brief excursions over the border, and in 1984 took a cruise down the Pacific coast which stopped in the bay at Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatenajo and Acapulco. That’s it.

I studied Spanish in school and have had occasion to use a little bit, off and on, since then. Recently, I’ve been studying hard to get the rust off so I can function in Latin America. Actually, I’m pleased with what I can remember. I think, before long, I’ll be fine. Verbal comprehension at normal speed will be the hard part. It sure was that way in South America. I can express myself okay as long as I have the vocabulary word I want.

Not much new has happened in Chongqing and I’ve definitely been in waiting mode. The winter wasn’t too bad this year, but I stayed in a lot, anyway. Now Chongqing is in full spring bloom and quite pretty in some places. Below are some pictures taken in the park across the street.

Notice the birdcages. It’s popular for guys to bring pet birds to the park, hang the cages in trees and socialize near them, listening to the birdsong. Talking birds, like mynas, are very popular. The guys also hang the cages along the bower walks. This makes for nice walking through the park, especially so because there are not many wild bird in the city, no doubt because of the environmental destruction which has not spared Chongqing.

We’ve been getting in in a bit of last minute socializing. A couple of days ago, we had a last dinner with our best friends here, the ones who originally encouraged us to come, PiPi and his wife, Xue Xue. Below are some pictures of a dinner we had with the shop owners on Myung’s strip of shops. The families came. We ate soooo much, and a few of them had many beers.

It was “bottoms up” I don’t know how many times! I actually stopped drinking beer almost entirely, trying to recover from that decompression sickness I gave myself in the Philippines. thank goodness THAT seems to be finally over. It took long enough.

I don’t have a lot more to say at this point. I’ll be posting on this site more often, now that I will be on the road again.
thanks to any and all of you who read my babbling.

So, until we meet again, be well, all of you.

Happy New Year.

Thanks for checking in at my website. I know it hasn’t been so interesting recently, as my life has been mostly simple domestic. That will change in two or three months. Sometime around the beginning of spring, I will be leaving China for Latin America. I’ve got nothing really against China, it’s just that I haven’t really connected here. The language proved too difficult for my tired brain. Either that, or I didn’t try hard enough and succumbed to embarrassment about trying to flounder through the beginning of using it. Anyway, I’ve decided to move on.

Myung is very likely to join me. She has had trouble getting her products for sale through the corrupt Chinese customs process. Ransoming it out of a warehouse in the entry port is prohibitively expensive. She’s tried other ports with the same result. So, she has started to look for a new renter for her shop space. Here in China, a renter pays a “transfer fee” to the owner. If a renter wants out of the rental agreement, they must find someone to pay the transfer fee. She just put her place up for rent on the internet yesterday, so we don’t know how it will go yet. If it goes quickly, she may leave with me. If not, she may stay till it does. She’s always got her ear to to ground about other business opportunities, so if something inviting comes along, she could opt to pursue it. I hope she comes with me, but as is plain, this all involves personal issues between us. You can love someone dearly and not choose to follow them to the ends of the Earth. Even if she comes with me, she’ll go to Korea on the way to take back he stuff she’s had, little by little, sent here. That would be nothing, though. In fact, it might go easier if I went ahead and scoped things out a little, not that that would be necessary, as she can handle backpacking on the fly as easily as anyone. Maybe she’s rusty, but it’s like riding a bike.

I returned to Chongqing last week after a month in the Philippines and 20 days in the US. The Philippines was mostly a beach and diving thing for a couple of weeks. The last week and a half was recovering from decompression sickness. More on that later.

The cheapest way to the Philippines turned out to be taking the train to Hong Kong, then flying from there to Cebu. I wanted to go there first, anyway, because I had hoped to get a visa to return to China at the consulate there. I also wanted to begin somewhere not in Manila and end up in Manila for my flight to the States. That visa part didn’t work out, as they have an onerous application process like in Macau; don’t ask me why.

I hung around Cebu, the Philippines second largest city, for four days, which is about three days too many. There isn’t much to see or do there, but I did begin to experience Philippine culture. That’s about it, though. There’s a fort there and this bell tower.

Exciting, eh? I could have taken people pictures or something, but didn’t. I was left with the impression Cebu is a work-a-day town. The culture is basic Southeast Asian with a hint of Polynesian and strong American influence. The markets look like markets, the buildings look like buildings, the traffic looks like traffic. I’m very used to Philippine people, having worked with hundreds of Philippine nurses for many years.

That little picture is little because WordPress completely changed everything about itself. Instead of automatically fitting pictures into the column width, this is the way it comes out. It looks like the new WordPress has all kinds of new possibilities, which I hope to learn about but, meanwhile, I wanted to get a post done. Hopefully, the format of future posts will be better. The text and photos will never get better because they are my doing.

After Cebu, it was mostly diving and hanging out a dive dives for the next couple of weeks. At the northeast tip of Cebu island is a dive island called Malapasqua. The big deal there is is to look at thresher sharks. I saw seven in two dives, which I’m told is a good day. Their bodies are a couple of meters long and they have fabulous long tails. They aren’t dangerous to humans, and one came about one meter away from me. The cottage I stayed at there was a nice place to hang out.

Here’s off to the right.

From there, I went to Oslob, near the southwest tip of Cebu Island. It’s one of the places in the Philippines where you can snorkel with the whale sharks. These filter feeding gentle giants can be as long as 12 meters and weigh 20 tons. The ones in Oslob were about half that. It’s one of the places where they still feed them to get them to come. They are basically trained to come every morning and scarf up plankton which the people have gathered up and frozen. What the tourist does is go out on a little boat, not more than a couple hundred meters off shore, to where the whale sharks know to come for breakfast. You don a life vest and a snorkel, and hang on to the side of the boat while the shale sharks loll around filtering huge amounts of water plankton has been thrown into. You are supposed to stay 5 meters away, but that’s impossible. The boat guys are dumping plankton from the boat and you’re hanging on the side and the whale sharks are eating. You get nudged all over the place by these slow, blubbery trucks. They could care less about you (which is one reason getting them too used to humans is hazardous for them), and you can lift up and look right down their craws if you like. Pretty cool, even if you do feel guilty about what all happens to animals when they don’t have fear and respect for humans.

From there, it was a short “jeepney” and ferry ride to Dumaguete on the island of Negros. A jeepney is a common mode of public transportation, basically a covered pick up truck with benches along the side, like songthaws in Thailand, only bigger. A lot of them are tricked out like Indian trucks. They are called jeepneys because they used to be mostly left over US Army jeeps converted for this civilian purpose. There are still many around which are fashioned from later Jeeps. Dumaguete is another dive place, along with the nearby small island of Apo. Good coral diving there. I have pictures. This one is of the boat out to Apo with out tanks lined up on the beach. These catamarans are the typical short-trip water craft of the Philippines. They are very stable, which is handy in a country that sees practically every typhoon that comes to Asia. There are little three meter ones like the one to see the whale sharks, and there are big ones which serve as ferries for dozens of people. They call them “pump boats”.

From there, I flew to Palawan Island. Domestic flights are too cheap there to bother with long ferry rides. It was something like $40 for an hour flight. Can’t be beat. The flights go into the capital, Puerto Princesa, or Coron on Busuanga island northeast of Palawan but still part of Palawan province. Palawan is the least developed or busy major island in the Philippines. Even Puerto I laid back. I stayed there about three days, one day doing nothing and the other going on a day trip island/snorkel tour. Here are some pictures from that.

One island we went to is in the process of disappearing with global warming.

Here are some pictures taken over about a one hour time period. check out how the water comes in from the mangroves in the distance. That’s about 200 meters of encroachment.

After that, I left where I consider to be civilization, places with ATM’s. 50 km northeast of Puerto is the next stop on the tourist route, the world’s longest underground river. I forget how long it is, 20-something km I think. Most people go on a tour boat about a kilometer and a half. Sometimes you can go something like 4-5 km in, but its hard to get up a group for that so it’s hard to arrange. You can’t take photos inside, but here is the outside.

Next was the northeast tip of Palawan, El Nido. This is almost all about the diving, but is so popular, it’s a regular town even though the road to there isn’t paved. Most people stay along one beach. It’s thick with beach backpacker joints and bars. Not my thing anymore. I stayed south of town where it was quiet and just as lovely, maybe more. On the right kind of evening, the sunset views from the popular beach would be great. No interesting sunsets while I was there, though. Here’s what it looked like from where I was staying.

Here is over near the popular area.

It was here I got decompression sickness. I used bad judgement and paid for it. I dove with a couple of young divemasters who were in much better shape than I am. We were returning to the boat, bucking a current, and I got down to 50 BAR in my tank. Instead of going up for a safety stop, I kept going, thinking we’d be back in a few minutes. I incorrectly assumed I would have time for a stop if my gauge showed 20 BAR. I saw the bottom of the boat and went up, but instead of having 20 BAR like my meter said, I had nothin’. My safety stop was all of about 1 minute. To make a long story short, there is no decompression chamber there, no hospital for that matter, so I toughed it out. The first two days was bad headaches, other nuero symptoms and cramps. Then I started to gradually improve. After about four days i could eat a little and sleep. I could also fly to Manila, which I did. I saw a doctor there, as I was still having myriad symptoms like my skin sloughing off and poor gastric motility. He said there was nothing to do about it now and I’d be okay eventually. I did little in Manila but rest up. I lost a lot of weight which I have since put back on. I think I’m okay now, a month later, but I still feel it. My diving days may be over. That was nearly the weirdest thing that ever happened to me and it put the fear of God into me.

There’s not much I can say about Manila. I didn’t do anything. It was basically another big city. the guide books and other backpackers said I didn’t miss much.

That gets me to my brief trip to the US. I went to attend my niece, Anne’s, wedding. There’s not much to say that would interest most people likely to read this. It was a very nice wedding and she and her husband look like they are going to be fine together. It was held at a nice beach front resort hotel in Santa Barbara. Here are pictures. This is my brother, Bill, walking her down the aisle.

Here’s during the ceremony.

Here, she and Nico are leaving back up the aisle.

Here they are hanging out at the reception.

And here are my brother and me. Yes, I have a suit and tie in America I can break out for special occasions.

We’re getting near the end of this tome. The last pictures are of a famous stretch of coastline along the California coast. I took the coast road for old time’s sake. It was not only beautiful (when I could see through the rain) but I got to see a bunch of elephant seals at one point and a whole pod of grey whales, maybe 10-12, about 300 or so meters off shore. THAT was really great! I don’t have pictures of either, as it was raining heavily where the elephant seals were and the whales wouldn’t have been good pictures with my little snap shooter. Here are a few general pictures. People from or familiar with Big Sur will recognize this immediately.

The rest of the time in California was hanging out with friends in the San Francisco Bay Area and my original home town of Stockton about 100 km east of there. It was nice; then it was time to go. And here I am.

Likely, my next post will be in a couple of months when Myung and my plans flesh out. Until then, I hope you have a good start to the new year. Be well, all of you.

I’ve been a little remiss about blogging, Not only has it been a while, but I went to the US for a month in March and April. My friend, Mary, above on the right, had hand surgery and I wanted to be supportive. The woman in the middle, Susan, is our long time friend from when Mary and I were in nursing school 30 years ago. Besides that, I had a chance to visit with my brother, Bill, his wife, Rita, and their daughter, Emily, and her family who live in San Francisco, just across the Bay in Oakland where I lived and did nursing for over 20 years. I also got to check out my rentals, take care of some other issues, and visit the area where I spent a god part of my life.
It had been over two years since I had been back in the States. In most ways, it seemed the same. I enjoyed the familiarity of the sameness, while at the same time could see I don’t really need to be there on any kind of a permanent basis. As I’ve told many people, it felt like I was going to a big theme park. I really enjoyed touching bases with my friends and family, enjoyed looking around at familiar and changed things, and eating all the food I missed. In some ways, I look at this as my eating vacation. I ate everything I missed and more, and ate a lot of it, probably gaining 3 kilos while I was there. I stayed most of the time at Mary’s apartment. For a time, I was helpful during her recovery. I spent a few days in my home town of Stockton, where my brother still lives, visiting and doing business stuff. Sometimes I stayed in a motel near Mary’s place. As much as we are dear old friends, it’s best if we don’t spend too much time together. I also got to take care of some things in the Bay Area and visit with friends there. I must say, I had a fine time.
I have some family photos. Here is my brother and me.

Here are Bill, me, Emily, her husband, Kenneth, and Bill’s wife, Rita.

Here are Bill and Rita.

Here are Bill, Kenneth and Em’s and Kenneth’s son, Lucas.

Kenneth and Lucas on the couch at their place in SF.

Em in front of an urban mural near where they live.

I got on a photo jag when Bill, Em and I were walking on that street with the murals. I think nearly everybody has seen pictures of San Francisco, but I don’t think they’ve seen this street. I hadn’t. Very cute.

I’m not up for some kind of rambling discourse on my visit to the States. I had the good time I described, Mary’s hand is good, and I’m outta there until something comes up which necessitates my returning. As I always say, the US is a good country, but I’ve been there before.

Practically nothing important has happened since I returned to Chongqing. My life is like it is. I sit with my computer, do most of the cooking, hangout with Myung and bring her dinner at the shop and hang out with her some more. We see friends about once a week. Except for some inconsequential stuff, that’s about it.

A big new park did open up in Chongqing recently. It cost some amazing bizzilion dollars to build, but it really is nice. It’s attractive and a lot of attention was paid to detail. It was made in some ravines and hills, so it’s up and down and has tunnels from one area to the next. The theme behind the park is exhibition of symbolic buildings and cultural significant stuff from many of the regions of China. There are many exhibits of famous or culturally typical structures and motifs from the areas. They are somewhat miniaturized, but big enough that you get the feel for the real places. So, what you do it walk through scenic areas and come upon clusters of these exhibits. Suddenly, there is something to see in Chongqing besides go to the big Buddhist temple, take a booze cruise along the Yangtze and look at the brightly lit buildings, visit the Stillwell headquarters, and start your Three Gorges tour. Here are some pictures.

See Myung hiding behind the old dude fishing with his grandson?

That’s about it for now. I don’t know where I am going in July, when I have to make my every three month visa run/trip. It’ll be monsoon season, so many places in Asia aren’t that fun at that time. I may just make a simple run to Hong Kong, or I’m toying with the idea of going to Taiwan, which is modern with a lot of pavement and decent shelter. Myung says Taiwan isn’t that interesting, though, so maybe I won’t go there. I think it’s expensive. We’ll see. In November, I may go to Nepal again and/or India. My friend from back in S. America while Myung went back early to Korea, Marita, is thinking of going to India and maybe Nepal and maybe Mongolia around then. She’s one of the few people I’ve kept up with, and it would be nice to meet up. That’s a long way off, though, so anything might happen. We’ll see about that, too. There are big political problems brewing again in Nepal.

Lastly. I have a few pictures of Myung and me.

So, until next time, be well, all of you.

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.

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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.