Richard's Travel Blog

Lonely Planet says Chongqing is where you spend the night and arrange your trip down the Three Rivers Gorge. Well, we decided not to spend the money on that trip, but Chongqing has been a really nice experience. Both of us have seen so many scenic wonders that we are a little jaded sometimes. One can’t see everything in the world, so since we have only about 20-30 more years to live, probably, and have to conserve money, we are seeing the cheap stuff for now. The best experiences are the personal ones, of course. Here in Chongqing we met up with a couple we met in Lijiang, Yunnan, and have had a lovely time with them, their family and friends. Besides that, Chongqing is really not such a bad tourist destination. There is much history, ancient and recent, around here. It was the World War 2 capital of unoccupied China, and over the centuries has been the scene of important historical events. Shoot, I like it here, though I do think most of the reason I’m having such a good time is because of the people we met.

They are Pipi and Xie Xie. I’m definitely not sure about the spelling of her name. That’s close. In pinyon, “x” is “sh”. Oh, if you are wondering about Chongqing, “ch” is like the English “ch” with the tongue rolled back and “q” is like the English “ch”. In the west, we call this place Chungking, like the brand of canned Chinese food. Pipi is a captain in the army and Xie Xie is an ICU nurse in the big state hospital here. He speaks a little English. We met their family and friends, went out to eat several times ( I am gaining weight to the extent that I better start watching it.), and toured around. Here is a picture of them, Myung and his best friend and his best friend’s fiance. We were at a restaurant in the countryside near his hometown of Hechuan, an hour’s drive north of here. By the way, it is very typical in China for a rural restaurant to grow their own vegetables and raise their own meat. Cluck, cluck, cluck our chicken lunch was carried out back for slaughter and the veggies were picked just before they were cooked.

I’ll spare you photos of Pipi’s parents, uncles and aunts, and their families. The following photos were taken when we were walking around a fortress area where in Chinesae history, the Southern Song dynasty held off the Mongols for 32 years before falling and ushering in the short-lived Mongol Yuan dynasty. It really is an heroic, epic story. I’ll spare you that, too. Now the place is a nice walk in the park.

Chongqing has an old part of town which is mostly tourist shops, though if you venture away from the center, it’s pleasant.

This is an artsy effort of a roof in a Buddhist temple in the heart of Chongqing, and one of the devotees.

At night, this big city of 4 1/2 million is lit up like a Christmas tree. I’m impressed by how the planners have made an effort to make it as liveable as possible. And they do have plans. I went to the urban planning museum. That in itself was amazing. You’d think urban planning would be as boring a subject as possible, but this was a great museum. It made me interested in the subject and it was a good museum to walk around in. Lonely Planet said it was “fabulous”, and they are right. Who’d a thunk it? Anyway, here are some of the lights.

Myung is off trying to buy train tickets for Wuhan. If she is successful, we plan to go this afternoon on the 16 hour ride to there, then north to some traditional towns. If she is unsuccessful, we’ll stay here till there are tickets. At any rate, that’s it for now. Be well, all of you. I’ll leave you with my new way of keeping Myung in line. It hasn’t been easy, but my mates and I have a plan.

I wrote before that we lost pictures of the giant 71 meter Buddha statue in Leshan. Turns out that that was recoverable, so here are a couple of pictures of it and a couple of pictures of Buddhists at a temple in nearby Mt. Emei.

As is usually the case, we aren’t doing everything as we originally planned. We are in Chengdu, and I will pick up my visa extension this afternoon. We had planned to go north to Jiuzhaigou, which is a beautiful area in the mountains, and probably look at Tibetan villages in the area. Then we were going west to Kanding and Tibetan villages around there. Unfortunately, this is the 50th anniversary of Tibet’s “peaceful liberation from serfdom”, and they are celebrating with protests. The government’s response is to close most of the areas to foreigners. As of a couple of days ago we could go to Jiuzhaigou scenic area, but taking a 10 hour bus just to do that, not to mention paying a $25 entrance fee, just doesn’t seem worth it. So, we’re going to Chongqing tomorrow. We made a friend from Chongqing while we were in Lijiang and he has, three times now, invited us to visit him there. So, the plan is to go there. I don’t know what he’s doing. Perhaps we won’t meet up, but we are going to try. There are other things to do around there, anyway.
What we did do in Chengdu was go to the panda research base where most of the captive breeding of pandas has taken place, and a hundred something pandas live. It’s really quite interesting and informative. It’s part zoo and mostly research and breeding. About a thousand wild pandas live in Sichuan and neighboring Shanxi. Unfortunately, they have been unable to successfully introduce any of them into the wild. They are even cuter and playful than they look on TV, and seem quite happy living in captivity. It’s no wonder they attract such worldwide interest. There are red pandas and the more famous giant pandas. The familar giant pandas are the main draw.

In a poll, Chengdu was voted China’s third most liveable city. This is despite it being yet another huge city, China’s fourth largest, with a population of 13 million and having some of the wworst air I’ve seen yet. I can see why. The people seem nice here, so much more relaxed than you normally see in megalopoli. It’s easy to get around, with a ring road around the center and bus line spokes from the city center out to the ring. The traffic isn’t horrendous and the subway is scheduled to open next year, which will make it easier still to get around. It has pretty areas of tree lined avenues and nice parks. There is a pleasant “new-old” area in the center with nightlife and memories of a passed culture. And the climate is moderate, a little on the cool side, but right up my alley,. I took a few pictures in a park near a temple. I’ve posted so many pictures of temples, I’ll just post a few of the park.

You can tour the area a couple hundred km north of here which was devastated by the earthquake. I thought about it, but somehow touring an area where 80,000 people died doesn’t work for me.
We went down to Leshan, about 2 hours south of here, to look at a famous 71 meter byddha and take in the views of a famous Buddhist mountain. Unfortunately, my camera caught a virus. I cost $15 each for the guy to clean our memory cards, and coincidentally I had just filled one of them and starteed anoither. Rather than clean a few pictures on the other card, I just let him erase the pictures while cleaning. It’s no great loss. you can search Leshan, Sichuan if you want to see the big guy. And Mt. Emei was fogged in, so you aren’t missing much there.
So, I’m going to go down tho get my visa and mail my DVD to Larry, who is keeping my pictures for me. I’ll write again from Chongqing or not long afterward. Be well, all of you.

Myanmar just fell out of the picture. They have a scam where one travel agent in Kunming is authorized to take foreigners over the border. We were told by another woman in the consulate this was no long so, but today the guy there in person said it’s still so. So we contacted that agent. They want $200 just to escort us overthe border. It’s a racket. Myung flat refused to be part of it, and I don’t blame her. Myanmar is run by the pettiest crooks in the world, maybe. Fuck them. We’re staying here. Wednesday, we are going to Shenzhen. Myung wanted to visit with her friend anyway, which she couldn’t do whenwe were there before because he was out of town. My visa extension is up on Saturday, so I’m going to Hong Kong for a brand new one. Probably I’l go to Macao ( a half our ferry ride from Hong Kong) on Saturday and Hong Kong on Sunday. I can then open up the Chinese consulate on Monday morning and have my visa on Tuesday. then we’ll go north to as yet undecided destinations.
Later….

Yuanyang is famous for it’s rice terraces. Unlike Dragon’s Backbone terraces near Longshen, where we went and t was foggy and rainy, these were quite visible and quite beautiful. I will let these pictures speak for themselves. Most were taken in and around a small village near Xinjie.

Note that guys big bong. They smoke a variety of legal substances. Some of it looks like rope. Sometimes they put regular cigarettes in there. Their eyes usually look terrible. Chain smoking with that has to be the WORST!
I had a birthday there. We got a bottle of cheap wine and looked down on the terraces from our nice rooftop digs.

The city in that area is Xinjie. We stayed there a couple of nights. The markets there are great for people watching. There are so many minority people there, it keeps your finger on the shutter button.

Where’s Waldo?

That’s enough, I think, of that place. you get the picture, so to speak. I wish I could do more.
We’re in Kunming now, and figure to get visas for Myanmar tomorrow. On the way up here, we stopped for a couple of nights in Jianshui. It’s a nice place, and not even crowded with tourists. I uploaded a few pictures of the Confucian temple there. Actually, this first one is just a nice scene in the square outside the temple.

With that, I’ll close for now. I don’t know how internet access will be in Myanmar. I know there is access, but I don’t know if it will be fast enough for blogging. I’ll do my best. Meanwhile, Myung and I say: Be well, all of you.

They say the bus broke down, but maybe they just didn’t have enough passengers to warrant going to the next town. At any rate, we’re hanging out here, waitng for the next bus in about an hour and a half. This gives me an unexpected opportunity to post some more pictures and write an update.
We’ve been slowly going around the minority areas of southern Yunnan. There are dozens of minority peoples here. I get them confused. This young woman above in Lahu. Those of you who have known me for a while, and might have a very excellent memory, might remember I stayed in a Lahu village next to Maung Na while I was in that clinic in Northern Thailand in 1999. This woman works in a tea store in Pu Er. The tea around here is called Pu Er. Myung is into learning about tea these days, so we’re stopping in many tea stores and looking at tea exhibits at the factories. We ended up hanging out with her and a Lisu woman, and going to lunch with them and their friends at a Lahu restaurant. In this picture, the Lisu woman is on the right, dressed similarly to the Lahu.

We took a couple of bad bus rides to the extreme south, just a few km from the Myanmar border, to look at villages and colorful people. It turns out, some of the most colorful people are in the cities. One place we went to had a Dai village that was like a theme park. They even charge admission, though we walked around the gate. This place, Menghun, is just southeast of Jinghong. For sure, some of these people in traditional dress are dressed to the nines for the tourists.

But these peoeple were just regular.

Most of the temples in China are in pretty bad repair, but at least the tourist money has enabled this village to keep theirs up. Note, it’s very Southeast Asian around here because it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

We saw plenty of normal villages, too. In this first one, you see how poor this area really is and, in this forst one, a typical village temple.

All the rest of these pictures are of people in towns and villages where we went. I get a kick out of the first one. In a couple of towns we went to, there were pediatric clinics. Outside of them, you usually see a mother and her kid walking along with the mother holding a pole from which is hanging an IV. I wish I had a picture of one mother and child I saw. She had a tree branch for an IV pole. She and the kid were both crying. In this one, the IV pole is one of those plastic poles short shop keepers use to take down clothes displayed on high rails. Her son wasn’t too happy, so she’s getting him a banana to comfort him.

This was just an hour ago. We are in a town called Jiangcheng. These women are Hani.

So, that’s the story up till now. In about 45 minutes, we hope, we’ll be on a bus for the Yuanyang rice terraces. It’s going to taske a couple more days to get there. Groan. You could search that if you want decent pictures before I have an opportunity to post another entry. After that, I think we’ll go to Kunming for my Myanmar visa. Myung may not need one. Lonely Planet says citizens of ASEAN member countries don’t need one. Then we’ll head for Myanmar, perhaps stopping in the Baoshan region of Western Yunnan. I’ll blog again when I can.
Be well, all of you.

Not every place we go is a UNESCO World Heritage site, that’s for sure. Yesterday afternoon, we went southwest of Jinghong about 70 Km to the town of Damenglong. There is definitely a Thailand/Myanmar/Laos feel and look to this area. It’s dusty town not far from the Myanmar border. In the rainy season it must be a real mud hole. They seem to be gearing up to pave the road through town, though. Maybe they will get it done before the rain starts in June.

We felt like getting out of the city, though Jinghong isn’t bad except for the air polution. It’s derfinitely slow around here. We came here because Lonely Planet said it was alive on market day. We figured there would be lots of minority people, and there were, but they weren’t particularly photogenic. I think traditional dress is going quickly. Here are some shots of the market today.

Here’s a guy selling local medicines, even literally snake oil. Of course, maybe it DOES cure everything from hair loss to tuberculosis.

This town isn’t much for restaurants. You’re best off just eating at the stands. Here’s a woman kneading dough while the other fries the bread up.

Here’s me having noodles for breakfast. Noodles, rice porridge, fried bread in various shapes and boiled chicken or duck eggs are the most popular beakfast items in Yunnan.

Just outside of town is a Buddhist temple. It’s a shame they can’t keep it up well. This place looks like a very few people are working hard to get what they can get done done. Still, it’s kind of nice in a neglected sort of way.

Yesterday evening we walked away from “downtown”…

…..and had some dinner in a just opened restaurant. I don’t know who they plan to have as customers, but it was good enough Dai food. Here’s Myung picking out what we wanted. It’s typical to look at the food and decide. I haven’t seen a place yet in China where the veggies are more than a day old.

You probably noticed I was above the ground floor when I took that picture. Almost all the buildings are open on the ground floor and activity happens on the second floor. This is typical of Southeast Asia. It’s so hot and wet that being upstairs is cooler and drier. We were the only real customers, I think, but here are lots of locals chatting and eating up there. In Asia, “restaurant” is a vague term. The ladies in this first picture have black teeth from chewing betel. They think it’s beautiful.

After going to the market this morning, we took the bus 15 km to Xiaojie. It’s even less impressive than Damenglong. We walked through the village, then up through the rubber plantations.

It must have been the temple in Korea that got me into roof lines.

Speaking of roof lines, probably 3/4 of the homes and buildings solar heat their water. So simple and cheap. You just can’t luxuriate too long in the shower.

That’s it for now. This tells you how many pictures we have. Here, we’re having a mundane (for us) couple of days, yet we probably have about 40-50 pictures. Tomorrow we’re going to another area, this time southeast of Jinghong. Then we’ll go west of Jinghong. See you later. Be well, all of you.

Oh, here’s one more I took off Myung’s memory card. It’s up by Dali where it was a lot cooler.

If you happened to view “99 bottles…” between yesterday when I posted it and now, you read a mistake I corrected. I called those people in the village north of Lijiang, Dai. They weren’t Dai; they were Naxi. The Naxi are interesting. They are one of the few matrilineal societied on Earth, certainly one of the biggest, with a few hundred thousand of them. The women really do run the show. They are in charge of everything, names and wealth is passed through their line, the works. There are Dai around, and the farther south you go, the more there are. the Dai are the largest group in Dali. The Dai actually had a kingdom a thousand years ago, stretching from southern Yunnan through Northern Burma, Laos and Thailand. Here’s a Dai lady in Dali.

Lonely Planet thinks Dali isn’t as “good” as it was when it was the last stop before going into the Yunnan hinterland. I beg to differ. It’s actually fairly normal, with a sort of kitchy old town, but it’s regular too. And it becomes real regular real fast if you walk out of that area. It’s along the banks of a rather indistinct lake. We wandered around town and out in the fields. It was nice. Here are a couple photos of the older part.

I wanted to post these yesterday but ran out of time. Last night we took the night sleeper bus (Sleep?! Yeah right) to Jinghong, the principle city of Xishuangbanna in the south of Yunnan. The Mekong River runs through here just before forming the Lao/Myanmar border, then Thai/Lao border.
We’re a little bushed. Myung wanted to go buy some tea, so I’m hanging out here in this internet place. The deal in this area is to look at the minority peoples. There are about a dozen or so tribes around here. There are even Lahu. The medic who helped me so much in Maung Na was Lahu, and I stayed in the Lahu village near Maung Na. We don’t have an exact plan yet. We’ll have to do the usual weighting fo desire versus feasibility. I’ll try to blog whe I get some photos and have had a look around.

I really don’t know what Myung is doing by this pole. She isn’t a boy, so it can’t be THAT.

I have unexpectedly got the time to post an entry. Right now we are in Dali, Yunnan, waiting till our bus leaves for southern Yunnan. It’s raining, so Myung went to the room to take a nap, and we will meet in an hour. It may stop raining by then. Or she’ll bring umbrellas. Whatever.
Few words this time, again. We went from Kunming up to Lijiang. 15 years ago when Myung first went there, it was something like 13 hours over dirt roads, so it was unspoiled. Now it’s a worse tourist ghetto than Fenghuang. I uploaded one picture. It’s cute enough there. It looks a lot like this in most of the places. There are a couple of main walking drags which are crammed with Chinese tourists of the geekiest sort.

Basically, the best thing to do is walk around there for about a day, then go to Shangri La (I forget the old name for it), and from there to Shangri La Grand Canyon (which we didn’t do), or tour through the high mountains (which we did do). Before you get to Shangri La, there is a beautiful place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. We decided to go on a tour, on a bus with 30 other tourists, all Chinese. Some of those trips are all party, singing and such. This one was fairly sedate, though there was some singing and lots of socializing. Here’s Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Most of us walked down to the river at the bottom of the gorge. Hmm, I thought I uploaded pictures, but I don’t see them. Oh well.
From there we went up to the high mountains. The pass was about 13,000 ft. There were nice spots along the way. If I had known I’d be here blogging, I’d have brought Lonely Planet so I could remember the names of places. This is the “first bend” of the Yellow River.

There are mostly Tibetans in there, as you can see from the stupas. It’s Tibetan New Year, so many people were getting ready to celebrate.

Here’s up at the top of the pass.

This is the view out our guesthouse window in the morning.

From there we went to a glacier. Myung chose to walk the 20 km up the mountain. I decided to spring for a horse.

It was quite nice up there, even though it’s evident the glacier is melting away.

Then it was back down. Oh, going downhill is hard on guys if the stirrups are too short.

On the way back was a village with a large gompa, that is, Buddhist monastery. This one is quite nice. To me it looks like a little Potala in Llasa. I haven’t been to Llasa, but I’ve seen a lot of pictures, especially now with Chinese TV heavily covering New Year and, of course, giving it’s version of Tibet’s liberation from serfdom.

Her are a couple of pictures from around there.

We kind of formed groups. Here’s our group having dinner after we got back.

About 8 km from Lijiang is a Naxi minority village. Quickly, here are some pictures of that place.

Okay, I have to0 go. Here are the last pictures for now. In one, I’m getting my spsring travel cut. The others are just nice photos. Be well, all of you.

Fenghuang is a very picturesque city in Western Hunan. It was developed as a tourist site about 8 years ago, so it retains some of it’s charm despite being thick with Chinese tourists. Along the lanes right next to the river there is loud music after 8 PM well into the night. During the day it’s halfway mellow.

That last one is of a local liquor store. Myung didn’t know exactly what was in those containers and we didn’t ask. It’s gotten almost boring to ask. Every region has it’s own firewater. A good alcoholic could have a field day, or a field year, just sampling all the liquor here and there.
The people living there are Miao, and many of them continue to where there traditional clothes. Also, the tourists like to see them in that attire. Naturally, many are getting in on the tourism business.

Fenghuang will keep your finger on the shutter button, for sure. Here are a few more of the dozens of pics in our cameras.

All that whaite? They are the sheets from guesthouses along the river hanging out to dry. Adds color, don’t you think? There is definitely no shortage of rooms to rent in Fenghuang, all with a view.

That last one was some kind of performance. Myung couldn’t understand them, so I don’t know what it was. Some kind of comedy. My not knowing what this was about underscores how wondeerful it is to have Myung around to educate me. She’s of enormous logistical assistance too, as you can imagine. China wouldn’t be that easy without her. Well, it’d be easy enough, in a way. I’d get along, but I’d be getting a small fraction of what I’m getting out of it. I’d be my usual dumb donkey self, trying to not get in a bad way somehow and understanding only this and that. She brings the Chinese perspective as well as communication skills. And she’s good company.
We left there for Kunming, Yunnan. As I feared, it took about two and a half days to get there. The good news is that it was a lovely bus ride. We learned later we could have taken a very long sleeper bus from near Fenghuang all the way to Kunming, but we would have missed a lot of scenery. Southeastern Guizhou and most of Yunnan are temperate, and spring has sprung.The most dazzling thing was kilometer after kilometer of these bright yellow fields of rape blossom. Rapeseed is a major source of cooking oil here and in Korea. They are a little out of focus because they were taken from the bus.

That just about brings us up tp date. Kunming is nice enough, from what I could tell, for a city of a million people. From there we went to Lijiang, another old city. That’s where I am now, in an internet place with Christmas music playing. Chistmas was evidently popular around here, judging by the Santa Clauses still up and the music. Valentine’s Day yesterday was popular, too. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as possible. I can get a visa extension here in Lijiang, so we’ll be in China for another month. Tentatively, we’ll go to Myanmar after that.
Tidings of comfort and joy to you all.