Blog neglect would not come close to explaining or excusing the hideous gap in posts this time. I can only say that I have been very lazy and have been all to consumed with the right here right now to bother maintaining this journal of sorts.
The truth is though, I have been writing, I just haven't bothered to publish anything. It was only when Marie and John (who were visiting last week) said that they enjoyed reading it and thought that I should continue with it, that I felt motivated to update the blog. Nice to have some encouragement.
A fair bit has happened since the last post in April, so I've dumped everything that I wrote into the blog and you can read through it if you are wanting to kill some time.
I have recently finished running a tour through Lao and Cambodia. The post directly below this one was a product of the Lao trip. The wet season turned out to be a really great time of year to visit Lao. Lush green jungle, rivers full of water, heaps of fruit in season and no smokey haze to obstruct the view. Really awesome!
I am suffering a little from decent music starvation, so if anyone can offer any recommendations for new music and/or books, this would be greatly appreciated! You could just click on the "comments" link at the bottom of one of the posts and mention your recommendation. It might save me from insanity caused by bad Thai music and bad backpacker books!
Cheerio,
Adam
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Man left bound by debt after holiday
A man has found himself financially committed, almost beyond his means after returning from what he expected to be a refreshing holiday.
It all started when Mr. Peter Warrington signed up to participate in a group cycling adventure through the small South East Asian nation of Laos. “I had just finished my job in Singapore and wanted a holiday before starting my new job in Hong Kong” said Mr. Warrington from his small room in a poor, Hong Kong neighborhood.
The other participants had joined individually or in couples also, so none of the participants new each other. Mr. Warrington said that in the beginning it all seemed very pleasant and everyone made an effort to get to know each other, while traveling first to Northern Thailand and then on a boat down the Mekong River in Laos.
Mr. Warrington admitted that he may not have paid adequate attention to the suggested packing list, sent to him by the tour operator. This is possibly where the trouble started. One of Mr. Warrington’s fellow travelers offered him a sleeping tablet for the overnight train trip. Mr. Warrington was grateful for the tablet as he often finds it difficult to sleep in such situations. The following day, Mr. Warrington felt a prolonged drowsiness, at which time his fellow traveler offered an energy tablet to help Mr. Warrington wake up. The consumption of the tablets started to become a daily occurrence as the trip went on as they helped Mr. Warrington to enjoy the trip more.
There were unusually heavy rains during the trip and Mr. Warrington was offered a rain jacket as he had neglected to pack his own. The offer came from the same fellow traveler and was soon followed by an offer of a torch for viewing the Pak Ou Caves. Mr. Warrington accepted all these items, being under the impression that the “small fee” that was mentioned may have involved a beer or two.
Things took a nasty turn while the group were visiting the tiger enclosure near Luang Prabang. Mr. Warington was fumbling with his morning wake-up tablet (to which he feels he may be heavily addicted to since the trip) and accidentally dropped it. The tiger was quick to consume the pill that landed in it’s enclosure and shortly after became highly aggressive, breaking through the enclosure fence and chasing two small, blond German children who were traveling with their parents (not members of the tour). The children did escape with only the loss of one foot each as they climbed up a tree to safety, but the family have pursued Mr. Warrington for medical expenses, in addition to compensation for pain and suffering following the tragedy.
The rare Indochina Tiger required emergency treatment for a severe reaction to the tablet that Mr. Warrington inadvertently fed it. This came at considerable cost and the carers of the tiger needed to be compensated by Mr Warrington.
Mr. Warrington made a cash settlement with both the tiger’s care-givers and the parents of the injured children. His fellow traveler was able to provide instant cash for these purposes and assured Mr. Warrington that even a slightly high rate of interest may be worth his while to resolve the issue out of the courts.
Mr. Warrington’s fellow traveler was nice enough to offer a third type of tablet to calm the nerves after the tiger experience which may have further exacerbated the dependency issues that were already becoming apparent. “I just found that I needed more and more of these tablets to help me feel good” said Mr. Warrington. “If I didn’t take sleeping tablets, I would dream about the tiger and suffer terrible insomnia”.
At the end of the two week trip, Mr. Williams was presented with a bill for all the items supplied by his fellow traveler. The bill, inclusive of tablets, rain jacket, torch, emergency compensation-cash and “miscellaneous traveling advice” came to a total of $3.5million US. Mr. Warrington therefore had to sell his Singapore apartment and enter into a payment plan with his fellow traveler who he knows only as Mr. Monsante. Mr. Monsante is not known to authorities, although upon reporting this incident to authorities, Mr. Warrington discovered that there are various other victims of such situations arising from group tours. Det. Insp. Sringnaponakorn of Vientiane tourism crime division said that they had no evidence that Mr. Monsante had acted outside the realms of the law. “All the contracts and accompanying documents all appear to be in order. We do stress to travelers however to carefully peruse the suggested packing list and be particularly careful to seek a price before accepting items of assistance, even in emergency situations.” Mr. Sringnaponakorn said.
For the meantime, it seems unlikely that Mr. Warrington will be going on another holiday for some time, as he works off the huge debt owed to a Canadian company believed to be owned by Mr. Monsante. When contacted for comment, Mr Monsante defended his actions and said that he was just trying to help his new friend and things may have got a little out of hand, but he said that this was mainly due to Mr Warrington being a little naïve and neglecting to prepare for the tour.
It all started when Mr. Peter Warrington signed up to participate in a group cycling adventure through the small South East Asian nation of Laos. “I had just finished my job in Singapore and wanted a holiday before starting my new job in Hong Kong” said Mr. Warrington from his small room in a poor, Hong Kong neighborhood.
The other participants had joined individually or in couples also, so none of the participants new each other. Mr. Warrington said that in the beginning it all seemed very pleasant and everyone made an effort to get to know each other, while traveling first to Northern Thailand and then on a boat down the Mekong River in Laos.
Mr. Warrington admitted that he may not have paid adequate attention to the suggested packing list, sent to him by the tour operator. This is possibly where the trouble started. One of Mr. Warrington’s fellow travelers offered him a sleeping tablet for the overnight train trip. Mr. Warrington was grateful for the tablet as he often finds it difficult to sleep in such situations. The following day, Mr. Warrington felt a prolonged drowsiness, at which time his fellow traveler offered an energy tablet to help Mr. Warrington wake up. The consumption of the tablets started to become a daily occurrence as the trip went on as they helped Mr. Warrington to enjoy the trip more.
There were unusually heavy rains during the trip and Mr. Warrington was offered a rain jacket as he had neglected to pack his own. The offer came from the same fellow traveler and was soon followed by an offer of a torch for viewing the Pak Ou Caves. Mr. Warrington accepted all these items, being under the impression that the “small fee” that was mentioned may have involved a beer or two.
Things took a nasty turn while the group were visiting the tiger enclosure near Luang Prabang. Mr. Warington was fumbling with his morning wake-up tablet (to which he feels he may be heavily addicted to since the trip) and accidentally dropped it. The tiger was quick to consume the pill that landed in it’s enclosure and shortly after became highly aggressive, breaking through the enclosure fence and chasing two small, blond German children who were traveling with their parents (not members of the tour). The children did escape with only the loss of one foot each as they climbed up a tree to safety, but the family have pursued Mr. Warrington for medical expenses, in addition to compensation for pain and suffering following the tragedy.
The rare Indochina Tiger required emergency treatment for a severe reaction to the tablet that Mr. Warrington inadvertently fed it. This came at considerable cost and the carers of the tiger needed to be compensated by Mr Warrington.
Mr. Warrington made a cash settlement with both the tiger’s care-givers and the parents of the injured children. His fellow traveler was able to provide instant cash for these purposes and assured Mr. Warrington that even a slightly high rate of interest may be worth his while to resolve the issue out of the courts.
Mr. Warrington’s fellow traveler was nice enough to offer a third type of tablet to calm the nerves after the tiger experience which may have further exacerbated the dependency issues that were already becoming apparent. “I just found that I needed more and more of these tablets to help me feel good” said Mr. Warrington. “If I didn’t take sleeping tablets, I would dream about the tiger and suffer terrible insomnia”.
At the end of the two week trip, Mr. Williams was presented with a bill for all the items supplied by his fellow traveler. The bill, inclusive of tablets, rain jacket, torch, emergency compensation-cash and “miscellaneous traveling advice” came to a total of $3.5million US. Mr. Warrington therefore had to sell his Singapore apartment and enter into a payment plan with his fellow traveler who he knows only as Mr. Monsante. Mr. Monsante is not known to authorities, although upon reporting this incident to authorities, Mr. Warrington discovered that there are various other victims of such situations arising from group tours. Det. Insp. Sringnaponakorn of Vientiane tourism crime division said that they had no evidence that Mr. Monsante had acted outside the realms of the law. “All the contracts and accompanying documents all appear to be in order. We do stress to travelers however to carefully peruse the suggested packing list and be particularly careful to seek a price before accepting items of assistance, even in emergency situations.” Mr. Sringnaponakorn said.
For the meantime, it seems unlikely that Mr. Warrington will be going on another holiday for some time, as he works off the huge debt owed to a Canadian company believed to be owned by Mr. Monsante. When contacted for comment, Mr Monsante defended his actions and said that he was just trying to help his new friend and things may have got a little out of hand, but he said that this was mainly due to Mr Warrington being a little naïve and neglecting to prepare for the tour.
Photos relating to China bound
1) The Yak 2) I don't know what they were trying to say
3) Safe path??? Who were they trying to kid? 4) Lijiang by night
5) About to enter the Red Dragon 6)View from Tea Horse, Tiger Leaping Gorge
7) The deserted island Quan Lan 8) Sunrise from our shack
9) Ben and I assessing the statistics on washed 10) The Chinese Sleeper bus experience
up thongs
11) Shanghai... well... a scale model of it
(not all the lights are working)
China bound
Gotta get out of Vietnam!
After working in Vietnam for around a month, running trips in the Northwest, I was looking forward to getting out. Vietnam is an amazing country and there are some endearing qualities in the locals, but there are also some rather frustrating qualities, being that around 40% of all transactions will somehow involve the local trying to inflate the price, or outright rip you off. The other 60% of transactions are perfectly honest and straightforward and go a long way towards repairing one’s perception of the country, but it is just such a task to have to constantly be on your toes and question prices on everything.
As a breather, a group of us including, friend, acquaintance and fellow tour leader decided to head to Halong Bay and then Quan Lan Island. These are two very contrasting experiences, because the first is done as part of a very well practiced, all inclusive two day tour. The second is an independent four hour ferry journey out to a very quiet little island where we stay in basic wooden shacks on the beach with our host who speaks about five words of English. They are both very relaxing experiences though and by the time we return to Hanoi we are well rested and ready to start the next section of our respective adventures. Ben is heading home to the UK for a couple of weeks before starting with his new employer GAP travel on a six months SE Asia contract. Sarah is exploring the coast of Vietnam before coming back up north and heading to China. Miss Guion and I are heading for China overland. We are catching an overnight train to Lao Cai and then going over the boarder to Yunnan province in China.
After bidding farewell to Sarah and Ben, we head for the train station. Things are running smoothly, the taxi driver even put his meter on without an argument and took us exactly where we wanted to go (a rarity). We arrive at the station with twenty minutes to go before the train leaves. We ask the man at the front of the station where to go and he motions us through the main entrance. The ticket checking lady motions us to board the train on platform one. It is only when we are getting our beds ready that things start to look a bit strange. There are another two people claiming to belong to the bunks that we are preparing and the train conductor tends to agree with them. We have boarded the wrong train and as we are scampering across to platform five, our train is leaving without us. So we now need to spend another day in Hanoi which is not really to our liking.
The following night, all goes to plan, we get on the right train and we arrive in Lao Cai earlier than expected. We consume a very average breakfasts at one of the tour sales offices posing as a café and then get a taxi for the boarder. I say to the taxi driver “Hekou please, China border” He says “OK…how much?” Miss Guion says, “put your bloody meter on” he says “OK” and then proceeds to take us about eight kilometers in the wrong direction!!! When we start circling a small town that is obviously nowhere near China, I start swearing at him and telling him to turn the meter off and take us to the border. All of a sudden, it turns out the little bludger can’t speak a word of English, despite making pleasant conversation while he took us for a ride into the arse end of nowhere. So we get out and grab our luggage. The little rip-off merchant starts to get aggressive and demands the money on the meter. He gets two local blokes that have been standing on the side of the road in on the act. He presumably tells them that these foreigners asked to come here (to the arse-end of nowhere) and now they don’t want to pay the fare. So before we get to blows, I pay the money and we get two perfectly honest moto guys to take us to the boarder. At the border, there is just one more problem. They have never seen my APEC card which substitutes as a Visa for various countries. A stern bloke in a messy green uniform barks “you wait there” and directs me to a hard, broken plastic char. After half an hour he comes back and says “OK, you go”. So we are out of bloody Vietnam! Not a minute too soon. We expect that things in China may be difficult, due to language barriers, but surely they can’t be as exhaustingly, commercially-dishonest as the Vietnamese.
When we arrive at the China side there is a lane marked “officials, diplomats and APEC members”. This is nice. I walk over to the counter and a small clean cut man in a neatly pressed communist-uniform hurries over to me. He salutes me and welcomes me to the Peoples Republic of China. He takes me to a small office with comfortable furniture and offers me a cup of tea while I wait. He apologises and says that they do not see many APEC cards here so would I mind waiting while they check the regulations? Not at all when he puts it like that. While his co-worker checks the regulations, he keeps me company and makes small talk about my country, his country and the weather. When all is done he walks me through to the exit and bids me good luck in my travels. I give myself a pinch to make sure that I am not dreaming and then I walk over to meet Miss Guion. As we are discussing our next move, there occurs, a horrible guttural sound, that sounds like something between an angle grinder, a pig in pain and nails on a blackboard. We look over in horror, thinking that somebody is dying right next to us, only to see a fairly well dressed man spit a huge lump of snot and mucus onto the footpath. Ahhh… we are in China!
We are in shock and disbelief. Hekou is like a showroom. The streets are clean and wide and nobody is sounding there horn every three seconds. Everything is neat and ordered. We go to the bus station and through my few words of Mandarin and some excellent miming, we obtain a bus ticket to Kunming. The ticket says 10.50, so we have an hour and ten minutes to wait for departure on this ten hour bus ride, or so we think. It turns out that China is an hour ahead of Vietnam. The whole country is. This is quite curious when you think about the breadth of the country. In the Western provinces it stays light until a surreal hour in the evening, while the East coast can enjoy a fairly normal daylight span.
After about eight hours driving we arrive at a food stop and consume a delicious meal for about a dollar. The food in China is superb. These people seem to live for it, just like those in my adopted country of residence, Thailand. Everything has to have balance though and in this instance the balance is the toilet. I had forgotten exactly how bad Chinese toilets are. They are the worst in any place that I have been. The places that you would expect to have lovely clean toilets have pretty bad, smelly rooms with filthy bowls that are hardly ever cleaned. Bus stations and roadside stops are beyond comprehension. I have been in the company of people that have vomited at the sight of these toilets. They are truly unimaginable to those that have not traveled in China or in the number one toilet hell, India.
The toilets are a small price to pay for the otherwise wonderful travel experience that is China. We arrive to Kunming late in the evening. Kunming is a huge metropolis in comparison to the ramshackle cities of Vietnam. A very polite mini-van driver takes us to our hotel and we sleep the sleep of contented travelers, in the knowledge that we will soon awaken to a huge buffet breakfast, including Bao-tsa, the steamed bun with various fillings that can be found all over China. There is Bao-tsa with red been filling, Bao-tsa with green veg and tofu and Bao-tsa with any kind of meat you might desire. Miss Guion and myself are of the veg-aquarian faith and for this reason desire no meat or “Wor che su da”, a phrase that works well for us across the country.
Night buses ( a Chinese specialty)
Kunming, whilst impressive, is a little on the boring side. It’s big and has lots of people and there is heaps of shopping (especially for mobile phones), but asides from this not a lot to do, and a fair bit colder than we have been used to, so not entirely a bad thing that we are on a sleeper bus to Lijiang that night.
I’ve seen sleeper buses before. Some look new and spacious and flashy and some look old, claustrophobic and dirty. We were lucky to get a new one, but the spacious and flashy bit was a false impression. A sleeper bus is basically a single decker bus, with very thin bunk beds down each side (two high) and a row down the middle (also two high), then there are four more placed over the walkway which means that you can’t actually walk from the front of the bus to the rear of the bus without bending down to look at your knees and for me, I had to basically crawl. At the back there are five beds in a row across the back with a second level at the same height as the rest of the bunks. This is where the driver places us which is not such a bad thing as I can stretch my legs into the aisle. The man next to me speaks a little English and says he is Tibetan, but has lived in Lijiang district since he was a child. He also explains that he will try not to spoon with me, although not in so many words. I have never before slept in such a confined space. It was quite easy to sleep though. We seemed to stop for extended periods of time at toilet stops and roadhouses, but this was fine, we just kept dozing. We were due to arrive at 7am. When we pulled into yet another stop at 5.45am, Miss Guion got up to go to the toilet and reported that it was quite clean. We went back to sleep and awoke about an hour later in daylight. We appeared to be in the same place, but there was nobody else on the bus and Miss Guion, myself and the Tibetan man were happily snoozing up the back. There were a lot more buses around us and to in truth, it looked very much like a bus station. I got out and found a young guy cleaning a bus. I pointed to the ground and asked “Lijiang ma?” to which he looked at me strangely and nodded (as if to say, yeah… duh). So we had slept on for an hour on a stationary bus that had already reached our destination. But so had the local, so we figured it wasn’t so bad.
At the time I told Miss Guion that I would not go on another sleeper bus (I relented soon after). In hindsight though, it really wasn’t that bad. It was quite cozy really. The only problem being the contrast. If I was lying on my left hand side when I opened my eyes, I would see the attractive and altogether very pleasant face of Miss Guion (or at least the back of her well groomed head), but if I was lying on the other side when my eyes opened, a weathered, brown, whiskery face with a set of yellow chompers greeted me.
Lijiang – Old town and place of many sports shops
Our arrival into Lijiang was a bit surreal. We took a taxi and used our Lonely Planet map to show the driver where we wanted to go. We pointed to the inset section called “old town” and he nodded and took us to where the inset was placed over the normal map. We were a tad confused. There were old buildings and it was a town, but we had heard that it was a hugely populated tourist destination. There weren’t any tourists or tourist facilities as far as we could see. So while we tried to get our head around this, we stopped into a small eatery and feasted on vegetable dumplings and noodle soup. This delicious and wholesome meal came to a grand total of twenty one Yuan ($3USD). The food really is one of the best parts of traveling in China. Every town or province has a specialty and despite a strong emphasis on meat, there is always something for the vegetarians or veg-aquarians.
On a full stomach we had a lot more luck in our search for the old town and we certainly found the missing tourists. Hundreds, bordering on thousands of Chinese tourists converge on the old town and particularly the old town square every day to see demonstrations of Naxi dance and ritual. The Naxi are a minority people that are indigenous to the North and Western areas of Yunnan, which was originally part of Tibet. They wear colorful clothes and have some strange marital practices, where the male remains at his mother’s residence after marriage and all land ownership is in the hands of the women. Some women even take multiple husbands. I’m sure the commies have put an end to this or at least tried.
We checked into the Old Square Inn as recommended by my mate Eric. All the guesthouses here are very similar, with a strong trait being the paper thin walls. By this stage the volume that the Chinese feel the need to communicate at had started to grate on me. Even when completely unnecessary, they scream at each other... especially when they are talking on the phone. This combined with the clearing of the throat and nasal passages is enough to drive me insane.
We awake the next morning to go for a run. A small staff member greets us and informs us that the hotel is full today and could we please move to another hotel. Well… not really we say. Thinking that they have stuffed up their bookings and are trying to shift us in favor of a group, I immediately say ‘no we will not move.’ We go on our run and then come back for a shower. After our showers, we are sitting there reading and we notice that there is a lot of banging and crashing and shouting. Eventually I go to investigate. I find the hotel furniture being walked out into the town square. There are people taking everything out of the building and when I go to reception, the counter has been taken away. At this point, I realize that the hotel is being closed down. So I find the teary receptionist and extract my refund and we then high-tail it to another hotel down the road.
Tiger Leaping gorge and Hello baghorse
I have heard of Tiger Leaping Gorge for almost as long as I have taken an interest in China. Whenever I talk to a Chinese person about traveling in their home country, they tell me that Yunnan is the most beautiful province and that the gorge is the most important of sights there.
We were planning to take three days to walk the length of the gorge, from Qiaotou to the end. There are guesthouses along the way that we would be able to stay at and we left most of our luggage in Lijiang, so we weren’t carrying a lot with us.
The walk starts out in a fairly obscure spot which was marked on this occasion by a mule, standing in the shade, next to a large pile of his own shit. This caused me to observe this animal that has always puzzled me. I mean, it is a sterile animal, so why bother breeding it? And if the almighty one (or ones) did not intend to let this silly looking creature reproduce, then why let it get this far in the first place? While I ponder this, we start to round the bend and are met by an amazing view of the mighty Jinsha river, towered by a sheer cliff face and snow capped mountains. I am sure there are no words that can explain the sight adequately and this was only the start! As we climbed and climbed to the point where we were almost level with the mountains, the view became what can only be described as aw-inspiring. Indeed when we arrived at our stop for the night and found a good place on a balcony to take in the view, I did so in considerable awe. It is one of the sights that I will preserve in my memory for the rest of my life and when I am in need of some inspiration, I can think of this image and remember that if I stick out whatever is troubling me at the time, then I may have the opportunity to view something as amazing as this again.
At the Tea Horse which was our stop for the evening, we met Kerra and Nate, two Americans who were working for China Climb, a company based in Yangshou who run school rock-climbing trips. They were using the research of a trip as an excuse for a holiday and their company was appreciated. I think… I hope that I am a reasonable judge of character and I like to think that I know good people when I meet them, and these seemed to me to be good people. It is an obvious stereo-type to apply, that Americans are all loud, obnoxious and incensitive to other cultures. I can safely say though, that the Americans that travel (or at least the ones that I have met) are really cool people I think it’s the cool part of the population that travels, and they all seem to be from Washington State. We would run into Nate and Kerra in Lijiang and later in Yangshou also.
The following day, we continued on our way at an early hour and enjoyed breakfast at another guesthouse along the way. Here, I saw my first real live Yak. A huge, hairy creature, much more impressive than the silly looking mules that we kept seeing on the track.
The mules would be led by men who were hoping to carry either tourists or their luggage for a fee. Their approach was quite annoying. They would follow about three meters behind a tired looking walker as if willing them to give up and relent to “Hello baghorse” You see this is all they say. As you walk past one of them, they point to the animal and say “hello baghorse”. So after a while, I would try to beat them to it and wave to the animal while saying “hello baghorse!”
We had planned to take the high and less trodden track over the top and to our next stop of Sean’s guesthouse in Walnut grove. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it, so we decided to walk or climb down to the river itself. This involved a treacherous descent down something that the locals actually had the nerve to call a ladder. It was actually just a track, worn into the side of the cliff with steel cables, poorly anchored to trees and posts and things. My knees started to give me grief as I was possibly still a little tender from my recent accident in a Vietnamese truck. By the time we got the bottom I was grumpy and sore and probably didn’t fully appreciate the river, but it was quite impressive to see this huge volume of water, rushing through the narrow gorge, sending a cloud of spray up as it went.
We stayed at Sean’s guesthouse as recommended by lonely planet, which gave further weight to a theory that once a place is listed in the LP, they can trade on name and no longer need to attempt good service. The Tea Horse from the previous night and our breakfast stop at halfway house was far more impressive.
The path forward seemed to be cut from the best information we could obtain, so we called it a day short and headed back to Lijiang. We walked down to the road and hired a micro van. It was then that we realized that the majority of tourists came to visit the gorge in huge tourist buses and arrived at a visitors centre. There must have been twenty buses there when we where there and they kept coming as we were driving out. This gives a further appreciation for the amazing experience that was the hike.
So back to Lijiang, and then a sleeper bus back to Kunming, to start the next part of our journey to Guanxi province. This time we are three on the sleeper bus. I now have a small toy Yak that Miss Guion bought for me. He does not need a bed of his own though, so he is easy travel company.
Back to Yangshou and Hello Bamboo!
I had been to Yangshou three years or so ago, when I did my first charity bike ride through Guanxi province. On that occasion we rode into Yangshou in extremely heavy rain, but were able to enjoy sunny weather while we were there. Coincidentally, as Miss Guion and I landed at Guilin Airport, it was raining heavily and continued to do so all the way to Yangshou on the two hour bus ride. When we met up with Eric, he said that it had been raining solidly for the last few days. It just kept coming he said. Thankfully it ceased the following day and gave way to amazing warm, sunny weather.
It was around this time that the National holiday started, during which the media estimated that 150 million Chinese were traveling across the country. It certainly seemed as though they were all headed for Yangshou. This small town has already been hugely expanded by an all-round increase in tourism, but the massive influx of people was unbelievable. Rooms that had cost 100Y before the holiday were now being let out at 300Y and tickets were impossible to come by according to travel agents.
We enjoyed Yangshou despite the impending chaos and took a bike ride up the Yu river to visit some old bridges and take in the small villages along the river. This is where we met “Hello Banboo!” This is a favourite of the Chinese tourists. They ride up the river by bike, then they sit on a plastic seat, fastened to a bamboo barge and float back down the river. It looks very boring and over-done so we would choose to ride back to town when we were done. This didn’t stop them trying though. I think we must have encountered fifty hello bamboo that day.
Miss Guion took advantage of Dr Lilly’s acupuncture and hot cupping treatments to help her to recover from the various health imperfections that had been annoying her for the duration of our trip.
After a few days in Yanghou, we took a sleeper train to Shanghai. Our legendary Yangshou travel agent Uncle Sam sorted us out for this rare ticket and we were on our way.
Shanghai and Hello Watch!
Chinese trains are nothing short of fantastic! Clean and comfortable, there are no bad points. Before catching the train, I went and bought a heap of food to sustain us for the twenty two hour journey.
At Guilin station, we waited in a huge waiting hall with a section of the hall assigned to each train. In the minutes leading up to the train, everyone surges towards the doors and the minute the train arrives, they charge out towards the train. This is very much a Chinese thing to do. There is no such thing as a queue in China. Be it a line up for immigration at the airport, a line for a food stall or the aforementioned train queue. They just jump in and push and jostle. All lines seem to grow from the front in China.
Shanghai! It is a place that I have been waiting in anticipation to visit since I heard my cousin Walter talk about it. He said it was the fastest growing city in the world and you could feel it. The density of people is the first thing you notice, followed by the brake neck pace of construction and the number of flashy cars and flashy shops. It is just humming with growth. If you stand in the middle of the street at first light when there is less traffic, I think you can actually feel the city humming with growth and progress.
Shanghai has the best food. There is food everywhere and there are no shortage of vegetarian options. It’s cheap and it’s good. There are places with pre-prepared dishes that you choose. Miss Guion calls these choose your own adventure restaurants. There are seafood restaurants and entire streets that are just feeding frenzies. One night we eat at a small restaurant in one of these streets where you choose the ingredients and they cook them in a broth. I could go on forever about the food, but I think my taste buds remember it best.
The skyline of this huge metropolis is like something that you only see in science fiction movies. Screens that take up the entire side of a sixty storey building and the giant pearl TV tower which stands out above everything.
When I run along the bund I forget that I am running, because I am so occupied, trying to remember each of the buildings that make up the skyline. I will remember this city for it’s food, it’s skyline and the annoying little men who run after you saying, “hello watch, hello watch!!!” They are more harmless than “hello hashish” though.
There are so many things about Shanghai that I found amazing and it is without doubt the most impressive city that I have visited, but it is also the place that I say goodbye to Miss Guion and head back south to Bangkok. We were having trouble getting tickets to Beijing as planned, so I had decided to head back to Bangkok from Shanghai. After a ride on the amazing Maglev train to the airport, Miss Guion fairwelled me onto my flight. She will now continue on to Europe by the Trans Siberian Express.
As the plane takes off from Shanghai, one of the Chinese passengers stands up and tries to open the overhead locker. The flight attendant does her best to crash tackle him and place him back in his seat. There are throat clearing noises, incessant yelling and general loudness from the Chinese passengers the whole flight and just before the plane lands in Bangkok, a lady gets out of her seat and opens the overhead locker. I think to myself that I am ready to get away from the Chinese for a while. You see, any country can give you the shits and exhaust you when you spend a while there. Weather it’s the scamming attitude of the Viets, the laziness of the Lao people or the perpetual impatience and loudness of the Chinese, they will all get to you eventually. A damn good reason to keep moving around. I wonder what shits people about Australians?
After working in Vietnam for around a month, running trips in the Northwest, I was looking forward to getting out. Vietnam is an amazing country and there are some endearing qualities in the locals, but there are also some rather frustrating qualities, being that around 40% of all transactions will somehow involve the local trying to inflate the price, or outright rip you off. The other 60% of transactions are perfectly honest and straightforward and go a long way towards repairing one’s perception of the country, but it is just such a task to have to constantly be on your toes and question prices on everything.
As a breather, a group of us including, friend, acquaintance and fellow tour leader decided to head to Halong Bay and then Quan Lan Island. These are two very contrasting experiences, because the first is done as part of a very well practiced, all inclusive two day tour. The second is an independent four hour ferry journey out to a very quiet little island where we stay in basic wooden shacks on the beach with our host who speaks about five words of English. They are both very relaxing experiences though and by the time we return to Hanoi we are well rested and ready to start the next section of our respective adventures. Ben is heading home to the UK for a couple of weeks before starting with his new employer GAP travel on a six months SE Asia contract. Sarah is exploring the coast of Vietnam before coming back up north and heading to China. Miss Guion and I are heading for China overland. We are catching an overnight train to Lao Cai and then going over the boarder to Yunnan province in China.
After bidding farewell to Sarah and Ben, we head for the train station. Things are running smoothly, the taxi driver even put his meter on without an argument and took us exactly where we wanted to go (a rarity). We arrive at the station with twenty minutes to go before the train leaves. We ask the man at the front of the station where to go and he motions us through the main entrance. The ticket checking lady motions us to board the train on platform one. It is only when we are getting our beds ready that things start to look a bit strange. There are another two people claiming to belong to the bunks that we are preparing and the train conductor tends to agree with them. We have boarded the wrong train and as we are scampering across to platform five, our train is leaving without us. So we now need to spend another day in Hanoi which is not really to our liking.
The following night, all goes to plan, we get on the right train and we arrive in Lao Cai earlier than expected. We consume a very average breakfasts at one of the tour sales offices posing as a café and then get a taxi for the boarder. I say to the taxi driver “Hekou please, China border” He says “OK…how much?” Miss Guion says, “put your bloody meter on” he says “OK” and then proceeds to take us about eight kilometers in the wrong direction!!! When we start circling a small town that is obviously nowhere near China, I start swearing at him and telling him to turn the meter off and take us to the border. All of a sudden, it turns out the little bludger can’t speak a word of English, despite making pleasant conversation while he took us for a ride into the arse end of nowhere. So we get out and grab our luggage. The little rip-off merchant starts to get aggressive and demands the money on the meter. He gets two local blokes that have been standing on the side of the road in on the act. He presumably tells them that these foreigners asked to come here (to the arse-end of nowhere) and now they don’t want to pay the fare. So before we get to blows, I pay the money and we get two perfectly honest moto guys to take us to the boarder. At the border, there is just one more problem. They have never seen my APEC card which substitutes as a Visa for various countries. A stern bloke in a messy green uniform barks “you wait there” and directs me to a hard, broken plastic char. After half an hour he comes back and says “OK, you go”. So we are out of bloody Vietnam! Not a minute too soon. We expect that things in China may be difficult, due to language barriers, but surely they can’t be as exhaustingly, commercially-dishonest as the Vietnamese.
When we arrive at the China side there is a lane marked “officials, diplomats and APEC members”. This is nice. I walk over to the counter and a small clean cut man in a neatly pressed communist-uniform hurries over to me. He salutes me and welcomes me to the Peoples Republic of China. He takes me to a small office with comfortable furniture and offers me a cup of tea while I wait. He apologises and says that they do not see many APEC cards here so would I mind waiting while they check the regulations? Not at all when he puts it like that. While his co-worker checks the regulations, he keeps me company and makes small talk about my country, his country and the weather. When all is done he walks me through to the exit and bids me good luck in my travels. I give myself a pinch to make sure that I am not dreaming and then I walk over to meet Miss Guion. As we are discussing our next move, there occurs, a horrible guttural sound, that sounds like something between an angle grinder, a pig in pain and nails on a blackboard. We look over in horror, thinking that somebody is dying right next to us, only to see a fairly well dressed man spit a huge lump of snot and mucus onto the footpath. Ahhh… we are in China!
We are in shock and disbelief. Hekou is like a showroom. The streets are clean and wide and nobody is sounding there horn every three seconds. Everything is neat and ordered. We go to the bus station and through my few words of Mandarin and some excellent miming, we obtain a bus ticket to Kunming. The ticket says 10.50, so we have an hour and ten minutes to wait for departure on this ten hour bus ride, or so we think. It turns out that China is an hour ahead of Vietnam. The whole country is. This is quite curious when you think about the breadth of the country. In the Western provinces it stays light until a surreal hour in the evening, while the East coast can enjoy a fairly normal daylight span.
After about eight hours driving we arrive at a food stop and consume a delicious meal for about a dollar. The food in China is superb. These people seem to live for it, just like those in my adopted country of residence, Thailand. Everything has to have balance though and in this instance the balance is the toilet. I had forgotten exactly how bad Chinese toilets are. They are the worst in any place that I have been. The places that you would expect to have lovely clean toilets have pretty bad, smelly rooms with filthy bowls that are hardly ever cleaned. Bus stations and roadside stops are beyond comprehension. I have been in the company of people that have vomited at the sight of these toilets. They are truly unimaginable to those that have not traveled in China or in the number one toilet hell, India.
The toilets are a small price to pay for the otherwise wonderful travel experience that is China. We arrive to Kunming late in the evening. Kunming is a huge metropolis in comparison to the ramshackle cities of Vietnam. A very polite mini-van driver takes us to our hotel and we sleep the sleep of contented travelers, in the knowledge that we will soon awaken to a huge buffet breakfast, including Bao-tsa, the steamed bun with various fillings that can be found all over China. There is Bao-tsa with red been filling, Bao-tsa with green veg and tofu and Bao-tsa with any kind of meat you might desire. Miss Guion and myself are of the veg-aquarian faith and for this reason desire no meat or “Wor che su da”, a phrase that works well for us across the country.
Night buses ( a Chinese specialty)
Kunming, whilst impressive, is a little on the boring side. It’s big and has lots of people and there is heaps of shopping (especially for mobile phones), but asides from this not a lot to do, and a fair bit colder than we have been used to, so not entirely a bad thing that we are on a sleeper bus to Lijiang that night.
I’ve seen sleeper buses before. Some look new and spacious and flashy and some look old, claustrophobic and dirty. We were lucky to get a new one, but the spacious and flashy bit was a false impression. A sleeper bus is basically a single decker bus, with very thin bunk beds down each side (two high) and a row down the middle (also two high), then there are four more placed over the walkway which means that you can’t actually walk from the front of the bus to the rear of the bus without bending down to look at your knees and for me, I had to basically crawl. At the back there are five beds in a row across the back with a second level at the same height as the rest of the bunks. This is where the driver places us which is not such a bad thing as I can stretch my legs into the aisle. The man next to me speaks a little English and says he is Tibetan, but has lived in Lijiang district since he was a child. He also explains that he will try not to spoon with me, although not in so many words. I have never before slept in such a confined space. It was quite easy to sleep though. We seemed to stop for extended periods of time at toilet stops and roadhouses, but this was fine, we just kept dozing. We were due to arrive at 7am. When we pulled into yet another stop at 5.45am, Miss Guion got up to go to the toilet and reported that it was quite clean. We went back to sleep and awoke about an hour later in daylight. We appeared to be in the same place, but there was nobody else on the bus and Miss Guion, myself and the Tibetan man were happily snoozing up the back. There were a lot more buses around us and to in truth, it looked very much like a bus station. I got out and found a young guy cleaning a bus. I pointed to the ground and asked “Lijiang ma?” to which he looked at me strangely and nodded (as if to say, yeah… duh). So we had slept on for an hour on a stationary bus that had already reached our destination. But so had the local, so we figured it wasn’t so bad.
At the time I told Miss Guion that I would not go on another sleeper bus (I relented soon after). In hindsight though, it really wasn’t that bad. It was quite cozy really. The only problem being the contrast. If I was lying on my left hand side when I opened my eyes, I would see the attractive and altogether very pleasant face of Miss Guion (or at least the back of her well groomed head), but if I was lying on the other side when my eyes opened, a weathered, brown, whiskery face with a set of yellow chompers greeted me.
Lijiang – Old town and place of many sports shops
Our arrival into Lijiang was a bit surreal. We took a taxi and used our Lonely Planet map to show the driver where we wanted to go. We pointed to the inset section called “old town” and he nodded and took us to where the inset was placed over the normal map. We were a tad confused. There were old buildings and it was a town, but we had heard that it was a hugely populated tourist destination. There weren’t any tourists or tourist facilities as far as we could see. So while we tried to get our head around this, we stopped into a small eatery and feasted on vegetable dumplings and noodle soup. This delicious and wholesome meal came to a grand total of twenty one Yuan ($3USD). The food really is one of the best parts of traveling in China. Every town or province has a specialty and despite a strong emphasis on meat, there is always something for the vegetarians or veg-aquarians.
On a full stomach we had a lot more luck in our search for the old town and we certainly found the missing tourists. Hundreds, bordering on thousands of Chinese tourists converge on the old town and particularly the old town square every day to see demonstrations of Naxi dance and ritual. The Naxi are a minority people that are indigenous to the North and Western areas of Yunnan, which was originally part of Tibet. They wear colorful clothes and have some strange marital practices, where the male remains at his mother’s residence after marriage and all land ownership is in the hands of the women. Some women even take multiple husbands. I’m sure the commies have put an end to this or at least tried.
We checked into the Old Square Inn as recommended by my mate Eric. All the guesthouses here are very similar, with a strong trait being the paper thin walls. By this stage the volume that the Chinese feel the need to communicate at had started to grate on me. Even when completely unnecessary, they scream at each other... especially when they are talking on the phone. This combined with the clearing of the throat and nasal passages is enough to drive me insane.
We awake the next morning to go for a run. A small staff member greets us and informs us that the hotel is full today and could we please move to another hotel. Well… not really we say. Thinking that they have stuffed up their bookings and are trying to shift us in favor of a group, I immediately say ‘no we will not move.’ We go on our run and then come back for a shower. After our showers, we are sitting there reading and we notice that there is a lot of banging and crashing and shouting. Eventually I go to investigate. I find the hotel furniture being walked out into the town square. There are people taking everything out of the building and when I go to reception, the counter has been taken away. At this point, I realize that the hotel is being closed down. So I find the teary receptionist and extract my refund and we then high-tail it to another hotel down the road.
Tiger Leaping gorge and Hello baghorse
I have heard of Tiger Leaping Gorge for almost as long as I have taken an interest in China. Whenever I talk to a Chinese person about traveling in their home country, they tell me that Yunnan is the most beautiful province and that the gorge is the most important of sights there.
We were planning to take three days to walk the length of the gorge, from Qiaotou to the end. There are guesthouses along the way that we would be able to stay at and we left most of our luggage in Lijiang, so we weren’t carrying a lot with us.
The walk starts out in a fairly obscure spot which was marked on this occasion by a mule, standing in the shade, next to a large pile of his own shit. This caused me to observe this animal that has always puzzled me. I mean, it is a sterile animal, so why bother breeding it? And if the almighty one (or ones) did not intend to let this silly looking creature reproduce, then why let it get this far in the first place? While I ponder this, we start to round the bend and are met by an amazing view of the mighty Jinsha river, towered by a sheer cliff face and snow capped mountains. I am sure there are no words that can explain the sight adequately and this was only the start! As we climbed and climbed to the point where we were almost level with the mountains, the view became what can only be described as aw-inspiring. Indeed when we arrived at our stop for the night and found a good place on a balcony to take in the view, I did so in considerable awe. It is one of the sights that I will preserve in my memory for the rest of my life and when I am in need of some inspiration, I can think of this image and remember that if I stick out whatever is troubling me at the time, then I may have the opportunity to view something as amazing as this again.
At the Tea Horse which was our stop for the evening, we met Kerra and Nate, two Americans who were working for China Climb, a company based in Yangshou who run school rock-climbing trips. They were using the research of a trip as an excuse for a holiday and their company was appreciated. I think… I hope that I am a reasonable judge of character and I like to think that I know good people when I meet them, and these seemed to me to be good people. It is an obvious stereo-type to apply, that Americans are all loud, obnoxious and incensitive to other cultures. I can safely say though, that the Americans that travel (or at least the ones that I have met) are really cool people I think it’s the cool part of the population that travels, and they all seem to be from Washington State. We would run into Nate and Kerra in Lijiang and later in Yangshou also.
The following day, we continued on our way at an early hour and enjoyed breakfast at another guesthouse along the way. Here, I saw my first real live Yak. A huge, hairy creature, much more impressive than the silly looking mules that we kept seeing on the track.
The mules would be led by men who were hoping to carry either tourists or their luggage for a fee. Their approach was quite annoying. They would follow about three meters behind a tired looking walker as if willing them to give up and relent to “Hello baghorse” You see this is all they say. As you walk past one of them, they point to the animal and say “hello baghorse”. So after a while, I would try to beat them to it and wave to the animal while saying “hello baghorse!”
We had planned to take the high and less trodden track over the top and to our next stop of Sean’s guesthouse in Walnut grove. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it, so we decided to walk or climb down to the river itself. This involved a treacherous descent down something that the locals actually had the nerve to call a ladder. It was actually just a track, worn into the side of the cliff with steel cables, poorly anchored to trees and posts and things. My knees started to give me grief as I was possibly still a little tender from my recent accident in a Vietnamese truck. By the time we got the bottom I was grumpy and sore and probably didn’t fully appreciate the river, but it was quite impressive to see this huge volume of water, rushing through the narrow gorge, sending a cloud of spray up as it went.
We stayed at Sean’s guesthouse as recommended by lonely planet, which gave further weight to a theory that once a place is listed in the LP, they can trade on name and no longer need to attempt good service. The Tea Horse from the previous night and our breakfast stop at halfway house was far more impressive.
The path forward seemed to be cut from the best information we could obtain, so we called it a day short and headed back to Lijiang. We walked down to the road and hired a micro van. It was then that we realized that the majority of tourists came to visit the gorge in huge tourist buses and arrived at a visitors centre. There must have been twenty buses there when we where there and they kept coming as we were driving out. This gives a further appreciation for the amazing experience that was the hike.
So back to Lijiang, and then a sleeper bus back to Kunming, to start the next part of our journey to Guanxi province. This time we are three on the sleeper bus. I now have a small toy Yak that Miss Guion bought for me. He does not need a bed of his own though, so he is easy travel company.
Back to Yangshou and Hello Bamboo!
I had been to Yangshou three years or so ago, when I did my first charity bike ride through Guanxi province. On that occasion we rode into Yangshou in extremely heavy rain, but were able to enjoy sunny weather while we were there. Coincidentally, as Miss Guion and I landed at Guilin Airport, it was raining heavily and continued to do so all the way to Yangshou on the two hour bus ride. When we met up with Eric, he said that it had been raining solidly for the last few days. It just kept coming he said. Thankfully it ceased the following day and gave way to amazing warm, sunny weather.
It was around this time that the National holiday started, during which the media estimated that 150 million Chinese were traveling across the country. It certainly seemed as though they were all headed for Yangshou. This small town has already been hugely expanded by an all-round increase in tourism, but the massive influx of people was unbelievable. Rooms that had cost 100Y before the holiday were now being let out at 300Y and tickets were impossible to come by according to travel agents.
We enjoyed Yangshou despite the impending chaos and took a bike ride up the Yu river to visit some old bridges and take in the small villages along the river. This is where we met “Hello Banboo!” This is a favourite of the Chinese tourists. They ride up the river by bike, then they sit on a plastic seat, fastened to a bamboo barge and float back down the river. It looks very boring and over-done so we would choose to ride back to town when we were done. This didn’t stop them trying though. I think we must have encountered fifty hello bamboo that day.
Miss Guion took advantage of Dr Lilly’s acupuncture and hot cupping treatments to help her to recover from the various health imperfections that had been annoying her for the duration of our trip.
After a few days in Yanghou, we took a sleeper train to Shanghai. Our legendary Yangshou travel agent Uncle Sam sorted us out for this rare ticket and we were on our way.
Shanghai and Hello Watch!
Chinese trains are nothing short of fantastic! Clean and comfortable, there are no bad points. Before catching the train, I went and bought a heap of food to sustain us for the twenty two hour journey.
At Guilin station, we waited in a huge waiting hall with a section of the hall assigned to each train. In the minutes leading up to the train, everyone surges towards the doors and the minute the train arrives, they charge out towards the train. This is very much a Chinese thing to do. There is no such thing as a queue in China. Be it a line up for immigration at the airport, a line for a food stall or the aforementioned train queue. They just jump in and push and jostle. All lines seem to grow from the front in China.
Shanghai! It is a place that I have been waiting in anticipation to visit since I heard my cousin Walter talk about it. He said it was the fastest growing city in the world and you could feel it. The density of people is the first thing you notice, followed by the brake neck pace of construction and the number of flashy cars and flashy shops. It is just humming with growth. If you stand in the middle of the street at first light when there is less traffic, I think you can actually feel the city humming with growth and progress.
Shanghai has the best food. There is food everywhere and there are no shortage of vegetarian options. It’s cheap and it’s good. There are places with pre-prepared dishes that you choose. Miss Guion calls these choose your own adventure restaurants. There are seafood restaurants and entire streets that are just feeding frenzies. One night we eat at a small restaurant in one of these streets where you choose the ingredients and they cook them in a broth. I could go on forever about the food, but I think my taste buds remember it best.
The skyline of this huge metropolis is like something that you only see in science fiction movies. Screens that take up the entire side of a sixty storey building and the giant pearl TV tower which stands out above everything.
When I run along the bund I forget that I am running, because I am so occupied, trying to remember each of the buildings that make up the skyline. I will remember this city for it’s food, it’s skyline and the annoying little men who run after you saying, “hello watch, hello watch!!!” They are more harmless than “hello hashish” though.
There are so many things about Shanghai that I found amazing and it is without doubt the most impressive city that I have visited, but it is also the place that I say goodbye to Miss Guion and head back south to Bangkok. We were having trouble getting tickets to Beijing as planned, so I had decided to head back to Bangkok from Shanghai. After a ride on the amazing Maglev train to the airport, Miss Guion fairwelled me onto my flight. She will now continue on to Europe by the Trans Siberian Express.
As the plane takes off from Shanghai, one of the Chinese passengers stands up and tries to open the overhead locker. The flight attendant does her best to crash tackle him and place him back in his seat. There are throat clearing noises, incessant yelling and general loudness from the Chinese passengers the whole flight and just before the plane lands in Bangkok, a lady gets out of her seat and opens the overhead locker. I think to myself that I am ready to get away from the Chinese for a while. You see, any country can give you the shits and exhaust you when you spend a while there. Weather it’s the scamming attitude of the Viets, the laziness of the Lao people or the perpetual impatience and loudness of the Chinese, they will all get to you eventually. A damn good reason to keep moving around. I wonder what shits people about Australians?
When you are due for a holiday
Pic 1) Ben, Hoai and I, enjoying a "good to be alive" drink. We got through the hardest trip we've run!
Pic 2) The truck after some "repairs" to make it "drive-able" (repairs included bending the cab back into shape a bit)
They say that cancerians are homely people. That they need to have a proper home and are proud of their home. Maybe in instinct this is true. I have always been very content when I am in my home. Things are different now though. My home is Bangkok, but in the seven months that I have called Bangkok home, I have spent a cumulative total of about two or three weeks there. In reality, my home is wherever I sleep on any given day. Some places are more home-like than others and some places see a lot more of me than others.
Coming off the overnight train from Lao Cai in the North West of Vietnam, I am glad to see Hanoi again. It’s my temporary home while I have been working in Vietnam this last month or so. The first thing to be done is to go and order a decent breakfast at the café that the local office is based in. Then it’s across the road to the small building that is the Prince Café Hotel. A modest room with a relaxed feel to it is very welcoming after having stayed in a wide variety of small town hotels for the last two weeks. It is now one day until I finish the trip that I am running and I can then safely say that I am on holidays. I don’t have to work again until June, so it’s time for some independent travel.
I am finishing up the worst trip that I have ever run. I had a bad feeling about this trip before I started, but I didn’t know how bad I would be feeling by the time it draws to a close. It comes immediately after having led the best group through the same itinerary, so the contrast is amazing.
It started with the airport collection. Ben, Hoai and myself were in good spirits after our last trip so the drive out to the airport was relaxed and warm. Then the group arrive. They are all from Sydney. Most of them go to the same gym and as a group, they are on the loud side. As soon as we board the bus, one of them plugs an Ipod into some portable speakers and provides everyone with some hip hop followed by Kaysan which I thought a strange choice given their current location. It becomes immediately evident that this is going to be harder work than we expected.
The first day and second are uneventful, but hard work all the same. We spend most of it riding through torrential rain. When we reach the third day of riding, things are thrown into chaos. The Phai Din Pass that was a pile of sand and dust just a couple of weeks earlier is now a pile of mud. The start of the hill is a recently graded and hard packed section. The soil is of high clay content and it makes riding through it a challenge. A truck comes past where we have stopped and it has it’s wheels spinning and the rear end sliding out. As we get further up the pass, the mud gets thicker and causes five bikes to almost simultaneously break. They can’t be repaired, so the participants in question have to get onto one of the support vehicles. Then we get to a serious bog section. The truck takes fifteen minutes to get through. Ben comes down from the top and says that there are at least three more bog spots ahead that we are unlikely to get the vehicles through in a hurry. We make the decision to abort the ride and head back to Son La in the vehicles. It had only been two hours since we passed the super slippery section, but by the time we got down there it was mayhem. What we had in front of us was some sort of Vietnamese stand-off. A red local bus, packed to the ceiling with passengers and their cargo had attempted to descend, but had started to lose control, so had simply stopped. Behind him, a dump truck had encountered similar problems and was stopped in a position that blocked the road. In total there were eight vehicles including ours lined up behind these two. Then in the opposing direction at the bottom of the slope was a line up of buses and trucks. There was a heated argument between the driver of the red bus and another bus wanting to come in the opposite direction. In order for the vehicles to try and go up, the ones coming down had to go through, but the ones going down wanted the up ones to turn around and get out of the way, as they feared that they would collide when they started sliding.
So Ben, Hoai and myself begin some diplomatic efforts. To start with, we try to tell the drivers wanting to go up that there is no point and that the road is impassable ahead. Then we explain to the driver of the red bus that if he gets all the passengers off the bus, he will be able to control his slide enough that he will avoid colliding with the up traffic (and may reduce the risk of injuring his passengers). Into this mess walk three local officers in their green uniforms. They have a small wheelbarrow full of dry soil and rocks. This is just laughable. We would need around a hundred of these barrows. It does however give us an idea. We start to throw all the ballast rocks from the side of the road onto the slope. This way the vehicles will have something to grip. Eventually there are enough rocks on the road for the red bus to attempt a descent. The passengers wouldn’t get off because they didn’t want to lose there seat, so a severely overloaded bus goes careering down the slope, while sliding very much in the direction of the drop off on the side of the road. It gets through OK though which encourages the other down vehicles to try. What followed can only be described as ice skating with trucks and buses. At one point, a six axel petrol tanker slides past us without any of it’s wheels turning. Scary stuff! Eventually our vehicles slide down the hill and take us back to Son La.
We formulate a plan for an alternative route. It will cut Dien Bien Phu and see us traveling one day ahead of schedule. It involves trying to cut through roads where even the locals can’t tell us what the conditions are like. For all we know they could be tiny cart tracks, but we have to at least try. There must be something there if it was worth someone putting it on the map. So the following morning we set off on the support vehicles to try and get through. All is going well, the roads turn out to be in far better shape than our originally intended route. Then we come to a mudslide. This perfect road just disappears under a massive load of mud. Plan B foiled!
Plan C. Drive through another alternative route to our intended final destination in Sapa, then ride in reverse some of the original route. After thirteen hours driving we reach the cold, wet and foggy Sapa. We then battle through two days of riding in the rain to get to Old Lai Chau. On the third day, we plan to drive back to Sapa to conclude the trip and catch the overnight train back to Hanoi.
The drive back to Sapa is where my trip takes a very unexpected turn for the worse. I set off on the truck with Liem the driver. I prefer to travel in the truck because I get bus sick sitting in the back of a mini-van, and Liem is a nice fella who I figure deserves some company. He speaks no English, but we have fun anyway, just using miming and pointing to communicate. We leave a bit earlier to get to Sapa before the group. That way I can do the check in ahead of them and their luggage will be unloaded and waiting for them.
We’ve been descending a mountain pass for a few kilometers when we round a bend and face an on-coming six axel truck. On our side of the road there is a parked dump truck, so Liem needs to hit the brakes and bring us to a stop behind the dump truck. He brakes, shifts down a gear and brakes again. Only the second time, the overheated brakes fail and we go slamming into the back of the parked truck. My reflexes are quick enough to at least turn my legs to the side a little, so the impact is not front-on to my knees. All the same, the cabin gets crushed onto my legs and pins them into the seat and the foot-well. The excruciating pain of the twisted metal of the truck cabin against my legs is causing me to make some fairly unpleasant noises. I look next to me to see that Liem’s side has not suffered the same impact and he is able to get out of the truck. Some farmers run over with crowbars and start trying to pry the cabin off me. I realize my phone has coverage and I call Ben in the hope that he can call some sort of emergency services from Sapa. At this point, it seems as though the farmers efforts are not working and I might be trapped in this wreck for a while yet. The circulation to my legs is cut by the pressure and I start to panic, thinking about what possible long term damage may have occurred. As I am asking Ben to call Sapa, the farmers find the right spot of leverage and the pressure comes off my legs. Liem pulls me out and I fall in a heap in the small stream running along the road. The accompanying scream lands in Ben’s ear and I drop the phone. In hindsight, this must have caused him some distress. By the time I gather my composure enough to call him, the phone reception is not working.
At this moment Mr Tony Zen and his wife come past in a 4WD with their driver and guide. Mr and Mrs Zen have a first aid kit and they help me to get cleaned up. They then kindly give me a lift to Sapa. At a guess I thought that my knee may need stitches, but the legendary doctor from our group, later says they are not necessary. So today somebody was looking out for me upstairs! I have walked out of this with some lacerations, bruising and emotional shock. When I think about alternative scenarios, all stack up quite badly. Had the brakes failed coming into a hair-pin bend, Liem and I would not be here. If we had been traveling ten kilometers faster, I am sure that I would have been in that truck for a lot longer and would have two broken legs. If the parked truck had been bigger the impact would have been at head height and that would be game over. I am incredibly lucky and this is why I am writing this in my blog. I know it may alarm some people, but it is a large event and for that reason I need to air it to you all.
I’m sure you can see why I am happy to be finishing this trip. I am in need of time off and the mess that was this trip is a sign that I need a break. So it’s a damn good thing that
I have one!
PS: Despite my negative comments on the group, it should be noted that it did actually contain some really lovely people (it just also contained some others). Two of the most pleasant people were Norbert, a Real estate agent from Northern Sydney and the Doc (a lovely Vietnamese Australian lady who has a heart of pure gold:)
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