Last weekend we all went to Ninh Binh, where there was nothing, really, and Hoa Lu where there was old temples - it used to be the capital in like 950 or some such year long ago, and to some other town where we rode little boats between rice paddies and mountains and through caves under mountains and it was really nice, and to Cuc Phuong National Park where I walked through the jungle :) and joined crowds of students in the "cave of pre-historic man" who (the students) were seriously more interested in goofy foreigners than pre-historic anything.
That was that. Back in Hanoi we hear about President Bush really going at this war business, and then there is severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, or, as I prefer to call it - Really Really Bad Something, RRBS. Doesn't that sound more ominous when you say it? RRBS. Yes, very ominous... Anyway, so from what I know there was one doctor here who came back from Hong Kong, had this disease and a bunch of workers at the Viet-Phap Hospital were infected. From what I read today, there seems to be no kind of new severe cases of it, here or elsewhere, so that is a good thing. That hospital is quarantined now, it is actually pretty close to where I live and go to class, but not right next door or anything. The school has issued the rather cryptic directive to us Hanoi students to 'avoid prolonged contact with people'. Something like that. Obviously the people who wrote that have never been to Asia, avoid people ha! Anyway, they also kind of recommended that we stay in Bach Khoa (this neighborhood) which seems a little bizarre to me but whatever. Anyway, I eat street food every day, and that is probably more dangerous than anything else around here!
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
My weekend in Sapa
Vietnam (in case anybody hasn't seen a map for a long time) is really skinny in the middle with a bigger bit at either end. In fact, if you look at a map of Vietnam by itself and put in some, um, bridges at the south end and an oil rig leaning off the coast at the north end, it looks exactly like a whatchimajigeroo, the kind of thing that has been studied at great length by the venerable Dr. Seuss... Anyway, Sapa is about three inches up and to the left of the ear (if there were an ear) of the, yeah that, in the northwest corner of the top bit of Vietnam.
We took the train from Hanoi to Lao Cai, which is pretty close to the border with Yunnan province of China. From what I read, when China invaded Vietnam in 1979 they came in here and knocked over the whole town of Lao Cai - not that this fact made my three hours in that spot any more interesting, but it was something to think about while waiting for the bus. And sleeper trains in Vietnam are, well, sleeper trains are the same everywhere (except in America where they aren't...). It was kind of funny for me to be travelling with my fellow students, most of whom had never been on a sleeper train at all, after spending half my month of January on trains in China I had almost forgotten how fascinating they are!
So we get to Lao Cai Friday morning at five o'clock or some other dark hour, and take a 'bus' (a van, really) going south, up a lot of hills to Sapa. Spent an hour or two there, eating breakfast, then we start going down what I can only presume to be the other side of the hill. This time I got to ride a Jeep, hurrah! It was a Russian Jeep. You can tell the Russian ones because they say 'Vodka' on the gas cap – ha. Actually, you can tell the Russian ones because they have no AC and the windows don't roll down, not broken just nobody made a crank for them. It wasn't too hot up there anyway, so it didn't matter, but I don't think I'd want to ride one in the summer!
So we go down a long dirt road following the side of a valley full of rice paddies on mountainsides, waterfalls faraway at the bottom of the valley, little villages of bamboo houses and general vast intense green-ness that looked much like a postcard. Eventually we stop and the driver says we can't drive the rest of the way because the road is too bad (some of us were in a van, a van of significantly less stomach than the Russian jeep I was in) so we walked down a path from there to this little village along the river. The walk was nice, amazing views, but it was also down a very steep hill for a very long time.
I noticed something – water buffalos are really ugly! From a distance they look cool, they are the same color as a rock, and have a certain majesty or calmness that accompanies things that don't move much (ie, Buddha, Mt. Rushmore, my VW Van...), but up close they kind of lose that. I guess I've seen too many cows. Con Trâu (yes that would be Vietnamese for water buffalo, see I am learning something) are like cows but they have hair like a pig, horns like, well, a water buffalo, and they can walk on those little paths between rice paddies without destroying them - which I can't imagine a 'normal' Holstein cow doing, in fact I had a hard time doing it myself! They also have pigs here – Vietnamese Potbellied Pigs like I'm told people have as pets in America. They were frankly a bit more unfriendly than the buffalo, and even more ugly.
Anyway, we stayed in a house this village built for tourists I guess, it was pretty cool. We slept in a kind of loft on bamboo floor that bounced whenever anybody walked on it, and our guide showed us around the village - not much to see other than some waterfalls and the bridge which was of the 'sketchy suspension' variety, ok except when somebody led their row of donkeys across it when I was in the middle where the suspension cable is about six inches above the rotting boards - a fine height for tripping. We spent most of the time just kind of absorbing the peace and quiet. It reminded me a lot of the place I stayed in Thailand (Maesuwai, or some such name) only it was in the mountains.
After a day and a half of watching ducks, etc, we hike back up the hill and head back toward Sapa. Saturday night I walked around Sapa, which is just big enough that you can see all of it that you want to see in 45 minutes or so. The last day in Sapa we walked out of town down another side of the hill to a village called Cat Cat - no 'Cat' in Vietnamese doesn't mean cat, I don't know what it means, but 'mèo' means cat, and it sounds like a cat, only with a tone. I don't think cats talk with tones. Anyway, Cat Cat was really just a waterfall, which was cool, and more green-ness, only with more tourists. Sapa itself had a lot of tourists, and a lot of ethnic minority people selling stuff to tourists. The village we stayed in did not have a lot of wandering salespeople, but most other places we went did. That village, incidentally, was ethnic Thai (I tried to theorize about how that was what reminded me of Thailand, but we also went to Hmong village and the houses looked about the same to me, and I don't think I could tell the difference between a Thai person and a Hmong person except for their clothes). I like parenthesis, they make me feel organized! In the Hmong village there were lots of people selling stuff, shirts blankets jewelry bags and, funnily enough, little instruments that are some Southeast Asian variety of the jaw harp. And I met a couple French tourists and got to practice my French, felt all intelligent when I asked if they were French, they said yes and you? I said American, they said - but you speak French! They soon discovered that I didn't speak much French, but anyway that was fun.
In that village there was the cute little girl with a whiny voice who followed me all the way through the village going "You buy shirt you buy blanket you buy music you buy chapeau (they usually spoke a few English phrase but somehow they picked up 'chapeau' which is French for hat, and I didn't hear anyone selling 'hats') you buy from her (not true) why you no buy from me? you American (true) you have million dollars (not true) why you no buy from me? you have money you no buy from me you bad man!" At that point I had to start laughing, which was nice because she kept saying that, all of that, over and over and over until I got back up to the road and into the van and waved goodbye to her.
In Sapa I found a hotel/restaurant with a patio with an amazing view overlooking the valley, and I sat there drinking mango juice and writing in my journal - and borrowed a conical straw hat from the waitress to keep my head from getting sunburnt, and all the staff laughed at me and I felt right at home. I bought a shirt from a nice old lady who was about as tall as my elbow. The funny part about the people selling hats was that they always tried to plant a hat on your head, but usually couldn't actually reach that high.
Back in Hanoi, I have started sleeping through the morning announcements. Oh, the government says that all good citizens should get up at 6:30 am, (I GUESS the government says that, somebody does) and they have loudspeakers all over the place (they even had one in the little village we stayed in, although it was pretty quiet from where we were) and at 6:30 am, as well as a couple other times through the day, they start blasting some kind of propaganda to the world as a whole. It was a bit startling at first but I don't think about it much any more. Not like I understand it - that probably helps me to ignore it! I guess that noise will help me remember Sapa, the quiet place in Vietnam!
We took the train from Hanoi to Lao Cai, which is pretty close to the border with Yunnan province of China. From what I read, when China invaded Vietnam in 1979 they came in here and knocked over the whole town of Lao Cai - not that this fact made my three hours in that spot any more interesting, but it was something to think about while waiting for the bus. And sleeper trains in Vietnam are, well, sleeper trains are the same everywhere (except in America where they aren't...). It was kind of funny for me to be travelling with my fellow students, most of whom had never been on a sleeper train at all, after spending half my month of January on trains in China I had almost forgotten how fascinating they are!
So we get to Lao Cai Friday morning at five o'clock or some other dark hour, and take a 'bus' (a van, really) going south, up a lot of hills to Sapa. Spent an hour or two there, eating breakfast, then we start going down what I can only presume to be the other side of the hill. This time I got to ride a Jeep, hurrah! It was a Russian Jeep. You can tell the Russian ones because they say 'Vodka' on the gas cap – ha. Actually, you can tell the Russian ones because they have no AC and the windows don't roll down, not broken just nobody made a crank for them. It wasn't too hot up there anyway, so it didn't matter, but I don't think I'd want to ride one in the summer!
So we go down a long dirt road following the side of a valley full of rice paddies on mountainsides, waterfalls faraway at the bottom of the valley, little villages of bamboo houses and general vast intense green-ness that looked much like a postcard. Eventually we stop and the driver says we can't drive the rest of the way because the road is too bad (some of us were in a van, a van of significantly less stomach than the Russian jeep I was in) so we walked down a path from there to this little village along the river. The walk was nice, amazing views, but it was also down a very steep hill for a very long time.
I noticed something – water buffalos are really ugly! From a distance they look cool, they are the same color as a rock, and have a certain majesty or calmness that accompanies things that don't move much (ie, Buddha, Mt. Rushmore, my VW Van...), but up close they kind of lose that. I guess I've seen too many cows. Con Trâu (yes that would be Vietnamese for water buffalo, see I am learning something) are like cows but they have hair like a pig, horns like, well, a water buffalo, and they can walk on those little paths between rice paddies without destroying them - which I can't imagine a 'normal' Holstein cow doing, in fact I had a hard time doing it myself! They also have pigs here – Vietnamese Potbellied Pigs like I'm told people have as pets in America. They were frankly a bit more unfriendly than the buffalo, and even more ugly.
Anyway, we stayed in a house this village built for tourists I guess, it was pretty cool. We slept in a kind of loft on bamboo floor that bounced whenever anybody walked on it, and our guide showed us around the village - not much to see other than some waterfalls and the bridge which was of the 'sketchy suspension' variety, ok except when somebody led their row of donkeys across it when I was in the middle where the suspension cable is about six inches above the rotting boards - a fine height for tripping. We spent most of the time just kind of absorbing the peace and quiet. It reminded me a lot of the place I stayed in Thailand (Maesuwai, or some such name) only it was in the mountains.
After a day and a half of watching ducks, etc, we hike back up the hill and head back toward Sapa. Saturday night I walked around Sapa, which is just big enough that you can see all of it that you want to see in 45 minutes or so. The last day in Sapa we walked out of town down another side of the hill to a village called Cat Cat - no 'Cat' in Vietnamese doesn't mean cat, I don't know what it means, but 'mèo' means cat, and it sounds like a cat, only with a tone. I don't think cats talk with tones. Anyway, Cat Cat was really just a waterfall, which was cool, and more green-ness, only with more tourists. Sapa itself had a lot of tourists, and a lot of ethnic minority people selling stuff to tourists. The village we stayed in did not have a lot of wandering salespeople, but most other places we went did. That village, incidentally, was ethnic Thai (I tried to theorize about how that was what reminded me of Thailand, but we also went to Hmong village and the houses looked about the same to me, and I don't think I could tell the difference between a Thai person and a Hmong person except for their clothes). I like parenthesis, they make me feel organized! In the Hmong village there were lots of people selling stuff, shirts blankets jewelry bags and, funnily enough, little instruments that are some Southeast Asian variety of the jaw harp. And I met a couple French tourists and got to practice my French, felt all intelligent when I asked if they were French, they said yes and you? I said American, they said - but you speak French! They soon discovered that I didn't speak much French, but anyway that was fun.
In that village there was the cute little girl with a whiny voice who followed me all the way through the village going "You buy shirt you buy blanket you buy music you buy chapeau (they usually spoke a few English phrase but somehow they picked up 'chapeau' which is French for hat, and I didn't hear anyone selling 'hats') you buy from her (not true) why you no buy from me? you American (true) you have million dollars (not true) why you no buy from me? you have money you no buy from me you bad man!" At that point I had to start laughing, which was nice because she kept saying that, all of that, over and over and over until I got back up to the road and into the van and waved goodbye to her.
In Sapa I found a hotel/restaurant with a patio with an amazing view overlooking the valley, and I sat there drinking mango juice and writing in my journal - and borrowed a conical straw hat from the waitress to keep my head from getting sunburnt, and all the staff laughed at me and I felt right at home. I bought a shirt from a nice old lady who was about as tall as my elbow. The funny part about the people selling hats was that they always tried to plant a hat on your head, but usually couldn't actually reach that high.
Back in Hanoi, I have started sleeping through the morning announcements. Oh, the government says that all good citizens should get up at 6:30 am, (I GUESS the government says that, somebody does) and they have loudspeakers all over the place (they even had one in the little village we stayed in, although it was pretty quiet from where we were) and at 6:30 am, as well as a couple other times through the day, they start blasting some kind of propaganda to the world as a whole. It was a bit startling at first but I don't think about it much any more. Not like I understand it - that probably helps me to ignore it! I guess that noise will help me remember Sapa, the quiet place in Vietnam!
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Dots Lines and Squiggles
I have begun studying Vietnamese. The people who first wrote Vietnamese down in Latin letters were Portuguese, and some French. So, you have all kinds of variations of what we know as english letters - an 'a' and 'o' with a 'hook' on the top right corner, then you have the 'hat' and 'smile' (those are thoroughly unofficial names) above some vowels like in french, only they really change the way you say them, plus tone marks above that. They have six tones, Chinese has four, and the way you mark them is pretty funny - one is a dot underneath the word, then you have a couple that are lines above the word like when writing Chinese in pinyin, then you have something that looks like a tilda in spanish, and you have to kind of make your voice do a little dip, then actually stop the sound for a tiny bit, and go up at the end... (it's not quite as hard as that makes it sound, but takes some getting used to) and another tone with a question mark looking thing (only smaller) above the vowel. Thus most Vietnamese words are surounded by various dots lines and squiggles!
Friday, January 31, 2003
Monday, January 27, 2003
The Road More Travelled
I have now completed my loop (circumbobulous perfection, one could say) in China and am now back in Shanghai. My last note was I believe from Kashgar. After Kashgar I took the train (which is a pretty nice train, really) back to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and incidentally, the farthest city in the world from any ocean. Furthest. Most far. Whatever. Why anybody bothered to figure that out I'm not sure - it was probably someone from CITS (China International Travel Service) which throws into grave doubt the accuracy of the figures, but anyway.
From there I wanted to take the train to Beijing. The train ticket office in the hotel didn't actually have any train tickets, (they should just call it "office") so I went back to the station. After pushing in line (one doesn't actually wait in line here in China, one pushes) for 45 minutes, I am told to come back at a later time to buy this ticket which I do; another 45 minutes, I am told to go to another ticket office to buy the ticket, which I do; I am told there are no tickets for the next four days; so the next day I go to the above-mentioned CITS.
I first went to a CITS office in Turpan, where they were closed for the winter, and second in Kashgar, where they told me that it was impossible to reserve a ticket in Kashgar from Urumqi to Beijing and that it would be no problem to buy it in Urumqi… So here they told me that if I couldn't get a ticket at the ticket office they certainly couldn't either. What did I think this was, a travel agency or something?!
So I went next door to the Holiday Inn Business Center where a quite nice person tried for a long time (on the phone, like travel agents are supposed to) to get me a ticket, and in the end got me an airplane ticket (that was all of four hours before the plane left) at almost four times the cost of a train ticket. But, it was like three hours instead of two days and something. And that allowed me to get to the Vietnam embassy in Beijing in time to give them my passport for the weekend to chew on and give back to me Monday, which was all good.
Other than that, Urumqi was just cold, that is about all that I remember: another hotel without a shower head, another hotel front desk lady who wanted to know how to say "luggage room" in orally legible English, a Chinese fast food place called "Best Food" which wasn't best but was complete with the red sign and golden arches serving hot instant orange juice with the value meal, a bakery where the girl who got me my coffee was so excited that a waiguoren came in that she was literally dancing to the music behind the counter, but still too shy to say anything in English or Chinese, and more Chinese concrete highrises... OK, so I did remember some things!
The funny thing in the Beijing airport, after arriving there at ten pm or so, was the guy trying to sell me a hotel room. I asked about a place listed in my guidebook that sounded nice, and he said "bu hao" (not good) I asked why, but he couldn't come up with anything better than that. I asked if his hotel had dorm rooms, and he told me, with a perfectly straight face, apparently expecting me to believe him, that dorm rooms were really quite dangerous and that I should avoid them. Frankly, breathing the air in China (outside of Tibet and Xinjiang) is more dangerous than any dorm room I've ever been in, and I had to laugh at him. Then he gave up on selling me anything and attached himself to some other hapless tourist...
First I went to the embassy to get my Vietnam visa process underway, then I bought a train ticket to Vietnam (which took the rest of the day) and tried to buy a ticket to Shanghai at the same office (which involved waiting three hours while somebody's brother sat in traffic inching toward the west train station with a ticket that turned out to be for the wrong day...) And went to the other train station to the "foreigner ticket office" which was packed with chinese (hmmm) where I bought a soft sleeper ticket because I was too tired to think about spending the next day searching for creative ways to get a hard sleeper ticket.
Instead, I spent the next day searching for creative ways to get money - the 1st ATM was broken, the 2nd ATM was not happy with my card, the 3rd ATM seemed happy enough but said I should contact my bank, the whole idea of getting a credit card cash advance while my passport was not physically on me, but in an embassy, (making me a non-person), made everybody laugh. Actually, the bank manager said I could come back next week when some other office was open and fill out a form to do it. So after the taxi back from the bank, and paying for the hotel until 'next week' I had literally fifty quai in my pocket ($6.20?) and two days to explore Beijing...
The next day, (after eating raisins from Turpan, a leftover banana that was a parting gift from my friend in Kashgar, and a seven quai bowl of chicken and cucumbers which was very good,) the ATM worked. The same one I tried first. I don't know why. And there are no internet cafe's in Beijing. They closed them because last summer there was a fire in one of them and twenty some young people were killed. I'm waiting for someone to set fire to the PSB office to see if they close all of those down too...
Anyway, in Beijing I went to a teahouse/bookstore place to drink tea (this place was really cool) and listen to Chinese classical music - an erhu, a pipa and a 'flute' (I don't remember what they call those in Chinese) player. That was fun. It was also slightly unnerving because there were only a couple Chinese people there, too many foreigners! But still fun, and I was among the only waiguoren who knew how to say anything other than "xiexie" (that is Thank You - with a Louisiana accent).
And I went to the Great Wall (that was my last 200 quai) which involved about five hours of preliminary exercises like a Jade factory and Ming tombs and a Chinese traditional medicine
"yourliverhastoomuchheat-youneedtobuysomeherbs-heretheseareonlythreehundredquai-yesyoucanpayinAmericandollars-thisisthechinesesecrettolongevity-thankyouverymuch-ohyoudon'twantthem?!?!" kind of place.
Lunch was funny, I was at the table with all the other foreigners on the tour (there was some people from Beijing and some Taiwan Chinese), an American, French, and an Egyptian couple - none of whom could really eat anything with chopsticks. It has been a long time since I met a foreigner so foreign that they couldn't eat with chopsticks! We did eventually get to the Great Wall, which was a good place to exercise the lungs. I had a good time climbing for awhile, left most of the other people behind so I had a bit of solitude, and it was really cold so there was not all that many people there.
The next day, after getting my visa, I sat in Starbucks in a happy daze - mostly from my visa and the sudden realization of how soon I am going to be in Vietnam (I have not yet lost my love of going new places, just as long as I don't have to first push through a line for an hour to buy a ticket, and then sit on a hard seat or sleeper bus to get there) and also from the general warmth, the coffee, and the completely unreal atmosphere that places like Starbuck's have in Beijing. Then I walked around Tiananmen Square, and through the Forbidden City, had fun practicing my Chinese with more people who never see foreigners talking Chinese.
The train back to Shanghai was, well, soft sleepers are not worth the money. They have TV, and actual compartments with doors, and only four beds instead of six, but soft sleeper people are snobby... The funny thing is that they aren't really any softer than hard sleeper, just a little wider. And it is good to be back in Shanghai, kind of funny to be done travelling, back 'home' but not home...
From there I wanted to take the train to Beijing. The train ticket office in the hotel didn't actually have any train tickets, (they should just call it "office") so I went back to the station. After pushing in line (one doesn't actually wait in line here in China, one pushes) for 45 minutes, I am told to come back at a later time to buy this ticket which I do; another 45 minutes, I am told to go to another ticket office to buy the ticket, which I do; I am told there are no tickets for the next four days; so the next day I go to the above-mentioned CITS.
I first went to a CITS office in Turpan, where they were closed for the winter, and second in Kashgar, where they told me that it was impossible to reserve a ticket in Kashgar from Urumqi to Beijing and that it would be no problem to buy it in Urumqi… So here they told me that if I couldn't get a ticket at the ticket office they certainly couldn't either. What did I think this was, a travel agency or something?!
So I went next door to the Holiday Inn Business Center where a quite nice person tried for a long time (on the phone, like travel agents are supposed to) to get me a ticket, and in the end got me an airplane ticket (that was all of four hours before the plane left) at almost four times the cost of a train ticket. But, it was like three hours instead of two days and something. And that allowed me to get to the Vietnam embassy in Beijing in time to give them my passport for the weekend to chew on and give back to me Monday, which was all good.
Other than that, Urumqi was just cold, that is about all that I remember: another hotel without a shower head, another hotel front desk lady who wanted to know how to say "luggage room" in orally legible English, a Chinese fast food place called "Best Food" which wasn't best but was complete with the red sign and golden arches serving hot instant orange juice with the value meal, a bakery where the girl who got me my coffee was so excited that a waiguoren came in that she was literally dancing to the music behind the counter, but still too shy to say anything in English or Chinese, and more Chinese concrete highrises... OK, so I did remember some things!
The funny thing in the Beijing airport, after arriving there at ten pm or so, was the guy trying to sell me a hotel room. I asked about a place listed in my guidebook that sounded nice, and he said "bu hao" (not good) I asked why, but he couldn't come up with anything better than that. I asked if his hotel had dorm rooms, and he told me, with a perfectly straight face, apparently expecting me to believe him, that dorm rooms were really quite dangerous and that I should avoid them. Frankly, breathing the air in China (outside of Tibet and Xinjiang) is more dangerous than any dorm room I've ever been in, and I had to laugh at him. Then he gave up on selling me anything and attached himself to some other hapless tourist...
First I went to the embassy to get my Vietnam visa process underway, then I bought a train ticket to Vietnam (which took the rest of the day) and tried to buy a ticket to Shanghai at the same office (which involved waiting three hours while somebody's brother sat in traffic inching toward the west train station with a ticket that turned out to be for the wrong day...) And went to the other train station to the "foreigner ticket office" which was packed with chinese (hmmm) where I bought a soft sleeper ticket because I was too tired to think about spending the next day searching for creative ways to get a hard sleeper ticket.
Instead, I spent the next day searching for creative ways to get money - the 1st ATM was broken, the 2nd ATM was not happy with my card, the 3rd ATM seemed happy enough but said I should contact my bank, the whole idea of getting a credit card cash advance while my passport was not physically on me, but in an embassy, (making me a non-person), made everybody laugh. Actually, the bank manager said I could come back next week when some other office was open and fill out a form to do it. So after the taxi back from the bank, and paying for the hotel until 'next week' I had literally fifty quai in my pocket ($6.20?) and two days to explore Beijing...
The next day, (after eating raisins from Turpan, a leftover banana that was a parting gift from my friend in Kashgar, and a seven quai bowl of chicken and cucumbers which was very good,) the ATM worked. The same one I tried first. I don't know why. And there are no internet cafe's in Beijing. They closed them because last summer there was a fire in one of them and twenty some young people were killed. I'm waiting for someone to set fire to the PSB office to see if they close all of those down too...
Anyway, in Beijing I went to a teahouse/bookstore place to drink tea (this place was really cool) and listen to Chinese classical music - an erhu, a pipa and a 'flute' (I don't remember what they call those in Chinese) player. That was fun. It was also slightly unnerving because there were only a couple Chinese people there, too many foreigners! But still fun, and I was among the only waiguoren who knew how to say anything other than "xiexie" (that is Thank You - with a Louisiana accent).
And I went to the Great Wall (that was my last 200 quai) which involved about five hours of preliminary exercises like a Jade factory and Ming tombs and a Chinese traditional medicine
"yourliverhastoomuchheat-youneedtobuysomeherbs-heretheseareonlythreehundredquai-yesyoucanpayinAmericandollars-thisisthechinesesecrettolongevity-thankyouverymuch-ohyoudon'twantthem?!?!" kind of place.
Lunch was funny, I was at the table with all the other foreigners on the tour (there was some people from Beijing and some Taiwan Chinese), an American, French, and an Egyptian couple - none of whom could really eat anything with chopsticks. It has been a long time since I met a foreigner so foreign that they couldn't eat with chopsticks! We did eventually get to the Great Wall, which was a good place to exercise the lungs. I had a good time climbing for awhile, left most of the other people behind so I had a bit of solitude, and it was really cold so there was not all that many people there.
The next day, after getting my visa, I sat in Starbucks in a happy daze - mostly from my visa and the sudden realization of how soon I am going to be in Vietnam (I have not yet lost my love of going new places, just as long as I don't have to first push through a line for an hour to buy a ticket, and then sit on a hard seat or sleeper bus to get there) and also from the general warmth, the coffee, and the completely unreal atmosphere that places like Starbuck's have in Beijing. Then I walked around Tiananmen Square, and through the Forbidden City, had fun practicing my Chinese with more people who never see foreigners talking Chinese.
The train back to Shanghai was, well, soft sleepers are not worth the money. They have TV, and actual compartments with doors, and only four beds instead of six, but soft sleeper people are snobby... The funny thing is that they aren't really any softer than hard sleeper, just a little wider. And it is good to be back in Shanghai, kind of funny to be done travelling, back 'home' but not home...
Saturday, January 25, 2003
and looking down...
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Qini Bagh Report
I am in Kashgar, staying in the Qini Bagh Hotel, which was, in days of yore, the British consulate. The primary purpose of the British consulate, I am told, was to spy on the Russian consulate down the street, and vice versa. I guess there was not much else to do in Kashgar! Anyway, at the moment, days of yore are over and the place offers some overpriced hotel rooms as well as really nice 'dorm' rooms for 40 quai - that would be a round 5 dollars a night.
On the train here from Turpan, I met a group of four Uighur students who study in Urumqi, coming back to Kashgar for the New Year’s break. They spoke English pretty well (and Chinese better than the two Hunanese PLA guys who were my hard-sleeper bunk-mates) and were very friendly, and had a guitar with them on the train... Well, that was a good precursor to this place.
After I checked into my hotel, cleaned up and was ready to go out exploring the town, I meet someone right outside my room door who, after a bit of conversation, offers to take me down the street to a Uighur restaurant for lunch, and proceeds to become essentially my tour guide for the last three days. Her English was better than my Chinese, but I still tried to use my language, as well as the three words of Uighur I've learned (I don't know how to spell them though!)
Saturday I walked around, past the Id Kah mosque, allegedly the second largest mosque ever, although I think that is an exaggeration, maybe the 2nd largest in China... And to People's Square, where you find the second largest (and this one I believe) statue of the great helmsman himself - makes me wonder if Chairman Mao ever even came way out here.
Sunday I went to the 'famous' Sunday Market, which was really cool. Big, crowded, I think about a five block radius was totally packed with people, bikes, donkey carts (yes they use those a lot here), and random sellers of dried lizards, sheep heads, and everything else under the sun (mostly not that startling, but always amusing). The place was, well, really photogenic, hopefully my pictures will come out. They sell every kind of dried fruit imaginable, and hats - the Russian kind with ear flaps (everybody wears them around here) along with lots of other varieties, mostly with fleece (real sheep fur) on the inside and mink or something on the outside, and various disappearing species furs hanging all over the place. One enterprising salesman jumped out from his booth, snatched off my nice warm cotton/thinsulate hat and plopped some hairy white/red thing on my head. I have to say that I have never looked so white - frighteningly Siberian (!) - in my life as when I looked in the mirror then, a big furry fox hat with ear flaps and my (currently rather straggly) goatee, with a few stray sheep hairs sticking out here and there! The cloth section of the place was amazing - a lot of silk and so many brilliant colors, it just made you kind of dizzy that so many rich looking things could be sold in a place that on the surface strikes one as so dilapidated and dusty. Plus they had some red cloth up to block the sun, which made all the colors super vibrant. I kind of breezed through the carpet section pretty quickly, having not enough money to buy anything there and not enough umph to carry anything like that anywhere. Also Sunday I went into the Id Kah Mosque, and had kind of a tour which was really cool and interesting, again the guide, who spoke only Uighur and Chinese, made the experience what it was with boundless friendliness that over-rode my bad Chinese.
Saturday night, my friend's friend invited me to her house for dinner, which was incredible. This is back about forty seven little alleys just big enough for a motorcycle, and we go into this room off of a little courtyard that looks like it is straight out of Lawrence of Arabia or something (me not actually having read that, I have to rely on, well, Hollywood or something to fill in the details) with silk hanging on the walls, the floor is of course carpeted (those things were amazing), a big cabinet on one side with ornate woodcarving and inlaid stuff all over it, a very cozy small stove, and piles of food in the middle to sit around and eat. Unfortunately, that experience was kind of cut off in the bud when we had to leave soon after getting there for reasons which I am still kind of unsure about, but in any case I got to see the inside of a Muslim Uighur house, which I am sure that not many travelers have, and it was amazing. I'm not sure how to better describe it, but it deserves a lot more than I can give it here.
Today I went to yet another museum that had to be opened just for me, and the ticket guy followed me around very scrupulously, I guess to make sure that I didn't steal any of the cultural relics (they were mostly all broken anyway) or take any pictures. The only thing that deserved a picture was the three pots they had that were not broken, and were just sitting on the floor, I would say about 800 gallon capacity or so! I wanted to jump inside one and stick my head out and have a picture of that, but, well, since I couldn't very well fit one in my daypack, and the "no photo" sign was right in front of them, well, it didn't work out! And I went to a couple tombs of famous guys, and another mosque - fun places to visit with my friend more for the sake of using (up) my Chinese and her English than for the places themselves.
Kashgar will be well-remembered as a truly interesting travel spot, as well as the place of numerous incredibly friendly people that I have met here. Ironically, my severely limited Chinese is more impressive here, where most people know Chinese as a second language, than it is in China. The rest of China, I mean. Also, English students here appear to learn English way faster than most Chinese students do, I will not ponder the reasons for that, but it seems to be true (based on my, what, three days here...).
Tomorrow I am on the train to Urumuqi, and still don't have a ticket the rest of the way to Beijing, which I expect to prove a really big problem in Urumuqi, since it is New Year’s here, when everybody and their brother (that would be about 1.4 billion people) are trying to get on trains to go places..., but there is nothing I can do about it now, so I'll try to get some sleep instead!
On the train here from Turpan, I met a group of four Uighur students who study in Urumqi, coming back to Kashgar for the New Year’s break. They spoke English pretty well (and Chinese better than the two Hunanese PLA guys who were my hard-sleeper bunk-mates) and were very friendly, and had a guitar with them on the train... Well, that was a good precursor to this place.
After I checked into my hotel, cleaned up and was ready to go out exploring the town, I meet someone right outside my room door who, after a bit of conversation, offers to take me down the street to a Uighur restaurant for lunch, and proceeds to become essentially my tour guide for the last three days. Her English was better than my Chinese, but I still tried to use my language, as well as the three words of Uighur I've learned (I don't know how to spell them though!)
Saturday I walked around, past the Id Kah mosque, allegedly the second largest mosque ever, although I think that is an exaggeration, maybe the 2nd largest in China... And to People's Square, where you find the second largest (and this one I believe) statue of the great helmsman himself - makes me wonder if Chairman Mao ever even came way out here.
Sunday I went to the 'famous' Sunday Market, which was really cool. Big, crowded, I think about a five block radius was totally packed with people, bikes, donkey carts (yes they use those a lot here), and random sellers of dried lizards, sheep heads, and everything else under the sun (mostly not that startling, but always amusing). The place was, well, really photogenic, hopefully my pictures will come out. They sell every kind of dried fruit imaginable, and hats - the Russian kind with ear flaps (everybody wears them around here) along with lots of other varieties, mostly with fleece (real sheep fur) on the inside and mink or something on the outside, and various disappearing species furs hanging all over the place. One enterprising salesman jumped out from his booth, snatched off my nice warm cotton/thinsulate hat and plopped some hairy white/red thing on my head. I have to say that I have never looked so white - frighteningly Siberian (!) - in my life as when I looked in the mirror then, a big furry fox hat with ear flaps and my (currently rather straggly) goatee, with a few stray sheep hairs sticking out here and there! The cloth section of the place was amazing - a lot of silk and so many brilliant colors, it just made you kind of dizzy that so many rich looking things could be sold in a place that on the surface strikes one as so dilapidated and dusty. Plus they had some red cloth up to block the sun, which made all the colors super vibrant. I kind of breezed through the carpet section pretty quickly, having not enough money to buy anything there and not enough umph to carry anything like that anywhere. Also Sunday I went into the Id Kah Mosque, and had kind of a tour which was really cool and interesting, again the guide, who spoke only Uighur and Chinese, made the experience what it was with boundless friendliness that over-rode my bad Chinese.
Saturday night, my friend's friend invited me to her house for dinner, which was incredible. This is back about forty seven little alleys just big enough for a motorcycle, and we go into this room off of a little courtyard that looks like it is straight out of Lawrence of Arabia or something (me not actually having read that, I have to rely on, well, Hollywood or something to fill in the details) with silk hanging on the walls, the floor is of course carpeted (those things were amazing), a big cabinet on one side with ornate woodcarving and inlaid stuff all over it, a very cozy small stove, and piles of food in the middle to sit around and eat. Unfortunately, that experience was kind of cut off in the bud when we had to leave soon after getting there for reasons which I am still kind of unsure about, but in any case I got to see the inside of a Muslim Uighur house, which I am sure that not many travelers have, and it was amazing. I'm not sure how to better describe it, but it deserves a lot more than I can give it here.
Today I went to yet another museum that had to be opened just for me, and the ticket guy followed me around very scrupulously, I guess to make sure that I didn't steal any of the cultural relics (they were mostly all broken anyway) or take any pictures. The only thing that deserved a picture was the three pots they had that were not broken, and were just sitting on the floor, I would say about 800 gallon capacity or so! I wanted to jump inside one and stick my head out and have a picture of that, but, well, since I couldn't very well fit one in my daypack, and the "no photo" sign was right in front of them, well, it didn't work out! And I went to a couple tombs of famous guys, and another mosque - fun places to visit with my friend more for the sake of using (up) my Chinese and her English than for the places themselves.
Kashgar will be well-remembered as a truly interesting travel spot, as well as the place of numerous incredibly friendly people that I have met here. Ironically, my severely limited Chinese is more impressive here, where most people know Chinese as a second language, than it is in China. The rest of China, I mean. Also, English students here appear to learn English way faster than most Chinese students do, I will not ponder the reasons for that, but it seems to be true (based on my, what, three days here...).
Tomorrow I am on the train to Urumuqi, and still don't have a ticket the rest of the way to Beijing, which I expect to prove a really big problem in Urumuqi, since it is New Year’s here, when everybody and their brother (that would be about 1.4 billion people) are trying to get on trains to go places..., but there is nothing I can do about it now, so I'll try to get some sleep instead!
Monday, January 20, 2003
Xinjiang - Kashgar
Kashgar has some truly friendly people
A famous and vibrant bazaar
A famous and vibrant bazaar
And a colossal statue of Mao Zi Dong
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Negative Altitude… ahhh
For those of you still wondering, the last leg of my trip to Turpan was quite nice, uneventful in plain words, and truly luxurious comparatively speaking. I got a meal yesterday on my really nice train here to Turpan. I asked the guy for rice, and egg & tomato stuff (just pointed to it actually) but, him being tired, I guess, he refused to speak Chinese to me. I say 'Wo yao yi wan mi fan hai you yi wan nage ji dan', (I want some rice and some of this chicken). He points at some greasy chicken parts and says 'cockadoodledoo' in Chinese and starts acting like a chicken in case I couldn't figure out what a chicken leg looked like, then gives me a plate with a scoop of everything on it, most of which I did not want and did not eat. Anyway, that was the nice train, why don't I not ruin it for myself? I saw a lot of yaks from that bus (before my eyes got full of smoke) and a lot of sheep and donkeys from yesterday’s train.
There was a Chinese lady on that bus from Lhasa that was sleeping on her 'bed' with some kind of steer or yak skull (one of those with big horns, like the kind they put on pick-up truck hoods in Texas) wrapped up in newspaper. Yes, I think Tibet is the Texas of China, a lot of Tibetans wore cowboy hats, which were actually a lot more useful there than I think they are in Texas.
Turpan has been good. Let me preface this with the following comment - in Lanzhou I was in a 'dorm room' with three beds, but there was only me. On the train here I was in a hard sleeper with six beds to a compartment, but there was only me. Here, I am in a huge, sort of Mediterranean style (if you can picture that in China) hotel, my room has five beds, but there is only me. In fact, last night I asked the friendly lady who unlocks my door for me, and she confirmed my suspicions that there was indeed no on else on the third floor! This is the dorm floor, you have to go outside and walk like a block (yes, literally) to the public showers, (open 3-9 pm, (that is Beijing time - which by the sun is two or three hours ahead here, but we are in China and Beijing IS the sun...), except when they aren't, when I had to track down some staff to ask them to unlock the door the other day, and the lady sits there on a barbershop chair knitting, waiting for me to get done in the shower so she can go back inside to hotel and knit there), I guess no one else wanted to put up with that...
Turpan is cold. My guidebook says 'zui ri de difang zai Zhongguo' but in my limited experience Turpan is not the hottest, but rather the coldest place in China! Summertime here is hot, (supposedly 121 F is the record!) Turpan is in the second lowest depression on earth, (only above the Dead Sea) the lowest spot is 154 meters below sea level - no wonder it took me so long to get here from Lhasa, lets see, from that one pass I dropped 5,330 meters, hmm. And they grow grapes here, on trellises hanging over the tourist streets, no cars allowed, and I think it would be really neat in the summer. Not bad now either, but there are no grapes, no music, no dancing in the streets...
I went to two ancient city ruins, some grave/mummy sites, a mosque with a big minaret that I wasn't allowed to climb, and some other places. Saw a Karez museum - these are the underground tunnels that they dig from the mountains (where there is water) to here (where there is no water) in order to water the grapes, and drink, and to live in general, pretty interesting. They do this also in Afghanistan, Iran, etc. And the old cities were really fascinating - unlike how I would picture such a thing being presented in America, these things are just there - you just buy a ticket then you can go walk around and climb on whatever you want. Felt sort of funny, I touch something and my gloves get dirty and I feel guilty for destroying relics... They get like no rain here at all, which is I guess the only way that these sorts of things have lasted for so long. They are huge, mostly just walls left, with doorways here and there, and wells that you don't want to fall into. Both places had leftovers of Buddhist Temples (these were from 3rd Century BC, and 5-7th Century AD - before Islam came here along the Silk Road).
In the one place you could rent a 'donkey taxi' (the preferred form of tourist transportation in this place) and go racing along to the monastery leftovers - allegedly six kilometers away. I told them I wanted to walk (there was no one else there and there was about ten donkey cart guys with nothing to do) so I walked (it wasn't anywhere near six kilometers) and had a nice time exploring in the silence, then heard some shouting and somebody came racing out the road in a cart to convince me to have a ride back, which he gave me for free after realizing that I really would just walk right beside his cart the whole way back unless he told me to ride for free... That was funny.
My guide/driver for two days of excursions was called Ilham - another 28 yr old guy who I had a lot of fun talking to. His Chinese was definitely better than mine, but still limited to a second language. Most people here speak Uighur, and depending on what kind of school they went to, also learn Chinese and English a bit. Uighur is closely related to Turkish. This ethnic tie is why the occasionally violent separatist group (in Xinjiang in general, probably not Turpan) is called the "East Turkestan Movement".
Today I went to a museum. I had to search out the lady selling tickets. Then she takes a flashlight and leads me into this big dark room and runs off to find a light switch, which when she does find it and turn it on, I see that I am standing underneath a dinosaur. So the museum had dinosaurs, mummies, and various cultural relics. I was the only person there. My tour was also much more interesting (and more expensive) because I was driven around in a van, but there was just me and the driver.
If anybody gets the impression that there are no other tourists in Turpan, you're right. I did see one group of apparently American travelers at the bus station the other day, and one old Japanese guy with a personal translator whom we ran into about three times, but that was it. The fancy hotel, with the decent restaurant (not the one I am staying at, the one I eat at!) has a post office, but it is closed; and a CITS (travel agency) office, but it is closed; three quarters of the stuff on the menu they don't have; but the staff is nice - I learned how to say squid in Chinese.
So that was Turpan, and I am leaving this afternoon for Kashgar - assuming that I can buy a ticket. In a strange bid to draw tourists, the Turpan Train Station is actually in Daheyan - a very bumpy 60 some kilometers away from actual Turpan. So anyway, assuming that the train to Kashar is as empty as the train here was, buying a ticket should not be a problem!
I just had dinner in a coffee shop - the Oasis Hotel, ate some kind of ham and egg sandwich that was designated as "Muslim" - I don't know if that meant the chicken, or the pig, or whoever ate it, or what but there it was: Ham (Muslim) and egg Sandwich...
For those of you in places with less character than this - enjoy your flush toilets. I long ago decided that I could live with squatty potties if I had to, but that was in a warm place. Somehow that thirty or thirty five degrees (C) makes a big difference!
There was a Chinese lady on that bus from Lhasa that was sleeping on her 'bed' with some kind of steer or yak skull (one of those with big horns, like the kind they put on pick-up truck hoods in Texas) wrapped up in newspaper. Yes, I think Tibet is the Texas of China, a lot of Tibetans wore cowboy hats, which were actually a lot more useful there than I think they are in Texas.
Turpan has been good. Let me preface this with the following comment - in Lanzhou I was in a 'dorm room' with three beds, but there was only me. On the train here I was in a hard sleeper with six beds to a compartment, but there was only me. Here, I am in a huge, sort of Mediterranean style (if you can picture that in China) hotel, my room has five beds, but there is only me. In fact, last night I asked the friendly lady who unlocks my door for me, and she confirmed my suspicions that there was indeed no on else on the third floor! This is the dorm floor, you have to go outside and walk like a block (yes, literally) to the public showers, (open 3-9 pm, (that is Beijing time - which by the sun is two or three hours ahead here, but we are in China and Beijing IS the sun...), except when they aren't, when I had to track down some staff to ask them to unlock the door the other day, and the lady sits there on a barbershop chair knitting, waiting for me to get done in the shower so she can go back inside to hotel and knit there), I guess no one else wanted to put up with that...
Turpan is cold. My guidebook says 'zui ri de difang zai Zhongguo' but in my limited experience Turpan is not the hottest, but rather the coldest place in China! Summertime here is hot, (supposedly 121 F is the record!) Turpan is in the second lowest depression on earth, (only above the Dead Sea) the lowest spot is 154 meters below sea level - no wonder it took me so long to get here from Lhasa, lets see, from that one pass I dropped 5,330 meters, hmm. And they grow grapes here, on trellises hanging over the tourist streets, no cars allowed, and I think it would be really neat in the summer. Not bad now either, but there are no grapes, no music, no dancing in the streets...
I went to two ancient city ruins, some grave/mummy sites, a mosque with a big minaret that I wasn't allowed to climb, and some other places. Saw a Karez museum - these are the underground tunnels that they dig from the mountains (where there is water) to here (where there is no water) in order to water the grapes, and drink, and to live in general, pretty interesting. They do this also in Afghanistan, Iran, etc. And the old cities were really fascinating - unlike how I would picture such a thing being presented in America, these things are just there - you just buy a ticket then you can go walk around and climb on whatever you want. Felt sort of funny, I touch something and my gloves get dirty and I feel guilty for destroying relics... They get like no rain here at all, which is I guess the only way that these sorts of things have lasted for so long. They are huge, mostly just walls left, with doorways here and there, and wells that you don't want to fall into. Both places had leftovers of Buddhist Temples (these were from 3rd Century BC, and 5-7th Century AD - before Islam came here along the Silk Road).
In the one place you could rent a 'donkey taxi' (the preferred form of tourist transportation in this place) and go racing along to the monastery leftovers - allegedly six kilometers away. I told them I wanted to walk (there was no one else there and there was about ten donkey cart guys with nothing to do) so I walked (it wasn't anywhere near six kilometers) and had a nice time exploring in the silence, then heard some shouting and somebody came racing out the road in a cart to convince me to have a ride back, which he gave me for free after realizing that I really would just walk right beside his cart the whole way back unless he told me to ride for free... That was funny.
My guide/driver for two days of excursions was called Ilham - another 28 yr old guy who I had a lot of fun talking to. His Chinese was definitely better than mine, but still limited to a second language. Most people here speak Uighur, and depending on what kind of school they went to, also learn Chinese and English a bit. Uighur is closely related to Turkish. This ethnic tie is why the occasionally violent separatist group (in Xinjiang in general, probably not Turpan) is called the "East Turkestan Movement".
Today I went to a museum. I had to search out the lady selling tickets. Then she takes a flashlight and leads me into this big dark room and runs off to find a light switch, which when she does find it and turn it on, I see that I am standing underneath a dinosaur. So the museum had dinosaurs, mummies, and various cultural relics. I was the only person there. My tour was also much more interesting (and more expensive) because I was driven around in a van, but there was just me and the driver.
If anybody gets the impression that there are no other tourists in Turpan, you're right. I did see one group of apparently American travelers at the bus station the other day, and one old Japanese guy with a personal translator whom we ran into about three times, but that was it. The fancy hotel, with the decent restaurant (not the one I am staying at, the one I eat at!) has a post office, but it is closed; and a CITS (travel agency) office, but it is closed; three quarters of the stuff on the menu they don't have; but the staff is nice - I learned how to say squid in Chinese.
So that was Turpan, and I am leaving this afternoon for Kashgar - assuming that I can buy a ticket. In a strange bid to draw tourists, the Turpan Train Station is actually in Daheyan - a very bumpy 60 some kilometers away from actual Turpan. So anyway, assuming that the train to Kashar is as empty as the train here was, buying a ticket should not be a problem!
I just had dinner in a coffee shop - the Oasis Hotel, ate some kind of ham and egg sandwich that was designated as "Muslim" - I don't know if that meant the chicken, or the pig, or whoever ate it, or what but there it was: Ham (Muslim) and egg Sandwich...
For those of you in places with less character than this - enjoy your flush toilets. I long ago decided that I could live with squatty potties if I had to, but that was in a warm place. Somehow that thirty or thirty five degrees (C) makes a big difference!
Thursday, January 16, 2003
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