tiger leaping gorge slip, view from my car window, down down down..
black dragon pool spring, lijiang
this little piggy went to market, chinese style pig on spit
moon rock, jangshou
lijiang old town
sunrice (haha), over the rice terraces
dodgy ladder, tiger leaping gorge
crystal clear mountain stream/pool, on mountain, near dali
leona with a new friend, lijianghello!
got a couple of hours to spare, thought id write again, im going to finish off the last week of China..maybe only 6000 words this time..
Well the wait in Kunming to go up to Lijiang was rather uneventful, Kunming not really having much to offer, apart from a couple of things, the 'great' restaurant we went to and the trip itself, both were decidedly interesting. Having had a bit of a meat 'overload' we thought itd be a good idea to get something vegetarian, something fresh and tasty at a place recommended in the guide book. The restaurant made 'vegetarian' food, but vegetarian dressed up as meat dishes, literally. Im not sure what the actual food was made of, but it seemed to consist of either dried bread and tofu or something, then shaped, moulded and designed to look like a duck, or turtle, or whatever 'meat' thing you had ordered, and then artificially flavoured to resemble the fitting taste.Very strange, I guess vegetarian food is still in it's first tentative steps in china..The bus trip was another 'highlight'. It was a sleeper bus, and although id been preparing myself for it, it was much worse. Maybe in my old age im getting more precious about personal space and comfort and all that, but the lovely foot aroma, human closeness and the bumpy ride, didnt make for an exactly restful ride. In sure the driver didnt try to find evey pothole on the road, but it seemed every 100 metres, everyone at the back (where we were) would fly literally in to the air and crash back down with a groan. I guess one guy decided he'd had enough, as he then turned on his laptop at 4 in the morning and start to watch a kung-fu movie at full bore. The 'swap' and 'swish' and 'chiing' from the sword fights were especially relaxing. I think we were both of the same opinion the next morning at 6 when we arrived, that night buses were not to be messed with, and further-more, we have no valium.
Lijiang and the surrounding area is amazing. I believe it lies something like 1500- 2000 metres above sea level, in what I would call the foothills of the Himalaya's. From here for instance is the place you can (try) and get up to Tibet by road, and also to Shangri-La, also in China, perhaps 3500 metres high. Although of course the more major mountains are too far away to be seen from here, but there are a couple of big ones, most notably 'Snow Dragon Mountain', which provides an amazing backdrop to the old-town of Lijiang, another major stopping point along the ancient silk and spice route through to India. Lijiang, mostly rebuilt and repared for tourists and funded by the government, in the old style of times gone by, and has cobbled streets, old bridges and waterchannels running through the entire city, so you can always hear the rushing and gushing of water, which makes of course the town incredibly photogenic, which in turn makes the town rather popular! I read somewhere, that 4 million tourists come per year to the city( with a population of 50,000 perhaps), and although it wasnt high season while were we there, if you timed when you walked around wrong, it was very busy. (That was OK, id just pop into the nearest dried Yak-meat store and hang out for a bit- really good and spicy!). The first day we spent just meandering around, and the blue sky, clean air and warm day more than made up for our sleepless night. We visited a really beautiful park, a 'mirror' lake, where an ancient marble bridge and a coulple of temples/pagodas are reflected in the crystal clear spring water, all with the backdrop of this impressive craggy mountain. This is of course a 'must-do' photo for all tourists, especially the Chinese ones, and later, the hordes made for colourful scenes, and amusing photo opportunities. We were there relatively early (another benefit of our early arrival, I guess night buses aren't so bad..) so were able to take photos in relative peace, before climbing the nearby 'Elephant Hill' to get a better view of the city.
The next day we organised a day-trip to Tiger-Leaping Gorge, an amazing trekking gorge on route towards Tibet, so another gorge where one side plunged 3000 or so metres into the 'Golden River' below, before sky-rocketing out on the other. The trip to get there was pretty eventful, driving over some very dodgy, narrow and bending road to get to our starting point, and just before crossing a part of the road partially repaired from a massive slip, the car in front abruptly stopped, as loads of rather large rocks came hurtling down in front of us, and away into the river, about 600 metres below. I was on the edge of my seat, and had the vertical drop 1 foot away from me. No problem, it seems that it happens often enough here, and we just waited, until someone gave our driver the thumbs up, and we continued on. The gorge was unbelivable, and again a sweltering day made going down ok, but going back up was a little sweaty. We didnt start at the top of the mountain, although you can (we did see quite a few exhausted and red faced tourists that had), but started about, 500 metres above the river, and made our way slowly down into the gorge, and along the river, through and under the cliff walls, carved out by the people living in the area. All very exciting of course, especially with the thought, shit, we have to go back up..In the end it wasn't such a drama going up, just sweaty, but it did involve a couple of practically vertical, and especially rickety, home-made stairs, which were also a lot of fun, if you didn't look down into the violently churning river below.
The next day we took a 5hr bus ride (no sleeping thank god) to a little township called Dali. Lijiang and Dali are both (relatively) know as sort of the Chinese equivalent of India's Goa, or Nepal, or another kind of Tibet and the feeling there is laid back, chilled out and pretty much still has the kind of hanging about Hippie vibe. Quite a few older westerners seemed to be living there, having moved into the area in the late 70's, early 80's and there are a quite a few western run bakeries (of which we found a sensational German bakery for breakfast,they also had cheese!) cafes and guesthouses.
Dali's surroundings are also great, squidged between a lake (the 7th largest freshwater lake in China, now so polluted that eating fish from there is not recommended, how they managed that I don't know), and another 3000 metre mountain range. The first day of being there, the weather wasnt so great so we hired some bikes and trundled through the surrounding farmland, past 3 large pagodas, one 70 metres high, and over 600 years old, stopping to have lunch in a rice-paddy, much to the amusement of the locals, us pushing and hopping around the ridges of the fields with our bikes, disturbing frogs, it was probably was quite amusing. As the weather was so dull, we decided to treat ourselves to a cheese plate, and wow, the taste was sensational, gouda never tasted so good! The cheese melted in our mouths, accompained by some average white wine (the red wasnt recommended, and was anyway ice cold), and also with toasted homemade walnut and potato bread, it was all rather indulgent..heavenly..that evening, feeling terribly guilty for such extravagance, we punished ourselves and our western tendancies by eating some weird insects, which turned out to be nice and crunchy and quite accetable! a bit like crisps really, maybe its an import idea!
The next day, it was fine again, sunny with a few speckles of clouds, and around 20 degrees, perfect again for a small hike up the nearby mountain. There were cable cars going up to around 2000 metres, and then a really relaxing 12km walk along an incredibly well maintained cobble path, leading along the mountain edge, from one mountain temple to another Austrian, fancy gondola to take us back down..The path led us around amazing rock faces, beautiful water eroded rock streams and waterfalls, with ice cold clear and clean water, babbling down the rock faces. No-one was really around, and the cool air and leisurely stroll was a perfect way to spend half a day in relative peace away from the hustle and bustle of the small township underneath. There were also great views of the lake and its islands, although a little hazy, and gave us a good view of how, a country with such a large population, most of the land is either used for something, or lived on, a land bursting at the seams. I think the only unihabited places in this country are where its bascially to steep and hard to carve a niche out of, and even then, as we were to find out isnt always a problem.
The reason being, we were travelling on from Dali, via Kunming again, to the Yuanyang Rice Terraces, another area of slope defying argriculture, but on a massive scale. We stayed at an impossibly cheap hotel, 4 euros a night, at the 'Photographers Hotel', the name coming from the fact that the hyperactive owner was a photographer. As we had a 24 hour journey behind us, the evening was just for relaxing, a cold beer, overlooking a partial view of some of the terraces from his hotel. As the owner, who spoke very good English was a photographer, he knew all the 'spots', for sunrise, day and sunset viewing, so we arranged for him to take us and a couple of others, to his 'secret' spots. Although the 5 in the morning rise didnt seem at the time worth it, he certainly didnt let us down. The photo-guy, hopping from one foot to the other, was unable to contain his excitement, at the imminent sunrise that was about to unveil itself- it seemed he was awaiting something special. It was.
It all happened within about 10 mins, first yellow, to a golden to speckled red, to blazing full on red colours, all the while the dynamic colours reflecting in the rice terraces, which were at this time of the year filled to the brim with water, their mirrorred, glistening surfaces reflecting the sky, all the while our guy running back in forth, rubbing his hands with glee, emitting small squeaks of excitement. He explained, this sort of scenery and sunrise, one doesnt see so often, maybe 4-5 times a year, and because we were only staying there one full day, we were very,very, very lucky. I took his word for it, as i guessed he'd seen a few days up in the hills.
It was spellbounding, the clouds started to roll in from the valley, hugging the small townships and villages perched on the slopes, the day beginning to start, water-buffalos and their owners trudging down to work on ploughing the fields for the new crop, pigs foraging for scraps, local kids on the way to school, local women in traditional attire about, starting their daily chores. Even they all paused, watching the unfolding drama, and admired the valley view. It was a perfect setting, and worth the chilly morning wake-up. From there the day consisted of exploring the area's vast array of terraces, 12000 square kms of them, all with their differences, their angles, steps and colour configurations, until at the end of the day we were practically terraced out. It was such a dramatic difference to the other terraces near Guilin, where the rice was gone, and there was no water about. Here all the terraces were flooded, for the new crop, and people were busily repairing the edges of the ponds, ducks and other birds floating about, and the men with their buffalos, ploughing away for the coming planting. This, combined with the clean fresh air, and laid back people, made the end of our China trip so rewarding. Only in coming back to our 4euro room, and our friends on the mouldy, damp walls and the rock hard bed, did we think, time to move on to warmer pastures..
This involved however, another 5 hr bus ride, to the chinese border town of Hekou and the vietnamese border town of Lao Cai. Normally i'm all for the 'scenic' route, but this invloved some fun on some bumpy parts, hours on end of swerving, braking honking and general rally driving, swinging around blind corners, albeit through amazing river-side, tropical scenery, banana and some sort of tree-sap plantations. The trip was all the more tiring and nervy as the border crossing was going to be closing a 5, and as the trip seemed to go on and on, taking much longer than we thought, we started to sweat, a little more from stress, rather than just heat. As it was our last day on our visas, and overstaying leads to who-knows-what pleasantries with chinese officialdom, not to mention a hefty fine, we thought it would be better if we got there soon, so when the driver, didnt take the fabulous new, straight and very flash looking motorway, we were a little despirited. Of course, we ploughed onwards, underneath the mightly motorway supports, dodging in and out of the massive concrete pillars, all the while I looked longingly at the motorway, praying that he'd get on maybe at the next bit. He didnt. But we arrived in time, all was well, and later we realised, that weirdly, vietnam time is an hour behind china. So stress for nothing, just a rather nervy bag search by the chinese immigration for 'blasphemous' or 'anti-china' literature (which id luckily hidden deep in my bag, so all was well..)
We were now in Vietnam..
China, was on the whole amazing, the people really friendly, open and helpful, and the whole experience suprised us both. How easy it was to travel around, although without chinese language skills, and the people often willing to try and understand, wanting to help get us what we wanted or were we wanted to go. And of course alot spoke enough broken english to get by. Tourists as well seem to be treated with a kind of wary respect, we were never hassled, never felt in danger, our naiviety of the countries systems or costs etc never seemed to be abused, which can sometimes be the case. The whole infrastructure from city to city for a huge and bulging land was on the whole amazing, generally clean and comfortable (if on train of course), just sometimes a little stinky, (if you happened to be near the toilets), and amazingly cheap. The amount of people is flabergasting, overpowering, and queing non-existant of course, always everyman for himself attitude, the streets teeming with action, the boulevards in most cities 4 or so lanes wide (on both sides), cars obeying only rules know to themselves. I think the (to an extent) opening politically, and commerically of the country in the past 15-20 years, combined with the Olympics and general modernisation and overall well-being has had a lasting effect on the people themsleves, and perhaps their attitude to travelers like ourselves and the outside world.
Ok thats enough for now, got a headache, hope everyone else doesnt..
more from and about vietnam in a later edition!!
love to all
joe and leona
got a couple of hours to spare, thought id write again, im going to finish off the last week of China..maybe only 6000 words this time..
Well the wait in Kunming to go up to Lijiang was rather uneventful, Kunming not really having much to offer, apart from a couple of things, the 'great' restaurant we went to and the trip itself, both were decidedly interesting. Having had a bit of a meat 'overload' we thought itd be a good idea to get something vegetarian, something fresh and tasty at a place recommended in the guide book. The restaurant made 'vegetarian' food, but vegetarian dressed up as meat dishes, literally. Im not sure what the actual food was made of, but it seemed to consist of either dried bread and tofu or something, then shaped, moulded and designed to look like a duck, or turtle, or whatever 'meat' thing you had ordered, and then artificially flavoured to resemble the fitting taste.Very strange, I guess vegetarian food is still in it's first tentative steps in china..The bus trip was another 'highlight'. It was a sleeper bus, and although id been preparing myself for it, it was much worse. Maybe in my old age im getting more precious about personal space and comfort and all that, but the lovely foot aroma, human closeness and the bumpy ride, didnt make for an exactly restful ride. In sure the driver didnt try to find evey pothole on the road, but it seemed every 100 metres, everyone at the back (where we were) would fly literally in to the air and crash back down with a groan. I guess one guy decided he'd had enough, as he then turned on his laptop at 4 in the morning and start to watch a kung-fu movie at full bore. The 'swap' and 'swish' and 'chiing' from the sword fights were especially relaxing. I think we were both of the same opinion the next morning at 6 when we arrived, that night buses were not to be messed with, and further-more, we have no valium.
Lijiang and the surrounding area is amazing. I believe it lies something like 1500- 2000 metres above sea level, in what I would call the foothills of the Himalaya's. From here for instance is the place you can (try) and get up to Tibet by road, and also to Shangri-La, also in China, perhaps 3500 metres high. Although of course the more major mountains are too far away to be seen from here, but there are a couple of big ones, most notably 'Snow Dragon Mountain', which provides an amazing backdrop to the old-town of Lijiang, another major stopping point along the ancient silk and spice route through to India. Lijiang, mostly rebuilt and repared for tourists and funded by the government, in the old style of times gone by, and has cobbled streets, old bridges and waterchannels running through the entire city, so you can always hear the rushing and gushing of water, which makes of course the town incredibly photogenic, which in turn makes the town rather popular! I read somewhere, that 4 million tourists come per year to the city( with a population of 50,000 perhaps), and although it wasnt high season while were we there, if you timed when you walked around wrong, it was very busy. (That was OK, id just pop into the nearest dried Yak-meat store and hang out for a bit- really good and spicy!). The first day we spent just meandering around, and the blue sky, clean air and warm day more than made up for our sleepless night. We visited a really beautiful park, a 'mirror' lake, where an ancient marble bridge and a coulple of temples/pagodas are reflected in the crystal clear spring water, all with the backdrop of this impressive craggy mountain. This is of course a 'must-do' photo for all tourists, especially the Chinese ones, and later, the hordes made for colourful scenes, and amusing photo opportunities. We were there relatively early (another benefit of our early arrival, I guess night buses aren't so bad..) so were able to take photos in relative peace, before climbing the nearby 'Elephant Hill' to get a better view of the city.
The next day we organised a day-trip to Tiger-Leaping Gorge, an amazing trekking gorge on route towards Tibet, so another gorge where one side plunged 3000 or so metres into the 'Golden River' below, before sky-rocketing out on the other. The trip to get there was pretty eventful, driving over some very dodgy, narrow and bending road to get to our starting point, and just before crossing a part of the road partially repaired from a massive slip, the car in front abruptly stopped, as loads of rather large rocks came hurtling down in front of us, and away into the river, about 600 metres below. I was on the edge of my seat, and had the vertical drop 1 foot away from me. No problem, it seems that it happens often enough here, and we just waited, until someone gave our driver the thumbs up, and we continued on. The gorge was unbelivable, and again a sweltering day made going down ok, but going back up was a little sweaty. We didnt start at the top of the mountain, although you can (we did see quite a few exhausted and red faced tourists that had), but started about, 500 metres above the river, and made our way slowly down into the gorge, and along the river, through and under the cliff walls, carved out by the people living in the area. All very exciting of course, especially with the thought, shit, we have to go back up..In the end it wasn't such a drama going up, just sweaty, but it did involve a couple of practically vertical, and especially rickety, home-made stairs, which were also a lot of fun, if you didn't look down into the violently churning river below.
The next day we took a 5hr bus ride (no sleeping thank god) to a little township called Dali. Lijiang and Dali are both (relatively) know as sort of the Chinese equivalent of India's Goa, or Nepal, or another kind of Tibet and the feeling there is laid back, chilled out and pretty much still has the kind of hanging about Hippie vibe. Quite a few older westerners seemed to be living there, having moved into the area in the late 70's, early 80's and there are a quite a few western run bakeries (of which we found a sensational German bakery for breakfast,they also had cheese!) cafes and guesthouses.
Dali's surroundings are also great, squidged between a lake (the 7th largest freshwater lake in China, now so polluted that eating fish from there is not recommended, how they managed that I don't know), and another 3000 metre mountain range. The first day of being there, the weather wasnt so great so we hired some bikes and trundled through the surrounding farmland, past 3 large pagodas, one 70 metres high, and over 600 years old, stopping to have lunch in a rice-paddy, much to the amusement of the locals, us pushing and hopping around the ridges of the fields with our bikes, disturbing frogs, it was probably was quite amusing. As the weather was so dull, we decided to treat ourselves to a cheese plate, and wow, the taste was sensational, gouda never tasted so good! The cheese melted in our mouths, accompained by some average white wine (the red wasnt recommended, and was anyway ice cold), and also with toasted homemade walnut and potato bread, it was all rather indulgent..heavenly..that evening, feeling terribly guilty for such extravagance, we punished ourselves and our western tendancies by eating some weird insects, which turned out to be nice and crunchy and quite accetable! a bit like crisps really, maybe its an import idea!
The next day, it was fine again, sunny with a few speckles of clouds, and around 20 degrees, perfect again for a small hike up the nearby mountain. There were cable cars going up to around 2000 metres, and then a really relaxing 12km walk along an incredibly well maintained cobble path, leading along the mountain edge, from one mountain temple to another Austrian, fancy gondola to take us back down..The path led us around amazing rock faces, beautiful water eroded rock streams and waterfalls, with ice cold clear and clean water, babbling down the rock faces. No-one was really around, and the cool air and leisurely stroll was a perfect way to spend half a day in relative peace away from the hustle and bustle of the small township underneath. There were also great views of the lake and its islands, although a little hazy, and gave us a good view of how, a country with such a large population, most of the land is either used for something, or lived on, a land bursting at the seams. I think the only unihabited places in this country are where its bascially to steep and hard to carve a niche out of, and even then, as we were to find out isnt always a problem.
The reason being, we were travelling on from Dali, via Kunming again, to the Yuanyang Rice Terraces, another area of slope defying argriculture, but on a massive scale. We stayed at an impossibly cheap hotel, 4 euros a night, at the 'Photographers Hotel', the name coming from the fact that the hyperactive owner was a photographer. As we had a 24 hour journey behind us, the evening was just for relaxing, a cold beer, overlooking a partial view of some of the terraces from his hotel. As the owner, who spoke very good English was a photographer, he knew all the 'spots', for sunrise, day and sunset viewing, so we arranged for him to take us and a couple of others, to his 'secret' spots. Although the 5 in the morning rise didnt seem at the time worth it, he certainly didnt let us down. The photo-guy, hopping from one foot to the other, was unable to contain his excitement, at the imminent sunrise that was about to unveil itself- it seemed he was awaiting something special. It was.
It all happened within about 10 mins, first yellow, to a golden to speckled red, to blazing full on red colours, all the while the dynamic colours reflecting in the rice terraces, which were at this time of the year filled to the brim with water, their mirrorred, glistening surfaces reflecting the sky, all the while our guy running back in forth, rubbing his hands with glee, emitting small squeaks of excitement. He explained, this sort of scenery and sunrise, one doesnt see so often, maybe 4-5 times a year, and because we were only staying there one full day, we were very,very, very lucky. I took his word for it, as i guessed he'd seen a few days up in the hills.
It was spellbounding, the clouds started to roll in from the valley, hugging the small townships and villages perched on the slopes, the day beginning to start, water-buffalos and their owners trudging down to work on ploughing the fields for the new crop, pigs foraging for scraps, local kids on the way to school, local women in traditional attire about, starting their daily chores. Even they all paused, watching the unfolding drama, and admired the valley view. It was a perfect setting, and worth the chilly morning wake-up. From there the day consisted of exploring the area's vast array of terraces, 12000 square kms of them, all with their differences, their angles, steps and colour configurations, until at the end of the day we were practically terraced out. It was such a dramatic difference to the other terraces near Guilin, where the rice was gone, and there was no water about. Here all the terraces were flooded, for the new crop, and people were busily repairing the edges of the ponds, ducks and other birds floating about, and the men with their buffalos, ploughing away for the coming planting. This, combined with the clean fresh air, and laid back people, made the end of our China trip so rewarding. Only in coming back to our 4euro room, and our friends on the mouldy, damp walls and the rock hard bed, did we think, time to move on to warmer pastures..
This involved however, another 5 hr bus ride, to the chinese border town of Hekou and the vietnamese border town of Lao Cai. Normally i'm all for the 'scenic' route, but this invloved some fun on some bumpy parts, hours on end of swerving, braking honking and general rally driving, swinging around blind corners, albeit through amazing river-side, tropical scenery, banana and some sort of tree-sap plantations. The trip was all the more tiring and nervy as the border crossing was going to be closing a 5, and as the trip seemed to go on and on, taking much longer than we thought, we started to sweat, a little more from stress, rather than just heat. As it was our last day on our visas, and overstaying leads to who-knows-what pleasantries with chinese officialdom, not to mention a hefty fine, we thought it would be better if we got there soon, so when the driver, didnt take the fabulous new, straight and very flash looking motorway, we were a little despirited. Of course, we ploughed onwards, underneath the mightly motorway supports, dodging in and out of the massive concrete pillars, all the while I looked longingly at the motorway, praying that he'd get on maybe at the next bit. He didnt. But we arrived in time, all was well, and later we realised, that weirdly, vietnam time is an hour behind china. So stress for nothing, just a rather nervy bag search by the chinese immigration for 'blasphemous' or 'anti-china' literature (which id luckily hidden deep in my bag, so all was well..)
We were now in Vietnam..
China, was on the whole amazing, the people really friendly, open and helpful, and the whole experience suprised us both. How easy it was to travel around, although without chinese language skills, and the people often willing to try and understand, wanting to help get us what we wanted or were we wanted to go. And of course alot spoke enough broken english to get by. Tourists as well seem to be treated with a kind of wary respect, we were never hassled, never felt in danger, our naiviety of the countries systems or costs etc never seemed to be abused, which can sometimes be the case. The whole infrastructure from city to city for a huge and bulging land was on the whole amazing, generally clean and comfortable (if on train of course), just sometimes a little stinky, (if you happened to be near the toilets), and amazingly cheap. The amount of people is flabergasting, overpowering, and queing non-existant of course, always everyman for himself attitude, the streets teeming with action, the boulevards in most cities 4 or so lanes wide (on both sides), cars obeying only rules know to themselves. I think the (to an extent) opening politically, and commerically of the country in the past 15-20 years, combined with the Olympics and general modernisation and overall well-being has had a lasting effect on the people themsleves, and perhaps their attitude to travelers like ourselves and the outside world.
Ok thats enough for now, got a headache, hope everyone else doesnt..
more from and about vietnam in a later edition!!
love to all
joe and leona
sunrise video, rice terraces
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