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For perspective its about 22 hours to Guangzhou by train and to go back to Hangzhou it takes about 16 hours.  Needless to say our fellow passengers gave us a bit of a hard time! So we bought tickets returning to Hangzhou that night and spent a good part of a day enjoying Guangzhou.

Guangzhou Riverside

 Guangzhou really reminds me of New Oreleans. it has some seedy parts and some pretty nice riverfrontage with colonial style housing.

It also has the fameous Market where the Bird Flu first originated- Qingping market. You can still purchase at least 8 varieties of turtle.  Then on to see pretty buildings and parks around the city.  Here it actually smells green. Refreshing after Beijing.

"Outstanding Garden Path" No really it had a sign that said that.

Anyways Hangzhou within walking distace from our hotel was breathtaking.. In the very manicured all the buildings are new and meant to look old kind of way. There were also crowds of people there to share the view with us. This area is known for it’s green tea (Longjin Tea), Silk and beggar chicken. It’s also supposed to be one of the most livable places in china. I would agree with this except for the traffic in the touristed areas. But the city is relatively small (only 6 million) and surrounded by mountains so pretty green.

Tianqin Culture Street - Kelly, Alyona, Mijung, Sueun, Andrew, Bora, Sunyi, Linna, Toby

The next morning we had “typical Tianqin breakfast” which I couldn’t eat but didn’t look to good anyways. It consited of bowls of gravy like stuff, read savory not sweet, with strips of bread. I was happy with my coffee. Then we went to the “old Culture street”  Bora and MiJung bought QiPaos which are traditional chinese dresses. Maybe I’ll find one sometime that fits the shafer hip.

This area seemed filled with LaoWai but still interesting. After we had lunch at a seafood resturant. The hosts never seem to understand no soysauce please, I’m allergic to it. And my chinese friends I think think there is something lost in translation but are willing to oblige and help me order correctly. Anyways everyone was super helpful.

On the Train Again

Then we hurried to the train. Getting to our seats was quite the experience. They sell standing seats when actual seats run out. So there are hords of people to wade through to get to your seats. Each of these peole has a giant bag they are sitting on and not really willing to move, so it kind of becomes a gymnastic feat to make it to your area. And then you have to chase people out of your seat. Which they do only very unwillingly. But we bought our seats so we insisted on them. Several hours were spent playing korean games translated in to Chinese so everyone could play. And Sueun practiced her english by reading “beruit to Jersuleum” to me. I understood more than she did I think.

The plan ws to go from Tianqin to Tai’an where TaiShan (Mt. Tai) is. We wanted to climb Taishan. Our Chinese friends with it decided it would be best to climb at night so we could see the sunrise. Tai Shan is a Unesco Heritage site because its be revered by the chinese for over 3000 years as the foremost of the 5 sacred mountains. Supposedly if you climb it you will live to be 100 years old.

This being a three day weekend, we ended up climbing with about a million other chinese. Literally, if not a million at least a few hundred thousand. It took 5.5 hours. We started at 1130 and arrived a 500 just intime to find a spot perched on rocks (all good spots already occupied) and watch the sky change colors

It’s not like going up mountains in the US. Hiking trails here are all paved with stone. This route up the mountain was paved with 14,000+ granite steps. Toward then end, the thousands of people in front of us started to slow down so it was stop and go for the last hour. Bora my roommate is kinda fragile and I almost thought she was going to faint several times. But everyone was strong willed and made it to the top! We were all dead. We wanted to ride the gondola back down but it was a 2 hour + wait so we walked back down half way and took a bus the rest of the way back to town. We then literally got on a bus and came back to Beijing.

Sorry I’ve been so tardy in posting on this blog. As I’ve told some of you, many chinese computers don’t allow access to wordpress. The chinese government claims that it bans sites based on the  possibility of pornography getting into the country (porn is illegal in china) but in the process alot of websites get banned (including cnn.com). My roommate’s korean computer somehow allows me to access wordpress. I guess it doesn’t have some programs on it that are on the computers in computer labs.

Long story short the last two months in China have been great. Eyeopening, and causing lots of stomache aches but great. Visiting Josh and Sutomi, who have since gotten married, in Taiwan for 10 days before coming to beijing was a great first taste to chinese culture. I arrived in beijing and it was freezing, literally. It stayed like that for about a month. All sightseeing was done huddling in groups and then running to places where we could be inside. The government made it snow once in Feburary, ending their winter long drought. It stayed on the ground for 2 weeks until it all sublimated. Did I mention it’s very dry. Mid-march spring officialy started. It’s only been blowing wind about half as much and while it’s been sunny most days (with some haze) it actually snowed again yesterday.

 

In beijing - Eating and photo taking is the name of the game.

Anyways. My roommate and I get along great. Her name is Bora and she is from Korea. I’ve made good friends with several people from her school and we all kind of pal around. The girl next door, Bora’s best friend, Mi Jung, is a fantastic cook. I’ve almost come to the conclusing that I like korean food over chinese (don’t tell any chinese people). Mi Jung has been teaching me, so when I come back I hope to be proficient. Below is a picture of Sueun. She also like CSI and is a taekwando teacher in Korea.

Yesterday I took a Chinese cooking class. The teacher, Chunyi, is from Canton so her cooking is differrent that beijing style. We made dry-stir fried dishes. Which means you cook things not as quick as stir fried and no sauce but oil and seasonings. Delicious and replicated a chicken version which was pretty satisfying.

 

Hard at work at cooking class and looking like a rabbit.

So I know, Food and weather are pretty important. Thats why I mentioned them first. I’ve been up to other stuff as well. My daily activities include making soy sauce free food. Napping. Studying chinese and occasional korean. Making to floor really dirty because they mop here everyday. Seeing sights around town, meeting chinese language partners to exchange english practice for chinese. Drinking really awful coffee. Looking at New “Old Buildings” and wondering who are they really fooling. Really appreciating my awesome teachers… both at school and the great cleaning lady who lives on my floor and speaks about as much english as I do chinese so we have been getting on great.

this weekend I’m headed out of Beijing for the first time in a while (beijing is huge it’s not hard to stay busy). to Tianqing. Will try to update again next week after that.  Until then!

Currently I am residing at my step brother (Don’s son) Josh’s house in Taipei. My last week in Thailand was great. Lots happened including Cooking lessons, Muay Thai Boxing, Chinese New Year, and Kendra’s Birthday. I encourage people to read Kendra’s blog entries on this time… Year of OX  and Capitals Contemporary and Historic … because I’ve not been keeping up this blog up to date. She is a better writer than me anyways. Kendra and I have now gone our seperate ways with her going to Barcelona, Spain and me flying on to Taipei, Taiwan to stay with Josh and his girlfriend Sutomi.

Taipei is a pretty nice city. The rail system around town is super convenient and everything is very clean. But getting around by driving is pretty confusing even if you’ve lived here several years as I discovered my first night. Josh and sutomi picked me up and first stop was the chiropractor. JOsh has frequent back problems and had thrown his back out by sleeping on his couch. The chiropractor has a very vigourous method involving standing on Josh’s back and Josh screaming.

The next day josh and sutomi had to work so a past english student of Joshes, Jacky, showed me around town.  Similar to the two party system of US politics, Taiwan has two prominent political parties, the blue (KMT) pro-chinese and green (DPP). The main argument between the two is the independence of Taiwan from China. The chinese still very much consider Taiwan to be a region of china and won’t let tawanese enter without a Chinese passport. But Taiwan has functioned with it’s own government for several years now and has a large population of people in support of taiwan independence. It seems that china won’t let go of taiwan for the forseeable future and Taiwanese government is hesitant to actually start war with china the economic and military power that it is. So for now the subject is simply debated and protesters get arrested.

Anyways, Jacky is proudly Taiwanese. He speaks great english and was very helpful around town.  We went to Taipei 101 which is the tallest occupied building in the world. THen to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. THe name may have changed to Democracy Hall, or Freedom hall, depending on who you ask… Chiang Kai-shek was a dictator who came from China to taiwan. The hall is a ginormous chinese structure with a large park and wall around it. The national symphony and playhouse are in large buildings also in this park square. The DPP wanted to take down the wall to make the whole area more accessible to the people. The current government doesn’t support that.  After that we went to 2-28 park. This is a park that is a memorial to taiwanese people that died on that date some years ago in the south where a fight broke out between the Taiwanese and Chinese over cigarette taxes. Beautiful park that is a meeting place for gay men. Then we went to the Longshan temple. Beautiful multi-denominational temple. It was full of people praying and giving alms. It houses 165 deities including one to help women find husbands and one for fishermans safety.  THere are alot of little lights in the back of the temple. YOu can buy one fro 1000$NT (or about 30 US$) and get good foturne for a year. THen onto Snake Alley. THis is a large night market with one alley devoted to stores that house and cook snakes. THey apparently used to torture lots of animals here but that has since been stopped by animal rights groups. The snake tasted alright,,, but it had alot of bones. Supposedly its really good for my skin or something. THey believe that because a skin sheds it’s skin then it’s good for the person who eates the snake. OR something. We then had an actual dinner that did taste good and some red bean soup for dessert.. It was very beany.

The next day I slept. And walked alot around town looking at shops. I was very hungry come dinner time. Sutomi picked up some special things… Josh’s Favorites. Chicken’s Feet. Pig Ear. THousand Year old Egg. Duck. THe duck was delicious. The rest didn’t make me throw up. At least we had some wine to wash it down.

In case you wanted to know…

Anyways… Kendra and I had come to northern Thailand to escape the hubhub and tourism culture of the south. The train ride up was pretty peaceful. 2nd class sleeper and then seats were pretty nice in fact. We got off at den chai, and were herded into a Songtaew (taxi truck were everyone sits on benches in the back of a datsun equivalent… generally they have a roof). Arrived in Prae around dark and luckily found a hotel. Nearly noone in Prae spoke english (what we were hoping for) and we had a pretty fabulous dinner by pointing and using the prhases memorized from the help section in the lonely planet guide book. While we were contemplating some particulary tastey looking noodle dishes a woman came up to me and grabbed my arm and started talking to Kendra and I and english. We were more than a bit suprized and somewhat suspicious. She proceeded to sit with us for dinner and ordered us food. I engaged conversation but didn’t eat so much (the idea of drugged food kept running around in my head). But as I appeared to be a finicky eater she started digging into my plate. Somehow that put us all more at ease. She was entertaining and her husband who spoke no english ended up buying us dinner before sending us on.

Nan isn’t much bigger population wise but has about 10 times the advertisements and apparently tourism that prae does. We see alot more faralang (white faces) here. Kendra and I stayed at a place with hot water, towels, tv with one english channel (BBC) and two beds,,, What luxury… all for the price of 300 Bat a night (roughly $9) how expensive… Just East of the main town is the nan river which nice enough. We walked along here until sunset which we watched from a nice riverside resturant. The soup burned our faces off. Quite literally. We feasted afterwards on a pineapple until my tounge bled. On the river some boats were practicing rowing. Nan is known for its boat races that appear very vigourous and loud, at least from watching the practices.

We visited the national museum in the morning to learn about the ethnic minorities of the area and the history of the nan province told by evolution of Buddha statues. There were literally thousands of buddha statues on the second floor. Made of wood, metal and stone. In various positions and in various dress. For instance did you know that buddha cross legged with one hand up turned in his lap and the other extended and down is the subduing mara position that symbolizes witenessing the earth.

We then rented a motor bike. The intent was to visit a Lue village 30 km north of town. We stopped at the regional art gallery 20 km north of town and stayed a while enjoying the art of Winai Prabripoo. He had some fantastic wood carvings. After chatting a while with the manager, loong tao (uncle dice in thai, what he wanted us to call him…) they invited us to come tonight to their show opening. Sadly we had to be on the road again this morning to get our visas renewed.  After leaving the gallery and arriving at a gas station we got a map that more fully showed where we were. Lonely Planet book maps were wrong again, at least 20 km off. O well, we returned the bike and went to an italian-thai resturant for a change of pace. Kendra got vegetable pizza with carrots and peas… After spending all day on a bus we sit on the Thai-burmese border tonight in Mae Sai. Tomorrow into Burma for the day. There is lots of cheap food and shopping here. I haven’t bought much of anything as of yet but that may change tomorrow.

Crazy Monkeys

The  wat – Khao Chong Krajok – if you climbed the 396 stairs up to it would give you the title of conquerer. Sadly kendra and I went up after business hours so we didn’t get our certificate… But we saw a great sunset and met a pretty funny thai man with dogs that harrased the monkeys.

Prachuap is the first place Kendra and I have rented a motor bike. I think that the man and his daughter who rented it to us must have thought they would never see us.. alive.. again when they saw us off. But none the less we learned from their pointing at buttons on the bike and made our way south of town. We made it first to the “thinnist of thailand” which was the thinnist part of the pensuila of thailand. We spent a fair amount of time on a beach finding lots of interesting shells. We also were about 3 km from a thai-burmese border crossing for thai people only. Kendra and I are headed north partly to cross a burmese border to renew our visas.  It will take about 15 hours by train and then some 6-7 on bus to get to the border we will cross in Mai Sai.

An interesting note. In every business and in front of every official building and in many hotel rooms you will find a picture of King (see full name below) Rama IX.  King Rama IX is the longest reigning monarch of any country in the world.  He has reigned  from 1946 – present. Everyone every where apparently loves the king. It is illegel, according to our guide book, to lick stamps because they have the kings face on it. All money has his face on it, and it is illegal to step on money because of this.

King Phrabat Somdet Phra Paramintharamaha Bhumibol Adulyadej Mahitalathibet Ramathibodi Chakkrinaruebodin Sayamminthrathirat Borommanatthabophit

 At the end of our day of motoring around we came back to Khlong Won. Peter had recomended this as a place to eat, so we were pretty happy to find the city of Khlong Won. After parking we immediately bought some street food… Most street food is good. But I would have to say Khlong won food is exceptional. Below are what I will call fish tamales,  honey rice cakes and a pineapple smothie. I’m not sure exactly what the fish tamales are called because the lady I kept ordering them from just kept saying “get’em while they are hot” in english when I got them. Needless to say they were spicy and delicious.

Khlong Won Food

The last few weeks have been busy. Ko Yao Noi was pretty great. We had some pretty great fried mussel phad thai. A pretty great old man gave us a lift into and out of town one day at the entertainment of about everyone else on his motorcycle cart.
The highlight by far of this island was our kayaking trip. Kitty and Zak who run Koh Kayak were terriffic people. Kitty is a scot who while traveling to Ton Sai beach (were we went next with her advice) fell in love with thailand and then with zak/ya.  It was kind of confusing because Kitty currently had three very cute kittens…

Carly and the Kittens

 They now run an adventure expeditions shop on south Yao Noi. Anyways we took two kayaks and camping gear and followed the route below…

Koh Yao Noi 4 day kayak trip

We spent 2 nights in the Kudu lagoon with some monkeys and fighting horn bills.  The evenings were idyllic, spent in hammocks and around a campfire. The kayaking was hectic. So we were generally kind of worn out. For food we made ”curry” about every night. The prize meal was some rice noodles with tuna and cabbage. Somehow the exercise made it all taste amazing. The 3rd day was extremely windy and as we came around the northeast corner of yao noi we were on waves that were breaking at over 5 five feet. It scared all three of us so instead of heading to ko hong as was planned that night, we stayed on a beach on ko yao noi.

From Ko Yao noi we journeyed west ward. Originally we were going to Railay beach but Kitty advised us to go to tonsai. They are close, only a half hour walk over some rocks or less at low tide, but very different. Railay is on its way to becoming Phuket. Phuket would be the island mecca for white american tourists looking to stay in expensive resorts, eat all westernised food, and every so often see those… what do you call them?… oh yeah thai people. Tonsai is still full of tourists but they are all rock climbers… which is totally different. A majority of the people I talked to came to thailand solely to spend 2 weeks to a month in Tonsai and rock climb every day. It is a breathtakingly gorgeous cove with giant cliffs surrounding it.  Sadly, the one night we ate out  on a special dinner made carly and I extremely sick. The food poisoning had us ralphing all night and the next morning. Oh well, there are worse places to spend a day resting on the beach. The rest of the food was good but not terriffic.

Highlights from Tonsai would be… Kendra learning to fire dance and then performing on the beach.  Carly slacklining with the austrians. Chatting with our hotel owner about his prize birds. The coffee. Spending an afternoon exploring the caves  and beaching it on Ao Phra Nang (the actual beach from The beach movie)… then hiking up the the lagoon to nowhere at dusk. The whole area was truly beautiful and wholely worth returning to.

The hike to Namtaloo Cave was definately the highlight.

Our guide Pol lead us for ~2 hours though jungle. We were a bit squemish when is came to getting leechs, but luckily all escaped without any bites. Pol was a bit like Mogli dodging ahead of us to suprise us swinging on a vine or playing the rocks by beating on them.

We hiked into the cave and followed the river down. We stopped to take pictures of cave formations and Giant hand sized spiders.

Mmm, Grasshopper

From here we took a subway to train station where after much deliberation we decided on a 3rd class AC 13hr trip to Surat Thani tomorrow… We may regret the 3rd class part but it was what was available and is cheap cheap cheap.
We wandered from the train station towards the river with the intention of finding a river boat. After walking though several neighbor hoods where we were the only tourist faces to be seen with lots of interesting we finally stopped to look at a map. A guard stationed near the map took pity on us and pointed us riverside less than 1 minute from the boat dock.
The time of day couldn’t have been more perfect as the city was lit with the sinking suns colors. We got off in Chinatown to explore… Bought lots of oranges and saw many.. edible?… foods. Finally took a taxi back home? for more pad thai. I only have a slight stomach ache currently.