Paradise sleeps in

We woke up early today to meet up with the Brits and Australians we met up with at the gorge so that we could share a taxi to a nearby wetlands. We made plans to meet up at 8:30am so we thought we'd get up early to grab some street food. Unfortunately not much goes on in town before 9am. Not only were there very few food vendors out and about, but there weren't even any taxis for us to take out to the wetlands that early. So we went to the Compass Café, this very nice western style café. After finally heading out to grab a cab we did a bit of negotiating to get out to this place. It was supposed to be only 7km away so after much haranguing on the price, mostly thanks to our newly made Australian friends Tamima and Mez who speak near perfect Mandarin, we talked the taxi into taking us for 60Y out and back and wait for us there. That's just under 10$ US for the 6 of us. Not a bad deal. When we finally made it out to the place, we were a bit disappointed to see that it was not a very exciting wetlands with trash strewn around. Then they wanted to charge us 30Y to get in which we still would have to pay for the horseback riding that was our original motivation for going. After a bit of haggling again we ended up getting in for 120Y between the 6 of us and had quite a ball just in haggling. At one point we tired to get the to throw in a free mini yak, they they didn't budge.





When we finally got in, it was slightly less impressive and turned out the only way to get around inside was to rent a horse. Here we worked out haggling magic to negotiate an additional 10 minutes on the horses for the same price. And we were off. Our local guides were chatting it up with each other and having a great time, as were we. We saw some free range pigs, some rummaging cows and a big expanse of wetlands. I was a bit concerned that Andrea's horse was going to bite my leg since every now and then it kept snapping at my horse, which were both being pulled by our guide, a very sweet older woman dressed in traditional garb. She was so sweet, she even snapped up my camera and took a bunch of photos of me, Andrea, me and Andrea, me, Andrea and everyone else...well you get the idea. Since Andres still had her camera, she was able to snap up a few photos of them photographing us.



When we finally used up our 30 minutes, we decided to take up try our hand at some archery. I loaded up a few videos of all our attempts. Andrea showed off her Oklahoma roots by firing the arrow right into the target on the first pull and then repeating the feat only moments later. I did manage to hit the target on one of my three attempts...so not too shabby. All in all, our second day in paradise has been fun. And now we are going to do some hostel shopping this evening hoping to find a more charming place than the one we are staying in now. But the good thing is we managed to get our laundry done...one thing about packing lightly is to constantly keep up on the laundry...or bear the wrath of an odoriferous journey.

Shangrila

Yes, this is indeed paradise*! I can attest to that fact since when I got off the bus in Shangrila (Zhongdian). After hopping out of the cab that whisked us away from the bus station into the old town we immediately fell in love with this quaint little town. It has a very weird vibe to it. Somewhere between the Bolivian Altiplano, a Colorado mountain resort and some hippy tourist town with Tibetan influences. I just love it. We were greeted with dancing in the main square as today happened to be the mid autumn festival (though I later found out they do this every night).


Then while walking around looking for a place to stay we happened on a staring contest between two young boys, they couldn't have been any older than 6 and 7. When we finally got to a place to stay we set out and quickly picked up the potato on stick, which is basically 4 baked potatoes covered in chili sauce then grilled...mmm so good. Then we went to eat at the Kamapa Cowboy restaurant which was something like a log cabin with a mixture of Native American and Southwest US decor and Tibetan influences. Our meal was the most divine pork ribs and cucumber salad ... And to those of you who know my fascination with popcorn I almost cried when I saw the waiter bring out a fresh bowl of sweetened popcorn to the table of people eating and drinking on the patio. The town has truly lived up to its name...at least for me ;-)
Oh and we happened to run into the hikers we met on the Leaping Tiger gorge. Its so fun to run into the same people again. We are off to explore the Napa Hai Lake tomorrow.






*For those of you unfamiliar with the work of James Hilton, in his novel "Lost Horizon," Hilton describes an idyllic Tibetan mountain monastery that has discovered the fountain of youth. The town's name was Shangri-la. In 1996, the Chinese government created a task force to find the really Shangri-la based on on clues from the novel. Zhongdian fit the bill due the presence of a Tibetan monastery in the general area described by the book, and the supposed discovery of a plane crash that occurred in the 1930's.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Our hike to the Tiger Leaping Gorge was phenomenal. We ran into a pair of Brits at our hostel that were going to do the gorge trek. So we decided to coordinate with them in order to share a cab to the bus station. We also got some great advice from them on leaving most of our stuff in the town at the trail head then picking up our stuff after the 3 day hike to continue on to the next town called Zhongdian (also known as Shangri-la). I had seen pictures online that show these jagged mountains and spectacular views on the hike. And I have to say the pictures don't even come close to how beautiful it was. The hike is fairly vigorous 20km up and down semi-steep mountainsides with a few areas proving more of a challenge than others.

Since we weren't on much of a schedule we decided to take a leisurely three days to hike the gorge rather than the more grueling two day hike. The trail is fairly well marked with red arrows pointing you in the right direction and the trail is fairly well worn. And along the trail at various points there are guesthouses where you can stay the night or just get some food and water. Our first day we did the short 3-hour hike to Naxi's Guesthouse. It was so nice to get a hot shower and be able to lounge around for the rest of the afternoon and evening and eat some very good food.

The second day was a bit more taxing since we would be walking from early morning into the evening in order to arrive at the base of the gorge where a tiger is supposed to have leaped across, hence giving the gorge its name.

All along the last 2 hours of the hike we kept seeing signs pointing to Tina's guesthouse. I felt like I was on the road to Las Vegas from Los Angeles with those famed "Eat at Joes, 200 miles" - esque signs. So when we finally got there I was eager to check out the guesthouse that was responsible for all that trail graffiti. It was only so-so. Fortunately it did have a warm shower and beds for us. The third day we got up to hike down the final leg of the gorge. There was a perilous ladder and a safer route to get down.

We took the safe route down though we did take the perilous ladder to come back up. It wasn't as scary coming back up, but I did notice that one part of the ladder had just a tree branch propping up the ladder...yikes!

But Andrea and I survived. The river at the base of the gorge looked like it would make great white water rafting if it weren't for all those jagged rocks.

After getting our fill of the gorge(eous) views we decided to head back to continue on our journey to Zhongdian. Since there had been some concern at the start of our trip if we would even be able to the hike due to a landslide we were a bit curious at how we were going to get back. The landslide blocked the road but not the hiking trail so we had no idea what to expect. It turned out we could take a taxi to the landslide and then have to cross over on foot then find another taxi on the other side. Since it was early enough and we didn't feel like paying the now 4 x's higher taxi fare we decided to walk to the landslide and see if we could get a taxi from there. It was a pleasant hike, though we had an unspoken fear every time we saw rocks on the road, knowing that another landslide could happen where we walked. We made it to the landslide zone and saw that a tractor was being put to use to clear it up.

We had to wait until the tractor had a mouthful of rubble and was taking it to be dumped over the cliff so we along with everyone else that was waiting there could scramble over the rubble. I almost made it over unscathed until my left foot sunk about 2 feet into a soft patch of sand and gravel leaving me with a few cuts and now a quickly fading scar that I can show off to prove I had an adventure. After walking on for another half hour or so a taxi came zipping by and stopped. There were already two hikers in the car asking if we wanted to share the cost of the cab for the remaining 10 km or so...it didn't take long for Andre and I to jump on that offer. We got back to the town, picked up our stuff and found a our bus that would take us to Zhongdian.

Situational Orientation

The title of this blog was in reference to our countless attempts at getting back to our original hostel so that we could get our stuff and move into a hostel that was closer to the center of town. The map we were given was practically useless since it showed barely a few of the streets, there weren't many street signs and the streets looked so similar. Our countless pleas for assistance to the local townspeople yielded a chorus of "ye ji itsu zho guay" which means go straight ahead then turn left. After hearing this at least four times we indeed went full circle until we were guided by a surly looking guy who said "follow me" then darted off with our map in hand down a dark and narrow alley. So we figured what other choice do we have other than to follow him, so we did. We passed right by the first place that we had asked directions from and had they told us to go right. If we had only gone to the left we would have been back at our old hostel with two turns. Of course we picked up our bags and headed back to the new hostel sure that we knew the way this time, but alas, we got lost again. This time we were helped out by a Chinese New Zealander who visits Lijiang often and knows his way around. Tired, hungry and a bit embarrassed for keeping Peter and Jenny waiting for us we dropped our bags and headed out to find some dinner.


After getting lost multiple times around Lijiang, I realized that every time that Andrea and I tried to remember or actually did remember where we needed to turn, we would constantly refer to an event that happened when we passed a certain spot. Like the spot where the guy told us "follow me" and led us into the dark alley. This became a new reference point for us to know that we were going in the right direction. Or the mini plaza that we passed where our Chinese Kiwi lead us to our hostel. It's interesting that when we are forced out of our way of orienting ourselves such as through absolutely useless maps, or when grid streets are only a distant memory we are forced to rely on other mental triggers to point us to our destination. Thankfully, the town is not that large and there are enough people here that either speak some English or can at least understand the few words we know such as "zainar" (where is) and pointing to a point on the map.

(Oh and those "digital crumbs" that I left to help us find our way back didn't work quite so well since I ended up taking photos of things that weren't quite as unique as I thought...say a red lantern or wooden door. At least we made it back...eventually.)

Digital crumbs lead you to yaks

Our next stop was Lijiang. We've been told this is one of the most beautiful towns in China. Well that's a tall order to live up to, but in addition to the town's inherent beauty, we found out that there is an excellent hike to be done a few hours away. We arrived late at night by plane since taking the bus would have exceeded our newly decided on 15-hour rule. We were greeted to stars (the first I had seen in months) and cold weather. Everyone was in thickly padded coats and I felt like I had just arrived on the Bolivian Altiplano. Fortunately Andrea had made a reservation at our guesthouse and had arranged the hotel to pick us up. There were no street lights out on our ride into town, only winding mountain roads, so the stars were amazingly bright. However that also meant we really couldn't see where we were going or what the town looked like. So it was quite a surprise the next morning to find out selves in this beautiful quaint old town with a labyrinth of cobble stone roads.




We had made plans to meet up with Peter and Jenny, so in an effort to not get lost I decided to take some digital pictures of the various twists and turns in order so that we would could find our way back (read the next post to find out how well this turned out).

We found Peter and Jenny and they had already hired a minibus to take them to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Park. Andrea and I decided to tag along. It was great we strolled up to this park and took a cable car ride up to Yak Meadow. And you know what you see in Yak meadow...yaks!!! I was so excited to finally see one of these creatures, but was a bit disappointed when we got there and could only see these little specks off in the horizon. We tried our best to get as close as possible, but there were in a fenced off area that we were not allowed in so I began to do my yak calls. It wasn't very effective since I don't actually know how to call a yak, but I did get a yak to give me a dirty look before resuming its meal of wild grasses.



The zoom on my camera is only so-so, but I did get some pics and was happy enough to call it a day. Fortunately Andrea suggested we turn back and go check out a temple with prayer flags that we could see on the horizon.

When we got there it was interesting but nothing too exciting until we heard a local doing a real yak call. He got the yak to get closer to him and even enticed the yak with an apple. We were just frozen with anticipation...would we really be up close and personal with a yak? Well the local man brought the yak down to within about 10 feet from us and we snapped up dozens of yak photos including the young calf that came along in tow.



It was such a great experience. The yak has always been one of my favorite animals, mainly because I love the exotic sounding name of this creature and few people even know what one looks like. I have to admit that I was one of those people up until I met one in person.

Oh and the yak jerky is great too, we got to stock up on the stuff in town for our hike to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Terra Cotta Soldiers

Along with the Great Wall, the of Xi'an are thought to be one the greatest draws to China. We were fortunate to have Song and Jackie leading us since we were able to catch the local buses that led us to the historic sites in Xi'an. Andrea and I were very excited when we were told that we would stop off at the Imperial hot springs before hitting up the Terra Cotta Soldiers. Well perhaps we had a different notion of what a hot springs would be becauhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifse we both packed our swimsuits and towels, but were very disappointed when we realized this was just a historic sight where the Chinese emperors would bathe and come to relax. So we had to content ourselves by looking at the Tang dynasty architecture and washing our hands in the warm waters.


We finally made it to the site of the Terra Cotta soldiers and were amazed with how extensive the grounds were. Thanks to our Lonely Planet suggestion, we decided to catch the 360 degree movie theater that showed a short film on the man behind the soldiers. After watching the film I was even more impressed with the statues. For those of you who don't know, the terra cotta soldiers are a collection of over 8,000 life-size sculptures that were buried along with Emperor Qin over 2,0000 years ago. The movie showed that the soldiers were destroyed by angry villagers shortly after his death. Emperor Qin is credited with having unified China. According to my Lonely Planet, Emperor Qin had angered the monks who were also the scribes, and they then excluded him from the history books, only for any evidence of him to be unearthed in 1974. As a result of the sacking most of the soldiers are in some sort of broken state. Though it seems the restoration team has done a good job of putting them back together in the grand hallway. The grounds are quite extensive and even after spending several hours looking at all the soldiers we hardly saw them all, since there were still more buried. And they will remain so until new restorations can be developed that will protect the paint that the soldiers were originally painted with since too to their age they deteriorate when exposed to the air.

Xi’an

It was nice to get out of Beijing. Though our trip out of Beijing meant we would be on a hard seat train for 12 hours. This meant sitting upright with now reclining seat for 12 hours. Needless to say after this quite uncomfortable experience Andrea and I have decided to no longer travel on a hard seat and that we would not travel for any more than 15 hours in a single shot.

Xi’an was nice. The pace was a bit more relaxed than Beijing with cleaner streets and seemingly fewer cars.






The main reason for coming to Xi’an was to check out the Terra Cotta soldiers, but since we would save that for tomorrow, we decided to check out the town. There was the Drum Tower and Bell Tower that provided some great views of the city and then the Muslim Quarter that had loads of street food to enjoy.



Thanks to Song and her friend Jackie for showing us around town and leading us to all these sights around town, including the Goose Pagoda, which is known for having housed the earliest Buddhist texts in China.

The journey begins

I think this pictures below say it all…I’m not sure how many thousands of kilometers we’ll be covering but everything we have has to fit on our backs so that means you’ll have to get used to seeing me in pictures with the same outfits…deal with it.

Leaving Beijing

With the end of our time in Beijing means the end of our internship at the China Academy of Urban Planning. I’ve learned a lot about China’s governance structure and how planning is done. Though at times it felt like my work here wasn’t that meaningful since the Academy is dedicated mostly to design and I’m more of a policy wonk. But I prepared a couple of presentations before leaving and was able to share some knowledge that I’ve gained from researching watershed management in the States. On the last day of my internship I presented to my team with the help of Gui Ping as my translator. I even got a cake as part of my send off.

As for saying goodbye to my fellow interns and Beijing we enjoyed a final meal of the Dai food...mmm deep fried potato balls. And Andrea, Stephan and I hit the town. I finally got to use that bottle of tequila that I had brought with me. Fortunately the clubs don’t pad you down when you enter so we made our own mixed tequila drinks all night long.

Also click here for a short video on our night on the town

Doing what planners do best..

Our time in Beijing is quickly coming to an end. So Andrea and I have stepped up the planning for our trip around the world. As we’ve come to realize that we just don’t have as much time as we would like we’ve decided to cut out India from our itinerary. The world is just too big and too interesting to try to squeeze in everything. So the idea for now is to head down south through Xi’an then to Lijiang then get our visas for Laos in Kunming, work our way down to Laos then on to Vietnam then Cambodia and finally Thailand. We’ve decided to keep our trip flexible and take the advice of fellow travelers in checking out things that strike our fancy.

Great Wall

Nothing evokes the grandeur of China more than the Great Wall. So it was with much anticipation that I was waiting to climb the wall. Andrea had already gone to the wall a previous weekend while I was at Qingdao but she went to Mutayun which didn’t quite capture the image of the Great Wall that she and I had because of the excess number of tourists and almost too well kept wall. So we took the less traveled road by hiking from Jingshaling to Simatai.

Our adventure started out by trying to find the bus station that would take us to the nearest town where we could catch a cab. Unfortunately, as we’ve come to know that the lonely Planet can’t quite keep up with the quick changing pace of Beijing, the bus station that was listed on our map was now a University. So we walked around a bit and ended up agreeing to paying a taxi driver to take us to Jingshaling then pick us up at Simatai.

Watch a short video documenting Andrea’s and my Great Wall Adventure below, or click here for the link.

International Water Conference

With my work being less structured than I had hoped for, I began to look forward to attending the 2nd International Conference for China Urban Water Development being held in Beijing. I was tipped off to its occurrence by one of my coworkers, Gui Ping, who would be presenting at the conference. Andrea, Peter and Kenetha had attended the Transportation conference a few weeks ago and had to pay the hefty fee 800Yuan. As far as conferences go it was pretty cheap, but when you are making 100 Yuan a day, it’s not a small matter. So I was prepared to pay a similar rate. I took to shuttle bus that my office had arranged and arrive at the conference center. When I got up to the registration booth I was informed the registration fee would cost me 1,200 Yuan. I contemplated turning back home, but another of my coworkers said it would be taken care of. At first I thought the CAUPD would pay for my registration until all the badges were handed out and I got nothing. Then it became clear to me that my team was going to smuggle me in. By getting smuggled in I would miss out on the conference book, which was fine, since it was mostly in Chinese.

I sat through the opening speeches, a few were in English so I was content, but the majority of speeches where in Chinese so I had to sit there and let my thoughts wander since I couldn't make heads or tails of what was being discussed. It wasn't until after the session that I realized there was simultaneous translation going on and I could have rented the translation headphones. I spent the rest of the conference seeking out the sessions that had simultaneous translation, which proved to be few and far between. And the sessions that sounded most interesting to me were conducted entirely in Chinese. Well I still learned a lot and I got to see the nearby Olympic Stadium that was still under construction. Its pretty impressive and I only wish I could have gotten closer.

Parks and open space in Beijing

Parks in Beijing are quite different than how we view parks in the States. As I've learned from my daily walking commute to work through the Purple Bamboo Park. But the scale of the difference takes on a whole new level on my visits to Beihei Park. Beihei Park is one of the oldest parks in Beijing. It's history goes back as far as the Liao Dynasty (916AD – 1125AD) when it was first built, following subsequent repairs and reconstructions since then. And it appears that parks had the function more of a place for serene contemplation. And the notions of being in the wild or in some pristine natural space is completely foreign. Every inch of this park seems to have been manicured from the trees to the stones. And an amazing thing is that people use these spaces for everything from spending a day away from the hustle and bustle of the city and the traffic, but of course the immense crowds here draw a hustle and bustle of merchants and people traffic as the crowds meander about here and there in the park checking out the different sites of interest.