Nepal - October 2009

The border crossing from China/Tibet to Nepal would have to be the biggest contrast I have ever seen. The Chinese side is well Chinese - noisy, bureaucratic, soldiers, the food is dumplings - customs takes ages as they search your bags for god forbid pictures of the Dalai Lama!

Across the Friendship Bridge, the people are friendly, the colours bright the soldiers smiling, the food dahl.

Welcome to Nepal!

We had heard that Kathmandu was well a bit shit really, but after a couple of months of greasy Chinese food the Thamel area of Kathmandu rocked. We had felafel every day, pizza, mexican and best of all bakery goods! See ya China!

Ben intended to do a three week Annapurna Circuit trek near Pokhara as the scenery is meant to be spectacular. The more people we talked to though the more we heard that road construction near the Annapurna Circuit had destroyed much of the scenery. So he decided instead to join the three of us (myself, Laura and Danielle) on the Langtang Trek. We booked for 13 days and made er 7 (two of which were getting there and back). Unfortunately everyone but me caught some sort of bug (Guardia or the like) and tagged team being ill for the entire trek.

We decided to carry our own bags instead of using porters it was only a short trek and we didn't need much stuff. I know that many people say it supports the local economy by giving the porters jobs but I couldn't bring myself to make some dude carry my stuff! Our guide Suman was great - supportive when we ill (often carrying the sick person's bag) and informative about the trek itself. He also would run ahead to find us accommodation when we were buggered.

We ended up above 4,000m above sea level at Kyanjin Gompa and the pictures speak for themselves.

The glacier that Suman took Ben and I to see was some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen. Whilst there we saw a landslide and it made me again wonder why the hell 'man' insists on climbing such ridiculous mountains (Suman agreed). As you can see from this pic Ben and I were exhausted after spending an hour and a half clambering up a massive hill at 4,000m above sea level. Suman got to the top and smoked a cigarette!

The trek however was spectacular and given I didn't get sick very pleasant! I would definitely recommend Langtang National Park for all your trekking needs!

Lately people have been avoiding Nepal due to the Maoist uprising this seems the least of your problems however when you see the Nepalese roads - by the far the most dangerous thing in Nepal. Every time you jump on a bus (which always takes at least 5 hours to go anywhere) you see at least one bus/truck crash. And given you are often at the top of a 300m cliff with a driver trying to break land speed records it's not very comforting. On one particular trip we were caught in a traffic jam for some time at the front was a crane winching a bus up from the river many, many metres below!!

Nepal for us was very much the tourist trail, Kathmandu, trek, Pokhara, Chitwan National Park. Nothing to write about for Pokhara as we were simply sloths for a week staying in the best value accommodation of our trip at $7 a night (HarvestMoon Guest House).

At Chitwan we met up again with Laura and Danielle as well as Luke from London. In Nepal we always seemed to be a day behind Laura and Danielle so by the time we arrived somewhere that had accommodation and activities arranged for us - nice! In Chitwan it was a days walk in the national park searching for rhinos - we found red bugs and monkeys, but it was nice anyway!

There is elephant tourism in Chitwan something that Ben and I are do not usually condone as elephants in captivity doesn't sit well with us - we did however bathe with the elephants because lets face it when will we get to do that again (and yes that is two elephants shagging!)

Tibet - October 2009

Yes I know it's been a while. China banned the blogger website, along with Facebook and hundreds of others because they incite violence and facilitate protests. I will do this entry by simply commenting of photos. Btw, there are many more photos posted on our Facebook site now including the top 50 Chinglish signs and about 70 Tibet and about the same China photos (there are links on the right hand side of this page, as well as an updated map of where we have travelled at the bottom).

Out the front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Religion normally doesn't impress me, but you couldn't help but be captivated by the extent to which Tibetan Buddhists will express their devotion. Each day people of all ages will circumnavigate all the major temples in the city, spinning their prayer wheels, walking their dogs, talking with friends. Some pilgrims have walked or even crawled hundreds of kilometres to get to the Jokang Temple where they then spend the entire day in full sun, prostrating themselves in front of the door.

In the background are prayer wheels affixed to the walls which people can spin as they walk along. You must always spin it clockwise and also do your lap of the temple clockwise. The Tibetan people are so photogenic too, our travelling companion, Laura, who takes some excellent photos, has some really nice portraits of Tibetan people that I will have to copy off her!

This is a view from Everest Base Camp, with the big mountain in the background. We were at 5200m altitude here, so it was only another 3650 to the top! Easy! The stacks of rocks are put there by people who have recently lost a loved one and they represent the spirit rising up, or so we were told. It got down to -2 degrees at night here, all our water was frozen, and most of us had headaches from mild altitude sickness.

One of the remarkable roads we travelled on during our trip from Lhasa to Zhangmu on the Nepalese border. Most of the time we drove along the Friendship Highway which is a spectacular paved highway, but we did make several detours off it to see some of the out of the way sights. You can only access Tibet by signing up for a (expensive) tour, there is no independent travel in Tibet, due to the Chinese governments paranoia of what people might do in such a sacred place.

At one of the many mountain passes along the way. The landscape consisted of lots of moon like rubble with snow capped mountains in the background. As we descended towards Nepal, the scenery greened up considerably.

Some prayer flags infront of one of the many crystal blue creeks and rivers.

A Tibetan snow dog and his master, in the countryside south of Lhasa.

From the train, Xining to Lhasa. 26 hours and 1990km, this 4 billion US dollar trainline was a feat of engineering. There is much debate about whether the trainline is a good thing, on the positive side it facilitates transporting important goods from China into Tibet along with tourists and modernises Tibet. On the other hand it is like an umbillical cord connecting China to Tibet, stymieing the Free Tibet movement. We also hear that trains arrive in Lhasa jampacked full but return somewhat less full, as China is encouraging Han Chinese to move to Lhasa to help Chinese the place up. It also helps transporting ore back to Beijing easier too.
All this aside, it was definately a remarkable train journey, filled with amazing scenery, wildlife etc. We reached a max altitude of 5040m and they provided tubes which you could plug into the walls for oxygen as the atmosphere thinned.

A glacier with the obligatory prayer flags in front of it somewhere between Gyantse and Lhasa.

Here's the Potala Palace, the (supposed to be) Winter residence of the Dalai Lama. We went inside as well, many many rooms filled with tributes to Buddhism, ornate sculptures, boxes of scriptures, meditation rooms, recieving rooms etc etc. Of course China has built a giant statue out the front with something about how great it is that China is here, a big Chinese flagpole guarded by two soldiers, as well as the groups of armed soldiers parading all around the square too, renaming the road that runs out the front of the palace Beijing Road. They really know how to rub Tibet's nose in it.

Shall I go on... making it law that all shop signs have the Chinese translation in the biggest font, not the Tibetan translation; forcing them to use the Chinese currency, each note of which bears the face of Mao Tse-Tung, the man who orchestrated the Cultural Revolution which saw half of the Potala Palace and countless significant monastries in Tibet destroyed; searching all of our bags at the border, not looking for drugs, but flicking through every book, scrutinising the pictures looking for images of the Dalai Lama or the Tibetan Flag, which you could easily buy 100m up the road in Nepal. Ugh.

And here's a man who oils the prayer wheels so they can spin freely all day long.

As I said, there are many more photos put up on our Facebook page.

I promise we'll be more active with the blog!

Ben

The People's Republic (Sep-Oct 2009)

Well, China what can I say?

1.3 billion people - 9.54 million sq kilometres.

China blows your mind.

The first city we arrived in after crossing the Vietnamese border on 20 September was Nanning. An insignificant little city that no one has ever heard of - right? It had 2.5 million people! It is where Ben finally got his Sichuan Hotpot fix he had been craving ever since our last meal at Dainty Sichuan in Melbourne 4 months before.

In China Jo, Nick, Ben and myself met up with Monica a friend from Australia and recently of London on her way home and Chris a mate from high school who has been living in China for the past 2 years.

We met in Guilin as it is near Yangzhou a beautiful region and a dream destination for most Chinese people. It was great catching up and we spent a few days biking around the kast mountains and eating dumplings.
Chris left us to go back to work after a few days and the five of us went back to Guilin. Mon was staying in a nice hotel that conveniently had an Australian wine tasting on for 60 RMB ($10AU) it was all you can drink wine and canapes. Lets just say they may not allow Australians to go to their wine tastings in the future.

After 10 weeks of travelling together Jo and Nick and Ben and I went our separate ways. Jo and Nick to head north-east on their bikes towards Beijing and Ben and I north-west towards Sichuan province and on to Tibet. Bye guys it's been fun!

Chongqing in near Sichuan Province is by far the biggest city I have ever seen. Home of the Hotpot the city is considered one of the four furnaces Cities of China (for the weather not the Hotpot). The city has 15 million people with the municipality a whopping 32 million. They had an awesome Planning Museum but I won't bore you with the details.

We looked into the Yangtze Three Gorges trip as in a couple of months the hydroelectric dam will be full and the scenery diminished. However, after the spectacular scenery (and because of the cost) we decided to head to Chengdu the land of the Giant Panda.

Whilst in Chongqing we found out that our Tibet trip had to be postponed for two weeks because of the Moon Festival. The Chinese government decided to close the border to tourists (although the media denied this) for the duration of this 60th Anniversary celebration.

We decided therefore to chill in Chengdu for a couple of weeks to get our visas renewed and get to know the city. Whilst there we met some ex-pats that had been their for many years. Two of them Heather and Joshua and their daughter Etheria kindly invited us around to their house and recorded Ben playing the bongos for their band Proximity Butterfly's new album. It was nice to just spend a couple of days with some settled people in a house and eat outstanding home cooked food.

We did eventually drag ourselves away from leisure time to go and see the Pandas at their breeding centre. They would have to be the silliest animals I have ever seen.

We met our chilling out obligations when Laura and Danielle arrived (our travelling companions to Tibet). By playing lots of cards and preparing for our trip to Tibet. For the Moon Festival, Eddy who ran the hostel (Traffic Inn (Hostel)) arranged a moon cake eating competition (traditionally during the Moon Festival Chinese people living away from home are sent moon cakes from their home village) and candle boat making to float down the river. It was very sweet.

Vietnam and Beyond

So we have been extremely slack on our blog and apologise very much for that.

We have just arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal after 10 days in Tibet. China bans Facebook and Blogs so we do have an excuse!

As you probably know we spent nearly 3 months travelling (partly by bicycle) in Vietnam, we hope to make a blog entry about this in the future but would like to concentrate on the more recent China and Tibet for now.

Nick and Jo who we were travelling with were much better at keeping their blog updated to be found at: www.crazyguyonabike.com/nickandjo We have updated our photos on the right hand side and are working on a China and Tibet entry as we speak.

We will endeavour to be more up-to-date from now on - so please stay tuned.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is a massive complex of temples up to 1000 years old. The main temple is the most famous and is considered the largest religious building ever constructed. It is surrounded by a massive moat which is almost as amazing a feat of construction as the temple, which has no mortar or anything like that, just perfectly shaped blocks of stone that all fit together.

We decided to explore the temples by bicycle with Jo and Nick, to see the whole shebang involves doing two loops of 26 and 16km. We took three days to see everything and I think I speak for all of us, but by the end of the 3rd day we were bloody sick of temples. The favourite of ours was Ta Proem, a ruin that has been left to the elements to a certain extent with big trees growing all over the old buildings. Unfortunately now it is most famous as "the one from Tombraider, with Angelina Jolie".

At each temple along the path there was a massive bank of restaurant/souvenir stalls and before you had even got off your bike, you heard cries of "you want water sir?", "something to eat sir?" said in almost pleading voices...I guess when you have 25 restaurants all next to each other, all identical in every way, competition is fierce, especially in low season.

On day two, our visit coincided with celebrations to mark the one year anniversary of Angkor Wat being named as a UNESCO world heritage sight, we saw lots of school kids with musical instruments. We also had a long argument with the gate keeper at one of the temples because we didn't have a hole in our ticket. He couldn't give us our hole, only a perfectly round hole punched by the guy 5km away would do, so Nick rode back and got our holes for us. On the last day we also met a Polish guy on his bicycle who had cycled all the way from Poland! He had clocked up 20,000km cycling through Iran, Pakistan, India etc. amazing!

The nearby town of Siem Reap (which translates as Defeat of Thailand, no love lost there...I think the history is that Thailand and Cambodia were engaged is a battle for a temple on the border, which Cambodia won in the end, also I think the Thais invaded Angkor centuries ago) was tourism central. There were heaps of bars, restaurants, hotels, it was all a bit overwhelming. We found a nice local place to eat called Mr. Grill, which we morphed into Dr. Beef, and spent a few hours there drinking mini beer kegs at our table and eating grilled stuff. We spent our spare time playing 4-player canasta, it is 6-5 to the girls at the moment.

Anyways, I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Don't feel the need to make any special trips to see a temple now after seeing the mother of them all.

Cambodia - Part 1 - What do you mean it's 4US$

Phnom Penh - Siem Reap
July 1 - July 15 2009

As soon as I was on the mend (apart from the aforementioned hideous purple rash) we headed across the border to Cambodia, the plan was to make it to Siem Reap by Monday 6 July to meet up with Jo and Nick, good mates of ours who have biked from Singapore yep that's right biked, more about that later! We caught the bus on 1 July from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and after two huge queues at the check point (and an extra $4US dollars each for the bus guys to fill in our visa applications!) and a few hours, we arrived in Phnom Penh. At about 2 million Phnom Penh is much smaller than HCMC and therefore a little less insane. Phnom Penh is a pretty well established city and you can get anything you want in this city. What we wanted was the Lleyton Hewitt vs. Andy Roddick Wimbledon quarter-final on a big screen. Which of course we found in a bar with a friendly owner from Adelaide!

We spent a few days simply wandering around the markets of Phnom Penh saving the museums, pagodas etc for when we return with Jo and Nick. One of the most bizarre aspects of Cambodia is the dual currency the Cambodian Riel and the US dollar. You go to an ATM (usually an ANZ) and you get US$ you catch a tuk-tuk or stay in a hotel it's quoted in US dollars. Basically it seems to work like this, there is fairly consistently 4,000 Cambodian Riel to the US dollar (although obviously the official rate varies) most things are quoted in US$ if you need change that is less than a dollar you receive it in Riel so it is not unusual to get a mixture of Riel and US$ in your change - what the? Anyway we are used to it now and have learned to barter effectively using this strange mixture of currency.

Phnom Penh is actually quite an attractive city with some stunning art deco and french colonial architecture and wide treed boulevards. The cities location next to a tributary of the Mekong certainly helps this as well. Unfortunately a lack of drainage infrastructure and rubbish collection can effect this ambiance, particularly in heavy rain. More on Phnom Penh later. On the 5 July we headed to Siem Reap where the plan was to meet up with Nick and Jo by Monday - they were riding their bicycles a couple of hundred k's from Thailand and were not sure how long it would take them. (The link to their blog, which they update way more often then us, is on the right under crazyguyonabike.com). It turns out that they arrived two days earlier and by 8pm Sat evening we were sharing some well deserved Angkor beers. Jo and I have known each other since high school and have had many an adventure in Oz, Asia, Africa and Europe and it has been great to catch up - we will travel together for a while now through Cambodia and onto the Mekong Delta into Vietnam. We have been so adventurous since we all met up that we spend several hours each day undertaking the guys vs gals Cambodian Canasta Championship (CCC)! Every now and then we drag ourselves away from the CCC to venture out to ride bicycles around Angkor one of UNESCO's most significant World Heritage sites (Angkor will be the subject of a future blog). Other people at our hotel actually participated in activities around Siem Reap like volunteer work at schools and orphanages and the like whilst we played cards and drank beer. This didn't last forever of course and we eventually began to again socialise with the outside world.

After a week or so in Siem Reap we caught a boat to Battambang according to the guide book it was to be the most picturesque boat ride in Cambodia. $18 US each for a boat ride seemed a bit steep but given it ended up being 9 hours maybe not! We were collected from our guesthouse at 6 in the morning the four of us and Jo and Nick's two bicycles, the Khmer guys walked us over to a ute that already had 6 people and their luggage sitting on the back, they piled in all of our luggage myself and Ben and then proceeded to put Jo and Nick's mountain bikes on top of all of us! Nick was directed to sit on the roof. Jo got a squashy seat in a minivan behind us! We considered this to be a bad sign for the boat trip ahead.

Ultimately it wasn't too bad (hint: take a cushion) card playing was not to be but the scenery was pretty interesting and we only broke down once, when the boat ran into a fishing net which was stuck in the propeller. The journey passed through Tonle Sap lake (one of the most productive inland fisheries in the world) past the floating villages which are villages built on boats that move up and down depending on the height of the river and then up a very narrow tributary which the boat didn't quite fit so we would crash into the reeds.

Spending time with Jo and Nick has made Ben and I very jealous of their much more independent method of transport (and made us realise how unfit we are!)

Ho Chi Minh Fever

June 1st - 14th

We flew into HCMC, Vietnam, on a very late night flight from Manila. We were relieved that the traffic was so light in this city...

Then the next morning, stepping out of our hotel room, after first being assaulted by jackhammers pounding on the other side of our wall, we were assaulted by everything else this city had to offer. Motorcycles EVERYWHERE, honking and weaving and mounting curbs and going the wrong way down streets. The roadside food, selling yummy tangy, spicy cuisine, a great changeup from the lacklustre FILIPINO food. Then there were the guys offering rides on there bikes - "Taxi sir?", "Motorbai sir?", "Where you go sir?"on every street corner and in between (they always seemed to approach me and not Taren). Then there are all the other people selling all sorts of stuff that you kind of need, but not really, and if you show the slightest bit of interest you are given the hard sell. There were also way more tourists here than wee had seen on any other part of the trip so far.

We visited the War Remnants Museum which tells the grim Vietnamese story of the American War (or the Vietnam War as we know it). Australia was mentioned on the information a few times, and we were one of the biggest serving countries in the war, but if you were from the US, you would have felt pretty bad about the things your government did which were described in the exhibition (chemical warfare for example). That's not to say the Vietnamese were angels by any stretch of the imagination - the stuff the Viet Cong were doing was pretty gruesome too. But when we left the museum, we were feeling a bit low as some of the pictures and descriptions were very tough to look at.

It was about the next day, the 3rd of June, that Taren started to show flu like symptoms - high fever, joint aches, headache, lethargy. After a couple of days of this, we took her to the doctor and they diagnosed Dengue Fever. The fever lasted about 8 days and a gruesome looking rash hung around for about a week or more after that (see gnarly picture). During this week and a half of rest and recovery we played a lot of Yahtzee, cards, read some books (Taren read a big fat stupid murder mystery thing in less than 24 hours), watched some TV, every now and then I would go out by myself and have a snoop around the city.

Once Taren had recovered enough, we ate some nice food together. One evening we went for a fish hotpot, where you boil up the raw ingredients in a big pot at your table. The waitresses didn't speak a word of English (which is great!) so we pointed at another table meaning we wanted to eat that too. The other table seemed pretty chuffed at this so they gave us a shot of vodka to celebrate, and we then watched what they did so we ate it properly (the trick is not to cook things for too long). They then offered us another shot or two, so wee bought a bottle too and repaid the favour a few more times, after a slowly eaten meal of a couple of hours we walked slowly home, there seemed to be twice as many motorcyles on the road this time!

The highlight of HCMC for me (Ben) though was the waterslide park, so much so that it deserves a whole blog post of its own...