1 june ode to Chinese english

Cannot help but write word for word the blurb on back of packet of toothbrushes.

1. More Function Head   As Dentist Appliance. assort Especially Insert Rubber. Contrive Can Brush Get rid of Tooth Exterior Fungus Spot, The back Attach Lingua Mossiness Clean instrument, Availability Wipe off Lingua Exterior Bacilli. All-sided Aegis Mouth Health.

2.Very Hair   Can into Clean Teeth difficult Brush Part, Light Easy Get Rid of Teeth Dirty Avert Moth Teeth.

3. Coziness Massage Skill imitate Type  Handle, Can Prevent Side And Accommodate Brush Teeth Strength, If Clear Digloid Agility.

30-31 may Train China to Mongolia

Caught our favourite bus #1 for 1 yuan to svey half of the walk to the railway station. Board carriage 15 Beijing to UlanBator to Moscow with supply of fruit, dry biscuits and noodle dinners (just add hot water)! The 29 hours on the train was no worries, hard sleeper, great company with one Mongolian girl, Cheke. she lives with French husband and daughter in Penang and returns each year to run tourist company in Ulan bator for three summer months. Told of common occurrence of mongolian people dying (including own family member) due to incorrect diagnosis by doctor.

Journey began through magnificent steep gullies, glimpses between tunnels, flattened to more rural country, remnants of Great Wall barely recognisable. Three hours at China border for passport control and to change bogies for new rail gauge. spent our last 34 Yuan on junk food, including 500ml beer cans for 3.5 Yuan.

Many other non asian tourists, Belgian girls next room, a belgian couple, Aussies, NZ, Scot and USA. later a Chinese man who taught us chinese words for I, you, he, hello, Ok, head, hair, eye, ears, mouth and nose. Of course we sang the tune  “we all clap hands together”! Most of the time not understanding anything just trying to repeat words with much laughter.

Woke up to rolling expanse of grassless dry landscape, random shepherds and fat-tailed sheep, herdsmen and cattle, and hairy horses. Isolated yurts. Shades of brown, salt lakes, then later tinge of green, bare rolling hills and valleys.

Prebooked guesthouse picked us up at station. everything going well. Murphies law comes into play. Need local money (1250 toogroog to the $) but takes ages to find ATM that will work. Great meal of Mongolian Chinese very fatty hot pot. Yum.

27 -29 may Beijing

Arrived Beijing Railway station at 4.45am. Just when we thought we had mastered all this train station stuff, it gets turned on its head. Signage not obvious to us foreign dummies and take ages to find the ticket office. We are tired and cranky but writing this now at end of day, it really was a bit comical. Should be easy enough. Famous last words. Just go and get then next leg of our journey Beijing to UlanBator on train K3 on 30 may (it only goes once per week). Train info window sends us to ticket window 1. Give man our request on piece of paper, he just says “No”, we say “why”. He says Inter Hotel and waves us away.

Walk through empty early morning streets to our prebooked hotel. Tianmen Square is few blocks away fills in some time before we can get our room. Burnsie, what are you up to? Liz and i have rated the shower at the hotel 11+ ES, K, C, T.  Lashed out paying for buffet breakfast at hotel and sneak out a few things for lunch. Slept most of the afternoon and night in SOFT bed.

Next day spent all morning in queue for Mongolian visa and then bank. Walked around Forbidden City for a few hours. Last emperor Puyi was sent packing by army general’s coup in 1911. The city is on a huge scale, almost one square km, surrounded by 10 m walls and 50m moat. Massive gates and almost 100 halls and temples.

We stillseem to be a novelty, even in Beijing. Mothers point us out to their children and we often get requests for pics with Chinese.

Liz skyped with emma for hour and half. Great to catch up.

Day three – catch metro then bus then share minibus to Great Wall at Mutianyu. Smoggy overcast day but very impressive anyway. Not sure how much is original or rebuilt. Walked past the “Visitors no pass here” to walk along a section of derelict wall, overgrown and unpaved. Walls and towers winding along the ridges in the distance. Liz got  a local metal horse souvenir.

Lucked on a lift back to Beijing in a taxi with a Spanish couple, Nico and Alba. Back to Mongolian consulate for our passports and then to CITS travel agent to buy tomorrow’s train ticket to UlanBator. Decide to fork out the big moolah rather than  independently getting bus or train to Erlian, taxi, and jeep to cross border and then local train to UB. Got two beds on the K3 TransSiberian. What a relief. Mongolia here we come. We think China has been fantastic, beautiful and interesting. But our few days in Beijing has felt a bit like “been there, done that”. Need more time to join in TaiChi exercises, and Tony to get some herbal cure or accupuncture for his shoulder which is still no good from the bike fall last November.

25 -26 may PingYao – Datong

Accommodation is getting better (and more expensive). Luxurious and peaceful Harmony Guesthouse, the usual extra firm thin foam bed and bathroom almost plumbed correctly, but obvious problems with septic, as is the case everywhere in China so far. Paid a fortune for 16th century ancient city pass and loved it. Walked along wall and through ancient Ming dynasty buildings. Beautifully preserved wall and watchtowers and residences, ancient cart tracks still present, Buddhist, Taoist and brahman temples. The old town had a very authentic feel even with all the cheap souvenir vendors. Very pleased with ourselves. Bought tonight’s train tickets without assistanceat the station and even the next night’s to beijing. Cannot believe we have almost finished China.  Dog tired and museumed out, returned to guesthouse for dinner and beer. Seen many other white foreigners here after weeks seeing only a handful. Nice to talk to others about their travels.

Had a middle bunk for 8 hr train to Datong. Enjoyed having a beer or three with two local lads one who was home on hols from Birmingham Uni. He said that he did not understand his lectures and had to study twice as hard at home. He was grossly overweight (unusual for Chinese) probably too many chip buttees.

Arriving in Datong at 5am was problematic. Large public square (spotlessly clean) and Tony still arrogantly disbelieving there is no info office anywhere in sight. Luggage office closed. Taxi drivers keen to get us to fork out 200 Yuan for trip to Yungang Caves and Hanging monastery. Local tour operator for CITS is very generous with his assistance and keen to join us up for guided tour for 100 Yuan each. Manage to get directions for ATM, then sit down for breakfast of yummy dumplings and questionable tofu soup. A chance meeting with two Chinese travellers gives us the way to get to Yungang independently – local bus and change to another local bus (1 Yuan, yes 1 Yuan, for each trip!) total 8 Yuan. The Buddhist grottos were amazing. 5th to 6th century Northern Mei dynasty. All the more surprising is that they are spitting distance to China’s biggest coal mine. Having trouble again wearing out the camera battery! We keep getting requests to be in photos with Chinese tourists.

 

22-24 may epic train again

Seemed to have lost a day somewhere! Caught the shuttle off Mt Huangshan to Tangkou, off and on without waiting to minibus, collect luggage from hotel on route, arrive Huangshan railway station very pleased with ourselves.  The next destination will be Pingyao to see ancient walled city. Unfortunately Tiger Leaping Gorge and Terracotta Warriors are now off the itinerary. Our next train journey stretches over three days with a spot of sightseeing for a day in Nanjing. We are getting the hang of catching trains but buying the ticket is still a challenge. The procedure goes like this: try to read the timetable in chinese characters and work out which trains goto desired destination, ask for help. Nobody speaks English. Go to ticket window, show map, point to destination. Nobody speaks english. Join another queue and when you get to the front, the window closes! try again. Cannot be too difficult. We want two beds  on the Z92 overnight train to Nanjing, then an onward connection. Eventually with some help ( a lot of help!) from someone who can speak english, we find out there are no beds (or seats ) left.  Buy two tickets for Nanjing for the next morning- hard seat for 6 hours. Now we have to find a hotel room.

Arrive Nanjing late arvo. Buy tomorrows ticket. Disaster! Tony has left Lonely Planet in a restaurant. We are utterly lost without the bible. No idea how to find accommodation. The train station is surrounded by freeways. Usually there are plenty of hotels in sight. No tourist information office. The tourist bookshop doesn’t have anything in English. We buy a city map and decide to go downtown. Go to the local bus stop, bus 44 goes there but we are not brave enough. See an internet cafe, but the ogre on the exit door won’t let us in. Find a MacDonalds for free WiFi. All the hostels are full except for one, miles away. Back to the station we are tired and hungry (did not have a maccas) and want to cry. A chinese guy just comes up and says “can I help you with something?”. “Y es please!” Jason (Chinese name too difficult) has gone to school at Balwyn High and worked in Melbourne for Optus for 9 years. And he has a car right here! And he wants to drive us to a downtown hotel! We pile our luggage and ourselves into his car. Who knows where he will take us. We drive for ages through peak hour traffic, on freeways and tunnels and think Wolf Creek. We arrive 20 minutes later (and we had considered walking!). His hotel does not exist but we find another. Luxury and a bit more than our usual 120 Yuan.

Nanjing is beautiful. Walked through town, upmarket shopping centre, old city streets, Confucius square, street markets, clothes and pet shops with birds, rabbits, fish, turtles, snakes, caught the metro to walk around the lake, old city walls.

 

Next morning getting the train is easy. Go through the walkway to ticket check, luggage scanning (like airports), passport check, go up lots of escalators, find the right waiting room and wait. Go like a leming through the gate to more escalators to the platform, find the carriage, show your ticket again, find your bed and relax. 17 hours to Taiyuan – no worries. Then why not keepgoing? Connection to Pingyao – two hours (about 150km) hard seat for $1.50 each.

21 may Mt Huangshan

Packed a day pack includingfood, drinks, thermals and rain jackets, left our main luggage at the hotel, and at 6am walked the 1km to the bus station. Bought a ticket, got on the bus and off we went (no hurry up and waiting!). Paid the park entry (a whopping $40 each) but no queues. All the tour groups took the cable car. Not us! 7.5km up the mountain and the only other walkers wer about 30 porters carrying enormous loads such as 20kg of rice times 2. Or great metal urns of YO (whatever that is) or 4 dozen jars of coffe and 300 rolls of toilet paper, or clean laundered sheets. We climbed up alongside amazing outcrops such as “The immortal pointing the way” and “doble cat catching the mouse”. At Brightness Top we joined the crowds in the fog and could see nothing.

 

We left the crowds for a side trip to Fairyland Bridge. More amazing cliffs and chasms. Sorry too many pics to choose from.

Back with the crowds for the descent of “The ladders on the clouds. Wow, wow, wow! Is this the best walk ever?

18-20 may train and bus

Three days on the train. Not quite, but it felt like that! After a wonderful few days based in Guilin and making short overnight trips first to the karst mountains of Lijiang and Yulong and then to the rice terraces of Longji, it was time to get going north again. We looked at our map of China and realised we hadn’t got far and no way could we go west to leaping Tiger Gorge or try Chengdu for big 42m high Buddha. So first, 16 hours on a train seat (7am to 11pm). Tony helped a fellow to edit the english version of his thesis abstract. Liz wrote emails in word doc. we are the only white foreigners on the train and seem to be a novelty. After an hour or two they get up enough courage ask us questions and we find out a bit about China. They are very interested in our pics on the computer. Next a Hard sleeper i.e. very firm mattress, a bit more comfortable than closed cell foam on bottom bunks in cabin of six (midnight to 8am), followed immediately by one hour micro bus to Tangkou – the launchpad for hiking Mt Huangshan.

Weather forecast is not good , so sit out a day and extra night in Tangkou, the most soulless town ever. Endless honking and blaring buses full of tourists (Chinese, you need to remember there are 2.4 billion of them) and wonder how many will be on the mountain tomorrow. It is China’s number 1 scenic area. Hotel almost intolerable due to noise of traffic and what I thought were gunfire or building construction blasting turned out to be funeral fireworks for hours. Shower was typical handheld spray over the toilet with drain in far corner and water was cold. And no internet. The mountain better be worth it!

16-17 may Longji Rice Terraces

Back in Guilin hostel and we have just about worn out all the hostel managers with our questions. They are offering one day tours of rice terraces and longhair women. We are wanting to traverse the Dragon’s backbone and it seems impossible to do the 4-5 hour walk and get the last bus back. We opt for a small daypack, extra clothes and a one-way bus ticket to Dazhai and see how we go!

The bus honks and winds its way up the narrow road. Some good driving needed.

Once off the bus, we dodge the souvenir vendors and the local women who want to carry your bag. How many times can you say “no” politely? The 3 hour plus bus trip means that it is already lunchtime. Tony is fanatical in not going where everyone else is being herded (to a restaurant), so we dither a while and find our own. Liz makes valiant attempts to explain we cant read the menu and we would like mixed vegies and steamed rice. Liz gets a tour of the ingredients in the kitchen. Four Chinese tourists  from Hong Kong come in and invite us to join them. They share their banquet and then our meal comes as well! And they don’t let us pay!

Armed with the typical not to scale and distorted tourist map, only marked in Chinese, we set off (again Tony reckons he can read the Chinese symbols on signposts and we try an alternate route climbing up out of the village and immediately get lost. A tourist being carried on a chair means we are back on track up and up and up to the “Music in Paradise” lookout.

We follow paved paths and dirt tracks. The unimaginable toil to create these terraces let alone maintain them. It is clearly maintenance season now – hoeing, weeding (no roundup here), building walls and directing the endless supply of water.

In an ancient village that appeared deserted we found one soul to answer our query of the way to “Ping An?” What an incredible walk, arrived at “seven stars and the moon” for sunset. Stay overnight in the Country Inn hotel room. Tony up early to see sunrise at “nine dragons and five tigers” then coffee and bagettes at the Bamboo Tree Hotel. Our German host, Peter, tells us his life story, employs two girls, sponsors schoolkids and has men working his seven terraces. The hotel is actually a pretend business to allow Peter to live in China. He has seen Ping An grow from a little wooden village 12 years ago with no shop. Development roads to isolated villages like Ping An bring a surge of construction (don’t you love concrete?).  There are 2000 empty hotel rooms in Ping An (but they,re locked up!).

China has a five year plan to link every city with high speed rail and freeways, and link every town with a road and electricity. Don’t believe the western propaganda that China is slowing down. We have seen hundreds of km of new rail and freeway construction. Chairman Mao died in 1976 and so did the failure of the Cultural Revolution. The new leader of the China Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, broke up the collective farms, encouraged foreign investment and innovation. And China has Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.

13 may China

Have been sitting in a stationary train for the last 4 hours. No, waited at the station for 1 ½ hours then sat in the train for 2 ½. We are still in sight of the city, Nanning. The train last night from Hanoi was ok. Took a soft sleeper. Was a cabin with 6 bunks. Fortunately we had the lower bunks. Were quite comfortable and I got a reasonable sleep. When we got to the border of Vietnam and China 2 00am, we met up with five 20 year old girls from Iceland. They did not have the correct visa for Vietnam and were turned back at the border and even had to pay for the return fare on our train after paying for the full fare to Hanoi.

Goodo, the train is moving. Heard that there have been floods and only one track open. S’pose that can happen anywhere. Probably better than the service provided Melbourne to Albury! Read that at any one time in China there are 10 million people on a train. I can believe it.

Scenery has been magnificent. You know the hills at Ha Long Bay, limestone cliffs and isolated hills, well the country side is similar only no water between. Instead are beautiful market gardens. Perfectly farmed, neat beds of corn, rice, and other stuff I have no idea about. Occasionally see a farmer in a triangular hat, buffalo, antiquated tractor things and beautiful neat country homes. Very different to Vietnam.  It is much neater, less crowded, greener. Very very beautiful. Farming seems to be on a bigger scale, less little family blocks.

Building is going on everywhere. Roads with enormous concrete pillars across valleys, railway lines and huge apartment buildings. It’s a place on the move.

Bought 2 corn cobs, 2 boiled eggs and 2 sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaf for lunch. It is usually lucky dip, sometimes good other times not. Tony just bought some nashi pears from the guy walking up the aisle. The Chinese yuan is about 6 to the Oz dollar. Tony reminded me that it cost 65 yuan for a 6 hour train trip that might  take 10 hours! Trouble is we get into Guilan at night making it difficult to find accommodation. Lonely planet tells us there are plenty of ‘family hotels’ close to rail station. Who knows what they will be like.

14 – 15 may Guilin – Hangshou

We had booked and paid for trip from Guilin for bamboo raft on Lijiang (Li River) described by Lonely Planet as must do in China. We set off overcast day which turned to pouring rain, not much visibility on river, still magnificent, not post card pictures! Note that the bamboo rafts were poly pipe replicas!

Next day unreal scenery in Hangshou. Tony up early for breakfast in street cafe (see menu) but only brave enough to try noodles and hot and sour veg. pics of taichi in park and from top of little karst hill in middle of town.

Next ones on long bike ride along Yulong River. Could not stop taking pictures and difficult to coose which ones for blog. Fantastic day, bus back to Guilin.