Since I began this blog in 2009, I have consistently managed to post something (even if it was only a few links to things elsewhere on the Internet) at least twice a month. This month is an exception, however, chiefly because I was traveling for most of the month (and in the week before my departure I was far too busy to post anything). I have only been back for a few days and so have not had time to write an account of our trip (I traveled with my family and a few of my wife's colleagues), but here is a very brief summary of the places we visited.
Istanbul, Turkey: This was a transit stop on our original itinerary, but since we were passing through, I wanted to stop for a few days, and I'm glad we did. We were there three days, which was too little even to explore all the top sites as thoroughly as they deserve, but at least we were able to see the most important ones, such as the Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia), and we even briefly crossed over to the Asian side by ferry. This is definitely near the top of my list of places I'd like to go back to.
Budapest, Hungary: This was our chief destination, as a friend who had invited us to come was studying there, though altogether we were only there about four days (three initially and one at the end). It was a very pleasant city with some nice sites, and it seems like it would be one of the better places to live in Eastern Europe, as it's nice, has plenty of good restaurants and shops, and yet is not too expensive. Regrettably, it currently has a rather bad right-wing government. We stopped to talk to a few brave protesters who are camping out in the square next to the parliament building until the current prime minister, Viktor Orban, is gone (we wished them good luck).
Krakow, Poland: We were only here for a little over a day, mainly because some in our group wanted to visit nearby Auschwitz. That was interesting but rather depressing (most of the people who really need to see it unfortunately won't go). I preferred Krakow itself, which has a very well preserved old town that is a nice place for wandering around in.
Prague, Czech Republic: We were here for about three days as well. This was also a pleasant place with a lot of interesting sites. Fortunately, though it's a bit more touristy than Budapest, it wasn't as much so as I feared. Aside from interesting places to see, it had a lot of nice little restaurants and shops. The only notable downside was that the middle of the old town square had been taken over by a noisy, over-the-top propaganda show sponsored by the Chinese government for Chinese New Year. Overall, Prague is definitely worth a visit, as are the other places we visited on this trip.
While we flew to and from Budapest, via Hong Kong and Istanbul on the way there and via Istanbul and Singapore on the way back (aside from our extended stop in Istanbul on the way out, we went to downtown Singapore for a few hours during our long layover there), we traveled by bus from Budapest to Krakow and by train from Krakow to Prague and from Prague to Budapest (the former overnight), so we did get a bit of a look at the countryside. We also passed through Slovakia on the first and third of these journeys, and the bus from Budapest to Krakow actually made a rest stop outside of Banská Bystrica, so we did set foot in Slovakia, if only for about ten minutes. If we ever get a chance to go back to that part of the world, I hope we will be able to take time to explore each of these countries in more depth.
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Nepal
Not too long ago, I posted a cursory and incomplete account of some of my travels. Though I still haven't written even an overview of the big five-month trip that came immediately after the place where that account left off, as I noted in my afterword, I did write down some impressions of a couple of the individual countries we visited on that trip. The first country we went to after Thailand (which was almost like our base of operations, as we returned to it twice more in the following months) was Nepal, which is the only country that I finished my write-up on. I had only typed half of it into the computer previously, but now I have finished the job, so it can be posted. As I recall, I actually started writing it while we were still in Nepal, though I finished it later (exactly when I don't remember). In typing up the last half, I noticed that a number of little incidents, especially from later in the trip, were left out, so I may have finished it a bit hastily. Also, I'm not sure that I would still agree with all of my impressions as I wrote them then (of course they were much fresher then, but now I also know more about not only Nepal but many other places, knowledge which might have led to different impressions if I had had it at the time). Nevertheless, I am posting the essay essentially unchanged, except for few changes to punctuation, even fewer to wording, and a handful of additional comments in brackets.
Upon arriving at Kathmandu's airport, it was immediately obvious that Nepal differs somewhat from a place like Thailand or even China. Instead of impressive rows of official-looking immigration counters, there were two counters manned by half a dozen officials running back and forth. The counters had signs hanging above them which informed us that one was for foreigners who already had a visa, the other for those without one. At the latter counter, however, we were told to go to the former to get our visas. Upon learning that we wanted 30-day visas the officials at the second counter sent us back to the first (they only had the stamp for 15 days). Now that we were at the correct counter, we had to pay for our visas in US dollars (local currency was not accepted) and we were given change from a drawer in which bills were rather casually stacked.
After leaving immigration and passing through a rather chaotic baggage claim and customs area, we went to buy tickets at the taxi counter. The guy behind the counter sold us the ticket while expounding on the virtues of one hotel to which we could have a "free taxi". We exited the airport to see dozens of touts for various hotels all waiting outside flashing cards. We pushed to the crowd to the taxi (which had no markings whatsoever identifying it as such - apparently the only way to tell in many cases is by the color of the license plate ). Many "volunteers" appeared offering to help us load our bags into the car (we ignored them, not wanting to pay for unnecessary services).
The car drove away from the airport, which was not surrounded by warehouses and such, but rather by fields. The taxi wound thru narrow streets to the tourist area of Thamel, a journey accomplished fairly quickly, making it clear that Kathmandu is much smaller than, say, Bangkok. In fact, most of Kathmandu can be seen on foot, though one must take care not to lose one's sense of direction in the narrow winding streets.
After arriving in Thamel and turning down the hotel the taxi took us to (the driver apparently having been bribed by a tout who had squeezed into the taxi with us), we walked around looking for a cheap place (the hotel we were taken to cost US$6, which is pricey for Nepal). On the way, we were constantly approached by guys offering, in conspiratorial tones, tiger balm, Gurkha knives, chess sets, and hashish (at least for this product the whispering made sense ). Having found a place to stay (US$2 for a room with common bath) we spent the next few days exploring the city.
Wandering thru the streets of Kathmandu, in particular the older sections of the city, one encounters a place which seems to have little in common with capitals of countries farther east. While in a city like Beijing or Seoul one can see monuments and palaces of the distant past, in old Kathmandu not only are there temples dating back centuries, but even most of the buildings that the people live and work in seem to be ancient. Many of them are cracked and lean into the narrow streets, seemingly on the verge of collapse. It is not difficult to imagine that the Kathmandu of medieval days differed but little in appearance from that of today.
Of course, there are still reminders that this is the 20th century rather than the 15th. When moving thru the crowds of people on a narrow market street, one frequently has to move aside for bicycles and motorcycles, and even the occasional car. Though traditional dress is still commonplace (particularly among women), Western style clothes are also in evidence. Certain ubiquitous Western products, e.g. Coca-cola, are available as readily as in most other places, and there was even a Wimpy's fast food place under construction during our visit.
It is possible to some degree to escape the more negative aspects of modern life which Kathmandu exhibits (namely traffic and touts) by going to the town of Bhaktapur a short distance away. It has the same medieval atmosphere as Kathmandu's old city, but fewer motor vehicles and not quite so many people selling tiger balm. In each of the three cities of the Kathmandu valley (the third being Patan, just across the river from Kathmandu), the heart of the town is in its Durbar Square. Durbar means palace, so not surprisingly there is a palace in each of the three Durbar Squares, harking back to the days when the three towns were separate principalities. The squares in front of the palaces are dotted with temples, shrines, and statues and it is easy to spend hours wandering around in them (if one can avoid the touts and sadhus. I'll say more about these two types momentarily).
The temples, however, are not concentrated solely in the cities' Durbar Squares. In virtually any part of the three towns' older sections one will come across temples and shrines. At one intersection in Kathmandu, the front of a relatively modern building, there is a small, inconspicuous Buddha statue which is said to be well over a thousand years old. Bakthapur has a small square in the town's oldest section (predating its Durbar Square) with several ancient temples and nearby there is a wooden window fantastically carved in the shape of a peacock. Scattered around Patan are four Buddhist stupas said to originally have been erected by the Indian emperor Ashoka over two thousand years ago, and throughout all three cities one comes across red-painted rocks sticking out between the paving stones which offerings have been placed on.
We saw a number of interesting street scenes while in the Kathmandu valley. Once while eating dinner in a second-floor restaurant in Bhaktapur, next to the valley's highest temple, we watched as large numbers of children in the square below taunted and were chased by a man wearing a mask and costume (actually there were two men but they took turns). Occasionally they would stop running around and ask for money from adults passing thru the square. Also in Bhaktapur, and in Patan as well, we saw snake charmers with crowds gathered around them.
One of the biggest differences between Nepal and the west (or Japan, Taiwan, etc.) is wealth --- we have it, they don't. Fortunately not all Nepalese treat tourists like walking money trees, but some do (and though irritating, it isn't hard to see why, when the average annual income is below US$200). As mentioned before, Nepal has large numbers of people selling all sorts of stuff, to the point where it is difficult to stand or sit in one place for a minute without being approached. In Kathmandu's Durbar Square, while we sat on the steps of a temple, we were approached by a boy of about eleven or twelve who first tried to sell us a souvenir, then wanted to change money, and finally, offered to be our guide. His English was quite good, and when I told him I was from Taiwan he simply replied "I don't think so." Nearby on Freak Street we encountered a guy who offered us some "dynamite" ("It'll blow you sky high, man").
Aside from those trying to sell something, there are, naturally, plenty of beggars. A special type are the sadhus --- normally these are men who give up their worldly possessions and go on a spiritual search, living on whatever alms they are given, but some are less genuine than others. In tourist areas some sadhus will come straight up to tourists, sprinkle flowers on their hair, smear red paste on their foreheads and ask for payment for the (unsolicited) blessing they've given. A far more common type of beggar is children --- a large proportion of them will, upon seeing a foreigner, stop whatever they're doing and ran over asking for "one rupee, school pen, chocolate" or offering to pose for "one photo" (for payment, of course).
Despite all this, we enjoyed our time in Kathmandu immensely, and after leaving Nepal, looked back longingly on its tourist-oriented Western restaurants (some of Asia's best Italian food can be found in Nepal [this may be a slight exaggeration, but I can't remember well enough to be sure]). Since, however, we didn't want to spend all our time in the Kathmandu valley, after five days we took a tourist mini-bus (the passengers were mostly but not all foreigners) south over incredible -- and at times incredibly scary -- mountain roads down to the Terai, the flat area which makes up Nepal's southern half. This part of the country is semi-tropical, and much of it is covered in forest (though, as elsewhere, not so much forest as in centuries past). Since malaria was mostly eradicated in the fifties, it has become the most heavily populated part of the country.
Our objective, however, was a place known not for its human population (it has almost none) but its non-human one -- Royal Chitwan National Park. The bus dropped us off in a town called Tadi Bazaar. Upon getting off the bus we were immediately surrounded by a horde of touts (at least twenty) offering lodging and/or jeep rides. We went along with one of them, the jeep bouncing its way over dirt roads and a ford (we were told that during monsoon season they had to use boats) to the village of Sauhara on the edge of the park. The village still has plenty of people living fairly primitively, and it had only gotten electricity a few weeks before we arrived, but there is also a lot of accommodation for park visitors.
We found a place to stay and during lunch the manager came to tell us about all the services they offered. We were taken to see the park's trained elephants and even fed one. The next day, accompanied by a guide, we took a canoe downriver into the park and walked back thru the forest, not without first being informed by our guide of the ways to deal with the various types of animals we might encounter. We saw a number of monkeys and even two crocodiles dozing in the sun on the bank of a stream. In addition we saw traces of other animals, such as the tracks of sloth bears and rhinos. On one tree we saw the claw marks of a tiger and elsewhere fresh tiger droppings [at least that's what the guide said they were].
On the following afternoon, we took a ride on one of the park's elephants, together with some friends from Taiwan who we met just by chance while going to the elephant landing [it was a British guy I'd lived with in a hostel in Taipei and his girlfriend; I'd had no idea they were in Nepal]. While on our hour and a half ride thru the park we saw seven rhinos (though we might have seen some twice) including a mother and calf [I recall that she was not too happy to see us, but compared to an elephant, even an adult rhino looked small, so she wasn't a real threat]. We ate that evening in a restaurant in the village we'd first visited the evening before and talked with the children who worked there (a girl of nine and a boy of seven, both with excellent English for their age). The next day we took a jeep to Tadi and a bus back up into the mountains.
This time our destination was a town several hundred kilometers west of Kathmandu called Pokhara. The attraction here is neither culture and history, as in Kathmandu, nor wildlife, as in Chitwan National Park, but mountains -- specifically the Himalaya, the world's greatest mountain range. Thought the Himalaya is visible at a distance from the Kathmandu Valley, it is often obscured by haze, pollution, or intervening smaller mountains. In Pokhara one is right up against them, a stunning array of towering white peaks. The portion of the Himalaya nearest Pokhara is known as the Annapurnas, a collection of mountains all over 7000 meters high. The nearest mountain of all is the slightly smaller (just under 7000 meters) Fishtail, which dominates the skyline. We spent several days enjoying the view [though I was briefly ill and acquired a tick bite on my shin, which later became slightly infected and left a scar which took a long time to fade], took a short hike up to a higher viewing point, and saw our friends off on a trek before heading back to Kathmandu on a video bus, meaning we were treated to an Indian [Bollywood] movie (action? comedy? romance? music? convoluted yet predictable plot? you name it, they've got it) and a Bruce Lee kung fu classic.
On arrival in Kathmandu we shook off the few (but very persistent) touts and got on a city mini-bus. It was no problem getting on as it started its route from the bus station, but it was no simple matter getting off -- it got so crowded we could barely see the door, even though we were sitting next to it (indeed, if another foreigner -- who looked like he might have first come to Nepal in its hippie heyday in the seventies -- hadn't told us when we arrived in Thamel, we might have missed our stop). We got a room in Mom's House (perhaps the best -- or worst -- named hotel in Asia) and spent a few more days enjoying Kathmandu's excellent restaurants (actually Pokhara's are also quite good) -- some of which also have great names, like Alice's Restaurant.
On our last full day in Kathmandu we took an auto-rickshaw (a three-wheeled mini-taxi) to a Hindu temple near the airport. There were huge crowd of people, many lining up to go in, others, like us, climbing a nearby hill to look down at the temple. We also visited a Tibetan Buddhist stupa, which like the similar stupa on the other side of town was surrounded by the relatively new houses of the relatively well-to-do Tibetans -- when one sees teenagers wearing jeans and other expensive Western-style clothes in Nepal, they're usually Tibetans. [I'm not sure how I knew this, assuming it is accurate, though simple appearance might have been the main basis.]
Back in the city, we noticed groups of children ambushing cars by pulling a string across narrow streets and demanding money from the driver or going to a shop entrance and shouting at the owner for the same purpose. That night there were many bonfires built around which people stood talking or singing. We learned that all this activity (and the crowds at the temple) was due to Shivarati, a holiday in honor of the god Shiva. The next day we caught a taxi to the airport and after waiting an hour or so in the waiting room (there was only one, as there was only one gate), boarded an airplane to our next destination.
So ends my account of our trip to Nepal. When I'll get around to finishing accounts to the other destinations on that trip or subsequent ones only time will tell.
Upon arriving at Kathmandu's airport, it was immediately obvious that Nepal differs somewhat from a place like Thailand or even China. Instead of impressive rows of official-looking immigration counters, there were two counters manned by half a dozen officials running back and forth. The counters had signs hanging above them which informed us that one was for foreigners who already had a visa, the other for those without one. At the latter counter, however, we were told to go to the former to get our visas. Upon learning that we wanted 30-day visas the officials at the second counter sent us back to the first (they only had the stamp for 15 days). Now that we were at the correct counter, we had to pay for our visas in US dollars (local currency was not accepted) and we were given change from a drawer in which bills were rather casually stacked.
After leaving immigration and passing through a rather chaotic baggage claim and customs area, we went to buy tickets at the taxi counter. The guy behind the counter sold us the ticket while expounding on the virtues of one hotel to which we could have a "free taxi". We exited the airport to see dozens of touts for various hotels all waiting outside flashing cards. We pushed to the crowd to the taxi (which had no markings whatsoever identifying it as such - apparently the only way to tell in many cases is by the color of the license plate ). Many "volunteers" appeared offering to help us load our bags into the car (we ignored them, not wanting to pay for unnecessary services).
The car drove away from the airport, which was not surrounded by warehouses and such, but rather by fields. The taxi wound thru narrow streets to the tourist area of Thamel, a journey accomplished fairly quickly, making it clear that Kathmandu is much smaller than, say, Bangkok. In fact, most of Kathmandu can be seen on foot, though one must take care not to lose one's sense of direction in the narrow winding streets.
After arriving in Thamel and turning down the hotel the taxi took us to (the driver apparently having been bribed by a tout who had squeezed into the taxi with us), we walked around looking for a cheap place (the hotel we were taken to cost US$6, which is pricey for Nepal). On the way, we were constantly approached by guys offering, in conspiratorial tones, tiger balm, Gurkha knives, chess sets, and hashish (at least for this product the whispering made sense ). Having found a place to stay (US$2 for a room with common bath) we spent the next few days exploring the city.
Wandering thru the streets of Kathmandu, in particular the older sections of the city, one encounters a place which seems to have little in common with capitals of countries farther east. While in a city like Beijing or Seoul one can see monuments and palaces of the distant past, in old Kathmandu not only are there temples dating back centuries, but even most of the buildings that the people live and work in seem to be ancient. Many of them are cracked and lean into the narrow streets, seemingly on the verge of collapse. It is not difficult to imagine that the Kathmandu of medieval days differed but little in appearance from that of today.
Of course, there are still reminders that this is the 20th century rather than the 15th. When moving thru the crowds of people on a narrow market street, one frequently has to move aside for bicycles and motorcycles, and even the occasional car. Though traditional dress is still commonplace (particularly among women), Western style clothes are also in evidence. Certain ubiquitous Western products, e.g. Coca-cola, are available as readily as in most other places, and there was even a Wimpy's fast food place under construction during our visit.
It is possible to some degree to escape the more negative aspects of modern life which Kathmandu exhibits (namely traffic and touts) by going to the town of Bhaktapur a short distance away. It has the same medieval atmosphere as Kathmandu's old city, but fewer motor vehicles and not quite so many people selling tiger balm. In each of the three cities of the Kathmandu valley (the third being Patan, just across the river from Kathmandu), the heart of the town is in its Durbar Square. Durbar means palace, so not surprisingly there is a palace in each of the three Durbar Squares, harking back to the days when the three towns were separate principalities. The squares in front of the palaces are dotted with temples, shrines, and statues and it is easy to spend hours wandering around in them (if one can avoid the touts and sadhus. I'll say more about these two types momentarily).
The temples, however, are not concentrated solely in the cities' Durbar Squares. In virtually any part of the three towns' older sections one will come across temples and shrines. At one intersection in Kathmandu, the front of a relatively modern building, there is a small, inconspicuous Buddha statue which is said to be well over a thousand years old. Bakthapur has a small square in the town's oldest section (predating its Durbar Square) with several ancient temples and nearby there is a wooden window fantastically carved in the shape of a peacock. Scattered around Patan are four Buddhist stupas said to originally have been erected by the Indian emperor Ashoka over two thousand years ago, and throughout all three cities one comes across red-painted rocks sticking out between the paving stones which offerings have been placed on.
We saw a number of interesting street scenes while in the Kathmandu valley. Once while eating dinner in a second-floor restaurant in Bhaktapur, next to the valley's highest temple, we watched as large numbers of children in the square below taunted and were chased by a man wearing a mask and costume (actually there were two men but they took turns). Occasionally they would stop running around and ask for money from adults passing thru the square. Also in Bhaktapur, and in Patan as well, we saw snake charmers with crowds gathered around them.
One of the biggest differences between Nepal and the west (or Japan, Taiwan, etc.) is wealth --- we have it, they don't. Fortunately not all Nepalese treat tourists like walking money trees, but some do (and though irritating, it isn't hard to see why, when the average annual income is below US$200). As mentioned before, Nepal has large numbers of people selling all sorts of stuff, to the point where it is difficult to stand or sit in one place for a minute without being approached. In Kathmandu's Durbar Square, while we sat on the steps of a temple, we were approached by a boy of about eleven or twelve who first tried to sell us a souvenir, then wanted to change money, and finally, offered to be our guide. His English was quite good, and when I told him I was from Taiwan he simply replied "I don't think so." Nearby on Freak Street we encountered a guy who offered us some "dynamite" ("It'll blow you sky high, man").
Aside from those trying to sell something, there are, naturally, plenty of beggars. A special type are the sadhus --- normally these are men who give up their worldly possessions and go on a spiritual search, living on whatever alms they are given, but some are less genuine than others. In tourist areas some sadhus will come straight up to tourists, sprinkle flowers on their hair, smear red paste on their foreheads and ask for payment for the (unsolicited) blessing they've given. A far more common type of beggar is children --- a large proportion of them will, upon seeing a foreigner, stop whatever they're doing and ran over asking for "one rupee, school pen, chocolate" or offering to pose for "one photo" (for payment, of course).
Despite all this, we enjoyed our time in Kathmandu immensely, and after leaving Nepal, looked back longingly on its tourist-oriented Western restaurants (some of Asia's best Italian food can be found in Nepal [this may be a slight exaggeration, but I can't remember well enough to be sure]). Since, however, we didn't want to spend all our time in the Kathmandu valley, after five days we took a tourist mini-bus (the passengers were mostly but not all foreigners) south over incredible -- and at times incredibly scary -- mountain roads down to the Terai, the flat area which makes up Nepal's southern half. This part of the country is semi-tropical, and much of it is covered in forest (though, as elsewhere, not so much forest as in centuries past). Since malaria was mostly eradicated in the fifties, it has become the most heavily populated part of the country.
Our objective, however, was a place known not for its human population (it has almost none) but its non-human one -- Royal Chitwan National Park. The bus dropped us off in a town called Tadi Bazaar. Upon getting off the bus we were immediately surrounded by a horde of touts (at least twenty) offering lodging and/or jeep rides. We went along with one of them, the jeep bouncing its way over dirt roads and a ford (we were told that during monsoon season they had to use boats) to the village of Sauhara on the edge of the park. The village still has plenty of people living fairly primitively, and it had only gotten electricity a few weeks before we arrived, but there is also a lot of accommodation for park visitors.
We found a place to stay and during lunch the manager came to tell us about all the services they offered. We were taken to see the park's trained elephants and even fed one. The next day, accompanied by a guide, we took a canoe downriver into the park and walked back thru the forest, not without first being informed by our guide of the ways to deal with the various types of animals we might encounter. We saw a number of monkeys and even two crocodiles dozing in the sun on the bank of a stream. In addition we saw traces of other animals, such as the tracks of sloth bears and rhinos. On one tree we saw the claw marks of a tiger and elsewhere fresh tiger droppings [at least that's what the guide said they were].
On the following afternoon, we took a ride on one of the park's elephants, together with some friends from Taiwan who we met just by chance while going to the elephant landing [it was a British guy I'd lived with in a hostel in Taipei and his girlfriend; I'd had no idea they were in Nepal]. While on our hour and a half ride thru the park we saw seven rhinos (though we might have seen some twice) including a mother and calf [I recall that she was not too happy to see us, but compared to an elephant, even an adult rhino looked small, so she wasn't a real threat]. We ate that evening in a restaurant in the village we'd first visited the evening before and talked with the children who worked there (a girl of nine and a boy of seven, both with excellent English for their age). The next day we took a jeep to Tadi and a bus back up into the mountains.
This time our destination was a town several hundred kilometers west of Kathmandu called Pokhara. The attraction here is neither culture and history, as in Kathmandu, nor wildlife, as in Chitwan National Park, but mountains -- specifically the Himalaya, the world's greatest mountain range. Thought the Himalaya is visible at a distance from the Kathmandu Valley, it is often obscured by haze, pollution, or intervening smaller mountains. In Pokhara one is right up against them, a stunning array of towering white peaks. The portion of the Himalaya nearest Pokhara is known as the Annapurnas, a collection of mountains all over 7000 meters high. The nearest mountain of all is the slightly smaller (just under 7000 meters) Fishtail, which dominates the skyline. We spent several days enjoying the view [though I was briefly ill and acquired a tick bite on my shin, which later became slightly infected and left a scar which took a long time to fade], took a short hike up to a higher viewing point, and saw our friends off on a trek before heading back to Kathmandu on a video bus, meaning we were treated to an Indian [Bollywood] movie (action? comedy? romance? music? convoluted yet predictable plot? you name it, they've got it) and a Bruce Lee kung fu classic.
On arrival in Kathmandu we shook off the few (but very persistent) touts and got on a city mini-bus. It was no problem getting on as it started its route from the bus station, but it was no simple matter getting off -- it got so crowded we could barely see the door, even though we were sitting next to it (indeed, if another foreigner -- who looked like he might have first come to Nepal in its hippie heyday in the seventies -- hadn't told us when we arrived in Thamel, we might have missed our stop). We got a room in Mom's House (perhaps the best -- or worst -- named hotel in Asia) and spent a few more days enjoying Kathmandu's excellent restaurants (actually Pokhara's are also quite good) -- some of which also have great names, like Alice's Restaurant.
On our last full day in Kathmandu we took an auto-rickshaw (a three-wheeled mini-taxi) to a Hindu temple near the airport. There were huge crowd of people, many lining up to go in, others, like us, climbing a nearby hill to look down at the temple. We also visited a Tibetan Buddhist stupa, which like the similar stupa on the other side of town was surrounded by the relatively new houses of the relatively well-to-do Tibetans -- when one sees teenagers wearing jeans and other expensive Western-style clothes in Nepal, they're usually Tibetans. [I'm not sure how I knew this, assuming it is accurate, though simple appearance might have been the main basis.]
Back in the city, we noticed groups of children ambushing cars by pulling a string across narrow streets and demanding money from the driver or going to a shop entrance and shouting at the owner for the same purpose. That night there were many bonfires built around which people stood talking or singing. We learned that all this activity (and the crowds at the temple) was due to Shivarati, a holiday in honor of the god Shiva. The next day we caught a taxi to the airport and after waiting an hour or so in the waiting room (there was only one, as there was only one gate), boarded an airplane to our next destination.
So ends my account of our trip to Nepal. When I'll get around to finishing accounts to the other destinations on that trip or subsequent ones only time will tell.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
My Travels: A Brief Overview (Part 1)
This week happens to be the 18th anniversary of my arrival in Asia, so as a form of commemoration, I'm posting a bare-bones account of my early travels (up to 1995) that I wrote a number of years ago.
I intend to eventually write down detailed accounts of all the various trips I've taken over the past decade, but for the time being I thought it might be a good idea to make a general summary (in case I never get around to finishing the detailed accounts). This is not intended to be particularly colorful, but rather a bare recitation of places visited and maybe a few notable sights and events.
Since my main concern here is with my foreign trips since adulthood, I don't intend to say much about trips I took as a child or even those I took as an adolescent or when in college. Briefly, together with various members of my family I have visited many parts of Texas, such as Galveston (where my maternal grandfather lived at one time), Huntsville (where my paternal grandparents lived), Hereford (where relatives of my father lived), San Antonio, Big Bend National Park (several times; once I believe we took a short boat ride across the Rio Grande to Mexico), Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and many other places. When I was going to college in Austin I also took two trips down to South Padre Island with various classmates during two successive spring breaks (on both trips we also made brief expeditions across the border to Mexico).
We also made trips to New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma several times, and on one trip out west we also went to Arizona and Utah. I went on a number of trips with my mother and various younger brothers to visit her relatives in Michigan, usually going by train but at least once going by bus. On these trips we passed through various cities of the Midwest including Chicago and St. Louis, though my memories of these places are limited to a few mental images.
When I was very young we went to California once or twice to visit my grandparents (before they moved to Huntsville). They were then living in Palos Verdes in the L.A. area. When we went the last time I was about four or five. All I remember is a vague impression of their neighborhood and parts of a trip to Disneyland (a simulated rocket trip, a submarine ride, and a haunted house ride). I even lived in L.A. once but since I was about a toddler at the time I have no recollection of that, and it is no surprise that I also have no memory whatever of the trip Mom and I took to Hawai'i to meet Dad during his R&R from Vietnam when I was about 8 months old (which in fact was my first overseas, though not foreign, trip).
Between my junior and senior years in high school I took part in a week-long seminar for "talented" students with an interest in science and math (I think we were invited on the basis of our Practice SAT scores) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. This was my first solo trip. We spent the vast majority of our time on campus taking classes, hearing interesting stories, and one night having a toga party (actually I was among those who didn't really join in, for better or for worse...; several of us spent most of our time listening to music in our dorm room and only occasionally wandered outside to watch other people reeling back and forth in various states of intoxication). We also took a day trip up nearby Pike's Peak.
The one major foreign trip I took as a child was a three-week vacation in Europe when I was ten years old. I went with my parents and the oldest of my younger brothers (my other two brothers stayed with my grandparents as my parents considered them too young for the trip; Mom was pregnant with my youngest brother at the time). On the way there we changed planes in New York, though we didn't leave the airport. We spent most of our time in southern Germany (Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Rotenburg, Munich, and a few small towns in the south) but we also spent a few days in Salzburg, Austria and Venice, Italy. I have clear memories of certain moments or places from this trip, but I have forgotten too much to put them into any clear sequence or context. In other words, I'll have to visit these places again someday!
My travels really began in late June 1992 when I left Dallas for Taiwan. I had a long stopover in L.A. which I spent sitting around in the airport. From L.A. I flew directly to Taipei (Taibei) across the date line, arriving on the evening of June 24, Taipei time. As I had gotten a job in advance with Hess Language School, they were supposed to have sent someone to meet me at the airport, but there was no one there. I called their head office but they didn't seem to have a clue (the girls who answered the phone spoke little English, and my Chinese was far too limited to help, as I'd only had a semester's worth of classes). However, they were able to tell me that there was another new Hess employee who had arrived on the same flight and like me had called their office asking about our missing transportation.
I was able to find my fellow new employee, a girl named Kim. She had come with her Taiwanese-American boyfriend. The latter's family came to pick him up, and since it was clear that our ride was not going to show up, they offered us a ride and a place to sleep. So on my first night in Taipei I ended up sleeping on the floor of an apartment in Neihu. The next day Kim and I were finally picked up by a Hess van and taken to the Taipei Hostel in the center of the city.
I won't describe my first year in Taiwan in detail here. For now, I'll stick to mentioning that I took my first major trip out of Taipei in early August when I went to Hualien (Hualian) and saw Taroko Gorge. I also took a day trip to Yehliu on the northeast coast in late July. In mid September I went to Meinung (Meinong) in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) County with a girl I knew (her family lived there). In late September I went on my first day trip with Dana and one of her friends to Tamsui (Danshui) to the northwest of Taipei, where we visited an old Spanish-built fort and Tamkang University, the school the girls were attending.
During the last week of August, I also took my first trip out of Taiwan to another part of Asia when I went to Hong Kong to pick up my resident visa for Taiwan. During this trip I went to the top of Victoria Peak, took a ferry to Lantau Island, the biggest island in the colony (larger than Hong Kong Island, though much more sparsely populated) and wandered about in the main tourist areas of Tsim Sha Tsui, at the southern end of Kowloon, and Central and neighboring districts on Hong Kong Island. I also took a one-day tour to Shenzhen, just across the Chinese border.
I took one more major trip within Taiwan at the end of October. It was in fact a company trip for the employees of Hess Language School where I taught English at the time. We went to the mountains of central Taiwan, visiting Puli, Hsitou (Xitou) and Shanlinhsi (Shanlinxi). Of course this trip differed from most others I've taken in that it involved huge numbers of people (Hess employees from all over the island) in tour buses, mass meals in cavernous restaurants, lots of group walking tours and so forth. The scenery was impressive in places, though, and I amused myself by spending a lot of time walking and talking with a few of the Taiwanese girls.
I took my first long trip to other parts of Asia in the spring of 1993, departing in mid March and returning to Taiwan three weeks later, in early April. My first stop was Thailand. After a few days in Bangkok visiting temples and other tourist sites, I took an overnight train all the way down to Malaysia. Getting off the train in Butterworth, I headed across to Georgetown on Penang Island where I spent a few days, hiking to the top of Penang Hill with an English fellow named Alan who staying in the same dorm room as me. I then went on to Kuala Lumpur by bus, visiting the Batu Caves during my brief stay there. From KL I took a bus to Singapore, where I spent a few days walking around, visiting Fort Canning among other places. I also spent some time in the local bookstores.
After a few days in Singapore, I took an overnight bus all the way through Malaysia to Hat Yai in Thailand. I met a Singaporean girl on the bus who was meeting her boyfriend in Hat Yai, so after arriving in Hat Yai, I joined them in catching a bus to Surat Thani, then an overpriced songthaew to the pier, a boat to Ko Samui, and then a second boat to Ko Pha-Ngan. After a couple of quiet days at a bungalow on the south side of the island, I took a ferry to Ko Samui, where I headed to Lamai beach. Here I ran into Alan, the guy I had met in Penang ten days earlier.
I spent several somewhat crazy days on Samui before heading to Surat Thani with Alan, where we caught an overnight train to Bangkok. Unfortunately there were no seats, so we had to sleep on the floor of the train (not a lot of fun). A couple of days after arriving in Bangkok, Alan and I took a trip to Kanchanaburi, where we visited the bridge over the River Kwai and Erawan Waterfalls. I returned to Bangkok and spent a few more days there before returning to Taiwan.
I didn't take any more trips out of Taiwan for the remainder of 1993, but I did take a few trips within Taiwan. The most important of these was in late June. My younger brother K. had come to Taiwan for a visit and we took a week-long trip around the island. First we we went down the east coast to Hualien, where of course we visited Taroko Gorge, on this occasion taking a bus up to Tienhsiang (Tianxiang) at the top of the gorge. From Hualien we went south to Taitung (Taidong). From Taidong we went west across the mountains to Fenggang (I think) then to Hengchun, and finally to Kenting (Kending), the national park at the tip of the island. Here we met Dana and some of her classmates. After a few days in Kenting we headed north, passing throung Kaohsiung and stopping in Taiwan's former capital and chief city, Tainan. From Tainan we returned to Taipei, stopping off on the way in Changhua (Zhanghua), which we toured with my friend Angela (Chen Yahui).
My first trip after K. left was to Alishan, the mountain resort in central Taiwan, with Dana. Aside from a couple of days in Alishan, we also stopped in Taichung (Taizhong). During this trip my relationship with Dana began to progress beyond ordinary friendship. It was as a couple that we took our next trip together, to Suao and Hualien in December of that year.
My first international trip in ten months was in February of 1994, when I took advantage of Chinese New Year to go to the Philippines. I spent several days in Manila where I hung out with a variety of people (two Filipinos, an English guy, the sister of one of my Hess co-workers, and a group of four Korean girls, one of whom developed something of a crush on me). After a few days checking out the sights of Manila, I took a boat to Cebu (my first overnight boat trip). I spent a few days in Cebu City, after which I took a boat back to Manila (abandoning more ambitious plans to do a loop through other islands). The day after my arrival in Manila I left again, taking a bus and boat to Puerto Galera, a beach on the island of Mindoro. I spent several days there, hanging out with an Australian guy I met. I then returned to Manila, where I hung out with the Filipino guys and my co-worker's sister. I flew back to Taiwan a couple of days later, having spent 16 days in the Philippines.
Less than three months later, in early May, I took another trip out of Taiwan, this time to South Korea. I spent a couple of days in Seoul, seeing some of the sights with one of the Korean girls I'd met in the Philippines. I then took a bus to Kyongju, the former capital of Silla, one of Korea's ancient kingdoms. I spent several days seeing the historical sights there with various fellow travelers I met in the yogwan (hostel) I was staying at. I then went back to Seoul and saw more of the sights there, and also hung out with three of the girls I'd met in the Philippines and several of the travelers living in the yogwan (we also got some unanticipated excitement in the form of a slightly unbalanced Korean girl who was staying there). I returned to Taiwan eight days after my departure.
In June, my youngest brother B. came to Taiwan for a visit. Dana joined the two of us for a trip to Tainan. We visited several sights in the city and one, the big temple at Luermen, outside. We then went by train to Touliu (Douliu) where Dana left us (she had to go back to Taipei) and B. and I caught a bus to Tsaoling (Caoling), a mountain resort. After a couple of days there we went to Changhua where we spent the night. We took a day trip to Lukang (Lugang) the next day, then went to Taichung, where we spent another night before returning to Taipei.
On the last day of August 1994, I set off on my first really long trip. I flew from Taiwan to Hong Kong, where I spent a few days getting a visa for China, opening a bank account and wandering about. On September 4 I took a train to Guangzhou. I spent a night and a fairly eventful day (talking to locals, nearly getting pickpocketed, and so forth) there before leaving the next evening on a train for Beijing. On the train I met a few other travelers. After a 36 hour ride we pulled into Beijing in the very early morning. I spent a week in Beijing seeing the major sites (the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, etc.) and otherwise wandering about.
I took a night train to Zhengzhou, where I saw traces of the ancient Shang dynasty walls and had dinner with a Chinese guy who was staying in the same four-person hotel room as I was (this was one of the few occasions where there were locals in a dorm room with me; most places segregate locals from foreigners). Next I took a bus to Kaifeng, which had been a capital city for a time about a millennium ago. I saw the sights there before taking another bus to Qufu (see my essay entitled One Day in China: A Traveler's Tale). After visiting all the Kongzi (Confucius)-related sites in his hometown, I proceeded on to Taian. Here the attraction was Taishan, one of Taiwan's holy mountains, climbed by dozens of emperors from Qinshihuang to Mao Zedong, most of whom left graffiti along the route up. I climbed up and down the 6000-some steps in one day, though I paid the price for a few days afterward. From Taian I took a train back to Beijing.
Back in Beijing, I mostly hung out with other travelers for the next few days. Two fellow travelers (an Australian guy and a Norwegian girl) and I decided to travel together to Xian (we met an English girl on the bus to the train station who also joined our group). In Xian we went to see the major sites (including, of course, the terracotta warriors guarding the tomb of Qinshihuang). On several occasions we were joined in our wanderings around the city by other travelers we'd met after arriving in Xian.
After a few days in Xian the Australian guy and English girl decided to travel on to Chengdu, while the Norwegian girl persuaded me to join her on a trip to Luoyang, which took a couple of days. Aside from seeing the place she wanted to see (Shaolin Temple) we also saw the Longmen cave sculptures. We then went back to Xian. The next day the two of us, joined by a Danish girl, took a train to Chengdu. In Chengdu we met up with the Australian guy we had been traveling with before and several other people, and spent several days hanging out and seeing the sites. I also took a short trip to nearby Leshan with the Danish girl.
Altogether I spent more than a week in Chengdu. During this period our little traveling group broke up as everyone went their separate ways. I took a train to Panzhihua in Yunnan on which I met some more travelers, including a Dutch couple traveling with their baby son and an American woman (who had lived in both China and Taiwan for long periods) and her younger brother. Upon arriving in Panzhihua we had planned to catch a bus to Lijiang, but we decided to eat lunch first and ended up missing it, so we had to stay overnight. The Dutch couple and I took a bus to Lijiang the next morning (the Americans had decided to go to Dali instead).
After a very scenic ride (but also at times a nerve-racking one, especially at first since I was sitting in the very front next to the driver -- later I changed seats), we arrived in Lijiang where I spent a few days. I joined the Dutch couple on a brief bike trip to the area just to the north, and the Dutch guy and I also joined a Belgian couple on a bus trip to Hu Tiao Xia (Tiger Leaping Gorge). From Lijiang I took a bus to Dali, where I spent a few more days, also running into a number of people I'd met elsewhere in China.
From Dali I traveled on to Kunming. I spent most of the last week of October there (the first couple of days I was sick, so I didn't see as much as I might have liked). Rather interestingly, the intersection the main travelers' hotel was on happened to be the area where the city's streetwalkers congregated, though the majority had no interest in foreigners. Getting a ticket out of Kunming was a bit of a hassle (though no more so than Chengdu), but finally I got a train to Chongqing, arriving on the last day of October.
I spent only a couple of days in Chongqing before getting a boat down the Yangtze river. On the second day we passed through the famous Three Gorges, which were fairly impressive, if not so much so as the Tiger Leaping Gorge or Taroko in Taiwan. On the third day the boat stopped at Wuhan (by this point the river was so wide that the river banks were quite far away), and on the evening of the fourth day we reached my destination, Nanjing.
After a couple of days in Nanjing visiting the sites I took a train to Shanghai. Here I spent a week, mostly just wandering around the city (I tried to take a trip to Suzhou, but because I couldn't find a bus to the train station in time, I missed my train). It was mid November when I left Shanghai, taking a train to Xiamen, a place which like Zhengzhou and Kaifeng had relatively few backpackers (at least I didn't meet any), though it seemed to have plenty of Taiwanese. After a few days there I took an overnight bus to Guangzhou. I didn't stay overnight but caught a boat upriver to Wuzhou. From here I took a bus to Yangshuo, which thanks to a series of tire problems and some engine trouble did not arrive until one in the morning.
I spent most of the last week of November in Yangshuo, relaxing and enjoying the scenery. I also took a couple of bike trips to the countryside (actually one involved a boat trip up the river to a village which was having its market day, and then riding back to Yangshuo from there). All in all it was a good way to spend my last week in China.
From Yangshuo I took an overnight bus back to Guangzhou where I spent one day before taking a train back to Hong Kong (Kowloon) on the last day of November. I spent a little under a week in Hong Kong (also taking a day trip to Macau) before returning to Taiwan.
My original intention was just to visit Taiwan for a few weeks and then continue my travels. The plan was for Dana and me to apply for graduate school and then for me to travel while she stayed in Taiwan and worked then in the fall we would go to the US together. With this in mind I bought a round trip ticket to Taiwan in Hong Kong with a flight on to Thailand. However on my return to Taiwan I decided I'd rather stay in Taiwan with Dana. Furthermore she wasn't ready to apply for grad school that year as she hadn't taken the necessary tests yet (and I was too lazy to start applying myself anyway). So I got a teaching job at ETLS and changed the dates on my tickets to Hong Kong and Thailand to late January.
By late January the paperwork for my resident visa was ready so I had the visa sent to Thailand so I could pick it up when I was there. I flew to Hong Kong where I spent two days before flying on to Bangkok. In Bangkok I bought a ticket back to Taiwan and picked up my resident visa. I also ran into Peter, an English guy who like me had lived at the Amigo and worked for Hess. We took a short trip to Khorat in the northeast, where we joined another traveler on a day trip to nearby Phimai which had a ruined temple from Khmer times. Back in Khorat we were followed around by a strange Thai girl as we wandered around the city. I returned to Bangkok the next day where I spent a couple more days before flying back to Taiwan.
My second major trip in 1995 was my first visit to the US since coming to Asia and my first overseas trip with Dana (it was also her first foreign trip). We flew to LA where we changed planes and flew on to Dallas. We took a trip down to Austin with my brother T. and visited with a couple of my old college friends. We also took a day trip to San Antonio. After returning to Dallas, Dana and I borrowed one of the family cars and drove to New Orleans where we spent a couple of days before going back to Dallas. We then took a trip down to Huntsville with most of the family to visit my grandfather and his new wife. After a final few days in Dallas we then flew to LA where we rented a car and checked out a few sites around the area before going back to the airport to catch our flight back to Taiwan. All in all it was a nice visit, though of course it seemed too short.
Dana and I took our second overseas trip together that October when we went to Japan for a week (actually seven days and eight nights). We flew to Tokyo where we stayed a day and then caught a night bus to Kyoto. We spent a few days seeing the sights in the former capital and also took a day trip to Himeiji to see the castle there. We took a night train back to Tokyo where we spent a few more days checking out the sights and the various districts of the city, before finally flying back to Taiwan.
The first part of this overview of my travels ends there. Unfortunately I've only written a tiny bit of part 2, which was intended to cover our lengthy 5-month trip through Southeast and South Asia. I did write a more detailed account of my impressions of Nepal, the first country we visited on that trip (other than Thailand, which served as a sort of base). However, it was originally handwritten and only part of it has been typed into the computer. If I can find the original I may finish it up and post it sometime. Or maybe I'll manage to find the time and sufficient motivation to write part 2 of this overview. We shall see.
I intend to eventually write down detailed accounts of all the various trips I've taken over the past decade, but for the time being I thought it might be a good idea to make a general summary (in case I never get around to finishing the detailed accounts). This is not intended to be particularly colorful, but rather a bare recitation of places visited and maybe a few notable sights and events.
Since my main concern here is with my foreign trips since adulthood, I don't intend to say much about trips I took as a child or even those I took as an adolescent or when in college. Briefly, together with various members of my family I have visited many parts of Texas, such as Galveston (where my maternal grandfather lived at one time), Huntsville (where my paternal grandparents lived), Hereford (where relatives of my father lived), San Antonio, Big Bend National Park (several times; once I believe we took a short boat ride across the Rio Grande to Mexico), Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and many other places. When I was going to college in Austin I also took two trips down to South Padre Island with various classmates during two successive spring breaks (on both trips we also made brief expeditions across the border to Mexico).
We also made trips to New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma several times, and on one trip out west we also went to Arizona and Utah. I went on a number of trips with my mother and various younger brothers to visit her relatives in Michigan, usually going by train but at least once going by bus. On these trips we passed through various cities of the Midwest including Chicago and St. Louis, though my memories of these places are limited to a few mental images.
When I was very young we went to California once or twice to visit my grandparents (before they moved to Huntsville). They were then living in Palos Verdes in the L.A. area. When we went the last time I was about four or five. All I remember is a vague impression of their neighborhood and parts of a trip to Disneyland (a simulated rocket trip, a submarine ride, and a haunted house ride). I even lived in L.A. once but since I was about a toddler at the time I have no recollection of that, and it is no surprise that I also have no memory whatever of the trip Mom and I took to Hawai'i to meet Dad during his R&R from Vietnam when I was about 8 months old (which in fact was my first overseas, though not foreign, trip).
Between my junior and senior years in high school I took part in a week-long seminar for "talented" students with an interest in science and math (I think we were invited on the basis of our Practice SAT scores) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. This was my first solo trip. We spent the vast majority of our time on campus taking classes, hearing interesting stories, and one night having a toga party (actually I was among those who didn't really join in, for better or for worse...; several of us spent most of our time listening to music in our dorm room and only occasionally wandered outside to watch other people reeling back and forth in various states of intoxication). We also took a day trip up nearby Pike's Peak.
The one major foreign trip I took as a child was a three-week vacation in Europe when I was ten years old. I went with my parents and the oldest of my younger brothers (my other two brothers stayed with my grandparents as my parents considered them too young for the trip; Mom was pregnant with my youngest brother at the time). On the way there we changed planes in New York, though we didn't leave the airport. We spent most of our time in southern Germany (Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Rotenburg, Munich, and a few small towns in the south) but we also spent a few days in Salzburg, Austria and Venice, Italy. I have clear memories of certain moments or places from this trip, but I have forgotten too much to put them into any clear sequence or context. In other words, I'll have to visit these places again someday!
My travels really began in late June 1992 when I left Dallas for Taiwan. I had a long stopover in L.A. which I spent sitting around in the airport. From L.A. I flew directly to Taipei (Taibei) across the date line, arriving on the evening of June 24, Taipei time. As I had gotten a job in advance with Hess Language School, they were supposed to have sent someone to meet me at the airport, but there was no one there. I called their head office but they didn't seem to have a clue (the girls who answered the phone spoke little English, and my Chinese was far too limited to help, as I'd only had a semester's worth of classes). However, they were able to tell me that there was another new Hess employee who had arrived on the same flight and like me had called their office asking about our missing transportation.
I was able to find my fellow new employee, a girl named Kim. She had come with her Taiwanese-American boyfriend. The latter's family came to pick him up, and since it was clear that our ride was not going to show up, they offered us a ride and a place to sleep. So on my first night in Taipei I ended up sleeping on the floor of an apartment in Neihu. The next day Kim and I were finally picked up by a Hess van and taken to the Taipei Hostel in the center of the city.
I won't describe my first year in Taiwan in detail here. For now, I'll stick to mentioning that I took my first major trip out of Taipei in early August when I went to Hualien (Hualian) and saw Taroko Gorge. I also took a day trip to Yehliu on the northeast coast in late July. In mid September I went to Meinung (Meinong) in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) County with a girl I knew (her family lived there). In late September I went on my first day trip with Dana and one of her friends to Tamsui (Danshui) to the northwest of Taipei, where we visited an old Spanish-built fort and Tamkang University, the school the girls were attending.
During the last week of August, I also took my first trip out of Taiwan to another part of Asia when I went to Hong Kong to pick up my resident visa for Taiwan. During this trip I went to the top of Victoria Peak, took a ferry to Lantau Island, the biggest island in the colony (larger than Hong Kong Island, though much more sparsely populated) and wandered about in the main tourist areas of Tsim Sha Tsui, at the southern end of Kowloon, and Central and neighboring districts on Hong Kong Island. I also took a one-day tour to Shenzhen, just across the Chinese border.
I took one more major trip within Taiwan at the end of October. It was in fact a company trip for the employees of Hess Language School where I taught English at the time. We went to the mountains of central Taiwan, visiting Puli, Hsitou (Xitou) and Shanlinhsi (Shanlinxi). Of course this trip differed from most others I've taken in that it involved huge numbers of people (Hess employees from all over the island) in tour buses, mass meals in cavernous restaurants, lots of group walking tours and so forth. The scenery was impressive in places, though, and I amused myself by spending a lot of time walking and talking with a few of the Taiwanese girls.
I took my first long trip to other parts of Asia in the spring of 1993, departing in mid March and returning to Taiwan three weeks later, in early April. My first stop was Thailand. After a few days in Bangkok visiting temples and other tourist sites, I took an overnight train all the way down to Malaysia. Getting off the train in Butterworth, I headed across to Georgetown on Penang Island where I spent a few days, hiking to the top of Penang Hill with an English fellow named Alan who staying in the same dorm room as me. I then went on to Kuala Lumpur by bus, visiting the Batu Caves during my brief stay there. From KL I took a bus to Singapore, where I spent a few days walking around, visiting Fort Canning among other places. I also spent some time in the local bookstores.
After a few days in Singapore, I took an overnight bus all the way through Malaysia to Hat Yai in Thailand. I met a Singaporean girl on the bus who was meeting her boyfriend in Hat Yai, so after arriving in Hat Yai, I joined them in catching a bus to Surat Thani, then an overpriced songthaew to the pier, a boat to Ko Samui, and then a second boat to Ko Pha-Ngan. After a couple of quiet days at a bungalow on the south side of the island, I took a ferry to Ko Samui, where I headed to Lamai beach. Here I ran into Alan, the guy I had met in Penang ten days earlier.
I spent several somewhat crazy days on Samui before heading to Surat Thani with Alan, where we caught an overnight train to Bangkok. Unfortunately there were no seats, so we had to sleep on the floor of the train (not a lot of fun). A couple of days after arriving in Bangkok, Alan and I took a trip to Kanchanaburi, where we visited the bridge over the River Kwai and Erawan Waterfalls. I returned to Bangkok and spent a few more days there before returning to Taiwan.
I didn't take any more trips out of Taiwan for the remainder of 1993, but I did take a few trips within Taiwan. The most important of these was in late June. My younger brother K. had come to Taiwan for a visit and we took a week-long trip around the island. First we we went down the east coast to Hualien, where of course we visited Taroko Gorge, on this occasion taking a bus up to Tienhsiang (Tianxiang) at the top of the gorge. From Hualien we went south to Taitung (Taidong). From Taidong we went west across the mountains to Fenggang (I think) then to Hengchun, and finally to Kenting (Kending), the national park at the tip of the island. Here we met Dana and some of her classmates. After a few days in Kenting we headed north, passing throung Kaohsiung and stopping in Taiwan's former capital and chief city, Tainan. From Tainan we returned to Taipei, stopping off on the way in Changhua (Zhanghua), which we toured with my friend Angela (Chen Yahui).
My first trip after K. left was to Alishan, the mountain resort in central Taiwan, with Dana. Aside from a couple of days in Alishan, we also stopped in Taichung (Taizhong). During this trip my relationship with Dana began to progress beyond ordinary friendship. It was as a couple that we took our next trip together, to Suao and Hualien in December of that year.
My first international trip in ten months was in February of 1994, when I took advantage of Chinese New Year to go to the Philippines. I spent several days in Manila where I hung out with a variety of people (two Filipinos, an English guy, the sister of one of my Hess co-workers, and a group of four Korean girls, one of whom developed something of a crush on me). After a few days checking out the sights of Manila, I took a boat to Cebu (my first overnight boat trip). I spent a few days in Cebu City, after which I took a boat back to Manila (abandoning more ambitious plans to do a loop through other islands). The day after my arrival in Manila I left again, taking a bus and boat to Puerto Galera, a beach on the island of Mindoro. I spent several days there, hanging out with an Australian guy I met. I then returned to Manila, where I hung out with the Filipino guys and my co-worker's sister. I flew back to Taiwan a couple of days later, having spent 16 days in the Philippines.
Less than three months later, in early May, I took another trip out of Taiwan, this time to South Korea. I spent a couple of days in Seoul, seeing some of the sights with one of the Korean girls I'd met in the Philippines. I then took a bus to Kyongju, the former capital of Silla, one of Korea's ancient kingdoms. I spent several days seeing the historical sights there with various fellow travelers I met in the yogwan (hostel) I was staying at. I then went back to Seoul and saw more of the sights there, and also hung out with three of the girls I'd met in the Philippines and several of the travelers living in the yogwan (we also got some unanticipated excitement in the form of a slightly unbalanced Korean girl who was staying there). I returned to Taiwan eight days after my departure.
In June, my youngest brother B. came to Taiwan for a visit. Dana joined the two of us for a trip to Tainan. We visited several sights in the city and one, the big temple at Luermen, outside. We then went by train to Touliu (Douliu) where Dana left us (she had to go back to Taipei) and B. and I caught a bus to Tsaoling (Caoling), a mountain resort. After a couple of days there we went to Changhua where we spent the night. We took a day trip to Lukang (Lugang) the next day, then went to Taichung, where we spent another night before returning to Taipei.
On the last day of August 1994, I set off on my first really long trip. I flew from Taiwan to Hong Kong, where I spent a few days getting a visa for China, opening a bank account and wandering about. On September 4 I took a train to Guangzhou. I spent a night and a fairly eventful day (talking to locals, nearly getting pickpocketed, and so forth) there before leaving the next evening on a train for Beijing. On the train I met a few other travelers. After a 36 hour ride we pulled into Beijing in the very early morning. I spent a week in Beijing seeing the major sites (the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, etc.) and otherwise wandering about.
I took a night train to Zhengzhou, where I saw traces of the ancient Shang dynasty walls and had dinner with a Chinese guy who was staying in the same four-person hotel room as I was (this was one of the few occasions where there were locals in a dorm room with me; most places segregate locals from foreigners). Next I took a bus to Kaifeng, which had been a capital city for a time about a millennium ago. I saw the sights there before taking another bus to Qufu (see my essay entitled One Day in China: A Traveler's Tale). After visiting all the Kongzi (Confucius)-related sites in his hometown, I proceeded on to Taian. Here the attraction was Taishan, one of Taiwan's holy mountains, climbed by dozens of emperors from Qinshihuang to Mao Zedong, most of whom left graffiti along the route up. I climbed up and down the 6000-some steps in one day, though I paid the price for a few days afterward. From Taian I took a train back to Beijing.
Back in Beijing, I mostly hung out with other travelers for the next few days. Two fellow travelers (an Australian guy and a Norwegian girl) and I decided to travel together to Xian (we met an English girl on the bus to the train station who also joined our group). In Xian we went to see the major sites (including, of course, the terracotta warriors guarding the tomb of Qinshihuang). On several occasions we were joined in our wanderings around the city by other travelers we'd met after arriving in Xian.
After a few days in Xian the Australian guy and English girl decided to travel on to Chengdu, while the Norwegian girl persuaded me to join her on a trip to Luoyang, which took a couple of days. Aside from seeing the place she wanted to see (Shaolin Temple) we also saw the Longmen cave sculptures. We then went back to Xian. The next day the two of us, joined by a Danish girl, took a train to Chengdu. In Chengdu we met up with the Australian guy we had been traveling with before and several other people, and spent several days hanging out and seeing the sites. I also took a short trip to nearby Leshan with the Danish girl.
Altogether I spent more than a week in Chengdu. During this period our little traveling group broke up as everyone went their separate ways. I took a train to Panzhihua in Yunnan on which I met some more travelers, including a Dutch couple traveling with their baby son and an American woman (who had lived in both China and Taiwan for long periods) and her younger brother. Upon arriving in Panzhihua we had planned to catch a bus to Lijiang, but we decided to eat lunch first and ended up missing it, so we had to stay overnight. The Dutch couple and I took a bus to Lijiang the next morning (the Americans had decided to go to Dali instead).
After a very scenic ride (but also at times a nerve-racking one, especially at first since I was sitting in the very front next to the driver -- later I changed seats), we arrived in Lijiang where I spent a few days. I joined the Dutch couple on a brief bike trip to the area just to the north, and the Dutch guy and I also joined a Belgian couple on a bus trip to Hu Tiao Xia (Tiger Leaping Gorge). From Lijiang I took a bus to Dali, where I spent a few more days, also running into a number of people I'd met elsewhere in China.
From Dali I traveled on to Kunming. I spent most of the last week of October there (the first couple of days I was sick, so I didn't see as much as I might have liked). Rather interestingly, the intersection the main travelers' hotel was on happened to be the area where the city's streetwalkers congregated, though the majority had no interest in foreigners. Getting a ticket out of Kunming was a bit of a hassle (though no more so than Chengdu), but finally I got a train to Chongqing, arriving on the last day of October.
I spent only a couple of days in Chongqing before getting a boat down the Yangtze river. On the second day we passed through the famous Three Gorges, which were fairly impressive, if not so much so as the Tiger Leaping Gorge or Taroko in Taiwan. On the third day the boat stopped at Wuhan (by this point the river was so wide that the river banks were quite far away), and on the evening of the fourth day we reached my destination, Nanjing.
After a couple of days in Nanjing visiting the sites I took a train to Shanghai. Here I spent a week, mostly just wandering around the city (I tried to take a trip to Suzhou, but because I couldn't find a bus to the train station in time, I missed my train). It was mid November when I left Shanghai, taking a train to Xiamen, a place which like Zhengzhou and Kaifeng had relatively few backpackers (at least I didn't meet any), though it seemed to have plenty of Taiwanese. After a few days there I took an overnight bus to Guangzhou. I didn't stay overnight but caught a boat upriver to Wuzhou. From here I took a bus to Yangshuo, which thanks to a series of tire problems and some engine trouble did not arrive until one in the morning.
I spent most of the last week of November in Yangshuo, relaxing and enjoying the scenery. I also took a couple of bike trips to the countryside (actually one involved a boat trip up the river to a village which was having its market day, and then riding back to Yangshuo from there). All in all it was a good way to spend my last week in China.
From Yangshuo I took an overnight bus back to Guangzhou where I spent one day before taking a train back to Hong Kong (Kowloon) on the last day of November. I spent a little under a week in Hong Kong (also taking a day trip to Macau) before returning to Taiwan.
My original intention was just to visit Taiwan for a few weeks and then continue my travels. The plan was for Dana and me to apply for graduate school and then for me to travel while she stayed in Taiwan and worked then in the fall we would go to the US together. With this in mind I bought a round trip ticket to Taiwan in Hong Kong with a flight on to Thailand. However on my return to Taiwan I decided I'd rather stay in Taiwan with Dana. Furthermore she wasn't ready to apply for grad school that year as she hadn't taken the necessary tests yet (and I was too lazy to start applying myself anyway). So I got a teaching job at ETLS and changed the dates on my tickets to Hong Kong and Thailand to late January.
By late January the paperwork for my resident visa was ready so I had the visa sent to Thailand so I could pick it up when I was there. I flew to Hong Kong where I spent two days before flying on to Bangkok. In Bangkok I bought a ticket back to Taiwan and picked up my resident visa. I also ran into Peter, an English guy who like me had lived at the Amigo and worked for Hess. We took a short trip to Khorat in the northeast, where we joined another traveler on a day trip to nearby Phimai which had a ruined temple from Khmer times. Back in Khorat we were followed around by a strange Thai girl as we wandered around the city. I returned to Bangkok the next day where I spent a couple more days before flying back to Taiwan.
My second major trip in 1995 was my first visit to the US since coming to Asia and my first overseas trip with Dana (it was also her first foreign trip). We flew to LA where we changed planes and flew on to Dallas. We took a trip down to Austin with my brother T. and visited with a couple of my old college friends. We also took a day trip to San Antonio. After returning to Dallas, Dana and I borrowed one of the family cars and drove to New Orleans where we spent a couple of days before going back to Dallas. We then took a trip down to Huntsville with most of the family to visit my grandfather and his new wife. After a final few days in Dallas we then flew to LA where we rented a car and checked out a few sites around the area before going back to the airport to catch our flight back to Taiwan. All in all it was a nice visit, though of course it seemed too short.
Dana and I took our second overseas trip together that October when we went to Japan for a week (actually seven days and eight nights). We flew to Tokyo where we stayed a day and then caught a night bus to Kyoto. We spent a few days seeing the sights in the former capital and also took a day trip to Himeiji to see the castle there. We took a night train back to Tokyo where we spent a few more days checking out the sights and the various districts of the city, before finally flying back to Taiwan.
The first part of this overview of my travels ends there. Unfortunately I've only written a tiny bit of part 2, which was intended to cover our lengthy 5-month trip through Southeast and South Asia. I did write a more detailed account of my impressions of Nepal, the first country we visited on that trip (other than Thailand, which served as a sort of base). However, it was originally handwritten and only part of it has been typed into the computer. If I can find the original I may finish it up and post it sometime. Or maybe I'll manage to find the time and sufficient motivation to write part 2 of this overview. We shall see.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Bangkok trip
It's been some time since I managed to post anything, one reason (along with preoccupation with other matters, sheer laziness, etc.) being that I was away last weekend. My wife had a meeting to attend in Bangkok, and I decided to go along. What's more, we took our daughter, who thereby had a number of firsts, including her first international trip (for that matter, her first trip out of the Taipei area) and her first airplane ride. It was a pretty short trip, probably the shortest of my many trips to Thailand, as we went on Friday and came back the following Tuesday. Not surprisingly, we didn't do much sightseeing (in fact we didn't do any, at least in the sense of going to specific tourist sights), though that wasn't a big deal, as most of the major sights of Bangkok we've seen at least once and in some cases multiple times.
The meetings my wife was attending went on all day Saturday and Sunday, and I stayed in the area of the hotel they were being held in -- the same one we were staying at -- so she could nurse the baby during their breaks. My furthest venture was to a used bookstore about 20 minutes walk away, a little way past Soi 26 on Thanon Sukhumvit (the hotel was on Soi 20). I took the baby in her stroller, which was complicated by the fact that at most intersections with sois (a soi is a lane or alley off a larger road) or driveways there was no ramp down from the sidewalk to the street, so if the curb was high, as it usually was, I had to pick up the stroller to haul it down and sometimes back up again (though when going back up it was usually possible to just push down on the back to lift the front wheels onto the curb). Also, I had to try to make sure the baby didn't get too much sun (not that a little sun is bad for anyone, but at her age she would certainly burn easily). Nevertheless, a trip of this distance proved manageable, though unfortunately, despite having a good selection, this time the bookstore only had one of the books I was looking for (on our last trip I was able to find several I was searching for there).
Much of the rest of the time we were in the hotel or at most in the soi outside. Fortunately the meeting was being held on a floor just two below the one we were staying on (though annoyingly the stairs were for emergency use only, so we had to use the elevator), and that floor (the 14th) also had the hotel's pool, which was outside on the roof of a shorter wing of the hotel. Though we didn't get to go swimming, it was nice to be able to sit outside while we were waiting for the next rest break in the meeting or while the baby was nursing. The baby was not surprisingly something of hit among many attendees of the meeting, who incidentally were human rights defenders from a wide variety of places, including Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, various South Asian countries and Mongolia.
On the last day the three of us first moved to a cheaper hotel across the soi from the one the meeting was held in (our stay in the latter was partly subsidized only through Sunday, the night following the meeting, so we decided to save some money by switching to a cheaper place). After that we took the Skytrain (the elevated rail line -- incidentally saturated with annoying advertisements; the underground subway called the MRT is much better in this regard, though it didn't go where we were headed in this case) to the shopping district of central Bangkok. We went to the chaotic but relatively cheap MBK shopping center before heading over to the Siam Center/Discovery Center/Siam Paragon shopping complex. Though unsurprisingly I didn't find many of the Thai CDs I was looking, most being either obscure, very old, out of print, or some combination of the three, I did manage to get a few things, and my wife also found a few interesting things. For dinner we met a woman I knew from previous trips who works at Thailand's largest record company GMM Grammy as a sort of assistant to the boss. The place she chose was a pretty good Italian restaurant (she suggested it after I said I'd like to have Italian food) not far from the GMM Grammy building, and fortunately also not far from our hotel (in the other direction), which meant we could walk back.
The other two days of the trip were pretty much taken up by our flights there and back, which fortunately the baby handled fairly well, with only a little fussing. We can only hope her next international trip goes at least nearly as well.
The meetings my wife was attending went on all day Saturday and Sunday, and I stayed in the area of the hotel they were being held in -- the same one we were staying at -- so she could nurse the baby during their breaks. My furthest venture was to a used bookstore about 20 minutes walk away, a little way past Soi 26 on Thanon Sukhumvit (the hotel was on Soi 20). I took the baby in her stroller, which was complicated by the fact that at most intersections with sois (a soi is a lane or alley off a larger road) or driveways there was no ramp down from the sidewalk to the street, so if the curb was high, as it usually was, I had to pick up the stroller to haul it down and sometimes back up again (though when going back up it was usually possible to just push down on the back to lift the front wheels onto the curb). Also, I had to try to make sure the baby didn't get too much sun (not that a little sun is bad for anyone, but at her age she would certainly burn easily). Nevertheless, a trip of this distance proved manageable, though unfortunately, despite having a good selection, this time the bookstore only had one of the books I was looking for (on our last trip I was able to find several I was searching for there).
Much of the rest of the time we were in the hotel or at most in the soi outside. Fortunately the meeting was being held on a floor just two below the one we were staying on (though annoyingly the stairs were for emergency use only, so we had to use the elevator), and that floor (the 14th) also had the hotel's pool, which was outside on the roof of a shorter wing of the hotel. Though we didn't get to go swimming, it was nice to be able to sit outside while we were waiting for the next rest break in the meeting or while the baby was nursing. The baby was not surprisingly something of hit among many attendees of the meeting, who incidentally were human rights defenders from a wide variety of places, including Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, various South Asian countries and Mongolia.
On the last day the three of us first moved to a cheaper hotel across the soi from the one the meeting was held in (our stay in the latter was partly subsidized only through Sunday, the night following the meeting, so we decided to save some money by switching to a cheaper place). After that we took the Skytrain (the elevated rail line -- incidentally saturated with annoying advertisements; the underground subway called the MRT is much better in this regard, though it didn't go where we were headed in this case) to the shopping district of central Bangkok. We went to the chaotic but relatively cheap MBK shopping center before heading over to the Siam Center/Discovery Center/Siam Paragon shopping complex. Though unsurprisingly I didn't find many of the Thai CDs I was looking, most being either obscure, very old, out of print, or some combination of the three, I did manage to get a few things, and my wife also found a few interesting things. For dinner we met a woman I knew from previous trips who works at Thailand's largest record company GMM Grammy as a sort of assistant to the boss. The place she chose was a pretty good Italian restaurant (she suggested it after I said I'd like to have Italian food) not far from the GMM Grammy building, and fortunately also not far from our hotel (in the other direction), which meant we could walk back.
The other two days of the trip were pretty much taken up by our flights there and back, which fortunately the baby handled fairly well, with only a little fussing. We can only hope her next international trip goes at least nearly as well.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
One Day in China -- A Traveler's Tale
Way back in the mid 1990s, I took a long trip to China. I spent close to 3 months traveling all around the country. The following is an account I wrote some years later (but still close to a decade ago) of one relatively eventful day during that trip.
The sky was overcast as I stepped out of the hotel and walked to the bus station. This was a small, rather unimpressive building next to the train station. I managed to find my bus among the various vehicles that were scattered about the parking lot behind the station. It was properly speaking a minibus, and it was not blessed with leg room suitable for a foreign devil, especially one loaded with bags. Though fortunately it wasn't stuffed to its roof with passengers like buses in and around bigger cities, I didn't anticipate a particularly comfortable ride. On other hand, for the price I was paying I had no right to expect luxury, and, anyway, a little discomfort once in a while keeps life interesting.
Safely (more or less) crammed into my seat, I watched as the bus driver piloted us through the streets of Kaifeng. It was rush hour and the streets were filled with bicycles. They took up the whole road, so the occasional larger vehicles (generally buses and trucks, though there were also a fair number of private cars) had to push their way through, driving right in the center of the road. Though most Western drivers would no doubt have quickly lost their tempers trying to drive in such conditions, our driver was not perturbed in the least, though he used his horn more often than necessary.
Despite the slow pace, we eventually managed to make it out of the city into the less crowded countryside. Here the main obstruction, other than the less then perfect condition of the roads themselves, was grain. In villages all along the way, locals had spread their grain out on the road to sort and dry in the sun. Fortunately they always left enough space for vehicles to get by, though as in the city it was often necessary to drive in the middle of the road.
Throughout our journey we took on and off loaded passengers on the side of the road deep in the countryside. Most people seemed to take the bus for fairly short distances; in fact I believe I was the only one on the bus who traveled all the way from Kaifeng to its final destination. I was also one of the only passengers with a printed ticket, since all the people we picked up on the side of the road just paid the driver whatever he told them was the price for wherever they wanted to go. One or two did argue briefly about prices they considered too high, but they paid up in the end rather than stay on the roadside waiting for the next bus.
We crossed into Shandong province a couple of hours out of Kaifeng. In Heze, the first major town we came to, I moved up to a seat at the front of the bus at the driver's insistence. He, and the woman who took turns driving with him and was presumably his wife, appeared to be in his fifties. Both of them were friendly and talkative, though unfortunately I couldn't understand much of what they said, in part due to their accents and in part to due to my own language deficiencies.
My new seat was decidedly more comfortable than my old one, since there was more room to put my bags, though the road conditions sometimes negated any comfort gained by the move. At one point we left the paved road we had been following and drove along a dirt road which stretched along a ridge overlooking farm houses. Children playing in front of the houses stopped to gaze at our bus as it passed, but it was impossible to gauge from their reactions how often buses passed this way. It was presumably a short cut of some sort, though not surprisingly we didn't travel along at a great speed, and even at the speed we were going my teeth rattled and my bones shook. Fortunately we got back on a paved road before long.
Towards the end of our journey the bus broke down. As the driver and his wife worked to get it started again, I had visions of spending the night sitting there in a bus on the side of a country road in the middle of rural China. In the space between my seat and the driver's was a hatch of sorts which could be lifted to work on the engine, so it wasn't necessary to get out of the bus to do whatever repairs were necessary. The driver and his wife took turns trying to get the engine started while the other one fiddled with it. Apparently the oil wasn't flowing properly, because while one of them worked the gas pedal, the other sucked on a tube to try to get the oil flowing. Whatever they were doing, it was effective -- after ten minutes or so they got the bus started again.
We pulled into Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, at around four o'clock, some eight hours after our departure from Kaifeng. As soon as I exited the bus station I was accosted by a middle aged woman who offered to take me to a cheap hotel. It was cheap all right, the room was a stuffy (but reasonably roomy) cell in the basement furnished with a bed, a little wooden table and a fan, and the toilet was an outhouse. Despite the less than luxurious accommodations, I decided to take it, on the general principal that as long as there was a bed to sleep in and no obvious signs of rat or insect infestations, it would do for a night (though I would have preferred nicer toilets).
Though it was late afternoon, I hadn't had anything to eat all day other than some bread I had had for breakfast before leaving Kaifeng, so I decided to get a very late lunch. I found a small restaurant where I got some fried rice. As I ate the woman who ran the place talked to me, for the most part asking the standard questions ("Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Are you married?") . At one point she suddenly asked me how many millions of dollars I had. I tried to explain that I didn't even have one million, that in fact the appropriate question would be how many thousands of dollars I had, but she didn't seem to believe me (perhaps she meant renminbi, the Chinese currency, but even one million renminbi is more than US$100,000). This was borne out by the fact that she charged me the outrageous sum of 25 RMB for my plate of fried rice -- well over ten times what I'd paid for a large bowl of noodles in Kaifeng the night before.
Upon my return to the hotel I met the landlady, who told me her last name was Kong, i.e. that she was a member of Confucius's extensive clan, and warned me to watch out for rip-offs, a warning I hardly needed after my experience at lunch. Nevertheless I survived the rest of the day without any significant holes being made in my wallet.
Sometime after midnight I was awakened by a knock on the door. Two uniformed men came into my room. One asked if I could understand Chinese and I indicated that I could, though I refrained from revealing that I could speak it as well, not wishing to prolong the conversation. They lectured me on the safety (or rather lack of the same) of cheap hotels such as the one I was in, and said I should stay in better hotels. I was tempted to point out that the only disturbance I had thus far encountered in this type of hotel was them but I thought better of it. After they had finished dispensing advice on accommodation choices, they left and knocked on other doors. Several hours later I was awakened once more by a hotel employee who took my passport to be checked (by whom I never found out). It was not clear whether this second disturbance was related to the first (though I presume it was) nor whether this was a random inspection, one inspired by word of a foreign devil in the hotel, or rather inspired by an overindulgence in Qingdao (Tsingtao) beer by the policemen on the night shift. In any case, I was left undisturbed for the rest of the night.
The sky was overcast as I stepped out of the hotel and walked to the bus station. This was a small, rather unimpressive building next to the train station. I managed to find my bus among the various vehicles that were scattered about the parking lot behind the station. It was properly speaking a minibus, and it was not blessed with leg room suitable for a foreign devil, especially one loaded with bags. Though fortunately it wasn't stuffed to its roof with passengers like buses in and around bigger cities, I didn't anticipate a particularly comfortable ride. On other hand, for the price I was paying I had no right to expect luxury, and, anyway, a little discomfort once in a while keeps life interesting.
Safely (more or less) crammed into my seat, I watched as the bus driver piloted us through the streets of Kaifeng. It was rush hour and the streets were filled with bicycles. They took up the whole road, so the occasional larger vehicles (generally buses and trucks, though there were also a fair number of private cars) had to push their way through, driving right in the center of the road. Though most Western drivers would no doubt have quickly lost their tempers trying to drive in such conditions, our driver was not perturbed in the least, though he used his horn more often than necessary.
Despite the slow pace, we eventually managed to make it out of the city into the less crowded countryside. Here the main obstruction, other than the less then perfect condition of the roads themselves, was grain. In villages all along the way, locals had spread their grain out on the road to sort and dry in the sun. Fortunately they always left enough space for vehicles to get by, though as in the city it was often necessary to drive in the middle of the road.
Throughout our journey we took on and off loaded passengers on the side of the road deep in the countryside. Most people seemed to take the bus for fairly short distances; in fact I believe I was the only one on the bus who traveled all the way from Kaifeng to its final destination. I was also one of the only passengers with a printed ticket, since all the people we picked up on the side of the road just paid the driver whatever he told them was the price for wherever they wanted to go. One or two did argue briefly about prices they considered too high, but they paid up in the end rather than stay on the roadside waiting for the next bus.
We crossed into Shandong province a couple of hours out of Kaifeng. In Heze, the first major town we came to, I moved up to a seat at the front of the bus at the driver's insistence. He, and the woman who took turns driving with him and was presumably his wife, appeared to be in his fifties. Both of them were friendly and talkative, though unfortunately I couldn't understand much of what they said, in part due to their accents and in part to due to my own language deficiencies.
My new seat was decidedly more comfortable than my old one, since there was more room to put my bags, though the road conditions sometimes negated any comfort gained by the move. At one point we left the paved road we had been following and drove along a dirt road which stretched along a ridge overlooking farm houses. Children playing in front of the houses stopped to gaze at our bus as it passed, but it was impossible to gauge from their reactions how often buses passed this way. It was presumably a short cut of some sort, though not surprisingly we didn't travel along at a great speed, and even at the speed we were going my teeth rattled and my bones shook. Fortunately we got back on a paved road before long.
Towards the end of our journey the bus broke down. As the driver and his wife worked to get it started again, I had visions of spending the night sitting there in a bus on the side of a country road in the middle of rural China. In the space between my seat and the driver's was a hatch of sorts which could be lifted to work on the engine, so it wasn't necessary to get out of the bus to do whatever repairs were necessary. The driver and his wife took turns trying to get the engine started while the other one fiddled with it. Apparently the oil wasn't flowing properly, because while one of them worked the gas pedal, the other sucked on a tube to try to get the oil flowing. Whatever they were doing, it was effective -- after ten minutes or so they got the bus started again.
We pulled into Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, at around four o'clock, some eight hours after our departure from Kaifeng. As soon as I exited the bus station I was accosted by a middle aged woman who offered to take me to a cheap hotel. It was cheap all right, the room was a stuffy (but reasonably roomy) cell in the basement furnished with a bed, a little wooden table and a fan, and the toilet was an outhouse. Despite the less than luxurious accommodations, I decided to take it, on the general principal that as long as there was a bed to sleep in and no obvious signs of rat or insect infestations, it would do for a night (though I would have preferred nicer toilets).
Though it was late afternoon, I hadn't had anything to eat all day other than some bread I had had for breakfast before leaving Kaifeng, so I decided to get a very late lunch. I found a small restaurant where I got some fried rice. As I ate the woman who ran the place talked to me, for the most part asking the standard questions ("Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Are you married?") . At one point she suddenly asked me how many millions of dollars I had. I tried to explain that I didn't even have one million, that in fact the appropriate question would be how many thousands of dollars I had, but she didn't seem to believe me (perhaps she meant renminbi, the Chinese currency, but even one million renminbi is more than US$100,000). This was borne out by the fact that she charged me the outrageous sum of 25 RMB for my plate of fried rice -- well over ten times what I'd paid for a large bowl of noodles in Kaifeng the night before.
Upon my return to the hotel I met the landlady, who told me her last name was Kong, i.e. that she was a member of Confucius's extensive clan, and warned me to watch out for rip-offs, a warning I hardly needed after my experience at lunch. Nevertheless I survived the rest of the day without any significant holes being made in my wallet.
Sometime after midnight I was awakened by a knock on the door. Two uniformed men came into my room. One asked if I could understand Chinese and I indicated that I could, though I refrained from revealing that I could speak it as well, not wishing to prolong the conversation. They lectured me on the safety (or rather lack of the same) of cheap hotels such as the one I was in, and said I should stay in better hotels. I was tempted to point out that the only disturbance I had thus far encountered in this type of hotel was them but I thought better of it. After they had finished dispensing advice on accommodation choices, they left and knocked on other doors. Several hours later I was awakened once more by a hotel employee who took my passport to be checked (by whom I never found out). It was not clear whether this second disturbance was related to the first (though I presume it was) nor whether this was a random inspection, one inspired by word of a foreign devil in the hotel, or rather inspired by an overindulgence in Qingdao (Tsingtao) beer by the policemen on the night shift. In any case, I was left undisturbed for the rest of the night.
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