Andy and Sarah's Journal

Gallery: Cambodia

andylillicrap — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:55:00 GMT

Burma

andylillicrap — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:10:00 GMT

I've decided not to post my writing on Burma on the web for a range of reasons, but will happily send a copy if you're interested. Email me at

andylillicrap@hotmail.com

be warned - it's 19 pages......

Gallery: Burma

andylillicrap — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:28:00 GMT

Thailand 1

andylillicrap — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:04:00 GMT

Thailand

Arrived 4/02/2009

Left 11/02/2009

Time	GMT + 7
Currency/Exchange rate	Baht (50 to the pound, down from 70 last time we were here and Bangkok feels much more expensive).
Language	Thai Hello - Sa wadi khap (men) Sa wadi kha (women) Thank you – Khap khun khap (men) Khap khun Khar (women).
Beer tried	Chang – strong (6.4%) ok taste. 3/5 Singha – funny taste 2/5 Tiger – 3/5
Food tried	Thai green curry – nice if not too hot! Good Indian food in Indian Area
People	As friendly as ever and more vibrant and less conservative than most other parts of SE Asia.
Best bit	Good food and less humid than Bali.
Worst bit	Expensive! Hang over after drinking Chang.

The flight from Bali to Bangkok takes about 4 hours, one of our better results at £30 each with Air Asia. A little bumpy in the air and one big downwards lurch that caused a few screams, surprisingly not from Sarah. The new terminal at Bangkok airport is huge and very impressive. Sadly nothing has improved regarding the taxis into the city and the sham continues. (We had to be very assertive to get a fare of 400 Baht, when we returned to the airport with a driver willing to use the meter it was just over 200 Baht). The airport extension to Bangkok’s sky train is just a few months away from opening, perhaps the taxi mafia will have to step in line at last.

We set off early on our first morning to join the queue at the Myanmar (Burma) embassy. Postings and advice on the internet described a fast track one day visa service. However our application coincided with refugees from Burma arriving by boat in Sumatra having been turned away and even attacked by Thai naval ships. 20 of the refugees had died on board the packed ships and the story was all over CNN and the BBC for several days. The authorities in Burma hate this sort of attention and instructions had clearly been sent to the embassy to closely monitor visa applications. At all times they deny access to journalists and NGO workers, but they pay special attention when events such as this occur. Despite our best efforts at pleading with the visa application manager we were told that our application could not be processed until the following Monday. Like all other applicants that day we had to complete additional paperwork regarding our professions. The nature of our work didn’t help things and we were asked if we were NGO workers. Having changed our flights (at great expense) we collected our visas on Monday with some relief that we had been admitted, although with all the difficulty when applying we had considered forgetting the idea of going to Burma.

While waiting for our visa we attended an appointment with Jeff at the British Embassy. Jeff talked us through the procedure for a prison visit and gave us the names of 2 British nationals in Bang prison. The level security at the embassy was impressive. The Thai guards search you at the gate and take any electrical items from you. Even then Jeff met us in a cubicle with what we assumed was bullet proof glass between us. On the wall behind him there were 2 panic buttons labelled “incident” and “bomb”.

We made our first prison visit on a Tuesday afternoon. Each block in the prison has 2 visit days per week and for the two men we were seeing it was Tuesday and Thursday. This is the only time they get to leave the block and both confirmed they are always pleased to have a visit. Arriving about 20 minutes before the visit you must submit a visit request form and show your ID. You then wait to be called and given a stamped visit form. With this you can cross the road and enter the prison. Your bag is handed in, you can keep a pen and notebook and your ID. Any thing you have brought for the prisoner is searched and taken from you to be passed onto the prisoner the next day. Entering the inner prison gate you handover a photocopy of your passport, walk into a courtyard and in the far corner hand in your prison visit slip. Then you wait for the prisoner to be called. The meeting takes place behind glass and bars on either side with a gap of about 2 meters between them. Conversation is via telephones.

I won’t go into any details about the 2 guys we have visited, but think they won’t mind if I share a little of how they described prison life. Up to 12 men share a cell. They sleep on the floor and share a small hole in the ground as a toilet, there is no privacy when using it. They are released from the cell at 6.30am each morning and put back in the cell at 3.30pm. When not in the cell they are in the “yard”. Each person has a locker of some kind in the yard where they can keep any personal items. In a group with other English speakers they have been able to buy some cement from the guards and have used it to make some barbells and dumbbells for weight training in the yard. Having money or cigarettes to trade is a vital part of survival in the prison. Each foreign inmate receives 2 phone cards a week and can use each to make a 5 minute call to the UK. They rely on financial support from relatives to buy any sort of comforts in the prison. A couple of months ago the prison block was attached to the water mains, before that the shower water was pumped straight from the river.

Both were uncomplaining about their physical accommodation saying that it now feels normal. However both had a lot to say about their legal situation. Much of their time appears to be spent exploring the law, their hopes are for a pardon from the Thai King or for changes in the law that would allow them to return to the UK with a reduced sentence. Like the vast majority of British prisoners they were convicted of drugs offences. If what they have said is true, then from my knowledge in the UK they might have received 6 months to 2 years for a first offence if in the UK. Instead they were sentenced to 20 and 50 (reduced to 42 after an amnesty – good will gesture from the King) years and are currently 6 and 10 years through those sentences. I guess we can each make our mind up about the level of sympathy we feel for them.

Whilst on remand awaiting trial for 27 months one of the 2 was in a cell with 70 others who did not speak English. They were all in hand and wrist chains and shared one hole as a toilet. This was his first experience of prison and although he didn’t say so, it must have been quite frightening. The two men we visited have found a way to survive prison life, their own friendship and their focus on achieving release one day is clearly a big part of this. They described other British inmates who have not been able to find ways to cope and who have become increasingly mentally unwell.

Our other challenge in Bangkok was to equip ourselves with enough US Dollars for our 4 week trip to Burma. There are no atms in Burma and all cash must be brought with you in dollars and then changed into local currency (Kyat) as you go. We amassed Thai Baht from the atms in Bangkok for several days and then went to a money changer to exchange them for pristine dollars (only perfect notes are accepted in Burma). Frustrating that the pound is at it’s lowest for years against all other currencies.

Indonesia

andylillicrap — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:18:00 GMT

Indonesia.

Arrived 6/01/2009

Left 4/02/2009

Time	GMT + 7 Sumatra/Java GMT + 8 Bali
Currency/Exchange rate	Rupiah Varied from 15,500 to 16,500 to the pound during our month.
Language	Bahasa Indonesia Bali has its own local dialect. Used by the majority Hindu population. Different linguistic patterns used by the speaker and person being spoken to are part of the caste system and are used to define people’s social position.
Beer tried	Anker – 3/5 Bali Bai – 2.5/5 Bintang - 4.5/5 very good.
Food tried	Lot’s of rice and noodle dishes. Curry. Fish and sea food – Red Snapper, Tuna, prawns of all sizes.
People	Sumatra – 98% Muslim. Outrage at the events in Gaza that coincided with our time there. Collecting money to help and young men pledging to go and fight. Everyone very friendly towards us though. Woken by at least 3 mosques at 4 am wherever you were. Appear to be no limits on how loud they can send out the call to prayer and broadcast sermons. One morning it lasted until 6am. Java – majority Muslim but more laid back than Sumatra. Jakarta quite cosmopolitan and huge blend of sky scrapers and slums. Mosques still audible throughout the day and at 4am in Jakarta and Yogyakarta but at least there seemed to be some degree of volume control. Bali - majority Hindu. People very friendly but also massive tourist industry and therefore a more established group looking to rip off tourists.
Best bit	Sumatra – entering Indonesia by sea and travelling 2 days to Bukittinggi felt like we were getting off the beaten track. Bali was very easy and restful especially in Sanur and Ubud. Meeting up with Steve in Jakarta for a few days.
Worst bit	Travel was very slow and always much longer than you were told it would be. Road surfaces were good (where we were – although apparently bad further north on Sumatra). But roads are narrow and full of traffic. Very slow trucks cause massive lines of vehicles doing about 15 miles an hour and resulting in dangerous overtaking. The intrusion of the broadcasts from the Mosques at 4 am and throughout the day was hard to accept.

Although cheaper to fly, we decided to travel by boat to Indonesia. Over 17,000 Islands make up Indonesia (4^th largest population in the world and biggest Muslim population of any country). Many of the islands are linked with each other and an array of other countries by an amazing number of ferry boats. Safety records for ferries throughout this region are poor and a ferry sank en route to Sulawesi while we were in Indonesia with over 200 drowning as a result. Our own ferry was pretty modern, looking something like a big speedboat. The brightly coloured outside wasn’t matched by the interior which was very tatty. Customs and immigration were very small scale and quick on exiting Malaysia and we were on board soon after 9am. We sat for about an hour before the boat finally set off. There was no safety briefing, although there were some life jackets dotted around the boat. We were on the highest deck and there was an open door to an outside area and this made us feel we would have some chance if the boat rolled over. The 2 hour journey was more like 3 hours but Sumatra is 1 hour behind Malaysia and this helped us a little.

The port of Dumai is mainly in existence for the export of oil. Compared to our usual entry to a new country via an airport this was a chaotic and unsettling experience. Unlike everyone else, we and 2 other western foreigners on the boat had not been able to complete the immigration process on board. On arrival we were taken to an area next to the immigration office. This was a non secure area, we could have walked out of the open doors if we didn’t need an official entry visa. This also meant that various bus touts, taxi drivers and money changers had free access to us while we waited to officially enter the country. We were summoned into an office to pay our visa entry fee by a woman who spoke very good English but wasn’t wearing any official uniform. She asked for an outrageous amount of Malay Ringgit and then Indonesian Rupia. When she finally accepted that we had none of either she handed over official receipts for the 25 US dollars each that we knew to be the correct amount. We were then brought into the immigration office and our visas were issued fairly quickly. By now all other passengers had left the terminal but this didn’t stop the customs officers calling us over to look through our bags. They wanted to see all the medication we had with us and copies of any prescriptions to see that the names matched. Finally through the terminal building we now had to decide which of the various touts to believe. Each had a wildly different version of how far the bus station was and how long it would take to reach Bukittinggi our next destination.

Having settled on a taxi driver we stopped at a bank to take out some Rupia. Unknown to me the driver reversed into the shade while I queued for the atm. Unsure whether or not Sarah had been abducted I decided there was nothing I could do about it until I had some money. With our card refused by the atm I was talking to some very worried locals about the kidnap of my wife when I spotted the taxi in its new position. Sarah and the driver were in the middle of an Indonesian lesson and unaware of my concerns. We had success at the third atm and headed to the bus station with 2.4 million Rupia (£150).

Bus stations in Sumatra were all as follows. At some, presumably more prosperous time, a new bus station was built outside of the town or city that it served. These impressive buildings are home to a few tired looking buses, most of which are being repaired in some way. As you arrive at the bus station a swarm of people gather round you demanding to know where you are going. Occasionally it is possible to get through this swarm and to find ticket offices for the bus companies based at the bus station. However the role of the people sitting there is the same as that of those without offices, to sell you a bus ticket for as much money as they can. Luckily bus travel in Indonesia is very cheap and though you never get the same price as locals the fare is still incredibly low. An 8 hour bus journey might cost £3. Having been bought by one of the touts you are escorted to your bus and then sold on to the driver or conductor (young boy who collects fares and hangs out the door shouting for new passengers). We only once had an actual ticket, although no one asked to see it. At some random time the driver will decide it’s time to leave. Any enquiry about how long the journey will take is met with a wide grin and no answer or some wild estimation, for example “maybe 1 more hour” would usually mean at least 4 more hours.

In Melaka we had been told that it would take 6 hours by bus to reach Bukittinggi from Dumai. It was now clear that this journey would take at least 14 hours. We decided to settle for the half way town of Pekanbaru. Once the bus set off we were finally able to relax a little. A few “hellos” on the bus soon broke the ice and we enjoyed a good atmosphere and some stunning scenery. It was the wet season in much of Indonesia and Sumatra was incredibly lush and green. Deep jungle stretched as far as we could see for much of the journey. Much of the road side was habituated, with the advantage of the road for transport creating a strange everlasting village just one house deep on either side of the road but rarely stretching any deeper into the jungle. Sumatra felt much poorer than Malaysia. From the poor roads and rough feel of Dumai to the simple wicker or wooden houses along the road side and much older and more battered vehicles on the road. It was soon possible to see why wild Tigers still exist in Sumatra in such vast areas of unspoilt jungle.

Pekanbaru is the centre of oil in Sumatra and the road runs alongside an oil pipeline all the way to Dumai where it is pumped onto ships for export. It is probably for this reason that the road is in such good condition, potholes are quite rare and the whole distance is paved. (We heard from others that this is not the case on roads heading north). The road, like all we experienced in Indonesia was very narrow, buses or trucks pass each other very closely. Indonesia gives the impression of having a very high number of vehicles, but it is probably more accurate to say that there are just very few roads to drive them on. Every road in Indonesia is basically a queue of traffic in either direction all moving at the speed of the slowest vehicle, often an ox cart carrying local produce to market. This makes the average speed about 15 miles an hour for any journey. Although not aggressive in their driving all drivers take any opportunity to over take anything in front of them going slower than their own vehicle is capable of going. Any bus or truck overtaking requires the whole of the other side of the road, any motorbike or bicycle coming the other way is just expected to get out of the way. As with so many places in Asia no one likes to use their lights at night. Many towns and villages display car wrecks on concrete pedestals next to the road to act as reminders to drive carefully.

The helpful driver and conductor seemed confused at our choice of hotel in Pekanbaru but with limited common language we couldn’t work out why. We were confused when they dropped us by the roadside outside of town in the dark. Of course, since our ancient second hand guide book was written a new bus station had been built outside of town. We discovered this on arrival at the hotel next to the derelict old bus station in a now very run down part of town. The hotel was at the lower end of our desirable comfort spectrum and a short stroll round the local area only gained us some Ritz crackers. My goal of a cold beer was stumped by the fact that we were in a Muslim area.

We reached the new bus station the next morning in a shared micro, disco van (called an opelet) – common throughout Indonesia. The base speaker under the bench seat was flapping my trouser legs. The bus journey unfolded much like the previous day, although having sat in the bus at the bus station waiting for departure and then crawled through town picking up more passengers the bus then went for 5 minutes before stopping at the company depot where the drivers had a leisurely breakfast and a bald tyre on the bus was swapped for another bald one. We had good company on the bus and people enjoyed having their picture taken and seeing it on the camera screen, this appeared to still be quite a novelty. Also for the first time on our trip not everyone had a mobile phone. It took a while to realise what was missing, but the absence of constant ring tones was quite nice. Starting to tire from 2 days travel in the afternoon we were a little frustrated to not be able to gain any idea how much further we had to go. We arrived in Bukittinggi at 4.30pm, much relieved despite pouring rain to welcome us.

Common throughout Indonesia is for young men to jump on the bus at various times and sing a song or two whilst playing their guitar. After a quick whip round they then jump off and wait for the next bus. This was usually quite welcome (apart from one or two terrible voices) and most people gave a few pence.

Also very common whilst we were in Sumatra were people coming on the bus or villagers stopping the bus with simple blockades and holding collection boxes to the windows. We soon learnt this was to gather money to send to Gaza – the Israelis had been bombing Gaza for over a week at this time and there was immense anger at this throughout Sumatra. It was said to us that many young men would travel to Gaza to fight the Israelis if they could gain travel permits. It was certainly interesting to see the impact the war was having in a mainly moderate Muslim country and how funds are raised in support of Gaza. Whilst everyone told us the money would go to buy food and medicine the route by which it would get to Gaza was very unclear and we could only assume that some of this money also plays a role in the arming of Hamas.

Bukittinggi is 930m above sea level and in the evenings at least, offers some rest from the intense heat of Sumatra. Unable to get our bearings in the rain we sat in a café when we arrived and drank local sweet tea. The helpful staff couldn’t make sense of our map and eventually the 2 men at the next table came over and helped us. In the end they drove us to the hotel we were looking for. All they asked for in exchange was that we tell people that Indonesia is a good place and that it is safe to visit. It seems Indonesia has been hit hard by a series of unlucky events and that tourism has been struggling for many years. (9/11, Sunami, Bali Bomb, fighting in the north, earthquakes). In Sumatra we often experienced a sense of desperation with people clamouring to earn even a few pence.

On our first night in Bukittinggi we went to a traditional music and dance show. Centred around a really skilful musician who played a set of copper kettles with a sound like steel drums from the Caribbean. Sadly the performers outnumbered the audience. I was invited on stage to bang a big drum to open the show and by the end all of the audience was on stage dancing. Despite some cringing, it was really good music.

The next day we decided we could cope with another hour on a bus to cover the 38km to lake Maninjau. Having been woken at 4am by the nearby mosque and then kept awake by a lengthy sermon we hoped the lake might be a little more peaceful. The bus stopped at the roadside a short distance outside Bukittinggi and we all sweated for several hours with no explanation. The 38km took 5hours, our third day on a bus and we were starting to get a little fed up.

Lake Maninjau is 17km long and 8km wide. It sits in the bottom of a collapsed volcano crater. From the crater rim down to the lakeside the road turns through 44 very tight switchbacks giving fantastic views. We stayed in a lakeside bungalow with stunning views and a really relaxed atmosphere. Sadly there was no swimming as there had been a release of some sort of sulphur gas from the bottom of the lake. Staff at the bungalows were cleaning up dead fish several times a day and nearby huge pits had been dug to bury the tonnes of dead fish from the 100’s of fish farms on the lake. Apparently it had been 7 years since this last happened and there were many more fish farms than the previous time. With no insurance many local people were facing ruin. One local man was sure that the lake was taking revenge on the over development of fish farming, the tonnes of fish food thrown into the water have caused significant changes to the ecosystem. We were woken again at 4am, but the local mosque didn’t have quite the volume of those in Bukittinggi and we were able to sleep again. Our bungalow was surrounded by paddy fields and rice plating was in full swing as it was the wet season. The flooded fields were home to 100’s of frogs and insects and the racket they made each night took some getting used to.

We spent a day back in Bukittinggi wondering around town. The old Dutch fort is just an empty shell and not too impressive. Walking round the backstreets was fun and local kids loved having their picture taken before it threw it down. We weren’t sure if it was normal or whether the Mosques were doing overtime because of the Gaza situation. But most of the day all the Mosques were blaring out sermons from their loud speakers. Maybe people get used to this but for us the level of intrusion was too much and despite the friendly people we were meeting we were happy to get out of Bukinttinggi.

2 hours in a shared taxi brought us to the airport at Padang (capital of Sumatra). Even inside the airport there was a very loud call to prayer over the public address system at 4pm. Interestingly, no one at the airport took any notice what so ever. Also the women working at the airport were also much less conservative in their dress than those we had so far experienced in Sumatra, with very few having their heads covered.

A one hour flight brought us to Jakarta. As we came into land in the dark we could see the vastness of the city lit up below us. The heaviest rain for several years had caused flooding in some areas. The airport bus into town saved us a few pounds on the cost of a taxi, but we felt a little anxious as the packed bus made its way through a few dark and dodgy looking neighbourhoods dropping people off as we went. From the end terminal a short tuck tuck ride dropped us at the Ibis for a few nights of luxury!

Mr Jackson of the BBC had arrived at the hotel a few hours earlier having flown in from London. The area round the hotel had plenty of restaurants and was safe enough to walk around at night. Most of the restaurants closed at 9pm however, it seems that even in Jakarta there remains a rural influence in how people live.

We had several nights out with Steve including a fantastic (and expensive) meal at “The Face” restaurant as recommended by Steve’s BBC colleagues. On his day off we headed down to the port area to see the fleet of traditional wooden cargo ships. A local guy called Santun offered to be our guide and took us on board one of the ships. The wooden ships carry cargo between the smaller ports on the various islands leaving the bigger iron made ships to service the larger ports. The most common cargo seems to be cement at the moment. On average it takes 20 days to unload and reload the ships and then around 20 days at sea between ports. They use a combination of sails and engine power to propel the ships. The crew is 18 strong, mainly to cope with the loading/unloading. Most of the crew begin their career at 15 but some start as young as 12, usually as a cook. The pay is quite high at $300 a month, but the work is described as dangerous. Storms can come with no warning in this area, especially at this time of year (as seen just a few days before when a ferry carrying 250 people sank) and 3 of the wooden cargo ships had sunk already this year. The ships are still built by hand on the Island of Sulawesi using “Iron wood”, not sure what name we have for this.

Santun then took us around the workers village, a shanty town alongside the port where dock workers and local fishermen live with their families. Many of the ramshackle self made houses were flooded due to the heavy rainfall, but despite the squalor there was a vibrant and friendly atmosphere in the village and we were made to feel very welcome. One family of 6 living in a tiny room were particularly welcoming. Despite the imminent flooding of their home they were keen to meet us and thrilled to have their picture taken. When I first glanced into their doorway and saw a serious Muslim man fixing his fishing nets, I made assumptions about not being welcome. The photograph of him having just kissed his wife shows how wrong I was. The ownership of the land was unclear, however many of the houses or land they are built on are rented. The men of the village take it in turns to patrol the village at night in large groups. Santurn explained that an attempt had been made to burn the village down, probably so that the land can be cleared for development. A fire in such cramped and chaotic alleyways and dead ends would be a terrifying situation. Fresh water has to be carried into the village each day. Communal toilets drop into the surrounding water, which was lapping into all the alley ways and many homes due to the floods. Despite such hardships this was clearly a tight community and people were determined to continue living here. Not that there appears to be any viable alternative.

Santurn pointed to a large new hi rise development close by and explained that it is mostly Chinese people who have the money to live in such relative luxury. The success of Chinese people was becoming quite a theme of our journey through SE Asia.

In complete contrast to the village we headed to café Batavia, little changed from Dutch colonial times this swanky place gives a flavour of what life was like for the foreigners in those times. We enjoyed a delicious and expensive lunch, tinted with an edge of guilt having literally walked 15 minutes from the shanty town.

After a sad farewell to Steve we took the train to Yogyakarta. Our tickets for the executive coach were quite expensive at 230,000 rupias each (around £15). The leg room was good but the coach was very grubby. It was freezing cold with the air con on full and a TV at one end blasted out terrible Hollywood movies in English, with Indonesian subtitles that no one could have read as they were so small. We were delayed two an a half hours crawling through the flooded suburbs of Jakarta. It had really poured the night before and we wondered how the family we met in the shanty town were fairing. From the train we saw hundreds of miles of paddy fields, lush green with all the water around. Many of villages we saw looked beautiful. Well kept, with amazing flowers and trees and stunning backdrops. It must be hard to be forced to leave such places in search of better paid work and end up somewhere in the miles of slums we had seen as the train rolled out of Jakarta. All of the windows in our carriage were full of cracks and more were added as kids hurled rocks at the train while we passed through some of the villages. We were unsure whether this was just kids being kids or the result of some animosity between country and city people.

Yogyakarta is something of a traveller’s haven. A number of excellent cafes, restaurants and hotels are European owned and managed. We stayed at a great place with just 13 rooms, a pool and afternoon tea served each day. A couple of the restaurants are very involved with supporting local community and village projects and played a big part in helping people get back on their feet after the 2006 earthquake.

Yogyakarta is also the base for visiting 2 of Java’s most impressive sites, The Prambanan temple complex and Borobudur. Both were constructed in the 9^th Century, Borobudur about 50 years before Prambanan. Just a few kilometres from Yogyakarta, Prambanan encompasses 50 temples, the largest is the Shiva temple at 47 metres. Reconstruction was carried out in 1937, the current scaffolding is for the ongoing repairs after the 2006 earthquake. The more impressive Borobudour temple is 42km outside Yogyakarta, $25 million was spent on reconstruction and work continues on further repairs following 2006. It’s an impressive and unusual site and well worth the effort. For us though neither site matches the temples of Angkor in Cambodia for sheer size and beauty.

Like many other SE Asian countries, Indonesia has it’s own version of the cycle ricksaw, here they are called a Becak. Whilst this is a genuine and necessary form of transport used by the locals, many of the drivers like to hang out in tourist areas where they hope they might make more money. This leads to the usual scenario of an excess of drivers hassling tourists constantly for business. Most rent their Becak and make around a dollar a day.

Our Becak tour of Yogyakarta took in the Sultans Palace known as the Kraton. The familiar scenario of colonialism ending feudal power in SE Asian countries also applied in Indonesia. The Sultans each ruled over an area of the country and were mostly kept on as figure heads and representatives. Many enjoyed continued wealth and foreign education for their families if they formed sound relationships with the upper classes of their colonial masters. Independence left most Sultans in difficult positions. Those deemed a political threat could be arrested and many had to find ways to work alongside the new regime to maintain their wealth and land ownership. Cambodia and Thailand each have a King who remained powerful and influential enough to be taken seriously by all those looking to influence the country’s future. Perhaps in Indonesia with a number of Sultans rather than one king, none of the Sultans had quite enough power individually to challenge the succession of corrupt governments.

The current Sultan in Yogyakarta is number 10. He has 2500 people under his employment, but no one could tell us how he affords to pay them all! (probably from land ownership). His father, number 9, is something of a legend as he was the most outspoken amongst the Sultans. He publicly challenged the government about the levels of corruption in the country at significant risk to himself. Perhaps it was his level of popularity that kept him safe. A photograph amongst the exhibits in the Kraton shows a meeting between number 9 and the Prime Minister, where it is said number 9 was warned to keep his mouth shut or bear the consequences. Our guide at the Kraton was one of the palace guards, replete with uniform and impressive dagger. He was the most outspoken critic of the government we had so far met in Indonesia. He was very patriotic and immensely frustrated that the huge wealth of Indonesia was being stolen by a small number of people. Sadly he held no hope for change.

That evening we went to an excellent performance of the Ramayana. We sat next to an American couple, she was 6 feet 3 and he was 6 feet 8. After the performance Ravana “the demon king “, at 5 feet 4, didn’t look quite so scary standing next to the American guy for a photo!

After realising that we had left Sarah’s ipod in the pocket of trousers that went to the laundry we spent a stressful early morning trying to get it back. We had no luck, an ipod worth about $250 must have been too big a temptation for someone earning 1 or 2 dollars a day at the laundry. We just made it back to catch our minivan at 8.30am. After an hour and a quarter driving round to pick up more passengers we headed out of Yogyakarta. The road is the now familiar situation of long queues of traffic waiting to get past slow trucks or tractors. Our minivan was soon struggling and the air conditioning had to be turned off to prevent overheating. We arrived in Probolinggo 12 hours later, the driver was exhausted and the bus wasn’t in good enough shape for the climb up to Cemoro Lawang at 2300m. Both would be making the return journey early the next day. With a new van and driver we started the last leg of our journey, a 1 and a half hour climb up to the Cemoro Lawang village on the lip of the Tengger crater. The van blew a radiator hose half way up the climb, filling the inside with steam. At least it was nice and cool at this altitude while we waited for a replacement van. We walked over to the Bromo crater during the morning, sharing photos and football talk with an Indonesian family (this area is a very popular trip for Indonesians looking for a break from the heat). Sunset was beautiful and the following morning gave us our clearest views of the Tenggar crater and the Bromo volcano within it. The whole area is very fertile, lots of crops are grown on the ash covered slopes. The cooler climate is also ideal for many vegetables and flowers and together they make for beautiful views.

The air thickens and warms rapidly as you descend from the crater and we were soon sweating again. The express bus promised for 11am, finally arrived at 1.30pm much to the frustration of us and the others who had pre paid their tickets. After a couple of meal stops we reached Ketapang at 7.30pm. After a 20minute wait the bus boarded one of the 24hr ferries for the 30 minute crossing to Bali. Our ferry joined a queue for docking in Bali and it was 9.30pm local time (1 hr ahead off Java) before the bus set off for Denpasar. A quite reasonable road gave the bus plenty of overtaking chances which was a bit hairy in the dark. Everyone was very relieved to arrive at 12.30am after a very long journey (we had all been up at 3.30am to see the sunset or woken by others doing this). The local taxi mafia did their best to fray tired nerves with their price fixing and refusal to drop you anywhere useful (thus leaving you at the mercy of another driver who just happened to by nearby).

We spent a few nights in Kuta, the most developed area on Bali. Great for sunset, very busy, full of young Australians, tattoo parlours, pizza and surfing shops and quite a bit of hassle from shop keepers. The monument to those killed in the 2002 Bali bomb was very moving and is quite a focal point for foreigners and locals alike.

We moved on to the area of Sanur and checked into the Paneeda View resort. We had a very restful and relaxing 7 nights here in a fantastic bungalow. The 5 km promenade has many restaurants and we enjoyed excellent sea food each night usually sat on the beach. A sea snake casually came out of the sea and up the beach towards one restaurant we were sat at. The locals shared our surprise (and fear) at this and one of the waiters was given the unenviable task of ushering it back into the sea with a beach rake.

Bali has its own language in addition to the Bahasa Indonesian that everyone speaks. It is also a majority Hindu population (no mosques to wake us at 4am). A caste system is very much in force here and includes strict rules on the language that people at each social level can use to address each other. The service on Bali is excellent and the key to this maybe that although appearing subservient to their foreign customers many Balinese find them more polite, friendly and grateful for good service than the higher caste members of their own society, who treat them as lower beings.

It’s very hot and humid and we have rain most afternoons and some evenings as it is the wet season, but this doesn’t detract from our enjoyment of this area and we will definitely try to come back here. We befriended a local cat who came to see us on our veranda each night to eat the ham we took from breakfast for her. Like every female cat in SE Asia she was pregnant.

We were sad to leave Sanur, but couldn’t afford this level of luxury for too long. A traffic choked weekend and a return to cheaper accommodation gave us an initial poor impression of Ubud. But this gradually changed and we enjoyed the endless art shops, jewellery shops, organic and vegetarian restaurants and traditional massage. Another highlight was the excellent Botanical gardens. We also paid a visit to the Bali Animal Welfare Association (BAWA) and were only to happy to make a donation to a well run outfit who were doing something about the pitiful state the countless cats and dogs roaming Bali’s streets are in. They are very popular with the locals as the dog situation has improved dramatically in the one year they have been running.

We needed to send a parcel home taking our flight from Bali to make sure the things we had bought didn’t take us over the weight limit. The published prices for parcels to the UK had no meaning and the price started at double that listed. After refusing to pay and asking for the manager we negotiated a lower price, although still higher than the official price. It remains to be seen if our parcel will make it out of Ubud!

Malaysia

andylillicrap — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:16:00 GMT

Malaysia

Arrived 31/12/2008

Left 6/01/2009

Time	GMT + 8
Currency/Exchange rate	Ringgit (RM) 5 to the pound. (down from 7 when we were here 5 years ago and things are noticeably more expensive as a result).
Language	Bahasa Melayu (official language). Thank you Terima Kasih. Chinese – various dialects – although many Malay Chinese say English is their first language (in quite an elitist way). Tamil English
Beer tried	Tiger – 3/5 Various imported beers. Guinness very popular but expensive.
Food tried	Good curries in Kuala Lumpur from street vendors. Excellent Southern Indian Masala Dosa in little India. (KL)
People	KL still seems to have its impressive harmony between the various elements of the population. Chinese still top of the pile – they are the ones spending the money in the shopping malls and having the more highly paid jobs. The large size of the expat community and numbers of tourists was very noticeable after China. Last time we came here was after Thailand and so we were used to the idea of older western men with young Malay women. After 2 months in China it was much more noticeable .
Best bit	Good atmosphere for New Year’s eve. Good to already know our way around. Nice to have some more varied food after 2 months of rice and noodles. Fun in the hairdressers!
Worst bit	Much more expensive than last time we were here and a challenge to stay in budget.

Despite some heavy rain soon after we arrived in Kuala Lumpur the jump in temperature and humidity was very welcome after the cold weather in China during the last 2 months. Kuala Lumpur seemed very cosmopolitan after the Chinese cities we had been in and much more Western in terms of the shops, advertising and number of people speaking English. The streets and bars were packed for New Years Eve and there was a good atmosphere.

Our hotel was a familiar arrangement with a Chinese woman owning the business and running the reception and administration with her 2 young sons. The cooking and cleaning was done by an Indian Family who lived on site. The relationship between the 2 families appeared very comfortable, but the roles of each clearly defined their status. Having spent time in KL before it was nice not to have to spend time finding our way around although it took us an hour and a half wandering around little India to find the restaurant we had enjoyed so much last time. It was worth the effort for the great food and to discover that they have branches all over the world, including Croydon! Heavy rain each afternoon in KL felt quite strange after dry China, but did nothing to lower the temperatures. Throwing it down the morning we left and a 30minute walk to the bus station with our bags. The hotel owner gave us 2 old umbrella’s that she said she was due to throw out, very kind. The previous day we had given her some of the expensive green tea we were given in China and she had been very pleased.

After 2 days in KL we took the 2 and a half hour bus ride South to Melaka. Melaka is an interesting coastal city with a Portuguese Fort standing on a hill overlooking the city and the sea. The Dutch followed the Portuguese before the British controlled the sea port here from 1824. The China town area is set amongst many of the old colonial style buildings and has many nice cafes, restaurants and arts and crafts shops. Some of the best food was in the Indian and Malay restaurants and this was much cheaper than the more tourist focused places in Chinatown. Melaka was a comfortable and relaxing place to spend a few days although it had a more conservative feel than KL, perhaps due to the more prominent Muslim population.

Gallery: Indonesia

andylillicrap — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:29:00 GMT

China

andylillicrap — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:08:00 GMT

China

Time	GMT + 7
Currency/Exchange rate	Renminbi “the peoples money” 10 yuan to £1 (about 6 months ago it was 15 then the pound started it’s freefall). 1 yuan is worth 10 jiao 1 jiao is worth 10 fen – but this I worth so little it doesn’t really exist any more (we didn’t see any). Yuan is often called a kuai A Jiao is often called a mao.
Language	Mandarin – beautiful and fascinating characters but hard to learn. For example character for “man” as used on a toilet entrance is a square divided in to 4 this representing a paddy field with a shape of a strong arm underneath. Cantonese is spoken in southern areas and more in Hong Kong. In shanghai they have an accent that no one else can understand and the 50 or so ethnic minorities also have a range of languages. Mandarin is the common language that all Chinese speak to some level. Thank you – pronounced shey shey. Hello – knee how.
Beer tried	Tsingtao – 3/5 only 3% but probably the best of the universally weak Chinese beers. Snow beer – 2/5 cheap and cheerful (till the morning). Soon discovered several grades of Snow and the slightly more expensive ones were our favourite in China.
Food tried	Naxi sandwich – lovely. Dumplings - great. All sorts of rice All sorts of noodles. Aubergine – cooked in various styles Sticky rice cakes Excellent oranges and strawberries Shredded potato Egg and tomato Egg and onion And much more! The best places were hole in the wall places where everything is laid out and you pick what you want it’s the cooked in front of you in a hot wok. Everything on offer is freshly prepared that day – they won’t have it any other way. Fish or chicken is alive until ordered and other meat as fresh as possible. Although dried meats are seen hanging around everywhere.
People	Warm friendly and helpful. Attitude to life seems based in Confucianism, basically treat others as you like to be treated yourself. However family is everything and beyond their family they don’t appear to have a sense of responsibility for any one else. Perhaps this has been emphasised by communism where the rights of the individual are very much secondary to those of the majority, as demonstrated in the massive relocations for the 3 Gorges Dam. This is understood and accepted and is unlike Western culture where we have a much greater focus on the rights of the individual.
Best bit	Warm and friendly people. Terracotta Warriors. Beautiful scenery
Worst bit	Price of some of the attractions. Throat clearing and spitting – men and women all the time everywhere including restaurants, buses and trains. Smoke filled buses.

Emerging from Beijing Train station on warm and sunny afternoon we immediately started to feel relaxed, despite the usual stresses of finding our accommodation and carrying all our stuff. The plaza in front of the station was packed with people. There was a vibrancy that had been absent during our time in Mongolia. The hum of thousands of people talking and laughing was disarming and familiar. Perhaps in Mongolia people just didn’t hang around much because of the cold.

After showering we strode off to find Tiananmen square. We were immediately impressed by wide tree lined streets, immaculately clean and stuffed full of huge luxury hotels and office blocks. The closer we got to the square the more full of Chinese tourists the pavements became. They were usually in large groups following their flag bearing tour guide and often all wearing the same coloured base ball caps in case any of them got lost. Although unable to understand a word we immediately loved the bustle of these groups. Banter, shouting, laughing and a clearly very expressive language gave us an impression of real energy and enthusiasm.

Tiananmen square was a little underwhelming. Dominated by Mao’s huge Mausoleum it was hard to imagine the events that had taken place there previously. The thousands of tourists and modern Western cars choking the roads on all sides made it feel like any other large square in a modern city. We ambled around as the light started to fade and didn’t really notice the number of people starting to thin out. At 6pm we and a few other stragglers were subjected to impatient rants from the police through their patrol car mounted megaphones. As directed by the policemen on foot we exited through the most inconvenient exit and walked round the outside of the square to return to our starting point.

At the time of writing we have been in China for just over a month. We have just succeeded in extending our visa’s for another 30 days. Good news, as China is so vast and there is so much to see. To avoid slipping behind I’ll just put a summary of where we’ve been so far. I’ve kept some notes of our many thoughts and observations as we’ve gone along and will try to summarise these when we get a few free days somewhere warm. (We’re currently in Songpan, it’s minus 8 at night and there’s no heating in our room. But we’re luckier than those still living in tents in this area after the earthquake back in May).

7th November – arrive in Beijing at 2pm. Walk to Tiananmen square and have roast duck in restaurant. (£6.80 for whole duck – very good service).

8^th Nov – take metro to the Olympic site. Pay £5 each to go into the Birds Nest stadium. Very busy and according to our tickets we were 110 millionth or so visitors. Very impressive up close.

9^th Go to Sunday market. Very busy and good atmosphere. Full of nick knacks of every description, mostly aimed at Chinese rather than foreigners which is good. Visit Taoist temple and walk back through nice park.

10^th Join a tour from the hostel to go to the Great wall. 10km walk takes about 4 hours with all the photo stops. Both really impressed despite high expectations.

11^th spent day at the forbidden city. Home to generations of Chinese emperors from around 1400 to 1950’s. Very busy but well worth seeing. Ate at specialist dumpling place – really good, although Sarah got food poisoning.

12^th visit the drum and bell towers – they were used let people know what the time was from about 500 years ago (Ming Dynasty). Then caught the night train from Beijing west train station. Absolutely massive place and very chaotic. Thought we were early but most people already on train so luggage space all gone. Hard sleeper bed in stacks of 3 all open within the carriage. Each had our 2 bags with us so not much sleep.

13^th Arrive Pingyou 7.30am – ancient walled city. Very touristy (Chinese tourists) and quite expensive. (£12 each for a 2 day ticket to the major sites – most of which were a bit naff). Enjoyed a walk around the top of the walls – 6km, some good views into the traditional courtyards. Walk out of a café refusing to pay £3.50 for a pot of Jasmine tea when many local people earn just £100 a month. Start of the China tea crisis (full story later).

14^th finish off our 2 day ticket. Enjoyed the martial arts museum – couldn’t understand anything but no one around so got to play with swords and big spear things in the courtyard.

15^th spent the day with a local guy who is managing the restoration of a traditional courtyard. Showed us round the project and a few other hidden courtyards. Ate with him at a local roadside “tent” excellent food – about £2.70 for 4 of us, but freezing cold sitting outside.

16^th bus to Xian, 6hrs. Expressway very modern and not very busy. Xian huge city. First hostel noisy till early hrs so moved.

17^th Visit to the terracotta warriors, amazing. Also visited tomb of Emperor Jing Di . Equally impressive and even better designed as a museum.

18^th both have heavy colds – didn’t do much. Walked in local park in evening – full of older Chinese people taking their exercise. Park full of exercise machines.

19^th visit the Muslim quarter and enjoy great food from the street vendors. Meet local teacher and drink tea with her for an hour – bit bonkers but very interesting.

20^th Train to Wudang Shan 8hrs. Confirmed we were off the beaten track when there was no train platform and we had to jump the last 4 feet from the train. Stayed in a cheap local place. Not a single word of English but very friendly. Ate in a hole in the wall place round the corner. Best food so far especially noodles. Meal for £2 including tea and beer.

21^st Took bus and cable car to top of Wudang Shan mountain (1612m) and then walked down. Both still not 100% and the 3 hour walk down was quite tiring. Views from the top were good, would be fantastic on a less hazy day. (resisted the temptation to be carried down in a sedan chair – really steep – the porters that carry the chairs are unbelievable).

22^nd point and smile using our book not working here as not many people can read. Our poor pronunciation meant we were set to get on a bus to completely the wrong place. Luckily a woman we chatted to on the mountain arrived at the bus station to return to Beijing and informed us of our mistake. Crowded and knackered bus to Yichang took 5 hours (freewheeling at every opportunity added a couple of hours). Continued new found confidence with hole in the wall eating, excellent food again.

23^rd spent day in Yichang before boarding our cruise boat Victoria Star at 7pm for start of our 4 day Yangze river cruise. Our booking was through the manager of hostel in Xian. We hadn’t seen tickets and when the driver collected us and drove into the night in the wrong direction (we thought) we were both convinced that we were being taken off to be mugged (we had the balance of the cruise to pay in cash). Our relief at arriving at the boat meant we handed over the money without thinking. When we got on board there was no reservation for us and the driver had gone. After a fraught half an hour the Xian hostel manager put things straight and all was well.

24^th/25^th and 26^th cruise on the Yangze. The trip included the 3 Gorges Dam. 1.3 million people relocated and this may yet grow to 4 million as the new river banks are eroding faster than anticipated. However the Dam generates as much power as 18 Nuclear power stations. The Gorges are beautiful, but must have been even more so when the river level upstream of the dam was 100m lower.

27^th Cruise ended in Chongqing city – a massive city of 4 million crammed onto rolling hills overlooking the river. Survived the most chaotic bus station so far and caught a bus to Chengdu (5hours). From Russia with love was the movie on the bus with Chinese subtitles…..followed by Moonraker!

28^th Early morning trip to the Panda breeding centre. Had about an hour of just us and the Panda’s before 1000’s of noisy school kids arrived. Amazing to see so many Pandas up close especially 12 aged between 3 and 4 months in the “nursery”. They seem to be successful at breeding but not much luck with re introduction to the wild yet where numbers remain very low. They do seem to like giving Pandas as gifts to other countries though!Visited very active and interesting Buddhist temple and spent a few ours in the tea house there. Sunny and warm and a great place to spend time. Pay once and have your tea cup refilled all day from huge copper kettles being brought round the tables. Soon learnt that leaving your lid off means more water….even if it’s already full!

29^th Spent Saturday in the people’s park with much of the rest of Chengdu. Nice strolling – met some students and bought some pictures with their help from an old man. The tea house was packed but the staff made a fuss of us and got us a table. Drank tea and played chess for several hours before this forced a visit to the park toilets……let’s just say there’s not much privacy!

30^th Long walk through town – really enjoying sun and laid back atmosphere. Walked round the Tibetan area, lot’s of Monks begging for money which we couldn’t really understand. Yet another tea house – definitely liking the lifestyle here.

Sichuan province is known for spicy food and the restaurants left our lips burning most nights, but enjoyed some really good dishes.

1^st Dec - Bus to Leshan (2 hrs). Our visa expires on the 5^th and in most places an application to extend takes 5 working days. Leshan has a reputation for doing it in 24hrs. All goes well and we are told to return in the morning. Got a bit stuck trying to book into a hotel without passports, the receipt we had been given didn’t seem to convince them. Some other guests (Chinese) bullied the reception staff into letting us stay. Leshan has the largest Buddha in the world, carved into a cliff face. Spent the rest of the day walking and exploring the park around the Buddha. Visit our most “local” place yet for dinner and enjoy a very cheap but delicious meal whilst providing endless entertainment to the staff and other customers.

2^nd Dec, pick up Visa extensions. Have been granted a 30 day extension from the day of application and so will need to leave China on the 31^st December. Seems to be quite a lottery – Australians in particular are often given 60 days. The British and French are more tightly monitored. Probably due to our outspoken views about Tibet. Head back to Chengdu – make the decision not to go to Tibet. Would cost us £1500 to be there for 5 days and we would be accompanied by a “guide” at all times. There is very tight control over who goes there and who they have contact with – this has been in place since the riots last March. Hope to go there again in the future when we can travel more freely without Chinese control. Tried a Chinese massage, both somewhat bruised afterwards but does seem to break down any nodules along with everything else in your back.

3^rd Depart for Songpan on 6.30am bus, doesn’t leave till 7am and then breaks down twice before driver get’s it sorted. Usual scenario where officials count the numbers on the bus as it leaves the station and then the driver picks up extra fares all along the route – sometimes by the minivan load from touts. Presumably they can avoid some tax element of the ticket price paid by those who get on at the station. Journey to Songpan takes 11 hours. Used to take 7 but as it passes through a significant part of the area devastated by the earthquake in May this year the going is slow. There is a major diversion and many of the bridges that collapsed have been replaced with temporary ones. Piles of bricks are all over the road and lots of lorry’s are driving up and down as people are rebuilding their homes and lives. Some of the valleys are very steep and the landslides were huge, we had never seen anything like it. There are still thousands of temporary homes in use as the rebuilding goes on.

4^th Dec – People pleased to see tourists in Songpan as they have had a very difficult year with no one going there. Freezing at night (-9) and no one has any heating, shared a single bed and piled the blankets on. Window thick with ice in the morning from our breath. Used the thermos of hot water we were given to make tea and to fill empty coke bottles to be hot water bottles. Spent the day horse riding into the next valley and back. Really good and nice and warm from 10am till 5pm when the sun was in the valley. Temperature plummeted again once the sun had gone. Finished the day and last of the sun at the local tea house…..we thought 50p was cheap for bottomless tea but later learnt it should have been 20p.

5^th Dec – Walked for a couple of miles out of town in the morning and then caught the bus to Jiu Zhou Gou about 2 hours along icy but scenic roads. Whereas Songpan is a market town Jiu Zhou Gou is a resort town catering for the national park with the same name. As it was out of season the town felt like a deserted seaside town. The wealthy from Beijing and Chengdu fly in to the small airport nearby as a part of an organised tour. For us arriving at the local bus station we had some difficulty finding a hotel that was open. The one we found was empty and like all the hotels we stayed at all the windows were open (to avoid damp or to air the bad smelling drains – we aren’t sure). Needless to say it was freezing despite having a sort of warm air blower in the room.

6^th Jiu Zhou Gou national park, very beautiful but done in a very American style with concrete steps or wooden walkways everywhere you are allowed to go. All the interesting routes were closed off for the winter which meant that we could only take the shuttle buses from one stop to the next and then walk around for a short while before going to the next scenic spot by bus. This seemed to suite many of the Chinese who had all the latest walking gear but clearly no intention of actually walking anywhere. For us it was quite frustrating having the countryside given to us in such a controlling manner.

7^th Took the 7am bus back to Chengdu, again going up and over some huge passes en route. Pleased to be back in Chengdu with hot showers and relative warmth!

8^thSent parcel home, £25 for 6 kilograms. (3 months surface). Went to Carrefour (French supermarket) and enjoyed French bread, cheese and wine in the room. Cheese is almost unheard of in china and was very enjoyable for a change. Red wine was Chinese and wasn’t too bad!

9^th Flew to Lijiang, another tourist hot spot, but quite interesting for pottering about and eating some good local food.

10^th December – took a bus 2 hrs to the start of the trail for Tiger Leaping Gorge. Plans to Dam this gorge have apparently been shelved for the time being – good news as it is a fantastic 2 day work along the edge of the gorge. Enjoyed really good accommodation on the way and also the local Naxi food that was excellent. The Naxi (pronounced Nashi) people are one of china’s 50 or so ethnic minorities. They are unique in having a Matriarchal society, all the elders are women and can be seen socialising and hanging out around the town wearing their traditional gear. Apparently channel four filmed a documentary here a few years ago, will have to try and find a copy when we get home!

11^th completed the second days walking and then over did it a little on the Chinese whiskey and other local specialities.

12^th a very slow start to the day and then 3 hours back to Lijiang.

13^th walked up to the pagoda overlooking the town – had to pay an entry fee as with everything in China. Refused to go into the park (famous for it’s mountain views) because of £8 each entry fee. You can live very cheaply in China but many of the tourist attractions are expensive and sadly well beyond the reach of most Chinese (although in this case the park was free for locals).

14^th A long day – fly to Kunming and then on to Hangzhou with a short stop at Gianzhou. China Air very impressive. Arrive Hangzhou about 11pm and take bus into the city. Hangzhou is one of several cities of 4 to 5 million people within an hour or 2 of Shanghai. In the taxi to the hostel from the bus stop we passed Porsche, Ferrari and rolls Royce dealerships and countless posh restaurants. It’s a very nice area, with rolling hills, tree lined streets and a huge lake (West Lake) this is home, or second home, to many of China’s super rich. A certain irony as it was originally built as a summer playground for the emperors and their entourage before communism did away with all that privilege.

15^th The hostel was nice enough, but the staff were less friendly and helpful than we had become accustomed to in China. The hostel was also a bit out of the way. We were keen to experience the contrasts that modern china has to show, but we were quite quickly missing the less flashy and more down to earth parts of china we had been enjoying. We took a taxi to Lingyin Temple and after paying £3.50 each to enter the grounds discovered that each of three temples had a further charge. The grounds were nice enough and we decided we could cope without seeing another Buddhist temple. My feelings about Buddhist monks have become more mixed, in both Mongolia and Chine we saw fat monks driving posh cars (even new range rovers) around temples with steep entry charges. Yet in Chengdu the Tibetan monks had been begging for food. I’m not convinced that many Buddhist temples are offering much back to the communities they are based within and it’s almost out of superstition and tradition that people seem to keep contributing to their local temple.

16^th All the bikes at the hostel were broken, so much to Sarah’s relief our cycle round the lake turned into a walk. We found a cheap locals tea house on the lake side and had our best few hours in Hangzhou playing chess and chatting to the locals whilst eating sunflower seeds. The Chinese have mastered the art of squeezing the seed case and sucking the nut inside out, we were till a bit slow in comparison.

17^th Caught the express train into Shanghai. Very fast, clean and modern taking just 1 hr 20mins. On arrival we found out that the last express train back was at 8pm – too early we felt so booked seats on the slow train at 9.20pm. Enjoyed walking along the Bund – historic riverside area where many of the British building remain, good views from there of the ultra modern towers on the other side of the river. Walked through the old town, amazing street bustling with people and food stalls. All with 2 storey dilapidated buildings with a back drop of modern sky scrapers. I wonder how long this part of town will last with the desire to modernise everything. Shanghai has its share of tourists and foreigners working there, but it has nothing of the cosmopolitan flair and vibrancy that Hong Kong has. Good to have seen it but 1 day was enough. The slow train was packed to the rafters, although those in our seats readily moved when we got to them and we enjoyed chatting and banter with them and others until our stop.

18^th bus to Tunxi and then onto Tangkou. This is the starting place for walking up Huang Shan. Ended up in a 4 star hotel thanks to the Chinese on the bus who grouped us all together to increase out bargaining power. Ate with a couple from Beijing and tried our best to maintain chopstick etiquette. They didn’t seem too offended so we think we did ok. They were tea connoisseurs and after dismissing the restaurants tea invited us to share theirs. It was really good and for £300 for 500g it probably should be. We were horrified at the price but they assured us that 500g would last them several months and compared to our wine bill at home this didn’t seem so bad. They gave us a generous donation of tea leaves when we said goodbye the next day. We also learnt that although the green and white teas we had been drinking did have only a little caffeine in, they do contain another natural stimulant. The name for this didn’t have a translation that we understood, but we had wondered if there was a connection between the many hours we had spent in tea houses and some restless nights sleep.

19^th Cable car up the mountain, 8km circuit around the summits and then a 10km descent. A fantastic day with some stunning scenery. Good company with the Chinese couple and learnt a lot from them. (See later).

20^th local Bus back to Tunxi and then bus to Likeng village. Quite a small place built around several streams. On the schedule for Chinese tour groups but once they had passed through for the day it was lovely and peaceful. The 2 hours of sunshine we had on the balcony the afternoon we arrived soon evaporated and it was freezing. It snowed on the second night and we had no heating again. But it was lovely during the day and the place we stayed was really good with the owner, Shindi rustling up great food for us each night.

21^st/22^nd walking round the village and the surrounding fields. Shared the occasional heated seat with the locals – wooden seats with a metal tray holding hot coals in the bottom.

23^rd 13hrs 2 taxis and three buses. Likeng to Wuyuan to Jingdezhen to Nanchang to Changsha. Arrive about 9.30pm, pretty exhausted and stay in a pretty grim place near the bus station.

24^th No bus to Guilin till 3pm (although later realise we’re at the wrong bus station) and it take 8 hrs not the 6 we had read about. When we get on the bus it’s a sleeper bus – horrible and we’re right at the front. We endure Chinese techno music followed by a Bruce lee film that keeps jumping. All Chinese buses are smoky but this was the worst ever. Relieved to finally arrive at 11pm, but get dropped at the roadside not at a bus station (the bus was going elsewhere). Have to get angry with the taxi driver who was “waiting for us” before we luckily see our hotel and get him to stop. Get into the room with a couple of beers from the local shop just before Christmas day.

25^th -31^st – we had a couple of days in Guilin before taking the bus to Yangshuo and then on again to Xingping. A great little riverside town with great views from the hostel roof. The whole area is beautiful, the thousands of limestone hills with sheer cliffs and rivers running below are amazing. Yangshuo and Guilin are very touristy but we could have stayed here much longer despite the rainy weather.

China – thoughts and observations

Customs and Habits

Loud and strong throat clearing followed by spitting out the resulting phlegm is completely normal in China. Men and women of all ages are accomplished clearers and spitters. Some of the best technicians of the discipline savour a slow spit, dropping their prize around their feet. Others prefer a good head movement to project their gooey mess away from themselves. Buses provide spittoons in the aisles or plastic bags on the back of each seat. On the sleeper train we took from Beijing to Xian two of the men sharing the same area of the carriage as us spat onto the carpet throughout the night rather than walk to the sink at the end of the carriage. It’s fair to say that most Chinese people would also find this offensive. Spitting is much less common amongst younger people, especially in the cities. They are very in tune with Western fashions and seem to be aware that spitting everywhere is not the done thing. Air quality is generally very poor in China. Lots of cars, burning coal for cooking and heating and vast coal burning power stations make most of the cities very dirty and polluted. After a few days in China you develop some sympathy for the throat clearing. But the spitting everywhere never quite feels normal.

Queuing is not known in China. It was quite common to be talking to a receptionist at a hotel and for someone else to come up and to start talking to them as well, usually resulting in them getting served before you. If waiting for an ATM, you need to have your card out ready and ideally touching the back of the person in front. Otherwise it will be assumed you are not ready and people will stand in front of you. Apparently an attempt to introduce a ticket based queuing system in some of the banks was shelved because “local entrepreneurs” were taking all of the tickets and selling them to the highest bidder. This free for all approach is also applied on the roads. Mostly people go in the right direction, but push bikes and motorbikes often go the wrong way, or on the pavement and sometimes cars, buses and trucks will do the same. A small number of traffic lights have police cameras and drivers usually stop for these, but otherwise they are largely ignored. This applies to pedestrian crossings in many cities as well. In Beijing the American right turn at a red light rule is used. Except that the car making the turn has right of way over the pedestrian crossing on a green man.

Often in China it felt like ideas were copied from the West in order to look good or to give an impression of safety or good practice, but usually with rather obvious flaws. For example an impressive and expensive looking speed monitoring vehicle sitting by the side of the motorway with 4 or 5 policemen sitting next to it on deck chairs and very little going on. Presumably enforcing some kind of speed limit is to do with road safety and when they were actually working these policemen might pull over and fine drivers they found to be going too fast. The Mum, Dad and three young children on a motorbike together with no helmets on the motorway, that passed this police team at the same time we did, held no interest at all for them. Neither did the weaving and undertaking drivers who were carving everyone up.

In Beijing before you enter the underground system your bags have to go through an x-ray machine. This is manned by what looks like a school kid, in trainers and casual clothes who is either too bored to look at the screen or too busy saying hello to you to look at the screen. You and what you are wearing is not searched in any way. Bus stations also have x-ray machines. But if catching an early bus you are exempt as the people running the machine haven’t started work yet. It is very common to catch buses outside the bus station or along the route the bus is taking. That way the price can be negotiated directly with the driver and his conductor. This cuts out the bus company and also additional costs for the running of the bus station that are included in the official ticket price. Presumably in response to this, each bus station exit has a barrier and before a bus can exit a very official looking person in a uniform comes onto the bus and counts the passengers and ticket stubs before allowing the bus to leave. However as soon as the bus pulls out of the station it stops and takes on new passengers. On one occasion the official person got off the bus, we pulled forward and stopped half in and half out of the bus station with the barrier up, whilst several new passengers got on. Needless to say that their bags had not been through the x-ray machine!

The One child policy

This is still in force and parents face large fines and also a loss of future benefits if they have more than one child. The law is upheld much more strictly in urban areas than in the countryside where infant mortality is higher and a large family is still necessary to ensure your care in old age. Those more effectively engaged with the system (those in urban areas) are entitled to a pension and retirement age is 55. The expectation is that grandparents at this age will play an important part in raising their grandchildren allowing both parents to work. This is somewhat confirmed by the large numbers of grandparents waiting at the school gates each afternoon. If two single children marry then they are now permitted to have two children.

The one child rule has resulted in a significant imbalance in the genders, there are millions of missing girls (through a range of means) and the natural balance is out by around 3%.This phenomenon has become quite empowering to women, if you want a nice girlfriend you must treat her well as there are lot’s of other lonely men willing to take your place!

Tradition places the responsibility for the care of aging parents with their sons. However it is becoming more widely acknowledged that daughters are actually better at taking care of their parents (and parents in law). Many urbanites are now keen to have a daughter rather than a son. As elsewhere in the world girls also appear to be outperforming boys academically. Invariably in the places we stayed the girls would have excellent language skills and would therefore have the more interesting (and better paid?) roles working directly with tourists. The boys would have the more menial roles and when they did spend time talking to us their English was often much poorer and their outlook less mature.

Millions of only children who have lived through the last 2 decades of such rapid development seem to be almost lost at times. The internet in particular has opened up a world that their parents often know little about. Modern China with all its technology and bustle comes as second nature to this generation. But for many of their parents it has come so fast and so hard that many must still hanker after the quieter, simpler more isolated China of 20 years ago. Perhaps this is what the 60’s were like in Europe and the US. China has a generation of well educated and highly skilled young people who are being given a glimpse of a wider world. It remains to be seen whether the country can keep moving fast enough towards allowing them to live the lives they aspire to or whether unmet expectation will grow into civil unrest and confrontation.

Many of the recent graduates we met gave a sense of treading water, often in quite poorly paid jobs, but with an increasing awareness of their ability and skill in international terms they seem to be waiting for the day when the barriers come down and they have the freedom to fulfil their potential in the way they choose. Graduates all over the world go through similar difficulties making their first steps onto the career ladder, but China still controls its population much more firmly than countries in the west.

University in one of the smaller cities was described to us as follows:

“Everyone is woken at 6am by the loudspeakers throughout the campus. All students must go for a run. Everyone lives in a dormitory and this is shared with 5 others. At 7.15am all dormitory doors are locked and no one can return there until lectures are finished for the day. Lectures start at 7.30am. Teaching quality can be mixed and classes can be large. At 4pm everyone is involved in cleaning the classrooms and sweeping the grounds etc. this is strictly enforced by student monitors. Every class has a party member present. No one knows who they are, only that they are present. Their role is to report any inappropriate teaching or discussion in the class. In classes there is little or no discussion and few questions. Students listen and take notes or fall asleep. The heating is activated on a fixed date in November and turned off on a fixed date in April. It may be well below zero before the heating is turned on”.

Some of the people we met clearly came from rather more forward thinking Universities and had enjoyed a little more freedom to think and challenge. 30,000 people are employed by the authorities in china just to monitor the internet. Many pages are blocked or altered (The BBC website was allowed during the Olympics but banned again after the games, the World Service radio broadcast is blocked with static). Chat rooms are monitored. Young people love the chat rooms and find it a really useful way to share information about what is going on around the country. They also like to play spot the agent. Several people will be chatting together and a new person will join, they will start making pro party comments and generally singing the praises of the authorities in relation to whatever is being discussed. This was described as sometimes being quite good fun. A degree of teasing and winding up the agent is good sport. But there must also be the constant fear that if you overstep the mark too much then you could be traced and arrested. (Openly discussing politics in a negative manner in Beijing can still lead to your arrest. There are many plain clothes listeners in the city who undertake this work).

Christianity is booming in China. Apparently 40 million bibles are printed each year but this is not enough to keep up with demand. Soon, we were told, Christianity will be China’s biggest religion and China will have more Christians than any other country. We generally tried to avoid this subject as it was a sad and frustrating one. The opening up of China has allowed the more negative elements of Christianity to roam free. A young and rather lost generation that has been given a dictatorial education and isn’t equipped to question and challenge is easy prey for the likes of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Perhaps this is where China’s greatest challenge for the future lies. It will be a world power, simply by capacity and determination. But with the exception of a very few, China lacks innovators. They will always make it faster and cheaper than anywhere else, but they may rarely own the idea or the development.

Aside from the growth of Christianity China has been busy rebuilding many of the Buddhist temples and monasteries destroyed during the cultural revolution. Buddhism never really went away and remains important to many people. Some of the younger people we met described being less interested than their parents but acknowledge the part local temples play and participate in certain ceremonies or ancestor worship to please their parents.

The national psyche appears to be born out of a blend of Buddhism and Confucianism. Although around for a relatively short period Confucius appears to have laid down a moral code that the Chinese have adhered to ever since, despite the dictatorial regime, violent destruction of the cultural revolution and widespread corruption. As a people they are warm, gentle and caring. The attitude is largely do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Many countries have harsh penalties for crime, as does China, but this doesn’t prevent theft and harassment. The harassment from Touts in China was of the mildest kind and yes foreigners are robbed some times, but we felt far safer than just about anywhere else we have been.

Another more subtle aspect of Chinese culture was the expectation people have about their rights. We are familiar with the rights of the individual carrying great significance. This is much less the case in China. Perhaps it’s a result of one party communist rule or perhaps it comes more simply from being part of such a vast population. In Chinese society the needs of the majority override the needs (and “rights”) of the individual. This is demonstrated by laws such as the one child policy and projects such as the 3 Gorges Dam. 1.3 million people re located in the quest for energy. (The official line is that it was built for flood control and that the energy is a bonus – but this seems somewhat unfeasible). The number may yet rise to 4million as the new river banks are eroding faster than expected. The guides at the dam give a well polished ramble about how happy everyone is, how quickly everyone was moved and how everyone now has better housing than they had before. This is all too good to be true, some people are yet to be re housed and of course there were winners and losers in such a massive shuffle of the pack. The more skilful people able to bribe or use the system to their advantage no doubt came out on top and the vulnerable or less well educated got what they were given. Comparing this to the possibility of a new run way at Heathrow with 5 years of talking and 100’s of millions on legal fees, puts the event into some perspective. Is China’s ability to carry out such projects just down to fear and suppression or is there also another factor, some degree of acceptance that as the largest population on earth they have to cooperate to be successful? They are a hugely patriotic and proud nation and I suspect all of the factors come into play in many of their achievements.

One other strange aspect of life in China that we saw repeated in every town and city was the dentist. We could only assume that being seen in the dentist is a sign of wealth or status. The dentist chair would always be in a room with a full length window onto the pavement outside. Often there would be a screen showing a close up of the work being done, also facing the public on the pavement. Those waiting their turn with the Dentist would be in the same room and if the practice was a large one then there would be a row of Dentists’ chairs in the same room each with its own waiting chairs. Perhaps to build trust with their patients Dentists in China need to create a environment where there is nothing to hide? A trip to the Dentist in the UK for a Chinese person could be very frightening then, as they are led into a private room where anything could happen and no one would know!

Language

Those in Beijing consider themselves to speak the purist form of Mandarin. The type and pronunciation varies greatly around the country. Shanghai in particular has a very different Mandarin based dialect and people from Beijing and Shanghai find it very hard to understand each other. In more southern areas Cantonese is spoken (including Hong Kong), although most Cantonese speakers can also get by in Mandarin. There are also some 50 additional languages spoken by China’s minority ethnic groups. There is a huge divide between the City dwellers and rural people in China. This is seen in terms of wealth and lifestyle and also language. Rural people are said to speak a much rougher version of Mandarin and when they move to the cities in search of work it is one of the ways they are identified and looked down on. English is a standard part of studying at University and many people we met were very keen to practice with us. China has a rapidly growing middle class and it is not unforeseeable that English will become the standard language for them. This would give a common language for people throughout China as well as enabling communication with foreigners. It would probably also be an elitist language, separating the wealthy from the countryside people who they generally look down on as ignorant or backwards. Communication and business with the outside world also requires Chinese people to speak English. Not only do Chinese in different provinces find it difficult to understand each other, but Mandarin is a very difficult language for foreigners to learn. There are four tones and depending on which one is used, the meaning of a word can be dramatically different. These tones are very difficult to learn. As a written language Mandarin is certainly beautiful, but also quite impractical. It is said that you need to know several thousand characters in order to read a newspaper. The characters can be quite difficult to decipher. The symbol for “male” as you might see on a toilet door, is a square divided into 4 smaller equal squares. This represents a paddy field. A curved line comes down from the middle of the bottom of the big square bending to the left. This represents a strong arm. Together a paddy field and a strong arm make up the character meaning “male”. Characters are written from left to right, but there are no gaps between them. Direct translation into English is often very difficult as the characters are constructed from different elements to create an overall meaning, almost in a pictorial fashion. This is why, both in spoken form and written form (including many official signs) Chinese people speak such strange English.

Ancient Chinese is written top to bottom on a page, rather than across. The characters are also very different to modern day ones. Some Chinese people are very interested in studying these characters, rather like Latin or Greek in Europe.

Everyone in china appears to have a mobile phone and many young people in the cities also have laptops. These use western style keyboards. Each word is typed out using Pinyin, a system developed to translate the characters into the western alphabet so that foreigners could pronounce them. (for example most road signs have place names written in characters with their pinyin translation written underneath – with some practice at sounding out the pinyin, Chinese people can understand where you are trying to get to). As the word is typed in Pinyin on a computer or phone several options appear below in a drop down box. Each of these options is a Chinese character that could represent the word, phrase or meaning the person wants to use. The more of the word the person types in Pinyin the fewer possibilities are displayed, as soon as the desired character is available in the drop down box it can be selected and the next word/character started. Whilst this sounds rather clumsy most people are able to type or text with amazing speed. Those without the ability to write in Pinyin are not able to text or write on a computer. (usually a further divide between city and country people).

Food, Eating and Drinking

There are a lot of rules in formal Chinese dining, we didn’t do much formal eating but a couple of the customs we learnt about were as follows:

Eating out is very common and an invitation to eat together is equivalent to an invitation to go for a drink at home. Whoever makes the invitation to dine out is then expected to pay for the meal. However those invited out to eat must first make a show of offering to pay before allowing the host to pay. We saw this acted out a few times in restaurants and it was quite funny.

At very formal meals, usually linked to business of some kind, there will be a hierarchy at the table. No one can eat until the most important person starts to eat and as soon as he (usually always a he I’m afraid) stops eating everyone else must stop. This might be one of the reasons that people eat so fast in China.

A waiter will bring a menu and then stand by the table waiting for the order. Usually there is one menu and this is given to the host who then orders food for everyone. All dishes are communal. If there are more than two of you then there is usually a spinning surface on the table for all the dishes to be placed on. Each person has a bowl into which they load food from the various dishes on the table.

You pick up food from the communal dishes with your chopsticks. As these also go in your mouth it is considered polite to pick out individual pieces from the communal dishes and not to fish around. As novices we usually ended up picking up and dropping most of the contents in each dish before getting some into our own bowls. Our hosts would usually request a spoon for us, probably for their benefit as much as ours.

It is good form to pick up your own bowl and hold it close to your mouth. A shovelling motion with your chopsticks is then used to fill your mouth. Slurping noises are the sign of a good meal, noodles can be bitten in half so that the remainder falls back into your bowl. Over enthusiastic shovelling, resulting in food down your front and over the table is not good form, but is a frequent outcome for beginners.

Our favourite places to eat were small “hole in the wall” restaurants. Simple places with one side open to the street and a few plastic tables and chairs inside. At the front there would be the cook and a very hot Wok. Laid out next to them would be all the fresh produce they had bought and prepared that day. You indicate to the cook how many dishes you want and what combination of vegetables, eggs, meat that you want in each one. It is then cooked for you with a choice or soy or spicy sauces.

This is a very hygienic way to cook. Only produce bought and prepared that day will be on offer and meat is fresh or even still alive. Everything passes through the red hot wok and the oil within it before it is served to you. All of this takes place in front of you. We never had any ill effects after eating in these places and had our best meals in some. The most we would pay including a couple of beers would be £3 and that would often be something of a banquet.

One downside of cooking in this way is that each dish is prepared one by one and brought to the table as soon as it’s ready. Our trip was in winter and many hole in the wall places were freezing cold. This meant each dish had to be eaten quickly before it went cold. Steamed rice was usually always ready and sometimes free or just a few pence. But if you ordered fried rice it would often come at the end of the meal when you had eaten everything else, when ordering you had in mind that you would be mixing each dish with some rice.

The pot noodle rules in China. You can buy them everywhere and there is always boiling water on offer at the same place. This was great for me on many long bus journeys, but sadly for Sarah we never saw one vegetarian pot noodle amongst the 1000’s,

Dairy products don’t feature in the Chinese diet. Cheese and milk were only available in certain supermarkets (including the French chain Carrefour who seem to be doing rather well in China). When we could find it, cheese was very expensive and our treats would normally be the less outrageously expensive cheese triangles with French bread.

Tea

Tea to the Chinese is rather like wine to the French. It is intrinsic to the culture and way of life. Chinese tea is green, white or red. Black tea is available but is mostly for foreigners and not generally popular with Chinese. Loose leaves are used either in a cup, tea pot or most commonly in a sort of clear thermos flask that people carry with them throughout the day, topping up with hot water as they go. Tea prices vary massively and it is very hard to know if you are being ripped of as a tourist. Early on we walked out of a café where the price for a pot of tea was £3.50. Local people were earning less than £100 per month and this price seemed wrong. Later we did pay £5.00 for a pot of tea. We spent a couple of days walking on Huang Shan mountain with a couple from Beijing who were tea fanatics. We learnt that the quality of the tea depends on the year it was grown (weather that year), the place it came from – quality of plants, soil and climate and the age at which it was picked. The baby leaf green tea from Hangjou that they shared with us costs the equivalent of £300.00 for 500g. It was very nice! They claimed that 500g was enough for 6 months and when we considered our wine bill at home for 6 months this didn’t seem so expensive.

The equivalent of the pub in china is the tea house. Usually in gardens, parks or temple grounds, tea houses involve lots of tables and chairs and a kiosk where you pay for a china cup filled with your choice of tea leaves (usually £1 to £2 in the city, less in smaller towns). Sometimes you are also given a large thermos flask of hot water to refill your cups until you have enough or request another thermos. More fun was when the hot water came from big copper kettles carried round continually by the tea house porters. Cups come with a lid to keep the tea hot. Leaving your lid off means that you require a top up of hot water. We didn’t realise this on our first trip to the tea house and having left our lids off to let the tea cool down we had to have more water added in true Chinese style, even though the cups were full and the extra water spilt over the table! Particularly at weekends but pretty much any time the tea houses are lively and noisy places full of bustle. People come for hours at a time to relax, play Chinese chess, dominoes and cards and just to chat with family and friends. A good selection of nuts and fruit is also usually on offer. Common to most tea houses is an ear cleaning service. Men and women in white tunics carrying an array of pointed objects and long tweezers will “perform miracles on your ears”. We enjoyed several long afternoons in tea houses, playing chess and drinking gallons of tea especially in Chengdu. We found that after such days we didn’t sleep that well. Later our Beijing friends confirmed that green tea does contain some caffeine along with some other stimulants.

Alcohol is readily available throughout China. Beers tend to be a bit weaker than we are now used to, but Chinese whiskey and rice wine can be very strong. Groups of men tend to drink especially around business deals and rice wine appears to play an important part in weddings, certainly as gifts. But apart from that drinking is not really a big thing in China, the emphasis is very much on tea. Unlike in the UK where particularly at weekends most towns and cities are full of drunk, rowdy and often intimidating people, this element is not present at all in China. In all of the places we went to, we never once experienced any alcohol induced aggression or intimidating behaviour when out late at night.

Travel in China

China has a large network of International Youth Hostels. They are run like hotels. The accommodation is good quality and the staff are very helpful. Most are graduates in tourism and speak excellent English. They book your next train, plane or bus ticket (for a fee) and a room at the Youth Hostel in your destination. The staff from that Hostel will often meet you from the bus or train at the other end and take you to the hostel. The Hostels often have their own bar and restaurant selling pizza and burgers alongside Chinese dishes. This makes travel between major destinations in China very easy. Quite soon though you desire to talk to people other than bright young graduates keen to please and practice their English and you also wish to avoid the other travellers that you first said hello to 1500 miles away in another Youth Hostel.

At this stage people head off to smaller towns without Youth Hostels and life gets much harder. The big cities all have modern centres that appear much as any European city centre. The small places are invariably market style towns and are from a different era. Arriving at our first such town there was no station platform and we had to jump the last 4 feet onto the trackside. We soon discovered that no one spoke English and pointing and drawing pictures did not result in the successful acquisition of onward train tickets (even though our goal was to get back on the same train we had just got off but in 3 days time). Accommodation was basic, but clean and friendly. Food was excellent and very cheap, here the pointing was more successful. Climbing the well known mountain near the town we did meet an English speaker (from Beijing). Luckily she turned up at the bus station the next day moments before we boarded a bus to a town 5 hours in the wrong direction from our desired destination. The pronunciation of the two town names was a little similar and the army of helpers we had acquired at the bus station over a few hours had been a little surprised that two foreigners had wanted to go to such a small and remote place, but only too pleased to help us out. We learnt a lot from this first step away from the beaten track and made sure we were better prepared with pre written requests and directions for future forays.

These sorts of experiences did bring us into contact with ordinary people and we were always warmly welcomed. Smiled at, waved at and encouraged in such places. The lack of any common language was frustrating though as it would have fascinating to learn more about their views and feelings about China. We did visit some smaller towns and villages in this way and enjoyed it immensely. But this was still limited to where we could get ourselves using trains and buses and no language. In terms of the divide in china between urban people and countryside people we did not feel that we were able to really access and spend time with people in the countryside. Inaccessibility and a lack of communication make this very difficult. But in some of the smaller places we gained a sense of the simpler life, the reliance on the land to feed yourself, working communally to grow rice for sale into the market. Of the 2 lifestyles in modern china this was the one that was harder to learn about, but in many ways held much of the charm and peacefulness we associate with China.

News and Politics

China TV channel 9 has an English language news programme that we watched a number of times during our time there. The presentation is rather different to what we are familiar with. The limited foreign news is kept very factual and short, this was dominated by the US election and the economic slump during our stay. News about China is all good news. If something bad has happened then the news is about how well people are coping or how well the authorities have responded to the situation. During our trip we passed through the area of Sichuan province devastated by the earthquake in May 08. The government made a huge response to this disaster sending in 80,000 soldiers as part of the rescue effort. Some of the young soldiers died of exposure during their efforts to rescue those trapped and reopen roads to enable aid to reach the more remote areas. The local people are very proud of this heroism. The government continues to pour aid into the area and there is a massive rebuilding programme underway. The two untold parts of the story are the schools and the death toll. The BBC covered the school story at the time but local people were kept quiet on the subject. A number of people raised it with us. The earthquake happened during school time and in the 3 minutes it lasted all of the schools collapsed killing and injuring many children. The local authorities chose the cheapest contractor to build their schools who in turn cut corners to maximise his profits. The concrete wasn’t reinforced properly and readily fell apart when the earthquake ripped through. To date this story remains absent from national headlines and we can only assume that no investigation into these claims will ever take place.

We talked to many people throughout China about the earthquake. They were all very moved by what had happened and generally pleased with the level of response from the Party. Often people drew comparisons to the cyclone in Burma and the lack of response from the “government” there. One interesting theme that emerged in these conversations was that no one knew the death toll for the earthquake. People would say things like “we heard it was very bad, maybe 10,000 people died”. The answer varied hugely but was always significantly below the BBC estimate of around 86,000. Maybe it’s a cultural thing or perhaps just another example of controlling the bad news, but in western news the death toll is a key piece of information readily presented after any disaster.

During our time in China the trial began for those deemed responsible for the baby milk scandal. Mixing a cheaper substitute compound to save money the company sent out to market a toxic mix. Many babies were killed and seriously ill as a result. A rather large number of men from the company were on trial and could face the death penalty (often by shooting in China and your family are required to pay for the bullet). The trial was screened on TV and widely reported, the Party presumably keen for the people to see that justice will be done. There seems little doubt that someone will pay the ultimate price for the lethal baby milk fiasco.

We couldn’t help but reflect on the contrast to the collapsed schools in the earthquake zone. It seems that justice extends to private companies but not to anything connected to the Party system.

The lonely planet is the most popular travel guide in China and fairly essential in planning your movements around the country. Entering from Mongolia we had no problems crossing the border. Others we met had different experiences. The most challenging crossing people talked about was from Vietnam. Here Lonely Planet guides to China we sometimes confiscated. Others had to agree to the removal of half of the two page map of china inside the front cover. The cause of all this fuss? The map shows Taiwan as a separate country. Everyone we spoke to in china assured us that Taiwan is part of China and most were certain that all Taiwanese people want to rejoin China. The universities and TV broadcasts have clearly done an effective job in spreading this message as the answer never varied. We met two American students from California, both were very American but travelled regularly to Taiwan where many of their family still live. They explained that the majority of Taiwanese support the current government in their position of remaining independent (of course this is what America wants and the propaganda machine in Taiwan is funded by them to support independence). However the opposition party, which has a significant minority, is in favour of re joining China. The greatest fear has come from the observations of Hong Kong, where although the economy has boomed since the handover, people have seen many of their liberties stripped away.

The other political hot potato in China is Tibet. As with Taiwan, the powers that be have established a fairly consistent view throughout China. This is that Tibet is part of China and that the Dalai Lama is an evil man. The most rounded answer we got was that politics and religion should be separate and therefore the Dalai Lama should not aspire to be the leader of Tibet. No one had any suggestion to make that Tibet was anything other than part of China, even a couple from Beijing who were by far the most outspoken critics of the regime did not appear to entertain any idea that Tibet should be independent in any way. We were very keen to visit Tibet and one of our hopes was to gain some impression of how the Tibetans feel about the situation and what their hopes for the future are. However since the riots in March 08 and with this March marking the 50^th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s departure, the Chinese have clamped down firmly on travel within the massive region. For many years you have needed both a special permit and to be part of an official tour. However on arrival you could leave your tour and do your own thing for the duration of your permit, usually 28 days. Sadly the situation now is that you must be accompanied by your tour guide at all times and you cannot get a permit without being signed up for a tour. For us this meant a price of £1500 to travel to Lhasa by train for 2 days, spend 5 days in Lhasa and the surrounding area and then fly out. We decided to wait for a future time when hopefully we can spend a longer period in Tibet and when we can travel independently without a guide to monitor and dictate to us. We were sad to make this decision and can only wonder how few people are making the trip to Tibet now and how limited their access to local people must be. The Tibetans must be feeling the affects of this clamp down both in terms of reduced income from tourism and isolation from others in the world interested in their plight. Of course there are no travel restrictions on Chinese nationals going to Tibet and this is an increasingly popular option for China’s millions of internal tourists especially since the train line was finished all the way from Beijing to Lhasa.

I’m unsure what conclusion to draw about the Dalai Lama. Does he represent a ruling elite who previously enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle whilst their subjects struggled to feed themselves? Whilst he represents many of the Tibetan people he does not represent them all. It is a vast region with many diverse people and as a leader it would be hard to see him as a democratic one. We will never know whether Tibet would have become an isolated, royalist dictatorship along the lines of modern day Bhutan or whether the Dalai Lama acting as a spiritual leader rather than political one, would have been the person to steer the country towards unity and democracy. Most of Asia seems to have had limited success in this area since the colonialists departed in the post war years leaving a melting pot of radicals, royal families and dictators feigning democracy.

Mongolia

andylillicrap — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:06:00 GMT

ongolia

Time	GMT + 7
Currency/Exchange rate	Togrog/Tugrik (pronounced “two greek”) rate varied from about 1850 to 1950 to the pound while we were there. Notes as low as 10 Tugrik. No coins. Change was a problem with 20,000 notes being the usual note from the atm.
Language	Mongolian – Cyrillic alphabet like Russian but with some different letters.
Beer tried	Chinggis – 4/5
Food tried	Found an excellent vegetarian restaurant run by a Buddhist and then went on a tour with them and so avoided the meat and more meat diet. Did try curd, mare’s milk with the nomadic families we stayed with. The milk was ok – it’s served hot with added salt. The curd was not so nice, but it was rude not to accept.
People	People generally quite shy, but easy going. Many educated Mongolians appear to have spent time abroad in Japan, Korea, China, Czech Republic, Russia or India. Ulan Batar big busy city, lot’s of talk of bag snatchers/pick pockets. Out in the country side people very relaxed and friendly.
Best bit	7 day tour out to stay with Nomadic families, white lake was really good-stayed 2 nights there and played cards with the kids of the family, chopped wood and milked yaks..
Worst bit	Arriving at 7.30am and taxi driver taking us to wrong place. Hotel tout trying to rip us off and then having to wander off with big rucksacks to find a place to stay.

Arrived 19^th October at 7.30am. A short night’s sleep after the border crossing. The train crew woke us at 6.30am to make sure we were ready and to give themselves a chance of replacing the sheets in the cabin for those getting on the train. Other passengers were promptly driven away by cars from the hotels they had pre booked. We soon regretted our decision to go it alone when our taxi took us to a different guest house to the one he agreed to take us to. This left us at the mercy of a tout for the guest house we had arrived at who tried to persuade us we owed the driver 30,000 Tugrik rather than the 2000 we had agreed on back at the station. (We had changed our last few roubles to Tugrik with some dodgy money changers who had come round the train at the border. Needless to say their rate was about 50% of the true value). Tired, cold and lost with just a simple map we ended up in a business hotel in a much swankier room than we had planned. The $65 rate came down to $45 and in the end we stayed there for the duration….not yet quite ready to lower our standards to those demanded by our budget.

After a few hours sleep we set off to explore Ulan Bator. The immediate impression was quite bleak. The roads were full of posh cars and 4x4’s but there were a lot of clearly very poor people walking around too, including street kids. The pavements are rough and uneven and there are frequently big holes and missing man hole covers to catch out the unwary. The car is very much king with no quarter given to pedestrians, even on marked crossings. Crossing the busy roads needs the confidence to walk into the traffic and force cars to stop. We soon learnt to do this with a group of others whenever possible. The impression we had that was later confirmed by those we met, was that the free market economy along with foreign aid was enabling a minority to become very rich. The majority of the population face life somewhere around the recognised poverty line of $100 per month. Although we later learnt that much of the construction work going on throughout UB is done by Chinese labourers who are willing to work for lower wages than the Mongolians. The construction work went on from very early in the morning to early hours of the next day. We saw big trucks pouring concrete at 1 or 2 in the morning in temperatures as low as -10. It did make us question how solid some of the taller concrete buildings are and whether the concrete just froze instead of setting.

The first few days passed quickly as we visited various tour companies and caught up with people we met on the train over some late nights drinking. We found the tour companies quite hard work. The concept of a customer wanting some information about what they want to buy from you seemed alien and we often left offices slightly bemused by the friendly and polite person we encountered who would tell us as little as possible about what they were offering, but clearly thought we should sign up straight away.

Expecting the worst for Sarah in a country famous for it’s meet eating we actually stumbled upon an excellent vegetarian restaurant on our first day and in the end we signed up for a fully catered tour with them. It is possible to catch local buses in Mongolia. These travel between the major towns but no further. To travel to the more beautiful areas and to reach some of the Nomadic people is only possible in 4 wheel drive vehicles. This and the challenge of quite a complex language and few English speakers outside of UB means that an organised tour is the only realistic way to see the more remote parts of Mongolia. We set off with our guide and cook Altai and our driver Ho So in his Russian Jeep. A bit like a camper van on steroids, it seemed very old fashioned to us but was only 6 years old. However it proved itself to be very capable as did Ho So who we soon learnt was a former Mongolian rally driving champion, we were only overtaken once on our 7 day trip and that was by a modern Landcruiser going up hill.

We called in at Ho So’s house before leaving UB. This immediately introduced us to another side of Mongolia that we hadn’t seen during our limited excursions around the centre. Ho So’s house was in the Ger district a vast area of fairly basic wooden houses and Ger’s surrounding the city and spread outwards and upwards onto the sides of the surrounding mountains. Each house or Ger has a small plot of land fenced off, there is a pit latrine in the corner furthest from the house and water is collected from communal taps usually at the end of each of the unpaved roads. Heating is from a stove that is also used for cooking. In UB coal is the fuel of choice for stoves. Along with the 2 coal burning power stations in the city the thousands of stoves pump out pollution.

The city traffic was congested and chaotic and required quite a bit of skill. However we soon found ourselves on a good tarmac road with almost no other traffic and an expanse of grassy snow covered plains and mountains in every direction. The tarmac lasted for about an hour and then the road became a dirt track. From what we could see only about 10% of the roads are paved. Many of the roads are under construction but there was very little activity and it looks like it will be some years yet before even the major towns are joined by decent roads. At times on our trip it seemed we were just driving randomly over mountains through the snow as any markings outlining the road were hidden under the white blanket.

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Our first destination was known as the sacred mountain and was about 4hours drive. We turned up unannounced to find the tourist Ger’s were closed for winter. A short conversation between our guide and a local family saw them leave their Ger so that we could stay there (they stayed with their neighbours, happily we were assured). When we asked it was confirmed that the toilet was “anywhere”. As with every Ger we entered we were immediately offered milk. This was served hot with added salt – but wasn’t too bad, good thing as it’s rude to refuse. We shared a single bed, which seems fairly standard for couples in Mongolia. The family’s guard dog kept us awake much of the night with his barking. Each home seems to have a dog. Despite never being allowed inside they seem happy enough, although the minus 15 Celsius we experienced is nothing compared to the minus 40 they will experience once winter really gets a hold. The Ger was nice and warm all night thanks to the hot stove fuelled by the dried dung stacked up outside for the winter.

The reason for all the barking in the night became apparent in the morning when our host family returned and informed us that a lamb had been taken in the night by wolves. This was a little sobering after we had joked about the possibility of wolves during our late evening stroll just a few hours earlier. The family didn’t seem too worried about and it seems that losing a few animals to wolves is quite normal. The man of the family told us of an unlucky family he knows who lost 180 animals to a pack of Wolves in one night. This seemed a little astonishing to us but we weren’t in any position to question it.

On day 2 we drove to “Flower city” a small town with a few brick buildings in the centre, a market and a large Ger district. We stayed with our guide’s cousins in the Ger district. The modest wooden house with one room and a kitchen was described to us as “city life”. The pit latrine in the corner of the plot was a bit frightening with a 6 foot drop into the pit and just 2 loose planks to balance on, only for the experienced once it went dark. The plan was for us to share the single living room with the family and our guide, but when the man of the house fell asleep watching TV and started snoring we insisted that we slept on the kitchen floor much to everyone’s amusement. Our lack of familiarity with living in such close proximity was further confirmed in the morning when our hosts came into the kitchen to prepare breakfast before the man of the house went off to his job at the bread factory. Although we filled all of the floor space they seemed quite happy to step over us and carry on as usual, of course we immediately got up and packed all our bedding away before awaiting our slot for the morning encounter with the long drop.

The plan to visit a remote monastery that had been restored after the Russians destroyed it (along with many others) had been abandoned the day before. Ho So had been chatting to local friends and the road was deemed to icy and dangerous even for his skills.

On day 3 we made the long drive to the white lake, the furthest point on our tour and a beautiful and remote area. All along the various routes we took in Mongolia were shrines consisting of piles of stones with a vertical pole on the top. Each would have numerous blue flags or strips of silk strewn all over it. They appear to be a hangover from previously well established shamanistic rituals. Shamanism and Buddhism appear to have co existed quite comfortably for 100’s of years. For good luck and safe passage you are supposed to walk around the shrine 3 times in a clockwise direction and then throw something onto the pile. However if you’re in a hurry you can just beep your horn three times as you pass. This was Ho So’ preferred technique and seemed generally more popular. On our way to the white Lake however we passed a particularly significant shrine built around an old tree, here we were left to walk round three times and make three wishes.

The superstitious theme continued when a Wolf ran across the road about 100m in front of the jeep. Because the Wolf’s direction was from our right to our left, this was described as running “into the pocket” (of a jacket or coat for instance) and is taken as a sign of very good fortune. Altai and Ho So explained that such occurrences are quite rare and they seemed genuinely excited by the incident, as were we, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. A couple of days later a fox crossed our path in the same way and whilst not as significant as a wolf it did further add to everyone’s excitement.

The White Lake is in a volcanic area and we clambered up one of 9 extinct volcanoes for a glimpse of the crater and surrounding panoramas before driving over the last pass and descending down to the lake. The tourist Gers had been taken down for the winter, but a number of nomadic families had moved to the area for the winter and the first family Altai approached readily gave up their Ger for the next 2 nights. In addition to Yak’s milk our welcome included continual offers from a huge bowl of dried curd. None too pleasant we politely chewed on small bites until opportunity arose to slip the rest into our pockets to be disposed of later.

Every where we stayed outside of UB, the night time sky was amazing. But at the White lake in particular the Milky Way was a valuable distraction from the frost bitten bottom that resulted during any night time answer to the call of nature. Slightly unnerving at such times was the sound of large Yaks moving around you in the darkness. Switching your head torch on would illuminate countless sets of eyes staring back at you. Sarah found this audience had an unhelpful affect on the completion of her performance.

We had the next day to explore the area as we wished. I picked out the largest of the nearby peaks and having made a detailed assessment of it’s scale, assured Sarah we could be at the top in about an hour. Of course the pebbles and small rocks on the route I chose turned into huge boulders when we finally got to them and the light dusting of snow near the top was a foot deep. 2 and a half hours to the top was worth it though as the views in every direction were fantastic.

Late in the afternoon we went horse riding for 2 hours. Mongolians take great pride in their horses and once we mastered the call of Chmoo Chmoo it was really enjoyable to ride such impressive animals. As the light faded we stayed warm by helping to chop wood for the fire and to milk the Yaks. We were definitely more skilled in chopping wood than milking, although I did get a steady flow on my second attempt. The warm slimy milk soon gets all over your hands and feels very strange! Milking is done every morning and evening, often going on after dark in plunging temperatures. The whole family is crucial to getting the job done. They really are very tough people. Their diet is largely milk and milk products that they make and meat. They don’t appear to grow any vegetables.

The kids of the family who’s Ger we were in played cards with Altei, Ho So and us until 10pm. Being able to communicate through Altei was great and they learnt our card games really fast, much faster than we picked up their games!

The next day was Monday and as the pick up truck arranged to take the kids to school the day before, hadn’t turned up, we set off with 6 extra passengers in our jeep. The kids go to school for a week at a time in the nearest “town”. Some stay with relatives, but the brother (8) and sister (12) that we had played cards with would be looking after themselves in the family’s small wooden dwelling in the towns Ger district. All the children had their food for the week, this included bags of raw meet, yogurt and curd. The tiny boy holding onto a big pot of yoghurt was under strict instructions from Ho So not to spill any as we bounced around on the obstacle course of a road.

We spent the night at some hot springs, one day before the last of the tourist Ger’s were taken down for winter. The so called summer Ger was much thinner than the real thing and we were freezing in the morning when the fire had gone out. The springs were a welcome chance to warm up and get clean (ish). Although after washing our hair we popped out to get water for Altai and within 10 minutes our hair had frozen. Sarah had hung her Bikini on the outside of the Ger to dry. Within 20 minutes it became a rigid pole!

Day 6 we headed to the former capital of Kaikorum to visit a semi restored Buddhist temple. Many of the relics were hidden in the mountains when the Russians started to destroy the temples. Most are now back in place and make an impressive collection, although security seems to rely on a few local women with big bunches of keys. This town is also the site where Chenggis Khan had his walled city at the height of his Empire. After a trip to the market where they sold jut about anything at unbelievably low prices (Nivea face wipes 35p a pack – Sarah pays £3.50 at home and this place is in the middle of no where with no decent road connecting it to any thing).

We then started the long drive back UB. We kept going after darkness fell and experienced the Mongolian technique of saving your full beam until someone is coming the over way, just to make sure they know you’re there. Once they’ve passed you return to dipped beam, there are no cats eyes and it’s very dark. Had we known this in advance we might have made a different wish at the special tree. We spent the night at a sort of truckers hotel. It was open despite not yet being finished. Our room was clean enough, but there were no curtains and all the rooms shared one sink at the bottom of the stairs just by the main entrance. There were five toilets, on the far side of the car park, but even the truckers seemed to favour the edges of the car park. The drunken owner seemed very excited about us staying and wandered into our room unannounced. We smiled and laughed at what seemed the right places and eventually he left again.

The next morning we took a diversion from the road to UB in order to visit the Hustain Nuruu nature reserve. The main goal of this reserve is the re introduction of the wild horse. The horse’s name in the west is Przewalski’s horse and in Mongolia the “takhi”. The takhi became extinct in the wild by 1969 due to hunting, desertification and cross breeding. The only surviving 160 or so horses were in Western Zoo’s. A breeding and reintroduction plan established by a Dutch organisation has enabled the tahki to be slowly brought back to Monglia. Survival rates were initially low as the horses were no longer accustomed to the harsh conditions in Mongolia. But things seem to be going well, the project is well funded and there seems to be a big team of well equipped wardens patrolling the reserve and making sure the horses are not hunted or stolen. Once we found a herd of takhi we were allowed to walk freely, our local guide stayed in the jeep. We walked up a hill side and got as close as we thought was appropriate and then stayed for about 45 minutes watching through binoculars and taking pictures. The chief Stallion of this herd eventually decided we had stayed long enough and snorted and stamped whilst staring at us. We took our cue to leave, but both agreed we could easily spend a week in the reserve, perhaps in spring or autumn. The scenery was lovely and the scope to wander freely and see all kinds of wild life was great.

We were very grateful to return the comforts of our hotel in UB. We had even greater appreciation of the luxuries of a modern bathroom, a world away from carrying water from lakes or taps several times each day.

We spent the nest few days exploring UB. The natural history museum had some impressive Dinasoar skeletons and a massive assortment of stuffed animals. The national museum was full of ancient Tankas and other Buddhist relics. The main square always had something interesting going on, usually some sort of trumpeting or celebrating by the government. We visited the rather run down palace of the last emperor of Mongolia and walked out to the view point marked with a monument celebrating Russian/Mongolian collaboration.

We met a couple of locals when we were playing chess in a bar, they were keen to play us and having beaten us both spent the rest of the evening chatting with us before paying for all the drinks. We met again a couple of days later for my birthday meal. Buya and Agy were involved in the construction industry, they owned a couple of diggers and trailers to transport them around. They dug foundations under contract to various other companies. They both spoke Russian, and Agy spoke excellent English whilst Buya spoke Japanese fluently. Just like our guide (and restaurant owner) Altei they seemed to have been through the Mongolian rite of passage in that they had plived abroad for a number of years. Returning home multilingual and with foreign contacts they were able to find ways to gain investors willing to be involved in launching a business.

We learnt about the riots that had followed the election results in July this year. The party’s headquarters were burnt down and 5 people were killed. The violence was sparked by widespread belief that the election results were rigged. No one seems to know any one that voted for the ruling party yet they stayed in power following the elections. Despite the protests no re election is planned and the mostly young students that were arrested at the time are currently being given long prison sentences. Agy assured us that prison in Mongolia is not somewhere you would want to experience.

We saw a number of street children in UB and we were keen to learn more about their situation if we could. We had read that people in the countryside still have very large families it is common for them to abandon children into the city in the hope that they will find some king of future. Others have escaped violent parents or relatives. UB has a Russian style central heating system that pipes communal hot water into many of the buildings. Survival for those on the streets appears to involves pulling off the man hole covers around the city and getting down into the underground pipe system in order to avoid freezing to death (winter nights range from minus 30 to minus 40C). Altei agreed that many NGO’s in UB are corrupt but recommended Lotus Children to us. Lotus Children was started by an Australian woman several years ago and Altei felt sure that she was a genuine person. We headed to a café in UB where Altei said funds were raised and more information would be available. In what we were finding to be typical Mongolian fashion there was no information on display at the café, however after clumsily repeating the words Lotus Children, the waitress did eventually dig out some leaflets. The project sounded interesting and the leaflet gave an address and some directions. We headed off on the local bus – heeding all the warnings about pick pockets in the crush of bodies. It was a bit difficult to differentiate between a different approach to personal space and feeling like you were being robbed, but we squeezed our way off at our destination with wallets intact.

A short walk through the Ger district and we were at the Lotus Children compound. We didn’t see anyone until we walked into one of the classrooms. We were ten greeted by a crowd of kids that we reckoned were about 4 or 5 years old. They quickly instructed us to take our shoes and coats off before climbing all other us, platting my hair, taking it in turns (sort of) to take pictures with our camera and generally running riot. The friendly and smiley teacher didn’t speak any English but didn’t seem at all concerned that we had literally just walked in off the street. Neither the teacher or the kids had seen the leaflet about the project before when we showed it to try to explain why we were there. But seeing the pictures of the building and some of their friends appeared to be very exciting. After 45 minutes of exhausting fun we were saved by the lunch bell. After saying our goodbyes we tried to make a donation, but the teacher flatly refused our several attempts to give her money. She pointed up the stairs ands aid “office”. But the office was locked and there was no one around. We were pleased to have visited but left a little sad at the apparent lack of organisation. In other countries we have visited similar projects that have set them selves up to be much more accessible to foreigners and have benefited from their time and money as a result. It seems that in Mongolia this more business like way of thinking is as yet limited to the construction industry. (Although even there the massive step from the Ger district to one of the 1000;s of new apartment blocks won’t be made by many and we just couldn’t work out who would be moving into all the new homes and office blocks that are being built).

We met the trans Mongolian train that stopped at Ulan Bator on the 6^th November at 7.30am and began the 30 hour journey to Beijing. This leg of the journey took us through some of the Gobi Desert, the area was dry and barren with some isolated towns dotted along the way that seemed to have built up around mines of one kind or another. We were happy to be leaving the freezing temperatures behind, but both agreed that we would be very keen to see more of Mongolia in the future. Probably in Spring or Autumn.

The Trans Mongolian Railway

andylillicrap — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:01:00 GMT

The Trans Mongolian Railway

We caught train number 4 which is a Chinese train with Chinese staff. Departure was Tuesday 14^th October 2008 at 9.35pm. Moscow time. Our cabin was a deluxe with 2 beds and a small armchair. We shared a shower room with the neighbouring cabin although the shower was a trickle at most. The sink was quite handy for washing our mugs and cups though. Each carriage had a toilet (ours actually had 2, but the crew kept one locked for their own use), hot water boiler (constant supply) and crew cabin. There was a restaurant car and also the chance to buy all sorts of food and snacks from people selling on the platforms as the train stopped en route. This was a little hit and miss as sometimes there was no one there and other times there would be people selling a wide range of things they had made themselves from boiled eggs to bread and cakes. Some stations just had a few small shops on the platform. The other variable was how long the train would actually stop for. The train crew would offer advice on this and usually get everyone back on board in good time. But it appeared to be up to the train driver when exactly we would leave. We had one occasion that saw us and other passengers running to jump on board the moving train. At many of the stops coal was taken on board each carriage to fuel the boilers for hot water and heating. We soon learnt that while the old coal truck trundled along the platform servicing each carriage, we were fairly safe to stretch our legs and buy supplies without danger of the train leaving.

Most importantly the various vendors kept us supplied with essential beer for the evening’s card games and a toga party on the third night. The vendors are not allowed to sell vodka on the platform, although it was occasionally offered surreptitiously from vendor’s hold alls. The half bottle of malt whiskey we brought from home and the better quality vodka disappeared in the first few days. A bit too much cheap vodka during the 3^rd night’s toga party meant that no one emerged before 1pm on the 4^th day. Food was mostly pot noodles, soups and porridge that could all be easily produced using the readily available boiling water.

Time zones were a little confusing. The timetable is written on Moscow time but we crossed 5 time zones by the time we reached Ulan Bator. We kept our alarm clock on Moscow time and kept our watches adjusted to local time. This enabled us to work out where we were most of the time. Although the journey to Ulan Bator spanned 6 days, it began at 9.35pm on the first day and ended at 7.30am on the last day. We also gained 5 hours on our departure time as the journey progressed through the time zones. All together this made the journey pass quite quickly. It was early in the morning on day 3 when the train descended from the Ural mountains, leaving Europe and entering Asia. Around 2100 km from Moscow this also marked the start of Siberia.

From the first day of the train journey the views through the window were of a very different Russia to what we had seen in Moscow and St Petersburg. We passed through vast wooded areas dotted with villages of small wooden houses. The towns and cities had an industrial feel, with wooden houses and unpaved road on the outskirts and large housing blocks in the centre. Some of these blocks looked like they had been modernised and others looked quite rundown.

Our book described the construction of the railway starting in 1891. Before the railway the only route across Siberia was on the post road, a rough and dangerous journey by horse and carriage. This was the route that the so called “exiles” followed on their slow march to the Siberian prisons. The discovery of massive salt, gold, silver and coal deposits in Siberia in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries meant that a work force was needed to mine these valuable resources. All sorts of petty crimes were punished by exile in order to feed the demand for labour. The exile system was abolished in 1900 only to be replaced just 30 years later by Stalin’s concentration camps, again a system to provide labour for construction and factories.

On the morning of day 5 we saw the sun rise over Lake Baikal. Said to be the world’s deepest lake (1637m) containing 20% of all the earths fresh water (approx 20,000 cubic kilometres). Half of the lake previously belonged to Mongolia but was “given” to Russia by the Mongolian communist party.

We arrived at the border area at about 9pm on day 5. The Russian border officers came on board in numbers and took everyone’s passports away. Then sniffer dogs were brought on, in our cabin the poor dog came no further than Sarah’s sandals that were on the floor near the door. Then the wait started. We had drunk a couple of beers whilst playing cards in the afternoon and this gave us the courage to go for a walk. We guessed the train wouldn’t go anywhere while our passports were gone. A short walk along an unpaved road outside the station took us to a small shop. The brusque women in the shop exchanged our remaining roubles for chocolate and crisps while we and other twitchy passengers listened out for the sound of a moving train. In fact it was a full 5 hours before the border control officers returned our passports and allowed the train to move on. The toilets were locked through the time that the train stood stationary. Frustratingly I missed the 10 minute window to use the toilet before we stopped again at the Mongolian border control. Again passports were taken away, but this time we were on our way in just 2 hours. The Mongolian customs officer was very smartly dressed in a grey suite and extremely polite as he asked us if we had any narcotics, clarifying his poor pronunciation of narcotics by pretending to inject his arm and then to sniff something off the back of his hand. Our reply of “oh no, no narcotics” seemed to please him as he said “good” and moved on to conduct his next interview. A few hours light sleep found us at Ulan Bator the Mongolian Capital 6304 km from Moscow.

Gallery: Malaysia

andylillicrap — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:25:00 GMT

The first 2 weeks, London to Moscow

andylillicrap — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:57:00 GMT

Helsinki

Arrive 6^th October

Depart 8^th October

Time

GMT + 2

Currency/Exchange rate

Euro about 1.25 to the pound – but variable.

Language

Finish, Swedish and English. Thank you in Finish is pronounced “key toss”.

Beer tried

Kauhru 4/5

Food tried

Baltic Herring, Elk meat balls.

People

Conservative, dull dress, good English, helpful, obedient (crossing roads).

Best bit

Fish market and visit to the island fortress, sveaborg

Worst bit

Expensive, impossible language.

Got a bus into town pretty easy. Noticeably colder than London. Bit tricky with the language and signposts so wandered around a bit carrying rucksacks until got bearings – Sarah complaining about my map skills. First impressions – very conservative people, not a diverse population. Very few people cross roads unless there is a green man – even though no cars in sight. Didn’t see any policemen or police cars the whole time we were there – seems strange for a capital city these days. Trams seem pretty good – although missed the beer tram as this only runs in the summer. Signs are in Swedish and Finish – this is the case in any area where 6% or more of the population are Swedish speaking. Much advertising is in English though and this is widely spoken (only way to access good telly, internet etc?) along with Russian.

Went to the annual Herring festival/market that was running for the 269^th time. Fishermen selling straight off their boats – nice atmosphere and good fish.

Took the ferry over to the fort – sveaborg. Tied up with all major parts of their history:

Used by Russians in the Crimean war against France/Britain. Featured in the Finish civil war after independence from Sweden in 1917, the whites defeated the reds with German support. Then defended by the Finish against the allies after they joined Germany to keep out the Russians during the 2^nd WW.

Finish like to drive on the pavement – kept happening. Good restaurants.

St Petersbug

Time

GMT + 3

Currency/Exchange rate

Roubles about 45 to the pound.

Language

Russian – Cyrillic alphabet

Beer tried

Lapin Kulta 4/5 plus a cloudy beer name lost but 1/5 (and of course vodka)

Food tried

Red Caviar. Salmon. Chicken Kiev. Lots of “spicy cucumber” (Gherkin). Nice breads. Really good Russian chocolate.

People

Wealthy – lots of posh cars, with a few Lada’s still around too. A bit aloof but friendly once the ice is broken.

Best bit

The Hermitage – paintings and artefacts mostly not our bag, but can’t help being impressed by the palace and the scale of it all.

Mass burial site of 420,000 from the siege of Leningrad.

Worst bit

Expensive. Long walks with heavy ruck sacks.

Train from Helsinki took 6 hours. Lots of people involved at the border with impressive uniforms and stern faces – but we didn’t have to leave our seats and it was all straight forward. Bit of a jolt walking into the street from the train station. Cyrillic alphabet quite hard to get to grips with. Tried to get a taxi – but wanted 600 roubles for a 3km journey. So headed into metro with the big ruck sacks. Bit stressy but went ok and we got there in the end.

Highlights:

Church of the Resurrection (on spilt blood – site where Alexander II was killed)- classic church with onion domes, very impressive.

Peter and Paul fortress (1703) – built to keep the Swedish out and later the Germans WWII. Within grounds is SS Peter and Paul cathedral where all the Russian TSARs are buried – including Nicholas II and family who’s bodies were brought back from the mine shaft in Siberia where they were hidden after their murder in 1918. There was a state burial in 1998, attended by British Royal family – distant cousins.

St Isaacs cathedral 1859 – impressive dome and good views from top.

The Hermitage 1762 – massive palace of the Tsars now stuffed full of 3,000,000 national treasures – many priceless. The security system appears to be run by a St Petersburg House Wife in each of the hundreds of rooms – very low tech considering the value of the exhibits. The French impressionists were our favourite. A selection of Leonardo Da Vinci paintings were quite powerful too, however the most impressive thing was the palace itself. Hundreds of massive rooms very ornately decorated.

Main shopping street – Nevsky Prospekt. Lots of Mercs and Bentleys and very posh shops.

Tourist Offices still seemed to be a little in the past. The lights were off so you assume they’re closed, when you look at the opening times you realise they are open. When you go in the staff avoid all eye contact even though you are the only people in there and they aren’t doing anything. The information available is limited to the main attractions and is not very detailed. We found a description of a memorial where some 420,000 people were buried during the Siege of Leningrad. The staff at our hotel didn’t know it but did their best to give us directions. We set off a bit late on our last day in town and found ourselves walking through a suburb as it was starting to go dark having taken the Metro away from the centre. The walk took us a good mile and a half out of town, people seemed a bit surprised to see us out that way, but it was interesting to get out of the tourist areas. We were the only ones at the memorial as it was going dark. Drizzling rain and a broody sky completed the atmosphere. An eternal flame burns overlooking about 8 football pitches worth of uniform grass mounds. Each one is a mass grave dated from 1942 to 1944. The siege lasted 900 days, most died from disease and famine rather than fighting. (St Petersburg – formerly Leningrad – is the most northerly city over 1 million in population and the siege coincided with one of the coldest winters on record). We were pleased that we made the effort to see this site and a little baffled that it is so poorly promoted.

Impressions

The St Petersburg Times is a weekly paper written in English. They featured an article on the gay and lesbian film festival. The venue was shut down by the fire ministry to try to stop it happening. But when this looked like it wouldn’t work the Emergency Situation Ministry turned up with riot police to make sure the meeting didn’t happen. The festival went ahead at a secret location with attendees invited by telephone. This was quite an eye opener for a city that appears to be so wealthy and Western. In fact St Petersburg is seen as the most culturally advanced and most “Westernised” of Russia’s cities.

Money seems to be in private wealth, the police and fire brigade all have old cars and the metro and tram buses are quite old. But there are more new cars around than in London and most of them very nice ones. However the water from the taps is not drinkable as the system is not good enough to rule out Guardia infection.

Much talk in the paper about the mafia and gangsters running the show and creaming off all the money. We saw a couple of convoys involving blacked out Mercs and big four by fours.

The second anniversary of the murder of Anna ………was the week before we arrived. Those wishing to mark the occasion had to apply for a permit of some kind. This was refused as there would be works involving machinery at that location on that day – they were offered a place miles out of town. The gathering went ahead and sure enough there was no machinery working there. However riot police were present and all attending were video’d by the police according to the St Petersburg Times.

Port a loos seem to be a new craze in Russia. Quite regularly there would be three or so on the street with an attendant. Usually there was a queue of people waiting to pay their 15 roubles for the privilege. Public toilets are largely limited to museums and restaurants and access to these is fairly expensive. We could only assume that peeing in the street would carry severe consequences. Most public places seem to be patrolled by some kind of security or police and although there were street drinkers and beggars they were few in number and seemed to be excluded from most places.

There was a seedy undertone to St Petersburg. Every publication we saw had advertising for massage parlours and lap dancing clubs and these venues were all over the city. Generally the men were fairly unimpressive – chubby and sporting the classic long back and short sides hair cut. The women however were generally stunning. However the fashion seems be that women should make the most of every bit of sex appeal they have with what they wear. No complaints from me – but did feel a bit like a former era of our fashion trends when maybe women were expected to make every effort for their men and some how be subservient as a result (I did not feel quite the same but wished I had brought some mascara with me!).

The St Petersburg Metro system has the longest escalators you’ve ever seen, a good 200m long. No one walks up or down and so people stand on both sides, some even sit down. The reason could be the river and various canals require the extra depth (St Petersburg has flooded many times throughout it’s history).At the bottom of each escalator a person sits in a controllers box. They all looked completely bored and didn’t appear to have anything to do. Although if anyone fell down the escalators it could be serious due to the height and it must also be a nightmare when they break down as most people would find the climb up quite a challenge. The escalator supervisor job only seems to be done by women, like a number of other roles such as the room supervisors in the Hermitage.

Caviar – a small pot of red caviar was about 150 roubles in a reasonable restaurant. The taste was good, a bit like a luxurious fish paste.

Vodka – plentiful and cheap. Smirnoff no where to be seen though! Those we tried were very drinkable and lacked the harshness of vodkas we have at home.

Moscow (Mokba)

Time

GMT + 3

Currency/Exchange rate

Roubles about 45 to the pound.

Language

Russian – Cyrillic alphabet

Beer tried

Sivirskaya Korona 3/5

Food tried

Sausage wrapped in cabbage (quite good). Beef Strogonof., a range of Russian cakes (not as nice as they look) and some bizarre breakfast combinations, liver and chips alongside jam pancakes. Black Caviar, more expensive than red – but we preferred the red. Caviar is very rich in flavour and best eaten in small doses.

Went to Mcdonalds due to the amount we were spending and because we couldn’t find any cheap cafes (earlier that day we paid £3.50 for a small hot chocolate).

People

Couldn’t be more helpful. Often quite short/abrupt to start with but always got things right in the end, they seem to take pride in having a job and doing it well.

Best bit

Kremlin and Red Square (St Basils Cathedral)

Worst bit

Getting lost when we arrived

Train left St Petersburg at 11pm exactly and arrived in Moscow at 7am on the dot. We had a 2 berth business class cabin. Very comfortable and felt very safe. Although as a practice run for the Trans Siberian we didn’t manage to sleep much. The complimentary drink was a beer or vodka. The vodka option turned out to be a 200ml bottle!

Despite best laid plans the journey to our hotel went pear shaped. Some how we ended up a stop too far on the metro without realising and then walked aimlessly trying to get some bearings without a map. Eventually in the increasing rain Sarah’s written Russian enabled someone to point us in the direction of the hotel. 3 stops on the electric bus got us to the vast block of our 2000 bed hotel. Then our reservation wasn’t on the system, however the staff were very helpful and after about an hour it was sorted. But then we couldn’t check into out room for another 2 hours so quite pleased to finally get into our room.

There was a large Sunday market just outside the hotel and we spent a nice couple of hours in the drizzly rain looking at paintings, crafts and old military paraphernalia that the Russians seem to love to collect. The place was aimed more at locals than foreign tourist which was quite nice although we resisted the temptation to buy anything as prices for the nicer stuff were at least as high as at home.

Observations

A few themes continued from St Petersburg:

Smoking – still allowed in many restaurants, bars etc. Was very noticeable in the hotel lobby for instance and in restaurants where people smoked even when their food was in front of them. Surprised us how alien this felt to us even though the smoking ban at home is only quite recent.

Drinking – we saw both men and women drinking bottles of beer as they walked along the street. This was at any time of day, it is almost as if vodka was an alcoholic drink but beer doesn’t really count. No apparent stigma to drinking a beer walking along the street in the morning.

We read that life expectancy in Russia is 71 for women but only 59 for men. Explanations include high numbers of smokers, alcoholism, poor health system (and getting worse) and a quarter or more Russians living below the poverty line of $100 a month. (You certainly don’t get an impression of this poverty in St Petersburg or Moscow apart from the people standing at the underground selling a few random items or the occasional person going through the bins).

Cleanliness – both cities were very clean. This is probably the result of the jobs for the people approach. There were a lot of people sweeping and cleaning the streets and metro system. Also very few people seem to drop litter in the first place, perhaps the consequences for this are severe. Similar to our experiences in Vietnam buying tickets for anything involves a ticket office and then a short walk to the entrance where at least one further person will check your ticket and scribble on it or put an official tear in it.

Gallery: Russia, Mongolia and China

andylillicrap — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:17:00 GMT

St Petersburg and Moscow