China Blog

Five days without an update, and that must surely have more to do with the dreadful internet speed over here in China than it does to do with my work ethic!

I’m sitting in a bar in Dali, Yunnan. A peek over my right shoulder and I can see that for the first time in the two days that we’ve been here the rain has stopped. At approximately 3000m above sea level it should have come as no shock that it is wet and cold, but in a country known for blistering heat as we hit summer it was still quite a surprise.

We had a truly fantastic time in Yangshuo and it was very hard to leave. The rock climbing on the Karst Limestone peaks never happened as we just don’t have enough time to stay in one town for long enough. An afternoon on bikes was a great substitute; fifteen minutes of riding and we were out of the city of 300,000 surrounded by rice fields dwarfed by the limestone peaks and completely alone bar touts yelling from the side of the roads. Lonely Planet wrote that riding a bike near Yangshuo is often the highlight for travellers to China, and whilst we had a fantastic time I still hope the best is yet to come.

Genuinely losing track of time and days is a great feeling, and it is with that in mind that some of my days might be out! Yangshuo was good to us; food was excellent, the beer was cheap, our accommodation was perfect, and our hosts at Bamboo Cafe were exceptional. Just as the journey to Guilin by bus had begun we came across a bus on the back of a tow truck on the highway that had been involved in a pretty serious accident; pretty sobering and a reminder that we can just cross our fingers and travel by train wherever possible.

We had a pretty flawless transfer from bus drop to jumping on the train in Guilin and before we knew it we had begun our twenty hour journey to Kunming. Filling a 4 berth soft sleeper with friends is a luxury and we filled the time with a few drinks and card games - fast forward a dozen or so hours and we found ourselves in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province.

As has happened at every single arrival and departure it was raining...and Kunming kind of smelt. We also couldn’t find any accommodation we wanted, nor did we find any of the sites appealing, so we grabbed some train tickets for departure that night to the beautiful old town of Dali. Not so lucky as our earlier train trip we were spread over two hard sleeper cabins. I discovered many things on this journey, 1) grumpy Chinese women sometimes get a bit cheeky and take the bottom bunk in cabins that aren’t even theirs, 2) they can get replaced by their rightful owners, two lovely doctors from Dali, 3) the doctor’s bought an entire pig’s leg when they were in Kunming and I spent most of my awake hours staring at its trotter, 4) I don’t fit in a hard sleeper!

Now this might not come as a shock to those that have travelled by train more than me, but I don’t fit in one of these bunks. I don’t know if it is a bit of a joke by interior designers, but if there is nowhere to put your daypack, and the bed is only 6ft long, with 1ft of headroom, and there isn’t room to lie flat it shouldn’t be called a sleeper.

Our arrival in Dali was greeted again by rain and when we couldn’t find the right bus to get us to the old town our roommate doctor couple came to the rescue and found the bus for us and a couple of other followers. I bade the trotter farewell and boarded the bus (30 minute ride, 1.5RMB (27c AUD)) and then walked around in the rain hunting for our guesthouse.

As the room wasn’t ready we went and found a breakfast as it was only around 7am - travelling with vegetarians has granted little pieces of amusement not normally found by travelling carnivores. Like the vegetarian dish on the train - steamed cabbage with rice. Not dissimilar to the dish that Jane and James scored for breakfast in Dali, boiled cabbage with noodles. As Sally and I slurped our beef, chilli and shallot noodle soup I couldn’t help but laugh.

In Dali I have taken to wearing my goosedown jacket to cut out the rain and the chill - the fact that I look around 120kg has given everyone something to laugh at. After enduring a stench that could only be described as sewerage meets something worse for hours I donned my jacket, camo cargo pants and my recently shaved head and confronted reception. Whilst the jacket did most of the talking I did manage to score us a new room. Score currently reads Jacket 1, the World 0.

An accommodation change this morning, the consumption of both sweet and savoury baba (local speciality - naan like bread stuffed with greatness), a few beer lao’s, attempting to setup a new blog, editing photos and the afternoon is nearly complete. A peek over the same shoulder as before and some blue sky has appeared, so here’s hoping that the msn.com weather forecast is wrong and we’ll be able to leave the bar tomorrow and take a look at this town!

By the time I depart China for Vietnam I will have lost several days of my journey in transit waiting for the next leg. So far it was 8 hours in Guanghzhou bus station waiting for our 8 hour bus trip to Yangshuo, followed by a 2 hour bus ride to Guilin train station where we waited 2 hours for our 20 hour train trip to Kunming; we then had to wait 14 hours before we could board our train for the 8 hour journey to Dali. China is a big country and even with some decent individual journeys we’ve still got a long, long way to go to get around this place.

New photos are online at www.jamiemcdonald.com and yes, I’m behind, as it is only a Macau update, but I’ll be back up to date soon!