Where to now?

I've made it into Tibet

jojo2go — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Well, I finally made it into Tibet after my flight was delayed for 2 consecutive days due to a "sandstorm". I did think it strange that the bad weather was delayed by a sandstorm and just put it to bad english translation by the Chinese staff at the airport, as it's winter and they probably meant "snowstorm". Almost 2 1/2 hours until we landed did I realise when I looked out the aeroplane window that the land of Tibet was very barren and dry. It was definitely, well most likely, a sandstorm that had caused the delay.

Danny and I checked into Phuntsok Khasang Internation Youth Hostel (www.tibetinn.cn), which was decorated with Tibetan artwork and motifs. It also looked like a backpacker's quarters with writings all over the walls, leaving messages of what experiences were had in Tibet, with some not so pleasant. There was a message that read "I don't like Tibet because my bike was stolen" or the other, "I was forced to come to Lhasa". Generally, most of the writings were positive, with many saying they'll return or even pasting a photo they took around Tibet, illustrating how great of a time they had. I don't really know why I never contribute to these things, I just find them fascinating to read.

The hostel itself isn't bad. It has a reasonable hot water system, self-laundry facility, bar & restaurant, internet (connection is tempremental), roof top seating area overlooking the Potala Palace and movie/dvd room. What I have found is the staff is not very friendly. I think we were very spoilt at Sim's Cozy with the friendliness of staff and well planned out hostel catering for backpackers.

Tibet is confirmed

jojo2go — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:30:00 GMT

I picked up my plane ticket to Tibet today. They also showed me a photocopy of the TTB permit, but I wasn't allowed a copy. The driver will present it to the check-in officer when I'm at the airport. It's a bit secretive really and wonder if you can get away without a permit. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to Tibet. The flight leaves at 8am and takes approximately 2 hours to get there, which is less stressful than enduring an almost 2 day train ride there.

Year of the Rat

jojo2go — Thu, 7 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Happy New Year! To all those gracious rats and mice out there, this is your year. Although, it's been advised in many articles that I've read that I (being a 'horse'), do not get on with rats. So my dear brother, if you're reading this (if you didn't realise, you were born in the year of the Rat), you and I simply don't get along. I know, it's a load of crap. I think it all comes down to the person and even when we read the description of characteristics of each element, I think we can pick bits from each. It's strange how a lot of people in the world invest so much into their astrological sign (western, eastern or otherwise), opening the daily paper in the morning, see what the future holds for them today. It's amazing how some of us (6+ billion people) are going to experience the exact same events.

Today was somewhat uneventful. As it was cold (around 1-2 degrees celsius), it wasn't a day to venture out, although I would have liked to see the going-ons of the city during their new year's day, the cold weather just got the better of me. I stayed indoors of this cosy hostel watching dvds (Shooter, Waterboy & The Paper Will Be Blue). This took up the entire day, including 2 cooked meals ordered from the bar downstairs and some playtime with the hostel's cross-pug puppy.

Yesterday evening I turned in a tad too early and missed the midnight celebrations of fireworks. I did roam the streets earlier throwing firecrackers around the place. So I still felt like I was involved in the celebrations, even with my measly crackers . Today people from my dorm said that they spent the night out but weren't impressed, as it was just fireworks and lighting of candles. Apparently the big night was heavily policed, so nothing too exciting could really take place. I'm glad I didn't miss out on anything.

Trying to get to Tibet

jojo2go — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

So we finally booked our way to Tibet with Sim's Cozy Travel, which is a travel agency within the hostel I'm staying at - Sim's Cosy Garden Hostel, but more on the hostel in a moment.

The service lady was actually Tibetan and asked her about travelling independently to Tibet. This is the only travel agent I found on the internet that would help you get the TTB permits for Tibet via 3 different options, you can read more here - http://www.gogosc.com/enly_lasa_application.asp. Basically, we've chosen option 3 and before we set off to making our way to Nepal, we will need further permits to step outside Lhasa. It's cost us 1,650 RNB for a one-way flight to Lhasa (tried to take a sleeper train but with Spring Festival, all tickets are hard to get), with 350 RNB for the TTB permit that is only applicable to the Lhasa area. If you want to enter the "unopened" areas, this is where you'll need a further "Alien's permit", which can be a headache to organise and very costly. Sim's Travel have a great set-up and can ease the pain of organising this, but it would require the hire of a 4x4 and a guide (the guide is the one who apparently holds onto the permits), which is approximately $200-$250 USD per day. We're going to have to organise this sort of transport when we're ready to head off to Nepal. Spoke to a guy staying at this guesthouse who recently returned from Lhasa and he mentioned that there are numerous notices/posts wanting to share the cost and ride of the 4x4. This so far is the least complicated way, the other would be hitching, but a lot of local Tibetan won't pick you up for the fear of being fined by the government for giving foreigners a ride.

Now that we've paid our 800 RNB deposit for our flight and permit to Lhasa for 11th February, it's a matter of waiting another 2 days to receive confirmation from the agent if she could manage to wrangle her way in getting us a permit from that day. It's basically a 50% chance and sometimes you might have to wait more than a week for confirmation. So be prepared to have some time on your hands when booking your trip to Tibet through an agent. I do highly recommend Sim's Cozy Travel as they really know the intricacies of arranging travel to Tibet and various places around China or organising visa extensions and they speak very fluent English!

As for the guesthouse, it's certainly an institute in the hostel world of Sichaun. It's got such a great set-up, that if you've travelled around so much and end up here, you can basically kick your feet up and just stay in this guesthouse day-in and day-out. It has a great indoor and outdoor dining/chill-out area, one of the biggest gardens in Chengdu, travel agency, dorms, standard rooms (single, double, family etc), rooms with optional heating/air-con, hot shower (runs off gas and it's f*&%ing hot, what you need for such cold weather), bar, restaurant, movie room, book exchanges, internet area, wi-fi. As you can see, the list goes on, but one thing that is very true to its' name, is that it's very "cosy", which is a big bonus when you're in Chengdu during winter. I'm staying in a six bed dorm with its' own bathroom (and that amazing "hot" shower). The beds are equipped with individual silk curtains for that extra privacy, shelves, lockable cupboards and individual reading lights. I really can't ask for anything better for 25 RNB a night!

Cleanliness is next to godliness?

jojo2go — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 02:50:00 GMT

If that's the case, then I was stuck in the aisle of a train carriage for 13 hours with hundreds of Satan's offspring. Ok, that's a bit harsh but let me enlighten you in this rich tapestry of my travels.

As you're aware I was in Panzihua buying my time to get the train to Chengdu. With the spring festival around the corner, the only ticket available were 'hard seats' for a decent fare (84 RNB), considering the distance being covered. I check into the waiting area of the station with my travelling companion, Danny. After much deliberation on what provisions we should purchase (we decided on a 2 litre bottle of water and 3 mandarins each), we were sat away from the crowd and wondered why there were so many passengers congregated in front of the station gates. We then decided to check our tickets to see our seat allocation, just so we didn't want to bother with beating ourselves for nothing in that crowd, we realised after comparing one another's tickets that nothing was different. This was bad. We had no seat number allocated, which meant, each man, woman, child, donkey (well maybe not donkey, but if you gave them the chance, they'd bring their entire zoo animals if they had them), were going to be in a mad scramble to get seats. I said to Danny that they would never over-sell/book tickets, to his retort, he rolled his eyes and said, "do you wanna bet?".

Since we had massively weighted rucksacks, we pushed our way through to almost 2 metres away from the gates and just waited, patiently and cautiously, making sure no damn person were going to push in front of us. Then the unthinkable happened, the gates opened and let me illustrate to my readers that this gates is only capable of fitting through 1 (only 1) human being at a time. This is never the case in China. There really isn't an etiquette in queuing system, it's everyone for their own. I said to Danny that he go ahead of me and try getting 2 seats, since I was still a novice at being aggressive in queues (Danny's been to China before, so he knew what it's like). I can't begin to tell you how many human bodies would squeeze themselves through, literally pushing in and shoving just to get to that platform. Then it was my turn. This Chinese man had a 1mx1mx1m denim clothed backpack, that was clearly overpacked and oversized for him and it was a contest between him and I to see who could get through. We were basically wedged at the gate together (this is not an uncommon sight or thing to occur). In the end, because I could see his girlfriend made it through before him, I relented and let him through (anyone that knows me would agree I would have won!). Although, after him, I was not going to let any bastard get in, up, under or around me until I made it through! Yeah, you do start to develop some agitation.

I made it on the platform, recouped with Danny only to discover that this pushing and shoving was pointless as the train hadn't arrived. Once the train did arrive and I got on board, I realised it wasn't pointless after all.

When on board the carriage, you couldn't tell who was coming or going. The carriages were lined with two aisles of seats (2 and 3 seaters facing each other with a table protruding from the wall), all of course were already occupied by men, woman, mothers, babies and whatever else from the first port of call, Kunming city. So the rest of us that boarded, were left to stand in the aisles and endure the 13 hour journey as comfortable as possible.

After much whacking and moving about, I finally got comfortable and was given a makeshift seat on top of someone's basket filled with rice, pot noodles and the like, mind you my generously made seat was half in the aisle and half within the seating area where no one at the outer seats had leg room because of the basket (how kind though?). Danny found a place to store my rucksack in the overhead part (after about an hour though) and found a place to wedge his rucksack beside a table and between people's legs, but out of the way of the aisles. Unfortunately Danny didn't have anywhere to sit.

So during at least the first 6-7 hours of the journey we would be interrupted to move our legs or some body part to make way for passengers going back and forth to the boiling water facility, bathroom or for the annoying on-board food trolleys. The trolleys were the most annoying, they varied from hot food, drinks and snacks and souvenir items. They took up the entire width of the aisle, which would mean to entirely shift not only ourselves, but any bags and other objects lying around. Although it was annoying when Chinese people were continually filling up their hot water flask or topping up their noodle pots with hot water, at least they could walk around people that were in the aisles. It becomes tiresome after a few hours though when your body clock realises that it's midnight and it's about time to sleep, but god wants to punish us some more!

Danny managed to get a free seat now and again when someone would stand up to get more hot water or go to the bathroom. I think at one point a passenger gave up his seat for him because he bought them a beer (bribery does work!). He stretched his luck as much as possible and slept for around 45 minutes until the guy nudged him to indicate that he was more than ready to sit down again.

Throughout the journey, you see people walking back and forth, pushing and shoving their way, inconvenient trolleys passing through, people watching tv, sleeping and snoring away, cleaning every orifice of their body onto the floor - I kid you not! I told my sister about the hawking and spitting out some nasty ones, but the worse of them all is the cleaning of nostrils. The technique is to block one nostril and blow out as hard and as much air your lungs can hold, so basically half your brains, and then repeat with the other nostril. This along with children dressed in crotchless pants were free to roam and piss all over the ailes and let us not forget the amount of rubbish thrown on the floor. One of the train attendants swept the carriages twice (halfway and at the end) during the journey, and it looked like a mini dump-site. Oh, for all you non-smokers, like myself, you can't go on public transport in China without that vehicle ending up as a Dutch oven when it reaches its' destination.

Overall I had a microsecond worth of sleep, Danny managed 1 to 1 1/2 hours, with the last 2-3 hours of the journey being easier on us as a few passenger alighted on a major stop prior to Chengdu.

So has this painted a pretty picture of the way I travel for you? It was certainly an experience and we made it in the end approximately 7am, actually to a very modest guesthouse with the best hot water (on gas too) system, that certainly made up for the journey.

Stuck at an internet cafe

jojo2go — Mon, 4 Feb 2008 14:07:00 GMT

I'm sat at this internet cafe waiting for my 6pm train to Chengdu, in a town called Panzihua. Actually I arrived in Panzihua 2 days ago, with no intention of staying here, but all sleeper train tickets to Chengdu were sold out, due to the Spring Festival. The next available were the hard seats on 4th February at 6pm. So now I hang about here for another 4 hours to enjoy my lovely 12-13 hour journey on a hard seat. I think the word 'hard' has that close association with the word 'uncomfortable'. Although, I can't complain as it only cost 84 RNB for the seat, but that means I will be placed with smokers, spitters and people leaving hygiene at the platform before they enter the carriages.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.