Walkabout

Gallery: nara

shorn — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:24:00 GMT

Gallery: xian

shorn — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:23:00 GMT

Gallery: kyoto

shorn — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:22:00 GMT

Gallery: himeji

shorn — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:14:00 GMT

Japonica

shorn — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:38:00 GMT

The flight from Shanghai to Fukuoka is only 1.5 hrs - how different can they be?

Japan is very much different from China.

The Japanese don't use street numbers and names in their addresses. I knew this. I've known it for years and always thought "hehe, crazy Japanese". It never dawned on me before how that would affect me. How the hell do these people find anything? Seriously. Apparently, "over that way - past the bar then look for the Family Mart - it's near there" is a formal fucking postal address in Japan.

Everything you've ever heard about Japanese toilets is true. Lavatory based weirdness abounds.

Also, I noticed the last batch of photos I posted was in low res. If I were a less lazy person I'd fix that right away.

Bye bye China

shorn — Sat, 7 Nov 2009 15:04:00 GMT

Flying out of China tomorrow, visa expires on the 17th, so I gotta go whether I want to or not. Three months has gone extremely quickly, but I'm ready to get off the ride now. :)

The last little while has seen:

Beijing - great, ended up staying for a week or so
Great wall - also good
Shaolin temple - m'eh
Terracotta warriors - awesome

Ok, so I have a fairly detailed initial plan for Kyushu island:

Fly in to Fukuoka
South to Kumamoto - visit the first of many, many castles
Further down to Kagoshima then a ferry across to Sakurajima for my first ever close-up with an active volcano, should be interesting!
Then turn around and backtrack up to Fukuoka and cross the straight to Shimonoseki for Fugu! (Tasty-fish, Tasty-fish, POISON FISH!)

After that, the plan gets a bit vague again:

Hiroshima
Himeji
Kobe
Osaka
Kyoto
Nagoya
Shizuoka
Tokyo

From Tokyo, fly up to Sapporo then on to the Niseko ski fields. That is, if I can get my accommodation sorted out - bloody paypal.

Seriously, I would send my credit card details plain-text over email before I would give paypal access to my bank account.

New plan!

shorn — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:18:00 GMT

Well,

Near as I can tell, the Russians don't want me stinking up their country.

That's the only reason I can think of for their stupid visa rules. The original plan was to get my Russian visa in Hong Kong - and it would've worked similarly well as getting my Chinese visa did. Except in the last month or so the HKers and Russians came to a mutual-visa-free love-fest arrangement. Which is fine for them, but it's royally screwed that particular pooch for me. So after that, seemingly I have to go back to Oz to get a Visa. Bollocks to that, seen the temps in Oz lately? I just bought a kick-arse fake German paratrooper jacket in Beijing - gotta get me some use out of it.

I figure if I'm going to freeze my arse off, might as well do it falling down a mountain, repeatedly. So I'm going to try and go skiing in Japan.

Smell that? That's what jealous smells like.

First, I have to figure out if Japan is going to force me to have proof of onward or return travel. Holy snap-crackle that shite is annoying.

It's not like I want to stay - I just wanna visit and stink up the place a bit.

Gallery: Yangzi

shorn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:20:00 GMT

Gallery: misc

shorn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:20:00 GMT

Gallery: Huangshan

shorn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:20:00 GMT

Gallery: Beijing

shorn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:19:00 GMT

Mt Qomalangma!

shorn — Fri, 9 Oct 2009 18:40:00 GMT

Back in Chengdu now after a week long group tour in Tibet.
The tour was surprisingly good, as far as those kind of things go - really good group of people on the tour, which is always the most important thing.

There are many things left in the world to see - but I don't think I have ever consciously thought "this is the best, most impressive thing I've ever seen".
I hope I see better, more impressive things in my life; but if I don't - I won't be so unhappy with that ;)
"The roof of the world" sounds like a terrible cliche until you actually see it - then you just end up thinking: "yeh, something like that".

Barley beer - thumbs up (everyone else hated it, I went back for more).
Altitude sickness - thumbs down (some poor barstards had it much worse though - fact: at 5000 metres you end up breathing roughly half as much oxygen with each breath).
Checkpoints - thumbs down (easily more than twenty times - five separate passport checks and two bag/body scans between the car park and the plane - and that was on the way out).

Pro-tip: do NOT lose your passport in Tibet, you won't be able to take a leak or scratch your arse without it.

Today was spent organising tours, drinking Guinness and scratching my arse (also, waiting for laundry).

Tomorrow I will see Pandas and giant buddhas.
Then, a couple of days cruising the mighty Yangzi gorges and then touring the damming thereof.

This post brought to you by Guinness "Foreign Extra" and the number 4.

It is now my considered opinion that the Himalayan region is one of the most interesting places on earth, and I want to see more. Who wants to rent a Royal Enfield and ride to Ladakh next year? Seriously.

Gallery: Tibet

shorn — Fri, 9 Oct 2009 15:32:00 GMT

Gallery: Tiger Leaping Gorge

shorn — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:32:00 GMT

Next up - Tibet!

shorn — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:25:00 GMT

Tiger Leaping Gorge was great, everything everyone said it would be.

The gorge hiking trail is 20km long with 1km ascent and an equal descent. That makes it pretty much exactly 1/5th of the Kokoda track. I decided to do the hike with my pack instead of leaving it at a Guesthouse. In combination with catching a cold as well - it was a bit of a bastard. Fortunately, it was quite overcast so it wasn't hot - I think some serious heat would've ended me :)

After much hassle, I should be getting on the plane on Oct 2 to leave for Tibet. They've locked down Lhasa again, but because my application was in before the govt stopped accepting permit applications - I get to go. Which is good, because when they will start processing applications again is up in the air - most places are saying Oct 8/9, but who knows really.

In Dali, progressing Gorgeward

shorn — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:47:00 GMT

In Dali at the moment, it's a nice little place. Though you know you're in a tourist town when the trash bins on the street are shaped like little pagodas - not tacky at all.

From here on to Lijiang and then, finally, Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Organising my Tibet trip at the moment - looks like I will end up in Lhasa on the 1st of October (60 yr anniversary). I am a master of timing.

The whole permit situation is a bit of a hassle, especially if you don't like tour groups, oh well. I'm going to try to get up to the border region around Deqin by myself though (staying on the Yunnan side though, of course). Deqin itself is something like %80 Tibetan anyway, <political comments elided>. Not sure how much time I will have left between TLG and Lhasa though (I want to spend at least a couple days in the area.)

Apparently, I may need to have the original Tibet Travel Permit before I go to Lhasa - which means I will have to mess around with the Chinese postal system and be somewhere predictable for a while, ugh. Maybe I can organise something overland to Tibet though...

After Tibet, I will start to move a bit faster, current plans include:

Beijing (+great wall)
Xian (terracotta warriors)
Huang Shan
Qingdao (brewery tour)
Chengdu (hotpot + pandas - no panda hotpot jokes, chinese are sensitive about these big guys)
Chongquing (three gorges cruise)
Henan (shaolin temple)

Anything I've left out? (I'm saving the north-east for one day when I come back for the winter festival in Harbin)

And then after that, there is a plan, a crazy plan (which is the only kind of plan I like), if I have the stones for it. More on that later.

Gallery: Dali

shorn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:57:00 GMT

Beer Fish!

shorn — Sun, 6 Sep 2009 18:31:00 GMT

Beer Fish be the bomb! The famous Yangshuo Beer Fish is as good as they say. I am going to learn to cook it tomorrow, then I am going to cook it at home (wherever THAT ends up being) with properly filleted fish and it will be the best thing EVER. I will never understand the predilection for many bones in your food - it's just wrong. When I am voted president of the world (2015 - "Yes you WILL"), there will be a law: each piece of food can have one (large) bone, at maximum. This allows for things like ox-tail, t-bone, lamb-shanks, ribs, etc. (you can see, I've thought this proposal through, I will be a kind and benevolent dictator - unless you have a thing for bones in your food.)

But then, just when I think the Chinese have their food-shit all backward - they blow me away (pre-pun intended, you'll get it in a minute) with the snails (stuffed with pork and mint, yum). They make a hole on the other side of the shell from the "door" and you just blow that little sucker out like a tenacious booger. Beats screwing around with tongs and a barbie-sized fork - bit messy though. BRILLIANT! (except the booger analogy, not very original, that.)

Also, rice noodle soup for breakfast is better than I thought it would be - in fact, I could get used to it.

Went for a 20Km bike ride the other day. First time I've ridden a push-bike in close to twenty years (holy cow, that makes me feel old). At least 10 of those Ks were on a very bumpy dirt track. Legs are fine, but wow, does my bum hurt.

<nelson>HaHAaa!</nelson>

shorn — Wed, 2 Sep 2009 21:03:00 GMT

Too tired to make an update right now.

But, because certain people seemed not to be jealous enough, I decided to post this photo of me sitting in the bar on top of my hostel.

Also, I am engaged now.

I was the best (read: only) singer on my bamboo raft, so I got the marriage-ball-thing. I regaled my fellow raftees with a rendition of that ancient epic: Row, Row... Row your boat. Truly, I am an ambassodor of Australian culture.

Gallery: Yangshuo

shorn — Wed, 2 Sep 2009 20:13:00 GMT