20: End of Phase 2c (Beijing to Kathmandu via Tibet)
The last dinner of our tour was held in a Tex/Mex-ish restaurant in Kathmandu,
and afterward our tour leader Brett was presented with a little scrapbook as a
thank-you and memento of the trip. A few people had to leave at that
point owing to starting tours the next day; the rest opted for drinks at the
bar opposite. The formal end of tour wasn't quite the end of things as a
number of us remained in Kathmandu for varying durations, so there were a few
more meals, a trip out to the Tibetan Bodhnath stupa and the art school nearby
followed by a walk down to Pashupatinath (the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal),
and some general hanging out. It was an excellent trip, and after 28
days or more, despite the potential for stress and friction, we were still a
cohesive group.
19: Quiet Days
Before coming to Kathmandu, we stopped for a couple of days in nearby
Dhulikhel. Our hotel was a hillside resort; a little slice of luxury
after a period of rough travel and rude accommodation. It had
tablecloths, flushing toilets, hot showers, cable TV, and what can reasonably
described as "cuisine" - their restaurant does a haunch of chicken dressed as
a bird, with a "head" and "tail" of vegetables. So, we received a very
gentle introduction to Nepal (which in turn is supposed to be a very gentle
introduction to India).
We strolled between village fields. We stopped
to watch a school sports carnival. Girls had a "sari race", where
they had to put a sari on and then run to the finish line, boys had
a "cockfight", where they had to hop on one leg and evict or unbalance
their opponants, and the female teachers played musical chairs while the male
headmaster called the changes. We caught a local bus and rode on the
roof to the town of Panauti, where we wandered the streets and visited the Indreshwar Mahadev temple complex at the confluence of two visible rivers (according
to legend there's a third river submerged underground, so that a trident is
formed). On the bank across from the fork, a funeral was taking place,
with a crowd of men around a corpse prepared for a pyre, and a few women
hovered around the periphery. Rituals were performed, and the pyre lit.
18: Border Zone
Our entry to Nepal was over the "Nepal-China Friendship bridge". You
could tell that inter-country amity was a key consideration when it was
designed, because it only had one narrow lane each way, and traffic was
snarled so badly on the final slope it that our drivers dropped us at the top
of the last bend and let us walk the last few hundred metres. We were
fortunate that they took us so far, as between the immigration
checkpoint at the border town of Zhang Mu and the bridge lie miles
of no-man's-land, with shops and (what appeared to be) dwellings lining the
road as it scribbles back and forth down steep and shady slopes.
Because of its orientation, I found Zhang Mu ("Dram" if you
were Tibetan and "Khasa" if Nepali) visually and
spatially interesting. Taken in isolation, its buildings are on the
ugly side: streetfront counters selling the pick of Nepali
imports, eateries of various styles and standards, cramped pink-lit
massage parlours where pink-lit masseuses perch on pink-lit couches,
and residential buildings; in other words, it has all the
facilities that make a Chinese border town just another town. And yet,
it's placed on so steep a slope. The only road to the
checkpoint, one-laned for much of its truck-jammed length, serpentines
down for quite a distance from the last turn off. A precipitous
mess of stairs allows a longer walk to be avoided by cutting from one
part of the road to another. The ugly buildings pile layer upon
layer up the slope, and many have a view: of other ugly ugly buildings
further down, of the green and pleasant no-man's-land, across the gorge to
Nepali trees and farmed slopes, and of the river and falls between them.
17: Coming Down
Zhang Mu didn't feel like Tibet at all. The area around it was
lush and the vegetation thick. There were trees -- so many real trees.
Our road there passed (and in one case passed under) waterfalls, and once when
we paused we saw what looked like a small logging camp way down by
the river. Tinggri, where we spent the previous night was undoubtedly
Tibet: barren, dry, treeless, and with the Himalayas stretching across the
horizon. Our room in the motel there was one of the
rougher permanent structures I've been in. I suspect from
the little quirks in the architecture that concrete may have
been slathered over underlying mud buildings. The feet of the bed
were on wooden blocks because the concrete floor was neither flat nor level,
opened-up beer cartons were used to line the base of the mattress, the walls
and roof were dressed with floral cloth. In the shower room,
tepid water streamed from a pipe embedded in the roof; the
concrete underfoot there was freezing, and so was the wind, which came
in through gaps overhead.
16: At the Bottom of the Top of the World
It was the very end of season at Everest Base Camp, only
mid-October and icy but not snowy yet, but already some of the tents there
were in the process of being packed up to be taken away by the
trucks that were there. The proprieter of the Hotel California -
yes, one of the tents there - said that by the next day
half of the tents would be gone. We were the last of his customers for
the year, and his tent was being packed up that day. Our last
week would go quickly, said Brett, and it did. From arriving at our
hotel at Rongphu Monastery, just eight kilometres frm Everest Base Camp and
the highest monastery in the world, to the end of tour took just seven
days.
The Nepali Everest Base Camp, a hike of weeks even if you do fly in
to Lukla, is far less convenient than the Chinese one. It only takes two
or three hours to walk up, and approximately 1 hour 22 minutes to
race down as adrenaline and oxygen floods your system. Just
behind the camp is a a hillock on which sits a stupa swaddled by prayer
flags. The hillock, a pile of brown dirt and rocks still well below
the snowline, isn't much higher than the valley floor - it's far lower
than the moraine overlooking the camp which we came over as a "shortcut" - but
I was still puffed when I climbed up with Jeff and Liz. There's an
uninterrupted view of Everest from the top, and because it was still early the
clouds had yet to shroud the peak. Yes, unless you've already been
you really should!
Our first view of Everest had been a distant one the morning before, when our
drivers made a pass-top stop to let us admire it. "That's not so big", I
said - we were still a fair distance away. By afternoon the
Himalayas looked a bit bigger - the next major pass had a view of half of the
top ten mountains, though as the afternoon clouds had come up they were a bit
harder to distinguish.
15: The High Life
Coming down from Base Camp my prediction of when we would be back was actually
way under. Because of the rarified air at altitude, distant objects look
clearer and thus much closer. The lack of air pressure at altitude means that
food packets puff right up; in theory they can even burst. At altitude
batteries don't last - my torch was dim after 15 minutes use - though this is
due to low temperature rather than lack of oxygen. The key problem at
altitude, though, is the potentially fatal Acute Mountain Sickness. We
were all affected to some degree, but as we had weeks of acclimatisation, none
of the problems were particularly serious. There were a couple of
nosebleeds, headaches a-plenty, difficulty sleeping, and most of all
difficulty breathing (you can get puffed climbing one flight of stairs), but
noone had to stay behind or receive emergency treatment. Most of the
over-50s on my tours were rather fit (two of them were Hash House Harriers)
but there are scarily fit over-50s out there. While we were comfortably
ensconced in four wheel drives, droves of them were cycling their way up
mountains on their way to Everest Base Camp.
We were packed four or five (including driver) in fairly beefy four wheel
drives; mine was shared with Japp, Helen, and Vanessa. Over long days of
travel as we travelled westward from Lhasa, we sat, and read, and chatted, and
played games, and watched the arid landscape through the dust of those
ahead. Nepal is largely attractive; I don't think that I can say that
about Tibet proper, apart from the area around Zhang Mu (which, although
territorially Chinese, is Nepali in climate and terrain), but the description
"harsh beauty" does fit it. I think of Tibet as being high desert even
where there are rivers and there's grass on the ground. There is very
little vegetation, and even fewer wild trees -- there used to be more, it's
said, but they were clear-felled decades back. The air is cold but dry,
affecting lips and sinuses in particular. It has bare cliffs and
hilltops, tumbles of rocks and boulders, rivers carving their way across
desolate plains, and rolling hills where patches of dirt and sand interrupt
the stumpy brown grass. Yet, even miles from the nearest village in the middle
of nowhere, you still see people - nomads and herders, campers and travellers,
and farmers eking out a subsistance existance.
Back when we were still on the Tibetan grasslands, before we'd reached the
Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), I noticed a sandy patch, and wondered if it was
a sign of impending desertification. The area was once the Tethys Sea,
Steve told me. When the plate India's on hit Eurasia, massive uplift
occurred, the Himalayas formed, and sand and shells got lifted kilometres above
sea level. We saw more sand after that, and once (while driving from Lhasa
to Samye) we stopped to admire the odd contrast of sanddunes beside the road
with snowcapped peaks in the background across the river.
14: Ups and Downs
One of the ways to help acclimatise to altitude is to walk up things. It
gets the lungs working, stretches your capacity, and when you sleep you do so
below the maximum altitude you've reached that day.
Gyantse has not only a monastery - visited, of course - but also what's left of
a hill fortress. It's where a British force under Captain Francis
Younghusband, invading on dubious pretext, defeated the Tibetan Army with the
assistance of machine guns and artillery. I decided to shortcut the
zigzagged path, and was badly winded by the time we reached the main gateway -
and the highest point in the fortress was many stairs further up.
While in Lhasa, four of us - Bruce, Julia, Steve, and I - walked partway up the
mountain behind Sera monastery. There are many routes up and down and
across the hill, but we took the one which went past the monasteries and
nunneries. A more energetic quartet - Colin, Japp, Liz, and Jeff - made an
attempt on the top - 5000 metres or so. It was a fine route, with views
looking down to central Lhasa, the Potala Palace, surrounding mountains and
hills, and tunnels at their foot. It was also just long enough a walk for
me. The Potala Palace also involved quite a bit of climbing - though
stairs rather than slopes (the only slope to walk is from its exit to the bottom
of the hill). It's by far the grandest and most imposing building in Lhasa
and is full of temples, shrines, and tombs of Dalai Lamas. Only parts of
it are accessible on the route through it, however, which starts at the top in
the "Red Palace", and works its way down through the older lower "White Palace"
floors.
Our first real climb, though, took place in Langmusi. We'd started with a
walk to visit one of its two monasteries, and even just walking to temples
twenty metres up the slope was tiring. Behind that monastery is a small
valley which we walked up which was far nicer on the lungs. The route goes
past a holy cave and the spring from which the valley's stream flows, and into a
verdant rock strewn open area. Our group wandered off in different
directions. A few were content to stick to the valley floor, a few decided
to really push themselves and vanished in search of the heights, and Ness and I
ascended one slope through spiky scrubby bushes to a rock outcropping where we
met Col and Steve who'd chosen an approach from the other side. For some reason,
slopes are far easier to ascend than stairs.
13: Vodka
Training
There were two Intrepid groups that travelled on the train from Beijing
to
Xian. It's a matter of fact that ours was more fun. Kevin and Lea,
who'd come off a Russia to China Vodka Train tour, had been quietly
gnawing their limbs off in disappointment at the fellow passengers
they'd been saddled
with. We gave them and their Genuine Russian Vodka a warm welcome to
our
group, and congaed up the train in search of the dining carriage. I
can
understand why they were so disappointed with their fellow passengers.
When we arrived at Xian, our group and theirs ended up at the same
bar. By
about half past ten, all the members of their group had trickled away
in dribs
and drabs in cups of warm milk and bed, except for Keven, Lea,
and their tour leader Sharon.
Most of our
group, the skeletal remnant of their group, and a couple of other
Intrepid tour leaders
who were in town, went to the Black Cat nightclub. And there was music
and
dancing and podium dancing and for some there was a little pole
dancing.
And there was more vodka, which may not come as a surprise given that
previous
sentence. Nor was it particularly surprising when we heard they'd left
their tour
behind: the prospect of days caged on Three Gorges cruise had
apparently lost its appeal. I believe they rejoined their fellow
passengers afterward.
12: Sights and Brett
We
went and saw the Terracotta Warriors near Xian, which were impressive
in their quantity and artisanship but... okay. We went to see part of
the Great Wall at Mutianyu, and tobogganned down (the friction burn on
my elbow still isn't quite healed). And we went with an excellent
local guide, Kevin, to the Forbidden City in Beijing, much of it under
repair and inaccessible. In the park behind the Forbidden City, we
walked up the hill to see the smog-drenched skyline, came down and
watched a master calligrapher write on the flagstones using water and a
sponge-tipped pole, and then went and feasted at a nearby restaurant.
We
had quickly established - by our first meal - that Bruce, Florian, and
I loved our
chilli, and it was lucky for us that we had stops in Beijing, Xian, and
Chengdu (capital of Sichuan) because it was hard to satisfy a capsaicin
addiction in Tibet: if they had
chilli sauce, it was more tomato than anything else. Not everybody
shared
our taste, and our second dinner - in a Sichuan restaurant in Beijing -
brought tears to the eyes of several. The dinner included a
particularly memorable chilli chicken, which had less chicken than
chilli (they were the dried variety, so they weren't so very hot).
It seems, by the way, that almost everyone who joins a package tour falls into
one of four categories. We all did. These categories are Technical
(science/engineering/computing), Public Service, Financial (including
accounting), and Health (or ex-health). The one exception was Kym on
the Gecko's tour, whose wife Di was ex-health. Go Figure.
So - who were my fellow passengers?
Alain - Quebec, Canada.
Bruce - Canberra.
Colin - Leeds, UK -- travelling for at least a year.
Florian - Switzerland, originally Germany.
Helen - Sydney.
Japp - Southern Holland -- travelling for 5+ months.
Jeff - San Diego, USA.
Julia - Köln, Germany.
Liz - San Diego, USA. Fiancee of Jeff (incidently because 3/4 of her
surname is contained within Jeff's, they're going to portmanteau their names
when they wed -- very cool!).
Steve
- Shepperton.
Vanessa - Sydney. Friends with Helen
And our tour leader was Brett, originally from Michigan, USA
We'd first met as a group in the bar of the hotel (though Japp and I,
who were
sharing a room, met earlier that day and went for a bit of a wander).
We sat around the table there, and introduced overselves. We received
cloth bags, chopsticks, and a booklet with information and maps for the
places we'd be visiting. Brett went over some background information
about the areas we were going to, what would happen, and life on the
tour in general. He leafed through the trip notes and read out a key
passage:
This is a demanding,
overland travel trip, which is suitable for the experienced traveller. The
affects of altitude, long days travel in old 4WDs over extremely rough roads,
accommodation in shared dormitories that vary in quality from the basic to very
basic and the possibility of severe and sudden climate changes means that this
is definitely not a trip for the armchair traveller. Be prepared for no showers
for several days, and in the event of a landslide blocking the road you may be
required to walk carrying your own luggage for unspecified distances.
Then we went out for Peking Duck at a local restaurant.
11: Start of Phase 2c (Beijing to Kathmandu via Tibet) / End of phase 2b (Hanoi to Beijing).
We went out for Peking Duck at a local restaurant, though two
passengers didn't attend. Afterwards, five of us went for last drinks
at the
bar next door. Phase 2b, the Gecko's tour from Hanoi to Beijing was
not nearly as successful as phases 2a or 2c, and one critical factor
was the difference in tour leaders. Both Long and Brett not only
really knew their tour routes, but also really seemed to really enjoy
their time with the group. Tina, unfortunately, did not give that
impression. Another critical factor was the attitude and actions of
some of the participants. Phase 2c had the potential to go far worse
than phase 2b, after all. Both had long days of travel, uncomfortable
nights on sleeper trains, and stomach problems. But in one, they
triggered problems; in the other, they were bonding experiences.
The tour wasn't by any means all bad - there were some excellent meals
and conversations, activities we did, and locations that we saw. But
as a unified whole, it wasn't so good. At the end of tour, I wrote a
letter. It was written out in longhand on the fly, so the structure is
imperfect and sections will be elliptical if you're not familiar with
all the gory details (some information is also in previous entries -
see Oil and Water in particular), but bear with me and I'll share some
of them in later sections.
10: Dear Tina,
Firstly, I regret and apologise for any of my contributions to making the
tour worse. Unfortunately once morale in a group starts to decline,
it's very difficult to reverse the slide, and events which would (hopefully)
be laughed off or shrugged off if morale were higher tend to cascade and
increase.
I also realise that not every problem can be laid at your door - there is
blame that can and should be apportioned to your company, Gecko's oversight
of tour membership, possibly rules and restrictions on tour guides in China,
and various members of the group. BUT (and it's a big "but"): A
number of problems - even though not directly your fault or responsibility -
would, I believe, have been mitigated or avoided if your tour leading had
been more effective.
One principle of problem resolution is: if people complain about something
there IS a problem that needs to be fixed. This may not be the problem
that they're complaining about - quite often it won't be - but there is,
nevertheless, a problem. Dismissing their complaints or saying "that's
not my responsibility" is only guaranteed to make things worse.
As a tour leader, one of your roles is as a facilitator. In other
words, you are there to ensure that things go as smoothly as possible.
We realise that there are things you do not have the authority to do -
things which only your company or Gecko's can authorise or change - BUT
you are the representative of both your company and Gecko's. You are
also, as tour leader, our representative TO your company and Gecko's.
If and When there are problems you need to:
- Determine the real problem
- Show that you understand that there is a problem
- Come up with some ideas/strategies for fixing the problem - perhaps
with the group
- Try and negotiate up your hierarchy about the problem/solution
And, most importantly:
- Keep everyone informed - even if nothing gets done.
Unfortunately, too often it seems that you have been content to be a
transport and accomodation coordinator only. This is an active tour
and promoted as such, and you not only avoid the active components, but in
the case of Tiger Leaping Gorge seemed to work hard to dissuade all but the
easiest trekking. Worse, your knowledge of locations is patchy.
I realise that tour leaders cannot have in-depth knowledge of every place
visited but certainly the basics are:
- Where is the exchange closest to the hotel, what can it change, and what
hours.
- Where is a place to have early breakfast/24 hour restaurant if available.
- Where is a nearby (cheap) Internet (if rare in the location)
- Where is a cheapish laundry (if hotel prices are ridiculous, as quite
often they are)
- Where are some good eateries, including for vegetarians - preferably with
English menus
- What and where are some interesting but minor (ie: not heavily promoted)
things to see and do.
- Provide participants with a map of the above - not everyone has a
guidebook.
Scheduling has, as you know, been a major contribution to problems.
Compounding this has been the lack of dayrooms, which are standard on other
Gecko's tours. These may be the fault of your company or Gecko's.
Compounding this, however, has been the number of poor meals/snacks that
we've needed to have as a result of not being able to either have dinner
before leaving, or having to transfer from one extended travelling duration
to another. We could have broken for even half an hour in Dali after
getting off the train; similarly in Wuhan on our way to Yang Shuo.
In the movie "Gosford Park", one of the characters says that the key
attribute of a good servant is "Anticipation". The same, I believe, is
true of a good tour leader - and I can only judge by my experience of
Vietnam. Anticipation means not only having things booked well in
advance, but also using part of your "free time" to expand your knowledge of
places so that you can answer basic questions with confidence. It also
means identifying and understanding problems before people complain about
them - and preferably putting a solution into place, so that you can say
"This is what I'm doing". By showing anticipation, you show that you
care about the concerns of your tour participants. In the last few
days, you have picked up more, but unfortunately it's rather late in the
tour.
Anyway, I hope you will take these comments as constructive, and wish you
more success in future tours,
Taro
PS: If people ask durations, rather than hedging, just say "About 4-6 hours,
depending on traffic", etc. We know that exact figures are impossible
to predict. Short statements will make you sound more confident.
Yes,
I understand that there's a certain amount of irony in that what I've
written about fundamentally concerns empathy and her lack of it, but if
it doesn't come naturally, you can at least approximate/synthesise it
if you try.
9: End Times
Much
of the tour was strained to some degree or another, but breaking points
had been reached, there was shouting and tears, a couple of people
had a meeting with the local Gecko's rep to complain, and there was reportedly threats of a fistfight. The structure of
the Gecko's tour, incidently, was different to the Intrepid one: Brett
was employed directly, while Tina was employed through a local Chinese
company and Long through a local Vietnamese company with oversight by
Gecko's. I think that it helped that most on the Intrepid tour either
were a backpacker, or had been one in the last couple of years.
Even
the end of the tour was not without its moments, though. Climbing the
Great Wall at Simatai, for instance, was a fantastic experience. The
section was less well maintained than the section at Mutianyu, but that
was ok because it felt more natural. Standing at the bottom, it looked
absolutely daunting, but only the first climb from the second to the
third watchtower was really hard going, and on reaching the final point
(further travel was blocked off as that section of the wall was still
unrestored) it felt like a reasonable achievement and the view was
clear (which apparently it isn't always).
8: Trains
Those
who were on the train from Beijing to Xian found it a great
experience. Those on an identical train from Xian to Beijing didn't.
Part of it was because we'd had so much train travel: Kunming to Dali,
Dali to Kunming, Chongqing to Xian, and Xian to Beijing. Part of it
was because three-berth sleeper trains are really uncomfortable - a
couple of people ended up catching a plane to Beijing because of this.
Part of it was because of scheduling. Part of it was because of the
lack of dayrooms throughout the trip. And part of it was because
morale was way way down at that point.
7: Scheduling
I'm
not a particularly bad person, I believe - I don't torture kittens for
fun; I do it for curiosity's sake - but I did
cause one passenger to cry in Beijing. We'd come off the train from
Xian in the morning rush, sleep on a sleeper train is poor sleep, and
we were unlikely to get rooms until midday. "Well at least we'll have
rooms by the time we get there", I said with what in retrospect was
over-subtle irony, as I gazed at the hellishly long taxi queue that had
exceeded its barricaded confines and coiled around the hall...
Scheduling
was a problem because instead of leaving after dinner, we frequently
left in the afternoon, which meant that not only were we eating a large
number of snacks/junk food/non-meals, but we would arrive at awkward
hours of the morning. For instance, we spent too little time in
Chongqing, a city I really liked just for its very city-ness, because
we had to leave for the station in the middle of the day. This meant
that those who went to the zoo only had half an hour to see the
pandas. We then arrived in Xian at 4:30am, where under normal
circumstances we would have had to have hung around until mid-morning
to get a room.
6: Dayrooms
A
dayroom is simply a room that's been rented until the evening. They're
not essential, but they do make life nicer, because it means that you
can leave your bag there, have a lie down if you want, and -
particularly important if you have overnight travel - allows you to
have a shower before you leave. Dayrooms were standard on both the
Vietnam leg of the Gecko's tour and the Intrepid tour, and passengers
who'd taken other tours (including those run by Gecko's) said that
every one they'd been on had dayrooms.
In Yang Shuo, people
weren't particularly impressed with the suggestion that they could pay
for a dayroom if they really wanted when there was a bike ride
organised during the day and a train journey that night, but things
were somewhat mitigated when the when the hotel allowed us to use the
toilets in the lobby to shower in - the showers, by the way, were over
squat toilets so wearing thongs was advisable. Matters really came to
a boil at the Three Gorges Dam, however.
5: Three Gorges Incidents
The
Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam in the world, now plugs the third
gorge. A cruise normally starts at Yichang (or at least it used to),
cruising upstream and getting from below the dam to above it through a
series of locks, so you have a chance to see it reasonably close. On
the train to Wuhan, we were told that instead we'd be catching a bus to
above the Three Gorges Dam - indeed above the third gorge - and the
boat would be leaving at 11ish at night. People were not impressed by
this change in schedule. Nor were they impressed with the prospect of
no dayrooms, needing to hang around and do nothing until we could board
the boat at about 10pm as the driver was to drop us off earlier, not
seeing the Largest Dam In The World at all unless they were willing to
pay a couple of hundred yuan (about A$35) for a bus + dam tour, and not
having a cooked dinner - Tina advised against both food from places in
the area upstream, and food on the boat.
The dayrooms and the
bus and dam tour? Ah, now there's another saga. Coming off the
overnight train at Wuhan, we carried our bags to the bus station ten
minutes away and hopped on a five-hour bus to Yichang without even time
to have breakfast. This didn't leave people in a particularly good
mood. The news we'd received about the change in schedule made people
crosser - the Three Gorges and their dam were one of the selling points
of the tour. Compounding this was the fact that Tina appeared to not
only not understand why people were upset about the schedule changes
and lack of dayrooms, but kept saying that it there was nothing she
could do, that it wasn't her job, and that if people wanted to they
could talk to her boss or Gecko's because she couldn't. A call was
made to Gecko's in Melbourne.
The end result was that the
cost of the bus to the Three Gorges Dam was covered, most of the
passengers paid a hundred and something for the Dam tour + guide, and
Sue and I saw the project area, were given dayrooms (which I didn't
use, so that was a waste), and had ice cream for afternoon tea. The
bus came and picked us up, and because it was late afternoon we ended
up seeing the dam anyway, at a distance not too dissimilar from that
which passengers on previous cruises had seen it. The boat was
boardable at dusk, and we did. The food on the boat was perfectly
edible, even if
they did like their fried peanuts, so I ate it. Quite a few of the
group, however, had prepared food
for the entirety of the trip - and so didn't eat the meals because of
that.
The
other key incident - and I don't believe I'm particularly evil; I'm
just written that way - is that one of the passengers quit the tour.
It all started with Margie, who was hopeless with names. We'd been
travelling for weeks at that point, and she still had trouble with
mine. I'd tried "Just think of the cards", and that had brought no
joy. At one point she'd called me "Toejam" - the word had just been
used in a conversation. So those of us who were eating cooked meals
aboard were sitting round the dinner table, and discussing this - I'd
mentioned that I was running out of incorrect names to call her - Maud,
Mindy, Mavis... you run out of them quickly if you're trying to avoid
repetition - and after some discussion, we ended up with the highly
incorrect "Merkin" and "Minge". At that point Daniel said to Terry
something along the lines of "And what about you... Terrence", and I
said "No, it's not TERrence" (he'd said not to call him it way back at
the start of tour, and I'd thought little of it since then), "It's
terRENCE". At that point he left the table, locked himself in the
cabin he shared with Dan, and shortly thereafter moved in with X. At
Chongqing he left the tour. There was, it seems, a rationale for not
wanting to be called Terrence, but I didn't know about it at the time,
and I Don't Read Minds. Mea culpa. Mea minima culpa.
4: In Another Gorge
Tiger Leaping Gorge was probably the highlight of the Tour. I've
written elsewhere about the bus breakdown on the way there, and the
truck ride we took instead, but that was actually very good for group
dynamics. On our first day, the walk was almost all along cliffside
road. On the morning of the second day, we walked down the trail from
our guesthouse to Middle Tiger Leaping Gorge to admire Middle Tiger
Leaping Stone and the churning Yangtze river close up, before ascending
on the short but difficult laddered route. After lunch we hiked the
high trail to another guest house. On the third day, some of us
continued on the high trail up and over and down through the
twenty-four bends back to the village of Shangri La. The others took
the shorter walk down - they'd be picked up and driven back to Shangri
La. Tina wanted us all to go down, and said that the high trail wasn't
worth doing and there wasn't much to see. There was: high forest, the
only wild bamboo I saw in China, the river far far below, clouds
drifting slowly upwards beside the path, and the cliffs of the mountain
opposite. It was the most scenic of the three days (though the second was also very good), and consequently
my favourite.
3: Contagion
There was a major run of the runs. Three of the tour stayed in Li
Jiang (two of whom were only doing the Kunming-Kunming loop, and for
whom Tiger Leaping Gorge was the focus of their tour), at least three
of those who went on the trek (including myself) were affected, and
others had been sick earlier but were Loperamiding their bowels into
immobility. The epidemic was almost certainly the fault of X, going
back as far as the bus ride from Lao Cai to Kunming on our first day in
China.
We'd stopped at a small roadside shop, and he'd picked up the running
hose that they'd been using to wash the bus off the ground, had a good
drink, and then filled up his bottle. That was the stop, by the way,
with the first disgusting introduction to Chinese longdrop toilets, and
it's a reasonable supposition to believe that the same hose had been
used to clean them. So even if the water was uncontaminated - and
that's a big if - the hose was a definite worry. It wasn't unexpected
that he came down with a bad case of travellers diarrhoea.
If you eat Chinese style, it's standard for everybody to use their
chopsticks to get food from platters. After X. reported sick we
started requesting individual serving spoons, but it was probably a
little late by then. He wasn't careful or considerate with his
illness, either: There were two occasions that I'm aware of, and
probably more, where he left squat toilets absolutely painted, with no
attempt to clean up after himself. Noone was impressed, and since this
was early days on the tour, in combination with his other behaviour, it
really played a big part in bringing people's enjoyment of the tour
down (it was a factor in many of the passengers moving to another hotel
in Li Jiang).
2: Facts and Figures
If this had been Tina's first time running the tour, there would have
been a lot more understanding, I think, but she'd run this particular
tour four times before (and had been to some of the locations on other
tours). There were, as implied by my letter, a bunch of minor things
that
she should have known as a tour leader for a tour on the budget end of
the spectrum - the contrast between the nature, quantity, and quality
of information we got for Xian on the two tours was marked.
Whether or not she gave incorrect information deliberately or
carelessly or ignorantly, I don't know; I've mentioned, for instance,
her assessment of day three of the trek. Another instance: While most
of the group were flashpackers, Dan and I were on budgets and a RMB200
tour of the Li river would have broken it. We therefore decided that
we would try to do it ourselves but Tina told us there were no buses to
the boat location. There were, and we did the day for about RMB120,
which was more affordable. The Er Hai lake tour was disappointing for
the price (she'd strongly pushed for hiring a private boat, which
wasn't entirely private) and content (the best bit was at the end of
the day in the town of Xi Zhou, mentioned elsewhere). A number of
people strongly suspected that someone somewhere was skimming/skimping
- although the only direct evidence I have is that the cost of the Martial
Arts show was near half the price on the Intrepid tour than the
Gecko's.
1: Early Times
Even at the first group meeting in Kunming there was a certain strain.
Tina's discourse style tended to be on the hectoring side, and a couple
of people who were late to the meeting got a lecturing. In addition,
four of us had had two days' travel with X. behaving insanely, so our
nerves were a bit frazzled. We'd had a thirteen hour bus ride from the
border town of Lao Cai, having been accompanied by Long on the
overnight train from Hanoi. We said goodbye to Long there (he was
about to return all the way back to Hanoi on the day train as he'd
another tour to lead soon) and crossed the border where, we met Tina.
0: Start of phase 2b (Hanoi to Beijing)
