Lhasa

The hotel is good, it has good food, showers, internet access and the world cup. Its very clean and traditional but the toilets are very very smelly. However, they do your laundry for free. Squatting in a smelly toilet is bearable if you are just doing a quick pee but can lead to constipation longer term, I am just not designed for using the toilet while squatting.

There are about eight 18 to 22 yr old Americans here to do volunteer English teaching and that's far too many for the size of the orphanage so there is a bit of competition to get to teach a class. I have been asked to help with the physical therapy for the disabled children and I am happy to do this expect I have absolutely no experience and they showed me once then buggered off and left me with the kids. The kids are sweet though and they know what they are supposed to do so they show me. The American kids tell me that its illegal to teach English in Tibet, I find this a bit strange but they are quite serious about not taking to strangers about why I am here. They told me certain places are bugged and undercover policemen will try to ask for information on the context of apprearing friendly.

Yesterday (Saturday) we went on a trip to Namtso lake. Lhasa is at 3,500m and Namso is at 4,700m, since I arrived in Lhasa I've had a mild headache but Natmso was like having a mega bad hangover for a day and a half, not good and the toilets there were the worst I have ever ever seen. However, the lake is pretty and we enjoyed the scenery. Its given me second thoughts about Everest Base Camp (EBC they call it here) as its even higher at 5,200m so I might just wimp out on the overland trip. Also, it seems that the trips are not really organised by recognised tour companies, you just put a sign up on the hotel notice board and collect a group of people, hire a jeep and go.

The road to Namtso was excellent (Chinese) and we saw the new railway link to Chengdu due to open on 1st July. On the road, we passed convoys of Chinese army trucks, 10 or 20 at a time, I think mostly they are doing contruction. I think this place would benefit from good roads and railways, sure it will make the place more commercial but the poverty here is harsh and I'm not sure now that I am so sympathetic to the Dalai Lama it looks to me like he lived in luxury while the rest of the people lived in extreme poverty. On Friday we visited the Potala Palace, its a museum now, there are a lot fo buddha statues behind glass and tombs of the previous DLs, you can see people outside on the pavement prostrating themselves in prayer. A lot of praying goes on here, the woman who cleans the rooms even does it at 7am in the morning before she starts cleaning.

Tibet

I am in Lhasa, just arrived today and it is so wonderful, I am so happy to be here at last. This is how it happened:

I was told that I needed to be in Chengdu for three days to get a permit to travel to Lhasa but the Global Crossroads contact was sending me very confusing instructions by email so I ended up booking my flight from Beijing to Chengdu for the 19th and then on to Lhasa on the 21st. I arrived at 6:30pm in the hostel in Chengdu and I had a beer, started chatting to people and watched a film, so I decided to call my contact early next morning. At 9:30am I called him and he said "I had a ticket for you to fly to Lhasa at 8am this morning" - oops. He came over to the hostel and we sorted it out so I was able to go see the Sichaun face changing opera and the Giant Pandas before I left Chengdu. Giant Pandas don't do much except eat and sleep, they need to spend 14 hours a day eating to maintain their bodyweight and only about 2% of the stuff they eat (bamboo) is nutritious. But they are very cute and very entertaining.

There are a lot of Chinese military in Tibet and you need a permit to go anywhere, so I have a permit for Lhasa and if I go anywhere outside Lhasa, I will need another permit....


Some random things about China
Chinese TV
I have never watched so much football as I have in the last few weeks, its the only thing on tv that I can understand except the one very boring English news channel. But because of the time difference, I've not seen any of the England games, there was one on at 3am this morning but I'm not that dedicated.

Chinese drains
They smell really badly, I don't even like going to brush my teeth because of the horrible smell. People say that the Chinese just tear down a building and rebuild it every six years and that there are always lots of problems with the building quality. They hire very cheap labour from people in the countryside and they have no safety regulations so they can build really cheaply.

Chinese spitting
People spit in the street, its awful and it is proceeded by a loud throat clearing. The streets are very clean though, not because people don't throw litter but because there are lots and lots of people sweeping all the time. There must be a premium on plastic recycling because if you finish drinking a bottle of water someone will come up and ask you for the empty bottle.

Chinese neighbours
The Chinese govt seem to be very keen to lend money cheaply to neighbours and they don't care who so Afganistan and Pakistan are included in this. In return they get to do things like build a coal fired power station in Mongolia which will send most of the the power to Beijing.

I can here the world cup football calling me....

Mongolia

This was such a wonderful trip, I am sorry I have to leave. I was so lucky to be traveling with wonderful people, we just spent the whole time laughing and joking.

The journey started with the Trans Siberian Express from Beijing to Ulaan Baator. You can stay on this train for six days all the way to Moscow but that must be a hellish journey because there are no showers and the toilets are smelly. When you flush the toilet it just goes straight onto the track, really, you can see the track and when you are sitting on the loo, you get a draft on your bum. Its very strange, the loo roll and the soap runs out fast, there is water but no hand towel. You get used to these things and just carry pocket tissues with you in your pocket all the time.

The train leaves Beijing at 7:40am and there is a mad panic with people trying to find their carriage and get their stuff loaded into their compartment. There are four bunk beds in each compartment but the one I was allocated was packed floor to ceiling with food and drink. We never found out what this was about but there were three or four people loading boxes of food from dried sausage to beer, noodles, jars of sauces. We thought maybe they buy stuff in Beijing because its cheaper and then sell it in Russia. Its pandemonium when the train is about to leave with all this stuff packed in the corridors and people complaining and squeezing past. After a bit when the train had left, the conductor moved me to the next carriage to share with a father and son from Maine and a nice lady from Mongolia who was traveling with her daughter and grandson, she spoke a few words of English and she told me she lived in Ulaan Baator. In the other carriages next to mine there was an English lady traveling alone, two young French Canadian girls and a family from Florida, it was all very cozy and we spent a lot of the 30 hour train journey chatting to each other or looking out the window at the wonderful scenery.

The food on the Chinese side is grim but its included in the price of the ticket so I ate it. When we go to the border with Mongolia it was about 10:30pm, the Chinese border people come on and do a lot of passport checking, give you forms to fill out and stamp your passport in a very serious manner. Then they throw you off the train in the middle of no mans land where there is only a duty free shop, so we bought some cold beer and stood around in the dark chatting and getting pissed. They play a very strange selection of music from Mozart to The Last Call. It was totally surreal. It takes them about two hours to change the undercarriage on the train because the track in Mongolia is 10cm wider and then you get back on the train for more serious passport checking and stamping. During all this process the toilets are locked and after so much beer one young American peed off the side of the train onto the track, the Chinese didn't like this at all and took him away for a good talking to.

Once in Mongolia, we started to pass through the Gobi desert and the amount of dust the train stirred up was amazing, we closed all the doors and people walked about with handkerchiefs over their mouth. The Mongolian dining car was a sight to behold, all carved wood and carpets and the food was delicious although this time you had to pay for it. On the whole, Mongolian people are much more friendly than the Chinese people. Mongolia is a strange and wonderful place, its between China and Russia and was part of the USSR but during the time of Ghengis Khan, the Mongolian Empire included China and stretched from the Yellow Sea to the Danube. The people are so happy and friendly and welcoming, since the communist period ended, tourism is booming and the country is changing rapidly.

The next day I was just slobbing in my hotel when my guide turned up to take us sightseeing around the city. There were four people in our group; me, Stephanie from San Francisco, Sheri and Rich from Chicago. Our guide was Gana, a young Mongolian guy who spent two years learning English in Southern California. Stephanie and I shared a room and luckily the same sense of humour, it took Gana a while to understand that nothing we said was serious and we were just joking all the time but once he caught on, he joined in as well and we spent the whole time laughing and making up mad stories about what was going on. This tends to happen a lot in Mongolia like you would ask how long it was till we arrived at the camp and you would be told about two hours, then twenty minutes later you would be there. Or you would say do they have cold beer and the answer would be no - the generator isn't switched on.

The driving
Our driver was so friendly and happy and spoke a few words of English, he was driving an old grey Russian minibus which he kept clean and occasionally would open up the engine to check or look underneath - we never found out what he was doing but maybe he was just keeping it going. Everytime he saw someone else on the road (not often) he would stop for a chat about which roads were open or closed. There are no real roads as such, you just drive across flat grassy plain (Steppe) or rocky sandy desert. There are tracks which make the journey a bit smoother sometimes. Most of the time its very very bumpy. There are no road signs and no visible land marks, occasionally the driver will make a right or left turn for absolutely no apparent reason, he must have known were he was going though because we always arrived at a camp. It was interesting after three hours driving when we had to ask him to stop so that we could pee, one time Sheri asked him to stop where there were more "features" ie the land was not just totally flat to the horizon. The sky is huge and clear and it really looks like you could fall off the end of the world. Even the flat parts of Mongolia are 1,300 metres above sea level, the weather is often very hot and dry and sometimes the wind whips up sand storms that blow the dust everywhere and you really cannot see a thing. The driver was excellent at spotting wildlife and stopping for us to take pictures, we saw gazelles - they run alongside the minibus and can reach speeds of up to 85 km per hour. We saw yellow beaked swans, black necked cranes and once we caught sight of a wolf.

The camps
We stayed in tourist ger camps. Gers are an amazing feat of engineering. The Mongolian people can put them up and take them down in minutes. They are round and the frame looks like garden trellis then the roof is like the spokes of an umbrella but made of wood, the whole thing is covered in felt with a small wooden door. After you've banged your head a few time going in or out, you remember to duck. These are tourist camps, you sleep in a ger, there is a big ger for the dining room and there is a concrete shower and toilet block. There are hot showers but the water pressure never gets above a trickle so you need to be patient. The camps are totally in the middle of absolutely nowhere as far as the eye can see. It was the start of the season so in most of the camps, we were the only people which made the sense of remoteness even more acute and delightful.

They serve western style food, there is way too much food, three courses at lunch and at dinner. For the first few days, we asked if we could have traditional Mongolian dishes but Mongolian food does not have a great variety, its mostly meat and that is either in dumplings or in soup so after a few meals of dumplings we gave up.

Our guide
We liked to torment him when we got bored, we would ask him to go catch a baby goat so that we could stroke it and take pictures of it. Then we would read the guide book and ask him to find us some fermented mares milk to try. He told us it was too early in the season for that but he did find us fermented camels milk which made us happy. It tastes like runny yogurt, its very alcoholic, we also tried the distilled version which is clear and very easy to drink, even more alcoholic and tastes a bit like neat gin. He quickly caught on to our desire for baby animals and pretty soon there would be baby goats, baby camels, small children, etc whenever we stopped. The baby goats are funny, they run away at first but after a while they come right up to you, they like to head butt things (anything) and they will try to eat anything including your clothing. The guide book recommended giving gifts to the children so whenever we saw one, they were besieged with pencils, crayons, colouring books and sweets. The guide book also said beware of rabid dogs so whenever we saw a dog, we would say ah, the rabid dog. Mostly they were just family pets and quite friendly although a bit ragged looking.

The people
2.5 millions people live in Mongolia and 1.5 m of them are in the capital UB. The centre of the capital is mostly ugly Russian style buildings but there are occasion more interesting Mongolian buildings like the wrestling palace (wrestling is a big thing in Mongolia and they say that the best Sumo wrestlers are from Mongolia). They are not really into football here but they are all watching the world cup, its on the TV everywhere you go so maybe it will catch on and there will be a Mongolian team in the next world cup. Around the city there are ger camps were people live in traditional style nomadic housing but have just moved them into the city - it looks a bit weird. Outside the city, you can be driving along and in the middle of nowhere there will be a ger with a satellite dish outside it. One time we stopped and saw a family combing the goat to remove the extra winter hair, it was a bit like cat grooming.

The journey
We traveled a bit west and then south from UB and caught an internal flight back from Dalanzadgad. The saw the ruined monastery at Khogno Khan, the ancient capital of Mongolia at Karakorum, the remains of the Erdenezuu monastery, the Orkhon waterfall (although there was no water - not enough rain), the ruins of the Ongiin monastery, the flaming red cliffs at Bayanzag (this is the area where the dinosaur bones and eggs have been found and you can still find tiny fragments of dinosaur bones in the sand. The guide told us that you can tell its dinosaur bone if it sticks to your tongue and then demonstrated that for us), the Altai mountains and Khongorin Els which is a massive sand dune 800 metres high (this is called the singing dunes and they kind of hum more than sing, they also vibrate when they do this and Stephanie freaked out when she was standing thigh deep in the middle of vibrating sand - its caused by the effect of the wind on the dunes - its quite weird when you see a whole area of sand vibrating). Then we saw the tiny glacier at Yoliin Am in the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park - its about 19km long and in a valley which gets very little direct sun, its not very deep during summer but it doesn't totally melt away so its very much a tourist attraction.

One night we stayed at a luxury camp called the Three Camel Lodge, we decided to treat ourselves to a massage - it was wonderful and then we watched DVDs and drank cold beer. The highlight of the trip was riding the camels over the sand dunes, this was really cool but a bit sore on those of us not used to riding. When I got off, I could hardly stand up and the nice camel man was laughing and supporting me. The next day we road horses on what was supposed to be a short stroll to the glacier and back however, on the way back my horse decided to bolt for home and I hard to pull really hard to get him to stop. I was scared out of my wits and shaking like a jelly when he finally stopped but I didn't fall off and later we were all joking that I galloped across Mongolia like Ghengis Khan.

Beijing

After a ten hour flight on Air China I arrived to heavy rain and jetlag so went straight to bed and slept for twelve hours as this seemed to be the best cure for swollen ankles and a headache. Air China is a bit basic, the food is terrible and they don't have a choice of movies also it took me a while to find the earphone as the guy next to me had hidden them on the floor so I watched Chicken Little in silence, to be honest it doesn't really need much dialogue but to make up for it, I stole his blanket.

Next day I saw Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City in the rain which was good because there were less people. Beijing is massive a sprawling, there are a lot of old style single story courtyard style houses and shops that are being pulled down to make way for multi storey building and highways. The old style building have some character, they are crowded together in narrow crampled alleyways of which there are said to be as many as the hairs on an Ox's back. The new buildings are sterile and characterless. They are throwing up hotels and restoring monuments in a mad building frenzy in preparation for the olympics. The guide talked about migrant workers being paid very little to do the construction but she means people from the countryside rather than outside the country. I went to the Friendship Store to see what shopping was like in Beijing and either it was empty because it was a Sunday or no one in Beijing shops there... I bought a map, they have a strange system were they give you a ticket to take to a cashier were you pay and take the receipt back to collect your goods. Could you just imgine that in M&S... Everything in China is called the Friendship something eg the Friendship Highway.

Yesterday I walked 12km along a really beautiful section of the great wall. I say along but it was mostly up and down and very steep in places but the views were stunningly beautiful. Even though we bought a ticket at the start there were people three places along the way asking for a further fee, I am not sure how much of this is legal, my guide managed to talk her way around the first one and paid the other two. Today, my poor legs are aching so I'm having a rest and tonight going to see the Shaolin monks display of kung fu.

Tomorrow - train to Mongolia for a ten day trip in the Gobi desert.

Hanoi – London – Beijing

On the way back to Hanoi, I stopped for two days at a place called the Boat Landing in Muang Sing, it was a beautiful peaceful place and it was raining. An American man lives there and works as a marketing consultant to promote tourism in the area, he was talking to one of the guides and singing the words to a local song in English. He said "when it rains, I think of the future". It set me thinking about what I would be doing when I got back to London and for some reason I just had a strong desire to go home for a visit, so I did. When I got back to Hanoi, I booked a flight to London and came home to beautiful warm sunshine, buses with a timetable and a soft seat, not have to bargain over the price for everything, M&S underwear and all currency that made sense to me. I checked my bank statement and found that what I thought was a quite large sum in Vietnam (220,000 dong) had cost me £8.50. Thank god for a strong pound, it’s a good time to go travelling.

Once back it was good to see old friends and catch up, there was a production in rehearsal at the Mary Wallace theatre and they needed an assistant stage manager to help out back stage so I volunteered and it was good to be involved in something while I was here. I had time in London to plan out the next stage of my journey, London to Beijing for some sightseeing, then on to Mongolia for a tour in the Gobi desert then two weeks volunteer teaching in Tibet. After that, maybe Nepal if the situation there has settled down and then India and if I can a job working for JPM in one of the offices in India either Mumbai or Bangalore.

Itinerary:
26 May: Arrive Beijing
27 May: Private guide to Forbidden City in the morning with Tianamen Square. Summer Palace in the afternoon . Lunch at the Dazhaimen Restaurant28 May: AM private guide for visit to Confusious & Lama Temple in Beijing . PM at leisure 29 May: Transfer to the Great Wall at Jins hanling - walk with guide to Simatai, around 12km return to Beijing.30 May: Day at leisure -Overnight in Beijing31 May: train to Ulaan Baator,Mongolia
1 June: Arrive UB - meet with Nomads Tours in Mongolia
Beauties of the Gobi tour
16 June: Return from Beijing
17 June: Transfer from Saga Youth Hostel to the train station for train to Chengde, Qiwanglou Hotel for one night
18 June: Return train to Beijing.
19 June: flight to Chengdu to obtain work permit for Tibet
21 June: flight to Lhasa to begin two weeks placement as volunteer English teaching assistant in a local school

Luang Nam Tha - Muang Sing - Hanoi

The day after I arrived in Ventaine was the start of the Laos New Year which involves four days of celebration. Its funny to have New Year on the 14th to 17th April, it seemed to be more of a religious festival than anything, it involved a lot of washing of Buddhas, lots of eating and drinking, fireworks, tying a white string around your wrist for good luck, having strangers throw water over you or having people cover you in a white powder.

I really wanted to be able to go to Luang Prabang which is an old French colonial city, where the focus of the festivities would be and yes, another world heritage site but the transport in Loas is not so great and it wouldn't be possible to both visit LP and visit the minority villages in the north in one week. The travel agent was a bit pessimistic about being able to find accommodation in LP over the NY weekend and I really wanted to see the minority villages as I had really enjoyed Sapa so much so I opted for the villages. When I mentioned Sapa to the travel agent, she said "yes, but that area has already been opened up to tourism". Now given that I had never been anywhere as remote as that before I wondered what more remoteness could there be? I soon found out... I took the bus from Luang Nam Tha to Muang Sing, it was really a truck with some bench type seats in the back. The good thing was it was open and the fresh air kept me cool, the bad thing was that people stand by the side of the road and throw water at any passing vehicle (see above re: water throwing). The other bad thing is that the roads are dirt tracks full of potholes and the bus/truck thing bounces along all over the places shaking you to bits. At one point the road was closed in front of us by two large concrete blocks. The driver just attached a cable to one and pulled it out of the way. I was to discover the road closing thing happens quite often (about three times a day) and its due to the Chinese building new proper tarmac roads with lines painted on them (oh bliss). At first I thought they did this out of some humanitarian desire to improve the infrastructure of poorer neighbouring countries, but no, its because they are leasing the land near them from the Lao people and farming it for all sorts of things like timber (wood pulp); water melons; potatoes. When the guide first said Lapa Trees (at least that what I think he was saying) I thought he said Laboratory as in laboratory farm (lapa tree farm). So I arrived at Muang Sing to start the three day trek around the Akha villages. They literally live on the land. They grow everything they eat, expect MSG which they are fond of and which they add to every dish. This is the only thing they buy from the market. On the first night, the guide asked me if I liked chicken and when I said yes, he came back with a live one. They put all the food in the middle of the table and you just help yourself, I mean you don't get a separate plate, you eat out of the dishes on the table. At first I found this really hard to do and the guide would give me a separate dish and put some soup in a bowl for me but I got used to it. He liked to tease me by saying I must eat the head and feet of the chicken as they are the best bits, but he asked the nice lady who made the food the remove the offending chicken head away from the table because I wasn't eating any of the chicken. They eat a lot of sticky rice (cold sticky rice), even with breakfast. They pick it up in their hands and squeeze it into a ball and then dip it into some really spicy sauce and eat it. I did this on the first day and the sauce was so hot it gave me hiccups. The children wear torn clothes or no clothes but they do go to school. I got the impression that the traditional costume was something the people only wore to impress me. There is a standpipe in the village which is the only source of water but I stayed in a luxury lodge with running water and a solar heated shower.

The young men have a sort of bachelor pad/hut built for them by the family and they can invite girls there to stay overnight. Now girls can say no if they don’t like the man but as recently as 2001 a girl was beaten for refusing to sleep with a man who had brought gifts to the head man of the village and “lost face” because the girl refused to sleep with him.

The villages have all been moved from the mountains to a valley closer to Muang Sing. Some people like the move because they have water and easier access to the town but some people decided to stay in the mountains because the air is cleaner and there is less disease. TB is a problem and people don’t have money to go to the hospital for treatment. The water supply was provided by a German charity which has been helping the villagers overcome opium addiction which was a big problem in the past.

Halong Bay - Vientiane

Halong Bay - yuck, yuck, yuck. I didn't like this, for one thing when there are a million junks, mine was a bit grubby, maybe I just didn't ask enough questions when I booked it and maybe the others are better but they all looked a bit tatty to me. Meals were included but everything else, even a coffee after dinner was extra, they didn't switch on the electricity in the rooms till about 6pm so no fan or hot water for a shower. Then they asked us to check out of our room at 9:30 the next morning, it was just a pain and not at all comfortable. The bathroom had chipped tiles and the water ran out of the sink straight onto the floor. Halong Bay is a beautiful collection of limestone outcrops / small islands, on one or two of the bigger islands there are limestone caves with interesting stalactites and stalagmites but people just throw rubbish in the sea and its disgusting.

I was pleased to get back to Hanoi and check into my lovely clean 15usd a night hotel room. I decided to treat myself to one of Hanoi's best restuarants, Bobby Chinn's, very modern and trendy and only 45 usd. Next day I decided to take a bit of a detour from Vietnam and visit Loas. I caught a flight from Hanoi to Vientaine and I've just booked a trip leaving tomorrow to visit the northern villages. This weekend is the Loas new year so it should be interesting. I have to say the currency thing has just gone out of the window here, they use three currencies - usd, thia bhat and the local loa kip. The Loas kip comes mostly in 5,000 kip bills and when change money at the airport, you get wads of them, eg the taxi from the airport cost 65,000 kip. When I booked the flight from Hanoi, it cost 242usd and to avoid the 4% commission that they charge for a credit card transaction, I got 4 million Vietnam Dong out of the bank in cash, I've stopped doing that now because its just so inconvenient.