There’s a new site for finding your way around in the Philipines. You can research weekly trips, or find a ferry schedule directly. I was involved in making the site, so I am a little biased, but I think its the best ferry schedule site in the PH. I can’t wait to go back.
I was going through some old emails and ran into this one… I wrote this the last day I was in Tibet, about the trek we did from Gamden to Samye. Its a god story, and maybe i’ll try to expand on it some day. But in the meantime, this might be able to help some of you looking for Tibet tips.
Enjoy:
Our trek was great, we took a bus to one monastary,
called ganden, and prepared to hike across some
mountains to another river valley and a monastary
called Samye. A guy met us as we were having breakfast
in the guesthouse and asked if we needed yaks. “Yak”
he says. So we arranged for a yak and a yakman/guide
to get us over the mountains.
It was a beautiful walk. First we went to this village
where the yak guy lived and waited for him to gather
the yaks, which turned out to be a horse. But he
promised the next day we would have our yaks. Then we
hiked into this very long river valley, and started
climbing toward what would be our first pass.
We camped at a flat spot for the first night,
apparently 2 hours from the top. It was really
beautiful, with nomad encampments scattered around.
The kids soon enough ran over to see what we were up
to, which at that point was mostly laying flat on our
backs.
The next day our yak showed up, causing a bit of a
stir because we had agreed on a price for 2, but there
was only 1. Thus we set off for zhukar la, the highest
pass on the trip at 17,000ft and undoubtably the
hardest hike I have ever done. It was 3.5 hours
straight up, without a step of downhill, directly
towards this ever visible saddle in the mountains.
Near the top, the trail dissapeared, and it became
just a scramble over rocks and bushes.
We climbed over the saddle then descended into an
unbelievable valley. The only way in was through the
high mountain passes, there were no roads, no power
lines, only a nomad herders camp by the stream at the
bottom. We hiked down into the valley and up again
into the mouth of another valley to sleep.
That valley led to chetur la, the second pass on our
trip. This pass was merely 16000ft, and already being
at 15,500 or so it was much more fun than the previous
days ascent. So when we got to the top andrew and I
decided to add to the excitment and try to get to one
of the two peaks flanking the pass. It turned out to
be pretty easy, if a little time consuming, as we just
walked up the steep slope, holding on for dear life.
The view from the top was great, we could see the
valley we came from, plus the two lakes att he pass,
and the promise of more valley’s below, as we followed
the stream from the pass. We walked along the ridge
and met kayin in the green pastures near the lake.
Then we had to catch up to our yaks, our yak party had
grown because our yak man connected with the yak men
for a group of italians, so we ran down the hill to
catch them.
The rest of the trip was downhill, following this
stream until it ran past the Samye monastary in the
Yarlung Tsampo valley (the yarlung tsampo is the
biggest river in tibet). What was amazing about this
last day and a half of hiking was the change in
scenery. We went from rocks, to boot-high plants, then
to knee high plants, until finally we were surrounded
by a lush forest of small trees, bushes, and
wildflowers. We stoppped in a small meadow by the
river to camp, and there we learned the reason for the
greenness. It poured all night.
The fourth day was a very short hike, we continued
along the river valley and watched it grow from a
mountain stream to a rushing river. About 3 hours into
our hike we came upon the first village we had seen in
days, and an hour later we were at Nyengo, a village
that had automobile connection to the rest of the
world, albeit by very bumpy tractor ride.
Here our yak and yakman turned back, and we continued
on by tractor to samye. Samye looked really cool from
the outside, but we had been advised not to go in,
because we had not purchased the appropriate permits
and the PSB was waiting inside for unprepared victims.
We then caught a hair-raising tractor ride from the
monastary to the river’s edge, where we boarded a boat
to cross the river. On the other side was the highway
heading back towards Lhasa. Just our luck, a minute
after we stepped on the road, a bus for Lhasa came by
and picked us up.
Well, I hope that captures some of the majesty that is
Tibet, but i doubt it. Today it is raining and dreary
in Lhasa, sort of anticlimactic for our last day in
this place.
I juist returned from a nice business trip to Cebu, the Philippines second largest city. I had a really nice time there, the people I met were wonderfully nice and friendly, and we were able to get a lot of work done. I also went on a great canyoning trip on the south side of Cebu. I wholeheartedly recommend repeatedly leaping down 5m waterfalls into placid pools of blue-green water.
OK, I know, why have a pic of SF if I am blogging from China?
Well, I like the picture. Also, we just got back from our US trip. We had a great time, but now its back to work.
I promise, when I get a good pic of Guangzhou that matches this theme, i’ll put it up here.
Now that I am back, I promise to get back to my semi-regular schedule of 1 podcast a week. Maybe. How’s this. If anyone emails me asking for a new episode, I’ll put one together. I’m not sure anyone is paying any attention.
You may have noticed if you have tried reading this blog that I have trouble finishing stories. So, I have decided to get around that problem by going straight to Audiobook. Also, this is for my dad since he complained that he couldn’t put my podcast on his iPod. So here you go, you can take this and listen to it on the way to work.
The music in this podcast is Uyghur music from The Red Rose CD , available at The Camel’s Back.
After a little bit of research, I have found the name of the town I talk about. It’s Yuanyang 元阳， in the prefecture of Gejiu 个旧. The nice lady we met was named Nayue 娜月, but that’s all I can remember.
Here’s a website about the Hope Project in Yuanyang, if you can, perhaps think about a donation.
[Ohio State University]
From the archives comes this gem of a clip taken on Langkawi Island, Malaysia, May, 2005. This was our first full day on the island, and we hired a car to take us to the points of interest. The Island was pretty small, but it had some wonderful scenery. The best view by far was this beach, called Tanjung Rhu. It looked like something out of, well, The Beach (I know, wrong country, but if you squint, you can actually see Thailand from that very beach). Pristine white sand, forested islands… There was noone there, maybe one or two other couples. This was more due to the fact that only 5 months had passed since the tsunami, as the beach was bracketed on both sides by fantastic and expensive looking 5 star hotels.
The problem was that we were paying our taxi driver by the hour, and so after a stroll and some photos, we were off to the next stop on the tour, something I already can’t remember. I really wish we had rented our own car. But all’s well. The taxi driver also dropped us off at the Night Market, where we had I believe the most pleasant afternoon in Malaysia in the company of a group of local kids. We most likely would not have found that on our own.
Salamat datang! (That may mean “good afternoon”…)
CM #9 Tanjung Rhu in Langkawi, Malaysia
Malaysia Trip 2005 Photo Album
This is a video taken during our trip to HK for our 3 year anniversary. The Avenue of the Stars is HK’s answer to the famous Mann Theater in Los Angeles. It was recently completed and I guess they have been holding live shows there on a weekly basis. We happened to catch one of the acts while we strolled the lane. The Avenue itself is placed at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, right across from the famous HK skyline. The view was really nice and we had a great walk.
It seems that I am the king of the unfinished story. I think I have actually finished typing out only one of my stories so far, but I am going to keep trying, because as I forget, it gets harder to write this stuff down. I just found this half-post in Blogger. I wrote this from an internet cafe in Kunming, the night before we were to return to Hubei by air, Feb 2002. Even then I couldn’t finish, granted, if kept at the same pace, this story will turn into a book.
the train Jan 24 - Jan 26
It was thursday, I had just been working 17 hour days for the past 4 days grading 70 essays so that I could turn in my final grades for the semester. I went to the teachers office and finished compiling all the grades into excel spreadsheets, printed them out, double checked them, and left them on the secratary’s desk. It was 1PM, Valerie and I were leaving on the bus at 4. Rushing home to find Val and Alison waiting for me for lunch, we enjoyed a wonderful last meal in our home of the past 6 months, Huangzhou. I quickly packed for the trip, trying to determin the bare minimum for my month long sojourn. I’d never been on a month long vacation, and I really had no expectations for the upcoming trip, only that it would be warmer as we went south.
The plan was simple, take the train to Kunming, Yunnan. From there we would get our visas for Laos, and head south into the small country for about a week. Then we planned to return to China, to travel through the fabled and diverse province of Yunnan. Starting in the rainforests of the south we would head north, to magnificent mountains at the edge of the Tibetian plateau, eventually returning to Kunming in time to catch our train back to Wuhan. “That should fill up 4 weeks”, we thought. By prioritizing and visiting the things we wanted most to see first, we were confident that our trip would be smooth, relaxed, and we would have no regrets.
We left Huangzhou on time, and nervously sat on the bus to Wuhan, where we would catch our train. I stared out the window wondering what the future would bring. I realised that we knew nothing, only the summaries in our guidebooks and a little bit of Chinese. We would become entirely dependent on other people, many of them strangers, if we were to fully realise our plans. That idea scared me a little bit, as I knew it would stretch my sense of independence, my ability to trust, and potentially get us into a lot of trouble. What I didn’t know is that this ability to trust is what makes travelling such a fulfilling experience.
Getting the train tickets was no simple feat. We were told by numerous ticket offices and travel agents, “Can’t buy any now, come back later, two days.” But after returning we found that the tickets had been sold out. Since that made no sense to us, we kept trying and eventually found a company that said they could get tickets, cheap ones too. As we entered the bustling train station and found our way to the appropriate gate and train car, we were immediately taken aback by the site before us. There was a literal human wedge forcing themselves into the door of the traincar. With little alternative Val and I pushed ourselves right in and rode the human wave into the train. Nothing I have seen could have prepared me for the scene I witnessed on the traincar. It was China: unleashed.
China is an overpopulated country, and in no place is that more apparent than the 4th class train car. Upon being pushed into the car I was presented with a site I can only call - humanity. There were people everywhere preparing for the ride to come. Some were sitting peacefully, others forceing themselves through the crowds. Men were throwing their bags into the overhead racks, women were calming their babies. Valerie and I found the seats written on our tickets and sat down.
The train was a cross section of the majority of Chinese society. Families travelling together, and students returning home for the semester break
Last week I was pretty much out of commision due to fever. On the last day in Baokang, I felt a cold coming on. On the train ride back to Guangzhou, the cold turned into a full-blown fever. I spent a fairly miserable 22 hours on that train, alternatively sweating and shivering as my fever ran its course. This was in fact the worst infection I have had in a long time, the last time I felt this bad was in Laos, where I was also traveling and fevering at the same time.
I think I picked up the bug in southern Yunnan, near the Vietnam border. I was traveling with Valerie, my cousin, during our first Spring Festival holiday. While we were waiting for our visas to be processed but the Laotian Consulate in Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, we decided to take a side trip to a town that my guidebook called “the best example of terrace farming in Asia.” This was an out of the way place with crazy weather, and instead of breathtaking views of hillsides covered in terraced rice patties, we ended up spending 2 days in a dense fog. Visibility 50 feet. We were not prepared for the weather, and I was cold. Despite the constant drizzle, wehad a great time in that town, but that is a story for another time.
We returned to Kunming to pick up our visas, then immediately hopped onto a 24 hour bus to take us all the way to the Mengda, the southern tip of Yunnan and the border of Laos. This bus is of the type called a “sleeper bus.” Instead of seats, it is fitted with skinny bunk beds, two levels and three rows, from front to back. We stepped over everyone’s luggage to the back of the bus where there were two adjacent empty spots. As everyone one the bus stared at us (admittedly not too many foreigners travel this way), we stowed our gear in the aisle, and settled in for the long ride.
Yunnan is a beautiful province. The most diverse in both poples and environments. The northwest of Yunnan is the southeast corner of the Tibetan Plateau, covered in snowcapped peaks. The southern part of Yunnan is covered in ful-fledged rain forest along the Burmese-Thai-Lao border. Unfortunately, I saw very little of it. Pretty much from the time I boarded the bus, all I remember was shivering, sweat, and a never-ending rocking motion as the bus lumbered along the windy, hilly roads of central Yunnan. When we stopped for food about 5 hours in, I wasn’t even hungry. Val was pretty worried about me, but there wasn’t much we could do on the bus, so I just hunkered down and tried to sleep it off.
We drove through the night, and the next morning, we arrived at a town that very clearly was not our destination, yet the driver was shaking us awake, telling us to get off the bus. Apparrently we were the only two who had bought tickets all the way through to the border, so the bi bus was going to stop in that town, and we had to board another bus. I was not feeling much better, but we dutifully trudged over to this new, smaller bus, one with seats. This one had strange markings on the side though, I would not find out exactly what that represented until later. What I remember from this bus ride was that I suddenly was feeling better, and that was a very good thing, because that was possibly the bumpiest ride I have ever taken.
Continued in Part 2
It’s still raining, so we haven’t really been up and about much. This morning, I was truly cold… I haven’t felt naturally cold in months. Yesterday we hung out at Second Sister’s house most of the day. She cooked lunch and dinner for everybody, giving Ma and First Sister a break. Their complex, at the People’s Bank of China, has a basketball court and we shot hops for a couple of hours. Ba gave me a schooling in Chinese Chess. I can still beat my two nephews, but I’m hopeless against anyone older than 16.
The food here has been great as always. It is very hearty, salty and oily, with strong flavors that I am not quite used to. There are also some strange vegetables that I have not seen anywhere else. One is a purple half cabbage half onion that is about the size of a head of garlic. It tastes like, well, a vegetable. Vegetables here are really fresh, really good. They aren’t big and pretty like the ones we buy in the market in Guangzhou, but they look much more real. They have bad spots, they are smaller and twisted. They look like they were grown in the real world.
We put together a movie from the footage we took while in Baokang. If you don’t know the people, it might be kinda boring, and if you’re hungry, well don’t watch. Itis a homage to the food and my Baokang family.
http://desandies.com/baokang.mov
Enjoy.