Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Blogs united
This is a picture of the Fay, Evee and myself on the lawn after our tour. Thank you ladies for a really nice day - and to Evee again for all your support.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Back in Glasgow
Saturday, 6 June 2009
He came, he saw, he did a little shopping!
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Decision made
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Hanoi to Bangkok
Our last day in Hanoi turned out to be very enjoyable. Our new friend Trang showed us round the museum of Vietnamese ethnology. She and Hien have both been extremely kind and helpful in many ways these last few days and have helped leave us with a very positive view of the Vietnamese people.
PS. Congratulations to Air Asia for another flight where they simply take off on schedule and land 10 minutes early - without blowing any fanfares!
Sunday, 31 May 2009
More Hanoi
Yesterday Ayumi and I visited the Van Mieu temple of literature (an ancient Confucian centre of learning) - with Trang and Chien as guides. They are a very pleasant and helpful young Vientamese couple I met a few days ago and who wanted to be our hosts in return for the chance to practise their English. They even provided the transport - in the form of fairly exhilarating motorbike rides through the city!
I have now decided on my next move, and will fly to Bangkok on Tuesday. My BA return flight to the UK is booked from there (on the 17th July) and I will be investigating the possibility of cutting my trip short by going home a lot sooner. BA's website doesn't want to allow me to make a change online; so I will have to leave my investigations till I'm at BKK. They don't have representation in Hanoi. As it happens, and for entirly different reasons, Ayumi has decided to make the same journey. We are turning into quite a travel partnership, and I remain very grateful for her good company.
I attach some photos from the Van Mieu visit, including an impresive old statue of Confucius.
Friday, 29 May 2009
Hanoi
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Sapa
The overnight bus journey from Kunming to Hekou was pretty uncomfortable, but it successfully delivered us to the border with an hour to spare before it opened for the day. Here's a picture of the border crossing (a bridge across the Red River) before opening time.
Monday, 25 May 2009
China update
I would have stayed much longer in China if the authorities hadn't seriously reduced my entitlement to stay in the country. I had a visa issued in Edinburgh for 2 x 60 day visits - based on my openly declared plan to enter from Nepal and travel through Tibet to other provinces. In Nepal I had no choice, though, but to relinquish this visa (and the ukp45 cost) in exchange for a travel permit to Tibet and then just a few days to exit the country. There are apparently ways to get this extended once in the country, but these are quite prohibitive (involving opening a Chinese bank account and depositing quite a lot of cash).
All this seems nuts at a time when the Chinese are apparently aiming to grow tourism dramatically and to help Xichuan in particular recover from the effects of last year's earthquake.
I know that this blog site is banned in China - which means that some officials will probably read it. My message to them is that they should lighten up and work on encouraging their visitors to stay a lot longer.
Undoubtedly China is a fantastic country in many ways, and I would have loved to be able to stay longer and explore the place properly.
But I was happy with what I was able to see and do. Chengdu and Kunming are bustling modern cities (huge by Western standards), each with their own interesting histories and places of serious interest (e.g. the Jiuzhaigou, Dali, "stone forests", as well as the pandas of course!).
I like the way the cities are laid out, with nice wide roads, plenty room for pedestrians and bikes of various sorts. There is a surprising number of electric bikes and scooters as well as push-bikes, which result in pollution being much lower than I had expected (certainly a whole lot better than Kathmandu).
Finally for now, I'm adding a link to Sam's Guesthouse in Chengdu - a really excellent place run by 5 lovely and very helpful ladies. Sam himself seems to have retired but obviously has some good common sense in letting these ladies run the place for him!
Oh, and an "opera" extract.
Belated Tibet update
A few words about my visit to Tibet, now that I have access again to my blog (from Sapa in northern Vietnam).
It seems that the Chinese authorities prevent any access to the blogger or blogspot websites (for reasons that I'm sure we will never really know). Facebook is tolerated though, and I've made a few notes there in my blog absence.
First of all I'm disappointed to report no obvious yeti activity. Maybe it was the wrong season, or maybe we just didn't get high enough. At any rate the Tibetans seem to be much less interested in their (possible) fellow inhabitants than the Nepalis.
In fact most of what we saw of Tibet is really high level desert which is hardly capable of supporting any kind of life. It is a gigantic place though and we only saw a fraction. There are some more fertile valleys towards Lhasa and beyond, especially around the Bramha Putra river. The views across the plateau to the Himalayas and other surrounding mountains are fantastic.
The Tibetan people have a very different identity to their Chinese colonisers, but they seem to more or less coexist happily enough these days. Maybe it is something to do with the very obvious military presence.
Lhasa is, of course, something very special, with the Potala palace/fort/temple complex dominating the town, and many ancient monastaries nearby. Shigatse and Gyantse were our other significant stops, also with very impressive cultural histories. At Gyantse is seems that the British have still not been forgiven for an attack in 1904!
As a PS I have now managed to upload a few photographs - but I know these don't do the experience justice. The people at the bottom are some monks in their debating hour, and our whole group at a Lhasa monastery.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Made it to Lhasa
We arrived in Lhasa this afternoon and the hotel seems just about perfect - a fine old place in the ancient part of town. Although I am very happy with the trip, I have to say that it has been quite tiring - e.g. with some early starts and late finishes to avoid roadworks. On the first day we were held up for hours before we could continue our journey at 10 pm (after the roadworks had finished for the day) and then after 4 hours sleep we had to be up at 5 a.m. to get through the next section before it was closed for the day. And that was after the tortuous process of Chinese immigration control, which is complicated further with lots of medical checks because of the flu scares!
But the scenery of course has been the best, the people are great, and it is all giving me a bit of an education. Oh, and the group is good fun too - a mix from all over the world. My own foursome includes David from France (but also speaking Mandarin), Uiske from Japan, and Kim from Singapore but living in Australia.
The plateau is mainly high altitude desert surrounded by mountain tops - including some of the best in the world. The view of Everest and its neighbours is completely uninterrupted - very much contrasting with the Nepal side.
The population is very sparse, but the Buddhist culture is fascinating. Lhasa has the richest heritage of all and I'm looking forward to exploring it over the next few days. The Chinese have managed to turn it into quite a burgeoning boom town by all appearances, but I'm reserving judgement on whether that is a good thing or not!
Sorry I can't add any photos for now. I'll try to fix that tomorrow.
Friday, 8 May 2009
Leaving Nepal
Lhasa is at 3700 metres and the route is pretty high all the way, going up over 5000 metres at some points. It will be interesting to see how the body acclimatises simply by driving to these altitudes. But I'm sure that the scenery will compensate for any little difficulties on that front.
Of course I have some mixed feelings in moving on. There are many things I like a lot about Nepal and the Nepalese people, and I have made some good friends here. I'm not going to make a long list of pros and cons here, but I won't be sorry to leave the Kathmandu traffic and power cuts behind!
When entering Tibet you also need to have an exit plan (and booking). In my case I've gone for a flight to Chengdu in Sichuan province. After that the plans are still pretty vague, but will almost certainly involve some rail travel for a change, probably taking in Kunming or Naning in the south before heading into northern VietNam. I have no idea what the internet access will be like in the remote parts of Tibet. Probably pretty poor I suspect, but I will post an update when I get the chance.