More Hanoi

It is Monday evening and I'm just back from an excellent street food meal with Ayumi and Masako - another lady fom Osaka who A. met the other day at Halong Bay. The three of us have been today to the Chua Huong "Perfume Pagoda" on a day trip - complete with a long river-boat journey in the hot-hot sun. It is a very special place and I hope to file some photos another time. I loaned my camera to Masako for the day - because hers disappeared on the Halong Bay outing.

It was good to see Hien again here, and she helped us get a great value deal on this outing.

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.

Hanoi

I'm in Hanoi for a few days, enjoying the hectic atmosphere and contemplating what next. The bus journey from Sapa was very enjoyable for the scenery, but pretty painful in other ways - because of the overloud and almost constant Kungfu DVD movies and Vietnamese pop videos.

On arrival we were fortunate in quickly meeting up with Chris from Australia and Hugo from France, who helped us get settled in to an acceptable hotel and head out for some good food. The "street food" here is just about the best there is - and of course it is also the cheapest option.

The photo is of me and Ayumi with Kenji, our new Japanese friend, at last night's fine street meal. This was followed by the discovery of a similar place which sells the local beer at 3000 Dong a go (that's about 10 pence each). Needless to say I rose slightly later than planned this morning.

Toda Ayumi and Kenji are on separate trips to Halong Bay.

I'm hoping to meet up later with Hien - someone I have kept in email touch with since my visit last year and she rated a blog mention as a top travel agent!

Sapa

This is my 4th day in the village of Sapa in northern VietNam. Blog access is possible again, but photo editing software is still rare. Thanks to Moira for pointing me at some websites which help.
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.

It was here that I met Ayumi, a nice young Japanese lady who was heading in the same direction - for Lao Cai and then up the 40km or so to Sapa. This is a really nice old French colonial "hill station", just by VietNam's highest mountain, the wonderfully named Fansipan (at 3143m). The air is great, and we seem to be constantly surrounded by rolling clouds. Ayumi and I have teamed up for a couple of one day treks in the hills, generally through rice paddy terraces and communities of various hill tribes - esp. "Black Hmong" and "Red Hmong". She has been great company, and we plan to make the (9 hour) bus journey to Hanoi together in a couple of days before going our separate ways. For Ayumi it is Laos, then Cambodia, Thailand, India. For me I need to do some new planning after my early exit from China!

My other pictures are of some of the local scenery and people - and of me and Ayumi at the start of our first trek.

China update

Well at least an update on my visits to Chengdu (in Xichuan province) and Kunming (in Yunnan).
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!

My pictures are of myself with the 5 star ladies at Sam's - and with a random (friendly) Chinese girl in front of the Mao statue in Chengdu's central square, the entrance to a Zen monastery there and part of teh interior, and of course some young giant pandas after a night on the bamboo - and a bonus red panda.
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.

Made it to Lhasa

I was wrong about the numbers but everything else about the trip to Tibet is going more or less according to plan. There are 32 of us, in groups of 4, each with our LandCruiser and driver; so we have been in a convoy of 8 big 4WD vehicles speeding across the special world of the high Tibetan plateau. I'm afraid that I won't be able to describe it all very well in just a short space here, but it has certainly been an excellent experience so far.
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.

Leaving Nepal

If all goes according to plan I'll finally be moving on from Nepal tomorrow - on a 6 a.m. bus for the border with Tibet and then transferring to a Landcruiser for the rest of the 5 day journey across the Tibetan plateau to Lhasa - stopping for the first overnight at the village of Nyalam. This is an organised tour for a group of 6 - 8 people - because this is just about the only way to travel in Tibet. When we get to Lhasa the package includes a couple of days sightseeing there.



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.

NMV update

I've been pretty busy with the NMV these last couple of weeks, mostly either trailing around the computer shops or teaching English (or preparing my lessons - which is actually the hardest bit).
We have managed to buy some suitable IT equipment, and my lessons seem to have gone down quite well. On top of all that the trustees and staff have been working hard to promote the school better in the local community with some quite positive results. I won't say any more about the NMV here, but I have prepared a more detailed update (and financial statement) for those who have generously supported the cause. Thank you all once again!
The photos are the handover of a bunch of IT equipment to Chuda and Kaushila (NMV Principal), and me with my English class.

This coming week I'll be spending more time at the school - to help to get the equipment set up and to do some training in its use.




Then it will finally be time for me to move on from Nepal. There always seems to be an air of uncertainty about any plans for travel to Tibet, but if all goes according to plan I'll be heading for Lhasa starting next Saturday (the 9th may) on an overland trip which should take about 5 days.