Taiyuan to Hohhot to Beijing - An Inner Mongolian Adventure - Also Haerbin

Sam and I made it to Hohhot (the capital city of Inner Mongolia) feeling a little weary after our second sleeper train in 2 days. After a brief rest, we went out in search of a tour company to ask about the Naadam festival and trips to the grasslands. Unfortunately, the Lonely Planet, usually such a traveller's bible let us down in some important respects.

Firstly, the map to the tour company was rather inaccurate, which is understandable considering that they tried to fit maps to every notable place in all of China into one book, but still annoying when you're trying to find something.

Secondly, the book informed us that Hohhot was a good place to see the festival which was celebrated at the horseracing grounds there. In actual fact, there was no evidence of festival at all in the city, and the tour operator told us that it was only happening at one of the grasslands about 200km away.

Thirdly, it told us we should be able to get a tour for a 200-300 RMB, but in order to get to the grasslands where the festival was, we would need a private car and a guide and the total cost would be more like 1100 RMB each, insanely over our daily budget. He managed to bring this down to around 800, or 700 for a tour to a closer grassland, but in the end we had to leave because there was no way he could come down to our price and no way we could go up to his.

Instead we found a public bus to the town (although it barely qualified as a village by English standards) of Zhaohe on the nearest grassland Xilamuren (still 120km away), and hoped that fate would smile on us when we got there. We were rewarded by some lucky coincidences and an amazing time, all for about 300 RMB, a much more reasonable price.

The 2hr bus journey took us through some stunning scenery, rolling (chalk or limestone?) hills that were easy to picture some millennia ago as the bottom of an ancient sea. Chinese driving, which is pretty terrifying in cities, became even crazier on the windy hill roads and our bus driver frequently overtook several large trucks at a time, on a corner, on a bridge, blaring his horn all the while. Another interesting feature of the bus was that the air conditioning only worked when the driver had his foot on the accellerator.

When we got off the bus we were immediately approached by a woman who asked us if we wanted to go horseriding and motioned us towards a small minivan. We said ok and got on the bus along with a Chinese man called Jang, who turned out to be invaluable to us, since he could speak passable English and therefore translated for us throughout the trip.

A short drive away we came to a yurt camp overlooking Zhaohe and were shown into a yurt and given some very milky (yeuch) tea. A yurt, in case you didn't know, is a round sort of tent, although all the yurts here are now more permanent structures on a concrete base. Jang translated for us and we ordered some lunch (a very difficult task if you're faced with a menu in Chinese characters I can tell you) and negotiated a price for horseriding.

We ended up riding for 3-4 hours around the grasslands on what were essentially ponies, since the horses of Inner Mongolia are rather smaller than the English variety. My horse was the tallest and seemed to have a thing for Sam's horse since he was rather protective of it. Not sure if the motive was sexual, since all the horses were male, but when Jang's horse came anywhere near mine, mine would spin around and try and nip it in the face or neck. This was quite challenging for me, because I've only been pony trekking a couple of times before so I wasn't quite prepared for my horse to suddenly lurch off to one side in a violent assault on a fellow rider's mount.

Also very different from previous pony trekking experiences was the fact that the horses occasionally went very fast indeed. None of this trotting gently round the countryside with a hard hat for us. No, our guide (an expert horseman) would hiss "Sshh Sshh" and the horses would immediately speed up, generally to a canter, but occassionally when we whipped them into a frenzy into a full gallop. We all tried as best we could to hang on and find a position that didn't involve bouncing up and down like a crazy thing when the horse went at all above walking pace. It was exhausting but good fun.

And the scenery was wonderful, a clear blue sky (the first unsmoggy sky I've seen in China) stretching over an endless, flat, scrubby grassland punctuated by sandy paths and trails forged by horses, cars and motorbikes (for the people of the grassland have all the mod cons these days). The landscape looked lifeless at first but soon I noticed insects everywhere including insects that looked like crickets or grasshoppers on the ground but had markings like butterflies when they leapt into the air. When we stopped I also saw small birds (chasing the crickets) and butterflies, and a tiny frog the size of my thumb, and a large stag beetle that was trying to burrow under a mound of grass.

We stopped at a sort of farmstead with a little lake where a huge group of Chinese tourists were trying on traditional Mongolian dress. We tried some on too and I have a picture of us looking very silly which I'll show anyone who is interested. After we took the clothes off they informed us that we had to pay 30 RMB for the privilege. We bargained them down to 20. It seems that the selling technique of the grasslands is to give you something or let you go somewhere and then charge you for it afterwards. We didn't really mind that they were trying to make money out of us, since most of their livelihood seems to depend on tourism these days, but it's hard to shake the notion that someone is trying to rip you off when they want to charge you 3 RMB just for looking at their lake. Still, this didn't even come close to spoiling the experience for us.

We returned to our horses and carried on to a field with tussocks of grass and a couple of cows (which made the view look rather English) and after another bonerattling horseride back to the yurt camp ate roast lamb and scrambled egg and tomatoes (a common dish here) and rice, and had a long nap. Our tiredness was mostly heat-induced, as we were rather sunburnt by this stage.


Later we went and looked around Zhaohe and saw a Buddhist temple there, and bargained for some souvenirs. Later still we went to a nearby yurt camp where the locals were putting on a musical show for tour buses full of Chinese people, like a sort of Inner Mongolian cabaret.


Unfortunately we turned out to be the main attraction here, along with 2 rather tall Dutch boys. Chinese people openly stare at foreigners and often come up and ask for photos (especially if the foreigner is particularly foreign looking) and they have no notion that this could be considered at all rude. After about a million pictures had been taken and after my very shoddy Mandarin had been tested to its absolute limit the dancing and singing finally started and the Chinese tourists (most of whom were very very drunk) kept clambering up onto the stage with the performers to have photos taken with them, while they singing and dancing. If I had been trying to perform up there I would very quickly have resorted to violence, but the Mongolians seemed used to it, although a little weary all the same.


On the bus on the way back to Hohhot, I sat for a short time next to a small boy who leaned forward to his mother and grandmother and whispered excitedly, saying "waiguoren" (foreigner) over and over. It was very funny, and I mind much less when a child stares or is interested in me. It's quite amusing to watch their open-mouthed shock when they see you, or their genuine curiosity about what sort of creature you might be. Still, having grown up in London and being quite used to all sorts of people from all sorts of places, it's still very strange to be such an object of curiosity and fascination (although not so far hostility) simply because you look so different.


From Hohhot we got a train to Beijing and went to see the Forbidden City, a huge walled palace complex that will be familiar to viewers of Chinese films. Everything they say about Beijing air quality is true. On our first afternoon we climbed up a bell tower and later a hill with a pagoda overlooking the Forbidden City and the view from both was completely shrouded in smog. The contrast was especially great because we had come from Hohhot where the sky is much clearer - a brilliant cloudless blue on the day we left.


From Beijing we went to Haerbin, a Russian influenced town in the northeast of China. They have a splendid Russian church and some beautiful buildings, which it was very nice to walk through at sunset. Yesterday morning (Saturday 2 August) we went to a Siberian Tiger park, which is ostensibly set up to save the tigers and let them into the wild, but which is more a sort of safari for tourists. Still, despite the dubious scientific merit of the place, it was amazing to see the tigers so close, and there were hundreds of them, as well as a few lions and other big cats. Also, it was good to see that most of the tigers looked healthy, which was not at all the case when I went to Shanghai zoo where all the animals look rather drab and unhappy.


After the tigers we dropped in on Haerbin's Science Museum which is very very cool indeed. It has lots of interactive exhibits (just like Launch Pad at the Science Museum in London for anybody who remembers it) and it felt like being a kid again let loose in a place with lots of cool toys.


We then got an afternoon train back to Beijing (since due to the annoying way the Chinese train system is set up we couldn't get a night train) and eventually got to our hostel here at about 12.30 last night, by which time I had developed a horrid cold. Because of this I spent all today in bed instead of going out to see all the amazing sights Beijing has to offer, so I'm currently feeling a little sorry for myself.


Tomorrow, we were going to do a 10km walk along the Great Wall, but I don't think I'll be up to this, so I think Sam will do that and I will go to a more touristy, less physically intensive bit of wall instead and see if I can fit in some more sightseeing in the city as well, since I missed out today.


We're going back to Shanghai on Tuesday night (on another hardseater train woo), so I'll be able to seem some friends there before I fly home on Saturday afternoon. I arrive early Sunday morning and I'm looking forward to seeing you all very very soon.

Hong Kong to Macau to Shenzhen to Guangzhou to Xian to Taiyuan

I'm currently in an internet cafe in the not particularly touristy town of Taiyuan and the Chinese government obviously took against my last blog entry for some reason because it took me about 15 minutes and as many proxy servers to finally get onto here to write anything. After all that effort, I suppose I'd better think of something worthwhile to say. Here goes...

On Thursday 17 I got up nice and early and caught a ferry over to Macau. This is a very strange place indeed. It's like Hong Kong in the sense that it was a foreign concession, and was recently returned to Chinese rule, but instead of the British, it belonged to the Portuguese. This means that the place is full of Mediterranean style squares and crumbling, once-grand buildings in a confusing mishmash with Chinese influences, writing and people. The signs are all in Chinese characters and Portuguese (with a few in English too) and Macaunese food is a mixture of all sorts of influences, and incidentally quite tasty.

I managed to translate quite a lot of the signs and things because Portuguese seems to have some similarities with Italian, and English of course. I think I'll never complain about being in a European country and not being able to understand the language, because it's unbelievably harder to get around in a country where the script isn't even the same so there's no way you can make an intelligent guess. This is most annoying in train stations where there are no English signs meaning you end up queuing for half an hour in the wrong queue before you get to the front and are directed somewhere else with a vague hand gesture.

I only had time to stay in Macau for one day - I would definitely go back for more, just because it's so strange there - so I mainly looked around the churches and other buildings of note in the centre of town. One church had a collection of religious artefacts in a mini museum to the side, and when I got to the top floor I found a sign that rather disconcertingly read "Max load of this floor 10 persons". Since I was the only one there, it managed not to fall in, so that was alright.

Other sights of note include the ruins of St Paul's church (where only the beautiful stone facade is left standing) and the fort next door to this. The fort contains a very good museum and from the roof there are not only great views but also cannons. You can't go wrong with cannons. I was resting by one of these when a local child came up to me and starting talking to me. At first I was wary because children who can speak any English in Asia usually just ask for money, but I think his mother was just sending him to random foreigners to practice his English, which I suppose must be an effective way to learn.

On Friday I got the ferry to Shenzhen and met Sam. We wandered round the park there and went to a museum and the next morning caught the train to nearby Guangzhou (Canton). We stayed on this nice little island in the river called Shamian Island and were only slightly weirded out by the abundance of American couples with one or more Chinese children on the island. Guangzhou must be a popular choice for US wannabe parents.

Lucy will be pleased to hear that we ate several times in a diner on the island called Lucy's. It even had a flashing neon sign. One day when we were walking the 200 metres or so from our hostel to the diner, the wind picked up hugely sending clouds of dust and grit flying and dislodging palm leaves to fall on unwary people below. The wind can only have lasted 10-20 minutes. The weather in Guangzhou is very strange, as well as phantom winds there were also rain showers that either consisted of a few sparse drops for ages or very heavy downpours that lasted just a minute or two.

We stayed in Guangzhou 3 nights and went out on the first for Sam's birthday, ending up at a Lonely Planet recommended nightclub that had clearly changed management since it was written up. There was a huge poster on the door of a lineup of scantily clad women and one of our companions asked warily what kind of club it was. The black guy who seemed to be the owner or manager said "Just a club" and so we followed him in to find a dancer writhing (in a rather bored fashion) around a pole in her underwear. She disappeared after a few minutes and we spent the rest of the early hours sitting around the corner hiding from the loud music (and ignoring the smell) while Sam beat pretty much everyone at pool. Something he does regularly.

Guangzhou was an interesting city with a massive public park - the Chinese do public spaces and parks very well and they really use them, e.g. for tai chi, kung fu, other exercises and games etc. In Guangzhou, the most popular game (and people were playing this in small groups on every street corner) involved a group standing in a circle and kicking a small shuttlecock type thing with a flat base up in the air. We also went to a mausoleum with a good museum attached and a couple of Buddhist temples that were very beautiful and older than ones I'd seen elsewhere. I would be interested to learn more about Chinese Buddhism and religion in general because it all seems rather mysterious when you're just walking around a temple. It's not like going to a cathedral or somewhere, where despite the fact that I'm not especially knowledgeable, I at least have some idea what's going on and what different things are for and/or represent.

We stayed in Guangzhou for 3 nights and on Tuesday started our epic 26 hour hard seater train journey to Xian. Hard seats are the cheapest option on trains here apart from standing tickets, and unfortunately these were the only tickets left. Not wanting to wait an extra day or two we decided to grin and bear it, and actually it could have been a lot worse. The seats were pretty much designed to be as uncomfortable as possible, but at least we had seats. The aisles were full of people who didn't. I couldn't exactly brush my teeth since people were sleeping in, on and next to the sinks (and yes I do mean in the sink, uncomfortable though that may sound), and in order to get to the loos or the hot water tap for instant noodle nourishment you had to battle your way through hordes of people, but we made it.

We then found our way to a hostel in Xian, home of the terracotta warriors. The Lonely Planet and some people I've talked to don't like Xian. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's inevitably quite touristy, maybe because the city itself is very modern and commercial. In any case, I really enjoyed it there. We crammed in a lot in one day, getting up early to go to the terracotta warriors, before coming back to town and seeing the Great Mosque, the Muslim Quarter, a small museum/teahouse, the Drum and Bell Towers and the city wall. I think it was good that I'd seen the British Museum exhibition and some documentaries before viewing the site where the warriors are, because the information there isn't exactly comprehensive. Still the site speaks for itself through sheer size and grandeur (the museum buildings like many public buildings here are grand, Communist, concrete structures) and there was a great little introductory film about Emperor Qin Shi Huang (the 1st Emperor who unified China and built the tomb and the warriors to be his private army in the afterlife). This was shown in a cinema with 9 screens in a circle around you which was particularly impressive for battle scenes or grand sweeping landscapes, because you could spin around and watch different bits of the action.

In particular in Xian I enjoyed walking round the mosque and the wall (which we wandered along at sunset), because both were tranquil, peaceful havens in a busy, traffic-filled city.

On Thursday night (25th) we got the train to Taiyuan and luxury of luxuries had hard sleeper tickets so we could lie down and sleep. We went to another good museum today and ate a bewildering array of Shanxi province noodles and things that were definitely (and emphatically) not dumplings according the guy who translated for us, but looked pretty much like dumplings to us. We're getting another sleeper train this evening (again with beds woohoo) up to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia where (if the dates we found on the internet are correct) there should be a local horse festival with racing and wrestling and dancing going on. We're expecting quite a touristy experience there but then Xian was supposed to be touristy and it wasn't really, so maybe it won't be so bad.

One final thing to end this stupidly long post. What is it with the Chinese and Auld Lang Syne? I've heard it 4 or 5 times on public address systems etc. and in Xian a guy up the bell tower was playing it on an ocarina-type instrument. Every time I hear it I get the urge to count down to midnight and sing along drunkenly while shaking hands with random strangers. It's damn catchy too.

Huangshan to Hong Kong

The passport official at Hung Hom (the Hong Kong train station) looks at my passport with a bemused expression. "Is this you?" he questions, pointing at my passport photo.

What does he expect me to say? No? Granted, the photo would never pass today's strict passport photo standards since most of my face is covered by my tragic hairstyle of 2002, but still, the passport has since got me around the world without a second glance until this guy asks me whether the photo is in fact, me. I answer "Yes," with what I hope is an innocent smile and my word seems to be all the confirmation he requires.

I am - as you may have gathered - now in Hong Kong, awaiting my visa which should be ready this evening for the whopping fee of HK$1200 (at 15.4 HK$ to the pound you can work that one out for yourself). Luckily, despite all the current visa fiasco it seems my simple tourist visa should be easy enough to get (fingers crossed etc. etc.), so I think I may even head over to Macau for a day before I meet my flatmate Sam in Shenzhen in China.

Yesterday I spent my afternoon in Hong Kong (apart from getting my visa sorted) wandering through Kowloon park, where they have an aviary full of pretty birds, and walking along the waterfront watching the lazer display show, which incidentally was a bit rubbish. The coordination required was impressive since all the skyscrapers light up in time to music but it just completely fell short of magnificent. I don't know, maybe I'm just spoiled e.g. by the laser display at Futuroscope (remember that one kids? with the white horse charging at you through the sky), but altogether I've seen much more impressive shows on a less grand scale. I'm not the only one either, a German tourist said "Scheize" (or however it's spelt) decisively as soon as it was over.

I was in fact interrupted writing this entry yesterday by the arrival in the internet cafe of Lucie Vickers, a fellow teaching volunteer from Thailand with her friend Fiona, fresh from their adventures in India. Suffice it to say, it was a bit random to bump into her here in HK, so I swore effusively before we went and had a (very expensive) beer in a (not at all) Irish pub.

Today I took the tram up Victoria Peak and eventually found the exit from the shopping centre at the top (everywhere is a shopping centre here). I then walked the 2.8 km circuit around the peak of the hill, partly because I couldn't find the road up to the top (I was clearly not in my best navigating mood) and partly because I thought perhaps my poor legs wouldn't stand the climb after the punishment they received at Huangshan at the weekend. More on that later.

After that I walked through Soho, vainly searching for a Chinese restaurant (they're harder to find here than you might think) and settled for sushi, to which I am now addicted. After that, I took a ferry back across the harbour and went to the art museum and now I'm here, telling you lovely people all about it, wondering if Lucie and Fiona will randomly walk in to the internet cafe again.

Unconventionally I've told you about the most recent events first instead of the least recent, i.e. my experiences up a Chinese mountain. Well here goes - the Huangshan epic.

Last Friday, 6 of us - Lily, Sam, Elaine, Aneesa and Alina and myself - boarded the night train from Shanghai to Huangshan, which rather accurately translates as the Yellow Mountains, a place consistently listed in top tens of what to visit in China. We were all full of promise, and the spirit of adventure - the trip certainly did not disappoint on that score. At Suzhou, we were joined by two volunteers from there (Natalie and Harriet) and the night passed uneventfully, except that the swaying I experienced at the top of a triple bunk bed (incidentally uncomfortably close to the air conditioning) did make it feel rather more like a trip on a ferry than a train journey.

From the train station we caught a bus and when this was pulling into Tangkou (the town at the bottom of the mountain), a man named Mr Cheng introduced himself to us as a local restaurant owner and purveyor of tourist advice, and informed us that the hostel I had booked for us online no longer existed. We all traipsed to the hostel that was supposed to be its replacement only to find they had no record of my booking (so I'm currently hoping the money won't just quietly disappear from my account).

Mr Cheng, who turned out to be a bit of a legend as well as a damn fine cook, made us lunch and booked us an 8 bed dorm at the top of the mountain with no shower. Lily and I had tried to book somewhere at the top of the mountain the previous weekend only to discover that everywhere we tried was full, except suites that cost 1000 RMB a night (at 13.4 to the pound) between two people. So, it seemed everything was working out for the best. Who really needs to shower every day anyway, or even once over an entire weekend, when you're climbing a mountain... At least we would all smell together.

We set off and walked an extra section via a waterfall on the way to the foot of the mountain. All of us girls (with me as usual lagging behind) were way too tired by the time we got to the eastern steps of the mountain to climb for another 2 and a half hours up, so Sam went up by himself and basically made it up by the time we did, and we were on a cable car. It turned out to be a good thing that we were lazy, because it began to absolutely bucket it down and even looking for the hotel at the top for 20 or so minutes left us all completely soaked through. The dorm minus shower was starting to look less and less appealing. On the bright side, however, the rain did provide us with an opportunity for some beautiful pictures of us all in our rain macs.

Since everything has to be carried up the mountain, and also just because they can, food and drink prices are very high up there, so Elaine, Aneesa and I, dined on a fine selection of pringle-substitutes, instant noodles and oreos, followed by coffee in one of the hotels. I asked the waitress where the toilet was - in English since my Mandarin education unhelpfully didn't include the word for toilet - but she just looked blank. I mimed washing my hands, and Aneesa, seeing the blank stares continued, made a sound that crossed language barriers and indicated that I really needed a wee, much to everybody's amusement. I found the toilets after that and (not to be underappreciated in Asia) the disabled toilet was an actual proper toilet, not a squat one. Only later did it occur to me that it was quite ironic to have a disabled toilet at the top of the mountain, especially since you had to climb a step to get into the rather small cubicle. Perhaps we westerners are deemed disabled by Chinese hotel owners due to our inability to use squat toilets.

We then climbed up the extra dark, windy staircase to our dorm room, which smelled strange, especially after we had sat and steamed in it a while. In the morning those of us who had managed to get any sleep were awoken abruptly by hordes of Chinese people getting up at 3.30 am to be in plenty of time for sunrise. We followed them, and while most of my friends found a place on a large wide rock that served as a viewing platform, I couldn't see from there and so walked a little further up the hill.

There I found a rock all to myself with a splendid view across the valley and it was incredibly peaceful and calm in that eerie pre-dawn light for all of five minutes before the hordes of Chinese people followed me and set up camp at my feet and on various nearby rocks.

The Huangshan sunrise has got to count as the funniest (and least meditative) sunrise I have ever seen, and served as an excellent lesson in cultural differences. Any sunrise witnessed by purely English people is done so in silence, with any necessary conversation conducted in a kind of reverend whisper. Not so in China. Conversation was loud and almost raucous and increased in volume until the sun managed to peak above the bank of clouds at the horizon whereupon several people actually cheered and clapped as if to say "well done". They then took 3 or 4 photos and disappeared immediately, because obviously the show was now over. I had to suppress giggles through the whole thing.

We then sat around waiting for toast that was on a menu but never actually materialised (presumably because someone had neglected to carry bread up the mountain the day before), before setting off at about 7.30 am to climb down the mountain. We accidentally got split into 2 groups and most people went down the shorter route (again accidentally) while Lily, Sam and myself tackled the western steps. It was magnificent, but physically very challenging, especially since my legs (not yet painful) simply ceased to work properly half way down and I started to walk like some sort of badly put together robot.

This was all fine (although once again I did lag behind a little) until it decided to rain again with a vengeance, resoaking my just about dry trainers (which are still damp today). At one point we took shelter under a tarpaulin over a little shop, and when the rain failed to abate after a few minutes went to look down the next set of steps.

It was at this point that I ceased to cope. The water was coming down in ridiculous quantities meaning we had to wade along the path, and the steps had turned into a vicious looking waterfall. Sam decided to go ahead anyway (being an adventurous sort) and Lily kindly stayed behind with me until the rain stopped, which was luckily not that long after.

We made it to Mr Cheng's restaurant by 1.30pm and then spent the rest of the day annoying him by hanging around there (although he did manage to offload some of us to a random person's swimming pool nearby), until we left for another night train journey in the evening. The whole weekend was generally rather exhausting but on the whole rather fun. I'll bore you all with pictures when I get back.

The end is nigh...

...because this is my penultimate day of working for Shanghai Talk Magazine. I'm also nearing the end of my time in Shanghai, as I leave for Huangshan (the Yellow Mountains) on Friday night and only touch down briefly in Shanghai again on Monday before catching the epic 20 something hour train to Hong Kong. Added to this I fly home exactly one month from today on the 9 August.

Here are my travel plans so far:
First a weekend trip to climb a mountain in Huangshan (and due to my aversion to exercise I can already envision myself being grumpy and exhausted all the way up and all the way back down);

Then to Hong Kong for a visa run and also just to see the place. This, I think, will be the single most expensive few days of my whole trip since Hong Kong is generally quite prices and visa prices have tripled because of the Olympics;

After that I meet up with Sam, my flatmate in Shenzhen near the Hong Kong border, and together we travel to Guangzhou (on the way to Xian), Xian (with the terracotta army), Beijing (with the Great Wall etc.), and some other places further north, possibly in Inner Mongolia (where we would get to sleep in a yurt) and Haerbin (a Russian-influenced town in Northeast China). Don't worry Mum, I'm trying to put Sam off going to Tibet. Maybe we'll save that for another time.

After we do that vague loop around China we'll head back to Shanghai and hopefully I'll have a couple of days before my flight home to relax and maybe do another cookery course (to add to my Laos one and my Thai one) so that I can wow you all with Asian cuisine when I get back.

Working at Shanghai Talk has been great - I've got loads of articles printed which should help me find a job and there is lots of freedom to think of ideas and pursue them. It's really made me think magazines are the way to go for me. Shanghai itself has been equally good, at once stimulating and terrifying, exhilarating and down right smelly. Hopefully I'm off this evening to this event we went to last wednesday at this bar on the Bund (the posh British concession area by the river). For 200 RMB/head (about 15 quid), you get really nice buffet food and free flow Mumm champagne. Mmmm. Classy.

Will keep you posted about my Chinese adventure. Really looking forward to coming home and seeing you all very very soon. Zaijian (Mandarin for goodbye/see ya soon). Wo xihuan luxing, danshi wo xihuan wo de pengyou he wo de jia bi luxing da. (I like travelling but I like my friends and family/home more).

The Chinese authorities...

seem to be smiling on blogland for once. I can now (at least for the moment) access my blog properly, comments and all. Maybe they just really really liked my last post.

Sorry to all for not posting sooner. I was struck down with a very nasty bout of gastroenteritis (some form of food poisoning I assume) that made me rather pathetic for a while. I basically lost my appetite for two weeks as well, which as all of those who know me well will see as a sign that I was really ill. Better now though (with crossed fingers) although quite a lot poorer than I will be until I get the insurance company to pay me back. I went a couple of times to an international clinic at a hospital, and the second time they put me on a drip which was quite dramatic, especially since the needle wasn't placed correctly the first time so it made my arm swell up. I've been walking around for a week and a half with a huge bruise shaped like a butterfly on the inside of my elbow. It was very cool, but even that's faded now.

Aside from that work has been good. The first issue of the magazine that I'd worked on/wrote stuff for came out on June 1 and it was really nice to see it all in print. Yesterday was the editorial deadline for next month's issue and I have even more articles in that one (wahey). In fact, yesterday was a bit stressful: I'd written everything except a profile of a business person for our business page, but neither of the people I'd sent questions to for that had got back to me. And then yesterday morning one of them wrote saying that he really liked the questions and he'd answer them in a few days but he'd had to go back to America because his mum had died.

Of course writing back and saying, actually today is the deadline was not really an option so my boss said we should put his profile next month instead. Of course this meant that we had to find someone else available straight away for an interview and my boss gave me the contact details of this guy who they've been getting potential people from. He runs a sort of business networking group in Shanghai and he was really helpful and found someone straight away who was really interesting to talk to. Writing back to the man whose mum had died was difficult - what do you say to a bereaved stranger?

So now I had a new person to interview and this is where it got stressful, because previously I'd only interviewed people by email and I'd had a couple of days at least to research them and think of some questions whereas now I had 10 minutes and then I had to do a phone interview because he was in Beijing and quite busy. It worked out alright with me asking questions and listening and typing down everything he said as quickly as I could and I'm pretty pleased with the results, but it was certainly a little nervewracking. I think to be honest, I've kind of been spoilt so far by the relaxed atmosphere at my workplace - where I've now taken to rolling in at 11 o clock in the morning. It's probably good for me to have a few moments of pressure/stress.

Other nice things include: the woman from Heart to Heart emailing me to say that the article I wrote about her group (which funds children's heart operations) had already resulted in one person signing up to volunteer with them;

a trip which we took to Hangzhou last weekend which is very pretty and has a huge lake and Buddhist temples and so on, and was lovely even though it rained incessantly and not one taxi driver in the whole town new where our hotel was;

too many visits to restaurants and bars and clubs to mention all of them (this is just that kind of town), but one interesting place thatmmaybe I will mention is a restaurant where you eat in the dark and are served by blind waitresses, you know like in that CSI Miami episode where the guy was killed with a pen? Anyway, it was an interesting experience, unfortunately the food was terrible and incredibly overpriced so I don't think we'll be going back;

my Mandarin lessons which are very cool even though they make my brain hurt - yesterday my tutor even started teaching me how to write a few characters.

You know you're in a totalitarian country when...

3 minutes of silence for a recent catastrophic earthquake is marked and enforced by the blaring of sirens and carhorns. I knew it was the right time to be quiet because it was suddenly really really noisy. Still, despite this, and the problems many people seem to be having renewing their visas as the Olympics approach, Shanghai feels on the surface much like any western city.

People here mostly live in apartments with modern facilities and go to smart office buildings for work and eat out at nice restaurants and shop shop shop in endless malls. Beneath the surface though, the differences become more apparent; what you see here is a city that has undergone dramatic changes in the last two decades. In fact one whole half of Shanghai (Pudong - east of the river), was a marsh until about 15 years ago, and has since become the financial centre, home to the tallest buildings in the city, and the richest expats.

Shanghai is a place of many contrasts - a few broken-down slums remain cradled by towering office blocks and residential flats. People hawk and spit, and urinate all over the shiny new metro platforms, and tunnels and several times I've even seen someone gob whilst on the train. This guy yesterday spat onto the floor of the carriage and then smeared it with his foot, which was unpleasant to say the least. My eyes are constantly full of dust from the roadworks outside my flight, and my nostrils are assaulted everywhere I go, especially at aforesaid roadworks, at which (nocturnally I might add), workmen are installing an underground sewage pipe. Which yes, does mean that the pipe was previously above ground, along the edge of the pavement, so that you had to hop over it to get into a taxi.

Shanghai is a Mecca for all things commercial - history and culture are to some extent cast aside in the search for new and more interesting places to put shopping centres. Believe me, I thought the centre of Birmingham was the most shopping-centre filled place in the world until I got here. There are so many shops and consequently shop employees that it's a wonder anybody is left to buy things. I work very close to Jing'an Temple - which despite being a still-functioning, ancient, Buddhist temple, also boasts a selection of shops around its circumference, and a metro station directly beneath it.

But don't get me wrong - I like it here. There's something very honest about this city. The commercialism isn't just present like it is in the West (where we're kind of used to the idea by now), it's brazen. Embraced by people who haven't had it for so long and are trying it on and finding it fits and buying 10 pairs just because they can.

I feel as though, having been here for a month, I'm finally getting to grips with Shanghai. I know my way around a little, and we've been through one cycle of the magazine (which will be out on 1 June with several articles etc. penned by me, woohoo). I'll write again soon with perhaps more detail about what I've been up to. Just thought I'd give you an overall impression for now.

Ok, annoyed now

Whoever sent a comment about my last entry, thank you, but I can't actually read it. Presumably because somebody somewhere on blogspot said something that a certain government of a certain country that I happen to be currently residing in, didn't like. Grrr. I've figured out a way to post and to view my blog, but this doesn't seem to stretch to comments. So email me or something - it's getting to me that I can't read it. I feel like oppressed and stuff... (although admittedly in the scheme of things not that oppressed).

Oh and I've got my first proper interview tomorrow - I'm going to talk to the founder of a charity that fundraises for children's heart operations. I'll tell you all about it soon.

Woe is me...

for I cannot return home now that Boris is mayor of London. Looks like I'll have to be a political exile until his term ends in May 2012. It's a shame really, I was looking forward to seeing you guys in August...

Chiang Mai to Sukothai to Bangkok to Cambodia to Ko Chang to Shanghai

Hi all,

Currently I'm sitting at my desk in the office of Shanghai Talk, the lifestyle magazine I'll be working for for the next three months. It seems rather relaxed here - I haven't exactly been given a brief or a job description, and despite the fact that I turned up at 10am on my second day, I was still in a clear hour earlier than anybody else on the editorial team (including the boss). Also, they don't seem to mind if I just play around on the internet all day - come to think of it, playing around on the internet seems to be what my job consists of.

Despite the relaxed nature of the job, it seems to be going ok so far. I have a few responsibilities e.g. finding trivia for the quiz page and other little things like that, and I'll soon have a couple of articles on the go for the June issue. They have recently started an environment page so I'm thinking of focussing on that and e.g. profiling some green businesses here. To that end I went to an Eco Design Fair on Saturday to network a bit.

Shanghai itself is rather a bewildering place. You would of thought that after growing up in London, one big city would be rather like another, but that doesn't seem to be true here where every other building is a skyscraper or apartment block. London's skyline (and I imagine also New York's) have nothing on it for sheer grandiose overstatement.

There are over 20 million people living in Shanghai (unlike London's measly 12 mill) and on my first day when I woke up in my flat on the 14th floor of a hi-rise apartment building, I swear I could hear the low hum of several million of them talking below me, along with numerous carhorns and intermittent firecrackers; apparently these are good luck for e.g. when someone is moving house. Also, not sure I'll get a haircut here as most hairdressers seem to be thinly disguised fronts for brothels.

I had a really great time with Mum and Lucy while they were over and managed to top up my tan to a healthy glow that I will undoubtedly lose in the next week or two because it has been a rather miserable, cold, early spring here in Shanghai. (Although actually it's warmer today and will soon be hitting highs of 40 degrees so I should take as much advantage of cool breezes as I can while they're still around).

I think last time I wrote, I was in Chiang Mai preparing to go to Sukothai the next day. The bus there (compared to others I've taken) was relatively painless. I met a retired couple while I was waiting who were travelling round Asia for a month. The woman and I got talking after we both couldn't help laughing at a bus company employee who was trying to put hundreds of empty water bottles into the luggage hold. He had slotted the containers holding these in sideways, but then needed to fit in another item and so pulled them out which inevitably sent cascades of empty bottles onto the floor. This process was repeated several times, much to our amusement, and I'm almost certain we left at least one bottle behind that had rolled under the bus.

For the first half hour I was sitting next to a young Thai man who had just left university and was on the way to look for a job. He told me how brave I was to go off to another country and travel on my own, and seemed to wish he could do the same. Unfortunately for him, Thai culture not only seems to infantilise young people and make them scared to go out into the world alone, but also makes them tied to the older generation in a way that is both positive and negative. This young man explained to me that even if he could earn enough money to travel, he would have to look after his parents instead of following his dreams. He also asked me lots of questions about England, like "Do you have all kinds of weather in one day just like in films?" and seemed particularly fascinated to know if the real world beyond Thailand's borders matched up to the imaginary one he'd seen portrayed on the screen.

After half an hour he got off the bus, and since he was a stereotypically smiley Thai person, I was glad of the chance to relax my facial muscles. The unaccustomed effort of relentlessly smiling back got to me after a while.

Sukothai itself was very interesting - full of the remains of ancient city temples. I got splendidly sunburnt and dehydrated however, because the only way around the site is to cycle from temple to temple - no mean feat in the heat of the day.

The next day I got on yet another bus to Bangkok, again not to bad. I treated myself to the more expensive bus with the toilet for the 6 hour journey and was literally just in time - the bus actually started moving as I was leaping onto it.

In Bangkok mum and Lucy and I all went to the Grand Palace again which was slightly less sparkly due to cloudier weather, but still mighty impressive. We also popped into Wat Pho and saw the huge, gold, reclining Buddha there. We then went to the enormous Chatuchak market where Lucy could fulfil some of her urge to shop (and incidentally Mum and I also managed to obtain a couple of items).

Monday was an early start as we flew to Siem Reap and relaxed in our hotel for a while before checking out sunset at a temple on a hill with a great view of different temples around Angkor Wat. This was very nice but even towards sunset it was very warm indeed - not sure how people make it round lots of temples in one day.

The next day was mine and Lucy's birthday (yay) and we got up at 5 am to go see sunrise at Angkor Wat itself. Lucy generously conceded that we should probably wait until later in the day to exchange presents - not sure I would really have appreciated mine that early in the morning. When the sun was up, we walked round the temple and took in the amazing reliefs there. Next, we went to Angkor Thom where we were pretty gobsmacked by the Bayon, a ramshackle collection of blue-grey towers with almost Mayan looking faces on them. This building, although compact, was certainly a highlight of the trip. We then walked by another couple of temples in Angkor Thom that I forget the names of, before having a wander along and around the Leper King's Terrace and the Elephant Terrace. The former was carved with lots of images of people, and the latter (unsurprisingly) featured quite a few elephants. Katie would've loved it - in fact Katie, from an elephant-themed point of view, you'd like quite a lot of southeast Asia.

After that, it was back to the hotel for a relaxing afternoon and a nice meal out in a restaurant/bar unappetisingly named Deadfish. This was actually a pretty cool place, with tables on platforms at different levels, performers demonstrating traditional dance, nice food and crocodiles. Yes, that's right. Crocodiles.

The next day (Wednesday) we satisfied Mum's desire to see an overgrown jungle ruin and visited Ta Prom, where huge blocks of stone intermingle with enormous trees, their roots twisting around and through the structure, holding it together. It was great. Then it was onto a LonelyPlanet recommended Butterfly Garden restaurant for a tasty lunch surrounded by butterflies which (as is usual for such occasions) refused to sit still and pose for photographs.

Thursday saw us heading back to Bangkok, and falling into the trap of searching for a better deal on a longtail boat when we should have just gone with the first one. Once we eventually made it onto a longtail, though, we had a lovely time gliding through the Thonburi canals, and provided entertainment (in the form of something to wave at) to locals as we passed. We then had a short wander through Chinatown and headed back to the hotel.

Friday was another early start as we flew down to Trat and were chauffered from there to our hotel on the island of Ko Chang. This hotel (the Dewa) was my first 5* experience and I sincerely hope not my last. It was a stylish and relaxing place, although it was marred slightly by the occasional smell of drains. However, it's not so surprising that Thai drains are unable to cope especially at the hottest time of year, and it didn't detract from the experience.

There followed several days of relaxing, eating, swimming (in the sea and the funky pool), watching films, and drinking cocktails. You could even swim over to a pool height bar to order your cocktails and drink them in the water. What will these crazy kids think of next.

As well as not doing much, we also managed to go elephant trekking, which was just as good the second time around, although extremely terrifying as I spent half the time riding on the elephant's neck, feeling like I was going to be flung to the ground and trampled. With my limited Thai, I could tell that Lucy and I were the main topic of conversation among the mahouts for practically the whole journey. This may have been mainly the fault of my Laos beer t-shirt.

The journey to and from the elephant trekking was invigorating, because we were in the middle of Songkran festival - the Thai New Year. This involves several days of locals (and tourists), children, drunken teenagers, and grown adults who should know better, throwing water and occasionally talcum powder at passing pedestrians and vehicles. Our driver cooperated by slowing down and honking his horn every time we passed a group of people with a tank full of water so that they would wake up and splash us. This was quite fun at first, but I soon began to worry for my camera (whose predecessor you will remember had already been overloaded with moisture). Also, some of the water was icy cold, which even in the middle of the Thai summer is an unpleasant shock.

This mostly made us glad that we weren't in Bangkok for the festival, especially because our hotel there was right next to Khao San road, the centre of much drunken revelry even without water-throwing festivals as an excuse. I don't think it would have been as relaxing an experience as Ko Chang turned out to be.

We also went snorkelling which was wonderful, although Mum managed to stand on a spiky black sea urchin and bring even more attention our way than we already received as the only white family on a very full boat. Mum also declined to marry us off to one of the men working on the boat. This, I feel, is probably for the best.

Unfortunately the time came when we had to leave our idyllic island, and we were driven back to the tiny Trat airport, where we got to take of in one mother of a storm (which I thought was quite thrilling, but on which Lucy, who is scared of flying, wasn't so mad keen). Back in Bangkok, we had a last shop on Khao San Road and our last evening together, before Lucy and Mum left the next day to fly home.

I still had another day in Bangkok so I went to visit the Vivanmek Teak Mansion, a palace built by the great grandfather (or similar) of the present king in the early 20th century. This is the largest teak mansion in the world and would have been impressive, only they'd taken all that lovely, hard wood, with it's beautiful grain that would tell the tales of centuries, and painted over it in various baby-puke shades of pastel.

My goodbye taxi through Bangkok to the airport on Sat 19th April was a little sad. This would be the last time I would see Thailand for (presumably) a very long time, and I realised I was very fond of it as a country, for all its flaws. How could you not love a place where, even while they're ripping you off, they smile at you affectionately?

I wished the Thai Airways plane journey to Shanghai would take longer than the 4 or so hours it lasted, because I was on a swish new plane with a personal entertainment system instead of the group screen I'd had on the way over from England all those weeks ago. It had everything - dozens of films, tv programmes, music, games. You could even learn a language while you were ferried from one country to another. I was genuinely disappointed that we landed so soon.

So now here I am in Shanghai - so far, a far more expensive, alcohol-fuelled environment than Thailand. A modern, vibrant city (albeit with the odour of raw sewage never far away). Here I am surrounded by Chinese people with inconveniently small figures (so that no clothes here will fit me except for those from H&M) and absolutely no conception of personal space, queueing, or the notion that it's rude to stare at foreign people. It's great.

Luang Prabang to Pak Beng to Huay Xai to Chiang Khong to Chiang Mai

I think last time (if you managed to read to the end of my overly long post), we left off with me seeing in the early hours of the morning on a bench in Luang Prabang awaiting sunrise and the opening of cafes/guesthouses.

After this, I spent a few days just wandering Luang Prabang, visiting the odd Buddhist temple (of which there are many to choose from) and watching monks doing surprising things (e.g. smoking a cigarette, surfing the internet) and less surprising things (being dressed entirely in orange including orange umbrellas as sunshades, chanting, generally looking mystic and calm about life).

The "city" is really a tiny place. It wouldn't qualify as a town in England, just a large village. This is unsurprising as there are apparently only about 6 and a half million people in all of Laos. The centre of the town has quite a few tourists and tourist-orientated things, but not in an offensive in-your-face way like in the south of Thailand. In Luang Prabang, you can walk down the main streets surrounded by white faces, and then easily slip into a side street or lane and see nothing but local inhabitants or no one at all apart from the many wild dogs and cats that laze in the sun all day.

There you can see the positive impact of the money brought in by tourism, in the shiny paved roads, and booming businesses, but also the stark contrast between the sanitised front painted on for tourists, and the crumbling interior of the country behind this facade. Walk just behind the French colonial shopfronts and crowded in the back are bamboo shacks where many of the Laos people themselves live, with the charcoal burners they use for cooking cooling by the door.

Despite the obvious poverty and hardship that most people in Laos clearly face - especially compared with their more economically advanced neighbours in Thailand - it was also wonderful to see a country where tradition and culture was so important and alive. Although, having said this, Laos hasn't been a country for very long. In fact the French artificially created it when they colonised the area, and perhaps local "culture" seems so important here as a reaction against negative outside influence - first the French, and then the Americans who bombed Laos to oblivion during the Vietnam War. Also, there is a communist government in Laos, and although you'd hardly know this as a foreigner, except for the 11.30 curfew, I imagine the controlling influence of political power is more strongly felt by locals.

A lot of the women in Laos where tradition sarongs (long, beautifully patterned skirts) and as I mentioned, much of the home-cooking is still done on clay charcoal-burners. I learned something of Laos tradition when I enrolled for a day on a Laos cooking class. This was not so much about cooking as it was about Laos itself, since their culture seems to be firmly based around food, and much of the food is firmly based around sticky rice.

Laos people use this to eat with - rolling it into balls and scooping up curries etc. - and the leftovers are used for everything: rice noodles; rice paper for spring rolls; dried rice cakes eaten with a tamarind jam; mysterious rice powder used in cooking; laolao (rice whisky) and rice wine. Frankly I wouldn't have been surprised if our teacher had turned round and told us her clothes were made of sticky rice. As she kept reminding us "If not sticky rice, then not Laos people". This I suppose is hardly surprising in a country where they grow over 30 types of sticky rice in a whole rainbow of colours.

Much of Laos cuisine will be difficult to reproduce at home however, since about half the ingredients are sourced from the jungle and have no English equivalent, including a piece of tree called "chilli wood" which if you chew it (why anyone would do this to find out, I don't really know) tastes zingy and hot.

On my last day in Luang Prabang, I took a minibus to Kuangsi waterfall which is just stunning - a proper huge waterfall, with water crashing down a rocky cliff, and below a series of turquoise rock pools and smaller waterfalls in between them. Some of these were "Swimming pools" and others were "Don't swimming pools". I had a dip in a swimming pool, it was icy cold but lovely. Also it was home to the biggest pondskaters I've ever seen in my life, which were interesting water-borne companions. Oh and by the way, my camera survived the day intact. I managed to resist the urge to fling it into the water.

After Luang Prabang I took a 2 day boat trip along the Mekong to Huay Xai, with an overnight stopover at Pak Beng. I'm really glad I did this (despite the fact that it wasn't so fun with food poisoning), because it was a way to observe a little of Laos rural life without being intrusive. There are lots of treks organised from Luang Prabang and also from Chiang Mai here in Thailand, that purport to take you to visit hill tribes and observe their way of life. In fact you're hard pressed to find a tour that doesn't include this kind of anthropological tourism. This (along with the food poisoning) entirely put me off the idea of joining a trek. As someone I was talking to pointed out, it seems to make local people into animals in a zoo, with westerners wandering past and saying "ooh isn't it ethnic". I'm sure some of these tour companies do organize sensitive tours that are of benefit to both tourists and local hill tribes, but having no way of telling which ones, I decided to give the whole scene a miss.

So, it was really nice to see Laos people along the Mekong and how important this waterway clearly is to their lives. In the whole two-day boat trip we didn't pass under one bridge, and roads only connect with the river at Luang Prabang, Pak Beng and Huay Xai, nowhere in between, meaning many people are half a day or more by boat from the nearest towns. But despite this there are lots of tiny villages of bamboo/tin/wood houses, many on stilts, nestled in the steep hills that rise up alongside the river, and the people from these villages were using the river for all sorts of purposes aside from the obvious one of transport.

Lots of small children swam and frolicked in the water, and women bathed more demurely with their sarongs pulled around them, or washed clothes. I even spotted 2 teenage girls shaving their legs and applying face cream. There were also lots of people shaking shallow bowls in the water, who I can only assume were panning for gold. Away from the villages, boatmen set up bamboo poles and floats made out of plastic bottles (debris from passing boats like ours) indicating fishing nets. Several times I also saw racks of waterweed drying. They press this into flat sheets with tomatoes and spices, and then deep fry them for 1-2 seconds before loading them with freshly cut lemon grass and peanuts. We were given some to try on the cooking course. It was quite a tasty snack.

I also saw some wildlife - lots of Buffalo, goats, birds, abundant insects - and the view as a whole was just jaw-achingly beautiful all the way. The river itself shining and rippling, with craggy rocks and boulders jutting through it; strata of rock and sand and mud at the banks leading up to tree covered hills and misty, sloping mountains in the background. I've never journeyed through anywhere so consistently beautiful and remote in a long time so I'm very glad I made the trip this way instead of taking another bumpy (but considerably quicker) nightbus.

From Huay Xai, I crossed over the Mekong to Chiang Khong in Thailand on the other side and bought a ticket on a bus to Chiang Mai. Just as I was buying my ticket, the driver ran outside to the bus, so thinking it was time to leave I followed him. He then moved the bus forwards and after that there was a huge fuss with lots of Thai people milling around and a couple of policeman turning up on motorbikes and whisking the driver away. It turned out that the bus driver had backed up slightly before pulling forward and in his haste had driven his exhaust pipe right through the bumper of the car behind which had in turn been pushed into the car behind that. Still, all the people from the boat were on the bus, so I had familiar people to talk to while we waited for the woman in the ticket office to go and bail out the driver so we could get moving. And yes, I do mean she had to pay a fee so that he was able to leave the police station. This whole business didn't give me much faith in the driver's abilities, and my lack of faith was confirmed when he appeared to be in entirely the wrong gear as we were going up a not-all-that steep hill. The bus started juddering backwards and then he managed to brake and claw us forwards up the hill, the smell of burning clutch following us all the way. So all-in-all the seven hour journey was not much fun, especially since the bus appeared to have no suspension at all, meaning that my hair was full of static from my head bouncing against the back of the seat so much. Oh and I was given a seat right at the back with the toilets behind one ear and the noisy air-conditioning unit behind the other. Do I sound bitter at all? If I do it's only because I seem to have had such awful luck with public transport here, and after 2 days of feeling ill, sitting on a boat doing nothing, another day of feeling ill sitting on a bus doing nothing was not my idea of a good time.

But still, I made it to Chiang Mai in one piece and went with a couple of Australians to a groovy guesthouse one of them had stayed in before. This has a beautiful garden with hanging vines and flowers everywhere, and is populated by ageing hippies. If you ignored the smell emanating from the toilets it would be wonderful. Since I couldn't ignore this, I've now moved to a soulless block with better facilities. That night we went to this reggae roof-top bar and watched the rain fall down on the Sunday market below. This was populated by the same clientelle as our guesthouse.

The next day (yesterday) I did a Thai cooking course (yes I do love food) and that was just wonderful. We went to a local market which, unlike many markets I've seen, was very clean with lots of inviting produce, and then were driven out to the small farm where the cooking school takes place (the company is called the Thai Farm cooking school). Here we were given a tour of the garden where they grow everything we cook. This was so tranquil I could have stayed there all day, done no cooking and still have been happy. Then we went to the kitchen where all of us had our own little workstations with hob, chopping board, knives, ingredients etc. I made 5 different dishes and they all looked reasonably like the picture and tasted very nice, so I was pretty proud with the result.

Today I've been far less adventurous as I've been struck down with a horrid cold, so I just stayed in my soulless room watching crap and slightly fuzzy television. Tomorrow, I intend to see a bit more of Chiang Mai itself, and check out the night bazaar (a market spread out over several blocks) which is supposed to be fun. Then the next day I'll be off to Sukothai, before joining Mum and Lucy in Bangkok on Saturday.

Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to Bangkok to Nong Khai to Vientiane to Luang Prabang

I've had a really rather brilliant time of it since I left south Thailand. First on Sunday 16th March I flew to Bangkok and spent 3 nights there (2 of those with Catha, another volunteer). On the first evening I had a wander down Khao San road and the local area. It's a pretty cool place, full of flashing lights, and people pedalling clothing and cheap tasty food. The vibe reminded me quite a bit of Camden. Here I met 2 Irish girls who offered me a salted bug that looked suspiciously like a cockroach. I declined. Then they tried to offer it to an older woman who was eating a rather dull looking pad thai (noodle dish). She explained that she didn't eat egg, soya, msg, or fish (because apparently the fisherman here put formaldehyde on their catch). I might have taken some notice of her, but as I mentioned before, this left her with a very dull dinner indeed, basically plain noodles and vegetables.

The next day I got a tuk-tuk to the Chinese embassy, and made the mistake of getting in the first tuk-tuk I saw. Big mistake, since the rather elderly gentleman driving it, though he insisted he knew where he was going, had to stop and ask directions from a friend at the side of the road. There then followed an hour and 20 minutes of traffic jams interspersed with teeth-clenching spurts of speed that made me feel exactly as though someone was juggling with my spine when we went over the numerous bumps and potholes in the road.

When we got to the embassy, he still didn't know where to go, although to be fair, the embassy didn't have any signs on it at all, not even in Chinese as far as I could tell. Eventually some kindly locals pointed us in the right direction and from there things got much easier. For an extra fee, I got to pick up my visa the same afternoon, and although this meant I had to spend way to many hourse mooching around the nearby Tesco-Lotus and wasting time in an internet cafe (since there was nothing more interesting to do nearby), it was definitely preferable to making the journey across town more times than was necessary. The journey back was much nicer, since I took a metre taxi and he even turned on his metre (which they refuse to do in the more touristy parts of town, since they can rinse you for more money that way).

I got back and met Catha at the hotel, and spent a pleasant evening with her. The next day, we visited the Grand Palace and adjoining temples which was amazing. I will definitely encourage Mum and Lucy to come with me again. It consists of row after row of bejewelled, gold-leaf encrusted temples and palace buildings which all gleamed magnificently in the hot Bangkok sun. We then walked through the amulet market, which like so many markets is a rabbit warren of a place full of interest even to those that don't wish to buy anything. It was however, a little difficult to negotiate (as many tight spaces are here) because we kept coming across monks. Women aren't allowed to touch Buddhist monks here, so when in a confined space, it's quite tricky to get past them. I just dread the thought of being the one stupid Western tourist who cheerfully bowls into a monk and sends him spreadeagled on the floor, his orange robes flying about him.

The next morning (Thursday) I got a taxi to the southern bus terminal (at an exorbitant rate, but it's hard to haggle when you have a huge backpack) and a very comfortable efficient bus to Kanchanaburi, the site of the Bridge over the River Kwai. My room was a little basic and dingy, but it was on the river itself (i.e. actually constructing on the river with little walkways leading out to the rooms). It was a very pretty location, full of insect and birdlife and lots of bats in the evening.

I walked to the bridge (which didn't look so far on the map) and this turned out to be a mistake, because though it was only 20 minutes or so, it was in the heat of the day. Once there the bridge was much as you'd expect it to be, quite touristy with not all that much going for it apart from it's history. I then got a taxi to the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, a museum recommended in the guidebook. This was excellent and made my visit to Kanchanaburi well worth the journey. The museum detailed the history of the Japanese prisoners of war and enforced Asian labourers who built the Death Railway and the bridge itself. It is a very modern, well-put together museum, and contains lots of personal details and memorabilia of the prisoners of war as well as information on the engineering of the railway and its history through and after the war. It was all rather emotional, and next door there is a large Allied cemetery which is just beautifully kept with small flowers and shrubs in between the stone grave-markers.

Remembering my dehydrating walk earlier in the day, I decided from here to get a bicycle-taxi (like a rickshaw) back to the guesthouse, only to discover that it was actually just around the corner, which just goes to show that you can never win.

The next day I got an early bus back to Bangkok and booked my ticket on the night train north to Nong Khai on the Thailand-Laos border. I left my bag in the station and hopped on the Bangkok subway/skytrain network, which is impressively modern, clean and aggressively air-conditioned (i.e. great for an overheated tourist). This took me to Jim Thompson's house. Jim Thompson was an american architect who came to Thailand after the war and made Thai silk famous by exporting it all over the world, using patterns borrowed mainly from Chinese porcelains. Jim had a thing for Southeast Asian and Chinese antiques and built himself a house from several traditional Thai houses brought from where they were falling into a delapidated state all over central Thailand. The house itself is very attractive and is full of interesting antiques - a lot of china and porcelain, and stone Buddha statues. If I sound like an advert for the place, it's because we were ferried around the house by a Thai tour guide who efficiently pumped us full of all sorts of information.

From here I walked down past Siam Square - the big shopping district and cool teen hangout - and had a wander through Lumphini park, which is a nice open space full of joggers and people doing tai chi. There were loudspeakers blaring all over the park and just as I was leaving a whistle blew and everyone in the whole park stood stock still and silent while the national anthem played (a very strange experience). When it was finished loud music started for communal aerobics, rather like the dancing/aerobics the children do at school, only slightly more coordinated.

I then had a very nice dinner of seafood and dipping sauces and got on the train. Unfortunately it was delayed and after an hour or so a nice employee came and told us poor farangs (foreigners) what was going on. Apparently a train (I later heard a freight train) had crashed at the next station and our train was therefore delayed for 5 hours. We could apparently go and get a refund, but I didn't fancy going and paying for a hotel and then having to find an alternative mode of transportation the following day, which (however long the train was delayed) would probably have taken longer.

So, I tried to sleep in my actually decent-sized cot in the train. This was rather difficult because (since the train wasn't moving, and since I wasn't in an air-conditioned carriage) it was rather stuffy. Also, even in the middle of the night train stations are rather noisy places and every announcement, bump or bang, seemed to me to herald our finally getting started, so I would awake triumphant, only to find we hadn't actually gone anywhere. The train was delayed almost 9 hours in total, meaning that we didn't get going until 5.30 am and didn't arrive in Nong Khai until 6pm. Since I'd got on the train early to make sure I found my seat and everything ok, this meant I was on that train for a total of 22 hours, not a situation I would like to repeat.

Still, it could have been worse and the solidarity of fellow cabin-fevered travellers found me a traveling companion for the next couple of days - Jenny an American woman spending a month in Southeast Asia.

We found a nice guest house in Nong Khai and it was only when I saw a mirror above the desk of the guesthouse that I realised I had been bitten by some unfriendly mosquito 6 times on my face. I did look a site. The next morning we cycled an only slightly-terrifying route along a main road to a nearby sculpture park made by a dedicated (for dedicated read crazy) shaman. This was filled to bursting with enormous concrete sculptures of Hindhu and Buddhist gods. It was really an astonishing place, everywhere you looked there was another snake-headed/elephant-headed/monkey-headed marvel. Apparently there is another park built by the same man at Vientiane over the border.

We then bused it across the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge, through customs and on to Vientiane. Here - mainly thanks to Jenny - we cunningly ignored the official looking price-list of the taxi/bus etc. drivers nearby the bridge who wanted us to pay 250B for a ride into town. Instead we walked a little further and got on a public bus (full of uproariously laughing Laos women) for 20B. We had a little trouble finding a guesthouse, but found an ok one in the end. They were all busy because - unbeknownst to us - there was a French music festival right on the river. So, after wandering around Vientiane and eating dinner, we went and listened to some very good French music on the Mekong, which (despite the sweaty, insect-filled) atmosphere was a wonderful way to spend an evening.

The next day we changed some money which given the huge inflation they have here means I'm now a millionaire, (for the first and hopefully not last time in my life). This is because there are over 16,000 kip to the pound meaning that the modest sum of 600B (i.e. 100 pounds) yielded me over 1.6 million kip. Unfortunately since a room for the night costs in the region of 80,000 kip I don't think my millionaire status will last for long. We then walked to and through Talat Sao (the morning market) which was full of colour and noise and mud, because there had been a torrential downpouring of rain early that morning. From here we got a tuk-tuk (at a rather exorbitant rate) to Pha That Luang, the national monument of Laos, a rather showy gold stupa surrounded by four equally showy temples. We then came back to town and had a wander across the dry sandy bed of the mekong river which seems to function as a local mountain biking park in the dry season. We then had a brief look at a local history museum which was not exactly in pristine condition, but which was interesting from the point of view of learning about French colonialism, the rise of communism and the utter incomprehensibility of US actions in the Vietnam war which led Laos to take on the not-exactly envious title of most bombed nation on earth.

We had a goodbye cake at a bakery in town (the french colonial influence here is felt strongly in patisseries etc.) and I got a tuk-tuk to the local bus station and a night-bus to Luang Prabang. I had decided on the local bus, because the tourist buses are incredibly overpriced in comparison, and only go during the day, which means you have to pay for a room either end and do nothing productive all day. I ended up on a bus that left at 6pm, the only white person apart from a Swiss couple. The journey wasn't exactly conducive to sleep. For a start, Laos has some difficult terrain so you couldn't sleep half the time because you had to cling onto your seat to stop yourself falling out into the aisle as the bus negotiated twisty mountainous roads, which probably would have been quite vertiginous if it wasn't pitch black outside. Secondly, they kept turning the light on and off at random intervals, and thirdly, there was loud Thai music blaring out for the entire journey from a speaker just behind my head. This rather gave the impression that they didn't want us to sleep.

The journey didn't exactly give me an appetite for the bags of rice and dried fish available as a roadside dinner on the way. Especially as five minutes before we stopped for dinner, the woman sitting next to me, presumably travel-sick from the bumpy ride, threw up into a container she appeared to have brought for the purpose. Or, which would be nicely circular I suppose, used to contain her dinner. She was very discreet about it, and frankly deserves points for not making more fuss over the whole thing, but still, it didn't exactly put me in the mood for trying some local cuisine. In fact, what with the jerky movement, the loud music and the young woman spewing her guts out, it was more like a bad disco than a bus ride. Oh, and because (I assume) of the changes in altitude and temperature, my legs and feet became rather swollen with water retention. I felt like an old woman, but at least this didn't last long - they are now back to their usual size and shape.

We (i.e. me and the Swiss couple) got into the Luang Prabang bus station at 4.30am and got a tuk-tuk to town, then had to wait until 6am for a bakery to open so we could down large amounts off coffee, and finally made it into a guesthouse a little while later.

So now here I am, after sleeping a while and wandering the streets of Luang Prabang which is just ludicrously picturesque - filled with French colonial architecture and beautifully carved and painted Buddhist wats. It's also a bit cooler here, partly because it's quite cloudly with a romantic mist hanging over the mekong, and presumably also because of the altitude and because it's a lot further north. It's good to get a burst of lower temperatures before I head back south into the heat of the Thai summer (which apparently tops 45-50 degrees...)

It's now time to...

move onto the next adventure. I had my last day of teaching yesterday which was pretty fun. The kids suddenly became very attached to me and didn't want me to go (although knowing children this probably has a lot to do with the balloons and sweets I gave them). The kids from P2 especially love me (they are 7-8), because they were supposed to have a test but I went up to get them for English, and the teacher let them come because it was my last lesson with them. They were pretty hyper after that.

I also have far too many photos of all the children, because every time they see a camera they point at it and say "one, one" meaning "take one picture", and then proceed to all crowd around the camera and pull funny poses/give each other rabbit ears etc. When the picture is taken they then launch themselves at you all desperate to see themselves on the tiny screen.

On Thursday the nursery finished for the year (the 2 month summer holiday for Thai schools is coming up) and they children who were leaving the nursery to move into P1 had a whole little graduation ceremony and show which lasted all morning. Some of the girls did dances (or rather a 5 year old's version of a dance) and they were all dressed up in matching costumes and makeup. Then the director made us get up on stage to introduce ourselves to the parents (with Suwat, our host Dad doing the translating), and I got a certificate in English for volunteering there, which only has 1 spelling mistake - pretty good going really. This wasn't much of a surprise because I had to write down my name for them.

Yesterday at school P5 went on a trip to a local fishery/aquarium with children from another school (and a couple of the other volunteers) and the director of my school took me and the Swiss family (who turned up to volunteer for the last week) along as well. It was really cool, there were lots of fish including some huge ones as big as a very large person which looked like they might be catfish or something similar. There were also several turtles, sharks, and lots of glowing neon fish. I got to see some of these in their natural habitat today as well. We teachers decided to join the conservation volunteers for the day on the boat and when they went diving we got to snorkel. Apart from the prodigious amount of sea water I managed to swallow, this was really cool. I saw hundreds of fish and some coral (albeit pretty ugly coral).

Outside of school, I've had a nice week apart from the horrid cold that has finally got to me after going around everyone else in the house first. Last Sunday, all the teaching volunteers went kayaking which was really good. We drove for ages and got to this bay called Ao Thalane. Then we kayaked out into the see and round the coast, by some dizzying limestone cliffs and through this beautiful canyon, before going through a mangrove forest which in a 2-person kayak is a little bit tricky, because if you're not bashing into the trees, you're losing your paddle in the branches. The scenery was amazing and it's really nice to do something active when you've been cooped up in a classroom all week. We stopped to have freshly cut pineapple (which out here is absolutely delicious, as are bananas) and a couple of monkeys turned up for the leftovers.

We also went out on Thursday for my leaving meal. We went to a bar/barbecue restaurant at the end of Ao Nang beach called The Last Fisherman. It's a nice, relaxing place and the food was really good, if extremely filling. We also get to have a another barbecue at the house this evening. They have one every month or so for all the volunteers to get together and somehow it's worked out that I get to go to 3 in 2 months which doesn't quite make sense but I'm entirely not complaining.

Oh and for all those people who are wondering, no I haven't managed to lose/break any electrical equipment this week. My shiny new camera is decidedly not going to go for a swim like the last one.

Life here continues to surprise...

I was preparing for my lesson this morning when in walk the children and the Director of the school chanting, "Singapore. Singapore is here!" This bemused me rather, but when I went outside I realised that they meant some GCSE-age children from a school in Singapore, plus their teachers. The teachers came and talked to me (in pretty damn good English - apparently in Singapore they use English as their official language). They started by asking me if I could give a speech to their students about the history of the school. Surprisingly enough I said no on the grounds that, as a clueless volunteer I didn't know anything about the school at all.

The Thai children then showed off their aerobics/dancing before the Singaporeans (if this is the correct term), split up the school into boys and girls. The boys went up onto the field to play football/what appeared to be netball without an actual net. The girls did some colouring in. It's very strange (or perhaps not so strange at all) that everything in schools here is so divided along gender lines. It's a really good thing that this isn't the same at English schools.

One of the teachers kept asking me strange questions such as, "Do the children live here at the school?" and eventually it turned out that they had been told by the tour company that brought them that they were visiting an orphanage. Now, considering that 3 of the pupils at the school live with me and most decidedly do have parents, I had to disabuse them of this notion and tell them that this is just a plain old government school. I think someone had taken them for a bit of a ride...

Anyway, they were all extremely nice and friendly, offering to show me around if I was ever in Singapore and asking lots of questions about my life and what I was doing. One teacher praised me highly for being so wonderful and kind as to volunteer and work here without a thought to money etc. He kept saying things like I must have a "very generous heart". It was most embarrassing and most un-English, but very nice of them.

As they were leaving, one cheeky girl in P4 said "Bye-bye Amy, go Singapore," and tried to pack me off with them. Not sure why she wants to get rid of me exactly but she and her friends seemed to find it very funny.

The other interesting thing that has happened recently was my trip with Lucie, Julia and Jane (other volunteers) to Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, just 20km north of Krabi. It was very beautiful and quite tiring - but not as much so as trekking up Tiger Temple. We walked for about 4 hrs through the rainforest, up to a not very exciting viewpoint and a couple of waterfalls and back again trying to cling onto trees to stop ourselves falling down the very steep slope. Notable things on this trip included:

the biggest tree I've ever seen ever, Lucie was just a dot in front of it when we took pictures;

the noise of the insects which was so loud it was almost deafening, it sounded like a really huge computer trying to dial the internet or the soundtrack from an avant garde horror film;

the biggest spider I've ever seen ever in the biggest spider web I've ever seen ever, which I just walked under not realising it was there, until I turned back and saw the others cowering in fear;

and the huge waterfall I looked down into, and more specifically the rockpool above which I fell into holding my camera.

The walk back down the dizzying slope in soaking wet clothes was interesting too. So, tomorrow's task is to buy a new camera. Strangely enough I wasn't even too upset about the whole thing. I think being in a predominantly Buddhist country (albeit in a Muslim area) must be rubbing off on me. I felt rather zen about it all. I might not have been so calm, I suppose, if I hadn't put all my photos on CD the day before. As it was, it was actually quite funny. I fell onto my front and then immediately thrust the camera out of the water shouting, "My camera, my camera." Lucie then pointed out that I should probably actually check I hadn't hurt myself before worrying about electrical equipment. On the way home in the bus, we kept shouting "My camera" and then dissolving into giggles.

I actually only have one week left at the school now, which I'm really happy about because although I've enjoyed it here, and I'll miss the children and the other volunteers, I'm really looking forward to traveling. I'm ging to start in Bangkok (where I have to go to get my visa for China) before going west to Kanchanaburi to see the Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway. After that I'll return to Bangkok and get a night train/bus up to Nong Khai on the Laos border, before crossing over into Laos and visiting Vientiane for a few days, then Luang Prabang, for a few more. I wanted to go and see the Plain of Jars at Phonsavan, where there are these fields of probably 2000 yr old jars put there by some mystery civilization. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have time for this, because I've heard that transport in Laos is pretty slow. I figured it's probably best to go to a couple of the main cities and see what day-trips I can do from there because of time constraints.

After Luang Prabang, I'm going to take a 2 day boat trip along the Mekong to Huay Xai on the Thai border, cross into Chiang Khong and bus it to Chiang Mai. I'll stay there a few days and then go south back to Thailand, stopping at Sukothai and possibly Ayuthaya on the way if I'm not sick to death of temples/if I have enough time. This should get me to Bangkok just in time to meet my lovely Mum and sister when they fly in and together we're going to go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, before traveling down to Ko Chang, an island National Park with lovely beaches, forests etc.

Hope this itinerary makes you all insanely jealous - I plan to have a very good time indeed.
(Can't wait to see you Mum and Lucy. Twill be great.)

Some photos...

Ao Nang Beach












Noppharat Thara Beach













Sunrise at Tiger Temple













A monkey at Tiger Temple













Sunset on Ao Nang Beach













Free barbecue on Valentine's day at the Umbrella Pub












Helga the goose (and Catha)













Elephant trekking with Grace, Emily and Lucie













Feeding the elephants













Some pretty water













Julia, Lucie and Sofina awaiting our monthly barbecue at our house












Some fish on our 4-island trip













Our Longtail on our 4-island trip













Ditto













The other Longtail













Preparing for the weather













Enduring the weather on a tuk tuk