Days 13-18: Burma

Ahh, Burma... How I love thy beaches but despise thy roads. We finally made it into Burma, escaping the frigid air of Yunnan for the warm Burmese winter weather. We had a lovely home-cooked Indian dinner waiting for us upon arrival, and then set out the next morning for Ngwe Saung beach. Ngwe Saung is around 120 miles from Yangon, I think, and last year that trek took us around 7 hours. But they were repairing the road, so it should have taken less time this year, right? Wrong. The lack of machines and therefore repairs done mostly by hand apparently move so slowly that the road gets worse faster than it gets fixed - they finally got a few steam rollers, though, so maybe that'll speed things up. In addition, the taxi transporting us had a natural gas tank that provided enough fuel for 100 miles of driving only, and there aren't any natural gas stations outside of Yangon, at least in that direction, so there was a leaky jerry can full of gasoline sloshing around in the backseat as we went over bump after bump for most of the journey. At least the fumes serve to muddle your brain so your fear of spontaneous combustion is lessened a bit. We made it in one piece, and got to enjoy several days on what has got to be one of the world's most beautiful beaches, lounging, swimming, and chasing little red crabs with beady white eyes. Then back in the death-mobile for one more sloshy-gas-container ride on the way back to Yangon, where we enjoyed some delicious meals at Sabai Sabai (my favorite noodles in the world, wide Thai rice noodles with soya and tofu), Manis (spaghetti carbonara with fiery stewed Indonesian beef), and had drinks at the Strand, one of the beautifully maintained colonial-period mansions around the city. We also paid a visit to the Shwedagon pagoda again before leaving town, stopping to pour cups of water on the emblems for the days of our birth - one cup over the Buddha for every year of your life, and then one on the animal deity - mine, the naga (Saturday), is a snub-nosed serpent which is very wise, and also a lucky deity to have. Dusk at the pagoda is quite spectacular, as the lights come on and illuminate the gold that covers everything in sight as the sun sets behind the temples. A beautiful end to another lovely visit to Burma.

Days 10-12: Kunming

Back to Kunming and the Cloudland Hostel! My sinus issues are continually getting worse, which I think results from a combination of the serious pollution and the incessant public cigarette smoking. I'm sure a couple of days at the beach in Burma will be just what I need for recovery. Although it's a bigger city, Kunming is more pleasant than Chengdu or Guangzhou, mainly because the sun shines and you can see the sky, and there are less people spread out over more space, so the crowding isn't anywhere near as bad. We dropped off our Burmese visa applications in the morning of the first day there, and then headed out of town on a tour bus (gasp!) to the Stone Forest, but this one just had bad movies rather than a yelling tour guide. One of the movies was about a guy who got in a terrible car accident, and called everyone he knew who just said awful things to him, like his father, who upon hearing that he was dying, said "great! Die and let me get back to my gambling." Pretty funny, actually, although a bit morose. He survived and many fireworks went off as he was wheeled out of the hospital. The Stone Forest is a beautiful UNESCO Geological Site about 50 miles outside of Kunming, which features these huge limestone pillars that are several million years old, called karst, I believe, and there's a series of underground rivers in the park, too. It was very impressive, and easy to lose the noisy Chinese tour groups as we walked out to the perimeter regions of the park. There was a quiet pond with towering rock pillars all around and through the middle, which reminded me a bit of the entrance to the mines of Moria in Lord of the Rings, minus the chattering rock hyraxes above. The food in the area looked a bit sketchy, so for dinner we went to this place called "Heavenly Manna" right near the Yunnan University in Kunming. Totally packed, and there was a devil child sitting next to us who was spitting (I kid you not) water off the edge of the balcony onto people below, but the food was delicious. Spicy and sour, just like Yunnanese cuisine should be. The next day we got our visas approved (woohoo!), then just wandered around the city, first visiting Green Lake Park, where there were several groups of people gathered to dance or do Qi Gong, and lots of seagulls fluttered around waiting to be fed. We also visited a Buddhist Temple that was over 1000 years old, and lit some incense and watched the turtles. Apparently people bring turtles to the temples for good wishes or after they rescue them, since they know the monks will watch over them with care. Near the temple we stopped into the accompanying vegetarian restaurant, where you can get all sorts of vegetarian dishes made to look exactly like meat dishes, which seems seriously unappealing to me for some reason. Particularly the "vegetarian chicken paw." We stuck with steamed buns, spicy soup, home-style tofu, and more fish-flavored eggplant. Delicious. It got a bit warmer during the afternoons here, but I think we're definitely all ready for the heat and sun of Burma. Bring on the beach!

Days 7-9: Lijiang

Lijiang is a smaller city in northern Yunnan, just a few dozen miles short of the Tibetan plateau. We were lucky enough to stay in Shuhe, a part of Lijiang that hasn't yet been overrun with commercialism and is actually a small, quiet town that feels like it hasn't gone through the drastic development and urbanization that other parts of China have in recent decades. Largely populated by the Naxi ethnic minority, you can find traditional works of art here that wouldn't be as common in other parts of China, as well as a variety of Tibetan clothing and crafts. With snow-covered mountains to the north, this is a destination for trekking foreigners as well as for Chinese tourists. Unfortunately we found ourselves on a Chinese tour bus, meaning that there was an unpleasant tour guide (he was very yashua, or toothbrush - my new favorite insult) speaking into a microphone on the bus the whole time at a deafening decibel level, and the tour stopped at various shopping sites on the way back from Tiger Leaping Gorge, our destination. Luckily the guide finally piped down on the way back from the gorge, and our small town of Shuhe was close to the massive jade market that the bus stopped at, so we fled the tour as quickly as possible at that point. The gorge was quite a site, though - the Yangtze is constricted to one third of its size through towering cliffs on either side, and there's a trail blasted/carved into the rock along the base of the gorge so you can hike along the cliffs and see and hear the rushing water below. The dozens of signs warning you to look up since rocks would be falling on you were a bit disconcerting, but we managed to get to the end of the trail and back unscathed. Shuhe actually seemed quite a bit like any other mountain town - it reminded me a lot of Boulder, CO. Open spaces, sloping roofs, and clear, cold air and water. Of course the monasteries, fuzzy ponies pulling yellow and red carts, and snub-nosed Tibetan dogs serve as a reminder that you're in northwestern Yunnan province, in the shadows of Jade Dragon Mountain rather than the Rockies.

Day 6: Kunming

Just a brief stopover in Kunming, the largest city in Yunnan province, on our way out to Lijiang, in northern Yunnan. We stayed in the Cloudland Hostel, another great hostel that's part of Hostelling International, which has great lattes, ping pong, a sundeck, and is located off the main busy streets near a park so it's not as noisy/smelly. There are beautiful flowers here, as asserted by a hilarious taxi driver we had, who explained that Kunming is the place with the most gorgeous flowers in all of China, emphasizing with an "o-my-gah!" (one of the few English phrases everyone knows) as we drove past a vendor selling huge pots of fuschia orchids.

Days 3-5: Chengdu

Day 3 was actually spent mostly in transit, as we caught the early train back to Guangzhou from Hong Kong, then headed to the Guangzhou (Baiyun) airport to get our plane to Chengdu. Our flight turned up as "delayed: bad weather" on the board, but then a flight from another carrier to Chengdu took off during our "weather" delay, and after a loud and large shouting match between passengers of our flight and employees of our airline ensued, the board posting for our flight changed to "delayed: reason unknown." Hey, anything's better than a volcano, right? Regardless of reason, we finally eventually took off, and landed in Chengdu after nightfall in the midst of a thick fog. Chengdu is in a valley surrounded by mountains, so it seems like the fog and pollution sit heavy over the city much of the time, especially in winter. Makes for some poor visibility, that's for sure. We stayed both nights in Chengdu at the Loft Hostel, a fantastic (and cheap - $7 per night for private double with bathroom!) place in a small alley surrounded by teashops, restaurants, and tall (of course) residential buildings. We didn't do much the night we arrived, but got up early to get the van ride out to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. Chinese tourists seem to prefer their entertainment to be interactive, so it wasn't surprising that the red pandas seemed to be begging for some food to be tossed into their compounds. In general, though, the Base is a very impressive conservation site, with an unrivaled giant panda breeding record. There are compounds with pandas of different ages, including cub, sub-adult, nursery (for breeding mothers), and several adult panda compounds, as well as an indoor area where newborns are attended to. Of course the babies are the stars of the show, and we got there early enough to see several cubs eating and wrestling with each other, which is hilarious to watch -- pandas are too lazy to properly wrestle, so they sort of lie next to each other and bat each other with their paws, and then maybe take a bite at the other's ear or paw if they can get up the energy. Most of the time they just lie around, then eat, then eat while lying around. We had lunch just down the alley from our hostel at a small local restaurant serving up Sichuan cuisine - my favorite. Unfortunately they toned down the spice for us Westerners, but the food was still excellent: dry-fried green beans with salty fish, ma po doufu, fish-flavored eggplant (just the name, no fish involved!), and gongbao (kung pao) chicken. I learned how to play snooker in the afternoon from a British/Afrikaaner girl who was also staying at the Loft, and then we set out for a walk down Chengdu's pricier pedestrian-only walking street. To cap off the day, we attended a Sichuanese Opera, which was more of a variety show featuring "rolling lamp", a comedy about a wife ordering her husband to do ridiculous acrobatics with an oil lamp on his head, table-juggling, face-changing and fire-breathing, and of course some music. Altogether a fabulous show. We got to bed after that, since we just had time for running a few morning errands before setting off for the long train ride to Kunming.

Day 2: Hong Kong

Didn't get to write again for a bit - had to get around the Great Firewall! We got on the early train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong our second morning, hoping to get to the Burmese embassy early enough to try to apply for our visas, only to find out it was Saturday and therefore all the embassies and consulates were closed! I guess it's easy to get a bit confused when you lose an entire day on the journey across the Pacific. Anyway, we were slightly relieved to have the entire rest of the day to explore Hong Kong rather than be wrapped up in visa business. As one of the world's biggest financial centers, HK doesn't initially seem that different from any of the world's other huge and wealthy metropolises, but does have some individual attributes such as a fantastic public transportation system and many unique buildings of ridiculous height. HK is like Guangzhou, in that the surface area of the city is not any greater than large cities in other countries but the buildings are 5-10 times as tall, or even more. Strolling through HK Island is a dizzying trek through towering buildings, both commercial and residential, upscale and crumbling, old and shiny-new. Our hotel, the Island Pacific, was a skyscraper right in the middle of where mainland Chinese immigrated to, and that means a less polished and more exciting part of town, but unfortunately also meant the heart of shark fin distribution territory. Environmental disaster aside, we enjoyed the luxurious hotel and fantastic harbor views from the 15th floor, and the other aspects of our busy neighborhood. Some streets seemed to specialize in one or two particular products, such as deer-antler-and-hoof-street, or bird's-nest-street. On every street in our neighborhood there were several open-front shops selling dried food items, most of which were unidentifiable by sight or smell. We continued our walking tour of China with a hike across HK Island: from Western, we walked through Sheung Wan, Central (stopping for a delicious dim sum lunch on the highest floor of a 4-story restaurant, Treasure Lake), Soho, and around the Peak area, which is a small mountain covered in trees and greenery right in the middle of Hong Kong Island that affords some incredible city and harbor views. You can take a decades-old tram to the top of the Peak, which is ridiculously crowded, of course, but also is quaint and has a long and interesting colonial history. At the top was a ridiculous mall-type monstrosity that we finally managed to escape, and were then able to enjoy a walk through the woods and the zoological and botanical garden. We then made our way over to Kowloon to watch the light show, an incredible exhibition set to music where each of the massive skyscrapers on HK Island (International Finance Center, China Tower, HSBC, etc) light up in turn and then in a synchronized display of variously colored spotlights and lights all over the buildings. Quite the experience. It wasn't too chilly, despite being on the water at night. We crossed back over by Star Ferry to HK Island, stopped for a drink on the terrace of the IFC, and had a late dinner after at a tiny Cantonese restaurant whose name I can't remember, but which was completely delicious: garlic steamed eggplant, roast-pork-stuffed soft tofu with spring onions, garlic-sauteed bean shoots, etc. A very satisfying end to our second day in China.

Day 1: Guangzhou

We arrived in Guangshou on the morning of the 18th, only to find that "volcano reason" may have resulted in the loss of our suitcases on the way from LAX. I didn't know there were active volcanoes in L.A.! Fortunately neither the volcano nor the Chinglish resulted in loss of luggage, so we continued on our way to the hotel. Turns out our hotel was an oasis of calm in the midst of the madness that is Guangzhou. We stayed at the Zhong Shan University, one of the oldest in China, which was filled with calm old trees and hustling students. First stop: dim sum in the dining hall, our first meal in China, and a great introduction to the Cantonese dining experience. Lots of dumplings helped fuel us through the fog of jetlag as we set out to try to get some things figured out for our Burma leg of the trip, which was horrendously difficult as usual. Still working on that bit. We also spent a lot of time wandering the streets on foot. One word to describe Guangzhou? Chaotic. There are neon lights and flashing gold-rimmed signs, each highlighting the name of one of thousands of tiny stores selling everything you could possibly think of and even more, and stopping to check something out may result in being hit by an errant bicyclist, bus, or large spitwad. Maybe not the best place to spend your first day of jetlag, but Guangzhou is definitely a city with impressive buildings and architecture both old and new, an amazing variety of street food and restaurants, and tons of friendly people more than willing to help you find your way around their bustling metropolis in any language they can.