Before we started our travels I thought I would adopt the mantra “It’s easier being critical than understanding”…. Whatever. That flew out the window after Russia.
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In China, it’s estimated that over 300 people are killed daily in a vehicle accident. China has less cars than the U.S., yet a significantly larger vehicle fatality rate. Sadly we’ve already seen 2 motorcycle fatalities.
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Mandarin phrases I’m constantly repeating:
“Wo Bu Yao” (No thanks)
“Yo Lah” (I have…) for example “Do you need a hotel room?” - “Yo Lah” (I have… a room)
“Duoshao quian” (How much is it?)
“Tai Guile-lur” (That’s too expensive)
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Taking a hint or no for an answer doesn’t apply in China. Politely repeating “Wo Bu Yao” and “Yo Lah” to the same soliciting person, is a test of my patience. Especially when they’re right in my face and walking along my side . I usually give the person 3 attempts to lay off. When attempt number 4 comes around it’s time to scream “Bu Yao!” or “Yo Lah!” directly into the person’s face. If they really piss me off the English obsenities fly out of my mouth (the Chinese obsenity is used as a last ditch resort, I’ve only had to curse in Mandarin once). Usually they back off. I cringe everytime we exit a train or long distance bus station. The cab drivers, hotel workers, map sellers etc.. congregate toward us like flies on shit. I wish I could swat them.
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Due to China’s one child policy, the system of addressing your Aunt or Uncle in Chinese will be virtually eliminated. In China, there’s a specific way to address your parents older or younger siblings. Since Chinese kids are growing up with no siblings, future generations will have no one to call Aunt or Uncle.
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Speaking of China’s one child policy. It’s unbelievable how spoiled and undisciplined the kids have become. The “precious” only child is treated like a little emperor or empress. There’s no effort to scold or teach a child what’s right or wrong (anyway, I can’t figure what’s right or wrong in this country). Kids free to roam around whenever and where ever they prefer. Nothing like hearing a screaming kid running down the hallway of a sleeper train, at 5 am in the morning, and the parents doing absolutely nothing! Who cares if everyone else is sleeping, the “precious” emperor has awoken and damn it he’s gonna do what he pleases! I guess I’m not helping the situation, thanks to me many kids in China have learned their first English words - “SHUT UP!” Oh well so much for being a role model.

Just figuring out better format for images, bear with us…

Click image below for pictures.

We’re back in Lijiang after spending a couple of days in Dali. We wanted to visit Tiger Leaping Gorge (don’t you love the name?), but my blister wasn’t healing anytime soon, so a three day hike was out of the question. Instead we opted for a 4 hour bus ride to Dali (beautiful scenery between Lijiang and Dali. Miles and miles of rice patty fields with these beautiful lushed, terraced hills in the background).
Turns out our friends, Carola and Joep, would also be in Dali. Via e-mail we arranged to meet and stay at their hotel, the Friend’s Guesthouse. A nice reunion after being separated for a short time.
Upon our arrival to Dali, we decided (among the 4 of us) to take a drive around the nearby lake and local villages. It’s about 150 km to circle the entire lake. We arranged a driver, for the following day, through the Tibetan Cafe.
Our driver - nice guy and honest. It’s rare with these drivers. Usually when hiring a driver there’s always a catch. You’ll be taken to your planned destination, but somewhere along the way they’ll start pushing other side trips - “…by the way this place is along the way..” Keep in mind nothing is ever free in China. The magic question to ask is “How much?” - it’s always expensive and in most cases we refuse. Even after saying NO several times, the insistent driver will prod several times hoping we’ll give in - it can be quite annoying. Since the guy is driving and in control, not a good idea to lose your temper. The only thing to do is pray that the driver will keep his mouth shut and not mention any more side trips. Throughout China, especially in Tibet, we had experienced this scenario one too many times. Thankfully, our Dali driver just did his job - driving. He even acted as local tour guide, explaining such things as: the local area; the interesting looking wild vegetables and nuts; the local people etc… He never pushed any side trips on us - amazing! In appreciation we asked him to join us for lunch and gave him a nice tip at days end.
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We, the four of us again, decided to take a Tai Chi lesson the following morning. Instead of being a one hour lesson, our passionate instructor stretched the lesson into two hours. A nice old man who would demonstrate these graceful, slow movements (he also couldn’t help burst out laughing at our pathetic attempts to repeat his movements). All great fun. Man - Tai Chi is very difficult, these slow, deliberate moves really work out the muscles. My body is still pretty sore.
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Dali has it’s similarities to Old Town Lijiang: cobblestone streets; canals’; cafes to chillout and relax.. quite the backpackers hangout, except it’s missing Lijiang’s charming narrow streets. What’s especially nice about these narrow streets, not a motorized vehicle in site. One can walk around without worrying about some psycho running you over. It’s also nice not hearing a car horn blaring off every 5 seconds.
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We’re spending one more night in Lijiang, then we’ll fly back to Chengdu and hang out there for a week. We’re using Chengdu as a base during the first week of October. This is suppose to be the busiest travel period throughout the ENTIRE country. October 1st is China’s independance day and apparantly it’s a full on Chinese tourist rampage. So to avoid any loss of our sanity we’ll stay put in Chengdu until the storm clears.
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Click on image below for pictures of these areas.

Due to the crazy amount of images we had to put up for the Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou blog, we’ve decided from this point on our images will exist in a separate link at the bottom of the blogs. This way we aren’t limited to one to two images to keep the uploading of our page quick. Also for those of you who would rather just see pictures and skip my lengthy blogs you know where the link to the images are.

:)

- We’re in the town of Lijiang. We’re staying in the old part of town, a quaint area with narrow cobblestone streets, canals and pedestrian bridges. Lijiang seems like a nice place to chill out for a while, I’m in need of a much needed break after hiking around Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong . We were planning on going to the city of Dali, but thanks to this painful blister on my toe, I need to lay off my feet for a while.
- Speaking of Juizhaigou and Huanglong these are the cleanest National Parks I’ve ever visited - in the entire world. No joke, both places really frown on littering and stress throwing rubbish away in a trash can. I just wish the rest of China would follow suit. It’s frustrating seeing trash thrown out of a moving train or tossed on the ground as if littering were not a big deal. Also, the buses at Juizhaigou are runned on clean burning fuel. I commend the park officials for keeping the water crystal clear and the skies blue!
- Another plus to Juizhaigou and Huanglong, tour guides are not allowed to carry megaphones! Chalk another one up for the park officials for reducing noise pollution. Chinese tourists are still loud, but at least we don’t have to hear the chorus of megaphones polluting the airwaves.
- We found out Lijiang has a restaurant that serves Korean food! After eating Chinese food for over 3 months, words cannot express how happy I was to eat for lunch: a bowl of Dol Sot Be Bim Bap (a typical Korean dish consisting of: a fried egg; meat; vegetables; hot sauce; and rice - all mixed together and served in a sizzling iron bowl which makes the rice nice and crunchy); Kim Chee (spicy fermented cabbage). In the evening, I needed another Korean fix, so for dinner we had: Kim Chee Bokum Bap (Kim Chee Fried Rice) and Hae Mul Panjeon (A seafood/green onion/egg pancake). Today I reached Nirvana! However, Yvonne doesn’t find my garlicky breath to be so spiritual.
- The great thing about traveling, is the people you meet along the way. We’re pleased to have met our new Dutch friends, Joep and Carola, out here in China. (Don’t worry Shelley we still love you).
- I told Joep and Carola to visit us in L.A. (whenever we get back). I asked Joep if he likes dogs. He gave me a weird look and answered with a not so confident “Yes, I like dogs.” He was relieved to find out I was only mentioning our pet dogs instead of food.
- Prostituion or whoring (as I seen it referred to in a hotel info. book as an annoyance) is quite rampant out here. If you stay in a budget hotel (3 stars or less) in China, you’re guaranteed to get a phone call in the middle of the night asking if “you want a massage.” What’s worse is getting a knock on your door from a prostitute. At the crappy hotel in Juizhigou, a startled Joep and Carola got a loud bang on their door. Wisely they did not open the door. Doesn’t matter if you single or coupled up, you’ll still get a phone call or a knock on the door from a desperate prostitute.
- At our hotel in Xi’an we noticed the A/C was not working (even with a remote control in our possession) and asked to have it fixed. Can you guess the answer? You guessed it! “…since the weather is fine, we feel you don’t need the air-conditioner so we turned it off.” (The hotel had specific access to our air-conditioner from the lobby!) But a pleading Yvonne managed to have it turned on. No screaming and yelling necessary in this situation. In this case, the customer was number one.

To see pictures click on image below.

The Dragon Hostel turned out to be quite nice. It was the first time we staying in a place that actually felt like China. It’s located in one of these neighborhoods full of courtyard houses, the Dragon Hostel being one of them. Our private bathroom was out on our balcony. Very nice and clean. Worth a stay.

While in Chengdu we ran into a Dutch couple that we previously met on the bus to the Terra Cotta Warriors. We were at Sam’s Guesthouse’s office in the midst of purchasing our plane tickets for Jiuzhaigou and Lijiang. It turned out that they were thinking of going to Jiuzhaigou as well. So after some pitching of the place, including postcard photos, they decided to come as well. Next morning before the crack of dawn, Carola, Joep, Eddy and I were on a shuttle to the airport. Before arriving you can see these amazing mountain peaks jutting out through the clouds. Great beginning. Nothing like a sunrise in the sky.

We decided after much searching our cheapest option from the airport was to buy the 90 yuan per person airport transportation that will take us to Huanglong, wait for us to finish walking around, and then take us to Jiuzhaigou that afternoon. It worked out pretty well, it was only the four of us in the minivan. Unfortunately, Joep had not been sleeping so well the past few days and the winding roads to Huanglong did not help, he was not in the best of shape when we arrived. But like a good trooper, he went for the 4 or so hour round trip walk in the park. Huanglong is at 3,553 meters above sea level, almost as high as Lhasa. So we all had a slower walk then usual. I have to say, this has been my favorite natural site yet, even with the heavy sticker price of 200 yuan a person. The terraced pools of blues and greens took my breath away. Gorgeous! By the time we finished, Joep was ready to pass out from: the elevation; his lack of rest; and the motion sickness of the car ride.

Fortunately, Jiuzhaigou is much lower in elevation and Joep seemed quite recovered by the time we had dinner. The hotel Carola and Joep’s friends had recommended did not have rooms, but our driver had recommended a place just a few doors down. Although the bathrooms seemed a bit gross, we decided to stay since we were all tired and didn’t know how much searching we would have to do. It turned out to be quite the bad choice. One of the rooms, the toilet was smeared with shit stains and the toilet did not work. After looking at two more rooms, one was decided as acceptable if they came to clean the bathroom. Of course this never happened. So after one night, we decided (even though we paid) to find another hotel and hope to get our money back. The Jiu Zhai Garden Hotel, which is where we had originally wanted to stay had rooms that day, so we went back to our hotel, took our things and just told them we’re leaving and wanted our money back. Initially they said no, but after a bit of complaining about the nasty bathrooms and not cleaning them, they relented. Yeah! Freedom from shit stains! All four of us let out a breath of relief as we stepped out of that nasty hotel!

With this heavy burden lifted, we went for our first day in the Jiuzhaigou park. Our pal, Shelley had told us that there was no need to buy the bus tickets , because the park assumes everyone buys a bus ticket so they’ll never check. We thought hell let’s try to save 90 yuan person by not purchasing these tickets. The entrance fee alone was 220 yuan per person. At this point we’ve been in China for over two months paying these crazy fees everywhere we’ve gone. So we thought this is our chance to beat the system, we’re going to do it damn it. Upon entering the park, it seemed everbody getting on the buses had their tickets out, the bus ticket is double the size of the admission ticket it’s pretty obvious when you don’t have one. Plus it was our first day, we instead decided to walk to the halfway point of the park. Let me just go over the distances one would have to cover by foot in order to see this park. The path basically looks like a ‘Y’. The entrance at the base of the ‘Y’ to the fork is 14.5 KM. Then each of the forks are 18 KM each one way. So added all together it would be about 103 KM to walk the whole thing. Insanity unless you stay there illegally in the villages. So we did the 14.5 KM the first day uphill. Dead tired but enjoyed every step, not a soul in site until you reached one of the major sites. At this point we decide it would be safe to hop on the bus to see the right fork, as recommended by Shelley as being worthwhile. No one checked for our bus ticket. Yeah! Victory! We all have huge grins on our faces as we’re pretty beat by the long walk. We get to the end of the right fork around 3 PM and hear this guy screaming that it’s time to board the last bus. We hadn’t checked when the park closed and none of us wanted to be stuck walking the 18 KM plus the 14.5 KM back to the park entrance so we hopped on and just basically saw this portion of the park via the bus. It turns out the park does not close until 6 PM and the buses don’t stop running until then. Oh well! We were tired anyway. Went to check at the Sheraton to see if we could get a cold beer. Yes, but at an extremely high price. So we decided to head back to the hotel and look for food around there.

On the way, I asked the taxi driver if he knows of a restaurant we could get a cold beer at, he said he did, so I asked him to take us there instead. It happened to only be across the street from our hotel. Yeah! The taxi driver asked the restaurant manager if we could get cold beer and the manager said he could do it. I didn’t think much of this comment until the waiter said we would have to wait half an hour for our cold beers! By then we had already ordered food and started eating some of the dishes. Ugh! Then we asked for rice, sorry you’ll have to wait about 10 minutes. What Chinese restaurant does not have RICE ready and waiting!?!

Next day, we thought okay, we’ll be at the park when it opens so we can see both forks of the path at a leisurely pace. MISTAKE! There are no tour groups arriving early to crowd the bus lines, we were hoping to blend in and be ignored. We tried anyway, but was asked to see our bus tickets, so I pretended to only speak english and was looking for directions to the walking path. Ugh! We are now faced with walking the same path to the next bus stop that will have loads of tourist. This did not happen until we got to the second village, we think maybe 10 or 12 KM from the entrance. Needless to say all four of us we only walking just to get to the bus stop, not really enjoying ourselves, pretty much wondering why we were so cheap to begin with. Ha! The Chinese have their revenge. Anyway, we get on the crowded bus and surprised to be on the one going to the left fork. We thought great. We’ll see both sides. At the top it is tourist hell. We all rejected trying to see the other side and just walk this side at a leisurely pace and avoid the tourist. Unfortunately at this point none of us really knew how far we had to walk. This left fork only has one bus stop at the end and no stops until the junction which is 18 KM downhill. Plus it poured rain on us the first 1.5 KM before we found shelter. We actually made it to the junction in time to catch a bus down and finished the park having avoided buying the bus ticket, but paid dearly with soar feet and legs. That night we indulged ourselves at the pricey Sheraton buffet and even ordered very expensive cold beer and drinks. We all walked quite strangely that evening.

You know I haven’t even described the place. It was beautifully forested with immense pools of blue water and hundreds of waterfalls. The blue at some places was so intense, it seemed fake. Well worth a visit. Of all the water scenery so far, these two places really are unique and stunning.

We decided since we splurged to fly up there, we would take the bus back to Chengdu. Beautiful drive, gorgeous mountains the whole way. We had a see-you-later dinner with Carola and Joep and went to the airport to come to Lijiang (We plan to see them for a couple of days in Hong Kong). We are now here recovering for a few days. Eddy’s got a nasty toe blister. Our next destination is a three day hike in the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

To see pictures click on image below.

We’ve arrived in Chengdu at 5:20 AM. It’s still dark and the receptionist will not be available until 9 AM, not to mention our room will not be ready until some time after 12 PM. The people here at Dragon Town Hostel have been nice enough to wake the chef and we are now awaiting an American breakfast. Bacon and all. They even had two full pages of coffee choices. Can’t wait. To top it all off, they’ve got a computer with free internet access, at least they haven’t asked us to pay yet. I’m sure Eddy will let you know how this goes…

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Dinner we had later that night.

Last night in Xian waiting out the rain before attempting to find a cab to take us back to our hotel. Let’s talk about whether I am having a good time here in the land of my birthplace. Not really. Part of me wishes I spoke better Mandarin so I could express myself more fully, especially when agitated. Unfortunately, I have only learned enough to date to get us from point A to B.

For example, on the train back from Luoyang, our jumping off point for Shaolin Temple, I was so fortunate as to be seated next to a young mother and her precious son. After maybe about 3 hours of being shoved and kicked by the both of them I could only muster up enough Chinese to say to her, “Sorry, but could you and your son please stay on your two seats.” How I would of liked to a bit more sarcastic and to the point. That’s the problem of only knowing only travel lingo. The subtlety of the language is just not there, not to mention my lack of vocabulary. I would much more have preferred to say something along the lines of, “I’m sorry but did you actually buy 2.5 tickets because so far I’ve only had half a seat.” Or maybe “Does 1.5 persons actually need 2.5 seats?” Whatever, those are not the greatest example but you know what I am getting at.

It’s still raining, so you’ll have to bear with me. Xian is one of the most ill planned cities yet. It is surrounded by what looks like a fairly new wall with only about 8 openings. This wall surrounds the city center, basically downtown. This is a city of 7 million people! Can you imagine LA county’s city center only having 8 outlets? Does that not sound like congestion hell? Sorry if there are those of you that are not familiar with LA, but most people have heard of our traffic problems. We definitely have more than eight street openings out of downtown and we are considered one of the worst traffic areas in the world. Can you imagine this large city only having 8 street access points, all on what we would consider local streets, not highways or freeways. Getting around has not been easy or fun. Luckily we are staying within the walls and anywhere we are likely to go are also within these walls, but the few times we’ve had to leave has not been pleasant. Although I have to say it’s not nearly as bad as the congestion we experienced in Athens. So perhaps it’s not horrible as far as the world is concerned, but not great as far as Chinese cities go.

Okay, enough babbling. I will leave off with that. Thanks for your kind attention. Adios!

On Tuesday we took a 5 hr. train ride from Xi’an to Luoyang. When we arrived in Luoyang we immediately hopped on a bus to the famous Shaolin Temple, tack on an additonal 1 1/2 hrs. of traveling. If you’re a fan of martial arts you’re well aware of Shaolin’s history of training Kung fu to the monks. As a kid, I remember watching “Kung Fu Theatre” on channel 13 every saturday afternoon. Whenever there was a fight, there would always be a reference to Shaolin…”Ahhhh..the snatching crane, very Shaolin….SSSoooooo you think you’re Kung Fu is so good eehhhh? I’ll show you….” well you get the idea. Anyway, Yvonne and I get off the bus and start walking the 500 yards, or so, to the Shaolin Martial Arts School. As we are getting closer to the school we can hear the sound of little kids screaming their Hyy-yahs! Upon arrival to the school we can see the little kids punching and kicking, along with the sounds of their Hyy-yahs! The school has a hostel on site so we inquire about getting a room. No double rooms available, so Yvonne and I have to be in segregated dorm rooms. The hostel was not busy so we each had a dorm room all to ourselves. Price 20 rmb each (approx. $2.50 US). You know the o’le saying you get what you pay for. Talk about a shithole (literally, please read on)! Ay-ya! Definitely one of the worst places we’ve stayed at during our travels. No running water on our floor, therefore no flushing toilets (the squat kind) - Ay-ya! The beds were hard as a rock and obviously the sheets were never washed, nothing like seeing hair all over my pillow and beddings - Ay-ya! The walls looked like the entire school was practicing their wall running techniques. Also, based on the size of the cracks and holes, the walls and ceiling looked like they were used for punching and kicking practice. The school houses approx. 7,000 students and a lot of the students were staying in the same building as us. So imagine sharing a 7 floor facility (with running water only on the bottom floor) and having to share with x amount of people (I nearly yacked when I had to use the toilet) - Ay-ya! (Note: We’re definitely not traveling 5 star okay? and we’re getting use to staying at crappy places, but at least we know what we’re getting into. If we’re camping we know there’s not gonna be a toilet. i.e..on our trip to Hanasu we knew we would be staying in a cabin with no amenities. Also, we know to expect that a budget place in China might have a few cockroaches crawling around or that hot water is only available in the evenings. But for a place that claims to be a hostel/hotel with facilites, the Shaolin school takes the cake on crappy lodging - you’re number one baby!) Well we suck it up for the night and hope for the best in the morning.
We wake up early and start walking towards the Shaolin temple. If you’re expecting Shaolin to be this isolated temple perched on top of a hill, you’ll be disappointed. The Shaolin temple is only 2,000 meters of flat walking from our bus stop. There’s nothing picturesque about Shaolin, it looks like an ordinary temple in China. Not even a grand courtyard on the premises (I guess we’ve all watched too many T.V. episodes of Kung Fu - thanks a lot Hollywood!) Again - nearby the temple you can see wannabe Jet Li’s in training - kicking and punching and Hyy-yaahing away. Further away from the temple is an interesting pagoda forest, Yvonne and I check that out to kill some time afterwards we walked to the nearby exhibition hall. At the exhibition hall we saw a fantastic demonstration of Kung Fu and Qi Gong by the Shaolin students. Absolutely amazing what these kids can do!: Flying round house kicks, God knows how high they were jumping I’m sure they could have knock Yao Ming down no problem; demonstrations of their stick and sword fighting ability - so fast how they manuvere these weapons!; unbelievable flips and landings on their heads or back - ouch!! And the most impressive was the Qi Gong demonstration. How the mind trains the body to deflect pain. The students barely flinched when a bamboo stick was smashed across their body or how about a metal rod smashed on top of their head? Oh yeah and taking a flying kick to the chest. Mind over matter - very impressive.
After the Kung Fu and Qi Gong demonstration there’s no point in staying around Shaolin, there’s really not much to see unless we plan on sticking around for Kung Fu lessons - naahhh!! So off to Luoyang on a bus. We arrive in Luoyang 1 1/2 hrs. later and are relieved to have a double room w/ac, and 24 hrs. hot water and western toilet - aahhhh!! (cost 120 rmb approx. $15 US, by the way Yvonne is getting the hang of bargaining in Mandarin she knocked off 60 rmb off the original asking price - we saved a whopping $7 US). The only thing to do in Luoyang is to eat at it’s famous Zhen Bu Tong Restaurant. Which is known for it’s “water” set meals. Basically is a bunch of dishes cooked in a soup base. Our set meal consisted of liver (not so tasty), chicken with soy beans (pretty good), some unknown hard jelly like dish (not so tasty), fish balls (tasty), deep fried chicken soaked in a soup base?? (definitely not tasty) and an egg noodle soup (very tasty). Overall the set menu was overated, however we did deviate a little from the set menu and ordered steamed pork dumplings (excellent).
We took a train the following day back to Xi’an and are staying in our hotel, which of course has a few cockroaches. This morning we went to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Qin Emperor’s tomb. Needless to say I was not so impressed at looking at a bunch of clay warriors and horses, that were solely built for an Emperor’s ego.
Tomorrow afternoon we will hop on another train to Chengdu and play it by ear when we arrive. We were hoping on taking a train to Yichang and check out the Three Gorges but we were unable to purchase sleeper tickets. The only tickets available were seats and we’re not about to sit on a train for 20 hours. If was difficult enough being surrounded by a screaming baby and estrogen chatty Chinese women for 5 hours, from Luoyang to Xi’an. We’ll make it to the Three Gorges at a later time. Thank God China is such a large country that it offers many traveling options.

Click on the image below for the rest of the pictures.