Golden Rock Rollercoaster

'Am I allowed to go?'
Its usually the first question you ask here.
'Yes, yes.'
'Yes?'
'No foreigner, no problem!' came the confusing reply.
'So I can go?'
'Ok, no.'
'Is that yes or no?'
'Yes or no.'
'Yes'
'OK'
In describing rough bus journeys in various parts of the world I might have used the term 'rollercoaster' once or twice. But today's experience truly was the closest approximation yet - a real life rollercoaster only without the strapping or safety rules. So let me share with you what it was like to ride a real life rollercoaster on the way to Kyiktiyo, the Golden Rock.

I arrived just in time. The young man was beckoning the final passengers on board and I found myself in the back seat corner where it was more comfortable to stand on the back decking rather than sit.
The bus was essentially a crudely modified cattle truck - seven rows of six bodies all condensed into narrow wooden slats. The hard stell of the back cage like decking had so many protruding edges of niggly bolts it felt like someone had designed the thing to exterminate every ounce of comfort potential.
The ticket boy leapt up beside me and two latecomers were fervently ushered on as well to join the merry throng.
One man squeezed up tightly behind me. After a while I could feel something big and bulging jutting out of his midriff or his crotch area. Only after a good look down did I realise it was the huge knot of his longyi (sarong) that happened to be vigorously rubbing against me.
Being the tourist I am, I was attempting to take photos when a severely crunching section of road saw my own crotch area collide with unavoidable forecfulness into oneo the proitruding metal sections on the cage. Ouch! As I grimmaced, the ticket boy took little time in enthusiastically enquiring after my health before thoughtfully sharing what had happened with the remaining entirety of the truck who collectively craned their necks around to stare and laugh while I was on the verge of tears.
Regaining my lost composure, I told myself to concentrate harder with my hand holds as they really were the difference between me staying onboard the vehicle and ending up in a messy splatter on the dusty road.
The driver was nothing less than an impatient lunatic whoi insisted on lauching the truck over humps, flinging it around tight bends and accelerating over narrow cranking bridges like they were take off runways.
From the back of the vehicle the suspension was gloriously redundant. In my radjusted position (there were many)or rather body contortion I now found myself slumped over the back row with my arm around an old lady. She turned to give me a toothless red gummed grin. My thigh was rubbing against a pink-robed nun. Neither seemed affected in the slightest by drama of the ride.
The nuns had clothed over their shaved heads to fend off the fierce afternoon sun while the old lady took up puffing what looked like a fat cigar but was actually a mild cheroot.

On we hurtled, steaming through hilly jungle, the road never less than torturously twisting. The succession of endlessly bumpy humps strangely reminded me of something I had not done for a very long time: skiing down a mogul field.
And there all of a sudden ahaead of me as I squinted ahead and fought off the intrusion of dust and the mini streams of sweat was the high glinting flicker of gold - the very reason I had chosen to come here, the Golden Rock itself. It was still very far away and necessitated a strenuously steep climb by foot, but it was just about worth it.
You cannot complain or moan, I kept trying to tell myself. You wanted to seek out adventure and now you've well and truly found some.

The return journey was even more full on mainly becasue it was near total darkness by the time we left. I was instructed quite assertively by one man to sit myself down on the back bench. But I simply could not insert the width of my thighs into the meagre space afforded. So I stood and half-crouched like a man on the verge of sitting down on the otilet. Bats swooped in the warm night air. Another old lady was puffing on her cheroot. Every now and then as we roared through it, out of the jungle darkness swung an overhanging vine which thrashed its way backwards with some venom towards the back of the truck. I usually managed to catch the last whack square on my uncovered head. Again this - the sounds of my pain infliction and repeated attempted aversions - seemed to provoke mirth and merriment all round. I looked up at the sky, it seemed so inviting, and I saw the plough. And however much my hands were being worn down from the tight grip pf clinging on, however tired my legs were from being battered, however much my back was aching, for a brief moment I perversely decided there was nowhere else I would rather be. I felt alive.

Here was a country, where amidst all the dire warnings and misinformation, you might well find a quiet slice of travellers' paradise.
In fact I have so many experiences to write about that I simply do not have the time or internet access to do them justice.

This is Burma

"This is Burma," Rudyard Kipling once wrote. "It is quite unlike any land you know about."

Well we're not supposed to call it Burma these days - nearly everyone I speak to calls it Myanmar - but his words still ring true. Here indeed is a country very different from any other I have travelled through and that is quite a few.

My flight from Bangkok was delayed. Through a dense early morning mist the mysterious shape of the country finally began to reveal itself. I could pick out the pin gold flashes of religious stupas. There was the very real sense of entering an unknown country. It was exciting and enthralling, the pleasurable tinge of being on the cusp of having new things revealed to me. Here was a country that we really know so little about from the inside.

Yangon used to be called Rangoon under the British. In some ways, architectuarlly at least, its like they never really left. Here is a city which has been fermented by years of neglect and troical rains, still glued to its past. The lifestyles of many of its people are still....

see the photos here:
http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/myanmar/

Should I go?

In case you didnt already know I am now inside Burma. Some people may disagree with me being here (I wonder how many times or how well travelled many might be) but let me address why I believe it is the right thing to come to a country that very few people know much about. For what its worth I met a man who has been visiting this country on and off for nine years. Not once in all that time did any person in the country tell him he shouldn't have come.
Tony Blair - amongst other so-called esteemed (but not informed obviously) experts - called for people to boycott this country. Please remind me how many times he actually visited here. Are we all supposed to unquestioningly defer to such people and lose all ability to think and act independently for ourselves?
Travel - and I write here with a strong weight of conviction - is an incredibly powerful force for good not least in raising awareness, deepening understanding and broadening knowledge and insight. Tourism, if conducted with a sufficiently open well informed mind, independent thought, sensitivity and discretionary purse can do a great deal to open up a country. In particular it affords some people in that country the opportunity to open up their lives to the outside world.
To some people I am effectively contributing to the human rights abuses of the Burmese government. Of course a small amount of money is likely to unavoidably end up in their pockets. But I am extremely discreet and careful where I choose to spend my dollars. I always try to travel as locals do. I eat where they eat. And I talk to people, lots of people. I listen respectfully to what they tell me. I am offering an income to them and an opportunity to opine which they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
How exactly can people ever be free when we keep them isolated? You tell me inwhich other ways are we going to so fully and comprehensively inform ourselves about a country whose regime thrives on being 'isolated'. This country is anything but isolated to those who matter and the sooner we stop pretending that sanctions - over 20 years worth - are working the better. Lives depend on it. They depend on us being well-informed, realistic and genuinely open-minded. The sanctions have been in place for two decades and they patently have not worked.
Under which of the following circumstances do you think a government is more likely to repress its people?
a) with no allowed in to see anything.
or b) with international visitors like me walking around asking awkward questions, probing for answers, taking photos, recording mnemories and conversations, interacting with local people...?
Ultimately, is it not better to be as well informed as possible or to remain in the dark?
How exactly am I legitimising a nasty government when I intend to do no more than share with you what I see, hear and what people I meet tell me?

If poeple want to feel ethically better about themselves for choosing to boycott and to help salve a conscious, thats up to them. But do you know what most boycotts and sanctions do? They make the poor poorer while the rich powerful elite drive fancier cars and live in more luxurious houses.
Who really pays the price of isolation? Who really has to make the big life-changing sacrifices of having sanctions imposed against them. You've guessed it, the people at the bottom. Who really gets punished?
SO why push a country, any country backwards. The only things we end up sanctioning - if we take a long hard cold look at the effectiveness - are the regime's own propaganda when we should be doing all we can to help demolish it. It is just like Iran.
Why not make the country a proper part of the world? Why not just flood it with travellers, trade, but also with information, ideas, technology, journalists, observers and opportunities?
boycotts can never be perfect or consistent anyway. WHose going to tell the French and the Germans that they have no morals for going on package tours? They'll just laugh at you dismissively.
By the same perverse logic are all smokers responsible for the deaths and exploiutation of children in developing countries by big tobacco companies because they purchase cigarettes? Are all American taxpayers responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq becasue they happen to pay taxes to the American government?
And it matters very little what we ethically chose to do anyway because of one word: China. China controls much of the economy here already. It quietly got on with asserting itself and because we all stayed away we are near blind to it.
Tourism is anyway a drop in the economic ocean to this government compared to the revenues it generates from selling gas, teak and soon oil to thel ikes of not just China, but also Singapore and Japan.
Through apathy, misguided and ill-informed ideology and complacency we have left an entire people in near muted silence.
We should be encouraging as many people as possible to go and see and listen for themselves.
Its like a man said to me the other day...
"We are alive and I can feed my family because of tourists. Why is my country so neglected and forgotten? Please ask more people to come and speak to us."
"Go and see for yourself. Listen for yourself. Then you can decide. What will you know, or anyone know if you never come and never speak to us and us to you?"

Border skirmishes

At the Cambodian border post I saw perhaps the funniest thing I had seen in the entire country. It was a hot, sweaty, dusty early afternoon. A slightly rotund policeman was patrolling the entrance channels.
Then out of the dusty nothingness came a galloping herd skinny white cows who were clearly intent on charging or rather sneaking past him and entering into Thailand. For a moment he appeared like the slenderest of rugby fullbacks overwhelmed by the prospect of an entire pack of huge beefy forwards hurtling towards him. And he began to panic.
Like a slumbering matador he stirred into belated action to wave them away. But the cows were having none of it. Only with the overdue assistance of a couple of chuckling colleagues did they manage to cows leaving Cambodia.
In all the frenzy of the excitement - a large crowd of border waitees were watching on riveted by the spectacle -one of the cows started to get promiscuously frisky. Maybe thats what the excitement of a border crossing does to you. It started to climb up onto another cow and proceeded to vigorously hump her from behind. This impromtu display of amorous affection threw all the other cows into disorientated confusion once more and they turned to have another crack at breaking past the wearied customs officals. The fat customs man had his walkie talkie out but that wasnt much use confronted by a herd of frisky cows.
Eventually another officer showed real intent and took off his designer shades and started to shout something in Cambodia which must have translated as something along the lines of the Dad's Army phrase: "Don't Panic! Don't Panic!"
Only the interception of a vehicle coming form the opposite direction was enough to finally deter the cows altogether. The humping became more subdued and off they skipped and frisked back into to dreary dust of the town they had just tried to escape.
I had no such luck, stuck for another two hot sweaty hours at the border before I bordered a sauna like bus (official temperature recorded at 38 degrees Celsius inside!).
But the cows simply trotted around the roundabout and, being the dumb creatures they are, came back again for another try. However, the customs men were fully prepared this time. The walkie talkies had been put away and they were now armed with brooms. Such is the circus of border crossings sometimes.

I now find myself residing at The White House....thats the White House in downtown Yangon, a city which crumbles with British colonial architectural legacies.

Phnom Penh

Cambodia bills itself as the Kingdom of Wonder. It seems a very appropriate word in all its meanings. Cambodia makes you wonder in every sense of the word. From killing fields to Kingdoms of the Gods. From sleek Lexus tanks to wooden carts crammed with large coconuts. From swanky shopping boutiques to stinking sewars. The ugly and the beautiful fused awkwardly together rubbing along side by side. This is Cambodia. It truly is the kingdom of wonder and it is compelling viewing.

It is a relatively small country but with a big heart. The average wage for a hard day's work is probably much less than you would pay for a pint of beer. The rich do very well and the poor, well they just survive. From the sparkling to the seedy, the sleek to the sickening here is a city that bubbles with surprises.
It was around 6:30pm. The waiter had just plonked down my second cold beer onto my streetside table. I had immersed myself in a newspaper. As I glanced casually upwards amidst the lights and flashes or the motorbikes, cars and tuk-tuks I noticed a very large dark shape which caused me to do a double take and reassess the effect and strength of the beer I was consuming. There was a giant elephant nonchalantly plodding along right in front of my nose. Only in Phnom Penh, you might say. Here is a city where so much collides together in one place.

But the thing that I liked about Phnom Penh was that you could really see so much in such a short time. There was plenty to wonder at. It only required a weaving motorbike ride from one part of the city to another. A sleek black luxury car beside the grubby cripple desperately crawling through the dust and dirt of the streets pawing at passers by. Another cripple wriggles along like a severed worm. The city feels like a labyrinthe with multiple entrances and you can never enter all of them simultaneously.
Phnom Penh pulsates with same relentless flow and drive of the Mekong River. It wearies you and it beguiles you. The orange flashes of monks. A limbless beggar hobbles to your feet. Children playing merrily. Bright vivid bouginvillea flowers and gleaming gold palaces. The high rise skyscrapers and the the flimsy rotting wooden shacks. There was always something to make you raise an eyebrow in passin or cast a second glance. The city owned a defiant vibrancy and from the seat of a motorbike you really felt like part of its momentum.
I glanced across at the motorbike next to me. The man had a wide basket strapped to the back. Looking more closely at the basket's contents becasue they apperaed to be moving I confirmed that there were several large piglets snuggled together inside. On another motorbike I ocunted six human bodies squeezed together. Another maniac motorbike driver charging up the street on the wrong side. I watched someone get half run over.
The people without homes could be seen eating off the streets with the scavenging dogs. They washed their children outside while the women huddled into a corner of shade to cook or just sit. Children fending for scraps just across the road from the golden royal palace.

Another morning stroll, another bombardment of enthralling images. The World Toilet Association (no I didnt know there was such a thing but there is and it is based in South korea for some reason)were financing the construction of some proper public toilets. There looked a long way to go. A discarded pair of 'Dior' heels lie abandoned in the sandy dust. A man borrows a stool over a motorbike to help himself over a barrier which had been implemented to stop motorbikes clogging up the pavements.

And the hasslers can wear you down.
A news report in the Phnom Penh post caught my eye recently concerning the cold weather:
"The temperature hovered between 13 and 16 degrees Celsius and even dropped to a frosty 8 to 11 degrees during the night. This is the coldest year ever.
"People are wearing sweaters, gloves, hats and socks both during the day and even in the night to keep them warm. The Red Cross has had to supply sweaters to some parts..."
And I remember cycling in roughly similar temperatures in the far north of Scotland in the middle of July and the locals told me what a warm summer it was. Everything is relative, I suppose.
At the time of writing they were planning to launch a stock exhange here in Cambodia's capital. I wonder what Pol Pot and his brothers would have made of that.

I will write more on Cambodia when I can, but soon I shall be entering another mysterious country, Burma.

Killing Fields of Cambodia

Choeung Ek. The name probably, almost certainly, means nothing to you. Add on 'Genocide Centre' or 'Killing Fields' and a bell of faint familiarity might begin to ring. This was once a wretched country where the hunger to kill was unprecedented. Untangling the tapesty of tragedy in this country takes some doing.
http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/cambodia/cambodia_khmer_rouge_victims/
Pol Pot and his band of murderous Khmer Rouge accomplices only lasted less than four years but, in the name of the world's most illiterate and brutal revolutions of recent times, they managed to wipe out nearly one in five of Cambodia's population. They came to power in 1975, partly as a result of spillover from the Vietnam war rivalries and secretive American bombing of rural areas, before they were overthrown by Vietnamese backed forces in 1979. In that time around 1.7 million people lost their lives - thats little short of the entire population of a large city - and the country was near reversed back in history to the Stone Age. An entire nation was kidnapped and then besieged form within.
A large blinding white and innocuous tower stands in a field some 16 km outside the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. Inside the tower are several layers of shelving. There is nothing remarkable about it at all. Until you notice that each shelf has been crammed with human skulls, sometimes piled on top of each other, several thousand of them.




As someone who once fractured my skull once, I even started to find it mildly interesting as I never realised there were three main types of trauma to the skull which ended life - blunt force trauma, sharp force trauma and gun shot wounds. Sadly, it was mostly the former two which were more common.
'Chopping or Hacking wound crossing the left lamdoid suture (left side of the back of the head'
'Multiple blunt impact sites with a complex system of skull fractures' And so on...
'Quiet please!' the signs read, but no one needs to be told. A warm wind rustled briskly through the trees, its caressing gentility utterly belying the chilling gruesomeness of what used to take place here.
The Killing Fields of Cambodia are exactly that - just ordinary looking fields where extra-ordinary levels of systematic killing took place.
Look at the skulls more closely and you can see the cracks where they were shattered. Hundreds of them. Every day. Death on the cheap, death on the crude and inhumanly nasty.
I've seen my fair share of the grim and misereable and depressing around the world, particualrly in parts of Africa and Afghanistan (www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/through_afghanistan/) And perhaps I became hardened to a few things. But here, digesting and visualising the very visible effects of organised mass murder, it was impossible not to be numbed, to find your breathing a little rougher and a bad taste envelops your mouth. Extremely sobering. And then you tihnk, 'How?' and 'Why?'
But really thses are simple questions that cannot be meaningfully answered. What I do know is that whenever I hear words like the following I shall be better able to put them into the context of their true perspective:
Devastating. Nightmare. Terror. Horror. Hell. Bloody. Cruel. Wicked. Beaten etc.
I've taken myself to peer into some very bleak cruelty in some other places - I had the same sensation in Auschwitz (www.alitravelstheworld.com/poland/), an Iranian war cemetry in Esfahan (www.alitravelstheworld.com/iran/iran_iraq_war/) Robben Island in South Africa and even when I marched through Bogota around this time last year (www.alitravelstheworld.com/colombia/colombia_against_terrorism/). And also when I was inside the Palestinian West Bank (www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/opening_up_the_middle_east/15_behind_the_wall_inside_palestine as a woman showed me a photo of her martyred nephew - especially poignant in light of recent Middle East events (see below). Can you for a moment imagine the intensity of hatred or anger you would feel to those who destroyed your home of killed someone in your family?
Everywhere you go, I believe you can never stop trying to learn and understand how and why things occurred to know why they happened. Becasue if we cannot learn from the past and know about it fully, then of course we are condemned to see things repeated. (see below)
Cambodian people may have managed to dig up thousands of bodies but you sense that their grisly past will be remain buried within them for a long time to come. And many people are still to dig up clear reasons for why it all happened, almost as if some of the fear is still instilled in them.
Tuol Sleng was a simple concrete school. It still looks like one when you arrive. The leaves of the palm trees tickle themselves around an open courtyard in the sunny wind. From the outside, it is almost pleasant. And then you remember why it is not.
Here under the Khmer Rouge, what were once school classrooms were converted into prison and torture cells. The floors remain tiled and the French style wooden shutters lend a misleading moderation of aesthetic kindness. Then you remember that out of 20,000 - twenty thousand - people who came here, only SEVEN survived with their lives intact.
The cream coloured walls are pockmarked with bullet holes, stains and grafiti. The prison cells were crudely erected with bricks an concrete, all crooked and uneven to divide up the large rooms. They simply couldnt build enough of the prison cells at one point.
Under Pol Pot, people who lived in towns and cities were considered inferior. Families were separarted in the name of collectivisation ideology. Children were forced to work or recruited as soldiers, which reminded me of what is happening now in Zimbabwe (see below), but thats another blog as there are plenty more similarities).
Money was near abolished (clever move that one) and everything was geared to producing spectacular (and tragically unobtainable) amounts of rice in the countryside - the peasants' revolution which nearly finished off all the peasants. Everything was a waste of time unless it was used to produce more rice.
Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, not enough rice was produced to fee everyone - plenty was exported and used to feed the army though. Suspicion and fear pervaded everywhere (again like Zimbabwe). ANyone who happened to be well-educated was out to death. Anyone who wore glasses couldnt risk doing so. People pretended to be illiterate to fit in with the 'brothers' and speaking a foreign language could also cost you your life as Pol Pot sealed off Cambodia to the world.
Rather like China's misguided ideology under Mao, there was a real disdain for education and intellectuals. People were considered enemies for having the wrong background. How ironic it was that Pol Pot (real name Saloth Sar - a man who never worked a rice field in his life and who was a teacher) and his cowardly coterie all hailed from the elite themselves educated men who thought they knew best. When in fact what they executed was, apart form the Taleban in Afghanistan, probably the world's most illiterate revolution or recent decades.
People were simply clubbed to death and shoved into large burial pits

After a while you wonder quite how much information you can absorb. Of course the human stories and factual information are totally compelling. But what impacts more forcefully are the human faces of the men, women and children. Their mug shots stare straight at you. Hundreds and thousands of eyes hinting at a multitude of gruesome stories. The eyes of men tortured to the very edge of imminent death and the eyes of men knowing their fate with a strange sense of almost exhilerated contentment in them that the agony of the punishments will soon be relived by the certainty of death.
The weary and exhasuted eyes, the defiant eyes, the shocked eyes, the disbelieving eyes. All of them, eyes of condemned men, women and children.


Some thirty years on, there is still no real formal justice procedure. Perversely, the men who did the butchering seemingly earned the right to live in freedom for decades without taking full responsibilities for what they did. Another huge failure of the international community (see below) was to allow the Khmer Rouge to retain the United Nations seat until 1991 - which meant that the murderers were representing their victims for well over a decade. Only at the UN could such a thing be possible.
As a statement in Tuol Sleng reads,
'The bones cannot find peace until the truth they hold inside them has been revealed.'

Israel and Gaza

And so with a weary familiarity, the world sighs as the Middle East combusts into flames of self-destruction and suffering once more.
Lets try to search for some answers. The Israeli leaders are being nakedly opportunistic. They have an election to fight next month and they have taken calculating advantage of both the distraction of the festive season in the west and the impotence of an outgoing American president in his final weeks in office. They are posturing with lives of innocent people.
But then when it came to the Middle East, of course, George Bush has always been the president who did nothing when he really needed to, and always did too much when he didn't need to act. You sense he probably still doesnt really know where the Gaza strip is, let alone have the slightest inclination what day to day life has been like there for Palestinians both before and after Israeli cranked up the aggressive exploitation.
You wonder what George Bush will (or can) do exactly when he retires. He could go and work for the Israeli government as their puppet spokesman. Oh hang on, that's already Tony Blair's job isn't it?
So what does Tony Blair do exactly, you might wonder. He is officially the ambassador of the so-called quartet of the EU, America, the UN and Russia. Shouldnt he be really earning his shekkels at this critical time? But no he seems content to sit on his hands in his palatial Jerusalem residence (when he is actually there at least and not spending his seven figure salary from JP Morgan for advising on banking - again didnt seem to earn his money there either did he really?). And George Bush sits with his feet on the desk in the White House. Both of them very clearly taking sides. Both of them having no conscience whatsoever about fiddling while the lives of innocent people burn.
I find it unfathomable why so many people keep blindingly swallowing the justifiactions of the Israeli government for doing what it is doing. Their slick media spokesmen protest that by smashing a city, and shattering the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, they are 'just defending the Israeli people'. Really? By their logic, one injured Israeli is equivalent to a hundred dead Palestinians. How and why exactly is that the case? What has taken place is wholely preventable. Bombing an entire people just to stop a few rocket attacks is not only disgustingly disproportionate. It is also highly ineffective and very counter-productive.
Israel is now effectively creating a whole new generation of suicide bombers and rocket launchers, perhaps even more hard-line and militant than before, and for decades to come, sadly, that is how it will be. Bombing wedding parties, schools and clinics, even by accident, is extremely dumb, very wrong and doesnt work.
Keeping the media away is also a very calculating tactic. It is censorship becasue the Israeli government are afraid of the ugly truths that might be revealed and they dont want to be made accountable for murdering scores of innocent people. The lame excuse that anyone innocent who is perceived as an enemy is a lame and morally weak justification. Perhaps a political leader of any calibre (is there one of stature in office anywhere now in the world?) might have the political courage to say this.
The policy of military war-making for Israel has not exactly been successful i nrecent times, has it? If it was then they wouldnt need to keep doing. So maybe they should think harder and more thoroughly about the causes of their unsatisfactory security. The solutions to this part of the world have to be political and economic. After my travels through the region, this was very much the conclusion I found myself reaffirming.
http://www.blogger.com/www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/opening_up_the_middle_east/
Ultimately, Israel will need to talk to people, understand their concerns and deal with them and compromise. And the world needs to stop viewing the Middle EAst in such patronising and simplistic terms. It is a labyrinthe with many entrances. But as long as Israel maintains the Palestianian people under an oppressive economic siege (to say nothing of the military siege funded and equipped by America remember) then its security will always be undermined.
I happen to know some good and likeable Israeli people, but there are too many Israeli's who are one-eyed and badly informed about parts of their world which are afterall right on their own doorstep and they can never travel too. A proper sense of proprortional perspective might be more useful, especially for a people for whom the destructive consequences of war should in no way require any reminders. Smashing up innocent peoples lives and shattering their homes wont work 'Never again'. We keep hearing those words when it comes to war. Think Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq even. But the words seem empty, meaningless and easily forgotten. Is there not a better alternative? Dont bank on the world's lame politicians to come up with one anytime soon.

Laos, the sleepy country wakes up

Laos is the sleepy country and it is waking up. It is the country that feels like it has been left on standby mode, a little slow to rouse itself.
Laos is the country that you may unashamedly never have heard of. Some might place it somewhere in Africa. But it is a country we might be hearing a lot more about.

more to follow....

Chinese Markets

Spitting

Disgusting I know, but it has to be brought up. Bad pun intended. The Chinese like to spit. And its hard not to let it affect you.

After the best part of a couple of months amongst them (most of the time fairly intimately), maybe its the sterile air or contagious force of habit, but part of you thinks if you can't beat them, join them. In fact, whuy not go one better and really show them how to spit properly because, especially for people who do so much of it, the peculiar thing is that the Chinese are not actually very good at spitting.
They are world class throat hoickers. Of that there is no doubt. But the actual spitting part is usually a complete anti-climax. Perhaps it is the crowds or the likely proximity of so many other Chinese people, but something seems to hold them back at the critical moment of expulsion. Still it never fails to make me glance around nervously and check that my legs dont have a new coating.

Road to Burma

They call it the Bamboo Curtain. It is China's secretive border with Burma. There is no reason to go there at all, nothing much to see. So I did a strange thing. I decided to go totally out of my way to take a look. Just for the thrill of the ride somewhere totally different. It didnt disappoint. For a couple of days I wandered around, not another Westerner or even Chinese tourist in sight. No one really spoke any English. It was just me and my phrase book, trying to fathom what I was doing in such a place.
In what felt like no time at all the bus engines had been switched off and there was the silence of an unexpected blurry-eyed arrival in a town I could not remember the name of. Sometimes when you travel you do not need to see a particular sight or undertake a designated experience. Just getting an open-eyed feel for somewhere which looks intrguing on a map is enough. Ruili, right in the far south western corner of China was such a place.
Like so many other places in China, it totally confounded my expectations. The scenery was stunning: an area known as the sea of heat for all its thermal energy and some twenty volcanoes, it is also very earthquake prone. My second bus deviated away from the main highway - I thought this was to avoid paying the toll, as had happened previously (see below) but no, this was indeed the rough dirt track to the Burma border. It was a road for motorbikes, jungle-clad with overlapping ferns, brilliant for hiding things or bandits poerhaps, unsuited to buses and it reminded me of the beginings of the Lost City in Colombia.
(www.alitravelstheworld.com/colombia)
This road, the Burma road was, I could see, still being built by hand, brick by laboriously chiselled brick. Teams of labourers toiled in the warm sun. Tea plantations began to emerge and then the mighty girth of the Mekong river and a precarious wobbly planked bridge. Banana plants and sugar cane-filled fields. Then, always a surprise around the next bend, flat plains.

There was that lazy hum and distant drone of the Asian Sub-continent, the sleep-inducing haze and mind-draining heat. Water buffaloes and cycle rickshaws. The people, I noticed, now had darker features and were more ragged looking, and less purposeful in their demeanour. I oculd easily have changed countries. I could easily have been in Burma.

And then some Chinese soldiers stopped the bus stopped the bus and asked me questions. Was I American, one of them asked, as he thumbed through my passport. Absolutely not, I replied, takign the risk of humouring him. It seemed to work. He and his colleague looked long and hard at my bag and gave me the benefit of the doubt, waving me on my way. But to where?
What a strange place Ruili was. Again there was the strong sense that I had left China altogether. I almost had. I was totally on my own in an unfamiliar town and it was strangely stimulating. Everyone I passed in the street looked at me hard. I attracted plenty of attention everywhere. No one seemed to speak my language. The men wore sarongs, like loose skirts which they had a habit of crudely 'readjusting' from time to time.
I found a hotel. it was rather surreal, vast and empty looking. The reception lady sent me to what felt like the furthest away possible room, at the end of the corridor where there were protruding cameras, which I cheerily waved into on my way past each time. It felt like I was their only guest. 'Classic Jazz Tastes Style!' boasted the hotel pamphlet. My room looked pretty ordinary and shabby to me. They even had a comb and shower cap in the bathroom (really useful to a bald man!). And the TV didnt work. And i thought back to the bus station which had clocks on the wall showing the times in 'Greenwich, Peking and Rangoon.' And I began to wonder if perhaps this city was not dissimilar to Rangoon, something I might well be able to find out within a couple of months time.

to be continued.....

First impressions are not always the most favourable. Shops didnt seem to sell anything I needed or wanted - an ice cream or a cold beer perhaps. Instead they offered expensive jewellry, designer sunglasses, washing machines, beds and even an entire row of stores selling blankets. Christ, it was well over thirty degrees, there was no danger of catching a chill at night here!

I walked into a supermarket to muffled titters and giggles. No less than ten uniformed girls greeted me at the entrance and then one of them escorted me around the shop. It was like having my very own personal shopper. Outside another large electronics store, the shop assistants were skipping, sop few customers were there.
Someone offered me teak, jade and some opium (a big problem, but thats another story) and at the border, did I require the services of a ladyboy? I'd heard stories that hairdressing shops were not indeed what they seemed and were fronts for brothels. Luckily as someone who isnt big on hairdressing expenditure, that wasnt a problem.
In fact whole swathes of the town felt like it was just one big front for various illicit endeavours.

The Brurmese people, at first glance to me, reminded me of Indians or Pakistanis and they spoke like them too. I came across a couple of boys who were very inquisitive in English. I thought they spoke it better than actually did and only realised when they kept repeating everything I said!

The markets, like plenty of markets in China were not for the faint of smell of the weak of stomach. Dogs in cages, cats on leads, blood fur and feathers all amalgamated together on the floor. I was sure there was a decent chance I'd pick up bird flu. A mentally ill man, ragged and destitute in a way that you would never come close to see in my own country or indeed continent, was craling his way laboriously across the dirty floor. Where he was going, or indeed where he had come from, no one seemed to know, or to care. It seemed that some people were actually living or sleeping in this market in hunched gloomy squats with washing hung outside. What a place to live. What an existence.
One strange thing about Ruili - there were many strange things - was that the town just seemed to come to a abrupt halt at the end of the main road (some eight lanes wide). High rise buildings, then jsut dirt and mud, nothing but the rubble of countryside again.
One thing that struck me as I picked my way through the mayhem - it was strangely compelling - was how busy or pre-occupied most people were. Children being schooled, a mother arranging her daughter's hair, a man texting on his mobile phone (every has one) families scoffing noodles, making tea, counting money, a woman methodically putting on her make-up.

Then it struck me. I'd come all the way from the sprawl of Beijing right to far fringes of the Burma border to encounter what I expected China to be - the lonesome anonymity of the strange alien outsider, the awkward and rude hotel service (another story) and the weirdness.

Having taken myself to some of its remoter fringes, I am tempted to conclude that maybe, just maybe, China as the monlithic homogenous entity we hear so much about, is not quite what we've told it is or what we think it is. Yet in this far flung corner of a vast country people seemed to posess something very un-Chinese - that rare commodity called time. And it occurred to me that people werent spitting in the street. I had barely noticed.

Chinese Lessons

Maybe its just me, but I seem to have a way of getting into trouble with attempting to speak the language. Never mind my Spanish in Central America (read my experiences and mistakes here: www.lulu.com/alistaircaldicott), theres always a new misunderstanding around the corner - Ill try to backdate a few here when I have time and internet speed / availability.
Earlier today, in a jokey sort of way, I called someone comrade. And then I discovered that the word comrade in Chinese (tongzhi) also now means a slang word for someone who is gay. Quite ironic really, since the literal translation (I belatedly realised) means those of the same mindset. SO there you go - perhaps that just about sums Chinese communism up - going from comrades to gays in less that a generation!
Some time ago I showed someone the word for sore throat in the back of my phrasebook. It was in very small print. I was wondering why he was looking at me in a funny way. Then I scrutinised the word and noticed that immediate above it, where I had underlined was the term for sore thrush.
Also the word for current affairs in Chinese is Shishi - said almost literally as Shhhhh! Appropriate perhaps, you might think.
And as today happens to be World Toilet Day (you think Im joking) - in the same restaurant I made my language faux pas I managed to photo their toilet sign, which didnt pull any punches:
TOILET: NO POO, PEE ONLY! THANK YOU.

I am now heading west right to the border with Burma -a very long way from Beijing. In fact I shall be closer to Delhi than either Beijing or Shanghai.

On the Edge

Perhaps my favourite Chinese sign yet:
BEWARE THE FIERY SAFETY!
And underneath: TAKE CARE THE ANXIOUS AND TORTUOUS PATH!
Rather appropriate in some respects.

WIthout realising, I had stumbled into the middle of a sizeable and chattering party of Chinese tourists (very easily done) but it was nothing like as bad as I might have feared. In fact I really came to enjoy their company and started to to work some of my Mandarin.
More and more I am coming to the conclusion that China is so far removed from our casually and lazily accepted norms. Obviously plenty of people will remain quite sceptical but my advice is to do what I usually do: come and see it for yourself and make your own mind up. It truly is an absorbing country with plenty of magic to be sprinkled on you...if you go delving into the right areas and delve hard enough.
As roads go, the road up to Lugu Lake on the border of northern Yunnan and Sichaun proivinces is a rattling, rough and rugged rollercoaster. It snakes and slithers its way around the precariously sloping orangey-brown mountains of Yunnan. It feel like hundreds, maybe thousands of men, are constantly rebuilding the road. And for a good reason: heavy landlsides. The road was closed for this reason just a few days before I ventured up and it was easy to see why. This was an area where landslides were of severe and epic proportions.
This is a road which is never short of drama: rubble and wreckage, overturned trucks, dusty swerves or the steering wheel from a driver who uses one hand for his mobile phone and the other for his cigarette. Panicky honks of the horn do little to reassure passengers - I found myself in the front seat which was both the very best and the very worst place to experience everything the road had to offer.
When you descend it - and it is no more than a rutted track of stones - it is the sort of descent for which you need to hold on to something fairly firmly. I was airborne from my seat several times and banged various parts of my body on hard edges of the bus interior. I always bang my head hard on anything, its like a curse of baldness. But in a strangely compelling way, the ride was worth every yuan. As the late afternooon sun ravished and dazzled the broadening river valley and banana trees emerged to signify a milder climate again, I was reminded of my crazy journey down the world most dangerous road in Bolivia (www.alitravelstheworld.com/bolivia)
And all sorts of every animal scattered and casually rambled across the road - piglets, herds of cows, sage old beared wild goats, horses, stray dogs. Every now and again I caught glimpses of brillinaltly flurescent women from the minority Mosuo people. More and more in CHina, you start to realise that so much its territory is actually rather un-Chinese at all. So many different kinds of diverse people co-exist within its borders. This is a country of Lost Horizons

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Last night, in my efforts to immerse myself, I summoned up the courage to eat snails for dinner washed down with local red wine, which was unsurprisingly the much more palatable of the two. I have met all sorts of people in the last week or so here in Yunnan province - having had beers and discussion with the Chief Justice of the Marshall Islands to having dinner with a German man in charge of a large automotive company opening its third factory in Shanghai to a an ex Wall Street banker.There was something utterly compelling about witnessing first hand the powered, frenzied, concentrated fury of the Yangzi river. The late afternoon sun glinted and streaked with marvellous dazzle down the river's path.
In terms of challenging walks that I have undertaken, the Tiger Leaping Gorge walk was fairly moderate and undemanding. In terms or spectacular views and scenery, it was dramatic. I nearly got bumped off the path and down into the lower reaches of the valley at one point by a pair of frisky horses, but managed to manoevre my body away form theirs just in time.

At the end of my charge down into the canyon, I found myself being asked to have dinner with a German man and his wife. His wife spoke excellent English but barely uttered a word and did little more than nod politely as her husband told me all about the Chinese work ethic and the economic prospects for the automotive industry.

'We always have to tell the CHinese workers so many times. It is not like in Germany. We cannot embarass or humiliate them. This is very bad. It is like killing them. The CHinese are very different to you and me.'

'Indeed they are.' I replied.

'They think, eat and act differently. Try eating the frog.' he insisted. 'It really is very tasty. And the goose feet too. This is recommended.'

Then suddenly, out of the blue, came a fierce cry. ' Fuwujian!!'

He was callign the waitress over.

'Oh so you know her name?' I innocently suggested.

'No. Dis is the word for waitress. If you shout it loud enough they always come over.'

Sure enough a girl sheepishly approached our table.

'Our food is not hot.' He insisted. 'Please take it back and make it hot.'

As she did so, she stared at him. I also stared at him. He had blood streaming out of his nose. It was altitude sickness. And it began to attract attention.

more soon....when China sorts its internet out! Believe me their is so much more to tell, but I'm short on time and internet speed. Tomorrow I am heading up to a place described as the 'Kingdom of Women'...

Chinese Signs

There are many dangers and perils to the traveller in China, some of them less obvious than others...

I shall add new signs when I can - there really are too many to upload...but enough of my scribbling!

Where were these signs when I needed them on my train journey! (see below)

Chinese Karaoke

If seeing is believing in China, then hearing is disbelieving when it comes to karaoke.
As someone with the singing voice of an undomesticated mammal which should never be inflicted on anyone apart from myself, far be it for me to caste judgements on the quality of others attempting to expel tuneful or melodic noises from the deepere recesses of their larynxes.
Nonetheless, it must be unequivocally stated that the vast majority of karaoke singers here are hideously and excruciatingly stressful to any normal and properly functioning human ear.
Perhaps I should have been alerted, or even troubled, by the hurried and exaggerated enthusiasm with which I was ushered up the stairs of a dimly lit bar I had just ambled into. But I was shunted straight into the uncomfortably intimate vicinity of a small raised stage. Luckily, after ordering a beer, and accompanied by my two English friends Abby and Jasmine, we managed to edge ourselves into a more discreet position out of the vocal firing line.
White smoke began to diffuse suggestively across the stage as an announcer over-enthusiastically belowed out something or other. A dog, which resembled a much hairier nad stockier Lassie, waggled and weaved in front of the stage in anticipation of what was to come.
Then out of the mist, in a very 'Stars In Their Eyes' kind of way, the shape of a body emerged. As the figure of a young man all in white became more clearly defined, I felt like he was on the verge oif announcing,
'Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be the Chinese Will Young!', before dissappearing back into the smoke. But he didn't. Instead he started to sing.
Only several lines into the song could I properly idnetify the song as an Eric Clapton one. But, instead of tears, the title had changed to 'Cheers in Heaven!'
And the man was boldly undeterred by the underwhelming apathy of the audience, which consisted mostly of a sprinkling of CHinese businessmen, a couple of whom were ploddingly absorbed by their mobile phone prodding. Meanwhile another group were masochistically indulging in dice rolling drinking games, feverishly and gleefully plunging themselves into raucous oblivion.
Clink, CLink. CLink. They raised their glasses and embarked on another downward slide into messy drunkeness. Then,m before I could uncringe my face from the final dying, screeched choruses of 'Cheers in heaven!', two of these men had plonked themselves down next to me.
The greetings were all forceful backslaps, exagerated head nods and endless handshakes, which I almost began to make a silent sweepstake on estimating the time my hand might be released from his grip.
All of us were near muted by the deafening volume of them usic. So the 'conversation' rarely progressed beyond monosyllabic shouts of enthusiasm or polite agreement.
'We make buildings. Our business.' one of them told me.
'Tomorrow Kunming we. Tomorrow you come Kunming!'
'Sure.'
In the end I hated the idea of stone-cold killing their enthusiasm. So with the conversation rather dry and them usic having shifted to a totally different and more vigorous dance beat, the three of us sat dancing with our hands.
The CHinese businessmen, when they weren't crash-clinking our glasses, seemed in awe of copying what we were doing with our dance movements. So, after a few moments of intensive synchronisation, there we all were under the instigation of Jasmine and myself, motioning the hand signals to cleaning the windows, climbing a ladder, feeding a horse and changing a light bulb. Their enthusiasm knew no bounds, as did my disbelief.
Then, before us, out iof the smokey mist another Stars in Their Eyes contender emerged - a tall man with a really long black mane of hair and sporting an intriguing red and white outfit. The dog didnt seem to approve and started barking. It looked like he had a very thick woolen jumper around his waist, or was it a actually a small blanket? Either way, he belted out some CHinesem usic with unswerving conviction.
Having exhausted the window cleaning and ladder lcimbing dance routines, all of us found ourselves merrily waving our hands swayingly in the air in the manner of a rock concert crowd. To some mild astonishment the singer started to respond and do the same arm movements while he was singing. When he had finished he took an exaggerated bow and vanished back into the smoke. My two Chinese friends had near exhausted themselves and felt obliged to issue goodbyes before beginning to stagger out.
'Tomorrow Kunming you.' he repeated.
'Yes tomorrow Kunming you' I replied.
And they were gone as swiftly as they'd arrived. A Spice Girls -ish solo tribute act was next up on the stage, but I'd had my fill.

Bureaucracy

China is an absurdly bureaucratic place in some respects. Some hotels in certain restricted areas require all sorts of information, but plenty of it borders on the ridiculous and is just paperwork for the sake of it. So sometimes I take a little silent pleasure in making answers up.
At the bottom of the form is a 'Remarks' section into which I have inserted comments like
'I'm very tired of filling out poinless forms.'
or, 'It's quite cold here and the hotel staff and not terribly responsive or efficient.'
Under 'Occupation', you could write anything from 'Egyptian goat herder' to 'Olympic athlete'. I once put down Gordon Brown as my employer. Maybe some pen pusher might pull me up for this when I eventually leave the country, we'll see.

Naked bodies

Have you ever witnessed naked human bodies being enthusiastically devoured by packs of vultures? Thats what I spent a morning doing the other day. it is a Tibetan Buddhist sky burial and it is peculiarly compelling. It is how plenty of Tibetan people choose to dispose of their dead and you might say it is the most ecologically friendly funeral practice on earth. And the backdrop, at nearly 4,000 metres high, with dazzling snow coated summits and a misleadingly silent and serene air, is equally compelling.

Seeing the heads of the vultures soaked with the red of human blood was slightly disturbing. They tended to gather in feverish packs awaiting the final slicing and chopping of the naked human flesh while a Buddhist monk issues the last rites.
The Chinese outlawed the Tibetan sky burials a couple of decades ago, but it really is very difficult to prevent a group of people just taking a body to a cold hillside, cutting it open and preventing the vultures from tearing it to bits and feasting. A free-for-all ensued, the vultures chasing and tearing at chunks of flesh right until there was nothing left. Then the bones are smashed and ground down into a paste so that also can be consumed.

Gruesome, macabre...you might chose to use these words, but it was fascinating, and also a reminder of just how different some people are to us.

On a separate note I have my suspicions that I am being watched and even followed, but more of that another time.

Shangri La

So I have reached Shangri La. And it is about as far removed from what I thought it might be. But then so have so many other places and indeed pre-conceptions about China. The road to it is as tortuous as it is dramatic. Every now and again the road is on the verge of falling away altogether a few hundred metres down into a breath-inducing canyon. But the arrival never quite justice to the journey.

For a seasoned traveller, or even a curious tourist, there is very little here to stimulate or nourish. But for an intrigued observer of where China is really going as a country, away from the turbo-charged, explosive growth of its mega-cities and their sleey, super-imposed modernity, it is rather fascinating and very revealing.

Here is place, so far far removed from Beijing and it is perhaps more syptomatic of the new China than anywhere else I've been. Perhaps this is what the Chinese government one day will turn Tibet into - some sort of gentrified, dumbed-down tourist theme park.

Shangri La is misleadingly billed as some sort of authentically Tibetan thriving city. It is anything but.The sun illuminates and warms parts of the city in the daytime, but by night, the temperature really plunges and chills everything and everyone.

The olds town brims with internet cafes (never mind that the computers dont always works properly!), tacky souvenir shops, boutique jewellry

Embryonic consumerism is taking hold, but in a rather staid, saniised and controlled way. Thai massage places for tourists (largely Chinese), Western food offerings.

It is also like they built all the shops and office blocks, the plush hotels, the statues and artificial lakes, and are still waiting for the people to come

There is an ordered calmness and a pleasantness which somehow feels uneasy and unatural. Something doesnt quite feel right. It is perhaps a slice of China's vision of its own utpian future and you wonder if this is what communism eventually turns into - sterile, controlled, uniform capitalism in all but the official name. For me, anywhere with an excess of contrived fakeness has the air of somewhere where you can easily be controlled or watched.

For a tourist wanting to renew a visa (me) it is breathtakingly easy and even efficient. I found myself laughing and joking with a Chinese policewoman about my lack of hair. Sometimes it pays to smooth the process along. My photo was very different to my shaven head. I looked like a monk, she said in her softly spoken voice. It is ironic becasue the Tibetan monks almost look out of place now here.

To the outside world China's voice is softly spoken (in a way that Russia's is not for example) and no one knows for sure what the future will be, but inside scrutiny and questioning on our part will be no bad thing. So the next time you see, hear or read a news report from the part of the world let me know.

President Obama

At the risk of prematurely predicting the result ) I once wrote a dissertation on the 1992 British election!), today could be a momentous day.
Yet we need to be very careful in getting too carried away by the implications of America's new president. We should be realistic and patient in expecting the changes that are needed. But nonetheless, it is a hugely significant momeent, not just for America but more importantly for the world. This change has the power to change lives for the better right from Palestine to Pakistan. So lets cast aside any cynicism or negativity and get behind the new president. He has the ability and judgement to do the right and necessary things. But patience is required for real change.

Tibetan flavours

How could somewhere so big, so empty and so open be so efficiently closed off, I asked myself. I was becoming breathless from the altitude (current town Litang, over 4,000m high) and the stunning scenery. The magnificent big blue skies, the sweeping vastness, the sense of the mountain summits grazing the heavens.

If China had a Wild West, then this would definitely be it.
Officially I am not in Tibet. Unofficially, and to all intents and purposes, I am already in Tibet. The soaring snowcapped mountains, the big empty terrain, the clourful prayer flags flapping in the icy winds, the stirring sense of gigantic wonder, the exotic weather-beaten faces of the people. Technically a part of China, but a very different world.

The terrain looks rather roughed up, in spite of a bright strong sun, which yields little kindness, only harsh brightness. The driver turned up the volume of his music. It was what I might describe at Tibetan techno, thumping beats and Spanish lyrics for one song: 'Vamos a la playa!' (Lets go to the beach!) The beach had never felt further away.

The morning frost was hard and the scenery promised to be breathtaking. Enromous valleys, icey rivers and mountains coated in gleaming snow. I was already out of breath with the high altitudes, but something else contributed too.

On my bus the driver had offered me cigarettes. I needn't have bothered smoking any becasue all the other passengers on Chinese buses do your smoking for you. And when they're not smoking, they're spitting.

At one small town stop I wondered around a market and watched men chopping and sawing off yaks' heads before they were casually wheeled off on a trollyey. Crude outdoor butchering and running blood. As they did so, cigarettes never left their mouths, of course. Pigs snaffled around the fringes of toilets. A pair of stray dogs (there are nearly everywhere in these parts) mated with uneasy brutality in the distance.
Of course it is always useful to remember just how much history China has been through (near on 46 centuries of it no less). So in some ways this is a country which is always writing, or even rewriting, its own enormous history.

Mountaineering for Buses

I promise you, one day I shall write a book entitled the world's worst bus journeys. A recent contender was my journey in Sichuan province (south west China) from the town of Kangding to Tagong. At times I thought I was back in Afghanistan doing a never-to-be-repeated journey - www.alitravelstheworld.com/afghanistan
The start of the journey was not promising. We reached a police road block. Then engine chuntered out and the driver went to speak to the soldiers. I guessed that they were not letting us through because we were foreigners. Never forget that China is a country of rules, of control, or order and of face. Rules must be adhered to.
On a previous bus journey people refused to sell me tickets because I was a foreigner. Foeigners are not allowed to buy tickets for buses here. 'Why?' I asked, without answers. I waved my money around but the woman behind the counter didnt want to know. She didnt even give one of the famously awkwardly tightly clenched polite Chinese smiles.

The bus company even made announcements in English and the entire list of the Customer Satisfaction Requirements (their words, not mine) were printed out on a notice board

It was only becasue of the attentions attracted that a lady came over and took myself and two other English girls in a taxi to the outskirts of town, Here we waited uneasily, wondering what on earth we were doing, Then the same bus we had previously been refused permission to travel on pulled over and we got onboard. Rules can be bent in China, sometimes very effectively.
Anyway to reach Tagong there was only one road and we were obviously not going to be allowed to travel on it. So the driver came back, slammed his battered Hiace into a frenzied reverse and off we headed down a side road. We came to a village checkpoint. Money was handed over to some local women and we took a very severe turn up a steep rocky farm track. It was an excellent place to be robbed and left for good.
We careered around a brick wall, near shaving it. However, there were some other passengers in the vehicle, Tibetan men, and they urged us all to get out. The driver told us to find some large rocks to palce behind the wheels to prevent it rolling back down the hill. Then he required us to push the vehicle up the farm hill. What on earth was going on, I silently wondered, as I packed my body down alongside twoTibetan men in a an exhausting attempt to generate some momentum. Becasue we were at altitude (over 3,000m) the effort was near shattering. Somehow the driver gave it all he had and we made it to the top of the hill. We came out on a main raod, indeed the correct road. A few shouts of delight and the turnign on of some loud Tibetan techno music indicated that we had successfully, if exhaustively, circumnavigated the Chinese military road block.
The Sichuan-Tibetan Highway is the main road all the way from South West China up to Lhasa, Tibet's controversial capital. To call it a highway is a gross exaggeration. It is a tortorously twisting narrow mountain road, deeply unsuited to the volumes of heavy truck traffic which batters it every day.

more coming soon ( Chinese internet connections and electricity permitting!)...

Monkeys in the mist

The Chinese have a saying that where one monkey stands in the way, ten thousand men shall not pass. And when you are confronted by clusters of these monkeys half way up stepp mountain trail, it is easy to understand why. From far away they look cute and playful. Up close however, they are considerably more menacing and threatening. They seem to believe they have a right to help themselves to anything edible you might have on you, whether you like it or not.
I spent a couple of days trekking up Emei Shan, one of China's holiest mountains. Misty monasteries and mischievious monkeys were the main highlights.

I was crossing a rope bridge and all of a sudden a small group of monkeys appeared around me from different angles. I had a stick with me, but it seemed to make little difference. One of them took a leap and swiped for my back. Fortunately I swerved oput the way just in time and he missed me. That was fine, but the more intimidating moment came furthher up the mountain where a young Chinese couple were waiting nervously.
It soon bcame apparent why. One very large monkey was sat on a post. When he saw me he growled. Up close some of the monkeys were the size of large dogs or even small black bears. As he growled me he yawned his mouth open and bared his fangs. We had to be very patient and wait for him to be distracted befopre continuing through.
I spent the night in a monastery. With creeping woooden floorboards, dark crevices and mysterious bodies lurking in the mist, it did a very good impersonation of a haunted house.

A few notes on further Chinese food experiences:
It really is incredibly hit and miss. Ordering is often a complete gamble, especially if you are feeling in the slightest bit adventurous. Entire dishes have been left untouched. Perhaps the most disgusting thing so far for me has been bamboo shoots. Harmless enough you might think, I certainly did, but utterly repulsive. And the fact that they happened to be shaped rather like a certain part of a man's anatomy also considerably diminished the appeal.
I found myself eating yogurt with chopsticks (?!) and the most bizarre yet....a fruit salad smothered with, wait for it, tomato ketchup...mmm....it almost makes those severed yaks heads and chicken feet seem vaguely palatable. In order to wash it down I had to order a bottle of 'Local Bear'
The Chinese dont really eat their food, they scoff and shovel it. There is something compelling unsophisticated and crude in witnessing the cramming into the mouth with the efficiency of cattle converging around a feeding station. And the mess they leave afterwards is truly incredible. The scavengers come, then devour, then they clear off again.

photos coming soon hopefully...

Xi'an

Not for one moment did I imagine I would find myself in the city where the great origins of China's early empire took root, gawping at skyscrapers and cranes. But this is twenty-first century Xi'an. For a moment I thought I must have taken the train to Shanghai by mistake. Its cenntre is one big endless glitzy shopping centre.

it was a bit like when I arrived in the city of Manaus, an isolated city in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest after four days of boat travel. It was all a bit underwhelming. I was expecting something more. All I got was busy blandness. The klet down of the first impressions after arrival somehow devalued the efforts of the journey.

The big thick walls of this ancient city (a more modern city centre you might be hard pressed to find), even they could not protect it from rampant consumerism and big name brand shopping. Its a little like a woman who puts on too much make-up again and again. The outside facades are clean and pleasant but you begin to wonder what is really underneath, what is being concealed or glossed over. When something is too gleaming and glitzy, trying too hard almost, you begin to ask yourself why.

Sure the site of the terracotta warriors is indeed very impressive. Although you cannot get all that close to them, you can have a solid appreciation of how one emperor set about constructing an army of 6,000 uniquely stylised clay statues under the ground. A policeman sat on his perch above some red carpeted stairs. The red carpet stairs were closed off to the public.

From Xi'an I continued on to Chengdu, home to the giant pandas. And I allowed myself the luxury of travelling hard sleeper rather than hard seat. Comfort, space and peace like I had never known on a train in China.

Just outside Chengdi is a giant panda reserve. Seeing these wonderful creatures close up is a very worthwhile experience:

One of my main aims has been to find a way into an area of China which (to thwart the censors!) begins with T and ends in T. It has lots of monastaries and mountains. But my chances of finding a way in are not looking great, so I'll see where I end up.