In the Shadow of Everest

UPDATE: I just spent a looooong time uploading photos on a very slow internet connection, so there are now photos within the two latest journal entries plus a ton more on my Flickr account, including an excessive amount of Mt. Everest photos.

My four-day journey from Tibet to Nepal started by joining up with Rob, Lauren and Noah, three highly enjoyable Americans I met by posting notices on message boards around Lhasa. We tossed our stuff in our Land Cruiser and were off, speeding out of the city and curving up a mountain pass for a couple of hours in order to get great views of the shimmering turquoise Yamdrok-Tso Lake just before rain struck. Back down in the valley, we passed tiny rural villages on our way to our first stop Gyantse, a little city dominated by a large fortress perched up on a hill. We arrived in time to see the city's manageable monastery and grab some yak-n-noodle soup just before the sun set.



We drove through dark with our driver's Tibetan pop cassette tape blasting on repeat and finally arrived in Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet next to Lhasa. The next morning we meandered through the city's great monastery which houses a huge golden buddha, got some yak burgers and tea near our hotel, then jumped back in the Land Cruiser for a long day of driving. We arrived at nightfall in Shegar, a one-street photographer's paradise that sits right outside the entry area to the Qomolangma Nature Preserve. Most people are more familiar with Qomolangma's English name: Mt. Everest.

We woke up before dawn the next morning and sleepily piled in the car once again, passed through several permit checks as the sun came up. The car drove through switchback after switchback and when we reached the top of the pass we were awed as we caught our first glimpse of Mt. Everest far across the wide valley. Three more hours of driving brought us to Rhongpu Monastery, famous for its dramatic views of Everest. As we arrived, the views were completely covered by a solid wall of clouds.

Noah, Rob and I decided to make the two-hour walk from the monastery to Everest Base Camp, which has been the preliminary home to Everest expeditions since before Sir Edmund Hillary first conquered the 29,028 foot mountain in 1953. As we started walking, the clouds began to miraculously part and Mt. Everest began to reveal itself to us in pieces. Within a half-hour, we were walking along a path toward a completely visible Mount Everest. Seeing the highest mountain in the world with my own eyes is the highlight of my trip so far, and is something that I won't forget for as long as I live.



Base Camp itself is a huge series of large canvas tents that serve as guesthouses and restaurants for visitors to the camp. We saw only one set of expedition tents — most of the summit attempts are made in May. Since we had extremely good luck by getting great views (the previous day the mountain was covered from sunrise to sunset), we decided to get moving by mid-afternoon toward Tingri, a town a few hours from the Nepal border. We noticed that the road from Everest Base Camp to Tingri is only shown on about half the maps we've seen, and once we saw it in person we found out why. The road is a series of occasional tire prints winding through a rocky and muddy valley that under very few circumstances would ever be considered a road — a vague path is a more accurate term. Our driver made every 4-wheel-drive enthusiast in the United States look like a bunch of stupid pansies; I've never seen someone do crazier crap while driving a car. Here's a shot out the window — we're on the road, even though it looks strikingly like a river.



We got to Old Tingri after four hours of crazy four-wheeling, bargained hard for a hotel room and wandered around the town. Exploring the city is like walking around in an old west movie — horses are tied up outside the saloon, little country stores and restaurants line the main street, and animals of all varieties casually wander looking for their next meal. We hit the rack late, our bellies full of the light but decent Lhasa Beer and more yak meat, just about the only food available in Tibet.



We rose early in Tingri and got out of town quickly in an attempt to get to Nepal as early as possible. Another long day of driving brought us atop a pass with an elevation over 17,000 feet before plummeting down toward the border through the most spectacular valley I’ve ever seen. Waterfalls poured down from all directions, sometimes directly onto the road, making for an incredibly fun and beautiful ride through misty forests. In the early afternoon, we parted ways with our driver (along with his terrible taste in music) in the border town on the Chinese side where we had to walk a few miles to the actual border. A fairly painless exit from China brought us to a six mile no-mans land of harrowing switchbacks that led directly below to the bottom of the valley where we paid our $30 and breezed through the seemingly voluntary Nepal visa process.

The six of us, including Yael and Alon two Israelis we met along the way, haggled for a shared jeep from the Nepali border town to Kathmandu. We bargained well, and the five-hour drive cost us right around four dollars each inside a gigantic military-style jeep. We were all surprised at the drastic differences between Tibet and Nepal — we passed through fifty or so Nepalese towns on our way into the big city which were much more Indian influenced than I had expected. Women wear bright saris, buildings have intricate carved detail, and the majority of signs are lovingly and expertly hand-painted. Within a few hours, we had dropped into the Kathmandu valley, an unbelievable 13,000 feet lower than the elevation a few hours before in Tibet. I certainly never imagined I'd see the Himalayas and palm trees in the same day.

We made it into the outskirts of Kathmandu where our college-aged driver brilliantly dodged the absolutely insane traffic, chasing behind a speeding ambulance for much of the way. I found a copy of the Kathmandu Driving Handbook, which I have carefully transcribed for you in its entirety:

-
City of Kathmandu
Driving Rules & Regulations
Article 1, Section 1:
Go nuts!
-

Despite almost getting killed in the traffic about thirty times, I'm thrilled to be in Kathmandu so far. First off, it is cheap as the dickens compared to China — a clean double room with a private bathroom, hot shower and TV runs about $3.50 per night, about a quarter of what it would cost in Tibet. The city has a remarkably fast pulse, but is extremely relaxing at the same time. Goats, water buffalo, and chickens wander the streets while motorcycles and rickshaws buzz past.

Touts in the Thamel, the main tourist area, desperately try to sell trekking trips, hotel rooms, crappy knick-knacks and hash. Bars and restaurants have a distinct hippie vibe, and although that’s not really my cup of tea it's been fun to just hang out with friends and relax over tea and deliciously spicy Nepali food for the last couple of days.

I'm planning to hang out in the city for a few days longer, do a bit of trekking in the Himalayas, then head south into northern India in a few weeks which I picture as a really intense version of Nepal. Thanks for reading as always.

Ryan!

Leaving Lhasa

The morning Bill took his flight back to Shanghai, I awoke with a brutal case of food poisoning. I won't get into the disgusting details, but I will tell you this: it is a horrible feeling running to the bathroom trying to gamble on which awful bodily fluid is going to come out first. Did I say I wasn't going to get into the details? I guess I lied. For three days, I was mostly bed-ridden and I couldn't keep a meal down to save my life. My friends and dorm mates were nice enough to check on me and buy water for me from the store while I sat in the room, wallowing in my own sick misery.

The third morning of my adventure in food poisoning was the day of Lhasa's Yogurt Festival, which only takes place once per year. I wasn't about to let a little intestinal mayhem get in the way of going to a festival, so I woke up at 5:00 am along with the rest of the city, met up with my friends Tahmina and Will and jumped on a bus to Drepung Monastery, a few minutes outside of town. Each year on August 23rd, the monks at Drepung unveil a Tibetan thangka, which is a gigantic fabric painting, hung on the side of the hills near the monastery. We arrived at the monastery in the pitch black of the early morning surrounded by thousands upon thousands of pilgrims, monks, and tourists alike. Pilgrims sang rhythmic songs, monks chanted and rang bells, and piles of burning incense filled the air with sooty smoke as we pushed our way along with the masses toward the top of the hill where they would display the thangka.



The wait was long — almost three hours of standing and waiting in the pouring rain before fifty monks finally gathered and began to slowly pull the thangka's gigantic mass until it was revealed. Will and I hiked from our previous vantage point and got up close to the thangka's base, where it was like a mosh-pit without music, people desperately pushing their way to get closer to the thangka and the monks who were blessing the crowd. We made our way back toward Tahmina who was warming up by a smoky incense fire, and left the monastery. By noon, my stomach had had enough of not being in bed, so I left the Yogurt Festival early and get some rest.



Side note: Apparently, it is called the Yogurt Festival because after the thangka is hung and dancing and festivities get going people eat — you guessed it — yogurt. Which I suppose means that I've had quite a few yogurt festivals of my own in the past. Who knows, maybe you're having your own yogurt festival as you read this? If not, crack open a Yoplait and get celebrating.

I've been in Lhasa for more than two weeks now, longer than I've spent anywhere else on the trip. The nice thing about having a year to travel is that I'm able to just stay around for a while in places that I enjoy without having to worry about it. Two weeks in Lhasa for no reason? Why not? I've become a regular in a handful of restaurants, and the people at the internet/breakfast place see me every morning, probably wondering if I'm ever going to leave. Since a lot of travelers use Lhasa as a base for exploring Tibet, people end up spending a lot of time in the city which means I see people I know around on the streets almost every day and I rarely eat a meal here without some good company.

Last night, I spent several hours as the sun was setting wandering through the alleys and lanes inside the Tibetan part of town, enjoying it for the last time. Every day, I am amazed at how warm and friendly many Tibetan people are. Even as I walk through the back streets, people greet me with Tashi Delek and a smile. It is really hard to describe wandering around in the Tibetan part of Lhasa accurately; it is an experience that pushes the limits of all five senses. Walking past doorways, you hear women singing from places you can't see. Kids expertly kick around deflated soccer balls in tiny alleys they use as fields. Yak meat hangs from store windows, waiting for someone to snatch them up. The crack of a pool cue striking a ball echoes through the streets and you catch glimpses of games among friends being played on worn tables out in open air. Old men shout for good luck as they slap down dice and trade shells, coins and cash in a gambling game they play in the middle of the street.



I’m leaving Lhasa in just a few hours in a 4-wheel-drive along with three other Americans who I met yesterday morning. We're headed on a four day trip to a few Tibetan towns on our way to Everest Base Camp, where we hope to catch a glimpse of the tallest mountain in the world. This time of year, the views are mostly obscured by clouds. Wish us luck.

Ryan!

Into Thin Air

In the few days after the last update, Bill and I spent quite a bit of time searching for a few people to join us on a 50-mile trek between Ganden and Samye monasteries. Independent travelers are required to have a government-issued permit in order to leave the Lhasa area, and the only way to obtain a permit is to join a stupid-expensive tour ($100-200 per day). As a result, most backpackers gang up into larger groups to split the costs of a tour among more people. After a few failed attempts at joining existing groups, we posted a note on the message boards at most of Lhasa’s major backpacker hotels.



While we waited for replies to our note, we rented bikes and headed north into the mountains above Lhasa. We biked through the insane city streets, which are absolutely packed full of people, motorcycles, bikes, cars, trucks, tractors, monks, carts, stray animals, and the occasional yak carcass:



We ended up several miles outside of Lhasa speeding through a few small villages as Tibetans smiled and greeted us as we passed. We spied a monastery perched up on a hill, and decided to ride toward it. The ride was rough: we were up around 13,000 feet going straight up a bumpy dirt road on heavy mountain bikes, and it was hard to pedal ten feet without becoming exhausted. We didn't even make it close to the deceivingly far away monastery, so we turned around and sped for miles down the mountain back to Lhasa.

With a couple days of actively searching behind us, we had no luck finding people to go on our trek. Since Ganden Monastery is officially inside the Lhasa area, Bill and I decided that our best option would be to scrap the idea of going on a pricey tour and create our own four-day trip around Ganden Monastery instead. We bought food, rented some trekking equipment, and hopped aboard the 6:00 am pilgrim bus bound for Ganden. We arrived and got a room at the 15,000 foot high monastery in order to acclimatize to the new altitude — not a bad place to stay for $2.50 per night:



We had the whole day to explore the stunning monastery and the surrounding hills. The monestary was mostly destroyed during Mao's Cultural Revolution, and most of what is there today is a reconstruction of the original. Still, the monestary was wonderfully authentic, full of monks quietly chanting and candles using yak butter as fuel. We started at the bottom and ended up above Ganden on a hill covered in prayer flags with a great view overlooking the monastery:



The next day we hit the trail with our guesthouse roommate, a song-singing flute-playing German guy named Tao. The route took us across a yak-covered ridge, where we met a herding family who invited us into their home. The house was made of thick black yak hair, and we were served yak cheese and boiled potatoes along with the seriously disgusting Tibetan specialty, yak butter tea. For those that would like to try some homemade yak butter tea, here is the recipe:

1) Take a few big spoonfuls of butter, put them in a coffee cup.
2) Let it sit in the sun for a day until they get a bit rancid.
3) Pour boiling water over aforementioned rancid butter. Serve.

As we gagged on the bottomless cup of tea, we were able to chat with the family for a few minutes, which was a really fun experience. Ethnic Tibetans are really interesting and beautiful looking people — they have dark skin and almost always have brick-red cheeks. Here is the yak herding mother and daughter outside their family home:



We walked a few minutes to the village of Hepu, where we stopped in a man's home for a traditional Tibetan lunch of tsampa, a mix of sugar, barley grains and — hooray! — yak butter tea. The first day of hiking wasn't horribly difficult, although we got lost a few times trying to follow the sometimes vague trek description from Lonely Planet. At the end of the first day, we camped at Yama Do, along with a few other groups of travelers doing a similar trek, including a super-nice family from Boulder and San Francisco who were accompanied by an army of yak-men, guides, cooks, and a total of seven yaks to carry their stuff.

The next day was slated as the hardest of the trek, and the guidebooks were not wrong. For the first five hours, Bill and I struggled up around 3,000 feet of vertical climb to get to the top of Shug-la, the first of two mountain passes. We got to the top of the crazy-high pass which according to one travelers GPS reading was 17,522 feet, more than 3,000 feet higher than I had ever been in my life. The air was amazingly thin, and we had to take it really slow in order to not get exhausted, or worse: altitude sickness. The rest of the day was pretty easy comparatively, and we set up our tents inside an old rock wall enclosure. We made camp with a group of three guys, Johannes and Marco from Germany and Aiden from England, who cooked dinner over a fire they made using dried yak shit as fuel, as some Tibetans proudly observed and helped get the fire going.



The thought of climbing Shug-la again and heading back to Ganden like we had originally planned seemed crazy, so we decided to gang up with the Germans and Englishman and head all the way to Samye Monastery. The third day, the five of us headed off together up the second and much easier pass, Chitu-la, again over 17,000 feet. The rest of the morning we went crazy-fast down valley after valley, with the sound of thin flat stones crunching like broken plates beneath our feet. We reached Lonely Planet's Day 3 trek description around 2:00 PM, and decided to keep on hauling ass down the valley to see how far we could get. By 5:00 we were making unbelievable time — we were already halfway through Day 4 of the trek description. We jokingly toyed around with the idea of going all the way to Samye Monastery, finishing the 4-5 day trek in just 3 days. By 7:00 our testosterone (or something) kicked in and we all agreed to trek into the night and make it all the way to Samye. The sun went down as we weaved through the valley passing a handful of gorgeous little villages where locals said tashi delek (the tibetan greeting) as we passed by. The tiny towns were full of sheep, yaks, and some of the cutest little Tibetan kids imaginable:



We walked in the dark without flashlights for a few hours, the road lit by a little bit of moonlight and the sky full of more stars than I ever thought existed. At around 10:30 it was pitch black and we turned on our headlamps. The straight road seemed to stretch forever, and I started to seriously doubt that it was never going to end. My whole body was in an incredible amount of pain and I was starting to hallucinate — understandable considering I had hiked more than 32 miles virtually non-stop since 9:30 am without eating anything more than a snack. Finally, the five us hobbled into the monastery a few minutes before midnight looking like the living dead, where we passed out in some cheap beds at the guesthouse.

We spent the next morning examining our blisters and walking around Samye Monastery, which had room after room of chanting monks ringing bells, banging drums, and playing loudly on Indian-style trumpets. The way back to Lhasa is not easy from Samye because independent travelers are not technically allowed in the area. Fines for being outside of Lhasa without a permit are generally $25-100, which is a much lower price to pay than getting a permit legally through a tour, so we took the gamble. Our way back to Lhasa took us on a bumpy four-wheel drive road, a run-down boat across a wide river, and a public bus that we had to flag down from the street. All the while, we nervously kept watch for any police presence, in an attempt to avoid a potential fine. We managed to make it back to Lhasa without getting fined, where we ate a nice meal as a group and then crashed in our hotels after an exhausting couple of days.

Bill is going back to Shanghai tomorrow morning, and my visa expires on the 30th when I'll make my way to Nepal, where I plan to do a little more trekking before heading into northern India.

Thanks for reading,
Ryan!

Photos updated: Lhasa, Ganden to Samye Trek

The road to Lhasa

I spent my last day in Yangshuo hanging out, reading, and enjoying the array Western food options. Although I’m really enjoying Chinese food, it’s really difficult to eat three meals a day of the stuff, and Yangshuo’s backpacker atmosphere is a great place to take a break and eat hamburgers and pasta.

There are only a few legal ways to get to Tibet — one of the most common is to fly to Lhasa from Chengdu, which is what I decided to do. I arranged my train ticket to Chengdu through the incredibly helpful girls at a Yangshuo travel agency, who also offered to have some friends meet me in the nearby city Liuzhou to help me catch the train. I took the bus to Liuzhou via Guilin and arrived to meet Troy and his friend Fu, who guided me across the city to the train station. For their help, I took them out to a nice dinner near the station. The spicy food was some of the best I’ve had so far on the trip, and the guys had great English. With a hushed voice and nervous looks around the restaurant, Troy brought up some political issues including censorship, which really surprised me. He didn’t seem to be a big fan of the Chinese government, although didn't dare express his concerns in a concrete way. The conversation made me realize how little I appreciate the freedoms that we have in America — I can’t even imagine sitting back at home in a restaurant discussing the problems with President Bush in a low voice, worried that someone might overhear. Here’s Troy and Fu at dinner:



The 40-hour train to Chengdu passed surprisingly fast. I spent most of my time reading the enjoyable Peace Like a River, sleeping, and hanging out in the dining car. Upon arrival in Chengdu I was greeted by hostel hawkers and took them up on their offer to stay at Dragon Town Hostel, recommended in Lonely Planet. Our hostel was seriously impressive: the gorgeous building dates from the Tang Dynasty, and has cheap laundry service, a great restaurant, good nightlife, and extensive travel services — all for around four dollars per night. Bill was flying in from Shanghai to meet me that same day, so I booked us two beds in a four-bed dorm room. Also in our room was a super-fun and ridiculously well-traveled 18-year-old from London named Tahmina, who I hung out with most of the morning before I met up with Bill.

The next day, Bill and I booked our flight for Lhasa and headed out to see one of Chengdu’s major attractions, the Panda Research Base. Despite hearing mixed reviews at the hostel, Bill and I thought it was a really good experience. Scattered over around 100 acres are bamboo forests, research labs, and indoor/outdoor Panda cages with a total of about 40 pandas. Most of the pandas were indoors in cages sleeping or eating massive amounts of bamboo. There were a group of incredibly cool red pandas outside running around and playing — they look like red raccoons, move like cats, but act like playful dogs. The coolest part of the base was probably the twin pandas that were born two days before our visit, which were like tiny pink rats. Very few pandas are born each year, and we really lucked out to be able to see such tiny creatures in person.



After a few hours with the pandas, we grabbed dinner at a traditional Sichuan place which had all sorts of intensely spicy meat and vegetables on sticks. Men all around had their shirts off and were daring each other to drink — the most common drinking game had simple rules: If you don’t drink this whole thing, we’re not friends anymore!

The next morning, Bill and I woke up crazy-early and got on a minibus to the airport. In order to legally travel to Tibet, you have to go as a part of an organized package tour. We were grouped together with a bunch of other westerners on the minibus and at the airport. Our “tour” consisted of checking in, going through the metal detector, and flying to Lhasa — apparently that’s enough to fulfill the tour group entry requirements. Although I was exhausted, I managed to stay awake on the plane to look at the stunning views of the Himalayas:



We arrived at the airport and took an hour-long bus to Lhasa. I drifted off for a second only to wake up and see the breathtaking Potala Palace out the window of the bus. I woke Bill and we both just sat there staring as the bus drove through the city. Wow... we’re in Tibet.



We found a gritty-but-pleasant hotel for five dollars each, and headed out into the city. After some research, I was prepared to be disappointed by Lhasa: I had heard that the city was completely overrun by Han Chinese people, and that it was extremely difficult to get a feel for Tibetan culture these days. It was clear almost immediately that these reports were pretty inaccurate. We walked around with the smell of Yak Butter pouring out of almost every window, thousands of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims parading around the Johkang Temple, prayer flags draped on every building, and little Tibetan kids flying kites everywhere. Although it is going through some seriously hard times, it seems to me that Tibetan culture is very much alive. Here are some videos of the Pilgrims walking around the mile-long Bharkor circuit, and some praying in front of Johkang Temple:





Yesterday, we headed out with our friend Tahmina from the hostel in Chengdu to the Sera Monestary, on the outskirts of Lhasa. I felt completely out of my element being a tourist in a very active Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Visitors chanted and prayed in their own ways as the three of us quietly observed their rituals. One of the must-see things at the monestary is to watch the monks debate each other at 3:00 every day in a courtyard. I had pictured twenty monks sitting in a circle, discussing important issues of their faith. Instead, we were treated to an absolutely insane display of around 100 monks passionately debating issues as they relentlessly clapped their hands each time they made an important point. I am so glad my camera can shoot video, because there’s no way to properly explain this in words, as you can see:





Bill and I are both totally in love with Tibet. This is definitely my favorite place I’ve visited so far on the trip, and will be extremely hard to top. We’re planning on joining up with a couple of other backpackers in the next few days to go on a five day trek (with yaks!) between two monasteries. We’ve stayed in Lhasa for a few days to acclimatize. The air on our trek will be thin and the elevation brutal: the highest point will be a whopping 18,000 feet!!!

Ryan

Photos updated: Yangshuo, Chengdu, Lhasa

Macau, Big Buddha, and the Misty Mountaintops

After a few days in Hong Kong, I fell completely in love with the place. Walking around, I kept getting butterflies in my stomach because of how excited I was to be there. The contrasts are amazing — you can shop for a live chicken and for a suit at Prada on the same block. Overall, the city seems light years ahead of mainland China in most respects, especially technology. People everywhere carry what are called Octopus Cards, which allow them to breeze through subway turnstyles, use a vending machine without carrying change, and hop on and off several different forms of transportation just by quickly passing their wallet or purse over the card reader — pretty cool stuff, if you ask me. Hong Kong is a very wired city as well; several restaurants offer customers free Internet usage while they're eating.

One of the compulsory activities while in Hong Kong is a trip on the crazy-steep funicular to the top of Victoria Peak for a view of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Luckily, it was a pretty clear night and the view was unbelievable from the top. In traditional Hong Kong fashion, they've build a few malls at the top of the peak which seemed ridiculous to me but popular with everyone else. While I was shooting photos, part of the city fell under what seemed like thick gray smoke, which turned out to be a solid wall of rapidly approaching rain. I quickly hid under a pagoda with about fifty Chinese people as the most intense rainstorm I've ever seen flooded the top of the mountain with water and didn't let up for almost an hour. The view a few minutes before the rain struck:



Sam had the next day off (and needed a new Hong Kong visa in her passport) so we went to Macau which like Hong Kong is technically part of China, but requires a trip through customs. The hour-long ferry from Hong Kong to Macau was brutal: Sam threw up twice, despite not being the seasick type, and I almost joined her. It was like being on a really poorly designed roller coaster for an hour.

We finally made it to Macau, which was formerly a Portuguese colony given back to the Chinese government in 1999. Its official languages are Mandarin and Portuguese, but the majority of the people speak Cantonese. The city is looks like a mid-sized Portuguese town, except it's filled with Chinese people and a plethora of casinos, which creates a really interesting cultural mixture. Sam and I hit the town by foot and wove our way through the black and white cobblestone streets to the remains of St. Paul's Cathedral which was almost completely burned down, leaving only the facade. We had a nice lunch of fresh seafood, and tried free samples of the various local specialties as we went from store to store. Unfortunately, the specialties were dried salted fish and sweet peanut candy, an absolutely terrible combination. We stayed into the night, then jumped on the return ferry which was subdued in comparison to the first one. Upon our return, Sam force-fed me Kowloon's finest street food, "fish balls" and ridiculed my gastronomic abilities as I struggled to finish. Lucky for me, they were out of squid-on-a-stick, Sam's first choice.

The next day, I ventured out to Tung Chung, the farthest metro stop from Sam's, to see the Big Buddha statue, built in 1993. What it lacks in historical significance it more than makes up for in sheer size. They should have named it "Amazingly Huge Buddha Statue!!!" because this thing was gigantic. After a few hours of walking around enjoying the scenery, I boarded the rickety bus which weaved through curvy roads along the occasional cliff back to the metro station. After a grocery store dinner and coffee at the excellent and popular Pacific Coffee Company, I headed back to Sam's for the night.



My last morning in Hong Kong was spent enjoying Sam's amazing view for the last time and eating the delicious area specialty Dim Sum at her local restaurant. The restaurant was busy, smoky, and buzzing with locals, almost like a Denny's mid-morning on a Sunday. As my first-ever Dim Sum experience, it seemed like a pretty authentic one. Here's a shot of the view from Sam's and one at the Dim Sum joint:





In order to get up north to Yangshuo, I first had to get out of Hong Kong on a short commuter train to Shenzhen, the neighboring city in the Chinese mainland. Another trip through customs and I was out into the very commercialized city, which was declared a "special economic zone" by the government a few years ago, allowing the city a unique ability to trade freely on a global level. Despite it being one of the richest cities in mainland China, the place was still home to stray dogs, people eating out of trash cans, and hookers as far as the eye could see. I spent a few hours eating conveyor-belt sushi and shopping in a local mall, where I bought a shirt for two dollars at the wonderfully-named store, Y'Pay More. The night bus to Yangshuo was the first of its kind that I'd ever seen: instead of seats, there were bunk beds filling the bus from top to bottom, which made for a really fun ride.



In the morning I arrived in Yangshuo, located in a valley between bizarre and beautiful mountains, and was approached by a guy named Robert hawking hotel rooms. After seeing my room and bargaining down to a reasonable rate ($12/night for a double with a bathroom and shower), he immediately busted out the beer and started trying to get me drunk so I'd go on his package tours. He did a good job apparently, because after an hour of bothering me while I tried to ignore him, I signed up for two days worth of trips. I realized pretty quickly that I paid way more than I should have for both the room and the tours — at least double the standard price around town. I felt like an idiot for getting scammed with the oldest trick in the book (get 'em drunk!), so I moped around town all day wallowing in my own stupidity. Here's a view of the bustling center of Yangshuo, where most of the town's streets cross:



The next day, I was in much higher spirits and decided I'd better make the best of whatever expensive tour I paid for. A guy met me in the lobby of my hotel and said, Hello. Robert send me. Get on. and then pointed at his motorcycle. I hopped on the back and we shot through the crowded streets, where we stopped to pick up a mountain bike. The old saying says that you never forget how to ride a bike, but I never thought I'd have to re-learn in crazy Chinese traffic. I managed to navigate as my new guide and I rode out of the city into the gorgeous countryside outside Yangshuo. We headed for Buddha Water Cave, about an hour's ride south, where my guide dropped me off with a local guide, a delightful 16-year old girl named Snow. She informed me immediately that she had never seen real snow, or left Guangxi province for that matter, and that it is just a name so don't ask about it. Noted. She and I wandered through the muddy rock cavern, which had room after room of beautiful stalactites. Snow would occasionally give me her insight and wisdom about the cave: this rock look like turtle, she would say. We ended up in a room with a huge lake of mud, where I was instructed to take a mud bath. I handed her my shirt (giggling ensued) and jumped in. I lost my sandal in the mud and spent 10 minutes searching for it, much to her amusement.

After cleaning off the mud, I was back on the bike riding through the countryside passing alongside fields of rice, water buffalo, and people using old-fashioned farming equipment. The farmers bodies were a cross between burly and emaciated, and they looked seriously overworked. It made me appreciative and somewhat embarrassed to have worked relatively easy jobs compared to the brutal rural life that these people are used to. We got back into town, I jumped onto the back of the guide's motorcycle, and we blasted through town to a restaurant where my choices were pig's feet, chicken's feet, and pig intestines. I opted for the surprisingly bearable intestines and vegetable stir-fry, which I asked for extra-spicy to try and compensate. At dinner, I calmed my stomach with spaghetti at a western place and chatted with the four waitresses, who were students taking a break to work for the summer. We huddled around their school textbook and I helped them with their English pronunciation, which they seemed to really appreciate. One girl's mother and grandma were at the restaurant to proudly visit her at her fancy job in a western cafe — they wanted a photo with a westerner, and I was the guy. I made sure to get one on my camera too:



This morning, the second day of my wacky adventures with Robert the tour guide, I walked downstairs and an old man was waiting outside for me with a bicycle and a wooden cart. He instructed me to get in the cart, and pedaled me across the city where I was handed off to some ladies that pushed me onto a loaded bus. The view along the way was incredible — par for the course in Yangshuo:



I arrived an hour later in a some town halfway toward Guilin and was greeted by a lady who walked with me for a bit, then handed me off again. The whole day was like a Chinese relay race, with me as the baton. This time, I was sitting in the back of a strange motorcycle cart thing along with several big bags of grain. I was able to hang on tight enough to shoot some video:



Then, they dropped me off at a restaurant where they gave me some fried rice with chicken before getting pushed into another motorcycle cart along with six other foreigners. We hung on for dear life and ended up at the riverside, where we boarded a boat to take us up and down the river. The scenery along the river was incredible, and was definitely a highlight of my trip so far. We stopped at a little island where a handful of people hawked trinkets and food. One lady wanted foreigners to take pictures with her and her two gigantic live birds (her business must be suffering because of bird flu concerns), and this guy on a water buffalo asked for one Yuan (roughly 12 cents) to take his picture:



After the boat ride, I headed back to Yangshuo using similar forms of transportation to those in which I arrived. So far, I'm really enjoying Yangshuo despite paying too much for these crazy tours. The great part about sketchy tours like this is that you never know exactly what to expect, which makes them a lot more fun. Plus, I got to ride on a motorcycle for the first time, which was a ton of fun.

Until next time,
Ryan!

Photos updated: Hong Kong, Macau, Yangshuo

Now that I'm using public computers, the ol' blog gotten a lot more difficult to update. From here on out, pictures, videos and stories may be lacking and somewhat infrequent. Thanks for understanding, and as always, thanks for reading.