Tropical Trek

We spent one day in a tropical city called Jinhong before setting off on our final trek. Jinhong is home to dozens of ethnic minorities. It felt as though we had left China. There was Dai script on street signs and storefronts, the people looked completely different, and although rice, meat and vegetables were the main staples, the flavors were refreshingly different---chicken stir fried with coconut milk or sticky rice served in a pineapple.

This is our guide, Ainipah, looking out over a village. Only 21 and he speaks the Bulan language, Mandarin and English (sort of). Ainipah left his Bulan village when he was 16 and moved to Jinhong to go to high-school.

On Day 1 the three of us hopped on a bus before sunrise and had a bumpy 3-hour journey to the starting point for our trek: a tiny town called Mengmeng (sounds like Mungmung).

In Mengmeng, we had a steaming hot bowl of noodles and then set off. For six long days, Ainipah led us through tea crops, coffee trees, banana trees and sugar cane. Some paths were so narrow and vegetated that if you followed too closely behind, you would be repeatedly whapped with leaves and smacked with branches.
Other paths led up the terraced hillsides with no escape of full sun exposure.

Every evening around 5pm, we would happen upon a village and Ainipah would go about finding a family willing to provide dinner, breakfast and a place to sleep. Most villages supported about 70 families.

Fog filled the valleys every morning.














This man was tickled when Josh offered his headlamp. I think he was glad to take the heavy metal flashlight out of his mouth. Looks like it didn't taste very good.

Each home (made of bamboo and grass) is one large room built ten feet up off of the ground. There is a fire in the center of the house that has continued burning or smoldering since the day the house was completed and the family moved in. The room fills with smoke, but you get used to it and it keeps the mosquitoes away. (We did take Mefloquine to prevent Malaria just in case. There weren’t any mosquitoes but we did have crazy and vivid drug induced dreams.)


Every night we sat down to a big meal of boney chicken (the heart and liver were proudly delivered to Josh's bowl) , a vegetable or melon soup and something or other that was pickled. Usually the men would join us a the table and encourage us to drink more of the homemade rice wine. The women never sit at the table. Ainipah says they always eatseparatelyy. They did make sure that our bowls were always full of rice and encouraged us to "eat slowly", "drink slowly", "walk slowly". I quite liked all that advice.















Josh and Ainipah after a particularly long day. This night we stayed with a family who had the newest house in the village--made of cinder block and plaster. It was our warmest and quietest night. No rats. No roosters.

These boys were excited to prepare one of their chickens for us.













Everyone lends a hand to get a house built in one or two days. We definitely slowed down progress for a few minutes.


Many of the villagers told Ainipah that we were the first foreigners they had ever seen in real life. Even though every family has a television, they sure were fascinated to see us up close and in person. Most everyone came out onto his or her bamboo porch to have a look. Young children stared at us agape, and, I thought, maybe a little frightened. According to Ainipah, they were all bewildered at why we would want to walk all day to the next village when we could take a tractor in this modern time.
Pigs, chickens and water buffalo everywhere!


Our trek nicely coincided with passing through this Bulan village when they were hosting a big party to celebrate the opening of an outdoor museum.
There was quite a crowd, including some local government officials. Four moretravelerss (two Chinese men, a German woman and an Irishman) met us there to join the trek for the last three days.


Every village that we came across had a temple for daily worship. Young boys become monks when they are 10 or 11 years old.
We had an unspoken agreement with these monks: We are tall and white, you are monks. Lets just stare for a while.

Ainipah cleaning up in a stream.














On our last night, the grandfather of this household gave each of us a massage. There was no choice in the matter. Without saying a word, he would enthusiastically point at you and motion over to a mattress on the floor. The massage was about three minutes long and the final touch was to crack your back: hands clamped behind you, he pushed out with his knees and pulled you back by your arms (see below).

That is an expression of pain and pleasure.

















Fabian (the Chinese guy in black) thought he could hide, but the grandfather found him.

Lijiang--home of the baba

I did not take this picture, but I wanted you to see what a baba looks like. If you have ever had a sopapilla, then you know what a baba tastes like and if you have ever had fry bread, than you have eaten a baba. Put honey on it, put pinto beans and green chile on it, eat it plain...you just can't go wrong.

This image, BabaCopyright 2003 by Philip, is from: http://www.globaltravelwriters.com/Galleries/Lijiang/pages/Baba.htm

We stayed in a charming area of Lijiang called 'old town'. Narrow stone alleyways lined with red lanterns, and a soothing stream that has been directed every which way through the old town. This is a very popular tourist destination with a number of little cafes and coffee shops where you can pay American prices for something western and while away the hours reading English magazines and books. (Do I sound like LP?)
The current situation in 'old town', according to LP, is that the Han Chinese (Han constitute 90% of China's population) have moved down to Lijiang taking away jobs of minority peoples and are taking over souvenir shops selling the minority goods and crafts.



Shopowners use cute dogs to lure you in.

At Lamu's Tibetan Cafe drinking milk tea.

Tiger Leaping Gorge---Hutiaoxia

In order to avoid carting an extra 50 lbs along with us, we tore out the appropriate pages of our China Lonely Planet and referred to it as the Word. It was so much a part of our trip that I felt like a third wheel. Of course we nicknamed it: “LP”. LP told us where to find buses, hostels, embassies, temples, restaurants, and trailheads. But in the case of the Tiger Leaping Gorge trailhead, LP let us down. We knew that our hostel was near the beginning of the gorge hike and as we emerged early in the morning, one of us (I won’t say who) spotted a red gate off in the distance that she (oops) thought could have been the entrance to this rather popular natural wonder. BUT LP—the authority---had us on what felt like a treasure hunt. “Cross the small schoolyard until you see a football pitch. North of the pitch, you will see a tractor road. Follow the tractor road until you find a painted yellow arrow on the lamp post.” It was fun for a few minutes, but knowing that we had eight or nine hours hiking in front of us that day, I was not impressed when the “yellow arrow” lead us up a steep path to no avail. We stopped to re-consult LP and up the path came an old woman and her granddaughter carrying heavy baskets on their backs by way of a strap that crosses the forehead forbidding any neck movement. Josh bravely asked “Hutiaoxia zai nar?” and the young girl, with her head perfectly still, looked over at us from out of the corner of her eye. She lifted her arm and pointed back down the steep path.
Back to square one. After scaling one brick wall with glass shards embedded into the top, we found a tractor road which led us to a… red gate and then we were on the trail.

It was a long day of hiking, with a certain “28 bends” up the mountainside that had me puffing. Josh marched ahead saying “C’mon. We’ll rest at the top!” How about resting at every bend, I thought. It was beautiful. We finally made it to a hostel at dusk, took off our boots and felt happily spent. We met a great group of travelers: one Ukrainian, an English guy and three Americans. They each started as solo travelers and met on a bus a couple days earlier. The seven us played cards, ate massive dinners (followed by even bigger deserts) and drank one Tibetan milk tea after another late into the night. We liked them so much that the next day, we all hiked to the bottom of the gorge together. At the bottom of the gorge, there is a narrow river with a ferry crossing and then you have one last steep hike up and that’s that.

The two men running the ferry were asking 20 Yuan per person to cross. This price was outrageous considering I could easily throw a rock to the other side of the river and there were seven of us. That would be 140 Yuan for three minutes work but that’s economics, I guess. There was no other way to cross.

Ever the bargainers we argued until we were blue in the face (well the American girl who spoke Chinese did. We stood behind her with our eyebrows furrowed and arms crossed nodding every so often). She accused them of trying to cheat us because we were foreign and told them that LP says it’s only 10Yuan to cross. They weren’t going to budge, so we started to back up and act as though we would climb back up and find some alternative. And, guess what, they called our bluff! It was so embarrassing. They turned the motor on and crossed right back to the other side. We just stood there deserted and defeated. We all agreed that we would rather swallow our pride than climb back up to the top of the wrong side, so we yelled over and motioned them to come back. We begrudgingly paid and had a very silent, disgruntled, and humbled three-minute crossing.

Yunnan Province, Wenhai Village

To make a long story short: We had a stopover in Kunming en route to the North of the Yunnan province when we were tempted by a Greek salad on the menu at a western Restuarant and despite being told over and over "Fresh vegetables bad! Lettuce bad!", we ordered it.
The next day we suffered. We woke up at 5am for an early flight feeling normal, but by the time we had made it to the airport, we were rather (the kind of 'rather' that means 'extremely')uncomfortable. At the boarding gate, we sat looking across at each other's queasy expressions and experienced the progression of symptoms in unison. I won't go into detail but I will tell you that in flight air sickness bags were involved and we spent the rest of the day in a dark, freezing (there is no heating in the south of China) hotel room cocooned in our sleeping bags.

After 20 hours of convalescence, we went back out into the light of day and had Snickers for breakfast, Snickers for lunch and oranges for dinner. We were having some trust issues with food. Can I just digress for a moment here? If you have not had a Snickers bar lately, I am strongly urging you to go out and get yourself one today. You will remember how amazingly delicious they are and wonder why you had forgotten about them all these years.

We were fully recovered just in time for our first trek to begin.


This man was our guide into the Wenhai village. Wenhai village is inhabited by an ethnic minority called the Naxi (sounds like Nah-she) people.










The 'ecolodge' courtyard at Wenhai village.














Looking down over Wenhai Village. 3,100 meters above sea level.






This moutain is called Jade Snow Dragon Mountain. Josh and I set our sites on climbing to a secondary peak to get a good look from the top.
















A view from the top. Wenhai Village is the dark patch on the near side of the lake.











The wonderful Naxi woman who cooked for us at the ecolodge. Naxi women are in charge of the household, business affiars and agriculture of the community and villages. Pretty unique.
















After a couple of days in Wenhai Village, we walked with a guide for a day to a small town called Qiaotou--the starting point for a trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Everywhere a Foriegner

Directly off the train from Jinan to Beijing, we spotted a Baskin Robbins next to a Starbucks and felt instantly giddy with the excitment of how much western food we would be feasting on over the next four days. Yes, of course, we wanted to see the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City....yaddiyaddiya.., BUT we were not ashamed to admit that locating the Papa Johns was of equal importance.
One the first day we hit TCBY, Starbucks and Subway just because they were there!

Beijing is overflowing with foriegners. I couldn't stop myself from staring.
We noticed straightaway that nobody was giving us a second glance. As we passed people on the sidewalk, I watched their faces waiting for them to register that we were white and take a longer look... but nothin!


We found a youth hostel that was warm and clean (the YHA) and got ourselves a couple beds in a room of four bunks. What I love about youth hostels---and this is true of hostels anywhere in the world, I think---is after you have stayed there for a night, you feel like you own the place. Some new travellers come into the bunks nearby and after introductions, you find yourself behaving as if you have graciously allowed them to crash at your place for a night or two, tempted to say things like "go ahead and makes yourselves comfortable...the shower down on your left has the best pressure...just let us know if you plan on coming back late tonight."




We decided that this view was nice enough that we didn't actually need to go into the Forbidden City.






Lamu Temple

















IKEA!!

We took a long bus ride out to Simitai--a section of the wall with very few visitors. After we got off the bus, I pretended that we were beginning the Amazing Race. Our competition: all the other young foriegners on the bus.

Putting the Kung POW in Kung Pao Chicken

Its the Chinese New Year and fireworks have been exploding non-stop for hours.

We arrived home to find only dehydrated mushrooms in the cupboard, so we had no choice but to venture back out into the pyrotechnic frenzy.
Driven by our hunger, we jogged through the cold toward familiar and accountable golden arches off in the distance. At 6pm, the streets were dark and barren. The sky was cracking and clapping and bursting with light. It felt like we were running for our lives through a desserted war torn city. When in reality, and favorably, we were running for hamburgers through China on the biggest holiday of the year.

Our trip was one great adventure after another, and we have hundreds of photos to show for it. Tonight I am wrangling with the computer to format, save and name the photos. I just know there has to be an easier way!

If we had a pet, it would know we are going somewhere

Tomorrow we are heading to the Olympic city of Beijing. We hope to claim a good spot to watch the marathoners come by in 2008, so we're taking the tent, sleeping bags, Whisperlite stove, and enough dehydrated mushrooms to last 946 days.

Okay, lame joke. Sorry.

We’ll only be there for a few days before we head down to the Yunnan Province with all of the above items (excl. the mushrooms which I am well and truly sick of) for some trekking.

Josh began planning the details of this trip a week after we arrived in China. To go this long without backpacking has made him a little CRAZY. This morning he was dizzy with excitement as he pulled out his gear. He slid from room to room in his socks looking for flashlights and Ziplocs, making lists, announcing that he had “just had a thought”. I could hear him laughing and talking to himself in the other room while he folded, stuffed and rolled.
He does have some really impressive gear. The compression sacks are my favorite; I have eaten burritos bigger than the current dimensions of his sleeping bag.

We will be high in the mountains thick in the jungles of S. China--a stone's throw from Vietnam and Laos--for more than 20 days.
Link to a map: http://www.warriortours.com/images/map/chinamap.gif

Until then...I bid you zai jian!

Ping-Pong Skills Unleashed

Every once in a while, Josh convinces me to play ping-pong in the gym with him. (I’d like to mention that surrounding the two ping-pong tables are several large glossy posters from the 80’s of men and women clad in bright aerobics outfits, sweat bands and heavy make-up (a little extraneous detail to set the scene)).
Josh is much better than me; I ping the ball too high enabling him to slam it back down on my side so fast I can’t even see it go by. I only hear it bounce off the table and then turn around to retrieve it. So, it’s really more a game of fetch. Sometimes I try to engage him in conversation, but his responses are pretty limited: “Uh huh”, “really?” , “mm hmmm..”.
He squats way down, bites his bottom lip and mercilessly defeats me. Really the only reason I ever have points at the end of a match is if he gets “too greedy” and tries to smack the ball so hard that it misses the table completely.

That was then.

Tonight, something deep inside me shifted. (If you have ever played ping-pong against me before, I am going to ask you to ignore that memory in order to truly picture what I am about to describe). I stepped back and bent my knees until my eyes were in line with the table. And then it began... I smashed and cracked the ball wide and low---exacting it off edges, tapping it so lightly that it barely cleared the net. Josh didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, the competition was so stiff. At one point, his whole upper body flailed onto the table for a save. We impaled ourselves on corners, cursed out loud, and slapped our paddles so hard that it stung!

First match: 21-19 to Josh

Second match: 21-18 to Betsy (marking the first time I have ever beat anyone in ping-pong, including both my grandparents)

But then, something in the air changed. Literally. I don’t know if it was the flourescent lights or some kind of mold, but I began to sneeze uncontrollably. I could barely keep my eyes open. It turned into a ping-ponger's nightmare!

Third Match 21-14 to Josh (ouch)

I convinced Josh to play one more match to prove that the first two matches were not a fluke, that it was the sneezing that got me! The sneezing by gosh!! He agreed.

Fourth match 21-11 to Josh

Being a good sportsman, I nodded and accepted that my moments of ping-pong excellence were short lived...now faded into the past like sweat bands and leg warmers.