Wanderlust

Kunming, China.

Today is our last day in China. Tomorrow at 5 pm we take a bus from Kunming over the Laotian border to Odomxai, Laos. It is also Thanksgiving Day. And I must admit that I’m feeling a little sad and homesick. I knew it would happen, but it still feels a little surprising. But we had a nice lunch of Chinese food that was probably the most American-like Chinese food we’ve had since coming to China. It was a very simple (and cheap) restaurant and our dishes tasted very fresh and weren’t over-sauced (they also didn’t contain MSG which we were overwhelmed with while eating at the cafeteria in Yangshuo). We had a plate of sauteed spinach with garlic and a plate of chicken with vegetables and peanuts. Again, for the first time in China, the pieces of chicken were actually like hunks of chicken breast. We learned in Yangshuo from some of the students that Chinese people prefer meat on the bone. I honestly don’t even know what they do with the chicken breasts or if they even let the chickens get big enough to have real breasts (the chickens at the market in Yangshuo were really scrawny). But the meat on bone thing was something we definitely noticed while in China, especially in Yangshuo. It wasn’t really meat on bone as it was just bone. I just didn’t even bother trying to eat it (especially since you had to eat it with chopsticks!). So our lunch was a nice little surprise. We also got some yummy yogurt smoothies afterwards even though it’s pretty chilly here right now.

Our train ride from Guilin to Kunming went really well. We got hard sleepers, so I finally lived up to my vow not to get overnight seats again on trains in China! The hard sleepers are still pretty soft and comfortable. There are six beds to a room (3-up) and we took the two top bunks. It was a bit of a climb getting up there, but we felt more comfortable being close to our bags (you store them at the top of the room by the top bunks’ feet). The lady who sold us the tickets suggested we take one top and one bottom, but she didn’t explain why. We realized the wisdom of this almost right away as you can’t sit up on the top bunk and the two people on the bottom bunks of our room were lying down. But there are little tables and little pull down benches in the hallway outside the rooms where you can sit and watch the world go by. It was a 19-hour train ride but we slept most of the time since it was overnight. Other than the fact that the overhead lights were controlled by the train operators (we had a manditory lights-out at around 10 and lights on at around 6) it was a pretty pleasant trip. Probably our most pleasant travel experience in China.

Looking back on our time in China, I think we both really enjoyed it. It was completely different than what either of us expected which is sad and nice at the same time. I think I pictured the country as a few giant cities but the rest just small towns and countryside with water buffalos and rice fields. Steve pictured all of the ancient buildings and architecture and beautiful cities both big and small. We were both completely surprised by the reality of China. A lot of what we now know about China’s history we learned from the book “Wild Swans” that we read while traveling here. It told about how during the Cultural Revolution the young people in China were encouraged to join a Communist group called the Red Guards and they were encouraged by Mao to destroy everything anything ancient. So a huge amount of the ancient monuments and buildings were destroyed then (notably the Forbidden City was saved). And we learned from the book “Oracle Bones” about the contemporary destruction of traditional homes and buildings in Beijing and elsewhere in order to make room for new, modern buildings–i.e. shopping centers and block apartment buildings. Stephen really found Chinese cities to be hideous. And in a lot of ways I’d have to agree. They’re obviously hastily built with either no consideration for aesthetics or a (to us) strange and futuristic type of architecture (a lot of the buildings that you can tell were built to impress look like they’re about to lift off at any moment). The back alleys in China have universally been the most pleasant places to walk. Main roads are swarming with people and lined with shops where blaring music comes out of cell phone stores (we’ve had to plug our ears), people are chanting or clapping to try to get you to come inside and shop, and you have to constantly be on your guard for cars, bikes, and mopeds which often even come onto the sidewalk, so you’re never safe (yesterday in Kunming I almost got run over by a car because I didn’t realize, foolishly, that the sidewalk I was walking on doubled as a parking lot! Silly me!). Back alleys are generally quieter and safer, which is a complete reversal for me (all of China has been safe in regards to violent crime. It’s the vehicles that will kill ya).

The countryside around Yangshuo was the only time I felt like I was in the real China. But, the truth is that what I think of as the “real” China isn’t anymore. The real China is ugly skyscrapers, intersections that are so crazy that there’s either a walkway built over them or tunnels under them for pedestrians, where everywhere you turn there’s stuff to buy–stuff! stuff! stuff! And really crappy, junky stuff most of the time that’s horribly overpriced (especially if you’re a foreigner). But the food is still amazing no matter where you go. And I would like to come back one day. Maybe in ten years after China has a chance to figure a few things out. And if I come back, I’ll definitely budget more money for travel. As far as food and lodging and everyday things, $32/day for two people is more than enough. But $500 for trains and buses around this giant country for 3 months just wasn’t enough to travel in comfort. This trip has taught me that sleep and food are very important to me. I can’t do overnight trains in China on a seat. Especially when the soft seat is on a lower class train, so is the equivalent of a hard seat on another train. And especially when I have no way of knowing this because I don’t speak Chinese and the ticket lady at the train station didn’t speak English.

I’m looking forward to going to Laos. I know almost nothing about the place. My knowledge includes that it was once controlled by France, so you can get a decent baguette there at Laotian, not French, prices. I know that only something like 20% of all the roads in Laos are paved, so there are some bumpy bus rides in my future. We found an awesome website called Travelfish.org that is completely centered around independent, budget travelers going to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand! It’s amazing. We’re going to Laos without a guidebook, but armed with free information printouts from the website that are basically free guidebooks for the different provinces. We’ve even planned our S.E. Asia itinerary around the site’s sample itineraries. We’re going to tweak them a bit here and there, but in the end since we don’t have a guidebook for any of the four countries and we don’t have the time or inclination to sit at a computer and drive ourselves nuts reading about every city and every thing to do and deciding not only what to do but how to get from point A to point B we’re just going to take some advice from the experts and use the routes they outline. We got our Laos visa yesterday at the Laos consulate in China. It was far and away the most organized, pleasant experience we’ve had in China. They spoke English, there was no pushing or budging in line, and everything was really as simple as filling out a piece fo paper, glueing on a photo, handing them our passport and paying them money. We came back the next day and had new, shiny pink Laos visas glued in our passports that were surprisingly (and thankfully) for two months instead of the 30 days that we heard you’d get. This is great since the visa starts the day you apply for it, not the day you enter Laos, and we were worried that we wouldn’t have enough time to do everything we want while we’re there and apply for a Vietnamese visa and get out of the country before our 30 days were up. But now we don’t even have to think about it! So, our plan for Laos goes something like this:

Arrive in Odomxai on Saturday around 1 pm (it’s supposed to be a 20 hour trip from Kunming to Odomxai). Find a hostel and spend the night in order to recover from the giant bus trip and figure out how to move on to Muang Ngoi.

Sunday, go to Muang Ngoi. It’s a small river village that I think you can only get to by boat. It only has electricity (supplied by generators) for 10 hours a day and I think only cold showers. (Sounds nice, huh?) It sounds absolutely beautiful and there are a lot of trekking and exploring to do around there. We’ll probably stay for 3 or 4 days, and we won’t have internet the whole time. So, no blog posts for a week or so until we go to Luang Prabang.

We plan on staying in Luang Prabang for a few days. It sounds like a beautiful city where there’s lots of restaurants, temples, and things to do and see around. This will be my first internet access in Laos, so don’t worry family, I’m having fun and I’ll write to you soon.

Phonsavan for a few days. This is near a site called the Plain of Jars where there are hundreds of giant jars that people speculate were used for ancient burials, but of course no one knows. The area sounds neat and it’s one of the only places in Laos where the scenery is more plains than mountains (or so I think).

Then we’re off to Vientienne, the capital of Laos. We probably won’t stay long. It’s more of the logical place to go to change buses to go to Tha Kaek where we plan on doing a 5-ish day motorbike excursion around the countryside (that is if I get brave enough to get on a motorbike…we’ll see).

Then to Savannakhet where we’ll get our Vietnamese visa and then go to Southern Vietnam starting at Hue sometime around Christmas. We’re not sure if we’ll spend Christmas in Laos or Vietnam, but we’ll know sooner or later. If we can make it to Vietnam, we might meet up with Linda and Jonas, the two Swedish volunteers who we got to know our last two weeks with VET.

So that’s the plan. It might change drastically or not at all. But I just wanted to give a heads up that we’re not going to have internet for at least a week, if not longer, so our families and friends won’t worry about us (too much).

I’ll try to journal on paper while we’re without internet so I’ll have lots of blogs to write when we get to Luang Prabang. And I’ll figure out our final China expenses for anyone who is trying to plan their own China trip to see how much we spent and on what. It looks like we’ll pretty much break even with our budget, even after going $700+ over from our detour to Mongolia (which was well worth it). Next Tuesday (which is also the Laos National Day) is the six month mark since we started on this trip. I’m shocked and amazed that it’s almost halfway over. It both feels like not long enough and too long, which is a strange sensation.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my family and friends! Today I am most thankful for all of you, which is amplified from being so very far away (I’m usually far away, and am surprised how much I feel the “very”). Eat lots of yummy food for me!

Tags: China, Kunming, Laos, Odomxai

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 12:35 am and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.