Warsaw to Bangkok

The next stage required me to be up early. In this part of Laos, transport wraps up shortly after lunch. A quick noodle soup and I was on the 8:30 back to Pakse. Approaching town, the bus stopped and numerous tuk-tuk drivers boarded. They would take me to Pakse for 5000 kip they said. Yes, I replied, but the bus goes to Pakse. Oh no, they said. The other traveller on the bus bought it and left. Of course, a few minutes later we pulled into the south station. This was precisely where I wanted to be, to transfer to Champassack. You see, as a traveller, you never know anything and only the tuk-tuk drivers can save you. They are so intently focused on your well-being and care nothing for lining their own pockets.

It was tough work finding a tuk-truck to go to Champassack. These are pickup trucks with a roof and benches in back. A tout assured me that the last trip for the day to Champassack had already left. Seemed a little early for that, I thought, but I was having trouble.

It occurred to me, though, that this guy was speaking good English. That was all the reason I needed to take everything he said with a grain of salt. After all, I could take his tuk-truck to Don Det, a ferry and another tuk-truck back north from Champassack from there. It was funny – he gave the convoluted instructions as to how he was going to save me very quickly so I’d think it was easy. But he said it so fast I was confused. I decided to continue my search and finally found my ride to Champassak.

It was one of those “leaves when it fills up” deals, and this process took a couple of hours. Stultifying hours. Against a backdrop of awful music. I cannot rant enough about the music. Individually, the songs aren’t usually that bad. But they are all the same. The same instruments, played the same way. The singers have the same voices, no range, and sing every song the exact same way. The pace is the same, too. Slow, so that even at the end of a long evening, you can still warble along with the painfully sincere singer and imitate his painfully sincere facial affectations. I call it, “karaoke speed”. I fear I may never be able to erase the stain of this music from my brain. This is a legitimate concern, as I still have songs from the 12 hour, 1 tape ride from Bishkek to Osh stuck in my head. I’m just holding out hope that the total lack of melody allows me to leave this stuff behind at the Bangkok airport.

To get across the Mekong, you take a ferry. We sat on the dock and watched the ferry pull in. The dock was blocked by cars waiting to do the other way, so the ferry landed at the beach. I found that rather inefficient, because he’d have to back out and then go to the dock.

Not so, as the ferry pulled back into the river. Then the dock moved. That was our boat – the wooden dock. My confidence fell through the floor as I envisioned our tuk-truck doing the same.

At the other side, a man boarded and we drove towards town. He was all smiles as he began to pitch his guesthouse. Jeez, I thought usually they wait until your almost off the thing. But the smile was genuine so I heard him out. The price was right, so I ran with it. The guesthouse overlooked the river. The other side has three bright bands of colour – golden sand, emerald gardens and dark green forest. The river is gentle and the hammocks on the veranda ensure that life is the same.

The main reason to visit here are the ruins at Wat Phou. The oldest of these were built in the 6th century by the Chenla Kingdom. Later, the Khmer and Cham rulers added to the complex. As a result, the frescoes on the ruins show both Hindu and Buddhist art. It is thought that human sacrifice was once carried out here.

The ruins themselves are crumbling brick, starting with two large buildings at the bottom of the hill and ascending a steep stone staircase to a small prayer room at the top. The rest is nothing more than scattered stones.

The staircase is especially amazing. On the sides are spikey, bare-branched trees with gnarled trunks. The staircase seems to be slowly folding in on itself, and the tree tops are almost touching. What were at one point undoubtedly perfectly regal stairs have been twisted and torn by the forces of time. To add to the beautifully sinister effect, the sky opened up, giving me a rare taste of rain.

The rain clouds had made the afternoon cool already, and it was nice to have a day off from blistering heat.

When I got back, the driver pulled a nasty little stunt. I paid him his 14,000 kip and he said “No, it’s forty.” Now, fourteen was not a deal to me, just a fair price. Forty would get me back to Savannakhet, 300 km away. The price had been stated three times, so there was no mistake. Worse, the driver was the son of the guesthouse owner, so I had to spend the rest of the evening debating the issue. I did not waver. The quibbling was polite – it’s not China – but tiresome. I felt trapped. Normally, I’d be able to walk away from such crap. Sad, too, because for a few dollars my stay was ruined.

I made my way south to Pakse. I arrived after dark. As is usual, I was surrounded my tuk-tuk drivers. They don’t wait for you to plant your feet on solid ground, grab your bags and get your bearings. They blitz you on the steps. But this time it was especially silly. The station was right downtown. These thieves will insist they can take you to a guesthouse, settle a price equivalent to a crosstown fare, and then drop you off around the corner. I just walked. I checked into a closet. A swanky closet with private bath and satellite TV, but a closet nonetheless.

The other annoying breed of tuk-tuk driver is the one that speaks English. They always leverage this fact by appearing friendly, smiling and offering to help the hapless tourist. Until of course you point out to them that the price they’ve quoted is double the going rate. They want you to feel ridiculous for asking what is in fact the real price, basically preying on travellers who find minor language barriers to be insurmountable.

got on perhaps the most rusted-out heap of the entire trip for the short journey up to the Bolavens Plateau, an area of ancient villages and coffee fields. I got off the bus at the turnoff for Tad Lo. There was a small village at the turnoff, all thatched huts and free-range chickens. Now this is more like it, I thought. I was all set to check into one of the guesthouses, but they said they couldn’t help me with regards to visiting a coffee plantation so I walked the 2km to Tad Lo.

I am glad I made that walk. The roadside village was nice, but Tad Lo is a tiny little paradise. As yet it remains off the beaten track. A resort – that is to say not a backpackers’ guesthouse – is in most of the guidebooks but there are cheap bungalows as well. There are a handful of these and I grabbed one overlooking the river. It’s not Jurmo or Pakruojis, so I didn’t have the place to myself, but it’s still lacking in tourists, or any commercial development really.

Hello Goats, You Are Goats

A hike to the big waterfall (which was dry) is as strenuous as it gets in Tad Lo. The falls at Tad Lo were still in full force and made for great viewing, hiking and swimming. Otherwise, hammock-napping, drinking Beer Lao and wandering around the local villages constitutes entertainment. If you wish, you may engage the cows, chickens and pigs in conversation. The cows are especially talkative. If you wish to confound a goat, just say “Hello goats. You are goats.” It leaves them speechless every time. Try it if you don’t believe me.

Now, it may be that ten years and three editions of Lonely Planet later, Tad Lo is no longer a well-kept secret. The road may be lined with souvenir shops and a large Thai hotel might grace the spot where my $2.50 thatched bungalow presently sits, but for now, bathed in the golden setting sun that brings out the best in rural Laos, it is undiscovered paradise.

I’d decided to end my trip with one last big adventure. Rather than flying, I was going to make my way overland from Vientiane to Phnom Penh. I’m glad I did. It was the best part of Southeast Asia by far. The first leg of this trip took me to Savannakhet, a small riverside town across the river from Thailand. Being in a narrow part of the country, Savan is also a jumping-off point for Vietnam. Since the only bus south was the bus I came in on I had 24 hours there.

Savannakhet is a peaceful town with wonderful colonial architecture. I’m not that fluent in architectural styles, but it seems Art Deco to me, so that’s what I’ll call it. While buildings of this type are demolished or spruced up elsewhere, these have not been touched since the French left.

While it is easy to lament the retention of colonial architecture in, say, Kyrgyzstan, certainly one feels less compelled to do so here as these beautiful, faded buildings lend style to the town. I wish we had more buildings like this back home (I can’t believe they demolished the Aristocratic and put up a Chapters!)

Savan, Part 2

Combine the wonderful architecture with looming coconut palms, a lazy stretch of river, and laid-back Lao culture and you have a solid stopover point.

At my hotel, the geckos were out in full force. When the orange sun has finished painting the sky its lovely pastels and the Mekong glistens with the Thailand’s bright lights, the local geckos congregate around light sources to feast upon the copious insects in the vicinity. These harmless little guys are as much a part of Lao nightlife as Beer Lao.

Speakings of nightlife, my new cologne seems to repel females at a phenomenal rate. It’s called Ben’s 30 DEET Wilderness Formula and the lady mozzies won’t come near me. Neither will the blokes, for that matter. It’s a sexy scent you must wear in Savan and most of Laos if you’re not keen on malaria and dengue fever.

The first thing I did the next morning was grab my bag and get out of Whiteyville. It’s great to have a place to go for email and travel services, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the type of place to get a feel for local life. Up the Mekong from Whiteyville is another, more charming guesthouse district. I parked myself between to two, in a guesthouse near a locals’ market. Chickens running around in all directions, old ladies selling veggies from the garden, bomb shells used as plant pots – now that’s more like it!

I went in search of breakfast. Bacon, eggs, toast…oi. I ducked down another alley to find a noodle shop. Not only do I tolerate spicy noodle soup in the morning, I’ve come to prefer it.

A wander around town in the blazing afternoon sun yielded many wats – small temples. Some of these have recently been restored, but others are wonderful examples of faded grandeur (no sarcasm). I took refuge in a teashop called l’Etranger for a bit of Bohemian rather than tourist style Western atmosphere. I sampled Lao smoked green tea. It is not nearly as smokey as lapsang souchong, just adding a hint to complement the astringency of strong green tea. Why they can’t have places this cool in Canada I’ll never know.

I passed through a few wats and wandered along the river. Even at the critical point where the Nam Kham meets the Mekong, Laos is relaxed – just some monks doing light farming. In the middle of town is a hill. Halfway up is a Buddha’s footprint, a large indentation that resembles a footprint and at five feet long could only be attributed to a man larger than life.

I passed through a section of traditional Lao houses. A game of volleyball was being played without hands. I know this game was developed in Rio in response to a ban on soccer at the beach, but I’m unsure if the Lao got it from there or if this is some traditional game. The ball was made of wicker and there were three players aside. The rules were the same for volleyball except a player could have consecutive touches. The net was only five feet high, allowing for spectacular bicycle-kick smashes. It was very entertaining, but I was the only foreigner who stopped to watch.

I then settled in on the shores of the Mekong for a coconut shake and spicy papaya salad. The latter was shredded green papaya with hot sauce, quite similar to the shredded cabbage with hot sauce you get with pupusas at the Latin kitchens in Kensington Market. I followed this with a competition with some local kids as to who could throw a rock farther out into the river. Luang Prabang had started to grow on me.

Night Market

Perhaps the best place for dinner is the night market. The main market is on the main street and sells pretty fabrics and trinkets. I spent about three minutes there and hit the food alley. Unlike in China’s tourist towns, I actually had to share the market with other tourists, but it still had some charm to it.

I had a glob of barbequed rice on a stick ($0.10). There are no grains, just a big mush coated in chile and peanut sauce. There were $0.50 per plate vegetarian buffets, but they were all cold so I gave them a pass. Rather, I had a barbequed quarter chicken fresh from the fire ($1.00), a starfruit shake ($0.30) a savoury barbequed sausage ($0.50) and for dessert a pommelo ($0.30). I didn’t bother to bargain. When you can get all that for $2.20, what’s the point?

Pak Ou Cave Excursion

Upriver from L.P. are the Pak Ou caves. Though Laos discourages mass tourism, there are hints of it in the wooden longboats full of tourists heading up the Mekong to the caves. The tour operator boats are much cheaper than chartering your own, so I ran with it. They make a junket out of it with stops at villages en route.

The first of these is the paper-making village. Tree branches are manually smashed into pulp with a hammer and tree stump. The pulp is washed, flattened, dried and dyed. The paper is soft and coarse, and is used to make lampshades and souvenir notebooks.

The village also does fabric-making and I popped into a silkmaker. They had silkworms in varying stages of development. The larvae spin cocoons for themselves and at a certain point these are hard enough to spin into thread. There were a variety of natural dyes on display. It was amazing to see that flawless shades can come not just from seeds and flowers but various roots and tubers as well.

The next village was the whiskey-making village, a misnomer as they merely boiled up a terrible-tasting rice firewater. In addition they had “medicinal” varieties, which are bottled with various poisonous animals inside, a practice I abhor.

The Pak Ou caves consist of an upper and lower cave, located in cliffside above the river. These are filled with hundreds of Buddha statues. The comparison to the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania is obvious, and both are pilgrimmage sites. However, the Hill of Crosses is larger, more sober, and with much better examples of art. The caves weren’t bad, but paled under such a comparison.

We pulled back into Luang Prabang and I was so starving I forgot the basic rule of dining – great location = crap food. I was rewarded for my laziness with great views of the Mekong and the worst meal since the trainwreck shawarma my last night in Moscow. I mean, sauce from a can, ingredients that simply do not work with the base flavours of the dish (which was merely sweet & sour chicken) and a drinkmaker too lazy to hold the button on the blender down long enough to properly grind my coconut shake.

A side note on fruit shakes – they’re very easy. Take crushed ice, chopped fruit (I like starfruit and dragonfruit the best), coconut cream powder and cane syrup and blend until smooth. Delicious.

When I arrived in Central Asia, I arrived under cover of darkness. I awoke the next morning to a whole new world. When I left Central Asia, I was in the Chinese part, and it seemed a watered down version. Leaving China, I passed into Chinese Southeast Asia under cover of darkness and awoke to a new world. I presume it to be as watered down as Chinese Central Asia, but going in the other direction it is a delightful aperatif.

The key, as I’ve said in the past, to Chinese cities is the little differences. In Jinghong, the massive palm trees lining the streets is a good start. But the two things that distinguish Jinghong from other Chinese cities I’ve visited are the local Dai culture and the food.

Yunnan is filled with minority groups. The Dai (not to be confused with the Bai, from Dali) are the most prevelant in Xishuanbanna, the prefecture of which Jinghong is capital. I rented a bicycle and headed south to get a taste of Dai life.

In just a few minutes, I hit the edge of town and the first wave of traditional Dai houses. These are built on pillars so that the family lives above ground, while on ground level the livestock, vehicles and firewood are kept. The roofs are massive and cover the house so that it looks like one big roof on stilts. I never thought I’d find a cool suburb, but I liked the Dai one south of Jinghong. I then passed through farms growing all sorts of crops. I came upon a river and was taken across in a wooden longboat. I took the coin from under my tongue and paid the ferryman.

I cruised through more fields on the other side and popped into a Dai village. There was a golden stupa near the entrance, a reminder that the Dai are indeed Southeast Asian, not Chinese. The village roads were wide concrete sidewalks lined with palms, and every house was the same wooden square on pillars. The women wear colourful clothing and everyone seemed very relaxed about life, a refreshing change in China.

The grips on my handlebars were especially nasty and painful blisters on my left hand forced my early retreat back to Jinghong. Before I returned the bike, though, I went to the bridge over the Mekong, a river I’d come to know quite well over the next few weeks. I took the opportunity to explore the town.

Mostly, I focused my efforts on the culinary scene. Dai food is everywhere and utilizes the full range of local ingredients. A popular street snack is rice that is stuffed into a bamboo stalk and baked over hot coals. Barbeque is popular here, but like the ubiquitosu skewers of Chinese night markets, it is not a light snack they serve. Large portions of meat are grilled over charcoal fires between two sticks of bamboo that act as tongs. One of the more interesting variants consists of patties made from ground pork, shredded bamboo shoots and lots of chile.

Other Dai dishes include fish with lemongrass. This is not nearly as greasy as Chinese food, and the lemongrass is used in conjunction with garlic, green onion, ginger, cilantro and chile. Dai food emphasizes freshness and allows the ingredients to each stand out, as opposed to Chinese food where the ingredients are intended to blend together to form a unified flavour. The Dai way of thinking is more in tune with my own, so I took to their food immediately. Another specialty is fried river fern, a change from the usual spinach and bok choy I’d been eating for the past couple of months. Other Dai specialties, which sadly eluded me as Dai food was lacking from the next day’s town of Mengla (near the border), include black rice baked in a pineapple, and green papaya salad with peanuts.

The Myanmar Jade Market
I went to the Myanmar Jade Market. It is a well-kept secret, even to the Chinese, that China has precious little jade. There are jade-bearing streams in the southern Taklamakan Desert, near the market town of Hotan in remotest Xinjiang, but that’s about it. The overwhelming majority of “Chinese jade” is either a) fake or b) Burmese. The former is apparently quite prevalent in Hong Kong and in tourist towns, but the latter is what you get in Jinghong, a major jade-trading centre.

I came across a fun game in the market. It is played on a square wooden board. There are holes in each corner, as on a billiard table. There are 19 small chips and one large chip, which acts as the cue ball. Two to four people can play, and whoever puts the most chips in the holes wins the round. I really like that game, though I was taken to school by my Burmese opponents, one of whom was about three years old.

At the other end of the market was a Burmese restaurant. I poked my head in the door to see if they had any Burmese beer but they started giving me free samples of food so I stuck around even they they were beerless.

Myanmar is mainly a southeast Asian country, but its western edges are subcontinental. The patrons and proprietors of this restaurant were from the latter part of the country, near Bangladesh. This makes them Muslims, hence the no beer. They did, however, have shrimp pakoras, coconut jelly and chick pea curry. The latter has a southeast Asian twist in that lime juice is squirted on top before eating.

I thought back to my previous curry, at the Pakistani restaurant in Kashgar, and how friendly the people there were. The Burmese were just as friendly. I will definitely need to cut a wide swath across the subcontinent at some point. Heck, I’d go after Thailand if I thought I could afford it.

Laos at Last
There is a palpable sense of excitement, and a proud sense of achievement, when you arrive in a new country, especially when you arrive overland. Your senses sharpen and evaluate every aspect of your surroundings with new vigour. You take nothing for granted anymore. Even the air feels different, although in this case that was the morning fog burning off in the course of the 3km tuk-tuk ride through no-man’s land to the Lao border post. A laid back passport check, some travel tips from the guards and I was in Laos.

My first order of business was breakfast. Noodle soup, yes, but distinctly different on this side of the border. Chile paste and soy sauce share the table here with fish paste, oyster sauce, lime juice, and fresh herbs. It’s a self-customizing soup and I did it hot and sour with mint.

Then I needed to take a minibus to Muay Xai, the important transit point in northern Laos. All the seats were taken so I rode “semi-shotgun”, in the cargo space between the driver and navigator. Thought it’s a bit dangerous, it was fine, in no small part due to the lack of oncoming traffic.

The way to Luang Prabang (my ultimate destination) is around 8 hours of tropical forest, hills, and Lao villages. Lao live on raised houses. These are a fair bit smaller than the roomy Dai houses. Lao keep oxen, chickens and pigs, with only the occasional cow. Women generally wear sarongs but the men stick to worn-out shorts and t-shirts. Whereas the Dai houses were wooden, the Lao houses can also be made from belts of straw and the roofs are sometimes thatched, rather than made of wooden shingles.

The land is not farmed as extensively here as in China. Even across the border in Xishuanbanna, where mainstream China fades away into SE Asia, there is more farming. But then, Laos has a lot fewer people. Boten, at the border, is on most maps for example. But it’s a village of barely 1000 people. In Laos, that gets you on maps, kind of like how Churchill is on most maps of Canada.

Being after dark when I arrived in Luang Prabang, I didn’t quibble and ended up in the white part of town. Nothing in China, not even Yangshuo, could touch this area for whiteness. The only Laotian people are the ones serving you your dinner. I planned to find a more Laotian neighbourhood the next day in which to stay.

I did manage to eat Laotian, though. I had fried Mekong seaweed. The Dai in Jinghong apparently eat this also well, though I never saw it on any menu there. It looks like crisp nori coated with sesame seeds, chiles and garlic slices. Tastes as it looks. I also had bamboo shoots stuffed with savoury pork. The drink was of course Beer Lao. I pretty good as mainstream lager goes, so I won’t be suffering as much as I did in China.

I left Lijiang to continue my big backtrack to Kunming before heading south. I’d returned to my old guesthouse and as I left, the old grandma gave me a good luck necklace. Well, my first order of business at that point was to get lost trying to exit the old town. What I found, though, was interesting. Strolling through the souther perimeter of the old town, I came upon an entire section of newly-constructed buildings in a more Chinese, less Naxi style. These looked like some sections of the touristy part of old Lijiang. This area was not yet inhabited, but the intent is clear – surround the beautiful tradiditional Naxi old town with a Chinese tourist-trap.

I boarded a spiffy modern bus to head back to Dali. This proved less comfortable and slower that the old rattler I took on the way up. The windows wouldn’t open, so if got very stuffy. They showed a typically silly Hong Kong comedy and took two rest breaks during the “grueling” three-hour odyssey. Sadly, the comedy was subtitled in English, or I could have avoided it.

Back in Dali, I visited my old guesthose. To my utter amazement, my towel was still hanging on the clothesline, right where I’d left it the week previous.

But I was exhausted, and I headed for a hotel that had been recommended to me. I needed to splurge on a little luxury after two straight weeks in dorms. The cost was only $10 CDN. The Yunnan Hotel is a new place, still a work in progress, but I was quite happy with the “living room”. This was built on a glass floor above the hotel’s expansive fish pond, and features free Internet, big stereo and DVD. I was pretty much the only guest so it was my own personal living room.

That I was the only guest speaks to something I’ve seen in China. These tourist towns seem built for peak season, and so many of the hotels and restaurants are largely empty for most of the year. They’re mainly family-run operations, and I do kind of feel bad picking one over the others.

By the time I was leaving Dali, a sense of urgency was developing. I actually needed this, because the past couple of weeks were filled with dawdling. I spent four nights each in Dali, Lijiang and Kunming, double what I really needed to. This was especially bad because two of these towns had little to offer me and because earlier on the trip a four-night stand anywhere was rather monumentous.

Finally, though, I was on the move and loving it. Within a week, I’d be in Laos, starting the southeast Asia leg. It was going to be weird I thought. In China, you can live a pretty good lifestyle for almost no money, including dirt cheap fast Internet. I’d been quite connected for seven weeks, and was becoming only a part-time traveller, as preparations for my return have begun in earnest. I have some publishing projects in the works I am really look forward to getting home and getting started. But travelling also holds great appeal and I needed to push forward.

Will I Ever Get To Jinghong?
I was forced to spend an extra day in Kunming to attend to some errands. Getting dollars in China is difficult work, but not quite as difficult as using a bank card in Laos.

Tuesday morning arrived much earlier than I’d hoped. I trudged zombie-like to the bus station and grabbed some dumpling soup with cabbage for breakfast. I’m quite used to eating fiery soups in the morning at this point.

I got to my bus, destination Jinghong. Departure time was 8:30. At 8:20, the passenegers were looking at me and giggling. At 8:25, I thought they’d mistaken me for David Beckham or something they were staring so intently. I dug out my pen to sign a few autographs.

At 8:27 they were hustling me off the bus. They told me that particular bus was only going to Simao. The sign, of course, said Jinghong, but they didn’t know I could read it. Another bus, they said, was for Jinghong. Sure enough, a sleeper bus was pulling in.

I think, ultimately, they wanted to put me on a sleeper rather than the old, seats-only bucket I was booked for. The catch was that the sleeper wasn’t departing until 10:30, and my first bus was long gone by the time I determined this little fact. They had my backpack stowed already, so I really couldn’t go anywhere, but at least I could lie down. However, I’d be arriving in Jinghong quite late, and I really don’t like doing that.

Amazingly, they attempted to give me the worst seat on the bus, yet again! Actually, this time I think to them it was the best seat, middle row with the TV in front of my face. Being that I expected to be the only one more interested in staring out the window than staring at hyperkinetic Cantonese comedy, I insisted on the window. And so there I was, beginning the longest day left on this trip, already tired and confused.

And then upset. The bus was delayed, from 10:30 to 11:00, and then from 11:00 to 11:30. The trip is twelve hours long, and I was getting quite concerned. Pretty much everything in China starts to shut down around 11 and by midnight the streets are often deserted. I could easily be stuck without a place to stay or food to eat. Their answer to my complaining – put some music on. I complained some more, so they put on a video. Just to add to my burgeoning confidence that I’d never see Jinghong, I noticed that the driver has his own little TV.

The program began with a really good movie, actually. It was Cantonese, but rather western in style. The plot revolved around a slightly repressed office shmoe. He reminded me of Homer Simpson, but living in the Office Space world.

There were no English subtitles, so I didn’t quite get everything, but the guy had a really bad day, and needed money but couldn’t get any no matter what he tried. There were always cops around to give him a hard time to. At the end he jumps off a bridge and tries to swim across the harbour, and the next thing you know a policeman is swimming behind him. I thought the film was very funny, and I probably missed half the jokes.

This was followed by Tom & Jerry, dubbed into Mandarin. But wait, you say, there’s no dialogue in Tom & Jerry cartoons. Well, there is in China. Nobody’s lips are moving, but they’re talking nonetheless.

No, I Shall Never Get to Jinghong
Our first stop was the town of Yuxi. I was given a meal ticket for lunch. The selection at the bus depot canteen was grim – greasy things cooked beyond recognition. I made out like my hesitancy in ordering was because I was an ignorant foreigner, but really I was having trouble determing which items would be the least inedible.

At one point we crossed what was billed as the highest bridge in the world. Naturally, the only statistic provided was its length. It was high, but I swear I’ve been on higher.

At Mojiang, a town populated by the Hani minority, I crossed the Tropic of Cancer again. The cold, fog and rain of my last night in Kunming was almost nostalgic because I’d be spending the next six weeks in the tropics.

At Simao, problems took over. Our ten minute stop stretched over half an hour. Then the bad news – the bus is broken, we must go to another. Me not speaking the language, I was the last to put this together and got no choice of beds on the new bus. This bus was a tangle of metal bars inside. It was dark, cramped, and prison-like. I was filled with the noxious product of twenty chain smokers. The only spot left was in the back ghetto with the riff-raff who couldn’t afford a reserved bed.

One generous man offered up his bunk. At first I declined, but in China this is merely considered “part of the game” so he refused to get back in his bunk and I eventually hopped on board, quietly grateful. It was quite a bit smaller, though, than my previous bunk and my shoulders were too wide to properly fit in the thing. With winding roads and sharp turns aplenty, I sustained a lot of bruising on my arms from the metal bars on each side of the bunk.

Worse yet, we were late. They managed to stretch a 165km journey into four and a half hours. At the beginning of the day, ETA in Jinghong was 8:30. We pulled in at 1:30 am. My “backpacker’s choice” guesthouses were closed up for the night (welcome to China) and I was left with the one across from the bus station. This was not the cheapest in town.

At 1:30 am, who has the negotiating power? They thought they did, but I’d seen an all-night Internet cafe. That made it academic. I WORK ONLINE – I could blow off six or seven hours on Ratebeer just doing my job. So I was going to get my price at the hotel or walk. They, on the other hand, know they’re not going to see too many other visitors. They’ll just lose whatever money they might have gotten from me. So a 180RMB room became a 60RMB room and I got six hours of snoozing in.

A couple hours north of Lijiang is the Tiger Leaping Gorge. At 16km in length and 3.9km in depth, it is one of the most spectacular pieces of landscape I’ve ever seen. The river is none other than the Yangtze, in its wild, mountainous youth. Unlike those other famous Yangtze gorges I cruised through some weeks ago, Tiger Leaping Gorge is most assuredly not navigable. Four men tried to take a raft through it in 1983 and none made it out alive. Nobody’s put a boat in there since.

The gorge trek begins in the town of Qiaotou. Though two days for the trip is normal, we (three of us) decided to take our sweet time. Like a lot of folks, we arrived in Qiaotou in the afternoon and made the hard 90-minute uphill slog to the Naxi Family Guesthouse. This is not a North American-style hike, but rather a hike built right into the community, based around an ancient footpath. There is a high trail, and a road below (which used to be the low trail). More on that later.

You start in a schoolyard, walking past kids playing basketball and soccer, and even a few studying. Oh, and smack in the middle of the schoolyard is a gigantic marijuana plant. That plant would have a very short shelf-life in most schoolyards, but in this part of Yunnan it grows wild and in distinct profusion, so it failed to attract much interest.

From the school the path heads up the hill, overlooking on the right the junction of the small river that feeds Qiaotou and the Yangtze. The path turns left, revealing the towering peaks on the south side of the gorge, topped by the jagged, snow-capped Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The name indicates great reverance as jade is the most valuable stone, dragon the most majestic creature and mountains of course are the most powerful physical thing in the world.

The Naxi Family Guesthouse is set in a hillside hamlet amid fields of corn. The entire inner courtyard was covered in drying corn husks. The family are very hospitable, the prices rock bottom and the food exquisite. I was still feeling the effects of sitting behind the world’s most prolific chain smoker on the ride up and had to turn in early.

Stage Two
The next day was a lazy start spent lounging in the sun. As we were beginning to saddle up around 11, some Germans came in, full of boast about having arrived from the Halfway Guesthouse in two hours and fifty minutes. Yippedy-do. We took six hours to make the same journey. Why? Because it was beautiful! Why come to spectacular, remote corners of the world just to race through them?

Leaving the Naxi Guesthouse, you come to the infamous 28 Bends, a brutal winding path straight up the hill. The sun beat down and I wasted little time putting on my Darth Vader mask. We took around two hours just to get to the top and were completely beat. But the views were excellent, as we could finally see down the gorge a bit. The wall of rockon the south side still confronted us.

The path offered many stunning views. At one point, in cruises through an idyllic pine forest, where cracks in the treeline offered views of surging rapids far below. Across the gorge, just above the river, a parking lot was filled with tour buses. I thought North Americans were lazy until I saw Chinese tourists. Exercise is not considered a form of recreation in China. Much time has been spent of late mocking the tour groups and their colour-coded headgear. They often wear business suits on vacation, too. I suppose this is to impress but it’s hardly my idea of unwinding. Then again, going to a resort in the Caribbean and frying by the poolside is hardly my idea of unwinding either.

Stage Three
Near the end of the day’s walk, we arrived at a waterfall. We could see that as nice as it was, a postcard falls was in a grotto partially hidden by a giant rock. A goat path led down and we followed the stream to the twenty-foot waterfall. It was the archetypal “paradise” waterfall that leaves unsuspecting couples no choice but to fall madly in love as they stand under it. Just guys here, though, so we skipped that part of the program and continued to the Halfway Guesthouse.

This is known for its top-flight food and jaw-dropping views from the toilets. It delivered on both accounts, though we could have done without the snippy, cocky teenage servers and lack of anywhere free of draft to warm up.

The last day we headed out with the intent of climbing up to “The Big Waterfall” and bamboo forest before heading into Walnut Grove, the final stop. However, we found ourselves descending instead. Apparently that upper path is not marked. Through sunburnt meadows and past goatherds’ huts we walked until we met with the low (paved) road. From here we crossed a bridge 70m over a stream that had itself plunged from even greater heights shortly before. Eager to get off the dull pavement, we took the opportunity to climb down several hundred metres to the river at the “middle rapids”. This path is perilously steep and necessitates at some points the use of ladders. I hate ladders. One was 25m high, twisty, and loose at the bottom. Another required boarding while lying on my stomach, with a left-foot lead. That was not cool.

At this point, the river is a seething, frothing, rabid wolf. Enormous boulders break the river up both at and under the surface. You can climb onto these right out into the middle of the river, though I wisely stayed off the wet rocks. The water rushes through the rocks with incredible speed and power. Surges as high as twenty feet crashed over the rocks in places. I don’t think I’ve seen a body of water with so much power, not even at Peggy’s Cove.

The hike from here could either be back the way we came (straight up) or along a spectacular, treacherous alternate route that was literally carved out of the cliffside.

This route takes you up through bamboo groves to a path chisled from a sheer rock face. You literally go through the cliffside. At parts the path is little more than a foot wide, with nothing but certain death if you make a mistake. There are sections washed out by waterfalls, sections consisting of nothing but scree, and finally a cave.

Beyond the cave, bends in the cliffside offer unparalleled vistas of the entire gorge. High up above the middle rapids, an outcropping reaches out to the other side. This is Tiger Leaping Stone, from which the tiger is said to have jumped a couple hundred feet to the other side.

You then come to a hut where a goatherd lives. He has a pool, built by hand and fed with mountain water. It is shallow and must be quite warm in summer. There is a stone seat and a few fish. It has views of the entire gorge and surrounding mountains.

Beyond the pool, the path winds through meadows, then cornfields and past the largest cactus I’ve ever seen (a massive, twisted tree with delicious fruit), then by a shy pig and a baby goat before heading up to Walnut Grove.

Finale
The next morning, we took a minivan along the road to Qiaotou. A shining example of Chinese hubris, this is The Road That Should Not Be. Blasted out of the mountainside, this road features rockslides every hundred metres or so. At one point, the road was one lane wide, the other lane being at the bottom of the Yangtze after the earth collapsed underneath of it. A massive rockslide bisects the road and we disembarked to scramble over it to our onward transport. An Australian girl who’d passed through the previous day pointed out all the giant stones that were newly fallen onto the asphalt. The rock face was riddled with cracks and fissures and not one bit of it looked remotely stable. We did not linger.

We went our seperate ways and I returned to Lijiang to begin my journey southward to Laos.

Travellers I’d spoken with almost unanimously indicated that they preferred Dali to Lijiang, which is three hours north into the mountains. Lijiang is too touristy, they said. They are all on crack. There are a few key differences between Dali and Lijiang.

Frist, Dali’s old town is only vaguely interesting. The buildings are not much different than old buildings in the rest of China. There is nothing in China like Lijiang. Second, while throngs of tourists roam both places, there is nowhere interesting (in town) to escape to in Dali, whereas Lijiang’s old town is only about 1/3 touristed and the rest is devoid of tourists and tourist infrastructure. Third, the touts in Dali are quite aggressive and it’s difficult to walk down the street or enjoy an al fresco meal. In Lijiang, they are not only rare but relaxed. It’s almost like being in the West.

The old town of Lijiang is all cobblestone streets and traditional courtyard-style houses, interlaced with fast-flowing canals. The houses are wood, brick and adobe. The streets are narrow and winding. You cannot avoid getting lost, but around every corner is another picture-perfect laneway, crooked house, or local doing their washing in the canal. So getting lost is sort of the point. Stick to the tourist area, and it’s as touristy as Dali, but overall it simply isn’t even close.

The canals support a large goldfish population, some of which are quite huge. There are also quite a number of rodents, as evidenced by the ample, fat and healthy feline population.

I stayed at a small family guesthouse in the non-touristy part of town where the service was wonderful. Food in Lijiang, however, is a downside. Typical tourist fare – overpriced and not very good. All in all, Lijiang is just a nice, quiet place to relax and you don’t have to see a single tourist if you don’t want to.

From here, I headed north to hike a few days in the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Four days in Kunming is beyond plenty. I arrived Saturday morning, which was probably not the smartest thing since my main business was visa acquisition. Kunming is the most Westernized of any Chinese city I’ve been to. There are a lot of western-style cafes near the university, and a big modern shopping district. The city’s layout is good for walking, with a big park smack in the middle. A whole street of Hui food stalls was one of the cooler ethnic influences.

I ordered up express service on the Lao visa because it was cheaper and quite frankly more appealing, to leave sooner rather than later. I’ve met a lot of travellers headed up to Dali, a day or two ahead or behind me.

Some food items have become staples. Ginger tea is prime among them, as is Yunnan coffee. You guys know I’m a tea drinker and there is some excellent tea in Yunnan, but you pay through the teeth for it. So I’ve mainly switched to Yunnan coffee, which is very rich with rounded dark chocolate notes and incredible smoothness. The Hump (the flophouse hostel) makes a mean Kashmiri chai, even better than the Kashmiris down on Gerrard St East do. An expat spot called Wei’s Pizzeria has won a lot of my business for its low prices and high quality food, both Western and Chinese. I’m a big fan of their macaroni al forno, but I must admit that my quest for a decent cheesecake in Asia continues. I also greatly enjoyed their supply of Tsingtao Dark, probably the best beer in China.

To Dali
The train to Dali was the oldest I’ve been on in China. It was much more crowded than any of the others, and smelled strongly of the coal fire used to power the engine (even though I was six cars back!). At first, the conditions on board weren’t too bad. City Chinese travel about as light as Westerners. It was only when we stopped at some smaller towns along the way that things really got messy. Rural Chinese carry all kinds of ridiculous things with them, and in great quantity. I’ve seen gigantic plastic bathtubs and sheep’s carcasses. And while there was no such exotica on the train, there were piles of boxes and bags everywhere. One woman was hauling a sextuplets’ supply of diapers. Did I mention that diapers are uncommon in China? Toddlers have slits in the backs of their pants and they just squat down whenever the needs strikes – anytime, anywhere. They don’t have pooper-scooper laws in China.

The sun shone brilliantly on the Yunnan countryside. When we weren’t in a tunnel, we were treated to Bai (a local minority) houses with corncob rooftops. That is to say, they were drying the corn harvest on every available surface. The houses are two-storey compounds, not unlike what you see in rural Central Asia. High walls surround an inner courtyard with one or two fruit trees. On the sides are stables and storage areas. The back wall has the residence. More than just occasionally, the outside walls are lined with various crops, some of the illegal, smokeable variety.

The train arrives in Dali City, aka New Dali. Nobody goes there. Often though, when getting off trains, the backpackers and Chinese head in different directions. Not so here. I was amazed to see the touts outside the train station totally ignoring us laowai (foreigners) and hassled the Chinese instead. Not only is this sweet justice, but economically this makes sense. Any touristy place I’ve been, even in Yangshuo, domestic tourists have far outnumbered foreigners. This is why we get all the neat little guesthouses – they are not equipped to handle the needs of massive Chinese tour groups, who must stay in monolithic white tile hotels in drab parts of town. Further, though the touts usually home in on foreigners, it’s the Chinese who come ready to spend money. I think perhaps they bargain better, but most backpackers are pretty good at it, since we almost never need what’s being sold. Ultimately, the Chinese love to go shopping and backpackers hate to load down their packs. And we have a shoestring budget, whereas Chinese love to spend on useless crap just to show off to their friends back home. So I’ve felt the touts should actually leave us alone and focus their efforts on the people who are more likely to buy.

Dali, Home of Tough Fish
Like in Yangshuo, there are a lot of “Western” places in Dali, though I’ve found the food is not to the same standard. So after a somewhat disappointing dinner we decided that the beer would be cheaper at a Chinese hole-in-the-wall. We ended up at a place that had a tank full of fish. One of these fish kept trying to jump out. He tried everything. He climbed the wall in the corner of the tank by bouncing his body off of each side. He tried to launch himself off the backs of the other fish. It was all very entertaining. Fearing that the fish was getting not only bolder but smarter, the staff put a wooden plank over the tank. Undaunted, he kept trying, repeatedly bonking his head on the plank. Then he wedged himself in a crack between the tank and the lid, and tried to get just enough leverage that he could climb on top of the plank. He came close a couple of times, so the staff put a bucket of water on top of the plank so that he couldn’t move the plank anymore. Still, though, BONK! BONK! BONK!

By the time we left, we were four and had been invited to a barbeque at a nearby hostel. You can’t really argue with that. Watching Aussies and French debate the finer points of barbeque management can be quite entertaining. At one point, an Englishman came running out to the courtyard, in quite a state of panic. A fish he’d started to scale had come back to life! They’d bought the fish at the market that afternoon. He’d spent several hours without water in a plastic bag in the fridge – they thought he was dead when they bought him. He even spent an hour on a chair before anyone got around to the preparation work. And yet, here he was, still alive. Well, we couldn’t eat him. Rather, he was deposited into the hostel’s fish pond and christened Houdini.

Dali, Part Two
You know you’re in a backpacker spot when you’re relaxing under the sun in a beautiful garden, not far from your $2 a night bed, sipping ginger tea with Bob Marley in the background. It’s ridiculously cliche but what can you do? The garden is at my guesthouse and I’ve been totally unable to get anything done but writing and relaxing in the mornings because I simply don’t want to leave. Cheap ginger tea and good French toast don’t hurt either.

Dali, the old part, has some mildly interesting traditional buildings, but is mainly a tourist trap. Great masses of Chinese package tourists swarm the streets and go shopping. Only a handful of them ever explore the surrounding areas, which is what myself and my Aussie friend Richie did. There is a mountain range behind the city. The most accessible one, Zhonghe Shan, has a chairlift but also hiking trails. There are a few shrines along the way and a touristy temple/lookout area where the chairlift lets off. Climbing a little ways from here is a guesthouse, which is the jumping-off point for two trails. One leads to the summit (4090m) and the other back down. The trail down is great fun – very with many drops requiring much clambering and climbing. The path, we were told, leads to a road that is being built up to the top of the chairlift. We were supposed to follow the road back to town, but noticed that our trail continued on the other side.

This was steeper and even more fun than before. The scenery looked quite familiar as the climate here is temperate, so lots of pines and no bamboo, palms or rice paddies. The path petered out after thirty minutes or so and a loud river was nearby. We inched our way through the undergrowth into the gorge, and finished with a six-foot jump onto a pathway that sat along a channel of water above the river.

This path lead to a spectacular series of small waterfalls, as steep drops and huge boulders broke up the river into several rushing cascades. The water was freezing, but a little wading facilitated incredible views of inaccessbile falls upstream and through the gorge out to Dali and Erhai Lake below. All in all, it was three very fulfilling hours back to town.

Once in town, it was dinnertime. We stopped at a Chinese place and were told to sit in the front. It was starting to cool off and we were in shorts and T-shirts so we wanted to sit closer to the kitchen for warmth, but eventually we relented. Well, it seems that the restaurant was at that point officially “laowai”-approved and the once empty tables filled rapidly.

I was pretty excited to get rolling to Nanning. First, I was reinvigourated by my four days of R&R in Yangshuo. I’d biked 80km in two days so I was feeling quite fit. With a full variety of Western and local food at my disposal, I’d eaten better than at any point on the trip (albeit rather expensively). Furthermore, Nanning lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer, so it was my first official stop in the tropics. And, it is one of the few places left on my itinerary where I can truly get away from the tourist trail. China especially seems to have specific designated tourist spots and outside of those rather little to offer besides uniform industrial cities and endless small-scale farms.

I’d arranged travel through the hostel in Yangshuo. I had a train ticket for 8:26 in Guilin, at the North Train Station. There were buses leaving at 6am from Yangshuo they said. Except that when I got to the bus station at 5:30, the first bus wasn’t leaving until 7. Given that the bus drops you off at the main (ie south) train station, this was cutting it really close.

But I’ve done this before. Central Asia prepared me for this. I headed out of the bus station to find the minibus. As soon as I started getting hassled by taxi drivers, I knew I was close. Sure enough, by 6am I was on the minibus, well on my way.

I got to the south station and grabbed a taxi. Intuitively, I knew something was amiss. Why would a train going south leave from the north station? I got to the north station at 7:45 and within ten minutes boarding had commenced. A little early, n’est-ce pas? Well, at five past 8 we left the station. Ten minutes later, we arrived at the south station and a horde of people piled on. So my ticket gave the time for the south station, but listed the north. That’s the sort of thing that could have ended in disaster. Fortunately, I had enough experience to know there would be a minibus, and also to be early for everything. Still, that taxi fare from the south to the north station really didn’t need to happen.

The trip was five hours, almost exclusively through fields of sugar cane. I must single out the wagon steward for special mention for being the most patient, friendly, service-minded individual I’ve come across in China.

I grabbed a bowl of noodles – the official Chinese train food, and had breakfast. I finished off with tea and very fresh peanuts (never had them this good back home), so I was quite full when lunch arrived. Unbeknownst to me, my ticket included a meal, much like what you’d find on an airplane. Though, aside from the infamous Hindu meal debacle, I’ve never had airplane food quite this bad. There was a beef & unknown vegetable dish where the beef was mostly fat. The rice had been steamed for the past several weeks and was distinctly inedible. Some other disgusting unrecognizable vegetable was present, as were sausage candies (they have the audacity to call them sausages, despite consisting mainly of sugar and artificial flavouring). There at least was an egg, though I promptly dropped this sole piece of edible food on the floor. I’m glad I didn’t know in advance about this meal, or I might have relied on it!

Excuse Me, do You Speak Chinglish?
The butchering of the English language in speech is quite understandable. I butcher any language I attempt to speak. The Chinese have a similar background to me – growing up thousands of kilometres from the nearest other language, with no second language instruction at an early age, and having one of the world’s most widely spoken tongues as my native one. So they are very much forgiven for only speaking Mandarin. But you’d think that there would be sufficient translational skills in China to avoid some of the disastrous signage I’ve seen here. Like the condo development in Guilin called “Reviralization Garden”.

The Chinese National Railway is a huge operation, but the best their crack team could come up with is the immortal “No Occupying While Stabling”, or on one train “No Occpuying While Stabling”. This is the definitive Chinglish phrase for most travellers. We all love it and use it as the punchline in jokes. It translates, by the way, to “Do not use the restroom while the train is in the station”. Fortunately, such wonderfully baffling signs are in such proliferation that before long, any gibberish makes sense as long as there’s at least one word that belongs.
Nanning

Chinese cities are rather uniform. They’ve all sprung up so quickly in the past couple of decades that it’s a rare pleasure to encounter one with a unique look (like Chongqing). Nanning looks like any other city, however. The differences are in the details, and it takes some wandering to notice them.

In Nanning, the streets are lined with a myriad of palms. Even a Chinese industrial city feels a little more laid back when there are palm trees everywhere. The fruit vendors offer prickly jackfruits, bright dragonfruits and a multitude of things I’ve never seen before. The food streets (streets lined with small restaurants and vendors offering simple dishes in a spartan, al fresco setting) are freakier here. In the south of China, they eat anything that moves. They’ve apparently pushed the “canine cuisine district” out of the downtown area so as not to offend Westerners, but evidence of dog-dining was unavoidable. For example, I went into the Wal-Mart to try and find some new beers and they sell whole skinned dog carcasses. Like you need another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.

They don’t seem to eat cats, at least I didn’t see any evidence of it. Probably owing to their usefulness in pest control. Hopefully the rise of pet ownership here will see a reduction of eating dogs and turtles (which are popular all over and would probably be extinct if they weren’t so expensive).

Nanning isn’t that far from the Gulf of Tonkin, so seafood is in more abundance here. Not that buying oysters from unrefrigerated street stalls is such a genius plan. They barbeque oysters here, by the way. Doves are popular, as are crabs and snakes. Old standbys like chicken and duck enjoy much popularity but you see less pork than in other parts of China. To give you a hint as to the ubiquity of pork, the word for “pork” in Mandarin is the same as the word for “meat”. Lay’s offers Beijing Duck flavoured potato chips, which along with onion flavour in Europe I would like to see introduced to enliven the moribund North American potato chip scene. Beef has been slow to take off in China. Apparently the Chinese find the taste too strong, which seems strange given how much they love duck.

I failed to locate the Guangxi Provincial Museum. My orientation skills in general have been on the downslide lately. I think after some early successes in China I’ve become too cocky. Ultimately, without the museum, I was left with nothing “touristy” to do. Then again, I got along just fine in Toronto for five years without climbing the CN Tower or visiting Casa Loma. So I spent my two days in Nanning just bumming around.

It’s one of those places where you see things, think about things and learn things. Where you take the time to compare the merits of pop music around the world. Chinese is definitely better than Russian (except the Oi Oi Oi Oi song – I liked that one), but the only North American stuff they ever seem to play is extra saccharine crap from the 80’s. I’ve heard “Say You, Say Me” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You” so many times my ears bleed just at the thought of them.

Nanning doesn’t seem to get too many foreigners. I stopped at a restaurant for a beer and within minutes a large crowd had gathered to critique every last thing about me. They found the concept of drinking a beer without food to be quite ridiculous. At one point, there were ten people there just watching everything I did. Of course, I contorted my face a lot and made many silly noises. How could I not?

Cold Dead Chicken
The next day I had more food and beer fun. I went into a restaurant specifically because they had signs for a beer I’d never seen before. Sure enough, they had several beers that were new to me. Yay! I tried to order some lunch. Not so yay. My rather unexceptional Mandarin vocabulary was far beyond the 20+ staff members’ combined English vocabulary. Let the games begin. This lot was especially dense. No matter how I tried to explain what I wanted, they couldn’t figure it out. Oh man, they couldn’t sort out gongbao jiding. I mean, everybody in China knows this dish and I’ve said it so many times I pronounce it properly. So I tried to draw them a picture. “ji” “Sichuan”. So Sichuan-style chicken, you’d think. Oh boy did they not grasp this. Eventually, after I finally conveyed to them that I wanted some chicken, a cooked but cold whole chicken arrived. Well, at least it was memorable.

Chinese Money
On Chinese money, there are five languages. Mandarin is used in both traditional and pinyin (Roman script). Uygher (which is written in Arabic script) and Tibetan (coolest alphabet ever!) are two of the other ones. Another is a Roman-script language with many consonants and unusual letter combinations. This one is on street signs in Nanning. Guangxi province, of which Nanning is capital, is well over 50% minority, the largest of which are the Zhuang people. Their language is related to Thai, so I’m not sure about the Roman alphabet thing, but as they are the largest ethnic minority in China my guess is that it is their language on the money. The last language, in a very unusual script (running vertically, and very tiny) I still don’t know. My guess is Mongolian, since Chinese Mongolians wouldn’t have converted to Cyrillic the way the actual country of Mongolia did, but that’s just a guess. I’ll have to do some research on this.

Another oddity of Chinese money is the slang. Yuan is the basic unit, and this is colloquially known as “kuai”. Each yuan is made up of ten “jiao”, which are known as “mao”. I find this very odd because Mao is not on the jiao notes, but is on every yuan note. When I first arrived, I actually nicknamed the yuan notes “maos” because he’s always there staring at me. So I probably confused some folks by doing that.