Goodby Vientiane

VIENTIANE: So I guess that's more or less a full recount of my upriver adventures. I think I still have one day in Luang Prabang to recount where we had a particularly interesting discussion with a monk outside a wat but all in all I'm satisfied to say I'm just about up to date. Tonight I leave on a sleeper bus for Pakse in southern Laos. Visit a Khmer-era temple in a day or two and then on to Si Phan Don for some relaxing.

Vientiane has been good. Had a few fruit shakes by the Mekong at sunset. (Off the beer until I get well). It has shady streets, a nice mix of Asian shambles, shady trees, concrete buildings and Communist concrete. It gets hot but then catches some of the most delightful breezes. And it's oddly multicultural with a huge population of expats (mostly NGO's and dipolamatic staff I guess), random Africans and Chinese businessmen. Wont be sad to leave - kind of down the town to death - but it was a nice place to linger.

Four Children on a Kayak

VIENTIANE: Much of the rest of my time upriver was spent swimming, watching the sun skulk behind the mountains and generally just lounging about. However on my final day I did get a little active and rent a double kayak to take upriver with another of my many new friends, Paula. Obviously paddling a heavy plastic double kayak upriver isn't exactly the easiest thing but we did eventually make some headway when our progress was confronted by a difficult but not, at least we thought, insurmountable grade one rapid.

But lacking the expertise and the skill to get her upriver we were forced to beach her, before carrying her into the beyond. With the kayak beached and our arms aching, I started to weigh up the possibilities of bodysurfing on the surging water. It is indeed possible. While I was mucking around in the water another boat appeared, piloted by four village tykes who managed to navigate it upstream without difficulty. I helped them get their boat onto the bank and then they promptly produced a small tyre tube. Running upstream they took turns throwing themselves onto the mercy of the water while we watched on. After a while they tyred enough to take out a pair of machetes and start hacking away at oranges which they kindly shared for us.

Then it was our turn: "Falang, falang, you go." The eldest handed me the tube pointing up river. It looked like fun until I was ankle deep in the shallow water. I lay down on the tube and then suddenly all four children piled on top of me. On a tiny tube, in shallow water, it was gathunk gathunk gathunk on the rocks for my ankles and knees all the way to the rapids. Their fun wasn't over though. After convincing us to carry our kayak up past the rapid all four of them jumped on, two of them still standing up. Like true river rats they made it down successfully though we did get a little scared when they started to drift almost out of sight but they managed to, almost effortlessly, return our kayak to us and after a while we were able to continue our own, very relaxing way upstream.

Staying with Gil

VIENTIANE: So after meeting Gil on the first day we decided to hike out to his guest house to see what joys a village stay presented. I kept my room in town and let Nadine stash her gear so all we had to take was too light tracks. It's not the nicest walk to Huay Bo - the slash and burn to make way for a soon-to-be-built road takes the beauty out of it - but after an hour or so we reached the conflicting signs that mark the way to the village and its competing guesthouses.

When we located Gil he was only too happy to have us and we dumped our stuff in the last two rooms (he only has three) then tried to follow his directions off through the jungle - on well trodden paths of course - to find a fabled waterfall. It was not to be, though our efforts were rewarded with a scenic climb through some hilly farmland before we decided to turn back two hours later. Apparently we didn't miss much. Marketing has caught on in a big way. The Laos have decided, quite rightly it seems, that falang love waterfalls, so in the best snakeoil traditions, they'll sell anything as a waterfall. Apparently this one was a little trickle down about four metres.

Back in the village we met John, a Welsh guy who'd been staying with Gil for a couple of days. We chatted for a while until our host presented the dinner options: chicken or duck. He was only going to kill one. We settled on duck and I went off to join some of the village kids for one of the most surreal games of football I've ever partaken in. Played on a pitch formed by the dykes of a dried rice paddy, with a couple of bamboo sticks as posts, the field of play actually curved like an elongated kidney bean. Rather than employ an kind of tactical sophistication, the kids belie their interest in takraw with a neverending series of unsuccessful kung fu style attacks at the ball that would leave Jet Li shaking his head. It soon became evident that playing with a cigarette and beer probably wasn't the best tactic so I retreated into goals where I put in a performance worthy of Buffon with only waterbuffalo, infants and limestone mountains to watch me. Seriously, my keeping kept my side in the game, that's how bad the kids were.

After dinner I sat round various village campfires, listening to the sounds of the animals, trading shots of lao lao and smiling at the locals. The next morning I was awakened before dawn, as I was every morning up river, by the chickens, dogs, roosters and pigs who sounded like roosters. We spent the rest of the morning wandering around the village playing with kids, watching mats being woven, knives being forged and animals being farmed before we bid Gil good well and walked back to town; a long river swim being my reward for a hard day's work.

Meeting Gil

VIENTIANE: My second day in upriver I walked out into the rice paddies to visit a couple of smaller villages. Crossing a few streams we emerged into a vista of dried rice paddies, broken up only by looming limestone mountains, as far as the eye could see. Watched by water buffalo absentmindedly chewing cud we tramped across the top of the dried dykes of rice paddies towards the first village, Ba Na. Occasionally when we thought we were getting lost we stopped to ask village kids returning from school or lone hunters and eventually we found our way to the tiny little village. There we watched the villages go about their daily lives, including a couple of guys building a bamboo enclosure for some pigs, played some games with the local kids and sipped a Coke at the restaurant attached to the tiny guesthouse in the town.

Then we tramped on to Huay Sen. This trip was much more difficult though luckily we befriended some local kids who took us all the way to the village. It probably helped that Nadine engaged one of the guys in a whistling/yodeling/blowing through grass contest. I just bought them off with cigarettes. Hey they were 17!

On the way I had one of my best experiences in Laos. We stopped to chat with some local boys who were frying their freshly caught fish on a barbecue. After some conversation and a shared packed of peanuts, which were spilt all over the riverbank, I worked my way over towards the spear and the mask they used for fishing. They were only too eager to let me dig deep into the upturned tree in the river in search of the fish. But these kids were experienced and could contort themselves into all sorts of positions, digging ever deeper underwater into the tree roots. It wasn't something I was so keen on, so despite my best, and repeated, efforts, I was unable to spear a fish. An older guy showed up later though and gave us an impromptu lesson in net fishing and later in the day we also got a chance to watch fishing with bamboo traps.

Anyhow after the fishing our guides eventually delivered us to Huay Sen where we had the chance to watch some more traditional village life, eat some food and, most importantly, meet Gil. Gil is a guesthouse owner in the third of the troika of villages fringing Muang Noi, Huay Bo. He was reclining in a hammock at the little restaurant attached to the village's guesthouse. He introduced himself then told us: "Eight o'clock, go to Muang Noi, my friend say drink lao lao. Four people, three bottle of lao lao, two beer, not good. Four people, three lao lao, maybe okay. I tell my wife, ten o'clock be home." It was now after four and we were at least two hours walk from his village.

Soon afterwards I realised I had a leach on my foot which he helped me pull off. Then he told us about the guest house he had in Huay Bo. Best guesthouse in the country, nay the world, if he was to be believed. Then he stopped talking, went to the edge of the village, threw up, came back and repeated his spiel about too much lao lao. Nevertheless Nadine and I were both intrigued and vowed to head back for a visit the following day.

We eventually made it back to Muang Noi near dark. I had enough time for a quick bathe in the river before a night of drunken revelry with a variety of new found friends.

PS: Lao lao is Laos rice wine. They call it whisky. It's not bad. But it is lethal gutrot.

Arriving at Muang Neu Noi

VIENTIANE: So while I've got some time and a reasonably cheap internet connection I should probably try and recount some of my experiences upriver in Muang Neua Noi. The town, a former fishing village, was hurt badly when many of the villagers moved downstream upon completion of a new bridge. They figured that the increased trade would boost their bank balances. What they didn't figure on was the huge boost that tourism would eventually deliver. Now the town, still a one street job, is wall-to-wall with guesthouses, ad hoc tour guides and restaurants. However tourism is still largely in its infancy and the town maintains what must have always been its charm.

Set on a riverbank it takes a four hour sangtaew ride from Luang Prabang to Nong Khiaw, where you change to a long boat for an hour long journey up the river. Perhaps my journey was somewhat fated as I ran into Lauren, one of the Australian girls I had last seen at the Kunming train station, by the boat ramp. The cruise up river was interrupted somewhat when we all had to get out and tramp through the jungle for about fifteen minutes. The dry season meant the river banks were particularly low.

Arriving at the town I managed to fluke one of the three cheapest rooms in town, a bamboo bungalow with a hammock and a balcony overlooking the river. Outdoor cold water showers, squat toilet, two faulty lights and four hours of electricity a day. But then the Hilton never knew such views... The first afternoon I meandered down to the river for my first river swim since I left Australian and ran into Nadine, a Swiss veteran of the Laos disco/houseparty night in Luang Prabang. Whoever knew that making friends would be so easy? And that was more or less the scene for the entire week, a small group of like minded tourists in a very small place made it an incredible place to meet people and make friends.

Vang Vieng: Koh Phan Ngam in the Countryside

VIENTIANE: Vang Vieng, by all accounts, was a sleepy little Laos village that, with the advent of tourism in 1999, was blessed by its location close to the Nam Song river and the dramatic limestone mountains that dominate it's horizons. Now it's "Spring Break: Laos Style". With a main street featuring almost wall-to-wall restaurants serving up identical Western food to the soundtrack of televisions blaring out endless reruns of "Friends". Sounds just like a fabled Shangri-La doesn't it?

Actually the place wasn't so bad but it's not exactly my scene. More for the 19-year-olds on a beach holiday excursion crowd. At times it literally felt like schoolies. Still it wasn't all just about the main street and on my first day I hired a bike with John, a Welsh guy I met in Huay Bo, and we biked out to visit a number of caves and beautiful turquoise lagoon teeming with fish.

The second day I turned my hand to Vang Vieng's signature attraction: tubing. Floating down a river with your arse in an inflated tyre. Not so exotic for any Australian who likes going camping. Still it's the thing to do in these parts so I parted with my kip and headed off river in a tuk tuk. While tubing may once have been as simple as plonking into the tire and floating down the river, it's now a thriving business built around a network of bamboo bars. One of these, a multi-story behemoth, was packed to the rafters with drunk teens and even included a volleyball court and a table tennis court. All the big ones feature massive rope swings or flying foxes, so that was a positive. And they all pump out Bob Marley or crappy house on these enormous sound systems. It's somewhat surreal to float around the bend of a sedate river to be accosted by 200 drunken revelers chanting along to Underworld's "Born Slippy" while somebody flies through the air on a trapeze.

I don't want to sound too condescending. I had fun and I was going to go again today but when I woke up I wasn't feeling the best so I just hopped town instead.

Where Have You Been Today?

VIENTIANE: Kind of got a bit of a traveller's bug (I'll spare you the details) but I woke up this morning and decided a change of scenery might do me good so instead of occupying a hammock down by the river for a day or going tubing again I booked myself on a public bus en route to the capital. Seems like a good idea. Don't know how much there is to see here but I ate dinner by the Mekong, watched the sunset, saw a couple of wats and have studiously avoided Beer Lao. Tomorrow I'm off to try and blend sightseeing with all the necessary housekeeping (bus ticket, US dollars etc.) to see me through Southern Laos and into Cambodia. Seems I want another mission for my sins.

Muanged Out

VANG VIENG: So much updating but these computers cost precious kip and my brain is still a little broken from the week spent up the river in Muang Neu. I'm in Vang Vieng at the moment which, so far, leaves a little to be desired. But then coming for a week in a bungalow by the river, swimming every day, meeting loads of nice people, no electricity, etc. then wall-to-wall backpackers is a little hard to stomach.

I will update more properly soon but suffice to say my adventures included spear fishing with local kids, net fishing, kayaking, white water tubing with some local kids, too much drinking, a lot of swimming, meeting loads of great people and walking through the jungle spending the night in a village where we had our food freshly slaughtered for us.

Oh and I played in goals in a village football match on a curved rice paddy with a crowd of buffalos watching. But as I said when I get some more rest (I was woken by roosters before six every morning) I'll up date some more.

My Adventures in Little Tokyo

LUANG PRABANG: Has to be the best city, or perhaps it should be a town, I've visited in South East Asia. Came down on a 30 hour bus ride from Kunming on Monday afternoon. The bus was a sleeper bus which basically means two rows of, very thin, bunks. On one side there are single bunks and on the other side doubles. This meant I spent most of the night curled up with a Chinese guy but during the day he sat downstairs watching the longest movie I've ever seen so I had room to spread out.

I also befriended a Japanese guy named Shin who has becoming something of a traveling companion. At least in Luang Prabang. We were the only non-Chinese on the bus so it made it somewhat easier to have somebody else with me while we tried to fumble through the border and the bus's sometimes strange etiquette. The trip also provided ample opportunities to see Chinese men shitting on squat toilets, door wide open, smoking on a cigarette. Not exactly something I ever want to see again.

But we arrived safe and washed up on a hostel that turns out to be something of a Little Tokyo. Japanese travelers have a unique system of swapping information in note books which means they often end up at the same hostels. Much the same way LP or Rough Guide travelers probably do. Anyhow I quickly befriended some Japanese guys and spent most of my first day walking around or playing tak raw (Thai hacky sack style game with a larger bamboo ball) in the shadow of a stupa at the local wat. A bunch of tourists took photos, I'm sure because they thought the blokes were Lao.

The following day we took a bus out to the local waterfall which came complete with a rope swing and turquoise water. It was nice to have a spinal injury again. Probably the first since the end of summer in Oz in 2005. Then we hiked up to the top of the waterfall and took about a thousand photos. The complex also included a bear rescue centre so we stood around and watched these very cute bears playing for a while.

The night time turned out to be an even bigger adventure when we met a couple of Laos guys who worked as English teachers at a school opposite our guest house. We were having a couple of beers watching them play bocce before this morphed into an impromptu singalong. Sometime later they decided we should go to a Laos nightclub so we all jumped on the back of motorbikes and spread across town for an evening of Laos dancing - something like line dancing. With the nightclub about to close we jumped back on the motorbikes and headed to a local house party where Shin and I were obliged to sing Thai karaoke. I think it goes without saying that neither of us speak Thai. Eventually we made it back to the guesthouse well after curfew.

The following day we wanted to go to the Pak Ou caves with a Malaysian girl we'd met the day before and another Tokyo-ite from the hostel. But to make it cheaper we needed more people so, as the only native English speaker in the group, I stood around in the dust by the Mekong playing tak raw and touting for business with the Laos riverboat drivers. Eventually we convinced an older English company to join us and we got our price.

The journey up to the caves - a local Buddhist temple filled with about one thousand Buddhas - took about an hour but it was a beautiful trip. On the way we stopped off at the popular whisky village, renowned for making lao lao, a local spirit. Some friendly guy explained the distilling process so we stocked up on a little. Then it was down to Pak Ou caves before heading home via another village where they make paper.

All that was left was a meal and a Beer Laos overlooking the Mekong and another trawl through the markets. I've really been taken with the doona covers but there hard to carry. I might pick one up and post home from Chiang Mai.

Sorry if this all sounds a little rusty. My prose certainly isn't up with the Conrad novel I'm reading but I'm off to explore Luang Prabang withmy friends. Tomorrow I head up to Nong Khiew and then on to another village I can't pronounce. Apparently they don't have much power so I'll be out of range for a couple of days.

Irkutsk - Beijing

KUNMING: Getting back from Listvinyanka to Irkutsk was where it all went pear. Basically the courier service didn't deliver our tickets so we were standing around at the train station watching our train chug off on its scenic route around the lake. What made it worse was that we were almost able to purchase replacement tickets but dodgy beauracracy and ATMs conspired to thwart our efforts.

So we caught a tramway back to the hostel - with the hostel owner who was trying to help us - and promptly lost our shit. Luckily the hostel owner whipped us into shape, took us back out to the train station and got us on a train to the Chinese border. At this stage all the stress was starting to tell on all of us and we all started to get sick.

From the Chinese border we had to catch a bus to Russia which basically involved sitting around in a minibus for about eight hours. Then we held up the entire bus group while the Russian border officials searched for an English speaker. The bus driver abandoned us to a cab that took us to the train station where we were able to negotiate, with great difficulty, a train ticket to Beijing. Unfortunately we had to brave the -30 temperatures to search the surrounding streets for an ATM.

Luckily we found one, purchased tickets and, in our one stroke of good fortune, there were some extremely crumby but cheap and convenient rooms available to rent across the road from the train station. We bought dinner at a restaurant by pointing at the dishes of fellow diners before retiring to our shitty room and our colds.

The train journey to Beijing was bearable for me and Kate though Jaq could only get a ticket in hard seating and she had to spend the night in an overcrowded train carriage that resembled a scene from the Long March. To even get back and see her we had to fight our way through three carriages jammed to the rafters with spitting, noodle swilling passengers and an entire market full of luggage. I swapped with Jaq for a couple of hours so she could sleep and I have to say those few hours were some of the longest of my life.

Then to add insult to injury when we finally arrived in Beijing we had to search for hours to our hostel, couldn't find it, and ended up checking into a cheap hotel.

Not exactly what we signed up for.

A Couple of Days in Siberia

KUNMING: Blogger is being spectacularly recalcitrant in China at the moment and I had a long detailed post on our adventures at a Siberian birthday party but that seems to have been lost to the winds of time. What else did we do in Siberia? In Irkutsk we visited one of the Decembrist Houses. The Decemberists were revolutionaries exiled in the 1820's. Many of their wives went East to join them and they ended up recreating the culture and society of European Russia in the boonies of Siberia. The houses give a wonderful idea of what life would have been like in an upper class Russian house last century.

Afterwards we visited a bustling market and bought some fresh honey still in the honeycomb. Note to self: the honeycomb doesn't taste particularly good and has the consistency of old chewing gum.

The following day we got up early to catch a martrushka down to Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake. (If it's not the largest it's certainly the deepest!) We were going to go either ice fishing or dog sledding but dog sledding seemed a little expensive and the lake had frozen so instead we were able to charter a boat for an hour to takes on a scenic, but freezing, cruise across to Port Baikal. We spent the rest of the time eating the smoked local fish and visiting a Russian birthday party, but more on that when I find my missing opus.

The Good Train

KUNMING: After two trips between the hostel and the train station, much frustration and some Kafka-esque confusion I finally have a bus ticket for Laos. I leave for Luang Prabang on Monday evening.

But as I endeavour to whip this blog into shape I thought I might add a couple of words on the first train trip which will bring us up until the 21st of December. The first trip was fine despite a rather stressful wait for the tickets we got underway. Met a Finish bloke on the platform and then went to bed quite early. We had a guest in our car for about the first fourteen hours and got to see all his holiday snaps. Truth be told it was as boring as batshit and I just wanted to read my book but he was friendly enough.

The following day we settled into our routine of lying around, reading, a little cards when Kate was in the mood, and basically watching the taiga roll past out the window. At one point I saw some guy on a dog sled in the distance. At around three o'clock we'd go down to the restaurant car to get a bottle of Massandra wine opened - we must have tried eight different varieties - and settle in for cocktail hour. A couple of nights were spent drinking in the restaurant car with an assortment of Scandanavians and French. I think, at least that's what they told me, I insulted or offended just about everybody on the first night but I managed to recover some of my dignity later in the trip.

And so that pretty much took us up to Irkutsk where it was freezing, dark but lots of fun.

Suzdal

KUNMING: So visiting Moscow this time I finally got to do the one thing I really missed out on last time - visit a golden ring town. With a little bit of time on my hand I was able to hit up Suzdal, often regarded as the prettiest. I started early and in typical Russian style they refused to sell me a ticket for Vladimir on the train. Luckily there was a bus leaving from upstairs. After a little bit of uncertainty - I was far from convinced I was on the right bus - it finally departed and three hours later I was in Vladimir. Another hour later and I was trekking through the snow towards Suzdal.

Unfortunately I got a little lost and for the better part of an hour I was wandering around taking photos of traditional Russian houses and their wooden adornements, wondering is this all there is? But I followed my instincts in the direction of some onion domes and emerged on a street full of horse drawn sleighs. Evidently I found high street Suzdal. So I wandered down to the Kremlin, dined on some sort of sizzling chicken in a hot clay dish, watched the end of a local ice hockey game and then found some accomodation. It was getting late. It was snowing outside so finding a bed was something of a priority. Unfortunately I'd left my passport back in Moscow and they refused to give me a bed. Knowing Russia, and the fact that no only sometimes means no. After much tutting, some toing and froing the manager, it turns out, had called his friend.

This kindly gentleman and his wife collected me and took me on a merry tour. At this stage I was a little worried. I had a bottle of vodka in my bag, but was rather keen on some dinner. Eventually we reached their house where they parked me in their living room, intimating through a brief game of charades that this was where I would be sleeping. So there I was, sitting in a rural Russian living room, staring wistfully at a bottle of cheap vodka wondering what I was doing for dinner. Then the kindly mother came in and gave me some tourist guides and maps. But still no dinner. Then after sitting around for about fifteen minutes Dad comes in and invites me into the kitchen. Turns out they've got a three course spread that includes sausages, home grown potatoes, bread, Russian salad and desert laid out for me. Then the next morning I was greeted with a feast of fried eggs and home made jam.

Then armed with the tourist information from the previous evening I was able to locate some of the more beautiful monasteries in town before heading over to the sublime museum of wooden architecture which I had only glimpsed in the distance the day before. Unfortunately this was the day my camera developed the spot that is now plaguing about half my pictures. I made it back to Moscow late and exhausted.

Crazy in Kunming (Not really but it's alliterative)

KUNMING: Made it down from Beijing - two nights on a top bunk sleeper with about two foot of breathing space. Not the best but I had plenty two read and two Aussie girls got on sometime yesterday afternoon so I passed the night playing Rummy and chatting to them. Had a hard time finding the hostel this morning but that seems to be par for the course for Beijing. Heading out to get passport photos done this afternoon and then maybe visiting a lake tomorrow and then it's onward soldier to Laos.

Long Live the Soviet State!

BEIJING: Our first day back in Moscow and I headed out to VDNKH to check out the one thing I missed out on last time. The place is an enormous series of exhibition halls built around a massive central boulevarde. Designed to celebrate the achievements of the Soviet state it now holds a series of rather depressing shops and markets. The one cool thing is a huge replica of a space shuttle right at the back, and an Aeroflot plane that, for about 100 roubles, you can go and sit in. I didn't. I've actually sat in real planes.

After VDNKH I walked around for a while hoping to find a cinema but failing I headed over to the Pushkin which was okay but disappointingly they've split the two collections so now it's only about half as good. Then I checked out the church across the road but I'm too hungry and tired at the moment to remember what it was called.

St. Sophia's in about three words

BEIJING: Our last day in Kiev we visited St. Sophia's which really rivals the Church of the Spilt Blood in St. Petersburg as my favourite Orthodox Cathedral. It has ancient frescos and some incredible murals including one that has barely degraded leading it to be widely considered a miracle. We also visited Kiev's only Art Deco church which was quite an interesting experience. Then it was off to the fresh food market before topping up on Massandra wine and heading off on an overnight train to Moscow.

Memories of Kiev

BEIJING: In Kiev, the day after visiting the Cave's Monastery - see below - we checked out a fantastically adorned building that lays claim to being the Gaudi of Kiev - The House With Chimeras. Amongst its many decorations

Then we attempted the Kafka-esque task of tackling the Ukrainian postal system at which we succeeded with the patience of Solomon, some kindness and some good luck. Then with the light starting to fade we checked out St. Michael's Cathedral, the newer of Kiev's twin beauties.

That accomplished we set out to raise St. Andrew's Descent or something. Unfortunately the persistent snow and failing light meant that Kiev's most famous street probably wasn't as magical as it could have been, however, it was still a lovely street. The other disappointment was that we all read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita and while the great man did actually live on the street the main draw was a cafe that was said to be decorated with a depiction of the book's legendary cat/demon Behemoth. The cafe was though like a film adaptation of a good book, it didn't quite live up to our expectations of this sharp shooting, chess playing, wise cracking cat.

To finish the evening Kate and I went to see Madame Butterfly at the State Opera which was very average though the woman playing Butterfly did warm to the role as her death approached. All in all though it felt like a high school version with slightly better singing. We finished off the night in some reasonably funky bar.

Random China Stuff

BEIJING: Using the internet in China is quite odd. You never know exactly what the PRC government is going to block. Wikipedia, for instance, will take you to a Chinese search engine. I can update this blog but I can't look at it. I wasn't able to check football scores on BBC.co.uk the other day though I could read regular stories.

Oh and it's illegal to sell Lonely Planet China here. Because they acknowledge the independence of Taiwan. Kind of annoying when you don't have a guidebook and haven't done much planning.

And the restaurant we ate at on New Years - we were lame (and sick) and didn't even leave the hotel - was serving at least two dishes that claimed to include Wikipedia including Fried Wikipedia.

The Mediocre Wall of China

BEIJING: Somehow I have to corcetina the last three weeks into my blog so I'll start with today, then probably head all the way back to Kiev to finish that off and then jump forward to Christmas Day which, sadly, turned out to be the defining moment of the middle of the trip. But before the doom and gloom let's have the excitement of climbing the Great Wall of China today.

Waking at 6:00 - I was lucky to wake up the hostel was supposed to wake me at 5:30 but never did - I scrambled to get ready and downstairs for the mini bus to the Wall. It's only supposed to be about 100k's north of Beijing but somehow it was 10:20before we got there. And freezing cold. My feet were aching. I kept expecting to take off my shoes when I got home to reveal blackened, deformed digits. Luckily with all the exertion of scrambling up and down the wall I managed to warm up.

My trip involved a 10 k hike from a place called Jinshanling to another place called Simatai. Because it was off season there was only really our small tour group on the wall which meant when I skipped away from the main group at one stage I was all alone on the wall, watching it climb dramatically in front of me, meander wildly behind me, surrounded all around by steep hills, rising to knife edge ridges.

A lot of the wall is quite degraded which means there are some really hairy descents, other parts where your walking quite slowly, making sure each foot slides behind the one in front, while at other times your almost on your hands and knees trying to climb up. Overall it was a little narrower than I expected and perhaps not as high but I suppose much of the grandeur comes with the length and the scope of the construction.

The hike ended with lunch and a three and a half hour trip back to Beijing.