From Northern Thailand To The Middle Of China
I left the comfort of Bangkok for the last time (sigh) and set out for Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai was pretty unremarkable as was my stay there. The walled old city is almost entirely devoted to tourism and the large expatriate community living in the vicinity. Though most of the center is pretty inauthentic, I still managed to find a couple tucked away marketplaces, which were nice places to sit down, drink a Thai iced tea and watch the hustle of everyday life go by. There’s a reason why Thailand has such a developed tourism industry - the people are friendly, the weather is great, the scenery is beautiful, and the food is sublime. That said, as comfortable as Thailand is, it can feel a little bit like the Costa Rica of Southeast Asia , a playground for people from wealthy countries who primarily want to party, relax and take in the beauty of the natural environs (save the untamable metropolis of Bangkok) . Although I can appreciate this type of traveling, it’s not the reason I set out on my trip. Whether or not I’m getting the experience for which I hope, I’m after something deeper, trying to scratch the surface of the places I visit. It’s tough with the unavoidable flood of travelers in Southeast Asia, which led me to call a major audible for my trip. In lieu of continuing south to Cambodia and then north through Vietnam, I decided I would head into China, which I perceived (I think correctly) as a tougher place to travel. For that reason, probably 90% of travelers to the region don’t set foot in the world’s most populous country.
As soon as we decided China was on the agenda, we set out directly for the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai to get our visas. Just our luck, it was the Monday after an obscure Thai holiday so the consulate was closed. Not the end of the world, we rented motorcycles for the day and drove into the hills of Chiang Mai where we visited a mountaintop temple and took in the view over the city. The next day we went back to the Chinese consulate. There were special requirements for obtaining visas for two nationalities. Guess which ones? French and American. The cost of the visa was spelled out on the window: Thai nationals, about 2,000 baht; USA about 6,000 baht; “other nationalities” about 2,100 baht. My friend was handed a special sheet for French nationals. While his visa would cost the same as the “other nationalities,” he needed to provide a bank statement, proof of health insurance, proof of a hotel reservation in China, proof of being employed or unemployed, proof of a ticket into China, etc. So while I forked over triple the price for my visa, at least I got to sit back, sipping a cool Thai iced tea, while my friend ran around in a panic making all sorts of arrangements. If we didn’t get the visa that day, we would have been stuck in Chiang Mai for several more days – something neither of us wanted – so that added to the urgency of the issue. Everything worked out in the end. Although Yanis couldn’t get all the required proof of everything that the Chinese consulate required, we both went back into the consulate and hammered them with smiles and kind explanations of how excited we were to visit China and sometimes that’s all it takes. Voila, the visas were ours.
The day after getting our visas we set out for Laos through which we had to cross in order to arrive in China. Crossing the border was easy. We decided to make a detour en route to China and pass through the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang. The day after crossing into Laos, we hopped on a two-day boat to Luang Prabang, slowly making our way down the Mekong River. The boat ride was beautiful, but obviously a “thing” for backpackers. I enjoyed schmoozing with other travelers on the way, but was also slightly irked by the acoustic guitar bonfire vibe, which unfortunately continued all the way into Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang was pleasant, but also pretty unremarkable. Maybe I’ve been travelling for too long and it just takes more to impress me now. Even more than Chaing Mai, the city is practically made for the purpose of catering to tourists. Another traveler told me that the city was once a mystical place, full with monks and beautiful, decaying temples before it was overrun by tourism. I could imagine it. Sometimes it seems like UNESCO has the effect of Disney-fying incredible places. We did have one particularly memorable experience in Luang Prabang when we rode in the back of a truck to a waterfall outside the city. Though beautiful, with jungle surroundings and clear blue waters in which to swim, the place was so full with tourists it looked like a community swimming pool, which was a shame. After taking a dip with everyone else, we decided to hike to the top of the falls. Thankfully, almost no one else had the same idea as it was a steep climb. Once we reached the top, we waded through knee deep water to gaze out over the top of the waterfall and stare out over a valley of verdant mountain landscape. Behind us and to our sides, it was jungle, the temperatures were tropical – it was undeniably a beautiful place.
After Luang Prabang we continued to Luang Namtha in northern Laos, which was much further off the well-trodden path. The first 5 hours of highway were probably the bumpiest of my trip. Yanis and I had the inauspicious seats in the very back of our minibus which, at every crater-sized pothole that we crossed, made us bounce several feet in the air. However, a moment came when we were about 100 kilometers away from China and the road became smooth. This is apparently because Laos is basically a dumping ground and extended mining field for China. There are lots of big trucks going in and out of this region. The trucks coming in are apparently bringing trash and the trucks going out are visibly jam packed with wood from Laos’ forests. With a population of 6 million, Laos presumably gets the shorter end of of the Lao-China trade relations stick. We only stayed for one full day in Luang Namtha, however it was really a beautiful place to take in. We rented motorcycles and rode through the mountains and jungle. Every ten or fifteen kilometers we passed a new village, full with wooden and bamboo houses. All of a sudden, the sky opened up and started pouring on us. We found a little bamboo roof perched on a hill and took shelter as the rain stormed down. Although we didn’t get to motorcycle around for the whole day as we had planned, it was a peaceful place in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Lao mountains, to be stuck. And although we were stuck, it was a memorable day.
The next day we took a bus into China. On the Lao side, we passed deforested mountains and border towns obviously meant to shake down every last yuan from Chinese visitors. The signs increasingly turned from Lao letters (and English occasionally) to Chinese characters. There’s kind of a proud thud and glorious accompanying drum roll as you cross the China border. Before you even enter the China customs office, you are greeted by soldiers who thoroughly frisk you and your belongings. While things look a little torn up on the Lao side, the China side is pristine. The roads are perfect. Even the trees and flowers look nice. There are huge billboards with Chinese characters. The ambiance as you cross is WE ARE VERY POWERFUL.
Our first real stop in China was Mengla, about 100 kilometers north of the border. The first noticeable thing upon arriving in China is that NOTHING is in English. And not only that, but speaking English in China is a bit like walking around trying to speak Kazakh in suburban America. Even words like hello and goodbye seem to be pushing the limit. You have the impression that if you say “hello” someone will look at you like you’re from Mars. Also, unlike in most other countries where people look at you and assume you don’t speak their language, in China (as goes my experience up to this point), everyone assumes you speak Mandarin. In Mengla, several people came up to us and tried to have conversations with us in Mandarin. When we made clear we didn’t understand, one solution people had was to speak Mandarin to us slowly. Unfortunately, we still didn’t understand.
Despite difficulties, we managed to change money and book ourselves on a night bus to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. The bus ride was a good introduction to China. First of all, the tickets were expensive (the cost of living in China is much higher than anywhere else I’ve been in Asia). In the bus, there were two-tiered bunks running down the side and then single beds running through the middle. We had to take our shoes off before getting on and everyone respected this rule. That said, there were no smoking signs, and despite being in an enclosed space, several people were lighting up as they pleased and putting out their butts on the carpeted floor. When people lit up, no one seemed to bat a lash. As for the ride itself, whereas all other mountain roads in countries that I’ve visited have wound their way up and down the mountain, as we rolled through Yunnan province, we saw that China had literally just blasted right through the mountains, making mile-long tunnels. I had read that China invested billions of dollars into highway infrastructure and that was really apparent with the pristine state of the roads. Every once in a while we would pass by an old village-like small house on the side of a superhighway. It looked like the remnants of pre mega-development China. At one point in the middle of the night we arrived at a military check point where several armed officers boarded our bus. The officers all put plastic bags on their shoes as to not offend the no-shoe policy on the bus. After, they briskly checked everyone’s IDs and carefully searched people’s bags and little crevices in the bus. As opposed to a country like Myanmar, the officers didn’t seemed very concerned with our foreign identity cards (we were the only two foreigners on the bus), rather they inspected the locals cards and belongings very closely. I later learned that people’s ethnicities are noted on their IDs so I wonder if restrictions on movement are placed on people by their ethnicity. If so, it would make sense that the officers so carefully inspected our bus in Yunnan province, one of the most ethnically diverse in all of China.
We arrived in Kunming early in the morning and, through pointing at our map and efficient use of body language, managed to signal to a taxi driver where our hostel was. Kunming was a great city to explore. It felt a bit like a megacity, but without the chaos with which one is usually associated. If there was one thing that was immediately noticeable, it was that the city has a flare for consumption - shopping and expensive restaurants are everywhere. High rises come up from every direction. At night some of the buildings were illuminated with ostentatious multicolored lighting. Most people ride around electric scooters for which the roads have a specially designated lane. In the mornings, folks, mostly older, gather on the corners of the streets to participate in synchronized dancing. I am not sure if this is for exercise or just for entertainment - but it’s great to watch. When we checked out the city’s main park, there were more than a dozen groups practicing their dance moves along with people flying kites, playing music and participating in other leisure activities. Also noticeable is that people are playing cards (gambling?) and Mahjong at every available park bench or table. The sites we visited in Kunming were much less exciting than the experience of being in Kunming itself, which was great.
After Kunming, Yanis and I decided we wanted to explore different parts of China so he set out further west into Yunnan province towards Tibet and me to the north. I took a 20 hour train ride north to Chengdu, another of China’s megacities. I took the sleeper class train. It was a pretty beautiful ride passing through rice paddies terraced against mountainous landscapes while a river followed the tracks almost the whole way. The Chinese sleeper class trains are kind of like the Indian AC sleeper class train, with three-tiered bunks on each side – only it was about 10 times more expensive than India. My ticket placed me in a section with 3 generations of women from one family: grandmother, mothers and daughters. Although none of them spoke a word of English, they kind of took me into their pack (or maybe they just felt sorry for me), offering me the occasional snack or piece of fruit and communicating with me via hand gestures, smiles and nods. For dinner I went into a cafeteria where there were lots of seemingly wealthy businessmen gambling, smoking and drinking. During my short stay in the cafeteria car, the waitress was constantly providing the men, who never got rowdy enough to lose concentration on their game, with more alcohol.
My first day in Chengdu, I wandered a bit aimlessly. I checked out a historic temple in the north of the city and a giant statue of Mao in the city’s central Tianfu square. I went into the historic section of the city to grab a bite to eat and ordered a famous tofu dish known as mapo tofu. As a vegetarian I have one big problem in China: nothing is vegetarian. Even things like tofu or vegetables are usually sprinkled with beef or pork or cooked in animal fat. I have learned how to say no meat in understandable Mandarin (which wasn’t a cakewalk given the language’s four tones, a concept that’s completely foreign to western languages and makes it so nobody understands anything unless you get the tone right). So when I ordered this tofu dish, I asked “buyao ro?” (no meat?) and the server responds “mayo” (which means no) and then continues to say something else after. I say I don’t understand and he continues repeating this one phrase. Concerned that he wants to tell me something along the lines of “there is no meat, but the tofu is cooked in pig’s blood” – I ask my neighbor sharing the table with me “do you speak English.” She pulls her ipod earbuds out and says “a little.” A LITTLE ! Wow! I am stunned. It is the first person to whom I have asked this question that gives a positive answer. She translates for the server. “He wants to know why you don’t eat meat.” So I guess after all that, the server just wanted to have a philosophical discussion. As per usual though, all is not for naught and I strike up a conversation with my neighbor at the restaurant. It turns out she is a solo traveler heading in the same direction as me and she is Chinese. I spent the rest of the day exploring Chengdu with her. We had tea in People’s Park (like Chengdu’s Central Park) and then enjoyed a Sichuan hot pot for dinner – the province’s most famous, mouth-numbingly spicy dish. It was great to have company and it was also great to have someone to translate China for me. Apparently the guy who looks like he’s yelling at me from the street-side bench, is actually just telling me “welcome to Chengdu!”
Two days later I met my new friend in the mountains near Chengdu and we explored the national park of Juizaigho together. The park itself was an experience. At about 9,000 feet high, the park was surrounded by dark green forested mountains. There were crystal clear lakes of several different colors - blue, green, turquoise - peppered throughout the park. Apparently this is a geological phenomenon. It turns out, however, that Jiuzaigho is the most renowned national park in all of China. Getting into the park felt a bit like going to a crowded summer music festival. There were literally hordes of people, like thousands – all Chinese tourists - queuing up to get into the park. In some places, it was like U2 was on stage - except U2 in this case was a lake - and everyone was pushing to get closer. Other places were sparsely visited and were possible to enjoy. Although the park was a bit of a shitshow, the natural beautiful of the place was so incredible that it was absolutely a worthwhile stop.
After Jiuzaigho, I continued to the historic town of Langzhong, still in Sichuan province, where I am currently. While most of China is irreversibly modern, this town has kept most of its historic charms without becoming a touristic Disneyland. I’ve paired up with a few Chinese travelers (who speak English!) at my hostel with whom I’ve spent the last two days aimlessly wandering the town. It’s been peaceful.
If there’s one thing I’ve experienced thus far in China, outside of lost-in-translation confusion, it’s hospitality, kindness and plain curiosity. I have met a few young people here and have been surprised by how open minded they are. It’s a contrast from what I have read about this country in the media.
Tomorrow I’m heading south to Chongqing. My China itinerary is making itself as I go. My trip ends in Hanoi, Vietnam, but whether I go east to Shanghai or directly south first, only the road ahead will tell.
QW
