Last day in India

We can't believe it, but our time in India and in Asia is coming to a close tonight. We fly to Milan, Italy at 5AM tomorrow morning. We have really enjoyed our time here in India, but we both agree that it has been an exhausting two and a half weeks. We have had quite a few 110+ degree days in and around Delhi and more hot and humid days in Calcutta with heat indexes over 110 degrees.

Internet has been widely available in India, but largely of very low quality connections and computers in dark, hot, and dirty little rooms. We have decided to limit our time online even though it is often dirt cheap, ~50 cents per hour. We will do what we can to get more updates up, but our Laos, Thailand, and India adventure stories and pictures may not make much of an entrance until we are back home in 'the states'.

the End of China

FENGHUANG AND THE EPIC JOURNEY OUT OF CHINA
Fenghuang is a very cool town with guesthouses and restaurants on stilts lining the river. During the day, we enjoyed the shops, the wonderful homemade peanut and ginger candy, the food vendors, and all the interesting animals, reptiles, and insects in the front of all the restaurants. From our balcony we would watch floating candles of all shapes, colors, and sizes float down the river each night. The streets and river were beautifully lit by red lanterns and lights. Karoke music could be heard coming from many of the touristy bars and restuarants. Except for the touts, the area was more relaxed than the bigger cities and we enjoyed 2 nights in town.

When leaving Fenguang, we headed to where our guidebook told us the bus station was located. When we arrived on the corner where the station should be, it was not there. We asked several people where the bus station was by pointing to the word "bus station" and "Jishou" we had written down in Chinese. We got several finger points to keep heading down the street. Tommy and I walked about 5 minutes before asking someone else the same question. They pointed further down the street where we were heading. About 5 -10 minutes later, we once again asked and were pointed further down the street. At this point we were heading out of the city with less and less people, shops, and cars around us, but we kept walking. We got pointed further and further up the same street, then directed to take a left, pointed up a hill, until about 1 hour later, when we are totally out of the city, we found the bus station. We were instantly rushed onto a bus to Jishou and took off.

Once in Jishou, we waited in line for train tickets. We asked for 2 night train, hard or soft sleepers to Guilin, but were told "no", without any explanation of if they were sold out, if there was not train to Guilin, or if she just didn't understand what we were asking. After a while, a university student came to our rescue and enquired about our ticket when it was his turn in line. He learned that there was no direct train to Guilin. So, we bought tickets to a town where we would be able to get a connecting train to Guilin. We had to buy tickets for the following night since that night they only had standing seats on the 8 hour night train. Once we checked into a hotel, we began to realize that our tickets for the following night were standing tickets as well. We decided to work it out in the morning.

In the morning, we headed down to the tourist office in the hotel where no one speak English. They called a girl, who seemed to be a student and not a travel agent, to talk to us. After a long time of trying to help us, she decided to just take us to the train station to talk to the ticket attendant. Once there, she confirmed only standing seats were avaliable for that night and the next several nights. With only a little time left in China and the need to be heading out of the country, we decided we had to leave town that day, going somewhere. Our new friend hopped into a taxi and went with us to the bus station. We decided Kunming should be our next destination, from where we could head south to the border of Laos. Since there is no direct bus there, we had to go to Guiyang first, but there is no bus to Guiyang, so we had to take a bus to a smaller city that is several hours away. We got a bus ticket to this small town and had to go back to the train station to sell back our train tickets. We hopped back into a cab, sold our tickets at the train station, stopped for lunch, said good-bye to our friend, taxied back to the bus station, and arrived just in time. Once we get to the small town, we immediately found a bus (the last bus of the day) leaving for Guiyang in literally 4 minutes. We arrived around 11pm in Guiyang, exhausted by the long day, only to wander around looking for several hotels in the guidebook that we never found. Finally aroun 1am, we found an affordable place to settle in for the night, that was not listed in the guidebook.

From Guiyang, we flew to Kunming where we saw more foreigners the first few hours than we had seen our whole time in China. We stayed by the university and enjoyed the college feel of the area, with all the fun shops, great restaurants, and relaxed vibe. We stayed 2 nights and took a flight to Jinghong. Then after several bus rides, a night's stay in a scary place, and another bus ride, we finally made it to Laos!!!

A FEW THOUGHTS ON CHINA
Tommy and I enjoyed our time in China, but wish we would have had more time to travel at leisure and to soak up the cities we were in. Especially for the last week in China, we felt that we were bogged down by travel difficulties and delays due to being off the main foreign tourist track and in the end, did not really get to experience the cities as deeply as we had wanted. Several times we became frustrated with situations because we were under such time constraints that we really did not get to relax and take in what was around us. We hate that this happened and took on a slower and more meaningful way of travelling once we came to Laos.

China had its moments of frustrations, but overall, the people there were so genuine, curious, and kind. We were often in situations where we needed help and an English speaking student would come to our aid in order to help us, with no strings attached. We even offered to pay them at times for their help, but they would decline. Not only the many students we met, but the other passengers on the train who felt it was their duty to look after us, help us with our bags, and tell us when to get off the train, made trips easier. On many occasions Tommy and I entered a restaurant where it not only had an all Chinese menu, but no one spoke English. The owners and staff at these restaurants were more than happy to try and accomodate us. We were even taken into the kitchens where we could point and select what we wanted to eat. Many times someone else in the restaurant would be able to speak enough English to help us order. On one occassion in Xi'an, we sat with the police captain of the south district of town and the owner, who was a detective. Being that only the police captain spoke English, he helped us order food and carry on conversations with the owner and curious patrons. They even called in another officer, a young, new man on the force, to come and practice his English with us.

We had so many positive encounters with people and their excitement upon meeting us was infectious. I very, very rarely felt uneasy about who we were talking to or their motivation for talking to us. Our conversations with locals were out of sheer interest about one another and not about what they could sell us or how to scam us out of money. This has been even clearer in hindsight after our experiences in Thailand and India. I cannot think of one time that I felt unsafe, even walking around at 1 a.m. in an unfamiliar town. Despite some annoyances that every city has, anywhere in the world, it was such a great and unique experience to visit China. One final note, we definately saw less cats in Bejing than elsewhere in China, but I don't think there was any less spitting.

In India and still behind on Blog posts

Kristin and I made it to India this afternoon. It was just a 2 hour flight from Bangkok to Calcutta. The bangkok airport was new, huge, and very impressive. Once here we shared a taxi with a traveling couple from Spain to the main area with guest houses for tourists. It was an eye opening hour ride. The streets were packed with motorbikes, taxis, packed buses, pedal rickshaws, person pulled rickshaws, and an odd cow or two. The traffic appeared chaotic at times, well most of the time. There are no lines on the road and one minute there may be 3 or 4 rows of traffic all going in your direction and the next minute two of those are now traveling in the other direction. Horns are used every few seconds to tell other cars what you are doing or that you don't like what they are doing. Even with all the chaos, heat and humidity, and exhaust no one seemed to be getting particularly angry. We have checked into somewhere with air conditioning, bought a used copy of the latest edition of the India Lonely Planet guide, eaten a little meal, and now are at an internet cafe. We will study up on the book this evening to better plan our time here. We will likely spend a day or two more here and then head north west in the direction of Delhi.


A couple of other updates:

• We sold the VW bus that we drove out west on ebay. Tommy's sister Sara and her fiance Nick did all of the physical work for the storage and sale of the bus. THANKS SO MUCH SARA AND NICK!
  
• I shaved my beard a week ago before spending a week in the sun at the beach
• We spent a week on an island in Thailand and stayed in a nice bungalow just a few feet from a beautiful bay.
• Kristin ran for one hour straight for the first time ever this weekend in Bangkok!
  
• Tommy got to play ultimate for the first time since Quito in late January while in Bangkok
• We heard "Lumberton, NC" mentioned on the news and even saw a video of a second or two of Bill Clinton's recent speech from a front porch in town.
• In a single twenty minute walk in Bangkok we past over 12 Seven-Eleven stores. In some places there was more than one on every corner!
  
• The cheapest beer we could find in Thailand was an 80 cent can of Thai beer, quite disappointing after the price and quality in China and Laos. The next cheapest beer that we could find (a dollar ~22oz beer in a bottle) turned out to be very bad white wine when we took the first surprising sip.

We would love to hear from one reading some of the blog. Please send us emails or leave a comment here on the blog or one our photo site.

Fenghuang - Travel then riverside

When we arrive in Yichang we are clearly off of the beaten backpacker track. We are not off the track, for there are millions of local Chinese around us, but there are not other foreigners around. Big city, fancy hotel, break from road, used gym twice, 1:30 train to Jishou, lucky evening bus to Fenghuang, girls helped us find cheap room, beautiful old city (new city outside), photographers, took it easy, two nights, bus back to Jishou----ever going to get to leave Jishou?

It is time to go eat dinner now, more to come. We are almost caught up with China entries.

Xián

After several games of Farkle, waking up to a strange Chinese man peering down at my face, and having to sleep in a different section of the train than Tommy, we arrive in Xián. Once again we have survived a smokey, cramped night on a hard-sleeper. Xián is a lot like Pingyao in the fact that it still contains aspects of ancient arcitecture, has a bell tower, a drum tower, and a large wall surrounding the city. It is also like Beijing and Shanghai, with its large population, busy streets, and big buildings. Once again we see a large number of vendors and our faith in "you can buy anything to eat on a stick" is restored. The Muslim Quarter is an interesting area that houses the Great Mosque and several other, smaller mosques. All the mosques, even the Great one, are not very visible from the street and seem to be hidden throughout the Muslim Quarter. There are also a lot of food vendors, where I was able to find, once again, some awesome steamed buns. Tommy found some delicious potatoes that looked to be roasted to perfection. As the cook put the bowl down in front of Tommy, we were both surprised by the jiggling motion the potatoes made as the bowl hit the table. As soon as Tommy took a bite, it was confirmed that he was not eating potatoes. He was in fact eating stir-fried spicy cubes of bean paste, which basically looked like transparent cubes of jello. We found several other food items made of bean - a green bean cake and a tasty looking treat that I thought would be chocolate, but turned out to be rice with dark bean paste. After this, I was done with the food tastings for a while.

WALMART IN CHINA
Tommy and I discovered a Walmart listed on the map of Xián that our hostel provided. We quickly found the large Walmart sign and proceeded to follow sign after sign, arrow after arrow, leading us in circles until we finally found the store, no where near the initial sign or the icon on the map. I cannot compare the prices of large bags of MSG, but for the rest - if you thought an American Walmart was cheap, you should check out Chinese Walmart!! Tommy and I got several bags full of juice, beer, water, and food for $11. We were very excited.

TERRACOTTA WARRIORS
The next day, Tommy and I set out to visit the Terracotta Warriors Museum with a tour group from our hostel. Outside of the museum, there is a gift shop where you can meet the man who discovered the Terracotta Warriors. He use to be a farmer, but has now been given the job of sitting inside at a desk all day signing books bought in the gift shop. By the look on his face, he is rethinking his decision of disclosing his discovery to others. The Terracotta Warriors and Horses are life size and colorless replicas of the warriors, horses, and chariots back in the day (the original colors quickly disappeared from the warriors and horses once unearthed) . It is an incredible excavation site and the process of excavating the warriors and horses is still ongoing. They are working on reconstructing those they excavate. It takes one person one year to restore one warrior. All of the warriors excavated differ slightly from one another, so no two warriors are the same, not even their faces. It was incredible to see all of the warriors and horses lined up in the vast pit. It is quite an experience.

That night we go for a short run around the city. Running on the streets of Xián makes you feel like you are running from someone, since you have to dodge people, jump out of the way of bikes carrying packages the size of refrigerators, steer clear of rabid looking dogs, get out of the way of vendors and their carts, etc. We found our way to the outside of the wall, which has a thin park that wraps around it. Many people come here to practice Tai Chi, meditate, jog, dance, walk backwards, and yell. This was a great people watching area.

The next day, Tommy and I decide we want to go for another run, but somewhere less crowded. We opt to pay the small fee and head up on top of the wall. The wall that surrounds Xián is 13m high and 13 km long. We have a wonderful jog around the wall, where we can see people flying kites, playing in the parks, and going on with daily life. The air is a little tough on the body, between the dry air and the smog. My head started to throb and my throat swelled up thick for the next day. Good luck to all those athletes heading to Beijing! After our run, we headed to the Big Goose Pagoda by bus.


TIBETAN RIOTS CHANGE PLANS
Our last day in Xián, we checked out and sat in the hostel lobby without a plan of where to go next. The riots in Llasa, along with the spreading unrest throughout China, made us reevaluate our plans. We had planned on heading west to Xiahe, which is not actually in Tibet, but has a large Tibetan population. We had heard that the government was not allowing foreigners into this town, along with several other towns we were thinking of heading to. Since all the media was being strictly censored, we were not sure of exactly what towns to the southwest we could head to.

So after a period of indecision due to this uncertain circumstance, our plan of attack was to head to south to Luoyang, Yichang, and Fenghuang. This route was the next most western train line after the one we were origanially planning on taking. This route was not on the Tiebian plateau and appeared to be safely away from the expanding Tibetan protests. Standing in the rain, we get train tickets for the first train out of Xián and run back to the hostel to get our bags. It is pouring rain and we are turned down by every cab driver we asked to take us to the train station. A girl nearby tells us to hop on bus 300 and that will take us to the train station. Tommy and I run for the bus, hop on, and ride out of town towards the station.

After 10 minutes on the bus, we soon take a turn and begin to head in the wrong direction, away from the train station. When shown the word "train station", the ticket attendant motions for us to get off the bus where we are and pointed in the direction of the station. We hop off the bus and start running down the street in the direction of the train station. After a few moments of not being sure if we would make it in time or not and not being able to determire where any of the busses passing us were going, we flag down another bus and point in our book to the word "train station" and the driver motions for us to get on. Two stops later, the bus driver motions for us to get off. We are not at the station, but we think that we can see it. The train will leave in less than 15 minutes. We run until we get to the station and push our way through the mass of people waiting for other trains until we get to ours. The whistle is blowing and our train is just about to take off. We jump on the train and it begins to move. Soaking wet and out of breath, we have made it!

Louyang - Budda Caves and Train Riding

THERE ARE TWO FOREIGNERS ON THE TRAIN
The trip to Louyang was via a "hard seat" on a train. A "hard seat" means that we have an assigned section of a bench seat. There are sets of benches facing each other on either side of a center isle. They are something like a booth at McDonald's but the table between the seats was much smaller. We are pretty sure we were the only foreigners on the whole train, which had around 15 cars of 50 to 150 people per car depending on the type of car. The whole train was full, which meant we were sitting in pretty close quarters with our fellow passengers, something like a full subway car. It was a great experience and I am finding it hard to fully describe the experience here. The other travellers were from a different world. Most seemed to be local farmers or entire families and many did not ride as far as we did. The train stopped every 30 minutes or so to pick up and drop off passengers.

At first it did not appear that anyone could speak any English outside of "Hello". The people in the seat facing us had been communicating with us for a while by pointing, gesturing, and writing in our common language, aribic numerals. We had gathered how old we all were and where we were going and where we had been, but not much more. A couple of hours into the trip fellow around our age showed up with a little note, in good english, asking us our names and where we were from. We wrote our answer and passed the note back. This got everyone around interested. After a few volleys with our mystery english speaker we convinced him to come up and talk with us. He was a PhD student in aerospace engineering on his way to have a meeting with an oil company about some thing the university was helping them with. I did not cease to be amazed at how light the Chinese travel. For this two day and one night trip, four hours from home, he was carrying..... a laptop briefcase. It was big enough for a little bit more than his laptop and power supply, but I doubt it was big enough for even one extra shirt.

Our whole section of the train had a grand time the last hour of the trip. Our new interpreter asked us questions that our traveling companions had been mulling over for the last couple of hours. Did we have any kids? What were our jobs? Did we like China? Did we like President Bush? What did we think about the war with Iraq? (they did not seem to like either of these things, but in general they did seem to like the US). Do you know who Yao Ming is? (we got this question on a number of occations) We saw that even though we were from very different worlds we had plenty of humaness in common. We also had fancy cell phones in common, although many of our traveling buddies outdid us in that regard. Everyone in China seems to have a cell phone that doubles as a music player and mini-PDA, something like a Blackberry but smaller.

The train got into town pretty late, 11PM?, and it was raining. We were convinced to follow on foot a man and a lady who offered to take us to the hotel we had choosen from our guidebook. We weren't sure that it would at first, but this worked out fine, more or less. We were now very clearly off of the international backpacker trail. So far in China we had stayed at backpacker hostels which cateered, more or less, to our English speaking foreinger needs. Our hotel this night spoke enough English to get by, but there was diffently not the same communial feel of our past hostels.

While checking out the next morning we met Brian, a backpacker from Hong Kong who spoke perfect English. He agreed to accompany us to the train station to help us buy our tickets for the next day. This was a godsend. Then he joined us for lunch, where he helped us order from an all Chinese menu. This was one of our best and cheapest meals from anywhere in China. We were all getting along well together and decided to travel together to the big tourist draw of the area, ancient buddist caves outside of town.

We rode bus number 81 to the end of the line and found the other dozen forienrs in town at the budda caves (along with hundreds of Chinese tourists). We were enjoying ourselves, but not overly impressed at first. Then, not expecting much more, we came to the top of a huge steep band of stairs and our jaws dropped. There were the biggest statues I had every seen. Well, I am sure Mount Rushmore is much bigger, but you are not this close to it. I am glad I did not have high expectations so that I could truely be wonderfully surprised by the size and beauty of this mammoths. In total there were tens of thousands of buddas. We wondered around of a few hours and got some good pictures, which almost took themselves.

From Louyang

That night we took a late night train over night to Ychang, around 11 hours away. Our train did not leave until after 1AM which gave us some time to sit around the train station. Because night trains are popular for long routes the train station was rather full of people even at this hour. We were approached by a couple of poeple wanted to say hello and practice their English. We talked to the student below for quite a while. He told us that he was studying English at a local university and that his professors told him to practice his English whenever had got a chance to talk to foreingers. He said we were the first he had ever talked with! He also told us that the way we westerners say "Yao Ming" means "kill you" because we say the words flat and not with the correct tones. We even say Beijing to mean "hurt you". This guy was waiting for a 5 AM bus to go a few hours home for the weekend. He was in great spirits, perhaps because he was traveling so light! At one point he wanted to show us how he had just been listening to some American music on his Ipod, so he pulled it from his over the sholder 'briefcase' type bag. It appeared to be the only thing in the bag! Now that is traveling light.

Pingyao

From Bejing and Pi...

Pingyao is a neat old cirty surrounded by a large wall. It looks like it has been dropped down right in the middle of a booming city, since outside the walls, it seems just like all the other busy cities of China. Inside the walls, motor vehicle traffic is very limited and the streets are quieter, more laid back, and not as smoggy (although it is a very dry area and quite dusty). Although the city of Pingyao consists of the area inside and outside the wall, inside-the-walls locals seem to only acknowledge Pingyao as the area within the walls.

CITY WALLS
We spend our first day exploring the street and walk on top of the large wall that surrounds the city. Solar panels are scattered about the tiled rooftops, as well as piles of corn, chickens, and cats. From the wall, we see a mass of gray buildings splashed with dots of red from the lanterns that line the streets. The slower pace and the quietness is a much needed relief from the large, busy cities we had grown accustom to. Pingyao is the first city of many to come where we hear fireworks set off at noon for a lunch time announcement. In Pingyao, there are not nearly as many food vendors as there were in the larger cities of Shanghai and Beijing, so we eat at several different restaurants that prove to be cheap and convenient. Finding the historical places on our own proves not to be easy. Our first day, we try to find several places of interest without any luck, since everything in this town looks identical! We end up playing with a girl about 8 years old and her toy that is equivalent to our hacky sack. The toy has several bright feathers with a flat disk attatched to the bottom. It is a popular game with the Chinese, and several older adults enthusiastically stopped to kick it a few times with us as well. The little girl seemed to have fun playing with us and sporadically would say either "Thank you very much", "So Sorry", or "Hello". She remained very serious the whole time and only allowed herself to smile and laugh a couple times when she seemed like she couldn't contain it any longer - usually this was after Tommy or I did something ridiculous. The game ended about 45 minutes later when she kicked the toy too high and it landed on the roof. Later, Tommy and I bought another one and found the little girl the next day so that we could give her a new toy. She didn't know what to do, but as we walked away and turned around, she had run in to get her mom to show her mom who had given her the gift.

Pingyao are beautiful at night with red lanterns lighting up the streets. We had a wonderful time roaming the streets until someone tried to tackle Tommy for his water bottle that was still mostly full. Luckily, after a couple of minutes of trying to lose the guy, a shopkeeper came out and yelled at the guy. This guy was one of several people that tried to grab our bottles before they were empty in order to add it to their recycling pile. Who knew you had to conceal your water bottles from theft? But, this gentleman's elevator did not seem to go all the way to the top floor. We saw a few other bottle collectors like this, but most collectors were fairly well dressed and seemed very normal.

The next day we had set out to meet Mr. Lui, who we read about in the Lonely Planet as a recommended tour guide. We had run into him on the street the previous day and he showed us a large stack of business cards he had collected from previous tourists with good reviews written on the backs of each. Since we had had no luck finding places that day, we set up to meet him at 9:30AM the next day. Of course, Tommy and I were running behind. Breakfast took longer for our hostel to make, since the electricity was out. We were 15 minutes late and he was not at our meeting spot. The L.P. listed his hostel, so we headed in search of Mr. Lui. We find him at the hostel and Lo' and Behold, there must be 2 Mr. Lui's because this is not the man we talked to before. The real Mr. Lui gives us a great 3 hour tour of the city. Throughout China, we often went into museums, temples, and other sights without gaining much knowledge since information was given mostly in Chinese, so getting a tour guide when affordable, was very beneficial.

Before hopping on the train for Xián, Tommy and I decide to bike an hour outside of town to visit a temple. It is a stressful ride getting out of the city due to cars, bikes, scooters, and people coming from every direction, but soon we are riding on more of a rural highway and have a nice ride on our flat-tired, loose steering, broken seat, one-speed bikes to the temple. They were top Chinese quality! We only stay at the temple for a short time, since we really did not know what all we are looking at. When we head back into town, the one outside of the city walls, traffic has gotten crazier and we have to walk the rest of the way until we get to the walls.


The beutiful greyness of the city as seen from the city walls. And, yes that is a big screen TV on the wall. It seemed to show videos for Chinese tourists.