April 25 Bac Ha Market

We were in Bac Ha for the Sunday market. This market was for real. By 7 AM all the vendors were set up and the market was in full swing. Native women were buying and selling. A few foreigners had slept in Bac Ha and were also in attendance. The livestock market was the best. Ducklings, piglets, dogs, horses and water buffalo were all for sale. There were lots of wiggling sacks around.
There were at least 20 charcoal stoves set up with various foods available. I tried bean curd for breakfast – It was ugly when served cold, but okay when it was hot. There was an impressive choice of meat cuts for sale. The Vietnamese do not waste any part of a slaughtered animal.
Joan and I bought some wall hangings as souvenirs. We are used to bargaining by now, but North Vietnam is different. The first price the vendors ask is triple to 10 times the going price. You need try a few vendors and walk away to find out the lower range of the goods. We bought the wall hangings for one-third the initial asking price and I still overpaid.
In the afternoon we took a motorcycle ride up into the mountains and walked back down. This downhill stuff is easy.

April 24 North Vietnam:

We returned from China and waited in Lao Cai, in North Vietnam, for Katherine to join us. She showed up at 8:00 in the morning after taking the all night train from Hanoi. She had neglected to book early and it was a holiday weekend in Vietnam, so she had to sit on a hard wood bench for the 10-hour trip. She looked a little tired. We got a bus to Bac Ha up in the mountains and Katherine had a nap while Joan and I went for a walk. The north of Vietnam is mountainous and is the home of several hill tribes. Vietnam has 55 minority groups and most are based in the north. We walked about 3km to visit a small village. Around Bac Ha most of the women wore traditional clothing, whether they were working in the fields or selling at the market. The men never wear traditional garb, but they all wore army fatigues. The women tend to carry big baskets on their backs or their baby. Often older sisters will carry younger brothers on their backs. We never saw the reverse.

April 23: Return to Vietnam

We packed up our suitcases and took a leisurely stroll across the China-Vietnam border. It was with mixed emotions we re-entered Vietnam. China was fascinating, but travelling was much more difficult with the Chinese script and the lack of English speakers. It is a police state. Using the internet requires an ID card and my blog was blocked while I was inside China.
We will re-unite with Katherine tomorrow and head into the mountains of North Vietnam.

April 22nd Xiaoquigkou

Joan took a rest day while I headed for a small town 75 km into the mountains. Since Joan was changing hotels I left her with the passports, which are required for registration. I got an early bus and I was the only passenger as we left the station. Within 100 meters we were 5 and then we trolled the city for more passengers and a few boxes to be delivered. Then we hit a police check. I flashed my Quebec drivers’ licence and the police seemed to like it.
The first 16 km took 1 hour. We covered the next 60 km in 2 hours. When I got off the bus, at my destination, I was met by the local police posse (4 of them). They demanded my passport, which I didn’t have, and then gave me a ride to the local police station. I wrote down my intentions (to take pictures of mountains) and they checked my camera and made numerous phone calls. Nobody spoke much English and my Chinese was very, very limited, so after 30 minutes I got to talk to a policewoman on the phone who took down all my details. Then the police photographed my drivers’ licence and medical card and released me with a warning to take pictures and then leave town that day. I agreed. After a brief photo session in the fields I found a restaurant. I was eating my lunch of barbequed potatoes, when the bus came by, so I hopped aboard. I hopped off at the top of the mountain pass and took more pictures. I got the next bus and headed back to town. Unfortunately we hit another police check. The locals all passed verification but my Quebec drivers’ licence wasn’t good enough this time. They told me not to move and then I got 1 question every 3 minutes while they went away and discussed my answer. I was glad they didn’t take me off the bus because I’m sure the bus would have left without me. The bus was boiling and the passengers were unhappy. Finally a police officer that spoke English arrived and she gave me the five-minute lecture on carrying my passport in a border area. I promised Ms. Officer I would never again travel in the border area without my passport and she let me go. I was only 10 minutes late for happy hour.

April 21st Nanxi

We took a taxi 20km up the road to Nanxi. Then we convinced a Tuk-Tuk driver to take us up into the mountains. She was reluctant at first, but got into it as we went higher and started taking pictures. We passed through a banana plantation. The bananas are picked by hand and transported to a central sight by horseback. It seems horses are the main mode of transportation in the area. We ended up at a fish farms/retreat. I couldn’t figure out what it really was and our driver seemed surprised as well. I think she enjoyed her day of sightseeing.

April 20th Kunming to Hekou.

Today was our final big bus ride in China. For the most part, riding the busses has been fun and enlightening. The landscape in this province is continuous hills and mountains. On the rural busses there are constant stops for passenger pickup and parcel delivery. At least a quarter of the passengers are minorities in full costume. At times the bus floor is packed with luggage and produce going to market. The express busses are more comfortable and don’t stop for passengers along the way, but the countryside is still impressive.
Kunming to Hekou was an express bus that ran on the autoroute all the way. Unfortunately the autoroute was non-existent for a long stretch (but they still collected tolls). The bus still averaged 50kph, which is good for China.

April 19 Western hills of Kunming:

Today we visited Xi Shan (the Western Hills) on the outskirts of Kunming. There are many temples on the hills and it is quite a climb to get to the top. We covered the first part by minibus and then electric cart. We then climbed up 650 steps to the top- but with many stops! My favourite part of the climb was the corridor and grottoes carved out of the hillside by a Taoist monk and helpers between1781 and 1835. What an enormous amount of work! The tunnel on the cliff face is wide enough for two people. Carved into the cliff face along the passageway there are three grottoes with Buddha carvings and other sculptures. Again, what a lot of work.
There were many picturesque temples to visit on the hillside. The most beautiful was the Huating temple, which had some absolutely amazing Buddha sculptures and sculptures of other beings of the religion. This temple was Tim’s favourite spot because of richness of carvings, murals and colour. There were so many great photo opportunities – but not as many as we would have liked as photography in the temples themselves was prohibited

This was a great place to spend the day!

April 18 Tengchong to Kunming

Another bus ride, another adventure. The bus trip from Tengchong to Kunming was supposed to be 11 hours. The first 3 hours we covered 150km through 2 mountain passes and a police check. Then we hit the autoroute. We arrived in Kunming 30 minutes early. The scenery was good. Several 4,000-meter mountains at the start. Terraced fields running up the mountainside in the lower mountains and bright red soil everywhere. The autoroute was brand new and featured several bridges and tunnels. Most tunnels were over 300 meters in length and the longest was 3 km. This was the first Chinese autoroute we have seen and it was impressive. Not that fast because of the slow vehicles but the best road surface we’ve seen in Asia.

April 17 Visit to farm village

I took a bus to the first farm village I could see, about 7km down the road. The village was not that photogenic since walls surrounded every house. But each house seemed to have a courtyard. The gates were all closed and when I found one open and asked to take pictures she refused and closed her door. In the next street a little old lady invited me in for a bowl of rice, but I wanted to take pictures so I declined. The standard of living is hard to estimate in a village like this. The houses are well maintained and repairs and new construction are happening everywhere.

At the same time several villagers are washing their clothes in the river. Lots of old men are sitting around smoking, yet many old women are working hard, carrying heavy loads of firewood and produce on their backs. China is a complex society.

TENGCHONG08, TENGCHONG09, TENGCHONG10

April 16 Volcano Park:

We visited a large park that had several extinct volcanoes. It was a short climb to the top and then we walked around the rim. We skipped the larger volcano since the stairs went up forever. I found a friendly driver who volunteered to take us on a tour of the park road, which meanders 12 km through the park. He was driving a decrepit motorcycle with a wagon, which held 4 midgets or 2 of us. He polluted the environment going uphill and turned the engine off going downhill. At the end of the road there are stairs leading down into a river valley and a scenic spot called the “Columnar Joint”. We walked down about 600 steps and along the river to the “Joint”.

After a lunch of green boiled eggs we walked along the river to the next parking lot. At this point we realized our friendly driver had stranded us, miles from nowhere. The parking lot attendant flagged down a car, which took us halfway home. Then while we were trying to figure out the second half a Chinese tourist, who spoke English, took us back to Tengcheng in his personal car. In the middle of China he was driving a chevrolet.

April 15 Sea of Heat:

Volcanoes and hot springs surround Tengchong. We took a minicab about 10km out of town to a hot springs area. The head ticket taker spoke English and he offered me the seniors’ half price special. What a nice kid. As we walked along the tour route, walls and concrete surrounded the first 2 springs we saw. We were pleased to find some springs ‘au naturel’ and bubbling out of the ground.

The second half of the walk followed a river and at one point there was a waterfall right beside a spouting geyser.
I liked it.

April 14 Fly to Tengchong:

Today we visited Heshun village, which is a popular tourist spot as it is an old traditional Chinese village with cobbled streets and lots of picturesque buildings. There used to be a charge to visit the attractions in the village (museum, library, etc.) but now you have to pay the same rate just to enter the village and stroll around. We spent a few hours wandering around. Our favourite spot was a temple, which had four levels that gave increasingly nice views of landscape and tiled roofs. We also enjoyed a private tour of a really old house. Part of the housing complex was a restaurant. We were not ready for lunch but the owner saw how interested we were in the house and showed us her private rooms, which were rich with wood and wood carving.

April 13: Tour around Kunming:

We went to Green park in Kunming in the morning. It is a pleasant park with fingers of water going in every direction. I have never seen a park with such high use. There were groups of dancers everywhere (mostly retired ladies). It seems anyone with a boom box can start a dancing club. Most of the groups were line dancing, but with an Asian flare. They were dancing among the trees, in the green spaces and on the lake promenades. There were also musicians quietly playing on the park benches and around the water edges. For people-watching it was excellent. The people watching works both ways – a Chinese photographer with a super-long lens approached me and showed me pictures he had taken of Joan and I touring the park.

After our stroll in the park we walked up to an old temple near the park. I bought a road atlas in China and it only has Chinese characters. I am learning to navigate by reading the Chinese characters on street signs. Unfortunately I can only remember 2 Chinese characters for 30 seconds so I walk around with atlas in hand. The temple we visited was first built in 1200 and restored several times after fires and earthquakes. It was the first temple we had visited in China and there is a difference between Chinese and Vietnamese architecture.
In the afternoon we visited the zoo, but the cages were so shabby and some of the primates looked so forlorn, we left after a brief visit.

April 12: Sick like dogs but fly to Kunming:

We had a very quiet day recovering from stomach ailments and flew at night to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. Simao has a small airport with exactly 3 flights per day – all to Kunming. Kunming is the capital of Yunnan province and has a population of 3 million. However it is small potatoes by Chinese standards.

April 11

Simao is the centre of the tea industry in China and I wanted to visit a tea tasting and a tea mountain. The tea is grown on mountainsides in terraced fields so that the sun can reach every plant. However I was unable to find any travel bureau or even tourist information on the tea culture. So I walked into the FITTourist distribution company on the chance they might have tours to the tea fields. It was Sunday, but 4 people were in the office. When the girl at the counter finally understood what I was asking for she called in 2 other employees and they unlocked the display room so I could have a tea tasting and buy some tea. Then she offered to set up a tour that afternoon and I accepted. I found Joan and we returned to the company. We were served tea while the girl set up our tour. Then 2 young girls showed up to accompany us. They are 21-yeard old students studying English here in Simao. They were to be our translators. We were then driven to a tea factory where the manager showed up while we were doing another tea tasting. The manager packed Joan and I and the 2 students into her car and we were off to visit the tea mountain. It was a wonderful afternoon. The students were very nervous at first but they did a great job translating and the teashop manager was a very knowledgeable girl. She took us through the fields and explained the workings of the tea process. It was everything I had hoped for, but when they dropped us off at our hotel they refused any payment. They had just spent 4 hours showing us around and they wished us a happy visit to China. Wow!

April 10 Simao

First on the agenda – get money. We went to the first branch –ATM not working! At this point, we were getting very stressed – actually, long before this point! One of the bank workers sent us off with an escort to another branch –ATM not working! On the third try, we finally were able to get cash. We learned our lesson and withdrew our limit twice today.
The rest of the day we walked the downtown area, got laundry done and found an Internet café. Simao is a modern town a world apart from the mountain villages and towns we had been through. One of the customs we observed was the morning bird owner gathering. At sunrise several bird owners showed up in the central park and hung their birdcages in the tree or bushes. The birds loved it and they sang loudly and jumped up and down in their cages. It was pleasant just to sit and listen.

April 9th

We got up at 6am to catch the 7 am bus to Simao only to find it was not leaving till 9.If we had not already decided that the next leg of the trip would be by plane, this bus trip would surely have pushed us to do so. The 145 km trip took from 9 AM till about 4:30. We followed a road over several mountain passes. The road was, unfortunately for us, about 80% under construction. It was a long, dry and dusty trip.
As we followed our travel plan, we were hoping to get to Bank of China ATMs in towns where we stayed. Again, unfortunately for us, there were no branches after Hekou, our very first city. When we arrived in Simao, we had about 30 yen(about $4) but had been assured there was a Bank of China ATM. Indeed, there were several branches but all of the ATMs were “temporarily out of service”. Tim was able to change some dollars and Euros that he had so we had some money to pay for a hotel (no luxury digs!) The big question was whether the ATMs would be working the next day.

April 8: Xinjie to Jiangcheng via Luchun

At 7:30 we boarded the bus again and off we went. The first bus ride went well. The only problem was that I couldn’t stop to take pictures. For 100 km we went up and over mountain passes and past hillsides of rice terraces. The hillsides were every bit as beautiful as those around Xinjie, but without any viewing stations. We got into Luchun only 20 minutes late.
The next bus to Jiangcheng left in 10 minutes so we just made it in time. However, Joan had to visit the WC so we delayed the departure by 5 minutes. The driver seemed unconcerned because we picked up 4 more passengers during those 5 minutes. The adventure started 20 seconds later when the bus stalled on the bus station up ramp. Two passengers blocked the wheels with stones and then the driver became a mechanic. He had a tool kit on the bus and he opened the engine cover inside the bus and got to work. The engine kept stalling because gas was not flowing. 1 hour and 2 phone calls later the bus was declared fixed and off we went. Again the ride took us through impressive territory. The hillside terraces remained but now we started seeing tea fields. They looked like well trimmed hedges all growing neatly in rows. The ride was going well, we were averaging 35km per hour, and then we hit construction. The river we were following had been recently dammed. The original road was underwater and we had a dirt road through the mountains for 30 km. Now we were dusty and dirty as well as late when we arrived.

April 7:

Today was a rest day. We wasted a lot of time trying to access our Email and phone our daughter. We eventually accessed our Email but we never did get a call through to Katherine. I have heard you get paranoid after a few weeks in China and I believe it. Several web sites are inaccessible here and I’m not sure I will be able to post my blog. I haven’t seen a wireless signal yet. We had a cup of tea with a couple from the Czech Republic who had their map and guide book confiscated at the border because Taiwan was marked as independent.

Joan and I went for a walk in the terraced fields today. We descended about 200 steps then walked 1 km through the woods and then passed through a small village before entering the terraces. As we passed through the small village we saw 4 couples having a community meal and they invited us in. I was hungry so we accepted and sat down to eat. I must look malnourished since she gave us a bowl of rice that would serve 8 people. Then we had a choice of several unknown dishes. I recognised egg and I had some; then some meat; then some green peppers and then some unknown stuff. The food was good. However when I tried the homemade firewater, it was terrible. I’ll stick to store-bought beer thank you.

April 6: Xinjie

Our driver for the day showed up at 5:30 am. We were off the see the rice terraces that make this area famous. We were to be at our first stop for sunrise. We were not alone. This district has made tourism a paying proposition by publicizing the best spots for viewing and running photographers tours that start with sunrise and end with sunset. Our driver certainly knew his way around. We had a good day of photography and our driver taught us a bit of Chinese also. We were on the road from 5:30 to noon and then from 4 pm to 7:30 and we covered far more territory than I thought possible.

PS from Joan
It was fun to have our personal driver so that we could stop wherever we wanted. The terraces cover the hills everywhere you look. A lot of the terraces were dry as they are having a severe drought here. Many had water but no rice growing yet. The patterns created by the terraces are beautiful. It is mind boggling to think of how much work it took to create them. I would be very fit if I had to walk down to the terraces to work and then back up to my village at the end of the day.