Northern Yunnan: Hike to Yubeng Cun (雨崩村)

Note: I'm actually in the Seattle Airport now. In China I had to blog through email since blogspot is blocked, but apparently this one never sent and was relegated to drafts, so here it is.

I didn't get to Tibet. But I got a good slice of the Tibet experience: I saw the beginnings of the eastern Himalayas, I got winded climbing stairs at 3,000m, I saw a giant monastery that Chinese administration has sucked the authenticity out of, I saw massive public security buildings, I met Tibetan monks and laypeople who readily complained about authoritarian rule, and I saw shiny new schools with huge dormitories (necessary for far-flung village kids) and enviable sports facilities - hearts and minds campaign?

After Shangri-La I thought I was done with scary bus rides. Ho ho. The five-hour trip to Deqin was fine for the first half - new roads, good weather - but the second half was fogged in. Hairpin turns. Remains of several landslides that reduced the road to a single-lane. One overturned truck stuck in a gravel pile. Our driver was careful, but still, high up on a foggy mountain top, it felt like with any turn we might swing off into free fall.

Arriving in Deqin, the last major town before Tibet, I hooked up with an Israeli couple who'd also rode the bus. They were nice and grateful for my Chinese skills. I like when I can help people, but as anyone who has played translator can probably attest, people start to feel entitled to requests they would never dream of if you weren't there to mediate. Best example? "Can you tell him [waiter] how to make an omelet?" Answer: "No."

We linked up with two other hikers and the following morning took another horrifying hour-long van ride to the trail head. I was afraid the altitude would make it tough, but the five-hour hike to Yubeng Cun (translation: Rain Collapse Village) was easier than expected and included passing convoys of mules loaded with village supplies and forest alleyways dressed in prayer flags. Pictures to follow when I'm back in the US.

Yubeng Cun is tiny. Just 35 families, all Tibetan, and the economic mainstay is guesthouses. The trek has become popular with Chinese hikers and some foreigners, but we saw a lot less of the latter.

As it was Saturday when we arrived, that evening a bunch of village guys congregated in our guesthouse commons for drinking, darts and karaoke. To really get the party started, they ordered a whole chicken i.e. one that had to be snatched up from the yard and slaughtered.

Fine by me. But one member of our hiking group was a bald Buddhist French lady. So when a guy went out to take care of the chicken, she walked in a circle around him chanting a Buddhist mantra. Imagine me rolling my eyes farther back in my head than you thought humanly possible.

Why did this annoy me so much? For one, she didn't chant a Buddhist mantra for the stir-fried pepper and beef the rest of us ate for lunch earlier that day. Plus, these Tibetans have been Buddhist a lot longer than she has. Plus, the next morning she (jokingly?) told the sole remaining chicken to run away. 

Westerners are privileged in their dietary choices (especially those who can afford to travel). This village is a one-hour car ride plus a four-hour hike/mule ride/iffy tractor trip from the nearest town, and the people live - to relative extent - a subsistence lifestyle. So, ugh, don't tell their chickens to run away. 

The following day we hiked into the "Mystic Waterfall," where hardier people than me make pilgrimages to bathe (this waterfall is located above the tree line and there was snow on the ground).

That night I had a chat with a local guy. We talked about Buddhism, his family members who've ran away to Dharamsala, and life under Chinese rule. A lot of the Tibetans I met seemed especially happy to meet an American. In two days, I wound up trading away all my remaining American money to people excited to see dollars. I suspect this has to do with the notion Americans are sympathetic to Tibet. 

Favorite passing interaction of the trip? This one with a van driver outside Deqin.

Me: Oh look, there go the soldiers. [as military jeep passes by]

Him: Yep. Soldiers.

Me: Do you like them?

Him: [grinning] No.

Me: Yeah, me neither.

On a somewhat related note, the people least enthused about my Americanness on this trip were Laotians. There when I told my nationality, people quickly and politely changed the subject. No wonder as to why.

The following day we hiked out. It was downhill the whole way until we had to hike up to the van because there were rocks obstructing the path to the parking lot. This van ride was even scarier because it was just a gravel road with a bunch of switchbacks carved into the side of the mountain. At one point I was reduced to "Oh my god oh my god oh my god." We all sat on the mountainside of the van, as if that would save us from the precipice. Our driver was all, "Don't be scared, I do this every day!"

In Deqin, we switched to another van bound for Shangri-La. Two Tibetans rode along and I chugged a beer at their request (China: no open container law), which helped take the edge off the drive. 

It's amazing the lengths of construction up there to service relatively few people. I'm talking three-story concrete retaining walls built into the mountainside for stabilization (some of them crumbling in places...) Would've loved to do this drive with an engineer for an informed opinion.

I spent the night in Shangri-La and today took the most hair-raising bus ride yet. I pray/doubt that it can be topped: It was much flatter and all paved, but we actually saw a long-haul truck come around a curve, bust through the concrete guard blocks and roll over into the adjacent grass. I assume he took the curve too quickly, but I also saw a woman running out of the way, not sure if that was related to the cause of the crash. I hope the driver is okay. We didn't stop, but there were people in the area. I'm glad I only have three bus rides left. They're all day-time rides on well-maintained roads and will be of relatively short duration. 

Tomorrow I'm going up to Tiger Leaping Gorge for one more two-day trek, weather permitting.

Shaxi: A one tea-horse town

Yesterday I completed my Tiger Leaping Gorge hike. Anyone who likes hiking and plans on seeing China should do this hike. It was just excellent. And every few hours there are people selling sustenance, so it's pretty relaxed. I stayed in a $5/night dorm halfway through (the place is called Halfway Hostel, btw) and all you had to do was step out on the porch and you were eye-level with an epic mountain view. Oooh, it was so great. I'll post more details when I can get photos up.

This morning I took a bus and then a minivan to Shaxi. I met a German sinologist at the gorge who recommended I check this town out. Way back in the Tang Dynasty, Shaxi was a trading post for tea and horses and supposedly the buildings are relatively well preserved for China. Plus the surrounding countryside is bike-able.

I arrived in time to see the Friday market where all the local Bai people come down from the villages to sell and buy stuff. There were even a couple gentlemen selling bags of hair ... to put on your head.

I walked around for a couple hours but then it started raining so now I'm drinking coffee in the hostel with an adorable hostel doggy curled up in my lap. In a few minutes I'm going to go look for some local fried goat cheese. Mmmmm..

Ray's Grill, Vientiane

I've staggered my posts so as not to inundate the blog, thus by the time you read this I'll be in Yunnan, but I have one final note for Vientiane.

Vientiane. Didn't do much. Woke up several mornings telling myself I was going to bike around town to see temples, stepped outside, decided it was too hot. Temples-schmemples. Read books in a cafe instead. And you know what else? I didn't even eat the local food. 

I mean, I ate some of it. When I felt like it. I've been permissive with myself on this trip. And that means eating Western food where it's available. At bus stops where the bearded white dudes in harem pants are loading up on plates of slimy noodles (rest stop food: never good), I'll go to town on a trusty sleeve of Pringles that costs twice as much. 

On the backpacker trail, there's this subtle pissing contest over who's being the most adventuresome traveler (never tourist). Alas, I'm traveling alone and sometimes the best comfort is a Snickers. I'm a shameless flashpacker. 

That said, I hadn't had any remarkable Western food on this trip. Until Sunday.

Ray's, located conveniently up the street from my hotel, got good reviews on the Vientiane wikitravel so I decided to check it out and ordered a Philly cheesesteak. Sweet Jesus, it was so good the first bite made me feel patriotic. 

Bread. Melted Cheese. Red meat. Carmelized onions. They say a Western diet leads to early death. This sandwich? Worth it. I would describe my feeling while eating it as akin to the deep gratitude I get snuggled next to James on a Saturday morning when the old thing on the agenda for the day is making brunch and reading books. I'm a bit embarrassed, but I think this is my favorite thing I've eaten on the trip. I'm going back tonight.

The chef, the eponymous Ray, was manning the grill next to my table. Turns out he's from Seattle. Used to deal in antiques and had a company that built websites. But after the dot-com crash he moved to Asia where life is cheaper, not so tied to debt. 

If you find yourself in Vientiane in need of a melty, savory American fix - make this it. 

North to Deqin

I'm in Kunming, headed into Yunnan's Tibetan hinterlands on the night bus tonight. 

I could've cried at immigration: the extremely nice customs guy flipped through my passport and decided it was perfectly fine for me to enter China on my work visa. "But I'm not working anymore!" He said it was fine, that way I could save my tourist visa for next time, which is all fine and well except it expires July 26. Curses! $160 and one passport page down the drain...

On a related note: Chinese customs officials are doing something right. They are so much faster and friendlier than what I'm used to returning to the US. 

In the 24 hours I've been in China, my mood has oscillated between poles, one being "aw, this is nice, just like I remember, I could live here again." The other: "THIS IS AWFUL!" The latter I usually succumb to seated in front of a computer, unable to open almost anything remotely interesting - Facebook, myriad blogs, Twitter, the New York Times app on my iPod, Gchat... 

Guess I'll just have to look at scenery or something.

Back to China

I should've applied for a China visa in the US. Guess I thought maaaybe my work visa hadn't been canceled. It had been. Applying in Vientiane requires a stupid pile of paperwork, it was so frustrating that I had to resurrect my China mantra, the one I retired five months ago: "No why, Leslie. No why..."

I assembled everything Friday and headed to the embassy. There was a sign posted outside the office saying it was closed for Labor Day. All the rage boiled up inside me and I thought I might start cursing the heavens and gnashing my teeth because if the office was closed Friday there was no way I was going to get a visa by Monday and thus no way to make the Tuesday flight I'd already booked, but then I walked inside and they were, improbably, open for business. "Yeah. Sure you can apply for your visa here. Today."

Of course it's not that simple, you file documents at the embassy, but you have to go to a bank across town to pay for it. Ugh. Whatever, China. At this point, I wasn't even surprised, still running on the relief of being able to drop off my paperwork.

I wandered outside and wondered how I was going to get to this bank since there were no tuk-tuks in sight, but then a Chinese guy who was behind me in line stepped out. Maybe he had to go to the bank too. He offered me a ride and was all excited and surprised that I speaka the Zhongwen.

On the way to the bank, he talks to me about a middle-aged Chinese person's favorite thing (or, one of) to talk to a foreigner about: Chengyu. He's a businessman here in Laos. He manufactures hard liquor and charcoal bricks (I had to look up the word for the latter later, I just knew he kept mentioning "wood something"). He explains a chengyu to me about how a poor man is always trying to get rich. Where other people might see poverty as the hand of God, he says, Chinese people see it as something to overcome.

After I'm done in the bank he offers to drive me back to my hotel, it's not far out of his way. When we arrive he says he has a couple hours of work but afterward he wants to have lunch. I've already made it clear I'm not doing anything, so I agree.

The restaurant has views of the Mekong, with Thailand visible on the opposite bank. Since that's where my trip started, it felt a bit like coming full circle.

Over several plates of seafood, we talked about everything. Or mostly everything about China - Xi Jinping, rich Chinese people, nouveau rich Chinese people, the exhausting hurry-hurry culture of Shanghai and Beijing that made him opt to set up in laid-back Vientiane.

At the end of the meal, he says he wants to take me to Sichuan hot pot for dinner. At one point at lunch I'd slipped in the advisory "My boyfriend blah blah blah" anecdote. I got zero creepy vibes from him. He wasn't nervous. He wasn't trying to impress or charm me. And I, once again, obviously had zero things to do. So I said okay.

But back at my hotel, I started to get cold feet. The afternoon sun was so hot and my brain was already exhausted from speaking Chinese for two hours. Plus wasn't two meals overkill?

I try to walk a fine line between being a cautious person and not declining things based on outsized fears. So in this case the fine line was deciding I was going to go to dinner, but I emailed James with my hotel details, local cell phone number and instructions that I'd email him again in several hours after the meal. Plus I wrote down the number for Vientiane police and the 24-hour US embassy duty officer hotline. Like I said, cautious.

Dinner went off without a hitch. I didn't expect to be eating delicious spicy Chinese hot pot - the kind where they give you a separate dish of un-spiced oil so you can leach off some of the fire - in Laos. And I was surprised and pleased with how my Mandarin held up after five months without practice. When we were finished eating he asked if I wanted to join his friends for karaoke but this time I begged off. Then he had a waitress take a picture of us together and said how glad he was to have made friends, that I was the first American he'd really talked to.

Ah-ha. Of course. Here was a fairly educated Chinese guy - living abroad, interested in what's going on in the world - but who doesn't speak English. There aren't so many of us Chinese-conversant Westerners floating around. I guess I forget that after living in Shanghai and Beijing where we're a dime a dozen. That's why I'm two-meal worthy.

He dropped me back at my hotel and we exchanged emails and emphatic invitations to each other's hometowns.

And so, my day of preparations to re-enter China started with the worst of what I've learned to expect from my home of three years (bureaucracy) and ended with the best, good food and hospitality.

On to Yunnan!

Death in Laos

I wanted to write about my kayaking trip first, but I also want to write about something that happened beforehand.

Leaving Nong Khiaw, my original plan was to take another slow boat farther south. I headed down to the dock, but there were only five other people who wanted to go, two Laotians and an American family, which wasn't enough - boats only depart when they have a big enough group.

I waited around with the others for a couple hours. One of the Americans, a guy from Minnesota, noticed people gathering down by the boats. A massive crowd made its way up the stairs from the dock. A dozen men were carrying the limp body of a young, thin Laotian man.

My first thought was, "oh maybe he's really drunk." I think I thought this because it was the least sinister explanation for a man to be incapacitated. But no one was smiling and it wasn't even noon yet. Sick then? I said a little prayer that he would get better soon as all the men let him down onto the bed of a truck converted for passengers, then piled in on the benches on either side.

The American guy was more inquisitive. He asked the boat ticket seller and he said the man was dead. An electrical accident with the engine. My stomach dropped.

"Was he a worker?" was my first question. This man was coming off the same kind of boat I was supposed to board. Yes, he was a worker. He'd been working on the engine when it happened, the American guy told me. Even still, I felt afraid. I don't want to die in Laos, I thought to myself. There are people I haven't spent enough time with yet.

A group of European girls, who'd planned on taking a boat north, left the dock and went to the bus station instead. And actually, all the boat men left on the truck, so there were no boats leaving Nong Khiaw that day. I headed back to the guesthouses.

Later I learned from a villager that when the man was working on the engine he had an old cord coiled around his neck and it electrocuted him. I didn't do much for the rest of the day. Everything seemed strange and trivial. I had a delicious chicken salad with mint and lemongrass for lunch, the waiter was warm and friendly, I got a cheap oil massage, I Googled "death in Laos" and "electrocution, Laos" trying to make sense, searching for context... I felt out of sorts but also acutely appreciative to be alive when someone else was not.

There wasn't any reason to avoid the slow boats. It was a bizarre accident and accidents happen all the time wherever there is water. Still, I was happy not to get back in one when the opportunity came up that an outdoor company was looking for people to join a kayaking trip. And although ultimately this incident had very little to do with me, I guess I can say, now that my trip is almost over, this will probably have been the scariest and saddest moment of my journey.

Northern Laos

I've been slacking on the blogs. I got up this morning and headed to a cafe to catch up, but when I opened Facebook for some pre-writing procrastination, I learned my brother had a bad fall pole vaulting at a track meet. A few minutes of all-consuming panic followed. I called my Dad at the hospital and he said Billy was moving his hands and feet. The x-rays came back with nothing broken. He was released from the hardboard they had him strapped to and able to go home, albeit in pain.

A few hours later, I'm happy and relieved. Although left wondering, in the wake of a brief but draining panic, how I will ever have kids when life with them can be so scary? "You just kind of live through it," was my Mom's answer. But what if your natural inclination in times of crisis is to recoil into an inoperative ball of anxiety? Oy. A small comfort is that - if genetics have anything to do with it - my children will probably be wildly nonathletic. Pole vaulting? I doubt it...

So Laos!

Presently, I'm in the capital, Vientiane. After northern Vietnam, there was a grueling nighttime bus ride (the highlight of which was a Polish couple, my heroes, shouting "DON'T SMOKE" at a Vietnamese guy who lit up on our little, packed-to-the-gills bus immediately after a pit stop. The Polish couple was like, "We are also from ex-Communist country..." by way of sheepish justification for their stern rebuke).

After the mountainous, curvy, not-totally-paved journey, plus a couple hours at the border processing, I spent an afternoon drinking beer with fellow travelers in a do-nothing stopover town. The next day there was a six-hour slow boat ride down the Nam Ou to Nong Khiaw, a beautiful little village with a relaxed backpacker scene.

Nong Khiaw                                            

                                          
                                   

More child labor! Another hiking guide.

She asked me if she could have my binoculars and tried to pull money out of my wallet. Then asked if I wanted to buy a beer, or if I wanted to buy her an ice cream. I appreciate the moxy.

Cave   

I wound up staying a couple days, it was just so pretty. Unfortunately, my hotel was the buggiest place I've stayed yet. I left the light on at night so if I felt them I could see them. I also hoped they wouldn't be so bold when denied cover of darkness...

I couldn't get enough of the limestone cliffs and green riverbanks, so I decided to spend three days immersed in it on a kayak trip down the Nam Ou to where it meets the Mekong - a 123-km journey.

Future model? Lao girl in the village where we homestayed the first night                                            
                                       

It was great to see the river slowly. The guide pointed out things I would've never otherwise seen: a shaman performing a sacrificial ceremony for a tree spirit, dozens of villagers gold panning, a pair of hunters smoking an iguana out of a tree so they could shoot it with their extremely long-barrelled rifles. There were rapids on the river so my camera spent most the journey tucked in a dry bag. Sorry about that.

I did get a few shots, like of this gang of 10-year-old monks splashing in the river.

Getting ready to dive in                                 

Fun in the river

This was the second night. After we pitched our tent on the riverbank, I put on my swimsuit and joined them. They laughed a lot, mimicking me and practicing their beginner English ("Hello my name is..." "1,2,3,4,5,6,7!").

When I got out, I didn't want to track my sandy feet into the tent to change, but the sun was going down and the boys were lingering on the shore. After standing around a bit, I turned shrugging to my fellow kayaker, a Swiss woman, and said, "Well, if I were Scandinavian I would've already changed a long time ago." As anyone who's been in a dorm with a Swedish girl knows, those ladies don't give a hoot about getting nekkid. I think this is a cool testament to the gender-equality achievements of northern Europe. Guys think it's cool too, maybe not for the same reason...

So I went around to the side of the tent blocking their view, but as soon as I did, wouldn't you know, all the orange-robed brats started scurrying up the bank.

"You all should be ashamed of yourselves, I know exactly what you're doing - NAUGHTY! NAUGHTY!" I yelled and pointed (not really mad).

"Naughty! Naughty!" some of them parroted. There was also a "THANK YOU!" and an "OH YES!"

Lesson? Boys are the same everywhere. Even the orange-robed, shaven-headed ones.

The kayaking was tough enough I had the beginning of callouses on my fingers and palms and was totally exhausted every night. But in the end 123 km felt like an achievement. And navigating some of the rapids was pretty cool. Back in the US, I want to learn to Eskimo roll.

This view...

Pro Tip: If you stumbled across this blog looking for info on kayaking in Laos, I recommend Green Discovery. My guide spoke great English and was eager to explain everything along the way. He was trained in first aid and knew his kayak stuff.