London: Shanghai Photos

Here are three photos of Shanghai.

Texting in the metro, E Nanjing Rd pedestrian walkway, and view of buildings near Moganshan Rd.

I'm heading back to New York tomorrow....

London: The Fastest Train and the Longest Day

I'm back in London, and I've managed to stay awake until 9:30 PM GMT, so right now it's 4:30 AM in Shanghai.

Today has been the 2nd longest day of my life (beat by my day of travel between Malaysia and New York four years ago).....

The 20th of June began in a bar in Shanghai, near People's Square. I was there with Noelia and Belén, both Argentinians living in Shanghai. I connected with Noelia through a mutual friend in San Francisco, so on Friday night we went out for Sichuan food for my last dinner in China. Getting to and from the restaurant (and the bar afterwards) involved longs walks through the French Concession, which was fun to see at night.

The bar was close to my hotel, so I walked home, but not before stopping to buy some stir fried rice cakes from a street vendor near my hostel. By this point it was close to 1 AM.

I only ate about 1/2 of the noodles, then did some packing up, then eventually went to sleep around 2 AM. I woke up at 6:45, showered, finished packing, and then went out to look for a bit of breakfast. The street near the hostel was quite lively early on a Saturday - like my hostel in Kowloon, this hostel is near a street with lots of pet stores, and apparently 7:30 AM is a good time to go pet shopping, since many people were. But I also found a nice spot that sold cruellers, soy milk, fried sesame balls and other breakfast snacks. I bought a scallion flat bread, three sesame balls and a soymilk, then headed back to the hostel to check out and leave.

I took the metro to the Maglev train station. The Maglev, which connects the eastern part of Shanghai to Pudong Int'l Airport, is the fastest train in the world. However, it only got up to 300 kph on my journey - at other times of day, it goes over 400 kph. It was still a cool train though, and certainly an efficient way to get to the airport.

Airport check-in was a breeze, and Pudong Airport is quite big and nice. I used up my cell phone minutes saying goodbye to Leo and Kelly, had some dumplings and udon soup for breakfast part II, then at 11 it was time to fly to London.

The 777 was pretty comfortable, but full. But the seats on the 777 felt roomier than on the 747, so this flight was nicer. I watched 3 movies: A Beautiful Mind (I hadn't seen this, I thought it was good), He's Not That Into You (this ranged from good to nearly unbearable depending on who was in the scene - Scarlett Johansson was at the top of this spectrum, while Drew Barrymore was at the other end), and Jurassic Park (I'd seen this one before, but not in many year). I realized in the shower just now that not only do the first two movies star Jennifer Connelly, but they also both have scenes where she gets really angry, screams at the top of her lungs, and breaks a mirror.

I had the Asian Vegetarian meals this time - neither hot meal was very good at all, and the salad side dishes weren't nice at all. So even though it was vegetarian, it wasn't very tasty. The woman next to me had the normal meals, and they didn't look all that much better.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but at the moment I'm exhausted, so I'm off to collapse.

Shanghai: Xiao Long Bao Galore

I think the last time I posted to the blog was in Mangshi - even though this was Monday, it seems like ages ago. Since then, I:

Had dinner at a Bai restaurant outside Mangshi with two of Leo's friends.

Slept well in my fancy hotel.

Had excellent noodle soup for breakfast in Mangshi, and some pumpkin-like-flavored pancakes from the market.

Flew to Kunming (had excellent views of the Mekong River from the plane)

Met up with Miao Miao and Jakob (professor in London next year) and ventured to the outskirts of Kunming.

Ate cold noodles with Miao Miao and Jakob.

Ate at a mushroom hot pot restaurant in Kunming.

Spent a night in Kunming.

Had super spicy noodle soup for breakfast in Kunming - too spicy actually, I couldn't even finish it.

Flew to Shanghai.

Checked in at my hostel in Shanghai, where I chose to get my own room - worth the extra $ since I can have room to pack and I control the AC.

.,....so I have been in Shanghai for two days now, and I leave tomorrow for London, then back the USA.

I have eaten three times at an XLB (xiao long bao, aka soup dumplings) place that was recommended by Colleen. I went once by myself on Wednesday, and I had the plain pork XLB. Then yesterday I went with an Irish couple I met, and we had the egg and pork XLB and the chicken and pork XLB. And finally, today I went back and had the more expensive crab and pork XLB. In order of best to worst, I would rank it: crab, chicken, plain, egg..........but they were all pretty good. Other than XLB, there is only soup (I tried egg and seaweed soup which is good) and sodas to drink.

Other food highlights have included: pan fried dumplings, sauteed river shrimp, cold beef noodles, and fancy dim sum with the Irish couple.

Aside from food, I've done some walking around and a bit of sightseeing. Thanks to Nathan's recommendation, I went to the Jewish museum in Shanghai - it cost 50 RMB, which is a bit expensive, but was well worth it because it was a good museum and I had a private tour guide. The neighborhood had a large Jewish population between the 1900's and 1940's, up until after WWII, and the museum told the history of the Jews in Shanghai during this time period. The museum is housed in the old synagogue, and in a nearby park there is a plaque in Hebrew, Chinese and English commemorating the Jewish people who used to live in the neighborhood.

Walking around the neighborhood near the museum was nice too - not touristy at all, and lots of local street life. I peaked into a wet market, and saw all the veggies, meats and fish for sale. Most was quite similar to what I had seen in Yangshuo, though there were some different products as well.

I went with the Irish couple to Moganshan Rd, an area with art galleries. This was interesting, and reminded me of Brooklyn. Overall, Shanghai reminds me a lot of New York City - I think it's the first time anywhere has reminded me of New York. There is a lot of construction going on here, and Shanghai seems to be frantically preparing for the 2010 World Expo - there are reminders everywhere that this is happening in 2010. I'm not sure what anyone will talk about once it's over.

Shanghai is a very interesting city - like New York, it seems like there are endless numbers of things to see, do, eat and buy. It's very hot here though, so walking around tiring. But I'm glad I got to see Shanghai, and I think it's likely I'll be back again.

I have to log off the internet now, and this is likely to be my last post before I'm back in the UK/USA.......so farewell China, it's been fun! I

Mangshi: A Few More Pictures from Ruili

Picture A) Crossing the Shweli River on the way to Ruili

 

Picture B) Night Market - I had two juices, some Burmese fried noodles and some Burmese pickled vegetables. Unfortunately my stomach wasn't feeling well enough to try the Myanmar beer.

 

Picture C) Park near the Market

 

Picture D) Wide palm-lined avenue

 

Picture E) Women dancing in the mall plaza

Mangshi: Posh Hotel

I am staying at a fancy hotel tonight. Leo, who is from Mangshi, recommended to me, and told me I could get a room for 80 RMB, which is about 12 US dollars - a splurge, considering I haven't paid this much for a room since I left Guangzhou.

 

But this room is worth it - niceness-wise, it's about equal to a nice Marriot hotel, except it has a huge bathroom (the bathroom itself is bigger than the entire room I had in Hong Kong) and a very nice sitting area. It's set back from the street, so it's quiet, and my room smells fresh and not smoky. I have my own water cooler (hot and cold), TV, DVD player, soft towels, good mattress, etc.

 

So hopefully I will sleep well tonight before my flight back to Kunming tomorrow!

 

 

Mangshi: Buying a Card Reader

I came into this internet cafe about 1 hour ago, and once I got settled on my computer, I asked if they had card readers to load pictures. Sometimes places do (like in Tengchong), but here they didn't. I really wanted to upload pictures, so I decided to just go buy one, so I have one to use for the rest of my trip (and afterwards too).

 

I went outside the internet cafe and found a nearby department store. Using sign language and pointing to my camera, I quickly found the camera section of the store, and identified the cheap card reader I wanted. There were two girls working at the desk, and I asked them how much it cost. They took the card reader, typed the number on the barcode into the computer, but nothing came up. Eventually, one girl said in English, "I don't know, sorry" and then they both just kind of sat there.

 

This was a big department store (multiple levels, kind of like a K-Mart) and I had a hard time believing that no one could tell me the price of the item I wanted. So I suggested (with sign language and noises) that they scan it using a scanner....or really anything, since I wanted to buy it!

 

They brought the card reader over to another woman, who also didn't know what to do, so then they called someone on the phone, who eventually told them a price of 25 RMB. I bought it, since that's only about 4 dollars and will be useful for the rest of my trip.

 

So the whole process in the store took almost 15 minutes. But now I have a card reader.

Mangshi: Burmese Ruili Part III

After breakfast, I continued my wandering through Ruili and made my way to the jade market. Ruili is very famous for its jade market, and a lot of the jade comes from Burma. There seemed to be at least 300 shops selling jade, rubies, gold, silver and wood carvings - most too expensive for me to be at all interested.

 

It certain parts of the market, everyone was Burmese. There were Burmese food carts, where I spotted someone else eating mohinga. There were also stalls where Burmese men were preparing betel nuts - I took a picture of a man folding up the betel nuts in the leaves. Inside the jade market, I was summoned over my a Burmese man who spoke some English. He invited me into his back room to chat - I told him that I definitely wasn't going to buy anything, and he said okay. We were joined by several other younger Burmese men, so we all sat there chatting. Like I experienced in India, they all wanted to know why I wasn't married, and they asked me questions about what I do. I told them I study food and was very happy to have tea leaf salad and mohinga.

 

The men I spoke to were all Muslim, and they said that in Ruili about half of the Burmese people are Muslim, while in Burma it's a smaller percentage. One man asked if I had been to Burma, and I said no. He said that the government of Burma was bad, and that things were better in China.

 

During our conversation, we were interrupted because a man from Guangdong who was shopping for jade came into the shop. He came into the back room and was seated next to me, so I got to watch as the man who invited me in tried to negotiate a sale. He was able to speak some Cantonese to the shopper, but after inspecting various pieces of jade, he decided not to buy anything and left. I stayed around chatting some more, then I left when a second customer came.

 

I went to a stall outside the market and tried some savory sticky rice topped with shredded coconut. It was very good so I decided to try more - a small bowl of beef curry (realllllly good), paratha, potato and chickpea curry and some pickled vegetables. Tea was provided in thermoses on every table.

Mangshi: Burmese Ruili Part II

Ruili was an interesting place to visit. Parts felt much like other Chinese cities I've visited (though with more palm trees), while other parts felt really Burmese, and quite different than anywhere I've ever been. The Burmese culture that I observed (mainly food, dress and appearance) reminded me more of places like Chennai and Madurai in India than anywhere in China.

 

My hotel last night cost only 50 RMB and was very comfortable - I slept well, and this morning my stomach felt a bit better. The shower, I should add, was one of the best I've had in China! I took another one this morning since it was so nice.

 

After a successful search for tea leaf salad last night, I set out this morning to find mohinga for breakfast - a catfish noodle soup which is a very common Burmese dish. It was even mentioned in the small Burmese food glossary of my China guidebook, so I knew that I had a good chance of finding it in Ruili.

 

The search didn't take very long. I found an alley with Burmese writing on some of the restaurants, and lots of Burmese people (easy to tell because the men wear longyi and the women wear colorful skirts or sarongs). I asked at one place if they had mohinga, and although I couldn't tell for sure, I realized that they didn't, since I could look into all the pots they had cooking. So I continued down the alley and into a big market.

 

As I was browsing in the market, a Burmese man and his 2 year old son walked up to me and said "Mohinga" while signaling an eating motion. Apparently news had spread that the white dude was looking for mohinga, and he led me back into the same alley to a different cart run by a woman who was making mohinga. Score!

 

I got to choose which kind of noodle I wanted - I chose egg noodles - then the woman put the noodles in the bowl, added lime and cilantro, some crunchy fritter pieces, a bit of dried chili flakes, and the catfish soup broth. It was delicious, and while the broth was thinner than versions I've had in San Francisco, the taste was quite similar! My small bowl cost 3 RMB, or about 40 US cents.

 

I sat at the table in the picture, while the woman's mother (also in the picture in the background) poured me tea.

 

I got to practice my Burmese today too. Jayzu tinbade = Thank You

Mangshi: Burmese Ruili Part I

I spent the morning in Ruili, then came to Mangshi this afternoon. I'll be here tonight, then back to Kunming tomorrow on a plane.

 

Here are some pictures I took of the restaurant where I had tea leaf salad. Later, at the night market, I saw that other Burmese places also had these same packets of tea leaves and crispy garlic, so it's a food available in many places in Ruili.

 

 

Ruili: Tea Leaf Salad on the Burmese Border

This morning I left He Shun and went to the bus station in Tengchong to catch a bus to Ruili. It was 9:45, and then 10 AM bus to Ruili was full already, so instead of waiting till 11:00, I hopped on the 10:30 bus to Mangshi. I got a good seat with legroom and a window - it was a minibus, and at times we had so many passengers that people had to stand.

 

The road we took toward Mangshi started out paved, then turned to a cobblestone-like consistency as we went up a huge ridge, with great views on both sides. After that the road was little more than a dirt track at times, as we past lots of tea plantations before heading down again (paved again) toward the Shweli River. The bridge across the river was a single track suspension bridge - along with half of my bus, I chose to walk across ahead of the bus, then got back on the bus on the other side. After the bridge, it was only about 12 km to Longling, a town on the main road between Kunming and Ruili....all of a sudden, the road had smooth pavement with street lights every 50 meters with pictures of nearby sites. This lasted for all 12 km - these street lights seemed a bit over the top and pointless, especially given the condition of the road itself only a few miles back. But whatever...

 

In Longling, our minibus stopped for a while, so I decided to switch buses there. I caught another minibus that was leaving for Ruili immediately, so I made a quick connection but didn't get to have any lunch. The drive to Ruili took about 2.5 hours, which made my entire trip today about 6 hours long. After Linglong, we made a big descent into Mangshi, where it became more tropical, with sugarcane and coffee growing all over. We passed right by a Burmese border crossing in Wanding, and I could see hills and buildings in Burma. Finally, we arrived in Ruili, a city with wide palm-lined boulevards and very calm traffic - mostly bicycle rickshaws and electric scooters. Here in Ruili, I'm closer to Delhi than I am to Beijing.....not to mention Rangoon, Calcutta, Bangkok, etc....so it's definitely a different scene from the east coast of China.

 

I found a hotel, and needed Leo's help checking in since the receptionist didn't speak English and didn't even attempt to communicate anything to me in sign language....she just sort of sat there until I called Leo, despite the fact that I was trying to hand her money and communicating the best I could. But eventually I got my room, then set out to find food (I hadn't had lunch). Since I was so hungry, I got a small noodle soup at the first place I saw...then I went in search of Burmese food.

 

I found a small street with lots of stalls and restaurants, all with pool tables. Apparently it's a pool-playing street. Halfway down the street, I spotted a restaurant with Burmese writing on the awning. I asked if they had La Pat Dok (Tea Leaf Salad, one of my favorite Burmese dishes that I often ate in San Francisco), and they did! The tea leaves and cripy garlic and lentils came in little plastic packets from Burma, and I ended up buying 3 more of these to bring back to the US (they are packaged, so I think they will be OK). The woman who made my salad chopped tomato, lettuce, onion, garlic and chili and mixed them with peanuts, the fermented tea leaves and the crispy garlic and lentils. It was excellent, and I took several pictures of the salad and the restaurant. The manager also came over to take a picture of me on his cell phone - I'm guessing I am the first American to ever come there and order tea leaf salad. The manager spoke a bit of English, but he wasn't Burmese - the woman who made the salad was though, and they were playing Burmese music videos on the TV in the restaurant. She was singing along.

 

There is a lot of Burmese influence in this city - Burmese writing everywhere, women dressed in colorful sarongs, all sorts of interesting looking curries and vegetable dishes on display at local restaurants. It's probably as close to being in Burma as you can get without actually entering the country.

 

After tea leaf salad, I walked around a bit more and then caught a bicycle rickshaw back to my hotel.......this evening my plan is to relax a bit at my hotel, then head to the night market to find more food. My stomach is feeling a bit iffy today, so I will need to be careful foodwise, but hopefully I'll be okay. There is no card reader here, so I can't load any pictures, but perhaps I'll be able to another day.

Tengchong: He Shun Village

He Shun village is really beautiful, surrounded by green hills and rice paddies. I walked around the town and took some pictures, then went up into the hills (fields, tombs, forests) for a view of the sunset. Notice the pagoda on the top of the mountain in the picture with the clouds and pine trees.

 

 

Tengchong: The Road to Burma

Yesterday I said goodbye to Mark, and to Dali, and headed off on my adventure westward toward Burma.

 

I couldn't buy a ticket to Tengchong in Dali Old Town, since the buses left from Xiaguan (Dali New Town, about 15 km away). So I took a public bus most of the way to the bus station in Xiaguan, then walked the rest. I got there at about 9:15 AM, in time to buy my ticket for the 10 AM express bus.

 

I was impressed by the public bus system in Xiaguan and Dali - the buses were big and spacious, and seemed to also be frequent and efficient (and easy to navigate).

 

I was assigned an aisle seat for the busride, which was annoying because I wanted a window. Luckily a man in a window seat in front of me switched to a different seat in the back of the bus, so I took his window seat, next to an older man.

 

Nobody on the bus spoke English. It took a while to actually leave Xiaguan, but once we did, the road was fast. The expressway has been extended west from Xiaguan - I'm not sure how far it goes now, but the aim is to connect it all the way to Ruili and the Burmese border. This new highway means travel times are a lot shorter - we drove on the highway for two hours, through several tunnels and across the extremely brown and fast moving Mekong River, and then stopped for bathrooms and lunch just outside Baoshan.

 

The man who was sitting next to me on the bus paid for my bathroom ticket, which was very nice of him. I think he thought I wouldn't know how to pay on my own. Later I shared my rice crackers with him. After bathroom, it was lunchtime, and everyone from my bus went into a restaurant where most people got a meal on a silver tray - much like a thali meal in India. Everyone got a small serving of several dishes: green beans and potato salad, eggplant with chili, cold salad of ma-la fatty pork, pork with pickled veggies, french fries, peanuts and rice. On the side everyone also got a bowl of vegetable and garlic soup. This cost me 10 RMB, which is about $1.25. While nothing was outstanding, I definitely prefer Chinese rest area lunches to American rest area lunches.

 

After lunch, we continued through the valley surrounding Baoshan, then went up into the hills again before making an impressive descent into the valley of the Salween River. The Salween River, according to Wikipedia, is the longest un-dammed (or however that's spelled) river in Asia...it starts in Tibet, then flows through Yunnan province before going into Burma and Thailand and emptying into the sea near the Burmese/Thai border. Many major Asian rivers go through Yunnan province - north of Dali, near Lijiang, the Yangzi River goes through Tiger Leaping Gorge before flowing north an east through Sichuan and out toward Shanghai....the Mekong flows south from Yunnan to Laos and Vietnam, and the Shweli River (which I would cross later just before arriving in Tengchong) is a tributary of the Irawaddy, which is the principal river of Burma.

 

At the Salween River, we left the highway to head west toward Tengchong on a smaller road. Down by the river, the landscape started to look a lot more tropical. I saw fields of sugarcane and coffee, as well as banana and mango trees. The bus got hot too, since it seemed like the air conditioning only worked when we were going downhill, which was only about 50% of the time.

 

We drove through a lot of forest - the least populated part of China I have seen so far - and then made our way down to the Shweli River valley, then it was about 45 minutes more driving on curvy roads before we arrived in Tengchong. As promised, the busride only took 6 hours (including the lunch stop), so it wasn't too bad at all - I was able to listen to my ipod which helped block out the movies blasting on the TVs in the bus, and the seats had decent leg room so I wasn't as squished as I was on the busride from Kunming to Dali.

 

When I arrived in Tengchong, I took a taxi straight from the bus station to He Shun, a small village about 6 km outside town. That's where I spent last night and I'll be staying there again tonight - it's very pretty and peaceful and there are a ton of nice houses and gardens, since many of the former residents are rich and have sent a lot of money back to the village. Tourists also come to visit the village on day trips, and there is a 30 RMB entrance fee, which I avoided since my taxi went straight through the gate without stopping. I will hopefully return to the village late enough tonight that the ticket collectors won't be working anymore, so I'll avoid the fee again.

 

 

Tengchong: All Around Erhai Lake

Here are pictures from various places around Dali and Erhai Lake.

 

A) View of central Dali from the West Gate tower.

 

B) View of Dali from the temple near Higherland Inn.

 

C) View of temple from the chairlift

 

D) Shuanglang Overlook

 

E) Shuanglang at the edge of the lake

Tongcheng: Dali Food Pictures

Here are some food pictures from Dali. Again, not sure what order they will show up in when the blog publishes, so you can play a matching game:

 

A) Cold Rice Noodles with Chicken in Dali.

 

B) Choosing Vegetables for the hot pot-like dish in Dali.

 

C) Individual servings of vegetables cooking in a communal hot pot in Dali.

 

D) Woman making traditional bread in Xizhou.

 

E) David and Mark getting ready to eat bread in the plaza in Xizhou.

Tengchong: Kunming Food Pictures

Just two pictures for this post.

 

Photo A) The big hawker center in Kunming was impressive, and I might have to go back there for lunch next week when I'm there again. Miao Miao told us that the city doesn't allow street food stalls anymore, so they have all moved to this big indoor food court. It was a lot of fun checking out all the local foods.

 

Photo B) Crossing the Bridge Noodles. I described this in the previous post from Kunming, so here is a picture.

Tengchong: Goodbye Yangshuo

During my last few days in Yangshuo, I went out to two big dinners with Leo, Kelly and Kelly's family - by this point, basically my Chinese host family. Here's a picture of one of the big meals, at a new restaurant in the center of town. The highlight was garlic bean thread noodles with cabbage (on the left part of the lazy susan). We also had roast duck, spicy beer frog with pickled vegetables, water spinach with salty tofu, pickled vegetables with chili, basket of fried shrimp, intestines and tea leaves, old duck soup with ginko nuts and longanberry, pork belly with taro served in bamboo, and sizzling squid.

 

I'm also including a picture of Leo and Kelly with Pippy (the dog) and Stella (Kelly's niece)

 

Tengchong: Old Stone Bridge

I'm in Tengchong now, far away from where this picture was taken. But I took this photo last week, very close to the cooking school in Yangshuo. I took a walk around the countryside and found this nice bridge.

DaLi: Erhai Lake

I'm still in DaLi, but leaving tomorrow for Tongcheng, and then on to Mangshi after that....then flying back to Kunming from Mangshi on Tuesday, then to Shanghai on Wednesday.....then there for 3 nights before going back to London, and then New York!

 

So now everyone knows my schedule. Good.

 

Just after my last blog post, Mark and I went to a great noodle place where we had spicy cold noodles with chicken - we both got small bowls for 3 RMB, but I wished I had had a bigger bowl, since they were really delicious. After that I was still a bit hungry, so we went to a place across the street where they cooked vegetables in a sort of hot pot and then the cooked vegetables were served in a soup. It had sichuan peppercorns but wasn't too spicy - but it made the tongue feel tingly with the 'ma la' sensation.

 

After lunch, Mark and I walked with our bags in the blazing sun up to the chairlif - about a 20 minute walk, which was a bit uphill and very hot. We took a chairlift up the mountain, where we were immediately summoned in to the Budhist temple, where we lit incense, said a prayer, wrote a wish in a book and then paid money to help our wish be granted. Mark paid 100 RMB for his wish, which meant he received a little charm on a necklace. I was cheap and only paid 10 RMB for my wish, so I got nothing, and probably my wish won't come true.

 

We stayed at a place called Higherland Inn - the views of the valley and lake down below were really nice, but it was kind of chilly out, especially at night. We took a small hike to a nearby waterfall in the afternoon, then just relaxed in the evening. This morning, after breakfast, we came back down the mountain and checked into the Jade Emu hotel, where the German girls had stayed two nights earlier. It's a really nice place and the staff are friendly, and they helped us organize a taxi to take us up to three different villages along Erhai Lake.

 

We had a good trip, took a bunch of pictures, and tried some good food. The villages had little touristy pockets, but for the most part people were going about their everyday lives and we had a good glimpse into traditional life around here. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures at some point.

 

But now it's off to enjoy the last night in DaLi before my potentially endless busride tomorrow.

 

 

DaLi: Jumping Off the Plate

Last night I asked my hotel where I should go to try good local food, and they suggested an area with lots of Bai restaurants a few blocks from our hotel.

 

I walked down there with Mark - many restaurants display all their ingredients (mostly veggies, but also fish, mushrooms, etc) outside the restaurant, so it's easy to point and choose. We ran into two German women who were also looking for food, though they were more wary of the "authentic" stuff...but they came along with us to the place we chose.

 

There was already a big table of Chinese people at the restaurant, and when I went over to investigate what they ordered, I tasted a cold pork dish and a chicken dish from their table. I ended up ordering the the pork dish, not really knowing what it was - then we went to the front of the restaurant and pointed to other items. I chose some mushrooms - there are several types here....and also some purple veggies (like purple spinach), and some garlic stalks.

 

The four of us shared these four dishes. The mushrooms were stir fried together with chilies, and they were really excellent. I'm not even sure what kind of mushrooms they all were. The garlic stalks were cooked with sliced pork filet, and the purple "greens" were sauteed with garlic and a bit of chili. The cold pork dish was pretty good, but I was the only one who ate the "pork" part - I asked someone at the restaurant to write down the dish for me, since it wasn't on the menu. Later at the hotel I got it translated - it was pig ears! But I thought it was pretty good, and nice and spicy. With one beer, rice and tea, the meal was plenty for the four of us, and cost about 10 US dollars.

 

Just before leaving, a Chinese couple sitting next to us ordered a cold dish that arrived at their table - it was a salad of tiny prawns. I glanced over as we were getting up to leave, and saw that the prawns were still alive, and jumping out of the salad! The waitress brought them a plate to cover up the dish to prevent the food from splashing and bouncing onto the table. This freaked out the Germans, who ran out of the restaurant, but I looked at the dish curiously, so they offered me a bite. I took a prawn that wasn't moving, and bit off the tail. It mostly tasted like the chili sauce it was served in....but I think it's the first time I've ever eaten still-moving seafood (or in this case river/lakefood)

 

DaLi is nice - we stayed in town last night, at a nice new hostel. It's pretty touristy, a lot like Yangshuo, but pleasant nonetheless. Later we're heading up to the mountains to stay up there instead of in the town...then I'll probably be parting ways with Mark and heading west toward Burma!

 

More soon

 

Kunming: Bridge Over Troubled Noodles

 

 

I arrived in Kunming yesterday, and I've been eating since my arrival. I traveled here with a guy named Mark who I met in Yangshuo, and the two of us met up with a woman named Miao last night - she lives in Kunming and will also be studying in London with me next year (doing Anthropology of Development).

 

We walked to a big hawker center for dinner, where we ate a lot. First we had a dish where we chose a bunch of veggies, tofu and other goodies, then had it boiled in a big communal hot pot, then ate it w/ chili sauce. The broth was already spicy and had lots of sichuan peppercorn. Next we had some rice noodles in a spicy bean sauce, and some banana roti. Then a huge pot of soup with sour bamboo shoots and fish. Then finally some tea flavored jello, and some pineapple/coconut/sago drink.

 

Awesome.

 

This morning Mark and I had Cross Bridge Noodles for breakfast - I got a big bowl of broth, and then some noodles, raw meat, a quail egg, and raw veggies. You dump them all in the broth and wait for it to cook, then eat it. Very good - this is Yunnan's most famous dish. After breakfast we got a bit more to eat - a rice pancake w/ peanut and spicy bean paste, and a steamed bun with red bean.

 

Kunming seems like a delightful city - I could definitely spend more time here, but it's off to DaLi this morning. So hopefully I'll report on more soon!

Yangshuo: Rice Terraces

On Monday I went on an overnight trip to the village of Ping An, about 3 hours northwest of Yangshuo. Ping An is a Zhuang minority village that is known for super steep rice terracing - the terraces are so steep and narrow that the farmers can't use machinery or even buffalo to plow their fields.

 

I could have taken public buses to get to Ping An, but this would have involved switching buses two times, so instead I went with a tour from Yangshuo. Most people do this as a one-day trip, but I chose to go with the tour on Monday, but then spend the night on my own and take the next day's tour bus back on Tuesday.

 

The travel agency where I booked my ticket didn't fully describe the tour, so I didn't know what I was getting myself into....but overall, the tour aspect of the trip was quite interesting, and nothing I'd ever want to do again. I had thought it'd be a small group going to Ping-An, but instead I was on a large bus with mostly Chinese tourists. My guide was nice, but her English was very hard to understand, especially since she was speaking into a microphone at the front of the bus. For the first half of the bus ride, they played an American horror movie on the TV, which had lots of blood and gory torture bits in it. I was able to block out most of the sound since I had my ipod with me. Then as we approached the hills near Ping-An, the tour guide told us about the Yao minority village where we'd be stopping before Ping-An.

 

At the Yao village, we had the option of watching a 30 minute show for an extra 60 RMB (the tour operator hadn't mentioned this either). I decided not to bother, which was good because one of the Chinese tourists on the bus who did see it told me afterwards that it wasn't worth it. We had to walk a bit to get to the Yao village, and our guide got off the bus first and held up a flag for us to follow! At this point I checked my watch, happy that at 3 PM I would be rid of the tour group forever!

 

The Yao women grow their hair really long, which is kinda cool to see I guess. From what I could understand, they only cut it three times: when they get married, when they have a child....and some other time too? I think I wasn't paying that much attention. But the traditional wooden architecture in the village was cool, and the air was clean and cool in the hills.

 

After the Yao village, we continued in a different bus up a super-windy road to Ping An. It was quite hazy, so the views weren't quite like the postcards, but the terraces were still impressive. We all had lunch at a restaurant in the town - the local specialty is bamboo rice and bamboo chicken - a hollow piece of bamboo is filled with food, then cooked over a wood fire. Both were quite tasty. By the time lunch ended, my tour group only had about 1 hour to spend hiking up to the different viewpoints before heading back to Yangshuo, so I was glad that I had extra time. I said bye to the group, then went to find the hostel that was recommended by my friends in Yangshuo - one of them had already called to reserve a room for me.

 

After settling into my room, and having a bit more lunch (the owner of the hostel suggested I try the local smoked bacon, so I did!), I latched on to an Intrepid tour group and went with them on a hike to the viewpoints above the town.

 

The Intrepid group had a local guide with them too, which was nice because he spoke very good English and knew a lot. The views were pretty cool, and it was nice to be able to hike with other people, even though the hike was short. The scenery reminded me a lot of Ecuador near the Black Sheep Inn - misty hills, farmers carrying vegetables, terraced landscapes. Ping An also has wooden architecture which is cool looking, so I took a bunch of pictures.

 

For dinner, I tried a local restaurant where I met and American guy named Jesse who just finished the SIT study abroad program in Vietnam. We shared some grilled beef, pumpkin w/ ginger and some fried noodles and chatted for a while. There are no real roads in Ping-An, only stone pathways and staircases that wind up and down the steep landscape, so in the dark it took us a while to find the correct path back to our hotels (he was staying in a hostel just next to mine).

 

We made a plan to meet up the next morning for a longer hike, but during the night a storm blew in, and by morning the town was fogged in and it was raining quite hard. We had breakfast of noodle soup instead of hiking, and then Jesse headed back to Guilin. As I walked back to the hostel, I noticed a wooden building with a big cauldron of liquid - I said hello to the man inside, then went in to discover that he was making tofu.

 

I ran back to the hostel to get my phrasebook and camera, and I watched the man make tofu for about 20 minutes. He explained some of the process to me, but since I barely speak Chinese, we were mostly limited to sign language and numbers. He heated soymilk over a wood fire in a huge wok, then poured that into buckets to mix with the rennet (or whatever the tofu equivalent is called), and then into the mold and press once the curds/whey had separated. All the waste from the process went to his pigs, who were making a commotion in a pen below the building. It was cool to see tofu being made, mostly using the same processes that people in the village have used for hundreds (thousands?) of years.

 

I spent the rest of the morning reading and writing, and after some lunch, I headed down to find my bus back to Yangshuo. Because of the rain, we ended up leaving early, which was nice - and this time we were in a mini-bus instead of a big bus, and there were only 6 other passengers. So the ride went more quickly too.

 

I was back in Yangshuo in time for dinner. Kelly had invited some other people over, so we had a very nice feast! I joked that it was in honor of my return! We had: steamed tilapia w/ ginger and soy sauce, sauteed crayfish, sauteed shrimp, bok choi, bamboo shoots, chicken soup with ginseng and ginger, and a whole sauteed duck! There might have been some other things too. Food that I eat with Kelly and Leo tends to be better than everything else I've had in this area - so I am gonna miss being here and eating good food all the time. I only have 4 more days in Yangshuo now....so I am off to make the most of it!

Yangshuo: Biking

I went on a long bikeride last week. I didn't begin with the intention of taking a long bikeride - I thought I'd be gone just one hour. I started heading north from the village where I'm living, along a dirt road that brought me through some other small villages and lots of rice paddies and fields. When I connected back with a main road, part of me wanted to turn around, since it was threatening rain and I had no umbrella or raincoat, but I was biking through new territory, farther from Yangshuo than I had ever journeyed, so I was tempted by the unknown around every corner.

 

So I kept going. I turned onto a different paved road that led up toward the hills, where I saw a few more villages and lots of orange orchards. It started getting hilly - and with my one-speed bike, I had to walk up some of the steep parts. At this point I could see on my map that there was a village wthin striking distance, although I am not sure if I ever really made it to the village - at one point I tried to ask some people where I was, but the language barrier was too tough, even with my map (which had town names in Chinese and English). But eventually I came to an intersection with signs in English - I could go back the way I came, or take a right turn to loop back a different way to Yangshuo.

 

At this point I met some other tourists who were also biking (and also a bit lost). We chose the new loop back to Yangshuo, which ended up being the best part of the ride. We went up and down lots of rolling hills - had some views of rice teraces at first, and then TONS of orange orchards - the scenery at some points almost looked like California, and it looked completely different from Yangshuo, which at this point was only 12 km away.

 

The last part of the ride was all downhill, which was excellent - down a winding road into the valley, and then into the center of Yangshuo. Overall, the bikeride was about 35 km.

 

What struck me most about this adventure was that the countryside here goes on forever. From Yangshuo I could bike in any direction, mostly on dirt roads or narrow paved roads, and go from village to village - the scenery changes quite quickly, but it goes on and on for hundreds of miles. When I was biking, I had an urge to keep going, because I feared that if I turned around, I'd miss out on the great view that was just around the next bend.

 

Now I have a few more days to explore Yangshuo, and I hope to do some exploring like this when I'm in Yunnan next week.