Things that go CRASH in the night!

VietNam has a pretty tricked out, state-of-the-art overnight bus transport system to move the tourists up and down and all around this skinny little country. And as with all the other southeast Asian countries, the drivers here are all totally insane.  They honk, they swerve, they not only use but require all the corners of the road.  And whether they're passing on the wrong side or overtaking others from the shoulder, you can rest assured that this maniacal behavior is standard fare in these parts.

But I had a sneaky suspicion that our little rice paddy daddy of a cheaufer was off his rocker when I had to buckle my seatbelt to avoid being tossed from my sleeper.  It was the sound of the windshield being smashed in, combined with the sudden loss of velocity, that startled even the heaviest of the snoring, slumbering guests.  I answered the cries and whelps of "What the **** was that?!" and "What the hell just happened??"  Our driver has finally managed to crash the bus.  It took him long enough; we'd already been into the journey for six hours.  I felt happier that he'd smashed our sleeper bus into the back of a 5-ton cattle mover as opposed to killing some motorbike drivers.  As he turned the interior lights on, the smartest of us got off the bus and onto the side of the motorway in the unlikely but possible event that the charter should explode from the leaking fluids gushing out the side.  Wise it was because the driver, who pretended to speak zero English, chose to leave our rear taillights off despite the hordes of upcoming traffic.  Are we a sitting duck? I do believe so.  As I've mentioned before, VietNam is crazy. And a rear-end collision of our bus while it sits stagnant in the highway in the middle of the night is probable.  I took a wait-and-see approach.

They don't even charge you extra for this service!

Fortunately, the engine is in the rear, and after it fired up, little daddy decided that we're going for it. We're gonna knock out the last 7 hours of this leg with zero visibility.  But not to fear, because he's not gonna let a little thing like not being able to see thru the glass deter his time schedule.  We've got some ground to make up from that annoying little delay.  As he continued on pelting it down the highway, swerving, honking, speeding and rocking, it dawned on me that we'll be lucky to make it down the coast alive.  Man, what have I gotten myself into over here?

Good Morning VietNam!!

What do you get when you take a full dose of airial bombardment, some artillery and rocket fire, mix it with a bunch of agent orange, a healthy dousing of napalm, throw in some B-52 night raids, a sprinkle of claymore fragmentation and add a whole lot of gun-em down and shoot-em up? You get a nation without many rules.  Is it fair to expect the contrary? I fear not!

Here in Hanoi, there aren't many rules to be followed.  Anything goes.  And as I have come to experience, a country that follows no rule of law can be quite an exciting and exhilerating place to be.  Hanoi pulses.  It thrives.  It is a vibrant, living, breathing, writhing organism unto itself.  The best way to handle this city is to jump in feet first and let the flow take you where it may.  And whether it's the museums or the French coffees, the spicy chicken Pho or the motorbike taxis, the souvenir T-shirts of Uncle Ho, or the twenty-five cent beers, seldom is the time when something will cost you more than 1 USD.  A beautiful thing I do concur.  The city is 1000 years old, it is loud, it is obnoxious, it is sheer insanity, it is chaos at its finest hour.  It is home to beautiful women, French architecture, lakes, parks, and tree-lined boulevards.  For those readers out there who are feeling stale, tired or bored with life, a visit to VietNam should cure your disease.  It is a Good Morning, VietNam!

In the Back of Beyond: Shangri-la

The Tiger Gorge Trail

On my way up to Shangri-la (elev 9500), I unwittingly put myself into the unwanted predicament of vertigo by allowing a couple of Aussies to persuade me into a 3-day gorge-trek above the Yangtze River just south of Tibet and the Himalayan Plateau.  The locals call this place the Tiger Leaping Gorge and it is among the deepest ravines in the world.  The trail is an ancient highway that was originally built by the Han Chinese as a means to ferry teas, silks, and opium from India, Nepal, and Burma to Southwest China's Yunnan Province.  I found it to be pretty harrowing at times because if you step off the trail, you die.  You will literally fall off the face of the earth into an abyss that runs straight down 3000 feet to the water.  But why would you fall off??  Because often, this trail is only 18 inches wide!  No railings, no lifeguards, no safety nets.  Just waterfalls cascading down from the 2.5 thousand foot vertical wall of rock to your left.  Cross the slippery slope and you live to cross another one later.  Turn back?  You're two days in already.  But the views are stunning.  These snow-capped mountains trump most places in this world.  Wise it is to let the goods-ladened donkeys and their sherpas pass as they approach; they are nimble and deft at these dizzying heights.  I'm glad I went but I won't be doing that again.

As for Shangri-la, I was happy to have my feet on solid ground when I got to it.  It's a funky little place with loads of Tibetan prayer flags doing their thing in the wind.  Shangri-la is home to a Buddhist Monastery that gives purpose to 600 monks who live and operate there.  It is also home to the world's largest Prayer Wheel.  The Prayer Wheel works like this... Inside of it there are 12.4 Billion Mani's (Om Mani Padme Hum's) and each time the wheel spins 3 times around, it lets off 37.2 Billion Mani's into the universe. How does the wheel spin?  By human effort only.  Each day, from morning until night, the people of the town come together and exert their effort to turn the wheel so the universe can have these billions of prayers sent out.  Chances are good that right now, on that hill next to that monastery high in the mountains of the Yunnan Province in a tiny old town called Shangri-la, the Prayer Wheel keeps on turning...

DaLi: No Starbucks Here!

Ancient Dali City - Yunnan Province

A one-hour train ride from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, followed by a one-hour train ride from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, followed by a 26-hour train ride from Guangzhou to Kunming (Yunnan's Capital City), followed by an 8-hour train ride to DaLi and now I am a happy man. This place is what I have been waiting to see my whole life.

Built in the 6th century, and rebuilt in 1382 A.D. after being conquered and destroyed by Kublai Kahn and his Mongol thugs, this city is medieval. Small, relaxed, and dirt cheap, it is surrounded by lakes, mountains and more ferrell Yunnan ganja plants than you'd care to know about. It's a stoner's paradise; comfortable are all of the loungy cafe's, beautiful are all of the willow trees that line the ancient boulevards, and soothing is the constant flow of mountain water being channeled down the sidewalks. Situated at 6500' elevation, the air is cleaner than not, yet the air temps are extremely mild thanks to the rain-shadow effect of the Cang Shan (Jade Green) Mountain range and DaLi's home in Yunnan Province, aka "The Kingdom of Plants" which is in the south of China and warm a lot. The main inhabitants here are the Bai people who settled it 3000+ years ago; they are the ones who established the Burma Road.

I have every intention of returning to DaLi and staying here awhile, to relax, hike and trek, live cheap and learn Mandarin Chinese at the University. It's a better place than most and it deserves my time.

Too Big for Comfort

Alright, well, I have been to some big cities before... NYC is quite large at five boroughs / 10.4 million, Tokyo weighs in at twice that with a population of 22 million, and Bangkok ain't no slouch. But until now, I have never been to a city so large as Guangzhou in south China. Originally known as Canton, Guangzhou was the starting point of the ancient silk highway; it's 2.2 thousand years old, spreads over 4000 sq. miles, and has a population of 59 million! It is not a tourists' town. Most people arrive here for business or to make a transit transfer from one of the umpteen hubs. I bought a map. It felt heavy. I unfolded it, steadied my gaze on the infinite sprawl, refolded the map, and tossed it away. Everything's written in Chinese.  And the layout is dense. Here in Guangzhou, the odds of finding your intended destination are ugly. There's too many streets, and the place is huge.  Then I set off to explore this boehemoth.

As I discovered the main river, and probably the bloodline of the city way back when, I noticed that it's best days had already come and gone. I did not taste this river for mineral composition or sniff it to determine the origin of its odor, but even to my color-blind eyes, I could see that I won't be bathing in it anytime soon.

As for crowds, they don't bother me and they almost never have. But Guangzhou changed all that on one October day. Now maybe it's that I have lived on Maui for too long, or maybe it's that a billion people is a lot of motherf++kers, but the crowds in the Guangzhou Main Train Station are in a league of their own. Getting a ticket and getting onto your train from here is both tough and demanding even for the strongest Chinaman. The absolute best one can do is to throw away all attempts at sanity and laugh at the situation.  To surrender to the crowds is the easiest way to get through this phenomenon. Moving down the corridors with thousands of Chinese who all want to be first in line feels like a river tide and to join the flow and not disrupt it is the only to survive being crushed by little people. Don't go too fast, but don't go too slow. Go just right and you will live to do it again later.

It is my opinion that Guangzhou's greatest attribute is that it was Canton, and with that comes a tremendous amount of great foods cheap. But, otherwise, if you ever get the chance to go to Guangzhou... don't.

Shenzhen, China's Largest SEZ

A Sunday stroll in China

Shenzhen, a sleepy little backwater not more than thirty years ago, has rapidly transformed into China's 5th largest city. After Chairman Mao's reign over China, the new leader (1975) declared to the world that China "is open for business." He set up 5 SEZ's (Special Economic Zones) and Shenzhen, due to its close proximity to Hong Kong, has experienced an annual growth rate of 45%, which is unmatched anywhere in the world. The northern part of this SEZ is walled off by an electric fence to prevent smuggling and to keep back hordes of people trying to emigrate to Hong Kong. There is a checkpoint when you leave Shenzhen.

It was recommended that I take a casual Sunday stroll in LaoJie while in the SEZ. This I do not recommend because if you take Tokyo's Shibuya and Midtown Manhattan on New Year's Eve, combine the two and double it, well, now you're getting into the realm of obscene population density one will encounter in LaoJie on a Sunday afternoon. The place is not for the faint-hearted and I really don't recall ever seeing more people in one area, ever. It's a far cry from Kahului, Hawaii.

A few beautiful dinners out with friends, some night clubbing, sauna bathing, dirt-cheap computer accessory shopping and a Chinese-style foot rubdown, and it is time to head onto "real China." Guangzhou... see you there.

Donnie, you are entering a World of Pain!

China is crowded full

Initially, when planning this trip, I considered journeying through China and then decided against it.  But as random chance surrounds us always, and after being invited in by an acquaintance I met while exploring Taiwan, I decided to take him up on his offer of a home-stay in Shenzhen pending approval from the Hong Kong-China visa relations office in Kowloon.  A 2"x2" facial photo, a lengthy paper application, a modest sum of money and a 4-day surrender of your passport gets you permission to enter China for two separate visits not to exceed 30 days each, the second visit to be used within six months of the initial entry which must be exercised within 12 months of visa delivery. Get all that?  I had to ask twice.

My experience with China thus far has been that it is the craziest and most maddening place I have ever been.  Relatively safe but not always clean, China is loud. Immediately upon passing the guards at the LoWu border crossing North of Hong Kong, the decibel level suddenly jumps to a steady, constant roar. It's the masses.  And these masses are Chinese. And Chinese are not Japanese.  The Japanese are quiet, reserved, orderly, and they conduct their social manners in a highly sophisticated way.  The Chinese are a seething mass of beings 1.3 Billion strong, each looking out for himself first and last.