Asia (South East)

Colombo-Beijing (via Malaysia,Thailand, Myanmar,Tibet) Feb/April 2007

This article is from Angie Whitehead. Check her website at http://www.srilankaundiscovered.co.uk

Malaysia 

  (exchange rate 1 US$ = 4 Malay Ringits MYR; 1 GBP = 7 Malay Ringits,MYR)

Having spent the month of January at my place in Sri Lanka, I took a night flight from Colombo Airport on 4 February (Sri Lanka Independence Day).  After a jungle detour to reach the airport (some minor terrorist activity on the main road) I embarked with Malaysian Airlines for KL or Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.  This was a 3 ½ hour flight with a 2 hour time change (forwards) so it was already morning when I arrived . 

KL airport is very modern and a train takes you to collect your luggage!  Visa formalities are simple – citizens of EU are given a free 3-month visa upon  arrival.  It’s about 75 km from the centre of town along an impressive palm-lined dual carriageway;  I had once more arrived in the 21st century and told my taxi to head for China Town where I had booked a room at the China Town Inn.  Unknown to me there were 2 but luckily they were close to each other, so I soon found the correct one.  The room was on the 3rd floor and had air-con, private bathroom and TV for MYR 100  a night, more than I usually spend but KL city is quite pricey.  I took a buffet breakfast at the next door Swiss Inn for MYR 11.

KL is a well laid out, clean and modern city and can easily be visited on foot.  The centre is Merdeka (Independence) Square, a well-kept park surrounded by  attractive buildings mainly dating from the British Raj, including the fine History Museum.   The National Musuem, set close to attractive parkland housing other attractions, such as Butterfly and Bird Gardens, is also excellent, with a special display commemorating Malaysia’s 50th anniversary of Nationhood (or Independence from the British).  Many Malaysians are of South Indian origin and Little India is an interesting part of town; I had an excellent Masala Thosai (vegetable pancake) here.   China town has a night market which creeps all over the streets after 3 pm and blocks the hotel entrances!  (These markets are found all over SE Asia).

The bus station was close by  so no transport problems, although I had to carry my pack there (fortunately it has wheels) since no taxi driver would undertake the ½ km journey and there are no poor people to act as porters!   I took  the 9 am  air con coach for about MYR 35 to Penang Island  - took 6 hours along a modern, well maintained motorway.  I got dropped just outside Georgetown, the capital and took a taxi to Batu Ferringhi, a town on the north coast of the Island, suggested by Lonely Planet as being more lively than its neighbour, Teluk Batung.  But as a lover of places more ‘off the beaten track’ I would probably have liked Teluk Batung better, as it is smallish and not commercialized like Batu Ferringhi, which even has a Holiday Inn! 

I  stayed at Shahini’s Guest House, opposite the beach, for MYR 50 a night (fan and private bathroom).  Plenty of places here to eat cheaply – pancakes for breakfast Indian style and Nasi Goreng (fried rice Malaysian style) for dinner!  Lots of people to watch on the coast (BF is a tourist centre both for foreigners and locals) and jungle to explore in the interior.  A taxi for 5 hours  to tour the whole island cost MYR 100.   Highlights are a funicular trip up Penang Hill (800 m high with superb views of Georgetown, the capital – Malaysians compare this view to that of Rio de Janeiro’s bay) and visit to the huge  Chinese temple nearby.  Snake temple was disappointing – very few snakes to be seen – and the Botanical Gardens were superb. 

Comment : All in all I was very impressed with Malaysia.  It is a modern country with an excellent infrastructure, pleasant and polite people (4 main ethnic groups – Malay, Chinese, S Indian and European), a low cost of living (between 4 and 7 times less than that of Europe, depending on the goods/services required.  The areas I visited were very westernized and the mainly Muslim population extremely moderate both in views and in dress.  Foreigners are well treated, English is very well spoken,  and swimwear is well tolerated on the beaches.  Weather was hot and dry with average temperatures around 28 deg. C and the timezone is Hong Kong time, which means that sunrise is around 7.30 am and sunset 7.30 – 8 pm. 

Thailand 

(exchange rate 1 US$ = 34 Baht, ;  1 GBP = 68 Baht)

Louie, owner of Shahini’s Guest House, had booked a minibus for me to go to Krabi, in SW Thailand, and it was a 5.30 am  pickup from her.  After picking up around 10 other people from their house/guesthouses we finally got underway on the motorway to the Thai border at Satao.  Citizens of EU get a  30 day visa free of charge. 

The minibus terminated in Hat Yei, a large town famous apparently for duty free purchases!  Here I had a 3 hour wait for my onward transport to Krabi (another minibus leaving again 2.30 pm to arrive Krabi 6 pm.)  The limestone karst scenery.was magnificent and there was no evidence of the Muslim insurgents said to be active in this part of  S. Thailand. 

On the bus I met Martha and Elise from Singapore, who invited me to visit their place there (more of this in my next trip report).  We were dropped in the centre Krabi beside a river  and  I walked to  the Thai Hotel, recommended by Martha and Elise -  price 330 Baht per night, for a room with private bathroom;  there was karaoke and girls (for sale?)  in the dining room every night, which I found out is quite a feature of many Thai hotels.  Krabi is quite a big town and a good touring centre for this region of S Thailand. It has a wide variety of  places to eat; simple rice and vegetable dishes will cost around 40 baht.  

Songthaw (pick up trucks with wooden seats each side behind)  shuttle back and forth to the beaches, a journey of around ½ hour.  The most well known is Ao Nang, which has clear water and those typical S Thai rock formations straight out of a James Bond movie.  These beaches are very commercialized and stuffed full of all types of western tourists.  It is from here I took a ferry to visit Ko Phi Phi, THE James Bond island, destroyed in the 2004 Tsunami but now almost totally rebuilt.  This is very pretty but very very commercialized  - there are even huge tents serving lunch to all the western tour groups! 

I also  hired a motor bike to visit the hinterland of Krabi , visiting interesting caves up cliffs, temples atop hill summits, a national park and monkey infested jungles.   I spent  6 nights in this area to cover up the Chinese New Year holidays then got an air-con double-decker coach to Bangkok, booked by one of the many small travel agents you find all over in Thailand .  The journey took 12 hours – air con and double decker showing films (Chinese fighting ones).  We stopped twice for meals – 11 am and 5 pm, leaving  8 am and arriving 8 pm, cost Baht 400 and distance about 900 km.  Scenery changed from the verdant agricultural areas of the south to the drier areas of the centre, passing by large tourist resorts on the east coast, the most notable being Hua Hin, which resembled Spain’s Costa Del Sol. 

I was dropped at a bus station and, unsure of my whereabouts, got a taxi  to the Royal Hotel,  the place I usually stay when in Bangkok.  It is at the end of Rajdamnoen Avenue, close to the Emerald Palace and Khao San Road and costs 1200 baht b& b; rooms are with private bathroom, TV and air con and there is a pool, a restaurant and an evening cabaret show (I don’t think the singers are for sale here!).  Bangkok is big, crowded, rather choked with traffic fumes, always very hot, but nonetheless charming, being a fantastic blend of the old and the new (ancient temples, palaces and modern style).   I spent 4 nights in Bangkok while organizing my  trip to  Myanmar. 

It was the King’s 80th birthday and the city was decked out in yellow with people wearing yellow t- shirts and so on. (most Thais wear western clothes).  I paid a little extra money (Baht 1200 instead of 800) and got my Myanmar visa in only one day.  I organized my flights and first-stop hotels with Orient Espresso, an excellent travel agency opposite to the Myanmar Consulate.  And so it was that after 3 days I headed out to Suvarnabhumi, Bangkok’s brand-new airport, for  Bangkok Airways short mid-morning flight to Yangon.   

Comment : Thailand is well organized.,with an excellent rail and road system  modern vehicles (apart from Bangkok’s tuk-tuks!), polite, friendly people and a great tolerance of western customs!  Foreigners are well treated everywhere and English spoken by those concerned with tourism. Weather was hot and dry averaging  32°C.  Sunrise is around 6 am, sunset at 6 pm; this is Bangkok time not Hong Kong time! 

Myanmar

(exchange rate 1 US$ = 1000 Kyat, pronounced Chat:no money changing facils so take cash)

Yangon airport is small and charmingly old-fashioned.  The hotel car met me, complete with English-speaking driver; we traveled through pretty wooded parkland, dotted with lakes, to the city centre; the hotel was not far from the main railway station and within easy walking distance of the Schwedagon, Yangon’s most famous pagoda.  

It was a little pricey – 25 US$ a night, incl. breakfast;  the room was small but with air-con, private bath and TV (there was even TV5, the French overseas channel!). 

Yangon itself is pretty rundown; indeed most of the buildings look derelict but are not!  There are wonderful examples of British colonial architecture, interspersed with golden temples, set in large compounds.  It was the dry season so falling leaves lay everywhere amid the usual litter and rubbish found in all South Asian towns.  A single-track railway ran parallel to one main road, leading to the river Ayerwaddy (Irawaddy) quayside, but also in a state of disrepair.  Potentially pretty parks were beset with weeds and pavements plagued by great holes and broken stones!

  I walked everywhere and so got a good feel of the place – after visiting the National Museum I entered a smart, air-con shopping mall to buy and ice-cream; I ate it on the steps outside watching the chauffeur-driven limos pull up to collect the affluent shoppers.  And I ate Korean rice in a fast-food restaurant in downtown Yangon, side by side with jeans-clad, mobile-phone poking young men and served by a charming girl, fluent in English).  Burmese food is rather bland and seemed to consist mainly of  rice and  vegetables, chiefly cabbage (the favourite vegetable); this can be had for around 500-600 kyats in local eateries. 

English is  well spoken in Burma and I even had an ex English teacher as my taxi driver back to Rangon Airport (cost of trip $7 ;  quite often either US dollars or kyat can be given in payment for goods/services.

I flew to Mandalay on Yangon Airways.  Mandalay’s brand new, relatively empty air-con airport is around 75 km from the town centre on a desert-like plain and I arrived just as the sun set.  An ancient and slow  Mercedes Benz with fierce cold air-con and a surly driver collected me for the 1 ½ hour trip to the Mandalay City Hotel, a new and expensive (US$ 40 a night) affair, complete with swimming pool and plant-filled foyer.  The room was excellent but the air-con was faulty – irritating for a price equivalent to a Burmese teacher’s monthly salary!  Mandalay has less of an air of dereliction than Yangon (or was I just used to it now?) and is laid out on a grid system with numbers for street names.   Its central point is the palace surrounded by walls and a huge moat.   Part of it houses the army and interesting slogans from the Tatmadaw (ruling political party) are draped over it.

Behind the palace is Mandalay Hill, at the base of which is a big complex of temples and monasteries.  The best way to get round Mandalay is on foot or to hire a cycle rickshaw for around $2 or so.  There are steps leading to the top of Mandalay Hill, covered by a roof (to keep off sun or rain) and it takes around an hour to get to the top (no shoes!)  for some great views of the town and the surrounding plain.  Avoid peak ‘tourist’ hours, like just before sundown for a tranquil climb!  Many stalls with food and drink and souvenirs can be found all the way up (this is common in all Burmese places of worship). People are friendly, pleasant and many like to practice their English.  I met another ex English teacher at the base of Mandalay Hill who invited me to her house 20 km away; she even told me where I could hire a bike to go with her – who said Burmese relied on fuel for transport? 

From Mandalay  I took a boat down the Aerawaddy ( 7 am start,  cost US20) to Bagan, an ancient city, now a mass of ruined temples.  The large boat took around 12 hours to make the journey and  horsecarts met it at the jetty to take passengers to hotels and guest houses.  I stayed at May Khar Lar, an excellent place overlooking the main street in Nyang U, for  US$8, including breakfast (private bathroom and fan but no TV!).  Temples are mostly too far to walk and can be visited by bike, by horse and cart or by cycle rickshaw.  There is not a great deal of motorized taxi transport in Myanmar outside Yangon.  There is so much to see on the temple complex;  some temples are close to the town of Nyang U, with people living around them, but most are far off, stretching as far as the eye can see.  Larger temples flush with stalls sell souvenirs and copies of George Orwell’s Burmese Days.  It is  very hot (around 37 deg C)  and dusty everywhere.  I browsed around the temples by bike and also shared  a horse and  cart  at $9 for the whole day with a new traveling companion – an aspiring Buddhist monk from Denmark.  We finished up viewing the sunset  from one of the temples, chased by some youthful postcard sellers who had made it to the outer reaches of the ancient city!  The following day we visited Mt Popa  at a distance of about 60 km,  climbing up the usual covered stairway for around ½  hour to reach the temple on the top of the hill.  The trip cost around US$ 20 for a van hire.  For a cost of US$ 7  I took the 9 am bus to Mandalay (I had thought this was a minibus Thai style but it turned out to be the local slow bus, stopping every 5 minutes to take up and put down people and full up with luggage both outside and on the roof!).  Myself and 2 Germans were the only foreigners on it and we were given window seats!  The scenery  was quite spectacular across a dusty plain, populated at random by villages of huts and bullock carts and across mountains to a more green and fertile area, passing the town of  Meiktila.  There were 2 meal stops – 11 am and 5 pm  - and the bus finally arrive at the depot on the edge of Mandalay – 7 km to be exact – from which I took a cycle rickshaw ( a very bumpy ride) to Royal Guest House (no more $40 hotels for me!), costing $7 bed and breakfast with private bathroom and air con (only available  when there was electricity; the guesthouse had no generator and this is rationed).  Not being a fan of dimly lit Mandalay by night I rushed out f or a drink at the Nylon Ice Cream Bar almost opposite  the hotel (a good choice of milkshakes but a poor choice for atmosphere as beggars cluster on the pavement outside) and a meal at Mann’s Café, where I had the usual travellers’ fare of  vegetable fried rice for US$ 2  (this café caters to tourists).  From Mandalay I took a pickup (van with open back and seats down the sides so that that the air, dust and fumes come in!) to visit  Amarapura’s longest teak bridge in the world, Inwe island’s ancient palaces and Sagaing’s hill temples – an action packed day which culminated in the loss of my camera up Sagaing Hill.. I  went to get a loss report from the local police; they were charming but didn’t give a loss report saying that the camera would surely be found; they took my address to forward it to me!)
The following morning I packed up to leave for China; my flight to Kunming was at 2.30 pm.  For $7 I got a taxi to the airport (no air-con and with a bad fuel leak!), which was virtually deserted.  I ate a slice of pizza for a big price (I thought it was a whole pizza!) in the restaurant . The China Eastern plane was small and I was put sitting beside the only other foreigner – a young man from Holland.  After a 1 hour flight which cost US$ 200 and crossed the mountains of NE Burma / SW China we arrived at Kunming,  Clocks forward again 1 hour to Beijing time!
Comment :  Myanmar is a great place – it’s like stepping back in time around 50 years to how Europe was at that time.  Infrastructure is poor, electricity supply is erratic.  People wear traditional clothes – lungis (long wrap around skirts) for men and women, with shirts/blouses. – and are friendly towards  foreigners.  Many paint their faces with thanaka paste in pretty designs, often to protect from the sun.  It was very hot  (35 deg. C), dry and dusty.  Sunrise is around 6 am, sunset at 6 pm. 

China

  (exchange rate 1 US$ = 8 Yuan ; 1 GBP = 15 Yuan)

Yunnan

Kunming is the principal city of Yunnan and has around 4 m inhabitants.  The airport is quite close to the city centre and was where I first realized that little English is spoken in China!  Immigration was simple;  I had obtained my Chinese visa in Colombo, Sri Lanka for Rs 3200 (around US$30) and it was  valid for 3 months.  The first impression was that I had arrived back in the West – everyone was wearing western clothes, in contrast to the traditional lungis of Burma, and smart clothes at that.  And Kunming was just so modern – wide streets lined with spring flowers and  with so many smart shops, cafes, restaurants, new-looking cars and buses; another world, another century away from dusty Mandalay.

I stayed at Hotel Camelia, at first sight a very smart hotel way above my budget, but divided into 3 parts – an expensive, a cheaper and a hostel!  I found this was common in China.  My room was in the cheaper part and cost Yuan 120  for a big room with private bathroom,.TV and electric blanket (no heating or air-con system!).and an excellent buffet breakfast served in the hotel’s art-deco dining room.   Kunming is called Spring City and this was Spring (early March) which meant that days were warmish (20 deg C) and sunny while nights were cool (7 deg C). 

I spent 5 days in the city, browsing around, visited  interesting museums, a fantastic botanical gardens with a chairlift to a nearby mountain, dotted with  temples (beware here – there was a Yuan 100 entry fee for the gardens, Yuan 40 fee for return chairlift fee and Yuan 20 fee to visit the temples at the top of the hill; this is very common in China, the first entrance fee usually will not cover all the sights you want to see)  and Dian Chi the nearby lake (another spelling could be Tien Chi – Heavenly Lake), complete with boats and tandem bikes (with places for 3 to sit!) for hire.  I had an hour’s boat ride for Yuan  20, punted by a young woman.   Kite flying is the main pastime in this area and the parks are full of kite-flyers holding huge wheels (the kite strings).  You can travel any distance in the city limits on excellent modern buses for Yuan 1 and get a plate of  vegetable fried rice for Yuan 5 in a café.  

I had developed a bad cough and cold in Myanmar (dust related I think) and had to visit the hospital for some anti-biotics.  This was a modern place, with signs in Chinese and English and  English-speaking help.  I was quickly seen and a prescription given, which  worked wonderfully well.  And all this for Yuan 15.  . As I was planning to visit Tibet I wanted to have the problem sorted because coughs can get worse in the high altitudes there!

From Kunming I took a coach to Dali, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, along a wide motorway, passing traditional Yunnanese wooden houses.  The aircon coach cost Yuan 40 and gave free bottles of water, the journey took 7 hours because of a breakdown en route.  Dali would have been an interesting old walled town but it is now a major tourist centre (local tourism) full of all types of shops, though mainly souvenirs, cafes and restaurants.  It is about 3 km from a large lake so I hired a bike to get around,  cycling out past the 3-pagoda temple complex to the lakeshore and then round the old city walls and up towards the hills.  The outer part of the town was a gigantic building site, new housing coming up everywhere ; many building site workers were women.  The houses clinging to the hillside were old and people were pushing cart-loads of coal up to them (fuel for the chilly nights and for cooking). The town is overshadowed by high mountains.  I took a chairlift up here to 3200m and it was bitterly cold! 

I stayed at  MCA Hostel just near the old town walls, where the taxi driver dropped me (the coach from Kunming stopped at Dali New Town, some 20 km from Dali Old Town).  This was good value as a buffet breakfast was  included for 80 Yuan, as well as free internet use.   The  room had a great view over the lake and a private bathroom, TV and electric blanket. 

From Dali I  moved on by local coach (I was the only foreigner on it) to Lijiang, only a 3 hour journey and at an altitude of around 2800 m.  Here I  stayed at MCA Hostel again (same ownership as Dali) for 60 Yuan a night, but this time no breakfast and no electric blanket though a private bathroom and TV.  The hostel has a very attractive setting on a hill overlooking the town.  Again the town is made for local tourism but is quite charming with old winding streets and  divided into an old and a new part, overlooked by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.  Tours can be taken to visit Tiger Leaping Gorge (the Yangtze River) for around Yuan 150 which includes lunch.  Beware because no-one speaks anything other than Chinese usually and the minibus has no heating!  Also a long visit to 2 jewellery factories is included!  Lijiang is the centre of Naxi (a Yunnanese hill tribe with roots in Tibet) culture and everywhere you go you hear Naxi music being played.  Piped street music is  very popular in China and even accompanies you on chairlifts and in cable cars up mountains.  I bought a CD from a small shop near Black Dragon Pool Park (supposedly from where you get the most famous view in China of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain reflected in the lake and it is very impressive!).  I climbed up the hill behind Black Dragon Pool Park and got some fine views of Lijiang as well as stumbling across a burial ground, which appeared to be a mixture of all the Chinese religions – Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.

Szechwan 

From Lijiang I took the plane (Air China) to Chengdu ; it was a late flight and arrived at 11.30 pm in Chengdu.  Getting a taxi proved a problem but an ‘airport guard’ helped with this (drivers don’t like to take foreigners as they can’t speak to them!).  We found Holly’s Hostel  in the Tibetan quarter of town (room was Yuan 100 with heating, bathroom and TV).  It also has a restaurant, with good, cheap travellers’ fare, and internet access.  Holly, the lady  owner, is very helpful and speaks good English. She organizes trips to Tibet itself, both overland and by air., and men clad in Tibetan robes hang around the foyer looking for business (driving tourists to Tibet that is).  The hostel is near the Kangding Hotel if you need a reference point for a taxi and opposite the Wuhu Temple, which houses a fine museum of Chinese culture and history.   Not far away is the Sports University, a well-laid out campus where students train at numerous sports and you can watch them every evening.

 
Chengdu is a city about the size of Kunming, but slightly less modern although boasting the ubiquitious McDonalds, and is the principal town of Szechwan province.  It has a huge central square with a massive Mao Tse Tung statue (very common in nearly all Chinese towns), off which lead the main shopping streets.  Not far away is  Wenchu temple, set in a maze of alleys with interesting food and drink stalls.  But most interesting  of all in Chengdu is the Panda Breeding Centre (tours from Holly’s Hostel cost Yuan 75 for ½ day, though it is worth thinking about going independently and staying longer, as it is fantastic.  You start early – 7.30 am – to catch the pandas’ feeding time and there are both adults and small pandas there guzzling their bamboo shoots and playing.   An interesting film explains the breeding programme and there is a fine museum all about pandas and other wildlife. 

Tibet

My ticket and Tibet permit had cost Yuan 2600 and were delivered to Holly’s Hostel by Tenzing, the travel rep in Chengdu (I had booked this in Kunming at the Camelia Hotel). 

Chengdu is around 2 ½ hours flying time from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, a stunning journey across jagged snow-capped mountains where the pandas live (this is good camouflage for them as the scenery is black  rock and white snow  for a lot of the year).  Only 4 foreigners were on the plane and we made friends upon arrival at Lhasa airport.  A bus takes you into the city, some 75 km (a common distance for airports!) away for around Yuan 15.  The sky is  blue and cloudless (altitude is 3600 m)  a welcome change after grey, overcast, chilly  Chengdu, the scenery somewhat bleak and empty, interspersed with the odd tree and the occasional flat-roofed village.

We enter Lhasa though the new town, a carbon copy of all Chinese towns, and pass the famous Potala (palace of the Dalai Lama).  The bus drops us near here so we get a taxi to the main guest house area, which is in the Tibetan part of town.  I get a room at the Snowlands  Hotel for Yuan 100 a night, including bathroom, TV and (yes) heating! 

Food is the usual travellers’ fare (pancakes for breakfast, vegetable fried rice./noodles for dinner with the addition of momos, Tibetan dumplings)  but costs more than in China proper because a lot of stuff is imported.  The Tibetan quarter is quite crowded as it is a focus for pilgrims to the Jokhang temple, near the Barkhor Square – beware of pickpockets here, especially in the form of children! 

My new group want to make a trip to Everest Base Camp so I join in to help lower the cost of the Landcruiser Hire (there were 5 of us).  A trip of 4 nights and 5 days cost us cost us around Yuan 500 (this included entry fees for Everest National Park).  It was a stunning but tough trip, visiting Lake Yarlung Tso, a vibrant  turquoise colour , covered with many icy patches, Gyantse (has a fine monastery full of dark chambers and numerous statues or demons and bodhisattvas, lit by yak butter lamps),  Sakya (home to yet another famous monastery), Lhatse (a small town where men play billiards in the street in the sunshine and we saw a sheep being killed outside a restaurant, presumably for dinner), Everest Base Camp,  Shigatse (famous for a huge monastery complex on the hillside), the Brahmaputra River Valley and back to Lhasa.  Some of the guest houses had no running water and (of course) no heating (price in this case Yuan 40 per room) and at Everest we stayed in a large plastic tent called Hotel California for Yuan 20 each.  This was the low point of the journey as it was very cold and windy and airless (!) – altitude 5500 m at this point.  It was hard to walk very far and food supplies were low.  The wind howled all night and the temperature dropped well below zero so that there was ice on a  glass of water in the morning!.  Despite all this, the stunning scenery made the journey worthwhile, even though conditions were extreme and food was appalling, where available. 

I had my first taste of tsampa, the Tibean staple food,  on this trip (roasted barley flour mixed with yak butter and tea leaves and made into a paste with hot water). Another highlight was the main monastery at Shigatse, mentioned above,  built on a hill overlooking the town, and a huge rabbit warren of shrines and statues accessed by wide wooden ladders (the usual way to go upstairs in Tibet).  Many monks in maroon-coloured robes swarmed everywhere.  The countryside outside Lhasa is very sparsely populated and there is no vegetation apart from in the lower-lying valleys.  Yet people do live here, keeping yaks, goats, hens and so on.  Houses are made from stone and people wear traditional clothing – long robes over trousers, sometimes with aprons in  front.  We saw  some people on foot, others with horse and carts (no motorized transport available) crossing high mountain passes. 

Back in Lhasa I was not so lucky with the hotel room – Hotel Kirey at Yuan 80 a night had no heating and a leaking bathroom!  I used the remaining time in town to visit the Potala (now a museum, containing the remains of the last few dalai lamas in jeweled splendour) and the summer palace. 

Lhasa-Beijing Railway

It was an early start to catch the 8 am train to Beijing - it was just getting light as we approached the purpose-built station outside the city limits; I was traveling with a Czech man who had been on the Everest trip. The train has been in service since around June 2006 and the line linking Beijing with Lhasa is a result of several years work.  I traveled soft sleeper (4 berths to a compartment and TV screens showing films about Tibet) and the 48 hour (2 night) journey cost me around Yuan 1600 (this is because I had bought the ticket in  2 parts, initially thinking I would get down in Xining, half-way along).  Food is available on the train – a meal of rice with 4 side dishes cost Yuan 15 – and hot water is provided in the usual flask, found in all Chinese hotel rooms along with jasmine tea bags.  The Qinhai plateau has passes of around 5500 m to cross and offers fantastic but bleak views into the far distance, with yak herds patrolling the plains  Many lakes and rivers were still frozen (it was now early April).  We started with a temperature of 8 deg C the first day but by the 2nd afternoon we were in the valley of the Yellow River and the temp had risen to 28 deg C– children were bathing in the river by the rail track.

Beijing

The following morning, after a total distance of 4000 km, we reached Beijing  Central Station around 8 am, having traveled since daybreak through endless grey and dreary suburbs so like those of western cities.   Getting a taxi proved to be the usual problem (drivers hate taking foreigners because of the language problem) but we finally made it to the Hostel Dragon Town (room with bathroom, heating and TV cost Yuan 120, a good deal for Beijing), in a pleasant hutong (narrow street),  not too far from Tienamen square.  The weather was quite cool and windy (Beijing is at 40 deg. N latitude), with few leaves on the trees, still calling for the winter jacket bought in Kunming (in a sports shop as the winter stock was finished  in Spring City).   I had  4 days in Beijing which was just about right to see most of the main sights –  the  Temple of Heaven, where the emperors worshipped and set in an attriactive park, the very large Tienamen Square, Mao’s Tomb (closed for renovations), the very crowded Forbidden City, which serves now as a museum, pretty Beihai park with its lake and hilltop pagodas, where middle-aged ladies were practicing martial arts.  I took an organized tour in a minibus  (there were 2 Japanese men , 1 Englishman and myself)  to the Ming Tombs just outside Beijing, passing the Olympic Village on the way (it was under construction).  Unfortunately we only saw one Ming Tomb, set in a pretty garden,  and had 3 obligatory visits to jade factories as well as a rather frugal lunch.  The highlight of the day was the Great Wall at Badaling.  The Wall is as impressive as it is in pictures and snakes away over barren hills into the middle distance.  But it is SO crowded you can hardly move in places – crowded with local tourists.  At one point there is a cable car just in case you cannot manage to walk up the steps and onto the

By contrast, the journey from Beijing to Paris with Air China WAS a relaxing experience.  The airport was large and spacious, the flight only half full and the service impeccable.  Our stewardesses patrolled the plane from beginning to end of the flight to see what the passengers needed, every ready to help.  I had excellent food and saw 3 excellent films, 2 of which were Chinese.  On the 8000 km journey we flew across Mongolia, across Siberia to Novosobirsk and Novgorod, all the while seeing only snowfields, snowy mountains and frozen rivers and lakes.  The snow thinned out on the western side of the Urals and had disappeared when we flew over Moscow, continuing to Gdansk, Berlin and so to Paris, 11 hours later. 

 Comment :  China is wonderful – a land of many contrasts, many climates and many cultures, but all with an underlying thread tying them together: the wish to progress.   It was warming up nicely when I left Kunming in the south (25 deg. C ), then the temp. dropped to 18 deg. C in Chengdu, and then to 16 deg. C in Lhasa , although nights and early mornings were near freezing point, finally to  hit 12 deg C in Beijing.  Infrastructure is excellent, the cost of living  low compared with Europe.  English is only spoken by those working in tourism and often not very well.  Channel 9 on TV is the China World Service and gives news in English, as well as excellent weather details for the whole country.  Communication is therefore the biggest problem and you need to rely on your hotel or guest house to get you onward or excursion tickets.  I even bought my Beijing-Paris Air China ticket from the hotel – it cost Yuan 5500 one-way.  Sometimes Chinese people seem a little surly but that is mainly because of the language problem.  Most food menus are only in Chinese and most food is nothing like that in Chinese restaurants in the West.  That said, you are sure to find something to eat, even if it means going into a self-service shop, so don’t worry, you won’t starve but you may get a little thinner (cabbage is a favourite in China as in Burma!).  The whole country operates on Beijing time, the same time zone as Hong Kong/Malaysia time.