China - Autumn 1996

14 Nov	We left the hotel at 6.50 am and had intended to take the 7.30 bus to Liping, but found there was one at 7.20 for Congjiang, so we took that instead after a quick bowl of noodles. At Congjiang we had no time for anything except a visit to the local toilet before the bus to Liping left. The ride was beautiful with Dong villages with their characteristic drumtowers dotting the landscape. We arrived at a deserted crossroads at about midday, and immediately got a ride in a pickup truck the last dozen or so kilometres to Zhaoxing. The hotelkeeper and I recognized each other from my visit in 1994, and I could see that the Zhaoxing Guesthouse for Foreigners had not changed in two years. However there were more guests now, in fact a large Japanese group were sitting there as we arrived, watching a performance of Dong dances and music before disappearing in their bus. But even without them there were several foreign guests. We walked around the village after lunch admiring the drum towers and the wind and rain bridges. The food was also as I remembered it, very scarce. There were potatoes, turnips, eggs and pork, the promised chicken failed to materialize. But Zhaoxing is a nice place to stay, although fast arriving on the beaten track, thanks mainly to Lonely Planet.
15 Nov	This morning Mr. Hua took us for a five kilometre trek up a mountain to the village of Jitang which he said was famous for tea tree oil. The path wound as usual up through rice paddies, but the Dong farmers didn't appear to be as industrious as their Miao counterparts, very few were visible in the fields, or walking the trails. Arriving in the village, the very first shopkeeper we met insisted on closing his shop and taking us home where he prepared the delicacy. It consisted of three-coloured fried rice mixed in tea tree oil soup. His home was smaller and poorer than the Miao homes we had stayed in, but the village itself appeared slightly less dilipadated than Zhaoxing. We saw only one drum tower, it was a very small village, and leaving the village to return we were accompanied by every child in the village. After lunch we explored Zhaoxing more thoroughly, we are almost a part of it by now. There are at least five Drum Towers and two Wind and Rain Bridges, all richly decorated and meticulously maintained. Along the narrow streets and lanes in the village there are a number of carpenters workshops, storehouses and plenty of animals roaming around. Just outside the village the paddy fields start and nearest the village many have small wooden bridges leading over the paddy with outhouses regularly spaced; a way of improving fertilisation.
16 Nov	Today we made a very early start to visit a market about ten kilometres from Zhaoxing (I never did find out the name of the village), it was very lively but by no means as picturesque as Xijiang, fewer people had dressed up for the occasion . We travelled up by tractor, it was to be the only tractor ride of the trip. We ate breakfast first at a noodle shop and got talking with the owner, and then with another young woman, all the time surrounded by a small group of on-lookers. The latter said that she was a market-controller, and introduced us to her mother, husband and small daughter. She gave us a bag of oranges in return for promising to send her the photos we took. It was cold so we were all well-wrapped up, and sitting as close to the stove as possible. Back in Zhaoxing, we ate lunch in the usual place, just as I was eating a piece of meat, I felt some sand or grit and chewing it I think I broke a filling in a tooth. I nearly fainted with the shock (and couldn't even finish my lunch !). We were leaving Zhaoxing to make our way towards Liuzhou, and as this is one of the more sparsely populated, and poorer parts of China, transport wasn't very plentiful, and Mr. Hua hadn't been able to arrange anything in advance. We waited about three hours "for some means of transportation" and finally a bus took us to Long'e from where we found a pick-up to take us to Gao'an. Thanks to my fainting I sat in the front of the pick-up and had a reasonably comfortable trip on roads which could hardly be called roads. The others froze and rattled. Just before Gao'an we were following three large timber trucks which were having difficulties forcing a slope where there was a diversion while the road was being repaired. We reached Gao'an about 17.30 and Mr. Hua decided it was too late to continue. The road was indeed deserted, so we descended on the local "hotel". It was cheap (4Y per bed) and clean and offered an indescribably beautiful view of the river. But it was cold, and facilities were non-existent. We ate dinner in the roadside restaurant across the street, they didn't have much, but what they had was good, eggs, some meat and fried noodles.

17 Nov

We made an early start from Gao'an, and without breakfast. Mr Hua said that we were taking a passenger boat that left at 8 am, we think he chartered it and couldn't understand why we couldn't wait half an hour for breakfast. The boat was some kind of river freighter carrying rice, we could sit reasonably comfortably in the cabin. Very cold still, but beautiful river views, nearly comparable with the Li River at Yangshuo. Arriving at Laoba we were starving, so immediately found a place to eat and thaw out. It was the usual type of hole in the wall but everything was tasty as always in that type of place. Now we had four hours to kill in this transportation hub of Laoba, consisting of a railway station, the ferry station and about three houses. We explored the village thoroughly, and took tea with a railway worker who was building a bee-hive in his spare time, he offered us his honey to taste too. The train left at 3pm and took four and a half hours to make the trip to Liuzhou. The maintenance of the train left a good deal to be desired, the floors of the carriages were thick with orange peel, peanut shells and other kinds of trash.

We arrived at Liuzhou about 19.30 pm and took a taxi to the hotel, which suddenly refused to take foreigners. So we walked to the next one, the Fish Mountain Hotel, here we were welcomed. Then we went out to dinner, another misunderstanding made us think we were going to eat at a good restaurant, while Mr Hua thought we would sit out and eat in the open-air market. No-one wanted to sit out and eat, and the dog restaurants were not popular either, so the choice was somewhat restricted. Finally we found a place everybody could accept.

18 Nov

A pleasant day in Liuzhou, which is dismissed by LP as "a poor mans Guilin" but offered some very attractive views of the crags, leafy avenues, and the Liu river curving through the town, pleasant people, and interesting markets and commercial areas. Even though it is growing fast, and trying to rival the coastal cities for affluence and newly built banks, offices and hotels Liuzhou is still basically a pleasant Chinese city, and now in November the climate too was just right after the chilly, cloudy days in Guizhou.

We had planned to travel to Guangzhou by boat, but discovered that the fast boat (12 hour trip) no longer sailed, and the slow boat (36 hour trip) did not sail today. So the choice was by bus, train or plane. We quickly vetoed bus and train, and Mr Hua didn't have enough money for the plane fare. So I changed USD 300 for him, and we bought the tickets at the local CAAC office. Then we ate lunch, and started to search for acupuncture machines; I had promised to take one home. But without success. The one I wanted was made in Nanjing and therefore unobtainable in Liuzhou. There was another machine made in Shanghai which might have been available at another storehouse somewhere, but this seemed uncertain, so I had to be satisfied with the He shou wu and the other herb formulae I bought at an extremely well stocked herb market earlier in the day.

Then we had dinner in the same very good corner restaurant we had eaten lunch in (lunch was whole, fried, sweet and sour fish, aubergines, and soup and dinner was chicken with mushrooms, aubergines in a clay pot and five-spiced pork).

Then it was time to make our way to the CAAC office to take the bus to the airport and an uneventful flight to Guangzhou where we stayed in the Aiqun Hotel near Sha Mian Island.

We finished a very eventful day with ice-cream sundae in the revolving restaurant on the sixteenth floor of the hotel.

19 Nov

The morning was spent sightseeing in the historic heart of Chinas second (or third ?) largest city, Sha Mian island and the area around. Sha Mian Island gives a very colonial impresssion still, and many of the old legations and commercial houses are used as private schools and offices and rest homes for the cadres, and now for well-off Chinese. Some tourists and tourist restaurants are here, but the usual Chinese street life is conspicuous by its absence. However it is not far away, to the south beyond the "White Swan" luxury hotel, and along the riverside. And evn more so to the north around the Xingping market. A lot of stalls in the antique section of the Xingping market try and sell coins and jade and small statues to the tourists, Arne bought a "guaranteed hundred year old" coin after a lot of hard bargaining.

We met Mr Hua for a late lunch, a final meal together at a luxury six-storey restaurant on the waterfront. We ordered, at last, a snake, and it was brought and killed in front of us, I drank the blood warm out of the body, and then the gall bladder which I drank in spirits. It is supposed to be good for most things. Then the snake dishes were brought, the snake itself crisply fried, but no meat at all ! And the skin stir-fried with celery, but it was very tough. It was good theater but expensive as food, the rest of the meal was very good though.

By the time we were finished it was time to go to the dock for the boat to Hong Kong. Unfortunately the taxi-driver had no idea where the dock was, so there were some dramatic moments before we found the boat, although it was not nore than 500 metres as the crow flies from the restaurant.

The boat was ok, not very many people on board, we slept in a second class dormitory and so left China in some comfort. The restaurant closed at 10.15 pm, we were the only guests so it was just to go to bed.

20 Nov	We rose before dawn to follow the arrival into Hong Kong harbour, it was truly impressive to arrive in this magnificent harbour in the dark, and watch the lights grow brighter, and the Peak come closer and closer. The "Bank of China Tower" is currently the highest building, and is clearly visible. We slowly disembarked and passed through immigration with no queues or bother. We took a taxi to the STB Hostel on Rxxxx Street close to Mongkok, the rooms were tiny, a reminder that space is extremely limited in Hong Kong, but comfortable enough. We immediately went out to search for a dim sum breakfast, at the hotel the manager recommended the "London" just two blocks away. They served dim sum on many floors, it was just to ascend until you found an empty table. It was really good, so we ate there every morning, trolleys were wheeled around and you pointed to whatever looked good. There were buns and dumplings of all kinds, chicken-feet and glutinous-rice concoctions, all of it freshly made and excellent, and the price was about 40 HKD per head. After breakfast I renewed acquaintanceship with the "Star Ferry" which has sailed between Kowloon and Hong Kong for about 100 years now, and offers ten minutes or so of sea air for under 2 HKD. I walked around the waterfront area, trundled along on the double-decker trams, incredibly slow but very picturesque, and saw Wanchai and Causeway Bay. Returning to the Kowloon side I visited the new Museum of Art on the Kowloon waterfront, where there was an excellent collection of Chinese and Hong Kong art, including a special exhibition on the Pearl River, which we had just sailed down. I met the others for dinner, which we ate at the "London", and tried four reasonably good Cantonese dishes. Then we continued to the Night Market on Temple Street, the major offering appeared to be porno videos.
21 Nov	Started the day by taking the bus to Stanley with Ulla, it was a beautiful ride along the coast of Hong Kong Island, through the Aberdeen Tunnel and past Deepwater and Repulse bays. Stanley itself was nothing but a street or two of shops with T-shirts and other goods aimed at tourists, Ulla wanted to stay for a while so I continued on to Aberdeen, and from there back to Central. The road from Aberdeen offered extensive views over the South China Sea and the harbour. I lunched on sushi and udon, and in the afternoon wandered around the marine produce markets in Western District, and finally through Mongkok before I met the others for dinner. We wanted to climb the Peak, but the tram was out of action, so we took the bus, fantastic views and plenty of visitors. Descending again we found the "Shanghai Restaurant" and enjoyed a number of unusual dishes for our last dinner together. Today there was a big fire (with 39 dead) in Nathan Road just a few blocks from our hotel. The apartment blocks age very quickly, the electricla installations are often shoddy, and adequate fire exits often non-existent, so this caused considerable debate about how to prevent more catastrophes in the future.
22 Nov	Last dim-sum breakfast at the London, and then I spent the morning touring the New Territories. bus to Tuen Min, LRT to Yuen Long and then a bus to Tai Po and back to Kowloon. The transportation in Hong Kong is excellent, but the rural feel of the New Territories (that I remember from 1983) is past, everywhere were new housing developments, skyskrapers and industrial sites. Annette will stay on in Hong Kong a couple of days at Chungking mansions ! She waved goodbye to Arne, Ulla and me as we took a taxi to the airport. It was only a short taxi ride as Kai Tak airport is in the middle of the city, next year a new airport will open on a reclaimed island outside the city, and air passengers will no longer have the thrill of flying between apartment blocks. We discovered on arrival that our Malaysian flight was delayed; Ulla and Arne who had a connection at Kuala Lumpur switched flights, but I waited for the Penang flight, altogether about four hours at the airport. The flight itself was uneventful and arrived at Penang about 10.30 pm. Penang airport has the excellent system of prepaid taxis, so for MRT 19 I rode in the air-conditioned taxi slowly through the crowded Penang Island roads to Georgetown, and out into the tropical night. I found a room at the "New Waldorf" clean and air-conditioned for MRT 60 per night. This hotel isn't highly regarded by LP but I found it very comfortable and friendly for the five nights I stayed in Georgetown. The ubiquitous health club was very discreet.

23 Nov	Late start today, with a noodle-soup, chicken and rice and veg. brunch at a rather shabby but lively open-air restaurant a block from the hotel. Then out to see what Malaysia had to offer. I started by following Georgetown's "Heritage Trail" through the historic centre of Georgetown. It provided a very well-signed and well-trodden route past merchants houses, Chinese temples and business premises, mainly dating from the nineteenth century. It finished up near the bus station so I decided to climb the Penang Hill. Two buses, first to Ayer Item and then to the Penang Hill Railway Station took me to the foot of the hill and after a 40-minute wait two tramcars slowly climbed the 700 metre high peak. There was an excellent view although not of Georgetown. Here there were families and couples out on a Saturday trip, so there were plenty of food stalls, mosques, temples, souvenir stalls, T-shirt salesmen, hotels and a police station. I tasted for the first time the Malaysian speciality es kacang, which consists of a heap of ice-chippings covered with fruits, ice-cream, jelly, coconut and anything else sweet that is at hand. Delicious, and about 2 MYR for a heaping portion. I visited an aviary and saw lots of parrots and finally descended in the dusk. Ate dinner at "Dragon King", a well-known Nonya style restaurang with good chicken curry, duck soup and vegetables. Just as I finished, it poured with rain, a real tropical storm, luckily another dining couple offered me a lift back to the hotel. The road was nearly impassable, and it continued to rain and thunder roared, and lightning flash for more than an hour.
24 Nov	Late start again, walked down to the waterfront and saw the Cornwallis Fort and the Town Hall, reminders of the British rule. I enjoyed nasi goreng and laksa (fish soup) for lunch. Today there is a bridge linking mainland Malaysia with Penang Island, but up to about 1986 there was only a ferry till Butterworth. I wanted to try the ferry, and it was a nice twenty minute crossing; the Butterworth ferry terminal appeared still to be the station for long-distance busses all over the peninsula. But I wanted to see if there was a town of Butterworth too. Nobody seemed to understand that, and I was shown onto a bus that immediately sped northwards, when it turned onto a motorway I decided it was time to get off. The beach was close at this point so I went down to it and dipped my toes. Then another tropical storm blew up, luckily there was a large restaurant close, so I was able to ride out the storm over a large plate of es kacang, and then a glass of beer, fish on a banana-leaf and some kind of dried fried octopus. By then the rain had stopped, and it was no problem getting a boat back to the ferry. In the evening I walked down to the Komtar, the highest building in Georgetown, an excellent view from the top, and with a lot of shops in the first few stories. In the same area I bought three very nice tropical shirts for 90 MRT. The guy said his shop was fixed-price, but he threw in a T-shirt.
25 Nov	Finally I went to the beach on Penang Island, taking the bus to Teluk Bahang, passing through the foreigners hotel ghetto at Batu Ferringhi. Even at Teluk Bahang there was one very luxurious resort "The Penang Muti" with pools and sixteen story blocks, but in the village just around the corner were street stall and considerably more modet places to stay. The beach was good and the water warm, signs warned for jellyfish, but local people bathing (with all their clothes on, of course) said that it wasn't the season for jellyfish just then. I stayed about an hour and a half in the sand, there was some haze and cloud so it didn't seem too hot. Lunch was at an Indian restaurant in the village, and then I walked to the butterfly farm, I didn't expect to be fascinated, but I was. More than 120 kinds of butterfly, the one more gaudily decorated than the next were flying in the large rock-garden like area, feeding on rotten fruit and hibiscus flowers sprayed with honey. There was also an insect museum and a few reptiles, but it was the butterflies that I will always remember. From there I wanted to make a circuit of the island, first the hourly bus to Belik Pulau, a breathtaking ride around Penang Hill on narrow and twisty roads, with, after a while views over the east coast of the island. Belik Pulau was an interesting small, almost entirely Chinese town, well worth strolling around for an hour or two. And just as dusk was falling a bus back to Georgetown, with lightning flashing all around and signalling an imminent storm. Dinner at the largest of the open-air food markets, batter-fried crabs and prawns, noodles, fruit-ice and juice, very good. And again a tremendous thunder-storm in the night with heavy rain.
26 Nov	After breakfast took the bus to Ayer Itam again, this time to see the Kek Lok Si temple. Leading up to the temple was a covered alleyway lined with souvenit shops and food stalls, punctuated in the middle by a large tortoise pool. The temple itself was huge and splendidly ostentatious, Aw Paw of Tiger Balm fame contributed to the cost, and the 10,000 Buddhas Pagoda was impressive, but unfortunately lacking the diversity of expression to be seen elsewhere. My thoughts turned to a factory somewhere churning out thousands and thousands of identical Buddha statues. Coming down I bought a T-shirt from a guy who spoke fluent Swedish, and said that he had worked at the Restaurant Karlavagnen in Fruängen (where I live). Late in the afternoon I returned to Teluk Bahang to the same beach as yesterday to enjoy the sunset. And after that celebrated the conclusion of my stay in Penang by eating dinner at one of the top Chinese restaurants in Georgetown, a feast of bean-curd and frogs and sharks-fin soup. Penang is a good place for a holiday, nice people, good food and fine beaches, plenty to see.
27 Nov	I attempted to make an early start to Kuala Lumpur this morning, the bus was scheduled to leave at 10 am but it was a little late, and then circled around Georgetown before finally crossing the bridge to Butterworth at about 11.45 am Then full speed down the motorway, Malaysia's "North-South Highway" with brief stops to buy fruit and to eat lunch before arriving in Kuala Lumpurs impossible traffic at around 5 pm. It was raining off and on in the afternoon, it wasn't easy to find a taxi and when I did it took a half-hour to drive the kilometre to the hotel area of Jalan Bukit Bintang. Once there it took some searching to find a reasonable room, many places were full, and I finally found a room of much the same class as I had in Georgetown but for a price of 125 MRT, there was a restaurant providing a very expensive and poor quality breakfast. Bukit Bintang is one of the centres of KL, especially at night; there are masses of hotels, restaurants, incessant traffic, markets and shopping malls, lots of food hawkers. KL itself has over a million people, and together with the suburbs a rapidly expanding 3-4 millions.
28 Nov	After breakfast I took a taxi to the Batu caves. The driver actually used the meter, something I later found was unusual in KL. This made th trip very cheap, the meter rate is only 1,50 MRT plus 0,50 per kilometre, so the fare came to less than 10 MRT. The drivers are constantly striking and agitation to raise the metre rate, and will often refuse to use them, negotiating a fixed price for a journey. The caves were amazing, a Hindu temple with over 200 steps up a hundred metre hillside lead to the cave and all the way up monkeys running everywhere, once up there are terrific views of the surrounding plains. The caves are vast, and the main one is known as the Cathedral Cave Returning to town I investigated the local bus services, reasonably frequent and fast, but crowded. After lunch (at street stalls of course) I visited the Bird Park and the Orchard and Hibiscus Gardens. The Bird Park was the most fascinating with hornbills, storks, peacocks and many smaller brilliantly-coloured species flying around in their enclosures. Returning I passed the ornately decorated Central Railway Station built around 1900 in Moorish style. Dinner at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Federal Hotel. KL kan almost rival Hong Kong in the number of high-rises.
29 Nov	The final sight in KL was the new Minister Tower, at 405 metres, it is at present the fourth tallest building in the world and from the observation platform (8 MRT) at 270 metres there are fine views in all directions. The information signs point to "City Centre", this is now just a hole in the ground, but at Malaysias rate of development, there will certainly be a city centre there in at most two years. KL is growing very fast. It then rained heavily, with thunder, for much of the afternoon, I tried to wander around the markets between showers, and was on my way to diecovering a more humane Kuala Lumpur, but by about 8 pm I gave up and took the bus to the airport. It is a long way, and takes about one and a half hours through constantly heavy traffic. The plane left at midnight (MH 2) after a last bowl of noodles at the airport.

China (19 Oct 1996 - 30 Nov 1996 part 3)