More views
View of the crags from midway up Oberneja del Castillano
Karen opening a bottle of rioja in the kitchen
My first, proper long holiday since Berlin last summer and what a start! Two hours delay in Singapore due to some mechanical failure, followed by problems with the door when we finally reached Heathrow which means walking down the narrow steps from the plane’s upper deck (where I was) to the lower deck lugging all the bleeding equipment. And because of the delay, we hit possibly the busiest time at immigration - there must surely be 500 people before me in the queue! To top it off, the weather in London had turned cold as soon as I touched down so my wardrobe which mainly consists of tank tops and short skirts looked very pathetic. Anyhoo, I had two lovely, if slightly hectic, days in London climaxing in a slightly tacky but fun bar in Fulham with a dangerous two-for-one cocktail deals and champagne on special price the night before flying off to Spain. I got up crazy early on the 29th in anticipation of the Royal Doo Daa wreaking havoc on public transport. By the time I got to Victoria at 6.20, there are already mother-daughter pairs in full make up and fascinators (google it for those who don’t know what this is) with union jacks in their hands. I also saw a man on the platform in East Croydon wearing a union jack cape. Was too sleepy (and partially still drunk) to take a picture but now I’m kicking myself. Anyhoo, got to airport crazy early and finally reached Madrid after a 15-minute check in because the girl at the counter had no idea how to pronounce Myanmar, let alone know where it is. She was very sweet nevertheless and apologetic, saying ‘I’m not very well travelled’ after I told her Burma used to be a British colony. From Madrid we did a 2.5 hour drive up to Ages, a small village about 25km from Burgos, the main town in the province and the seat of government during the Franco regime. Oh yes. Karen and Andy, my two lovely friends who bought a wreck a few years ago in the village, came to pick me up. It’s a very lush area - due to incessant rain - and apparently Burgos is also the windiest place in Spain! (The natural kind, not the other one) Karen, whom I studied with in Bournemouth some 6 years ago and knew how easily I get cold and miserable, thought it was a hoot that I’d got to Burgos when the weather was like 12 degrees! But their wreck is now lovingly turned into a charming, eclectic little house with lots of cute trinkets (reflecting their stints in Ethiopia and Serbia and trips to all over the world) and best of all, has a bathroom with heated floors! Heaven! The village has about a few dozen houses, not all of them occupied, and two cafes and has about 20 people in winter and about 200 in summer, according to Karen. There’s also a very picturesque church with a massive nest next to the bell tower for a pair of beautiful storks. The evening of Day 1 was spent catching up and enjoying Andy’s delicious grilled butternut squash with goat’s cheese and roasted summer veggies. And the massive chocolate Easter egg I got as a present in London. Day 2 started grey and cloudy but at least the wind wasn’t so cutting like the day before. After a slow start we headed off to a beautiful little mountain top village of Oberneja del Castillano (bet I got that name wrong) with stunning view of the gorges and crags and a stunning waterfall of vibrantly green water. Weather was very variable but the views and the company (Andy, Karen and their friend Anja, an old hand at MSF who’s worked in Somalia, East Timor and Zimbabwe just to name a few) more than made up for it. We had a delicious lunch - my grilled pork fed on acorns was divine! - before a massive thunderstorm threatened our plans. But we soldiered on, back to Burgos, a sizeable town with a pretty, pedestrianised area for the old town. Like everywhere else in Spain, the cathedral here is massive and the facade impressive and the town is bustling. Just a few decades ago, this was the seat of Franco. The people are still quite conservative but not unfriendly, although Andy and I had fun trying to decide who could be a spanish equivalent of a Daily Mail reader… We had thick, creamy hot chocolate with ridiculous amount of cream on top before heading back to Ages (pronounced arrr-hes). Day 3 I’m heading back to Madrid but this time staying the night! Thin Lei Win Humanitarian Correspondent South East and East Asia Reuters AlertNet & TrustLaw
I haven’t been to vegas so I can’t compare but the Shanghainese love their neon. More so than Beijing and well pretty much every other country and city I’ve been to. It’s most apparent when sitting on Cloud 9 - the bar on the 87th floor of Grand Hyatt. The whole city, especially the bund, is on neon rampage.
Strobe lights run across bridges and roads, buildings form wave shapes with lights, a tall slender building shoots out green laser beams every minute, a twister-lookalike structure sprouts mushroom-looking lights, and a building with a roof like a lotus flower opening up sends spotlights to the sky… This is just to name a few.
So there we were, spending our last evening in style, over a bottle of NZ sauv blanc which costs more than 4 times than normal, but what the heck, this has been an amazing trip.
We spent the earlier part of the day doing touristy things - cruise on the bund, lunch and spending money at some fab shops in Xin Tien Di, then walking around aimlessly, sampling tea, Ko Bu having fun reconnecting with his knowledge of Han Chinese (our map didn’t have any English oops)….
We found Shanghai to be flashier, Shanghainese to be less friendly and the amount of people everywhere simply overwhelming. We both prefer Beijing but we enjoyed the day out even if at the end we were out of breath from running to be at the airport on time.
As the blog name implies, our half-baked plans extended to the end. A conversation about life and death and everything in between made our stay at Cloud 9 longer than anticipated, and we found ourselves racing towards the train to get the Maglev, a 431km/hr bullet train to the airport that we have to connect from a different line.
It would’ve taken us 8 min on the Maglev to cover the 32km to the airport. As luck would have it, despite us spending an hour at the internet cafe first thing in the morning, neither of us thought to check the train timings and we got to the Maglev station to find out the last train had left almost half hour ago.
We spent our last notes of Yuan on a taxi to the airport, where my bottle of Chinggis vodka and the stupid lock whose combination changed between this morning and night got us into the customs officers’ area. Finally, we had our dinner at the airport, catching our breath at the same branch of restaurant we visited our one first day of this China - Mongolia trip.
Did I say half-baked?
Day 16 - My futuristic-looking bed on the train
More amusing signs
Day 16 - Sign says “Perilous hills, do not climb”
Day 16 - Something Forbidden
Hungry and tired, we decided to have a short nap while the changing to tires (as the tracks in China are different) were taking place in Inner Mongolia (which is under China’s control) at around 10.30pm last night.
By the time most of us woke up, dinner-less, it was 7.30am this morning and the view outside was a grey industrial town with rubbish strewn on the side of the street. Thankfully the scenery got better afterwards, to include picturesque Chinese towns like the ones you see in Jackie Chan movies, mountain-y countryside with terraced plantations, beautiful rocky cliffs and tunnels with streams or reservoirs of water below…
There were more of the depressing views like the one we woke up to as well - cramped-looking apartment buildings that would look atmospheric in a Wong Kar Wai movie, big-ass factories where massive amounts of smoke billowed into the sky and tonnes and tonnes of landfill spoiling some pristine-looking countryside.
Still the amount of construction and infrastructure development taking place even in the countryside is impressive - even if you think that is a narrow definition of a country’s development.
We reached Beijing around 2pm and the amount of people, touts and general loudness of the whole place was a shock after days of being in a place with more animals than humans and where the largest city has a population of 1.5 million.
Things got worse on the subway, which we took to get to Forbidden City (which was pretty impressive and I’d seen so many Chinese period movies and dramas on TV that I almost feel like I know the place) and then to the duck restaurant.
Perhaps because it was a public holiday (I reckoned it must be, as Forbidden City was teeming with locals and the tube was packed to the brim at 2.30 in the afternoon) or perhaps it was rush hour the second time we took the train… Whatever it was, it was definitely an experience!
I think they should actually classify being on Beijing subway in rush hour as a competitive sport like Body Combat. There is much pushing and shoving, a lot of elbows, people falling on top of each other (despite the lack of space, the jerk can be quite violent to cause this) and a fair bit of shouting from officials who want everyone to move further into the train.
After surviving the crowds and subsisting on bread, jam and cream cheese, we decided we deserved some delicious duck. Unfortunately we trusted an outdated map and went to the branch of duck restaurant Alex took us on our first night in Beijing that is closer to the train station.
After much confusion and numerous walks up and down the street we found out it is no longer there. I was gutted. But we found a good Szechuan restaurant so it wasn’t too bad. Along the way we got more souvenirs and some CDs (4$) and DVDs (1.5$)…
Now I’m writing this from my bed on the fast train to Shanghai. It’s a futuristic-looking white pod of a cabin with nice white sheets, a flat screen TV for each bunk, and temperature controls. But the connection is sketchy so let’s hope this goes up!