alwaysontherun.nl

If overlooking China’s national week when booking (see previous post) was bad, overlooking Vietnam’s coastal typhoon season is really bad. I had looked at the climate graphs for Saigon in the South, and Hanoi in the North, and concluded that all would be fine. Sadly, both cities lie inland, and Vietnam is less than 100km wide in the middle – so there’s only coastal there, and that’s where typhoons hit, right about now. Traveling from North to South this time of year is not a good idea, so I decided to kick it to neighbouring Laos.

Goodbye Vietnam – Halong Bay sunset

Though Vietnam now has several open land borders with Laos, most of these are of little use to most travelers, being quite a way from the major tourist destinations. Of these, the Tay Trung / Sop Hun in the far north is perhaps the most remote. From Hanoi, you have to take an overnight train to Sapa and then a minibus to Dien Bien Phu (it’s now also possible to take a direct overnight bus from Hanoi, but I avoid sleeper busses whenever possible), then a bus into Laos and then it’s another two days by boat before you get back to civilization.

Dien Bien Phu, though probably known by most at least by name (it was here the French forces met a decisive defeat against Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, effectively the end of Indochina), is of no interest to tourists: it’s nothing more than a dusty provincial town with one highway running through it and a few minor streets branching off. The road there from Sapa was atrocious. It’s only 150km as the crow flies, but it’s 280km by road. Of these, the first 180km took us a full seven hours. So abysmal was the road that even now, in the dry season, our Mercedes van had a hard time even getting across. Every time the driver hit a bump (which was always) the battered Benz made a sound like clucking hens. I felt a bit like a clutched egg myself at the end of the day. Still, it could be worse – at least it wasn’t hot.

From Dien Bien, it’s another day by bus to Muang Khua in Laos. At least the road is now paved and so much more comfortable and almost always passable – before, the journey could take up to two days, if it all possible. Still, seven hours is a lot to cover less than 100km. Snaking roads and unexpected landslides that block our passage are as much to blame for that as customs procedures.

I was warned about this crossing beforehand. Exit procedure at the Vietnamese side is easy enough, but getting into Laos is a different story. Laos does give a visa on arrival, but the customs officials are excruciatingly slow (‘do you think they could make it any more inefficient,’ I asked a fellow traveler. ‘It’s good, it just means they’re chilled out’ – well yes, I would be chilled out as well if I was continously living in an opium daze; without having seen any statistics I’d bet Laos is the one country with the highest percentage of opium smokers) and besides paying for the visa itself – which is 35USD, not cheap by any standard – you also have to pay a ‘fee service’ of 1USD and3000 kip (€0,30) for an ‘H1N1 check’ that is ostensibly fake: they supposedly take your temperature by pointing something like a barcode scanner at your forehead. Prices are always communicated by typing the number in a calculator and showing this to the other party, but they were rather surprised when I handed them back the calculator with 35 punched in, while I pointed at the visa pricelist. They pointed at the sign saying I had to pay one dollar for processing, and were quite offended when I said there was no such thing and that they had made it up. “You want to pay more? OK, you argue, you pay five dollars more”. Apparently, others realized this only it made it more obvious the fee was not official and were quick to try to convince me that no no, it was, in fact, an official government charge, and the guy with the barcode scanner (he could not have been older than 20 and looked rather mentally challenged) was a doctor who had to check for H1N1 (no matter that international treaties prohibit such medical checks as a condition for entry).

They got really pissed when I told them this was corruption – asking in an aggressive tone why I would say such a thing, and offering / threatening to give my money back while at the same time cancelling my visa. Wisely, I hung on to my passport. It was also possible to have a chat with the chief upstairs (literally; they weren’t threatening to kill me) but I – again, wisely – declined. Besides, there was a bus full of people waiting for me, so I made my way out of the checkpoint.

Some (most) people might think it’s only a dollar (‘petty overcharging’, my guidebook says), but in my view there’s no such thing as insignificant corruption. By paying without any protest you’re enabling corruption; I think if we have one ‘duty’ as Westerners it’s to not enable corruption, even petty corruption like this, in whatever small way possible. My protests are not going to achieve anything, obviously; I’m not delusional. But if every tourist passing through here got angry and called them out things might very well change.

We reach Muang Khua around 1.30pm. The road turns sharply downwards and then disappears into the Nam Ou river. Muang Khua is on the opposite bank, where the Nam Ou and Nam Phak meet. We’re ferried across in a narrow longboat. The town itself is ramshackle, but the picture is strangely fitting. A bend in the river, a dusty road; houses on stilts. Around it, the river flows brown; green forests on the opposite bank. As I sit on a terrace overlooking the Nam Ou, darkness falls, the sun, as always in the tropics, sinking rapidly. Before 6.30pm the night is pitch, the city becomes quiet, and the jungle comes alive with the deafening chirping of a million insects.

The End of the Road

Sweat is trickling down my forehead in small streams. The day began cool, a blanket of damp fog hanging over the land, but has become smothering. Yesterday, I traveled by boat from Muang Khua to Muang Ngoi. If Muang Khua was fitting, Muang Ngoi is perfect. There are no roads. The small longboat, seating about a dozen, took five hours to get here. There is no internet, because there is no electricity, save for the trickle of power provided by a diesel generator between 6pm and 10pm. There is not much to do, except enjoying the slow pace of life and exploring the countryside, which is all you will ever want to do. Today, I’m hiking through the rice paddies to an even smaller, even remoter village. All around me, jagged karst peaks rise up. Words can hardly describe the scenery. Photos don’t do it justice either, but this should give you some impression:

After a few days at Muang Ngoi, I hopped on the boat to the old capital of Luang Prabang. It’s an hour to the first town that is accessible by road. From there, it is theoretically possible to take the bus, but the boat is almost as fast and much more comfortable – gliding along the Nam Ou and Mekong instead of bouncing up and down like a cocktail shaker. But that’s not all. On the boat from Muang Khua, we were seated on wooden benches, facing sideways. This one has aircraft seats facing the front. This is as comfortable as traveling in this part of the world gets. At dusk, I’m back in civilization.

Beijing is different than I remember it. And it’s not just that is 27C now where it was 37C last year. It’s Beijing itself that has changed, and it’s unbelievable to see how much it has changed in just one year. I still remembered the way when I got off the subway, but I had to look twice – at first I thought I took the wrong exit. Buildings that were there then are now not, while others that weren’t, are. The cute little bakery on the corner of the street where my hostel is is now gone, replaced by the 566th branch of a hole-in-the-wall fastfood chain. The other corner now has a McDonalds, housed in a brand new building. As far as I can remember, there weren’t even any signs that they wanted to demolish the building that stood there last July. An entire hutong block that I explored last year, filled with little restaurants and eateries, is now gone – just gone. Only now can I really comprehend how much Beijing must have changed in the last five or six years, in the run up to the 2008 Olympics.

Hutong that I used to know

But I’m happy to be here, even if it’s not quite ‘like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’, as Lonely Planet put it. For the past weeks, I’ve been constantly on the run, and this is the first time I can finally take things a bit more slowly. Add to that very fine autumn weather – about 27C during the day, 18C at night. And Bastiaan is here – in fact I think I see him more often here in Beijing than I do back home – and it’s always nice to meet up with friends in a place like this.

One thing Bastiaan did was arrange for me to come with him and a group of his fellow students to hike the Wall from Gubeikou to Jinshanling. One trip to the Wall I won’t soon forget. Last year I was at Badaling, where the wall is basically a new structure; the steps you are climbing are twenty years old at most. While Jinshanling is partly ‘restored’, Gubeikou is at parts almost completely original Ming-dynasty Wall– or what’s left of it anyway (Mao encouraged the use of the Wall as a source of free building material for new homes or whatever – that alone should be enough to rank him among the worst criminals in history). Also, there is a military base that you have to walk around or be shot on sight, so it’s pretty adventurous all in all.

The above view, however, is not what made this trip so unforgettable. Neither is the fantastic four to five hour hike, first over and then alongside the wall. The unforgettable part came when we got to Jinshanling, and found a lady in green guarding the tower we had to pass through. While uninvited foreigners crossing the wall would probably have paid with their lives in the old days, her demand was rather more prosaic – a ticket to Jinshanling Scenic Area, weighing in at 65Y (about €8). We had, however, already paid at Gubeikou. And with half of our group Chinese or at least fluent in Mandarin, an argument soon ensued. And this is the part I’ll never forget. Those sweet girls turning sour, shouting at the top of their voices at the lady in green, who wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t let us pass without buying the ticket, wouldn’t give us a discount.

But there were eleven of us and only one of her, and soon (well not soon, for they argued for at least 20 minutes) we were scaling the tower on all sides – a group backtracked some 200 meters, descended the wall and passed the tower on either side at ground level. Bastiaan climbed in through one of the tower’s windows, but was . When the others turned back to descend as well, the lady turned her back on us and started slowly to cross to the other side of the tower. This was the moment I had been waiting for, and I quickly sprinted passed her, avoiding the need to backtrack and trod through the bushes. The lady in green was now in full retreat, but had signaled for help. Not by lighting a fire in the tower as they did in the old days, but by cell phone. At the exit, two guards (police? Private security? Somewhere in between? We’ll never know) were waiting, blocking our way. And the argument repeated itself. I sadly forgot to take a picture of the lady in green blocking the way, and missed the most heated part of this argument, when three of ours were in a shouting contest against three of theirs, but you get the idea.

By now, this had become a matter of principle. Indiana Jones-guy had found an easy way off the wall some 100 meters back from where we could get around the guards, onto a terrace of sorts, and Bastiaan and I went down to create a diversion. The lady in green had spotted us and went down to the terrace to block the way off of the terrace, while the rest of the guards continued to hold up our group. However, she chose a poor position to guard us – about halfway between us and the narrow exit. There was a statue right before the exit and Bastiaan and I decided to each walk around a different side, so the lady in green couldn’t catch us both. And then Bastiaan was out, and the guards finally acknowledged their defeat. The lady in green hopped on a moto, calling after us with her final bluff: ‘Later! Ticket later!’ The two guards followed soon after, and the rest of our group had an easy walk down. There was no ticket control later.

September 21, 2012, 07.30. Somewhere between Ulan Baatar and the Chinese / Mongolian Border.

This is the last leg of the Trans Mongolian train. I’ve already covered 9000km from Amsterdam to Ulaan Baatar. This leg will add another 1500-odd-kilometers to that, so that by the time I get to Beijing, I will have travelled 10.500km by rail.

With so many impressions, it’s hard to recall and write about the experiences of the past two weeks. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in two and a half weeks, and every muscle, every joint in my legs hurts. I’ve caught a nasty cold and sprained my ankle hopping across some tree logs in Mongolia. My body pulled the emergency brake yesterday and I spent most of the day in bed, so I didn’t get to see Ulaan Baatar. But I feel elated. What can I tell you?

I remember a night drowned in vodka in Moscow (or rather I mostly don’t). I remember my appointment with Lenin. The Kremlin, with all its churches. The supposedly fancy art district in the old chocolate factory, completely deserted when I got there. The dismal weather, the cold, the rain. And I remember the train to Irkutsk.

Crossing six time zones in well over three days and spending four nights on the train, this was by far the longest of my train rides. I had replenished my vodka stock (the bottle I brought with me was put to good use that one night), bought both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and brought chocolate and dried fruits to hand out (it “used to be de rigeur,” according to the Lonely Planet). I knew four Dutchies would take the same train and didn’t like it, but nothing could have prepared me for the shock that was to come, for in my carriage alone I found there were ten Dutch people. All in all I counted no less than 35 on the train. Of these, some 20-odd people were on a guided trip with Tiara Tours (of all travel agencies). And all of them would get off at Irkutsk, same as me. So much for an authentic experience. Thank god only one of the Dutch was in my compartment, a middle aged woman named Mechteld, the other two being Russians. By the time I got to Listvyanka, I was used to the Dutch, and four days later still, when an old diesel engine pulled the train through the the outskirts of Ulaan Baatar, I could even laugh about it, but at that time I wanted nothing more than to jump of the train – or better yet, find some clever ruse that would leave them stranded at the next station, Duffilled and all. But what was to be done? So I sat down, and handed out food to the Russians, who did the same.

The train was a modern one, air conditioned and all. Sadly, Russians turn up the heat to at least 25C in winter. I have never been able to figure out why this is so. What I do know is that this made the journey a living hell, as no windows could be opened (because of the air conditioning). At night, with four people sleeping in a compartment that is at most 10m3, with the door closed, it became almost impossible to breathe. The corridor was slightly better, though it was still stuffy. Unable to sleep, I lay naked but for my boxer shorts on one of the top bunks.
The days were slightly better. The first was a monotonous blur. Endless, dense birch forests, the train going in a straight line at a constant speed, the rhythmic clanging of the wheels on the rails. Mechteld knitted. The intermittent stops were, at least to me, the only definite proof that we were actually moving forward, and not going around in a big circle of sorts. I bought pirovsky with meat and vegetables, and pancakes with cottage cheese. Mechteld knitted. The second day brought better weather, but no change in scenery. Mechteld knitted. I found out that the air conditioning could actually cool as well – as soon as the sun was beating down on the train, fresh (relatively speaking), cold air flowed in from the vents. Bliss. Before long, it was actually cold in the train (in summer, Russians set the air conditioning to 18C. I have never been able to figure out why this is so). Mechteld knitted. On the third day – we were now well into Siberia – the forests began to give way to rolling plains. The stations we halted at became more and more basic, with the notable exception of Omsk, with its grand hall, huge chandelier and Lenin statue. Mecheld knitted. I was halfway through Anna Karenina. Then came the last night, and an early rise to get off in Irkutsk, were a transfer would be waiting to take me to Listvyanka and Lake Baikal.

Listvyanka is named the ‘Baikal Riviera’ in the Lonely Planet. With 1800 inhabitants, however, it’s barely a dot on the map. In fact Google Maps does not have a map for Listvyanka. It just shows a dead end road where the town should be. Then again, that is not too far off, for Listvyanka is in fact a dead end road lined with hotels and five dead end dirt roads that lead inland. But the weather has held and sitting near the deep blue lake, under a blue Siberian sky, basking in the sun, I have everything I need.