Blogs from China, Asia - page 2224

The Chinese are Crazy... The restaurants and food markets in Guang zhou are amazing. Seriously, forget the sweet and sour pork mate!!! Food in China is alot more exotic and definately not a place for vegetarians, animal rights activist or anyone trying to lose the extra tummy roll for that matter! Fresh vegies + anything that moves are potential dinner ingredients here. It took a while to get use to seeing live chooks, turtles and eels being sold in a regular modern supermarket. Weirdest thing on the menu: So... the Chinese really do eat anything. Turtles in soup and fried snakes made me raise my eyebrows... but who would think you could eat WORMS for dinner?? There are these big fat pink worms you can order that the cooks will boil and cut up to ... read more

You know you’ve been fully inaugurated into the lifestyle of a “Goma.” a woman of Golok, once there is an immovable layer of dirt under your fingernails and you find yourself sick as a dog, upper and lower respiratory systems totally infected, sitting on a hillside with yaks, vomiting into a ditch of trash, old clothes, and human and animal waste. I was sick for three days, but other than a lingering cold, I am now quite recovered. (Thank you Dr. A for the antibiotics!) Holly was passing through town for a day and I joined her on a trip back up to Dawu. Dawu is a major step up from Darlag - cleaner, more “westernized,” there is even trash removal here! I’m now in what is probably the fanciest hotel of Golok - about one ... read more

It has always been a dream of mine to visit Tibet although I was almost put off when I visited Dharamsala, the current home of the Dalai Lama. I heard conflicting stories from Tibetans about the influence of the Chinese in Tibet; some good, some bad. Yet as I flew over the snowcovered mountains and into Lhasa airport I almost cried at the stark beauty of the country and the realisation that I was here. After two weeks I still cannot resolve the conflicting impressions of the country. Chinese Han have had a huge influence here. The cities have areas similar to most modern Chinese cities. There are good shops and facilities. Many of the rural areas are also developing and many Tibetan villages have been rebuilt with more up to date housing for the Tibetans. ... read more

The standard of hawking up in China is truely world class. Sweet old grannies give you a toothy smile in the street and then turn away to noisily flob onto the pavement. The central government has tried to stamp it out (in Shanghai and Beijing at least) in preparation for the 2008 olympics. Fat chance - these guys are pros - if they can't hawk it, it probably wasn't worth hawking in the first place. Our scenic boat trip down the Li river from Guilin to Yangshou was punctuated by regular ripe phlegm expulsions. Sitting downstairs admiring the beautiful scenery, it almost seemed as if a light drizzle was eminating from the cloudless sky. Another trait of the Chinese became very apparent during that trip - they just can't resist posing for the camera. When we ... read more

After a relaxing day at Chengdu, we took a bus to Emei Shan, about 2 hours from Chengdu. The place we stayed at was called the Teddy Bear Hotel. Not sure where the name came from. The manager of the hotel, Andy, was quite helpful in outlining routes to climb the mountain. He was also very talkative about his hotel unfortunately he was not very intelligble so we did a lot of nodding and "that's nice" not having any idea what he said. Day 1: Stairway to heaven? There are two main routes to the top of the moutain. Typically, people take 2 or 3 days for the ascent and descent. We decided on taking a bus quite a ways up the first day. Going into the "hike", we knew that it was going to be ... read more