http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/EdVallance/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from EdVallance en-us Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:20:00 +0000 Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:20:00 +0000 For perhaps the third time in a month I awake to see the industrial suburban landscape that my room looks out on made beautiful by an allencompassing white blanket visible even at this hour of darkness. Its magic is still enough to send a little tingle of excitement down my spine even though it is my third winter spent in this city. Perhaps it jogs memories almost lost to me now of the first car http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Moscow/blog-453600.html The Moscow metro underground subway takes up so much of my life here represents such a vast crosssection of society and inspires such a mindboggling mixture of awe respect pity frustration fury and disgust that it deserves at the least a mention.Approaching a metro station you must first walk past an area of crappy food stands selling such delightful specialities as dog cat and rat s http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Northwest/Moscow/blog-446901.html Day 1Arrive Kaunas Lithuania night time. Ask young man in airport shop where to get bus to town centre. He smiles and replies in English. Very unSoviet in Russia would have had head bitten off for daring to ask such a question. Ask minivan driver in car park which stop to wait at. Jumps out of van and walks me over to right one.Town centre cleaner and roads better quality than most places in http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belarus/blog-428632.html After two years on the road I finally find myself back in an environment that should be comforting reassuring and familiar. But it is not. Suddenly after two years of discovery and exploration where conversations more often than not were about new things we had seen or learned new ways of living we had experienced new concepts and ways of thinking we had never known existed before I am trying http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/blog-428630.html I woke up with a nasty headache as the only reminder of the terrifying agonising attack that had overpowered me the previous day amazed that such an illness the worst I had ever experienced could have come and gone so quickly. Whatever it was I hoped never to have to endure anything similar again.After a large breakfast our driver Mogi took us out of Tsagaannuur for ten minutes before we al http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Mongolia/blog-420704.html Most of the time the only signs of civilisation were the wheel ruts on which our eightseater Russian 4x4 bumped and bounced for hours on end northwards across the otherwise empty brown plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. Occasionally the barrenness to which the sparse crunchy unhealthy grass was insufficient to lend even a hint of colour yet enough to nurture the odd herd of cam http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Mongolia/blog-419858.html Eddy Great said the excited voice on the other end of the phone Where are you Did you get across the border OKTen minutes later the voice had materialized into a person our Couchsurfing host in Ulaanbaatar Mobgolia's capital city. Begz was a small thirty three year old man in a beret with a weathered face that like many Mongolians made him look older than he really was. Seeing him wh http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Mongolia/Ulaanbaatar/blog-404140.html Where are you from came the first English words we had heard from anyone other than each other in several days. Turning to my right I saw two young suited Chinese men walking next to me.England I replied and youWe're from Kaili one of the men answered. We had been there a few days previously having taken the train fifteen hours to the east out of Yunnan province and into Guizhou. A f http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/blog-403450.html We arrived in Mengzi a large modern town of little interest in itself after a tip off about a market in a village two hours away where some of the craziest traditional tribal dress in Yunnan could be seen.Having stared at us gobsmacked as we entered the hotel clearly very unused to seeing travelers one of the women who worked there now trotted down the street in front of us in search of a taxi http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/blog-401548.html An hour and a half's bump jolt and grind down the road from Yuanyang brought us to the fifth ethnic minority market we had visited in as many days see previous blogs. The hill folk appearing at this market were less colourful but no less visually impressive than at any of the previous ones. As well as many members of the same group to be seen at Yuanyang's market there were others here dressed http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/blog-401541.html The village of Huang Cao Ba was a twohour van ride away from Yuanyang down a bumpy road that ran for much of the way through the bottom of a high steepwalled gorge. For the first time in Yunnan we began to see the usual concrete houses disappearing to be replaced just very occasionally by some of the few dwellings in traditional style that remained to the province.The market itself was like n http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/blog-401536.html Having visited a market in a nearby village I decided to have a look at the one in Yuanyang itself. The nearby one had been a visual feast a kaleidoscopic array of colours worn by the local tribespeople who come down from the mountain villages to buy sell barter and socialise to my delight I found more of the same in Yuangyang town itself. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/Yuanyang/blog-401526.html Yuanyang's rice terraces stretched away below us covering mountainsides in all directions. In comparison to these the famed ones in the north of the Philippines dwindle into insignificance. Here you could drive for over an hour and still be among the allotments of land that varied from the emerald green to the mud brown to the golden to mere watery reflections of the sky.Right now these ones wer http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/Yuanyang/blog-393687.html China is the first country I have backpacked where neither do I speak the language nor does almost anyone speak mine. Under these circumstances communication with anyone apart from other tourists or people directly involved with tourists in major tourist hotspots is exceedingly difficult. Without the finances to hire an Englishspeaking guide this means that when traveling in remote or offtheb http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/blog-393504.html A long time ago there was a king and he had twelve daughters. He was a devil and could not be killed in any way and used to kill his people indiscriminately. One day his daughters persuaded him to hold a feast and when he was quite drunk one of them said to him 'Oh father you are such a great king no one can hurt you.'The devil king was quite drunk and replied 'It's true I am a great king http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/Jinghong/blog-393177.html Tourists throng the streets of traditional wooden Chinese buildings many of which have been converted into expensive pizza restaurants curry houses souvenir shops and backpacker hostels. I've been walking down this particular street for less than two minutes and already the third greatgrandmother in the traditional dress of her ethnic minority is staggering up to me to say You want smoke gan http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/Dali/blog-393480.html I'm very lucky to have this job Robert who worked for an employment agency told us in an almost ridiculously posh British accent. It's just because I speak good Burmese Chinese and Shan . Most of us Burmese can't even feed our families. Before I got this job I worked in Thailand Cambodia then back in Burma as a longdistance lorry driver for US50 a month then in a factory sixteen hours http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Yunnan/Ruili/blog-390817.html A stream of highly animated but utterly incoherent nonsense greeted us upon our request to the policeman for directions to the bus stop. Six months in the Philippines had got us into the habit of thinking that everyone everywhere must speak English this encounter with the police officer was the first of several rude awakenings reminding us that travel in China is a completely different ball game http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/blog-389474.html I shivered below the layers of blankets piled on top of me. For the first time in six months I was waking up in a room full of really chilly air. It reminded me of a feeling so familiar as to be instantly recognisable but at the same time one that had not been felt in such a long time as to be quite exciting that of waking up in my room on a winter morning in Oxford. As consciousness trickled int http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Mountain-Province/Sagada/blog-386360.html Heading north from Manila the road and the transport serving it with their gradual degeneration mirror the disintegrating level of development of the surrounding areas. From the capital north to the city of Baguio is for the most part a smooth ride on a comfortable seat in an airconditioned coach across the flat plains of Pampanga and Pangasinan provinces the towns dusty and nondescript the http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Kalinga/blog-385662.html