HAVANA - IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HEMINGWAY Second only to the iconic images of Che ,which appear everywhere in Cuba from coffee mugs and T-shirts to graffiti and Government billboards, are the images of Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway is a legend in the Havana area and three of the main tourist venues in Old Havana are links to him - first is the Hotel Ambos Mundos on Obispo Street where he wrote “For Whom The Bell Tolls” in the 1930’s and Room 511 is kept as it was when he lived there. Not far away are two bars which he used to [View Full Entry]

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Finally, after ten years of visiting Cuba, I was on my way to see the strange and unusual landscape of the Vinales valley in Pinar del Rio Province - a land of isolated cylindrical steep-sided limestone hills, riddled with caves, which tower above the surrounding tobacco growing farmland with its bright red soil. These distinctive formations are the same as those seen in ancient Chinese watercolours of the Li valley in Southern China. Early in the morning we headed west along the autopiste which links Havana to the province of Pinar del Rio, crossing miles of flat scrubby land with [View Full Entry]

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Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think I would go to cemeteries when travelling abroad but I found the Necropolis or City of The Dead on several lists of “must-sees” in Havana and so, as it was within walking distance of my hotel, I decided to spend a morning there and was blown away by the scale and architectural grandeur of it. I enjoyed it so much that when I found that there was also a substantial Chinese cemetery nearby I tracked it down too and found it to be another very worthwhile location for a visit. The full [View Full Entry]

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Many different locations have been suggested for the site of James Hilton's fictitious Shangrila - somewhere in the mountainous tangle of the Himalayas and Kunlun Mountains. The Chinese government are promoting the area of Zhongdian in the extreme north of Yunnan province as their candidate. Zhongdian is the capital of the Dechen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and close by is the spectacular Ganden Sumsanling Monastery, sometimes called the Songzanlin Lamasery, built by the 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century. This was once referred to as the summer palace of the Dalai Lama and certainly [View Full Entry]

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One of our big aims on this trip was to see Tiger Leaping Gorge in the headwaters of the Yangtze River. In Lijiang we were close and so we rented a car and driver for the day and left at 9 a.m. A rental like this is not as expensive as you might expect - it cost us 260 yuan which is about $37 Can.for the whole day. The driver could not speak a word of English but knew what we wanted to see and was very helpful. Leaving the city we travelled over mountainous roads with some spectacular views, [View Full Entry]

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Another day trip by car from Dali concentrated on the Bai minority culture. Our first stop was at the Folklore Centre in the Bai village of Xizhou (admission 50 yuan). This building had a double courtyard plan, surrounded by wooden balconies on the second floor and in a large room beyond the second courtyard they demonstrated local costume, songs, dance etc in a presentation of the Three Tea Ceremony. The dialogue was only in Mandarin but the show was very visual and enjoyable, culminating in the sequential tasting of three teas - the first was bitter, the second very sweet [View Full Entry]

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Dali is a very short flight from Kunming, only about 45 minutes in the air. On arrival at Dali airport all went smoothly until we found the taxi rank, in chaos, paralyzing the five taxis that were there. The problem was that two couples wanted to share one taxi into the city. This incensed the next taxi driver in line and he drove his cab forward to block the exit for all cabs. The shouting began between the passengers and the drivers, all in Chinese. One of the passengers then marched in front of the blocking taxi and blocked it, explaining [View Full Entry]

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We did feel that we had selected a good hotel but were delighted when we got here - the New Era hotel is a cheap 30 yuan taxi ride from the airport (about $4) and is set in the middle of an interesting part of the city - the Yunnan Provincial Museum, the Bird and Flower Market, local mosques, old shopping streets and great pedestrian shopping avenues are all around it. The Provincial Museum has an excellent collection of bronzes from the ancient kingdoms of this part of China, well presented and actually labelled in English. The admission is cheap, [View Full Entry]

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On Friday night, M. picked us up at the end of his workday for the four hour drive to his hometown of Fuzhou, where we stayed at the 3-star Yishan Hotel. The next morning, M. and his wife Y. took us to one of the older streets in the city: a fascinating mix of small stores and craftsmen. Among the most interesting were the wedding decoration shop, the street butcher's and old cobbler's shops and a man making spring mattresses by hand. Next we went to the stone and antique market. It was Saturday and many stone carvers had come [View Full Entry]

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We've returned to Xiamen to visit friends and see some familiar sights from our adventure here last year. TRANSPORTATION TRIVIA An inexpensive and convenient way of getting around Xiamen is to use taxis. We collect and carry business cards of our hotel/apartment, certain restaurants, people we know etc. to communicate our destination to the drivers. The rules of the road are another matter. Canadian drivers might see these road warriors as bad drivers - lane changes are made at whim, vehicles drift to cut off others, near misses with bicycles, motorbikes and hapless pedestri [View Full Entry]

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