The Sleeper Bus

The next morning there was a wonderful changing of the guard type ceremony at the border opening time, a mad scramble of moneychangers, form filling and passport control, and after an altercation with a female money changer ( we still can't work out if she was trying to rip us off), and a moving farewell to China, we were bundled onto the back of a truck and driven through a no-mans land and entered Laos.

Laos passport control appears to be in the middle of nowhere. In fact , there is a village a few kilometres, away, but this was not made clear to us. So once clearing customs, a painless exercise, one is confronted with a small array of transport options. We wanted to go to Udomxai which is on the main route to Luang Prabang, which is the main route south, which, one would assume, would be the most travelled route. However not one of the "array of transport options" was heading that way.

Very frustrating.

Finally I managed to persuade the driver to drop us off at a crossroads which led to where we wanted to go. All we had to do then was to wait for the mini bus to fill......which meant waiting for two hours as other passengers meandered over the border. Whilst waiting I approached a sleeper bus which was enroute from Kunming to Luang Prabang, a journey of some 24 hrs or so but could not get any sense from the drivers or passengers and it took off before I could do more.

Sleeper buses are long distance buses that have no seats. Instead they have three rows of single bunk beds running the length of the bus ending with a quadruple bed at the rear. You can prop yourself up whilst travelling but basically stay in a lying position, unless you are a yoga black belt ( do they have them?) and can assume the lotus position for hours on end.

The buses have no facilities. They stop for lunch and dinner and toilets stops are on a needs be basis!

We hadn't considered them a viable means of transport.

However, after eventually leaving the border with a full mini-van and being deposited at the crossroads in the middle of no-where ( that's a lie there was a small village there), and having no luck talking to the locals regarding ongoing transport, the appearance of the sleeper bus I had approached before seemed like a godsend.

This time I managed to enlist the help of an American soon to be graduated Doctor who spoke some Chinese ( it was a Chinese bus) and he managed to negotiate a price for us with the driver to Luang Prabang...a mere 10 hours away!!! At least we were moving.

We climbed aboard two adjacent top bunks, much to the curiosity and mirth of all the "much younger" passengers and were off. Two minutes into the journey we realised that the swaying upper bunks were not for us and took refuge in the lower quadruple bed that took up the back of the bus.

We had the area to ourselves and it felt like we were travelling in the back of a "rock star ensemble bus" heading toward the next gig. The only problem being that the road to the next gig was diabolical. The Chinese built road lasted about twenty or so kilometres into Laos and then we were on a single laned, rutted back track and lying down on a bouncing bus is not the way to go. Mandy was continually airborne, until she realised we had seat( or in this case bed) belts and so there we were, lying prone, strapped to the bed in the back of a Chinese sleeper bus jolting our way through the mountainous Laos jungle.

We did have pillows and blankets and were able to make ourselves sort of comfortable and the scenery was delightful, thick jungle and beautiful ( although muddy brown) rivers in which children swam and played and basic thatched villages. The road was winding and in places high, but the jungle obscured any precipitace falls, so there was no bus roll calculations to worry about and the condition of the road did not allow for excess speeds, so at least it wasn't terrifying.

Mandy tried to sleep and I pretended I was young again and could take all the jarring the bus was delivering, but I think I did, for the first time, contemplate the comforts of home!!!

As mentioned toilet stops were conducted when required and the jungle the only option. At one stop, Mandy had a most enlightening experience weeing with a Buddhist monk!!!

Five hours is a long time on a sleeper bus and although we had had a short breakdown stop, the lunch break was welcome relief. But after the break it got worse. The driver, refreshed from lunch, changed into shorts (obviously his racing outfit) and with an improvement in road conditions, went for it. The next four hours were like being trapped in that bus in that movie with Sandra Bullock!

Luang Prabang could not come quickly enough. We arrived in the dark (we hate doing that), crammed into a tuk tuk, and managed to find a hotel. After dumping bags we got 50 metres up the street en route to a cold beer when I collapsed. The pretense of being young again after two days of solid travelling gave way to middle age exhaustion.

Poor Mandy spent her first night in long awaited Luang Prabang, comforting her ageing partner!

Travelling

Sometimes, when you are travelling that is exactly what you do......travel. It seems your own momentum carries you further than you had planned. The day of our Lucky Air flight we had intended to stay in Jinghong or maybe a smaller town for a day or so and then into Laos, but we were carried away by fortuitous links and an array of transport modes.

Our private minivan ( very plush thank you ) limousined us the 40 minutes from our Hostel to Lijiang airport where our Lucky Jet awaited. It didn't have propellers so we were happy about that, but none the less flew nervously for the fifty minutes to Jinghong where we landed into some tropical heat. We flagged a cab to take us to the bus station where we would catch a local bus for the two hour trip to Mengla. The entrepreneurial driver suggested he could take us there for a little more than the bus and turned on his airconditioning to strengthen his argument....we relented. The roads were fantastic and we reached our destination in an hour. We stopped once when the cab driver pulled over to a pineapple seller and presented us with a bag of freshly cut pineapple.....the Chinese never cease to surprise.

As we passed the bus station a bus was leaving for our next destination, so it was stopped and on we got for an uneventful journey to Menglan. We were on a roll and decided to go with it.

At the next bus stop we were accosted by a gentleman who spoke excellent English. He informed us that we needed to go to the South bus station, four kilometers away, to continue our journey and he would be most happy to take us there for a nominal fee and would also change Chinese Yuan for Laos Kip for a competitive rate if we so desired.

You just have to admire characters like this...so I agreed, not withstanding a rather dubious look from Mandy. She became even more doubtful when his mode of transport was a steel tray on wheels attached to a pushbike...but hey, we had agreed. So on we climbed, two 20k rucksacks, two heavy day packs and two bodies!


Off he pedalled and talked non stop from woe to go. We knew intimate details of his life and his family and he of ours. He wanted Lucy to meet his son and he wanted Sam to wed his daughter. When we told him Sam was poor in London, he quipped back " what like China poor"? a telling observation. "No not China poor" Mandy replied " but too poor to marry your daughter". With that he looked at me and asked if I was happy in my marriage and would I consider his daughter. I asked if he had a photo and when he replied no, I told him I couldn't commit without a photo.......he seemed to understand that!!

He organised our ongoing ticket at the south bus station, I changed some money at what I later found was a fair rate, he put us on the next mini-bus and bid us farewell....a gem of a gentleman!.

The country was becoming more tropical and the bus ride became a little frustrating. We turned off the bitumen to enter a lovely village, picked up more passengers and then proceeded to travel on rutted small road, when all the time the wonderful bitumen road was next to us. As we bumped along Mandy and I wondered why we not on the good road. Was the bus carrying contraband, were we overloaded, did the driver not have a valid licence etc etc. None of these made sense as we were in plain sight of anyone travelling on the "good road" There were no toll booths in evidence, other vehicles were using the blacktop,...it all seemed quite strange, but with three words of Chinese ( still after all this travelling!!) we were not getting the answers we needed.

Just before we left Adelaide we saw Arj Barker at the Fringe and his show was based on the premise of "letting it go". As we were never going to find out why we were travelling on an inferior road we looked at each other and " Arjed" the situation...let it go........let it go.........let it go!

But you never do!

We eventually reached Mohan, the border town and had time to cross the border, but didn't really know what lay on the other side, so we stayed in Mohan.

Note: I believe all border towns are weird places!

Get me out of here

Our bus journey from Shaxi to Lijiang, the next stop, was uneventful apart from a fellow traveller.

He was an older European who looked quite ill, and was carrying mountains of photographic equipment and luggage. We all alighted at the bus station and he approached us to enquire about accommodation. He had a card from a hostel but had no money to ring them and needed our assistance. Mandy's phone had run out of credit but we chatted and he was sick indeed. He had been mauled by two dogs in Dali and had spent a month in care. His stitches and scars were horrific, both on his legs and arms, but he was still travelling on.....you gotta wonder about people sometimes!!!!

Luckily two Chinese women helped him and we borrowed a taxi driver's phone to get the directions to our hostel and were soon ensconced in the Panba Hostel, a great place to stay.

Lijiang is well and truly cemented on the Chinese tourist trail, one of its most famous destinations. The old city is a larger version of Zhoaxing, beautiful to look at, but as we entered the main tourist area I could not believe the masses we encountered. I have never seen so many tourists in one spot....not even in Disneyland....I turned to Mandy and said, quote " get me out of here "

She refused and like most travel destinations, once you give them a little time and perseverance, there are aspects that grow on you.

In Lijiang:

we found quiet havens in small, interesting restaurants watching through the glass, the mayhem outside;

we found tiny upstairs bars that were the living rooms of the owners. In one we sat and drank on a tiny terrace overlooking the rooftops of the town whilst the Scottish owner and his Chinese wife ( we believed) and their son ( Mandy hoped ) watched a violent dvd on the couch inside and a group of young American girls did some dope next to us;

we visited a lovely village outside town and lunched and drank and watched a fascinating game of Petanque;

we wandered less travelled lanes, the Chinese tour groups being sticklers for following only the set routes, and found the quiet solitude that does exist;

we stayed in a hostel again and met some great people;

and by doing all of this we stayed longer than planned and left Lijiang reluctantly.

We did , in addition, order our first real burger. We had been told that a tiny restaurant served the best burgers in China...how could you ignore such a statement. We checked out the place and planned our burger purchase for the next day. We talked of nothing else ( probably a slight exxageration...but only slight.) We arrived early, drank a beer and had to decide between a beef or chicken burger. Mandy wanted the beef but being such a good girl opted for the chicken, it being healthier.

My naughty burger arrived and it looked magnificent. Mandy's arrived, and far from the chicken fillet we imagined it was a roll, choc-a-bloc full of shredded chicken, covered in an inedible sauce.

I believe Mandy nearly broke down and wept.

Sometimes it pays to be unhealthily naughty!!!


Our travel choices to Jinghong, our next stop, were 48 hours in buses or a fifty minute flight. For some reason we have developed an aversion to short flights and really had to think about this decision. In the end the flight won.

Having made the decision we spent an inordinate amount of time googling Chinese airline safety records to single out the company we wanted, but in the end it came down to choosing a company that had a solid sounding name...............................................

We chose Lucky Air.

The Electrician

The one huge difference between travelling now and thirty years ago is electrical.

Thirty years ago we had a tiny slide pocket camera that I suppose ran on a replacement battery and I presume we carried a torch or two, which again occasionally required a new battery.

Today we have a large red zip bag that carries a plethora of electrical cords. These cords relate to the vast array of technology that we are carrying: the computer: the ipod: the two mobile phones: the digital SLR camera: the smaller digital camera: the voice recorder: the electric razor: the back massager (only joking); each of these have rechargable battery packs. Added to that is the hair dryer, the hair straightener and I'm sure other electrical beauty aides that I have yet to see. Then you've got card readers: USB cords: camera to card reader cords: camera to TV cords:etc, etc, etc.

Most of the above require power, and every country has different power sockets. So a vital part of the armoury are power adapters. We opted for a configuration that had a base unit that fitted Australian plugs onto which clicked the different plugs for different countries.

I hope you are with me.

You can imagine our horror when only after a few weeks the base unit died.

All communication is in danger of running out with the battery life.

Correspondence with the outside world becomes intrinsically tied to how many minutes are left in that no longer rechargable unit.

Its frightening.

Really it should be liberating. Thirty years ago Mandy wrote around 200 odd letters and cards to Jude and Dave, and received as many in return ( yes they did number them ) not to mention her other correspondence.

I believe I wrote a little less!

In those days Poste Restante was the home away from home......and we managed.

But not today.

The death of our small white plug was a disaster.

I did suggest wandering down to the local Walmart to find a replacement, a suggestion that was received with some amusement ( or was it disbelief). I am an optimist at heart and often I will suggest ridiculous solutions to our problems. I think it can be a frustrating trait at times!

However, I am not such an optimist to believe I could dismantle our little white plug and try to fix it, so I was amazed to walk into our bedroom to find Mandy doing exactly that. She was poised over the plug, Swiss army knife in hand, having already removed one brass screw.

I think I said something like " Darling, do you think that is a wise move?"

The question went unanswered, the brass screws removed, a critical eye run over the interior workings, some manipulation of said workings, screws replaced, a challenging stare, the plug was inserted into a socket and a rechargeable unit inserted into the plug...............................................



It worked.

Mandy is now "the electrician"

On the tea and horse caravan route

Shaxi is a series of villages north of Dali, en route to Lijiang, and Mandy decided we needed to get there next. It all sounded a bit hard to me, involving stopping local buses on undefined parts of the road, minibuses and, no doubt, mountainous roads! Mandy, however, was insistent and with the ricewine and Tibetan Jim's help we hired a driver (in fact two, I think the drivers mate came along to keep him company, cos he wasn't going to get much intelligent conversation in Chinese from us, and boy did they talk) to take us the four hours into the Shaxi Valley.

The driver was careful ( our one concern at all times!), the scenery picturesque, and on arrival the drivers summons the girls from the hotel to take our bags.....all very civilised and easy. Sometimes, as we have said, it pays to spend a little more on modes of travel.

We are not allowed (I don't think) to promote products, but the people from Osprey would have been delighted with the way our girls managed our wheeled rucksacks through the cobbled streets of Shaxi!!!!

The village that is loosely called Shaxi was a major trading stop on the ancient tea and horse caravan route and the southern silk road ( thats about the extent of my historical knowledge!!) and boasts a preserved square from that time and was a glorious step back in time, narrow cobbled streets and ancient dwellings. Our hotel was a cultural centre in a restored Bai courtyard home, and our room was wooden and delightful and our single beds took up one side of the room facing each other, so we could sit up in bed and have a chat face to face.

We learned, soon in our travels, that it was better to book twin rooms with single beds as they tend to be larger rooms......Mandy was very dubious at first about my motives.

Having settled in, we looked for somewhere to have lunch. There was a lot of activity in the square as a movie was being made.....was interesting watching the process but the subject matter looked a little tedious, seemed to be mostly children pushing ancient hoops around. Off the square was a Cafe sign so we entered the building and wandered around until we came to a room that was obviously a restaurant and a well set up one at that. Eventually after a lot of throat clearing a young girl appeared, and, after a charade or two realised we wanted to eat, and brought the menus.

It was unbelievable.....the menu read like a Michelin Star offering. Flabbergasted we settled ourselves with a beer and wondered how on earth they were going to recreate the menu....things like parmesan cheese on salads, mashed potato with pork and olive oil dressing, mozzerella, roasted honied walnut salad, sundried tomatoes and amazing soups.

There was no-one in the kitchen, no sign of activity, but we ordered none the less, some soup and the walnut salad...we had already decided to come back for dinner. As sooon as we ordered people appeared, the manager materialised from no-where and sent the girl off to do the necessary shopping for our lunch, the kitchen came to life ( one person, but that was enough) and with very little fuss our meal was presented. It was delicious.

We had that lunch and two evening meals there and the food was sensational. It was bizzare, because none of the few staff new much about the food and we imagined neither did the cook, but he/she had been taught wonderfully well by someone. Of course curious Mandy wanted to know all the details, but we could get very little information from anyone. They had a great bar upstairs....always empty, but Mandy managed to teach the young girl what Gin was (the bar was fully stocked) and how to make a gin and tonic...all very weird, but certainly suited our needs.

The villages within the valley are quite close together and we had one of the best mornings of our trip walking from one village to another, wending our way through narrow lanes and rice paddies and wheat plots, being geeted warmly by all the locals, disrupting a classroom of screaming children, confronting a stubborn donkey who would not let us pass, being shown a hidden temple by an ancient gardener, and walking with an elderly gentleman who had been in the army and had a little English and would every now and then spout a nursery rhyme...Jack & Jill: Baa Baa Black Sheep and a few more.

The walk only took a few hours but it was magical and memorable.....moments like those are so special and make travelling so very inspiring.

We were also lucky enough to experience the weekly market the morning we left. The whole town is transformed into a seething mass of stall holders and the valley buyers...one of the best yet!

Thank goodness Mandy was so insistent on visiting this wonderful valley.....thanks darlin!

Mandy can not believe I have just summed up one of the most amazing markets in one sentence....just too hard to describe...