The wingtip seeming to caress clothes strung over the balconies of towering apartments, and passengers nervously hold their breath as the 747 banks sharply for an unnerving descent onto Hong Kong’s notorious Kai Tak Airport. It’s early November, and with one-way tickets, Christine and I have said goodbye to concrete blocks and ticking clocks to spend the next three months exploring exotic South-East Asia.
Peering down from the fifth floor window of our sarcophagus-size room we watch people scurrying about beneath the glaring neon dragons, stone lions, and other supernatural sentries guarding the buildings along Nathan Road. A brazen cockroach big enough to barbeque suddenly startles us by scuttling across our cobwebbed window sill. It is 4 a.m. in Kowloon, and day one of our Asian adventure.
With our limited travel budget we end up renting a room at the justly infamous ‘Chungking Mansion’. The squalid 17 story ghetto of global immigrants is home to many activities from the darker side of life, and with the elevators not working, more than once we have to step around a body slumped in the stairwells to reach our room. The mere mention of ‘mansion’ in the name is a monstrous misnomer especially since we also have to keep an eye open for the beady-eyed rats calling it home!
Our flat is divided into six eensie-weensie rooms; one for the landlady, and five others for rent to ‘budget’ travelers. The grungy communal bathroom features a hotplate embedded in the wall since it also doubles as the kitchen! The dingy dump is not exactly a hygienic masterpiece, and for the woeful week we’re here we pledge to satisfy our culinary needs elsewhere.
Exploring the vertical city we marvel at how Kowloon’s mishmash of medieval mysticism mingles with modern business. Unsecured workers clinging to towering bamboo scaffolding used on skyscrapers under construction, and tangles of butchered snakes are sold in an alleyway that sounds like distant gunfire from the clashing of Mahjong tiles. Next to a glitzy fashion shop on Nathan Rd, hogs with their throats slit in gruesome red smiles hang upside down, staring back with dulled unblinking eyes.
Dawn is Kowloon’s most serene time and the air is frequently filled with the cheerful chirping of caged songbirds being walked by their owners. Locals coil and uncoil apparently boneless limbs during the soft moving meditation of Tai Chi, and men in pajamas sit on sidewalks smoking from lengthy bamboo bongs looking like a modified didgeridoo. Then as mornings lengthen, the city’s cordial calm is replaced by the normal cornucopia of chaos.
Temple Street Night Market is a bizarre bazaar only open after the sun sets, and in the songbird section I am flat-out astounded when a little man strides towards me and makes a grab at my crotch! As I instantly grab a fistful of his shirt, large parentheses form at the corner of his mouth and he holds up a fist clutching a live cricket. Apparently seeking a better fate than being sold as bird food, the green escapee’s leap for liberation ended up on the zipper of my pants to create the crazy crotch-cricket caper!
Transporting about 50,000 people a day from Kowloon over to Hong Kong Island, the Star Ferry costs a mere 70 cents a head; and we also use other frugal ferries to explore Cheung Chau Island and the market in Stanley. To complete the afternoon we hire a sampan to tour the Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter, where many fishing families known as ‘the floating people’ live aboard their weathered wooden boats.
Fancying familiar food we stop at a Pizza Hut allowing as much salad bar food as a tiny plate will hold. Chinese strategically stack their plates to the point where the salads are almost brushing against the ceiling, but striving to emulate their aerial skills our inglorious efforts clumsily result in an avalanche of greens embarrassingly tumbling from plate to floor.
Five days later our China visas are ready, and we take an overnight boat 140 miles upriver to the city of Guangzhou. Our first meal aboard is not exactly epicurean perfection; but rather a plate of rice served alongside some weird fungus floating in a bowl of gelatinous slop. Locals observing our ineptitude at chasing the mystery items around in the bowl seem to have fallen silent in disgust. The question that pains our brains is that of all the food utensils on the planet ever invented for eating, how the hell did two skinny wooden twigs ever win out?
Our lodging is a hostel on Shamian Island in the city of Guangzhou, home to seven million people and roughly the same number of bicycles. Many here apparently consider fried dog a delicacy and while wandering the streets we are aghast to see curly-tailed dogs being butchered on the sidewalks!
Buildings and transport all seem overwhelmingly drab with grey, green, and blues dominating. People too share a somber sameness while shuffling along in Mao suits of either ink blue or duck-shit green. Even the weather is a dull polluted grey in China, with clear blue sky apparently yet to be discovered!
We find many Chinese restaurants offensive due to a lack of closemouthed politeness while eating. Most folks chew open-mouthed like a pit-bull on a caramel, and going from awful to awfuler, eateries often sound like a bronchitis ward with patrons grossly hawking up phlegmy stuff and using the floor as a spittoon!
Squat-pot toilets have a stench that would make a skunk ashamed of itself, and require a Sumo squat to do your thing before dumping a bucket of water to eradicate the evidence! Nope, China is sure as shit is not your ultimate fine-dining experience!
Most of our shoddy lodging doesn’t have the luxury of hot water, and if it does, it’s typically only for a one hour window. Usually we simply receive a thermos or two of hot water, which for bathing is about as useful as a trap door on a lifeboat, but such are the irritations of globetrotting on a shoe-string budget.
Venturing into the bacterial buffet of Quing Ping Market the outlandish assortment of ‘food’ looks about as appealing as a three finger prostate exam! Snakes slither about in glass terrariums. Dogs dangle from meat hooks and cats are being skinned. Still-live filleted fish flop about on filthy tables. There are tubs of live eels, turtles, starfish, and frogs alongside buckets of blood and mystery organs. Even worse, much of the food we look at is watching us back! Bathed in the pheromones of fear inside cramped cages are armadillos, eagles, monkeys, badgers, rats, owls, and other doomed critters all awaiting their fate on Death Row.
Given the population’s colossal consumption it’s been said that ‘Chinese will eat anything with legs except a table or chair, and anything with wings except an airplane’. Believe me, seeing what’s being sold here in ‘septic central’ certainly seems to gives credence to the rumor!
Out wandering we come across an old billiard table set up on the street and being a pool player from way back I challenge a local to a game; quickly drawing a curious crowd. The experience is interesting, with the pool cues having no tips and the pathetic table more warped than ‘Twisted Sister’. Down the road I also take on a kid in a game of ping pong on a crude makeshift table. I want to win, but it’s like trying to lick my elbow, it just isn’t going to happen. Table tennis, as I humbly find out is China’s national sport!
After exchanging our FEC (tourist money) for Renminbi (workers money) on the black market we struggle to negotiate a boat journey up the murky Pearl River to the town of Wuzhou. In a country where everything is hopelessly unfamiliar, the Great Wall of language barriers is turning every interaction into a frustrating game of Charades. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact we have somehow managed to lose our Chinese phrase book.
Twenty four dull hours on a dull boat gets us to the dull city of Wuzhou, before another dull boat takes us along the drunkenly meandering Li River to the very un-dull village of Yangshou. Surrounded by the mist- caressed peaks of the Huangshan Mountains, the inspiring area looks like a beautiful Chinese painting in motion as we cycle through the spectacular geology and past water buffalo steered by sinewy bent-double farmers toiling in emerald-green fields of rice.
As we step ashore after boating along the Li River to the tiny fishing village of Fuli, frightened children shriek out ‘Gweilo’ and scatter like wind-blown confetti! The slang for Westerners means ‘White Devil’ or ‘Ghost Man’, referencing the colour of our skin!
We’re fascinated by a secret weapon the Fuli fishermen have developed. Instead of hurling hooks into the river they use trained cormorants. A constricting ring around the bird’s throat allows fish to be caught but not swallowed, so they can be retrieved by the fishermen! At rest, the cormorants dry wings-spread-wide on the raft looking like Batman wannabees. I manage to join an old fisherman on his long bamboo raft, and though chitchat-challenged, we improvise and share an amiable curiosity by talking with our hands.
The exquisiteness of the surrounding countryside is nothing shy of magnificent. Continuing on the river towards Guilin we’re forced to abandon the boat when it runs aground in shallows outside the village of Yandi. An inquisitive crowd immediately gathers, invading our personal space and wanting to touch us. A couple speaking ‘Chinenglish’ want to know how old I am, and when asking them to guess, I am appalled they think I’m 60 to 65 – nearly twice my age!
Christine loves it, but I’m craving a mirror to see what all this rice munching has done to me. We later learn that to the Chinese it is facial hair that gets you there, and beards are seen as a sign of wisdom. Well, I suppose that makes their misconception a tad more tolerable; just a tad, mind you, just a tad!
Encumbered by backpacks so hefty that even the Sherpas would be seeking a word with their union rep, Christine and her ‘old man’ shuffle off down the lonely dirt road. Fortunately Lady Luck smiles kindly, and waving down a bus, we hitch a ride to a major crossroad. One truck and another bouncing bus later we arrive in gorgeous Guilin; a town whose landscape the Chinese proclaim as ‘the best under heaven’.
The Chinese again scrutinize us like we are an attraction in a zoo and make me wonder if my fly is open, there’s spinach in my teeth, or I’ve grown an extra set of ears! Also weird are restaurants with ‘live menus’ that resemble a petting zoo. The ‘food’ is imprisoned in cages outside for viewing, and after selecting the snake, turtle, etc. of your choice it is killed and skinned in front of you and then trotted off into the kitchen.
After visiting some caves in Guilin we opt to test drive a camel; the animal not the cigarette. I’m not sure why because I distrust camels, and anything else for that matter that can go a full week without a drink! It doesn’t take long to realize our Lawrence of Arabia fantasy is better left unfulfilled, and we dismount the ugly fat-lipped ungulate to search for a picture of the Dalai Lama. Though Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader’s image is forbidden by China, we purchase one in a black market and intend to smuggle it into the country.
First we must make our way to the city of Chengdu as it’s the only portal to legally enter Lhasa. With the train station having zero signs in English even finding the correct train proves an onerous task. In China, ‘Face’ is everything, and unable to bear the embarrassment if unable to answer a question people will without hesitation make something up; the fact they don’t have a clue not deterring them in the slightest!
Ticket buying is a mob sport, and as the train rumbles to a stop in the station throngs of mannerless bodies try to score a decent seat by flinging themselves through open windows and doors as if a madman were shooting at them! We end up in a repugnant car that reeks of body odor, squat toilets, and cigarette smoke; along with filthy floors fouled with a vile hodgepodge of engine soot, peanut shells, fruit peels, cigarette butts, and wads of slimy spittle!
As the train clacks over the tracks I’ve developed a high fever and the shakes, and am coughing up everything but a kidney. Now sounding like an emphysemic coal miner, I wonder if perhaps I’m turning Chinese! A nice older passenger with limited English seems concerned about my condition and brings me a blanket and offers to share his food. For his kindness I give him a B.C. souvenir pin which actually turns him puddle-eyed. Later, the fellow informs us that he is an official member of the Communist party.
After a grueling night we reach Guiyang and switch trains for another cruel 20 hour, 1000 km stretch of tracks to China’s Sichuan Province. It’s the end of November and my chest infection is aggravated by the unsympathetic cold weather and the past 44 hours of unheated train travel through northern China.
Unable to find transport from the train station in Chengdu quickly scuttles our morale, and we set off on foot ambiguous as to which direction to go. By happenstance an official Communist vehicle rolls up alongside us, and in the back is none other than the old fellow from the train! We can scarcely believe our good fortune when he offers us a ride to the Public Security Bureau to apply for our Tibet visas. Serendipity is a traveler’s strongest ally, and we will forever be indebted to our compassionate communist savior.
Acquiring our visas, we take a rickshaw to a hostel suggested by our new friend and find sleeping quarters in one of the cheap dorm rooms. Christine has sourced some medicine from a Chinese doctor but it doesn’t seem to help, and we’re now in a quandary over tackling Tibet as its average elevation of over 4000 meters makes it’s one of the highest regions on earth. However, not wanting anything on our to-do list transferred to a should-have-done list we green-light the call to adventure, invigorated by the fact that after hundreds of years of forbidding Western travelers to cross its borders, this is the first year Tibet has opened its doors.
Airplanes flying into Tibet don’t like to fly through the clouds, because the clouds here have mountains in them! But, with what feels like the slowness of cold molasses, our butt-puckering flight soars over the planet’s highest peaks before touching down in Lhasa, the ‘Rooftop of the World’! During an 80 mile bladder-bursting bus ride into the city through a predominantly barren landscape we endure a throat-clawing dust lifting from the gravel road and that’s being sucked inside the bus.
Arriving in town, the combination of my lingering chest illness and the oxygen-deprived Himalayan air is taking its toll. I collapse on a street leaving Christine the unenviable chore of hauling both our backpacks. This is a tall ask at 12,000 feet, when even the simplest of tasks is a challenge with what feels like an elephant sitting on your chest. But keeping each other out of trouble, it’s what we do!
To her credit my leading lady triumphantly ferrets out the Snowland Hotel, one of the very few lodgings available to foreigners. Unfortunately what the ‘hotel’ lacks in cleanliness it doesn’t really make up for with anything else. Not to be finicky, but with an unheated room the most popular activity is thawing! There’s also no running water and the lavatory smells like gorilla’s piss after an asparagus feed! However, with the weather cold enough to fart snowflakes it makes for a marginally better alternative to sleeping on the street.
My fever is not going away, and while I don’t have a thermometer stuck up my ass, I reckon if I did I’d likely have to add mercury poisoning to my list of woes! Catching a lucky break, Christine meets an English doctor living in China for the past two years who generously provides antibiotics that clear my fever, and happily, a couple of days later I am up and about.
In the mornings we cook our own breakfast of an egg and rice in a jumbo wok set over an open fire fueled by dried yak dung. The yak is critical to Tibetans and it is the permeating scent of Lhasa, with its dung used for fires, its butter for candles, and its skin for clothing.
I’ve somehow broken off half of a molar but there’s no chance I’m going to succumb to the local dentist’s hammer and chisel methods of extraction. When the stars come out temperatures drop into the ice age, and feverishly rubbing our hands together seeking warmth we hope not to spontaneously combust. Wrapped up like human burritos in all our clothes including our coats, and trying to sleep with my tongue draped over the throbbing tooth we are hardly radiating contentment!
Tibet is breathtaking, and so too is the stargazing. The high altitude, thin air, and minimal light pollution have transparent night skies chockfull of a million shimmering stars that seem so close it feels as if we could extend an arm and grab a handful.
Stepping outside into a splendid Tibetan morning Lhasa’s frosted ground looks as if it’s been dusted with diamonds, and as we stroll through the city’s narrow backstreets we pass by yak dung sellers, emaciated mange-riddled dogs, kids with noses needing wiping, and bicycle-riding Chinese soldiers.
At Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s holiest shrine, we follow a trodden-smooth stone alley with people spinning huge brass prayer wheels; and averse to wasting a view, climb a set of stairs to gaze out past decorative golden dragons to the thousand-room Potala Palace. The vast and former home of the Dalai Lama still stands proud, with the serrated Himalayas showing off their snowy splendor in the background.
Tibetans are a tough nomadic people with bronzed faces heavily creased from decades of squinting into the fierce sun. Yet despite enduring an abundance of hardships, including their struggles against the Chinese Government, the deeply religious Buddhists seem a friendly bunch and keen to share an accepting smile.
Pilgrims murmur mantras while engaging in the odd ritualistic practice of prostration. Dropping to their knees they flatten out face down on the ground and then stand up with pressed palms above their head and over their heart. Three small steps are taken and the sequence repeated. Tibetans are ideally expected to prostrate themselves 100,000 times a year as a demonstration of devotion in hopes of jacking up their karma; but to us the rigorous ritual looks not unlike a complicated ‘burpee marathon’.
At Jokhang Temple people respectfully wander around it in a clockwise direction while offering prayers. In an encircling marketplace called the Barkhor, women are bejeweled with turquoise, coral, and silver braided into long ropes of hair trailing down their backs. At one of the market stalls we elatedly purchase two thick Chinese hats with rabbit fur earflaps, optimistically hoping the bulky bunny bonnets will prevent frostbite of the ears in Tibet’s bone-chilling cold.
Dawdling about the eclectic market we spot a kind looking older fellow clothed in a yak skin coat spinning a prayer wheel and decide he is to be the recipient of our smuggled Dali Lama picture. Gifting him the photo his jubilation becomes unbounded. It’s like he’s just won the lottery, and he quickly embraces us in a tourniquet-tight hug that would make any bear proud!
Rubbing the cherished photo on his head and over his heart, he follows us around with puppyish devotion. To him the picture is an incredibly precious gift, and we find the full-wattage smile on his gap-toothed face reflecting right back in our own. This is the type of moment we travel for, and the delightful encounter becomes one of many cherished memories in unforgettable Tibet.
Today we learn that many Tibetans stick their tongue out as a traditional greeting. Apparently in the 9th century the brutally cruel King Lang Darma had a black tongue, and as Buddhists believing in reincarnation, people feared he would come back in another form. Sticking out their tongues is simply considered good manners as it serves as proof they are not the reincarnated evil king!
Another unique Tibetan custom is ‘Sky Burial’, with human corpses transported high into the mountains and the cut up with the bones crushed and fed to scavenging vultures to carry away. The belief is there’s no need to preserve the body as it’s now an empty vessel with the soul and spirit already set free. Disposing of the remains in this manner also solves issues with the frozen ground and shortage of firewood.
Finally it’s time for us to pull the plug on Lhasa, but since there are no flights into Nepal we investigate a bus supposedly traveling overland through the Himalayas. Unfortunately, we learn that a few weeks ago the old bus broke down in the jagged mountains and the consequence for its stranded passengers was frostbite. News that the bus has yet to be repaired works us up into a lather of frustration as it’s essential we get into Nepal, having neither the time nor desire to backtrack all the way back across China.
Travelers in Tibet are as rare as frog’s fur, but a short while ago we met an American named Fred, also planning to travel into Nepal. Updating him that there is no longer a bus, he informs us of a place in Lhasa where it’s possible to rent a jeep for the staggering cost of $280 each. This is an absolute fortune by Asian standards but we really have no other option. As a purported benefit, the shocking sticker price also includes a mandatory driver since it is totally forbidden for foreigners to drive in Tibet.
This intimidating undertaking involves a treacherous 1,000 km drive over a stone road gripping the edge of the imposing Himalaya Mountains. Although the journey sounds epic we are up for the challenge. So, with sizeable fuel containers strapped to the jeep, we drive outside Lhasa and roll the jeep onto a barge in order to cross a glacial river, before climbing up through the vertical giants and down through the gears.
Hung out like laundry along the way, multicolored Buddhist prayer flags called ‘wind-horses’ are meant to promote peace and wisdom. Tibetans believe the prayers will be blown upwards by the wind as an offering to their deities; bringing fortune, happiness, and health to those who hang them. Driving through the mountains at this altitude our breathing is labored and our journey long.
Our sullen driver has the personality of an Easter Island statue, but what’s worse is that the three of us did not expect for him to be messed up on some sort of drugs! Clearly the dullard is not with it, and spying his face in the mirror from the backseat I can see his rheumy eyes are glazed over like a morning donut.
Mere moments later he nods off at the wheel, crashing the jeep into a large rock and ripping open a front tire. Thankfully there is no other damage, and after I impale the ‘prince of ineptitude’ with a toxic verbal spear we nurse the wounded vehicle back to health with the only spare tire.
Fearful of being stranded in our desolate surrounds I tell Fred that the imbecile is a danger to us all, but his assertion is ‘Don’t worry, I know these people. It’s all about face, and from now on he’ll be extra careful’. With more than minor qualms we continue along a bottomless mountain road where any fall is final.
A couple of hours later it becomes clear that Fred is all foam and no beer when his hypothesis is clearly debunked. The moronic driver once again loses control as our vehicle careens around a sharp corner and hits a shallow ditch becoming airborne! Miraculously, this specific corner has a wide shoulder with boulders piled up at the outer edge. Landing with a seismic thud, the jeep bounces to a stop with the front bumper up on the rocks, the only thing preventing a catastrophic plunge over a vertical eternity!
On impact Christine is struck in the back of the head by a piece of luggage, Fred cuts his arm when thrown into the windshield, and I crack a front tooth on impact. Damn, at the rate I’m breaking teeth my dentist back home will likely be able to pay off his mortgage when/if we return!
Had the accident occurred on any corner either before or after this one there is no doubt we would all be laying toes up on a morgue slab! I cannot stop my legs from trembling, but with an avalanche of adrenaline flaming through our bodies we somehow manage to free the still drivable jeep from the rocks. Then, with the driver having nearly killed us all my anger detonates. With extreme prejudice I grab him by the throat and bounce his head off the side of the jeep while demonizing him with a 12 letter word beginning with M!
Trusting the creep about as far as I can toss a fridge, I then catapult him into the back of the vehicle along with the luggage. Since Fred’s advice has proved to be as fruitless as taking Tango lessons from a gorilla, there is no longer a debate. I inform him with a bitter finality that as of right now I am doing the driving; Period. Dot. The end! All that matters to me is getting us to the border alive, and I don’t give a red rat’s ass that this is illegal or that we are now in a hijacked jeep!
With Mount Everest and its pals holding up the sky in the background we tackle the ‘taker of breath’ known as Gyatso La Pass. Being 4 km higher than the Alps, the Himalayas are the highest mountains on earth, and at an ear-popping elevation of 17,126 feet this is one of the highest mountain passes in the world!
The jeep grumbles along in low gear as we drive the rugged road across the sky with the altitude’s oxygen levels less than half of those at sea level. Headachy and encountering slight nosebleeds we inhale the thin air deeply, concerned about the possibility of altitude related sickness.
Anxious about our fate in the unlikely event we encounter any authorities in the desolate surroundings, we pool our paltry food rations and come up with a tin of tuna, 2 tins of juice, some granola, and a partial jar of peanut butter. Stabbing through the tin of tuna with my pocket knife until the lid can be opened the three of us then devour the contents before continuing onward and upward through the imposing cloud scrapers.
Driving through the night is traumatic and we’re all frayed from sleep deprivation. Still we push on, and on. Late day a trailing plume of dust and the crunch of tires announce our arrival at an area close to the border which is as far as we can drive. Letting the driver out of the back he is puking his guts out, but as the Russians say “tuffski shitski”!
The only accommodation available looks questionable, but with no other options we retrieve our backpacks from the Jeep and hand over some money for a dirty room with a small bed and sheets that look as if they’ve been used by others since their last laundering. Christine and I have a room, Fred has a room, and as for the sleazebag at the epicenter of our anguish, well long ago he crossed over into ‘don’t-give-a-fuck’ territory! I angrily hurl the keys at him as we trudge off to pillow our heads.
With the new day still waking up both the jeep and driver have vanished. This is perfectly fine by us, as we thought the fourteen karat fuckup might make trouble for us with border authorities. With no food, but joyous to be alive, we leg it to the border. After clearing customs we still have a laborious 9 km hike through a buffer of ‘no-mans’ land between the borders of Tibet and Nepal. This area has just recently opened up and we are amongst the first trickle of foreigners to make the crossing.
We’re told about a ‘shortcut’ down the mountainside but it turns out to be a near vertical Sherpa trail that even a mountain goat would think twice about descending. It is so startlingly steep that we crab-walk down on our bum-cheeks to avoid going ass over teakettle from the burden of our weighty packs! If I listen closely I swear I can hear the faint mutterings of a mutiny escaping from between Christine’s beautiful lips.
Relieved to finally reach the bottom we cross the border into Nepal, and an outstretched thumb manages to halt a large truck of Tibetan pilgrims. The driver opens his compartment so the three of us can all scrunch in, and a body count reveals we’ve just increased the cab count to seventeen! Giving new meaning to togetherness, Tibetans are now sitting on top of each other, with one even sitting on the driver’s lap!
The truck’s cab aroma is an unpleasant ‘eau de pee-ple’, but with transport rare we’ve never been happier to squeeze into discomfort. The populous truck barrels over 100 km of coronary-inducing mountain roads until eventually reaching the legendary city of Kathmandu. Thanking the driver, we elatedly climb out of the truck, bringing a much-welcomed conclusion to our harrowing 48 hour expedition. Only then do we exhale!
After bidding adieu to Fred our priority is to find food. Newly slimmed down after a month of mainly rice we’re hungry enough to chew a shoe, and spotting a place called ‘Paradise Restaurant’, we’re on it like ravens on roadkill. Gastronomic expectations from a menu that even includes pizza have the two of us drooling like a pair of elderly Saint Bernards!
Eager to find some of the pounds lost in Tibet we ravenously stuff our mouths in the manner of ill-bred chipmunks, and after testing the endurance of our mandibles as if there’s an upcoming famine we slither out of the restaurant like a couple of well-gorged pythons. Thoroughly knackered from the last couple of days we Sherlock a room at the old Kathmandu Guest House, delighted to welcome the oblivion of sleep!
We find Kathmandu exotic and alluring with odd sounds and smells, eerie flute music, ancient wooden buildings, eye-painted temples, and women sporting a third eye between their eyebrows. As the heroes of Hinduism, cows here are considered sacred and aimlessly wander the streets with impunity, helping themselves to neatly stacked pyramids of fruit while merchants maddeningly curse them for the resulting spillage. In a tightly-packed carpet shop we enjoy a small glass of tea while swapping Canadian currency for the captivating country’s confusing coinage and colorful bills.
Sitting with her child outside a temple is an unkempt woman smoking a crudely rolled cigarette, and as I squat down to take a photo she removes the top of her wicker basket. About a foot from my nose the business end of a coiled cobra angrily pops up like a jack-in-the-box and forms a menacing question mark. Fearful of a kiss that can kill, my instant recoil shatters the world record for the reverse long jump. By a comfortable margin!
Still quaking in my sandals we head off to Durbar Square where more drama awaits when some guy behind me makes a grab at a recently purchased Girka knife residing on my hip. Instinctively I grab his arm and hurl him down into the gutter, and as he gets up the excrement hits the oscillation device!
He runs over to a market stall grabbing an even larger knife and comes at me with a venomous look, using fairly impressive verbal acumen to scream; ‘I cut you head off muthufuckuh’ ! Fortunately bystanders watching the drama intervene, and since Christine and I want no part of a knife fight we use purposeful strides to disappear from the melee through the crowd.
Rather than risk the possibility of another ‘mid-knife crisis’ it’s time for a change in surroundings! Bouncing along roads to the jungles of Royal Chitwan National Park in an old ox cart about as comfortable as riding in a wheelbarrow, we relish a swath of yellow mustard fields seemingly trying to catch up with the imposing Himalayas Mountains beyond.
In camp we arrange for an elephant safari, and on meeting the colossus of nature it immediately probes my cranium with its wrinkly seven foot schnozzle. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m always up for a little romance, but being ‘Frenched’ by three tons of testosterone is not exactly at the top of the list! After ‘introductions’ are over we find ourselves stretched as taut as an overenthusiastic facelift atop the gentle giant’s back as ‘Girth Vader’ dawdles along not much faster than if our roles were reversed!
With still no rhinoceros sightings on our final day in the park I ask a guide to take me out for one last look. As night concedes to dawn we encounter not one, but two of the behemoths, and armed only with my abundant charm it takes slightly under a nanosecond before I’m on the guide’s heels and running like a tourist at Pamploma! Climbing the closest tree we watch with wide admiration as the two Sherman tanks slowly lumber by beneath. OK then, that’s probably enough jungle for now!
Moving on to Bangkok our first night turns into a night of ugly. Over estimating his navigational skills, the taxi driver is unable to locate our hostel, and after seemingly an eternity, the Duke of Duncedom abandons us in the blackness at an obscure guesthouse dangling a ‘No Vacancy’ sign and then buggers off.
With absolutely no clue to our whereabouts, we spend a disheartening night curled up outside on the hard wooden veranda of the guesthouse dueling with antagonizing mosquitos at the top of their game. Batting back and forth like windshield wipers set to high while trying to send the nasty nocturnal ninjas to the mosquito morgue is not exactly the auspicious start we had hoped for in the Kingdom of Siam!
Sorting out directions in the morning we witness a sidesplitting sight as we make our way into town. A Thai guy riding down the main road atop his lumbering elephant suddenly stops, dismounts, and tethers what is not exactly a portrait of frailty to a wimpy car parking meter. Seeing the huge heap of herbivore being ‘parked’ on a bustling Bangkok street is definitely a first!
We spend the morning taking in the enormousness of the famous Chatuchak Market with roughly 12,000 stalls spread over 25 acres. We pimp up our wardrobe with a few unique accessories including stingray wallets and snakeskin belts, and then with our wallets battened down we visit the ‘Thieves Market’; basically a woodpile of tourists riddled with local termites all wanting to take a chomp.
Stopping at a snake farm we’re startled to have muscular boa constrictors suddenly draped around our necks like a couple of scaly scarfs. Carelessly venturing too close to a fenced area occupied by an Asian Sun Bear also gives me ‘paws’, as a blur of fur with Freddy Kruger-like claws leaves an angry set of crimson welts across my forearm! But I quickly forgive my shaggy swatter’s thuggery in the name of stupidity – mine! Besides, being beaten up by a bear is infinitely better than being beaten down by boredom!
Today on Chao Phya River we accidentally get off a water taxi at the wrong location, and the boat chugs away it leaves us marooned on a partially sunken jetty leading into a flooded alley with ramshackle housing! Unsure of the mystery yuck beneath our feet we’re craving a set of hip-waders as we plod knee-deep through a murky stew of floating garbage. What a dull and boring place Bangkok is, said no-one ever!
Our next port of call is 500 miles south to Thailand’s palm-treed island of Phuket. On the Andaman Sea, it appears to be the epitome of a tropical getaway; with ‘tan-tastic’ weather, white beaches, turquoise waters, and long wooden fishing boats adorned with flowers and brightly colored scarves. To call our little bamboo hut on the beach modest would be charitable, but it costs only six dollars a day and seems like heaven.
Christmas morning begins with some unintentional off-road field surfing when the van we’re in is forced to lurch off the highway to avoid a head on collision with a bus rounding a corner on the wrong side of the road. As in most of Asia the roads are an incubator for chaos, and the only truth seems to be that ‘right of weight’ outweighs ‘right of way’!
Fortunately no harm is done, but it’s a rude reminder of the fragility of life on earth! We continue to the famous ‘why-doesn’t-it-fall-over’ landmark of James Bond Island in Phang Nga Bay and then boat to Ko Panny; a Muslim sea gypsy village on stilts where we purchase two stunning but gigantic seashells.
With no option for a turkey Christmas dinner in Phuket we settle for a meal of fried shark and a bottle of Mae Kong whiskey. During our unorthodox yuletide meal things suddenly get tense when a gerbil-sized tarantula with legs that need shaving scuttles past beneath our table startling the bejesus out of us!
The next ‘legs’ of our journey take us from Thailand into Malaysia and on to well-ordered little Singapore, which after the usual unusual of Asia we’re accustomed to, feels more like Asia with training wheels.
With most hotels costing an arm and leg, and three toes off your remaining foot, we stay in the backpacker ghetto of Bencoolen Street. A crafty rat keeps pilfering food from our room, so seeking an improved quality of wildlife from our beady-eyed burglar we head to the zoo. Christine enjoys an amusing up close encounter with two hairy red apes by sitting down with a big mama orangutan and her adorable fuzzy infant, who perhaps looking for future fingernail fashion tips, seems totally enthralled by her shiny red nail polish.
We travel on to Indonesia’s most populated island of Java and find backpacker lodging on Jakarta’s Jalan Jaska Street. Sadly the city feels like a hapless stop, and after a few nights we board the ‘Mutiara Utara’ train and watch Java’s terrain scrolling past until reaching the end of the tracks at the port of Surabaya.
Ferrying Bali we’re astounded by its gorgeousness with palm trees gently swaying, volcanoes reaching for the sky, terraced rice fields tumbling down hills like emerald staircases, and the countryside dappled in ducks and sprinkled with monkeys.
The hypnotic sounds of gamelan orchestras make our ears smile, and ancient traditions still thrive on the island with people making temple offerings to their gods every day as they have for the last thousand years. Known as ‘The Island of the Gods’, Bali is by light years the best place in our adventure-prone travels so far.
Beavering away in fertile lawns of rice, sarong clad workers with frangipani flowers in their hair pause to gawk as we run past; mystified as to why one would run in this heat unless being chased! Outside of the village of Ubud Christine trades her sneakers for an ebony sculpture and I swap my shirt and sandals for a bone carving. Completing the transactions, a monsoon ‘Niagaras’ down causing the streets to swim; so clutching our new treasures we wade away barefoot, clad in only the few threads we have left and a smile!
Other stopovers along the ‘Banana Pancake Trail’ include the villages of Ubud, Sangeh, Tanah Lot, Mas, Kuta, Legian, Candidasa, and the lovably named Bug Bug. At the cost of about five dollars a night including breakfast, our island lodgings are all basic but comfortable, although a nightly sweep of the room is always prudent as we’ve had to evict a centipede from a shoe at one place and a creepy black scorpion at another.
Day’s end usually finds us beside the seaside enjoying a little local libation beneath a spectacular Balinese sky the colour of a boiled crustacean and watching skinny outrigger canoes being paddled ashore by smiling locals eager to display their eclectic catch. We like Bali. A lot!
During the tapestry of our travels we seem to have acquired a lot of foreign plunder along the way. Not to be outdone by Christine’s outrageous new wardrobe, I’ve managed to acquire items that include a Girka knife from Nepal, monster seashells and carved buffalo horns from Thailand, a blowgun from Java, a human skull kapalla from Tibet, and a sinister looking ceremonial Barong mask with wild boar tusks from Bali. No point going around the world and coming back empty handed, right? Don’t worry Honey; these will look lovely in the house!
Throughout the cultural smorgasbord of our three month Asian odyssey we’ve enjoyed an opportunity to sample a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and are unanimous that we definitely must return to the Wild Wild East for a second helping!
Mark H. Colegrave 1985