As the wingtip seems to caress clothes strung over the balconies of the towering apartments, passengers nervously hold their breath with the 747 plane banking 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 see people scurrying about beneath the glaring neon dragons, stone lions, and other supernatural sentries guarding buildings along Nathan Road. Suddenly a brazen cockroach big enough to barbeque startles us by scuttling across the cobwebbed window sill. It is 4 a.m. in Kowloon and day one of our adventure.
With a limited travel budget we end up renting a room at the justly infamous ‘Chungking Mansion’; a squalid 17 story ghetto of global immigrants, and home to many activities from the darker side of life. The elevators are not working, and 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 given we have to keep an eye open for the beady-eyed rats also calling the place 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 as it also doubles as the kitchen! Nothing like a shower in the kitchen, or is that a kitchen in the shower? In any case, the 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. Skyscrapers under construction are manned by unsecured workers clinging to towering bamboo scaffolding. Tangles of butchered snakes are sold in an alleyway that sound like distant gunfire with the clashing of Mahjong tiles. And on the main road next to a glitzy fashion shop, hogs with their throats slit in gruesome red smiles hang upside down, staring back at us with dull lifeless 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. Other locals coil and uncoil apparently boneless limbs during the soft moving meditation of Tai Chi, and men in slippers and pajamas sit on sidewalks smoking from lengthy bamboo bongs looking more like a modified didgeridoo. However, as mornings lengthen, the cordial calm is replaced by the city’s normal symphony of chaos.
Temple Street Night Market is a bizarre bazaar that only opens once the sun sets. In the songbird section I am flat-out astounded when a little man strides towards me and makes a grab at my crotch! Instantly grabbing a fistful of his shirt, large parentheses form at the corner of his mouth as 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 which created the crazy crotch-cricket caper!
Transporting about 50,000 people a day from Kowloon over to Hong Kong Island, Star Ferry costs us a mere 70 cents a head. After also exploring Cheung Chau Island and the market in Stanley, we finally take a sampan tour of Aberdeen’s bustling harbor, where thousands of Hong Kong’s ‘water people’ are born, live, and die aboard their weathered wooden boats.
Fancying familiar food, we stop at a Pizza Hut that allows as much salad bar food as a tiny plate will hold. Chinese strategically stack salad plates to the point where they’re almost brushing against the ceiling, but striving to emulate their aerial skills we realize much more practice is required as our inglorious efforts 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 a bowl of rice along with some weird fungus floating in a bowl of gelatinous slop. Our meal is accompanied by chopsticks, and locals observing our ineptitude seem to have fallen silent in disgust. The question paining our brain is that of all the utensils on the planet ever invented to eat rice, how the hell did two skinny wooden twigs ever win out?
Our lodging is a hostel on Shamian Island in Guangzhou. Formerly known as Canton, the city is home to seven million people and about six million bicycles. On our wanders we are astounded to walk past curly-tailed dogs being butchered on the sidewalks! Many here apparently consider fried dog a delicacy!
Almost everything seems overwhelming drab; with grey, green, and blues dominating. Even the people share a somber sameness, shuffling along dressed in Mao suits of either ink blue or duck-shit green; and the weather is a dull polluted grey with clear blue sky apparently yet to be discovered!
We find many Chinese restaurants offensive with the people’s open-mouthed chewing like a pit-bull on a caramel! Going from awful to awfuler, eateries often sound more like a tuberculosis ward with the patron’s de-phlegming and using the floor as a spittoon. The squat-pot toilets require a Sumo squat to do your thing then dumping a bucket of water to eradicate the evidence, and have a stench that would make a skunk ashamed of itself! No siree, this sure as shit is not your ultimate fine-dining experience!
Most of our shoddy lodging does not have the luxury of hot water, and if it does, it’s usually 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. Ah well, such are the irritations of globetrotting on a shoe-string budget.
Venturing into the bacterial buffet of Quing Ping Market we are disturbed by the outlandish assortment of ‘food’ on display. Snakes slither about in glass terrariums and dogs dangle from meat hooks. There are tubs containing live eels, turtles, starfish, and frogs; while still-live filleted fish flop about on filthy tables beside buckets of blood and mystery organs that look about as appealing as a three finger prostate exam! Even worse and suffering inside cramped cages, monkeys, armadillos, rats, eagles, badgers, owls, and other unlikely critters are bathed in the pheromones of fear as they await 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 aircraft’. Believe me when I tell you that what’s being sold here in ‘septic central’ certainly 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. This quickly draws a curious crowd. It is an interesting experience, with the pool cues having no tips and the pathetic table being 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!
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, a Great Wall of language barriers with an alphabet looking like tattoos turns every interaction into a frustrating game of Charades. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact we somehow managed to lose our Chinese phrase book.
Twenty four dull hours on a dull boat gets us to the dull city of Wuzhou, and another 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.
Bicycling through the spectacular geology, we pass by water buffalo and sinewy bent-double farmers toiling tirelessly in emerald-green rice paddies. A few days later we boat the Li River to the tiny fishing village of Fuli, and stepping off the boat, frightened children squeak out ‘Gweilo’ and scatter like wind-blown confetti! The slang word for Westerners means ‘Ghost Man’, and is used in reference to our white skin!
Villagers use cormorant birds for fishing, and I manage to join an old fisherman on his long bamboo raft. Though chitchat-challenged we share an amiable curiosity and improvise by talking with our hands. The birds cannot swallow their catch due to a constricting ring around their throats, and when not diving, they look like Batman wannabees, standing on the raft drying wide spread wings. The exquisiteness of the countryside is nothing short 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 invades our personal space wanting to touch us. A couple speaking ‘Chinenglish’ want to know how old I am, and when asking them to guess, I’m appalled that they think I’m 60 to 65; nearly twice my age! While Christine loves it, I am left craving a mirror to see what all this rice munching has done to me.
Later, we learn that to the Chinese it’s the facial hair that gets you there, and beards are seen as a sign of old age and 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 scrutinize us like we are an attraction in a zoo, making me wonder if my fly is open, there’s spinach in my teeth, or I’ve grown an extra set of ears! Also weird is restaurants having ‘live menus’ that resemble a petting zoo, and the ‘food’ imprisoned in cages outside for viewing. You select the snake, turtle, etc. of your choice, and then it’s killed and skinned in front of you and 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 Tibet.
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 is 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 rolls to a stop, throngs of mannerless bodies all trying to score a decent seat fling themselves through open windows and doors as if a madman were shooting at them! We end up in a repugnant car reeking of body odor, squat toilets, and cigarette smoke. The floors are carpeted in a vile mix 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 coughing up everything but a kidney, sound like an emphysemic coal miner. Damn, maybe I’m turning Chinese! A nice older passenger with limited English seems concerned about my condition. He 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 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 setting off on foot, are 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 grateful 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. 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 follow our 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 usually opt not to fly through the clouds because here the clouds have mountains in them! But with what feels like the slowness of melting glacial ice, our butt-puckering flight soars over the planet’s highest peaks before touching down in Lhasa, ‘Rooftop of the World’! Getting into town requires an 80 mile bladder-bursting bus trip through a predominantly barren landscape and a throat-clawing dust lifting from the gravel road and being sucked inside the bus.
My lingering chest illness and the oxygen-deprived Himalayan air take their toll, and in town I collapse on a street, leaving Christine the unenviable chore of hauling both our backpacks. This is a tall ask at 12,000 feet, where 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! Now I don’t mean to be finicky, but there’s no heat or running water, and the lavatory smells like gorilla’s piss after an asparagus feed! However, with weather cold enough to fart snowflakes, it’s a marginally better alternative to spending the night 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. A couple of days later I am up and about.
In the mornings we cook our own breakfast of an egg and rice using a wok set over a big open fire fueled by dried yak dung. The yak is critical to Tibetans, and creates 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 for warmth, we hope not to spontaneously combust. We’re wrapped up like a human burritos in all our clothes, including our coats; and with me trying to sleep with my tongue draped over the throbbing tooth we are hardly radiating contentment!
Tibet is breathtaking and so too is its stargazing. The high altitude, thin air, and minimal light pollution allow for transparent night skies chockfull of shimmering stars that seem so close it almost feel as if we could just extend an arm and grab a handful.
Stepping outside into a beautiful Tibetan morning the frosted ground looks as if it’s been dusted with diamonds. Lhasa’s narrow backstreets host dung sellers, kids with noses needing wiping, emaciated and mange-riddled dogs, along with 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. Averse to wasting a view, we climb a set of the Temple’s stairs and gaze out past decorative golden dragons to the vast thousand-room Potala Palace. The former home of the Dalai Lama 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. And 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 before standing 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. However, to us the rigorous ritual looks not unlike a complicated ‘burpee marathon’.
The Jokhang Temple is encircled by a marketplace called the Barkhor, where as they’ve done for the last thirteen centuries, people respectfully circle the temple in a clockwise direction while offering prayers. Women are bejeweled with turquoise, coral, or silver braided into long ropes of hair trailing down their backs. At one market stall we elatedly purchase two thick Chinese hats with rabbit fur earflaps; optimistically hoping the bulky bunny bonnets will help insulate against Tibet’s bone-chilling cold.
Dawdling about the eclectic market we notice an older fellow clothed in a yak skin coat spinning a prayer wheel, and decide he is to be the recipient of the Dali Lama picture forbidden throughout Tibet. Concentrating his energies on the photo his jubilation becomes unbounded.
Smiling like he has just won the lottery, our new best buddy embraces us in a tourniquet-tight hug that would make any bear proud! He rubs the photo on his head and over his heart, and 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 it is considered good manners to stick your tongue out at people in Tibet. Apparently in the 9th century the brutally cruel King Lang Darma had a black tongue, and as Buddhists, Tibetans believing in reincarnation feared he would come back in another form. Sticking out their tongues serves as proof that they are not the reincarnated evil king!
Another unique Tibetan custom is ‘Sky Burial’. Human corpses are transported high into the mountains and 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.
It’s time 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 was frostbite for its stranded passengers. 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 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. The price includes both the vehicle rental and a mandatory driver because 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 mountains and down through the gears.
Hung out like laundry along the way are multicolored Buddhist prayer flags called ‘wind-horses’, meant to promote peace and wisdom. Tibetans believe the prayers will be blown upwards by the wind as an offering to their deities; and will bring fortune, happiness, and health to those who hang them. Driving through the mountains at this altitude our breathing is labored and the 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 ignoramus 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 and crashes the jeep into a large rock 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 the driver is a danger to us all, but Fred’s 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 falls are final.
A couple of hours later it becomes clear that Fred is all foam and no beer. His hypothesis is clearly debunked when the moronic driver once again loses control. The jeep careens around a sharp corner and hitting a shallow ditch becomes 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 a 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 a sea 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 catapult him into the back of the vehicle along with the luggage. And 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. Its ear-popping elevation of 17,126 feet makes it one of the highest mountain passes in the world, with the Himalayas being the most massive mountains on earth and 4 km higher than the Alps!
The jeep grumbles along the rugged road in low gear, and driving across the sky the altitude’s oxygen levels are less than half of those at sea level. We are headachy and encountering slight nosebleeds. Anxious about our fate in the unlikely event we encounter any authorities, we inhale the thin air deeply, also concerned about the possibility of altitude related sickness.
Pooling our paltry food rations we come up with a tin of tuna, 2 tins of juice, some granola, and a partial jar of peanut butter. Wanting something to take the dust out of our mouths I pull out my pocket knife and stab through the tin of tuna until the lid can be opened, and after the three of us devour the contents; continue onward and upward through Tibet’s imposing cloud kissers.
Driving through the night is traumatic, and we are frayed from a scarcity of sleep. Still we push on, and on. Late day, with a plume of dust and the crunch of tires announcing our arrival, we come to an area close to the border. This is as far as we can drive, and as we let the driver out of the back he is puking his guts out. But hey, as the Russians say, “tuffski shitski”!
The only accommodation available looks questionable, but with no other options, we retrieve our backpacks from the Jeep. We hand over some money for a dirty room with a small bed and sheets looking 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 loathsome jerk responsible for so much anguish; well long ago he crossed over into ‘don’t-give-a-fuck’ territory! I angrily hurl the keys at him and 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. 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 somersaulting skull-first 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 driver’s 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 finding food. Newly slimmed down after a month of mainly rice, we are hungry enough to chew a shoe, and spotting the ‘Paradise Restaurant’, are on it like ravens on roadkill. Our gastronomic expectation from a menu that even includes pizza has the two of us drooling like a pair of elderly Saint Bernards!
Eager to find some of the pounds lost in Tibet we’ve become calorie furnaces, ravenously stuffing our mouths in the manner of ill-bred chipmunks. After testing the endurance of our mandibles as if there’s an upcoming famine, we slither out of the restaurant like a couple of overstuffed pythons. Thoroughly knackered from the last couple of days, Christine and I Sherlock a room at the old Kathmandu Guest House and happily succumb to the God of Snooze!
We find Kathmandu exotic and alluring. There are odd sounds and smells, eerie flute music, ancient wooden buildings, legless beggars, eye-painted temples, and women sporting a third eye between their eyebrows. Cows, the heroes of Hinduism, 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 jam-packed carpet shop we enjoy a small glass of tea while swapping Canadian cash for the country’s confusing coinage and colorful bills.
Nonchalantly smoking a crudely rolled cigarette outside a temple is an unkempt woman sitting with her child. 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 forming 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, only to experience even more drama. Some guy behind me makes a grab at my 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 there’s a collision between excrement and the fan.
He runs over to a market stall grabbing an even larger weapon, and coming at me with a venomous look, uses 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 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 uncomfortable ox cart, we relish a swath of yellow mustard fields seemingly trying to ‘catch up’ with the imposing Himalayas Mountains beyond.
Arriving 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, and ‘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 the night concede to dawn we encounter not one, but two of the behemoths. 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, our taxi driver is unable to locate our hostel, and after what seems an eternity, the devious Duke of Duncedom abandons us in the blackness at a guesthouse dangling a ‘No Vacancy’ sign.
With the driver having buggered off, and no clue as to where we are, we spend a dispiriting night curled up outside on the hard wooden veranda of the guesthouse. Trying to assassinate invisible mosquitos at the top of their game, we flail futilely at the nasty nocturnal ninjas throughout the night trying to send them to the mosquito morgue. This is not exactly the auspicious start we hoped for in the Kingdom of Siam!
After sorting out directions in the morning we make our way into town and witness a sidesplitting sight. A Thai guy riding down the main road atop his lumbering elephant suddenly stops and dismounts; tethering what is not exactly a portrait of frailty to a wimpy car parking meter. We have a great laugh seeing the huge heap of herbivore being ‘parked’ on a bustling Bangkok street!
Outside of Bangkok we’re taken aback by the enormousness of the famous Chatuchak Market. Roughly 12,000 stalls spread over 25 acres sell anything imaginable, and give us the opportunity to pimp up our wardrobe with unique accessories including stingray wallets and snakeskin belts.
With wallets battened down we visit ‘Thieves Market’; basically a woodpile of tourists riddled with local termites all wanting to take a chomp. Then from a sampan-filled floating market we boat the klongs to a snake farm and end up with a muscular boa constrictor draped around our necks like a scaly scarf. At the same place, venturing too close to a low-fenced area occupied by an Asian Sun Bear also gives me ‘paws’.
I unexpectedly learn a painful lesson about its speed when a blur of fur with Freddy Kruger-like claws leaves an angry set of welts across my forearm. However I forgive my shaggy swatter’s thuggery as it was my own damn fault. Besides, being beaten up by a bear is infinitely better than being beaten down by boredom!
Another day; another dramedy. Accidentally getting off a water taxi at the wrong location on Chao Phya River, the boat chugs away and leaves us marooned on a partially sunken jetty leading into a flooded alley snaking between some ramshackle housing. Unsure of the mystery yuck beneath our feet, we are 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 Thailand’s palm treed island of Phuket; looking like the epitome of a tropical getaway it has ‘tan-tastic’ weather, white beaches, emerald 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 us 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 suddenly 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, 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 then hire a boat to take us to James Bond Island; the famous ‘why-doesn’t-it-fall-over’ landmark in Phang Nga Bay. Then it’s on to Ko Panny, where at a Muslim sea gypsy village on stilts, we purchase a pearl necklace and two ridiculously large but stunning seashells that we’re not sure how to get home.
With no option for a turkey Christmas dinner in Phuket, we settle for a meal of fried shark and a celebratory bottle of a Mae Kong whiskey. Our unorthodox yuletide meal suddenly gets a little hairy when a gerbil-sized tarantula 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 over-sanitized 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 opt to stay in the backpacker ghetto of Bencoolen Street where a crafty rat keeps pilfering food from our room!
Seeking an improved quality of wildlife from our beady-eyed burglar we head to the zoo. Christine enjoys a delightful up close encounter with two hairy red apes; 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, but after staying a couple of days on Jakarta’s Jalan Jaska Street we find it a hapless stop. Boarding the ‘Mutiara Utara’ train, we watch Java’s terrain scrolling past until we reach the end of the tracks at the port of Surabaya.
Ferrying to Bali we are astounded by the island’s gorgeousness. Palm trees gently sway, volcanoes reach for the sky, terraced rice fields tumble down mountains like emerald staircases, and the hypnotic sounds of gamelan orchestras make our ears smile. Ancient traditions still thrive here, and people make 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.
Sarong clad workers beavering away in fertile lawns of rice pause to gawk whenever we run past; mystified as to why one would run in this heat unless being chased! Outside of the village of Ubud, Christine trades an old pair of sneakers for an ebony sculpture and I swap my shirt and sandals for an ornate bone carving. Just as we complete the transactions a monsoon ‘Niagaras’ down causing the streets to swim, and clutching our new treasures we wade away barefoot, clad in only a smile and the few threads we have left!
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 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 finds us beneath a spectacular Balinese sky awash in superb shades of red and orange, sitting by the sea with a drink in hand and watching skinny outrigger canoes being paddled ashore by smiling locals eager to display their eclectic catch. We like Bali. A lot!
During our hectic travels we’ve acquired a lot of foreign plunder along the way. Not to be outdone by Christine’s new wardrobe, I’ve managed to acquire 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 complete 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!
During the cultural smorgasbord of our three month Asian odyssey we have enjoyed an opportunity to sample a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and are unanimous in the fact that we’ll be back to beautiful Bali for a second helping.
Mark H. Colegrave 1985