Adventures of Kevin and Robin

After months of planning and permit uncertainty we were actually on the train to Lhasa! Although controversial in Tibet, the railway connects Beijing and Shanghai to the highest train station in the world at Lhasa (above 3,500m) via the highest railway pass in the world (over 5,000m) and in the process passes by the highest lake in the world (Lake Nam Co above 4,700m). The graph of the trip looks sorta like this:

The journey passes through unbelievable terrain including Tibetan villages with their unique square like architecture with their longhaired Yaks grazing in the plains all towered by picturesque mountain ranges. As we were sitting by the window we noticed that there were two little red hearts pinned to our curtains. There were no other curtains with these markers and no other white folks on the train so we started asking the other cabin members and determined that they were ‘foreigner’ markers. Who knows why we had to be marked but we thought we’d have some fun with ‘em and wore them around for a while.

Lhasa is sadly very much like it is described in Wikitravel – flooded by the Chinese Military. There are always two points of view on how history has come to pass. In this case there is the Chinese run Tibetan History Museum we visited in Lhasa where the “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” is boldly proclaimed and then there is the BBC documentary series on China we watched as well as the blockbuster called “7 years in Tibet” which both show a not-so-peaceful conquering of Tibet. We decided to spend half of our time with Ganlan in a newly established Chinese part of town called Jia Malinka where we enjoyed some of Ganlan’s home cooked Chinese food and talked about what it is like to be Chinese living in Lhasa. We then we moved into the Tibetan quarter for a contrasting experience where we had some homemade Tibetan food at Mima’s house including sambat, dried yak cheese, butter tea and some barley beer transported from his village in an old oil 2L bottle. Conversations on politics were extremely hush-hush even in the comfort of his home.

Our Tibetan guide Tashi gave us a breakdown of how to find locally owned businesses. We were then off and exploring sweet tea houses, slurping dumpling soup, and dominating momos one by one… the Tibetan tea houses welcomed us in but we were definitely not their normal customers and it was an experience all together trying to order. Luckily ‘momo’ was easy to pronounce and we are now comfortable using other patrons’ food as a menu selection.


Instead of basing our touring around visiting all of the monasteries in Lhasa, we continued with our “unorthodox yet effective” lifestyle and cycled around the city. We still rode around to see some of the major tourist sites, stopped to walk the clockwise circumambulation path at Sera Monastery and trekked the mountain high above the Pabongkha Monastery. To say the weather was good would be a complete understatement, it was AWESOME and had us excited for what we hoped would be clear days at Everest base camp.

One thing we couldn’t help but notice while traveling through China was the sheer volume of eggs they sell and consume here. The markets have a huge diversity of eggs from big duck eggs down to quail sized eggs. They have the common white and brown ones with every shade in-between, but also have the odd colored green ones and even pink ones they call ‘century eggs.’ There are clean polished ones, muddy ones and ones that still have poo and feathers stuck on the shell. Some people sell them by weight, others sell by the count. They are piled up high like tin cans and in the piles there are whole ones, cracked ones and even smashed ones. In the stores they have stacks and stacks of bulk eggs next to cartons that range from 2-4-6-8 eggs up to flats or multi-flats, but even more interesting are the single shrink wrapped eggs. These singletons are cooked and sitting in a dark sauce still wearing their smashed shell. There are lots of other styles of ‘cooked’ eggs with the strangest of them all being the preserved ‘pi dan’ that when buried under clay turns the yolk and the white into a translucent black jello. Dr. Seuss could have a field day writing a story about eggs here.

Xining is about 24 hours away from Lhasa by train and is the last major city before entering Tibet via railway. We met a nice college kid on the bus who totally helped us get off the bus at the right time and then found an awesome hostel in an apartment building with a quiet wifi living room and a great view of the city where we could work on finalizing our Tibet Permits.

Lhasa used to be open for tourists to meet up and plan trips across the Himalayas, however with the increased conflict between monks and the Chinese military, all foreign tourists are now required to obtain a permit before even purchasing a train ticket into Tibet. Tourists are also are now required to purchase a package through a guide service since only the guide can apply for the permit. Needless to say, this is quite a complicated process.

Being the last stop before Tibet, our hostel was full of tourists exchanging stories of seemingly random reasons why their permit application was denied, and hoping to meet up with other travelers to arrange a new tour. We sent in our final paperwork over two weeks ago however we still hadn’t heard any news from our Tibetan guide. We met up with David and Karin in the hostel, but sadly both of them and our new friends Emil and Emilia were also denied permits. The whole hostel of travelers seemed to be in a holding pattern and some were even abandoning ship and flying to India/Nepal, others were waiting it out for over two weeks. Two nights before we were scheduled to get on our train, we received the good news we were hoping for… we got our permits! Luckily, we had decided to take a tour with just the two of us, which minimized the complexity of getting a permit with mixed nationalities. Months of preparation and a whole lot of Chinese Yuan made this possible. Heading to the ATM to pay off our guide, we confused the hell out of the bank trying to get a bill larger than 100 RMB (which we found out later doesn’t exist).

With confirmation that we were actually going to be allowed in, we set off on a last minute shopping spree to stock up on snacks and goodies for our 24-hour train ride, and 9 day adventure through Tibet. Most travelers seem content to just purchase food along the way, however with Kevin’s obsession of always carrying food and being on the ‘eat a bolus every hour grazing plan’ we had to dedicate one of our day packs to lots of dried fruit, fresh Asian pears (apple pear), oranges, biscuits, a bag of lollies (candies), homemade muesli (oats, nuts, raisins, milk powder, coconut flakes, cornflake, sunflower and pumpkin seeds), instant coffee, a zip lock of Yunnan leaf tea, hard boiled eggs (with a little container of S&P), the Chinese version of trail mix, dried ramen noodles (with additional packs of freeze dried peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and baked firm tofu), a handful of steamed pork and red bean buns, the Muslim Bakery’s version of a cinnamon roll, crackers, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, soft cheese wedges (we don’t remember having eaten laughing cow cheese since elementary school), two take-away boxes of fried chowmein, a can of tuna AND two cans of some sort of sweet bean soup in what looks like a tall boy soda can. Could you imagine what a security officer would be thinking if we were stopped for some reason? Hey, at least if we are detained, or our tour guide’s jeep breaks down, we’ll have enough goodies for a tea party on the side of the road :-)

While in Xi’ning we increased our workout routine in an attempt to help us acclimatize to the high altitude (Xining is at 2,200 meters, Lhasa is just about 3,000m and our highest point on the trip would be above 5,000m). The parks around our hostel had exercise equipment, and we fit right in with the locals….. not! We became quit the spectacle from the locals all starring in amazement. The park was jam packed with a dozen ping pong tables, multiple soccer matches, lots of stretching and massaging legs on what appeared to be short pull-up bars, more people than we’ve ever seen on a 400m track at one time AND a brass horn band (wtf?). We showed up in shorts and tank tops to a brisk 50 degree day while everyone else wearing slacks, coats and what seemed like normal street business attire…. Oppsie! This was not a tourist town and there wasn’t much English to be had, however that didn’t stop us from trading sets of exercises with a not-so-fit, but extremely excited group of men.

The town was more than what we expected. There was a pretty posh shopping street, a bunch of local markets, and lots of good eats. We enjoyed a different Muslim style of dumplings, and a random soup with what we think might have been something’s stomach.

We also frequented a place with 1 RMB kosher cabob skewers and thick noodles…to our amazement, the noodles were made by hand right in front of us (without any sort of machine). The chef simply grabbed a lump of dough, stretched it out a few times, folded them in half a few times, stretched them out again and Wa Lah! It was quite amazing to watch.

We paid a visit to the Dongguan Mosque Friday’s lunchtime prayer. We were not allowed into the Mosque but were told that there are usually about 50,000 Muslims who come to pray, and come they did! The streets were flooded with little white hats as the huge Mosque completely filled up and prayer mats overflowed into the street. Turns out that this part of China has quite the Muslim influence.

We stayed with Kai and his wife for our first three nights in Chengdu. We had a fun exchange of cooking lessons; they taught us how to make ma po dou fu (spicy tofu dish) and we taught them how to make banana bread. Kai also gave us a very important lesson on how to play Chengdu style mahjong. Betting money on mahjong games is so popular in Chengdu that there are now specific rules that make it harder for cheating (lucky for us it makes the game extremely similar to the rummy card game that we already know how to play!) During the game we had to discard mahjong tiles, so we practiced yelling out the Chinese words for each number so ended up learning how to correctly pronounce 1 thru 9!

The city of Chengdu exists in part due to a 2,000 year old irrigation project that divided the Minjiang River into two and then multiple rivers that in turn irrigated the farm lands that fueled the growth of Chengdu city. With Robin’s interest in water, we decided that we should visit the World Cultural Heritage site in Dujiangyan. Two buses, a metro tube, a high speed train ride and one more bus later we arrived … but it was well worth it. The river was so beautiful and the gardens and temples surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage Site have been well kept. If you do end up visiting this place, we’d recommend staying for a few nights and walking up into the mountains; there are endless trails and temples to explore.

While planning our Tibet tour we met a few couples over email that we considered traveling with. In the end, our schedules didn’t allow for it but to our surprise we bumped into one of those couples at a ‘dumpling making’ party we attended. As luck would have it, David and Karin were super fun drinking and traveling buddies! We celebrated our meeting with 500mls of Chinese rice wine and several beers that we were awarded for ‘Most Creative” and “Most Beautiful” dumpling creations.

Chengdu is home of the Xi Ong Mao Ji Di Panda Research Base. We made it there bright and early one morning to watch the giant pandas munch away at their morning bamboo feeding and learned that they don’t actually eat the leaves (they eat the stalk)! We watched as the big pandas piled on each other and were amazed at how skillful they were to first peal the bamboo with their back teeth in three quick strokes and then bite off the ‘tasty’ inner shoot. The park is huge, with many different panda enclosures (we were told about 60 pandas). In the kiddy corner we watched some panda cubs attempt to climb down a tree. The awkward attempts to go down face forward gathered quite the crowd and received a well-deserved applause when the panda eventually made it down safely.

In the afternoon, we walked around Jinli lu (snack street), which is a newly renovated ancient street known for the many different snack vendors that line the alleyways. We enjoyed some unusual Chinese snacks (pineapple rice being the favorite) and found a teahouse to watch a Sichuan Opera performance. This style of opera is known for the face changing “bianlian” which turns out to be pretty funny and enjoyable because of the actor’s interaction with the crowd.

We also enjoyed some home cooking while staying with Derek and his wife “Monkey” for a few days. Derek’s family has a simple motto; “drinking is encouraged.” Since there are endless choices of rice wine in the store, we were very excited and curious to try what Derek termed “the good stuff.” We quickly realized that with our amateur taste buds, the 150rmb bottle was about as nasty as the 15rmb bottle, but well worth the taste testing. Derek is a freelance web designer (living near the High-tech zone in south Chengdu) and his wife is an architect who loved to bake, so we the four of us had a lot in common.

We borrowed Derek’s bikes and rode our way around the city. We only got a few blocks before stopping at Encounter (an outdoor clothing store that appeared to be China’s version of REI) so we stocked up on some warm Quechua clothes for Tibet and stored them in the store’s lockers while we headed out for our bike ride We must have doubled the amount of clothing we were carrying by buying a Quechua fleece set (top and bottom), some heavy wool socks, a wool base layer, and a blow up pillow. We headed north east from the High-Tech zone and found a greenway bike path along the river that snaked through Sichuan University and River View Bamboo Park. The pic below juxtaposes the old and modern style of buildings (with construction cranes that are everywhere in China).

While exploring the city we couldn’t help but notice little baby bottoms peaking at us through the enormous slit in their pants. We met an English girl who was working in China and she explained how most toddlers in China do not use diapers and instead just have the children squat when needed (this was an unusual site to see along the busy streets). This is such an interesting way for potty training kids and we have to admit that seeing how many people there are in China, the fact that most people don’t use diapers is probably a major benefit the environment and great fun for tourists like us

Throughout Asia we haven’t stayed in many hostels because the hotels and guesthouses provide much more value for the same price point. Kunming was a perfect example of this phenomenon. We had great directions from the out of town bus depot to a popular hostel located in the middle of town next to the Zhong ai Archway, so we stayed there for our first night. When we looked for alternatives, we found for just $1 more a night, we could stay in a 14th floor business style apartment with our own bathroom, kitchenette, window, LAN line, shower, tea cups and more! So we ‘upgraded’ and moved into a building full of locals on East Renmin Road near the Yan’an Hospital.

We really enjoyed our stay in Kunming; it’s relatively very clean and the traffic is divided into separate lanes so scooters and bicycles don’t have to battle with taxis and cars. Scooters are all electric, so there is little noise pollution. We have been super impressed with the activity level of people (especially elderly folks) in China. In the mornings and evenings, the parks and public squares are full of people dancing to music in what appears to be a form of exercise. It is quite peaceful to watch, especially when the older ladies use hand fans as a prop when performing synchronized motions. We love that the cities invest in public workout equipment and joined in the fun by doing our own little workout routine with Robin focusing on PT exercises for her healing knee.

When touring big cities like Kunming, our route is generally defined by three things. First, we look for big green splotches on the map and hope they are green ways or some sort of park. Second, we make a shopping list so we have a few goals to try and achieve, and then we try to throw in a few touristy sites. For the shopping list this time, we wanted to find a market to buy Robin some new sunglasses, and find an electronic store to get some replacement earbuds. The streets here have a different feel than when we were in Vietnam; even though the streets were bustling and busy, the scooters were eerily quiet (cause they are electric), and made for an additional obstacle when navigating the streets since you couldn’t hear the scooters coming. While biking through the city we stumbled upon a street near Yunnan University that was similar to Berkeley’s Telegraph Ave. On this street full of cafés and youngsters we were excited to find some sort of Asian style burrito stall with lots of options we didn’t quite understand.

We found sunglasses for Robin in a market that boasted being the biggest ‘flower and bird market’ of its kind and found earbuds in a loud and crazy electronic mall where each floor was dedicated to similar items; one floor for laptops, one floor for desktops, one for peripherals, etc… the baffling thing about these electronic malls are that they seem to be composed of independently owned stalls but they all sell the exact same stuff for the exact same price! How the vendors survive is a mystery to us…

Green Lake Park was apparently THE place to be if you were over 50 and wanted some action. The island park was completely packed with dancing groups, battling bands and games. We seriously couldn’t believe how many performances were going on at one time; in an area the size of Lake Merritt’s Fairyland, there must have been 600 active people. 8 different 10 piece bands playing over each other, 15 different 20-30 people dance groups playing their own dance songs, people playing mahjong, old men flying kites, and lots of additional spectators. In the middle of it all was Kunming’s Water History Museum that Robin found quite interesting. There were pipes inside that were built in 1917!

Navigating around isn’t so easy when all the streets are in Chinese characters and your map isn’t to scale… by the time we found Lotus Park, the sun was setting. We picked up a watermelon from a curbside vendor and enjoyed the sunset from the parks central pagoda. For dinner we ordered some rice “wine” and the waitress did a confusing double take and then brought the manager over to make sure we understood that the type of wine we ordered was 52% ABV. We insisted that this would be alright and couldn’t wait to see what this “wine” was like… turns out it’s a lot like Japanese saké . On our way home we were pleasantly surprised with how the city we saw by day changed faces with the night; all of the buildings lit up with neon colored lights and was very beautiful with reflections on the river waters.

On another one of our explorations, we went outside of the city and rode a 40km loop to the Dragon Gate Scenic Park in the western hills that is littered with temples that overlooked the city. (Note: If you like turtles as much as Perlyberg does¬, we found the biggest turtle sanctuary ever in the Tai Hua Temple)

Our route was planned purely by the roads we thought existed on the little tourist map we had… during this ride we must have seen every kind of road in existence. We battled a dust filled headwind on a dirt road trucking highway, we road through construction barriers and alongside the new train line that was being built, we cycled on what we would call a ‘no pedestrian freeway’, we followed a dirt path along a water canal for as long as we could, we cycled a posh waterside wharf and in a few different types of city lanes from separate bike lanes to mixed traffic tunnels. We didn’t realize it until we got to the mountain park and had a strange peaceful feeling and we couldn’t remember the last time we had been in a forest or seen so many trees! It was a pleasant break from the hustle and bustle of the city below and we actually saw local bikers in spandex for the first time in Asia! In this picture Kevin is pointing to where we started the ride: