It's been a nice four days here in Kathmandu despite nightly power cuts, we've had nearly perfect weather every day. I think I was glued to the window of the taxi we took to Thamel from the airport as I've never been any where quite like it. Tiny mixed dirt and paved roads packed with people, rickshaws and taxis. Walking around is quite like playing pinball. There is pretty much constantly a car horn blowing somewhere...
We haven't done much touristy other than visiting a few sites in the city and Durbar Square. Most of the time we have spent preparing for our 18 or so day trek around the Annapurna range. We've finally arranged all of our gear, opted not to hire a porter (yet), and we embark from the city tomorrow on a 6 hour bus ride to the starting point. From there, we'll hike around the range, staying with local people or in lodges that are setup for trekkers. The highest point on the hike is Thorung La pass at 5416 meters (nearly 18,000 feet). We'll be spending a few days up above 3000 meters and a couple above 4000 meters acclimatizing to make the hike over the pass. After we finish, we'll have a few days in Pokhara and then back here for a day to collect our stuff before heading to India.
It's been a great time to be here with the recent elections for the Constituent Assembly which will decide much of the future of the country. One night we watched a quite large Maoist victory procession through the town (as they've taken a huge lead in the vote). Everyone is eager to discuss the elections which has been truly interesting, sometimes inspirational, and sometimes just scary. Hopefully things will remain peaceful in Nepal and the Maoists truly committed to a multi-party system.
Will write again in a few weeks.
16 April 2008
12 April 2008
Catching up #2: Teahouses in Chengdu, with Pandas
We unintentionally, but certainly not disappointed-ly, spent the last 8 days in Chengdu, China. For backpackers, it is the main entrance point from China to Tibet. Since that's not really happening right now, for us, it was several days spent exploring and sampling the famously spicy hot pot food, tea house lifestyle, and checking out the pandas.
The city itself is very spread out and there aren't many sights to see as far as temples, etc. We did find the Wenshu Temple to be pretty cool mainly though because of the tea garden on the inside. In Chengdu it is completely normal apparently to spend all day (or a good part of the day) at a tea house hanging out with your friends and family. That seemed to be especially true on the weekend when all the tea places were very, very crowded with locals. As it happened, the best and friendliest tea house that Emilie and I found was almost next door to our hostel. In fact, our hostel turned out to be in our favorite part of the city.
As for the food... I wouldn't really call it spicy as much as mouth numbing. Especially in the hot pots, there is a special spice that supposedly is used by dentists to numb patients before operating in old times or remote regions. The first few bites were deceptively mild maybe as a result from that spice, I'm not sure. Soon enough, my mouth was fully on fire and it really was more power than flavor spice. I think I blew my nose about 25 times the first night we tried it. Another local specialty was the old staple from the Pacific Avenue apartment: Ma-po Tofu.
Definitely the most fun activity in Chengdu is visiting the giant panda research center where they study panda breeding with some success. We were lucky enough to be there around feeding time (early in the morning) and it was simply hilarious. I never realized how human the pandas can appear. Also, you can hold a baby giant panda for 1000 RMB which is about US $140. This consists of a baby panda sitting on your lap for about 30 seconds while photos are taken. The fee is a little much we thought, but the guy we watched do it was truly awestruck when he came out. So maybe it's worth it after all...
I have to agree for once with the Chinese media that Chengdu is a pretty livable place in China. Personally, I couldn't take the thick smog and layer of dust covering everything, but as for lifestyle, food, and location, it was a great place to visit. We didn't get into the country side too much, but it also looks beautiful.
More from Kathmandu later.
Pictures from Chengdu.
The city itself is very spread out and there aren't many sights to see as far as temples, etc. We did find the Wenshu Temple to be pretty cool mainly though because of the tea garden on the inside. In Chengdu it is completely normal apparently to spend all day (or a good part of the day) at a tea house hanging out with your friends and family. That seemed to be especially true on the weekend when all the tea places were very, very crowded with locals. As it happened, the best and friendliest tea house that Emilie and I found was almost next door to our hostel. In fact, our hostel turned out to be in our favorite part of the city.
As for the food... I wouldn't really call it spicy as much as mouth numbing. Especially in the hot pots, there is a special spice that supposedly is used by dentists to numb patients before operating in old times or remote regions. The first few bites were deceptively mild maybe as a result from that spice, I'm not sure. Soon enough, my mouth was fully on fire and it really was more power than flavor spice. I think I blew my nose about 25 times the first night we tried it. Another local specialty was the old staple from the Pacific Avenue apartment: Ma-po Tofu.
Definitely the most fun activity in Chengdu is visiting the giant panda research center where they study panda breeding with some success. We were lucky enough to be there around feeding time (early in the morning) and it was simply hilarious. I never realized how human the pandas can appear. Also, you can hold a baby giant panda for 1000 RMB which is about US $140. This consists of a baby panda sitting on your lap for about 30 seconds while photos are taken. The fee is a little much we thought, but the guy we watched do it was truly awestruck when he came out. So maybe it's worth it after all...
I have to agree for once with the Chinese media that Chengdu is a pretty livable place in China. Personally, I couldn't take the thick smog and layer of dust covering everything, but as for lifestyle, food, and location, it was a great place to visit. We didn't get into the country side too much, but it also looks beautiful.
More from Kathmandu later.
Pictures from Chengdu.
Catching up #1: Hong Kong
It's been a while... We were fairly busy in Hong Kong, seeing the sites and just exploring the really interesting town. I posted on Beijing when we got there, but I didn't realize that once we left and returned to mainland China, blogger.com and blogspot.com would be 100% blocked (I assume by the Chinese firewall / censor). Interestingly I was able to keep up just barely on news of Nepal's elections and also the Tibet stuff through Google News. So some stuff (English at least) does get through. All the other news sites (major aggregators at least) were totally blocked. I could have read China Daily, but I mean...
Anyways, Hong Kong was a great, fun city. It is truly a crossroads of a lot of different cultures. We spent the first night in a laughably dingy hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, the main tourist district. If for some reason you ever end up in Hong Kong, the Chungking Mansions and Mirador Mansions are the best deal in town but you probably don't really want to stay there even though they're mentioned in Lonely Planet. We moved a little further north from that area the next night and found a very nice, newly renovated place near the Jordan metro stop. It's nice to be just outside the chaos of Tsim Sha Tsui. We settled in there on the 30th and stayed in Hong Kong until the 4th of April.
It was 80 degrees when we landed, but most of the rest of the time we were there it was foggy though it didn't really rain. Our trip to Victoria Peak was a little of a let down because you couldn't see the famous panorama of the city, but the ride up at least was fun (and that is actually where we found Bubba Gump's).
We spent the vast majority of our time exploring the few little blocks that make up SoHo in Central Hong Kong. We celebrated Emilie's 26th birthday at a nice vegetarian place there the first night. SoHo is a really cool area near the mid-levels escalator (which is basically an escalator running up a steep - not like San Francisco - next to the street). Best of all there are a bunch of camera stores in the area, and I finally sucked it up and bought a tripod to take trekking out with us in Nepal and hopefully around in Africa. As Emilie can tell you, I pined for my tripod ever since I decided to leave it at home. I saved about 80 bucks by buying it in Hong Kong, and I'm 60% sure that it's not a fake... Just kidding, it's real. I think.
We wasted some time exploring other areas of the city including the really nice Victoria Park. Other than that, we took in a lot of happy hours (that run until 10 PM in Hong Kong at some places) and ate a lot of well... Gelato.
We did a day trip to Macau as well. It was actually a really cool city to see the Portuguese influenced architecture of the old city and visit the museum and St. Paul's ruins. We went into the Casino Lisboa, but despite severe desire to do otherwise, I didn't gamble. Other than the old sites we weren't interested in seeing much else and took the ferry back to Hong Kong around 5 PM.
Overall, I would say Hong Kong reminds me most of New York City in the US but with better public transportation. The subway there is unbelievable, especially the airport express service. We were definitely settling down into a routine of things to do by the time we left.
You can see some of our pictures of Hong Kong.
And pictures from Macau too.
Anyways, Hong Kong was a great, fun city. It is truly a crossroads of a lot of different cultures. We spent the first night in a laughably dingy hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, the main tourist district. If for some reason you ever end up in Hong Kong, the Chungking Mansions and Mirador Mansions are the best deal in town but you probably don't really want to stay there even though they're mentioned in Lonely Planet. We moved a little further north from that area the next night and found a very nice, newly renovated place near the Jordan metro stop. It's nice to be just outside the chaos of Tsim Sha Tsui. We settled in there on the 30th and stayed in Hong Kong until the 4th of April.
It was 80 degrees when we landed, but most of the rest of the time we were there it was foggy though it didn't really rain. Our trip to Victoria Peak was a little of a let down because you couldn't see the famous panorama of the city, but the ride up at least was fun (and that is actually where we found Bubba Gump's).
We spent the vast majority of our time exploring the few little blocks that make up SoHo in Central Hong Kong. We celebrated Emilie's 26th birthday at a nice vegetarian place there the first night. SoHo is a really cool area near the mid-levels escalator (which is basically an escalator running up a steep - not like San Francisco - next to the street). Best of all there are a bunch of camera stores in the area, and I finally sucked it up and bought a tripod to take trekking out with us in Nepal and hopefully around in Africa. As Emilie can tell you, I pined for my tripod ever since I decided to leave it at home. I saved about 80 bucks by buying it in Hong Kong, and I'm 60% sure that it's not a fake... Just kidding, it's real. I think.
We wasted some time exploring other areas of the city including the really nice Victoria Park. Other than that, we took in a lot of happy hours (that run until 10 PM in Hong Kong at some places) and ate a lot of well... Gelato.
We did a day trip to Macau as well. It was actually a really cool city to see the Portuguese influenced architecture of the old city and visit the museum and St. Paul's ruins. We went into the Casino Lisboa, but despite severe desire to do otherwise, I didn't gamble. Other than the old sites we weren't interested in seeing much else and took the ferry back to Hong Kong around 5 PM.
Overall, I would say Hong Kong reminds me most of New York City in the US but with better public transportation. The subway there is unbelievable, especially the airport express service. We were definitely settling down into a routine of things to do by the time we left.
You can see some of our pictures of Hong Kong.
And pictures from Macau too.
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