Our wake of tragedy continues. Did our mere proximity to Steve Irwin contribute to his unusual and untimely demise? Maybe we're just narcissitic in believing that we have the power to bring doom to a place just by visiting it. But it's getting weird. We were on our first day of diving the Great Barrier Reef, just a couple of miles from where the Crocodile Hunter was killed by a stingray. It's easy to get hurt by a stingray, but it's very, very hard to be killed by one. Australia offered him a state funeral, but his dad and Terry declined because he was just an "ordinary guy." Too sad.

We're back on land now. More on diving and a backpost on Hong Kong and a couple of China stories later.

I had sort of a plan for how this post should start out. I was going to include a link to the Wikipedia entry on the phrase: "Only Nixon could go to China". Unfortunately, Wikipedia is banned by the Great Firewall of China, so I can't read what it says, nor can I apologize to the originator of the phrase as I am unable to learn that sort of information from an article I can't read. I'm not sure why Google provides search results that point to websites banned by the government, but there you go. I have a secret wish that The Wander Yonder is also going to get banned for all of this subversive bitching and moaning.

I've just re-read that first paragraph. Sorry. It turns out I can include the link in my post, I just can't read it myself. Nor could I come up with a clearer way of saying so other than this explanatory clause here. I really don't want to re-write the first paragraph as this is about my ninth attempt to start writing this update and I'd just like to get on with it.

Nine times? (Read that as though you're Ed Rooney from Ferris Beuller's Day Off) Yes, nine times have I sat down at these damn Guilin/Yangshuo (that is where we are right now) internet cafes and tried to write an update on what we've been doing since we got back from Mount Everest. I am close to tears. Normally when I write an update I upload pictures in the background, but I've been unable to do that here because none of the computers have cd rom drives or working usb ports. What the hell is the use of an internet cafe in a tourist town if people can't look at all the pretty pictures they've taken? Actually, I know the answer to that question and it kind of pisses me off. Everybody around me is playing computer games online that look really fun and violent. The guy on my right just blew up the guy behind me with a grenade, and the guy on my left is attempting to kill a sort of dragon looking thing. I'm really jealous. I haven't killed anything online for months. To add insult to injury, all the menus are in Chinese, and I can't figure out how to even get to any of the games so I can play along. Which is just as well, I have work to do.

Back to the beginning. With apologies to whoever said "Only Nixon could go to China", Only Big Bird could go to China. No other children's character really had a tough enough anti-communist image to really pull off a 75 minute public television drama about a desperate search for the Phoenix Feng Huang all the while being thwarted by the maniacal genius of the Monkey King in the magical land of Guilin and Yangshuo. Starting to make sense now isn't it? Yeah, I didn't think so. Oh and don't bother trying to Google the bit about Nixon, other than the Wikipedia article, everything that comes up on Google is about Spock saying that the Nixon quote is an "old Vulcan proverb" in Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country You see, it sort of also applies to Kirk and the Klingons, what with Kirk being their sworn enemy. Come to think of it, it hardly applies to Big Bird at all, but I still think its a cute title, so I'm sticking with it.

I think I've come a bit unhinged. Its quite warm here.

Way back in 1983, I was five, Big Bird and Barclay (the vaguely dog-shaped ball of orange, yellow and white yarn) took a trip to China after they found a scroll in a New York Chinatown shop that described a Phoenix. It turns out Big B. was having a bit of an epistemic crisis, wondering if he, like his own best friend Snuffalupagus, was in fact also imaginary. Obviously, the lack of other seven foot birds added to his self doubt, so the discovery of a scroll describing a giant yellow bird in China, gave him hope that he was not alone in the world. Naturally he had to leave Sesame Street to find his long lost cousin. His adventure took him to Beijing and the Great Wall, then to Zhouzhuang in Suzhou (recently seen in Looney Cruise's new Mission Impossible movie) and finally to Guilin and Yangshuo. I won't ruin the movie for you by telling you much else but, I highly recommend adding it to your queue.

I suspect watching this on TV for the first time was the moment I caught the tourist bug. It is certainly one of my clearest early childhood memories, particularly the scenes from the end of the film where Big bird travels through an area covered in dramatic pointy mountains, glassy rice terraces and a misty snaking river. Twenty four years on, I have been to 22 other countries, learned to abuse parentheses, FINALLY learned where exactly those scenes were filmed and I've arrived in the place that may have made it my dream to want to see the world. I am not disappointed. Despite the summer haze (which has ruined most of the pictures I've taken here) it is truly on of the most stunning places I've ever been.

Its hard to say more than that. Guilin and Yangshuo don't quite come across as shocking and aweing as Mount Everest, (which may have something to do with plentiful oxygen, I'm not sure...) but the towns and surrounding countryside are perhaps even more beautiful and at times I've had the odd sensation of being trapped in a classical Chinese water color. Oh and did I mention that they are the only towns in China where almost everybody speaks fairly good English? Other bonuses include a pretty good beer bar in Guilin and Yangshuo has restaurants with burritos and chicken fried steak! We've also been killing a lot of time with hour long foot massages for five dollars. Its not quite Thailand massage pricing, but its pretty close and the massages themselves are slightly less brutal.

OK, yes, I do realize there's still about a week missing between getting back from Everest and arriving here. Most of it wasn't very interesting so I'll provide a quick recap. Heather may wish to add something more about the Pandas later.

Back In Lhasa
We tried to go see inside Potala Palace but couldn't manage to get tickets. Lhasa is packed these days and apparently the ticket procurement process is three days long. We were bummed about that and we also lost Heather's account book in which we have tracked everly last dime we've spent since August 29th 2005. It was kind of a bad day. The next day we flew to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.

Chengdu
Visited the Panda Research Center and ate a lot of spicy food. For the most part the Chinese food we've had here hasn't been very different at all from the chinese food we get at home. Sichuan cuisine was a big exception. A lot of the dishes used ridiculous quantities of Sichuan peppercorns (a type of black pepper, not a chile) that is not really all that hot, but it numbs your mouth. At home, sichuan food has a lot more chile heat and I've never had my tongue go numb. I think I prefer the americanized non-numbing but spicier version, call me crazy, but I like to be able to taste what I'm eating.

Yangtze River Cruise
We took a river cruise through the Three River Gorges area and saw the big new dam they're building that will flood the area in 2009 or thereabouts. We mostly wanted to do this because the dam will radically change the area in a few years and we wanted to see it before that happened. The highlight was the side trip to the "Little" and "Mini" Three River Gorges, which are just what they sound like, increasingly narrower river gorges. Lovely scenery etc. We spent four nights on the boat mostly sequestered in our somewhat dank cabin. None of the excursions off the boat provided any English language guidance whatsoever. Which is a little odd, because there were certainly enough non-Chinese on the boat to justify grouping us together and getting one of the tour guides who spoke English (of which there were several) to take us all around to sights together. Instead, the guides actively separated us whenever we seemed to clump together, like we were dangerous or something. We did have a pretty good time at all the food stalls when we got off the boat though. Since we couldn't understand the guides anyhow, we snuck off and ate dumplings and Chinese sausages while we had time because on the boat our only option was instant noodles, of which, one can get very tired. On the fourth days the boat docked in Yijang, we got up early and flew to Guilin that day.

Guilin and Yangshuo
Arrival in Guilin filled me with a huge sense of accomplishment after waiting so many years to visit this place. Naturally something had to go wrong, so all the ATMs decided to stop working and we found ourselves with about $10 in local currency and all the exchanges were closed for the day. Eventually, we did find that Bank Of China ATMs were still working, but not before we ran around stressed out in the heat, fighting off touts of all kinds and English skills, to find a stinkin' internet cafe so we could email our bank. The next day we visited the city parks, booked an English speaking river cruise (just a half day this time) and Heather had a rather remarkable shampoo in the middle of the night. The river cruise the following day took us to Yangshuo. Aside from the horrible maddening internet cafes here (which Lonely Planet audaciously claims are the best in China - unscrupulous twits.), Yangshuo has been very good to us. We've had lots of delicious food and yesterday we took a lovely bicycle/bamboo raft tour around the outskirts of town. The haze probably means that none of the pictures I got will probably do this place justice, but thats what coffee table books are for. Tomorrow we return to Guilin for a couple of nights before flying to Hong Kong for five days.

Heather has just completed a thorough itinerary of our last forty days on the road, so email us if you want us to send it to you.

Greetings from what everybody around here seems to call the roof of the world. Lhasa sits at 3700 meters. Which is fairly high, we've definitely gotten winded just walking up a flight of steps, but so far we haven't had any major symptoms of altitude sickness. Which is good, because tomorrow we leave for Mt. Everest Base Camp at 5200 meters. That's about 17,000 feet, almost 3000 feet higher than the summit of Mt. Ranier. We'll spend the night at Mt. Everest Base Camp before returning to Lhasa for a couple of nights. Then we fly out to Chengdu in Sichuan province to visit the Panda sanctuary.

We got to Lhasa via the new express train from Beijing thanks to some serious help from family, friends and a complete stranger. We are very grateful. The train was an interesting experience. We frightened away one couple from our sleeper cabin and they were replaced by a man travelling with his grandson, who shared a bunk, and two full grown humans were moved into the extra bed. That's 8 people in a six person sleeper. Fortunately one of the full grown humans found an empty bed next door, but we still had 8 loads of luggage and 7 people in a six person sleeper. It would have made for an interesting ride anyway even if the child wasn't a complete disaster. He had a rather explosive amount of energy which we suspect was exacerbated by the coffee drinks his grandfather fed him in the morning. Which in turn made him have to pee rather a lot, which he did into an empty water bottle. That worked out OK when grandad was awake and could supervise the process, but grandad got a bit sleepy from the altitude on day 2 and the child naturally didn't want to wake him up for such a mundane task. Unfortunately, this resulted in some spillage.

Oh, and later there was spewage as well. Tell me this, if you operated a train that ran at high altitude, which makes some people queasy, and still others get queasy just from motion sickness, you would provide some kind of bag like one finds on airplanes right? I thought so. Man would that have made the morning of day 2 a lot cleaner. All three sinks were clogged and the bathrooms had taken some hits as well. It was pretty gross. So then the terror child goes and pukes in our cabin. To be fair to him, he did try to make a run for it as he drooled a bit on the floor in a clear pre-spew signal. Then Grandpa did the unthinkable. He restrained him, and went to clean up the measly saliva that had hit the floor. Serves him right, 6 seconds later he had puke on his pants. I have no idea how he didn't see that coming. Our belongings were mostly spared. Heather's backpack got just a tiny bit on it. Heather also had some fragrant wet wipes that managed to mask most of the smell.

I just reread all this and it sounds like it was a 47 hour nightmare, but it really wasn't all that bad. I spent most of the trip asleep in my berth and there was some stunning scenery in the last 6 or so hours of the trip. Heather had a little bit more trouble than I did since she was on the bottom berth, but she doesn't seem too scarred.

I had better leave it there for now, we have a few more things to do to get ready for the trip tomorrow, like buy some Oxygen.