Journey highlights - Transit!

Clearly this post comes well after that spectacular trip - almost two years to the day.  However, I need to keep the blog going.  I'm heading out again soon for another trek (European return!) and as I'm looking back to be inspired, I'm finding some great shots from my last overseas jaunt.

Here, in a raw and unorganized form, are some photo highlights from the Asian 2011 adventure.


Transit:

Everywhere around the world people will find the most convenient, cost-efficient, and accessible ways to move themselves and their things.  But not everything translates across borders - and to see things done differently than what I see in my normal, everyday default world is what Travel is all about. 



By road!

Everywhere in Asia and worldwide, bus  is most often the cheapest way to travel.  Horror stories abound of bus travel misadventures, and if you're reading this chances are you have your own tales.  But whatever ones own experience, bus travel will remain with us as long as petrol flows and distances are long.

  Fantastic bus experience in southern Vietnam.  These bus seats recline to near horizontal, and still something like 30 people fit on this bus with TONS of luggage.  While relatively expensive for regular long-distance commutes for locals, plenty of foreign and holiday travelers (Lunar New Year!) enjoyed the comfort of these buses from Saigon.  En route to Mui Ne, Vietnam from Saigon.

 This was a very different kind of bus experience.  Clearly, this is the more typical bus travel situation - and, yes, even this is quite comfortable as far as global bus travel goes.  Enroute to Dalat, Vietnam from Mui Ne.

 The perils of being in 3D.. and in an overburdened truck on windy mountain roads.  A poignant lesson in taking initiative, even as an independent budget travels, to make sure you inspect and feel confident about your travel choices.  Even if it costs a bit more or may take you longer to arrive - it pays to make sure you arrive in one piece.

Another exceedingly popular and efficient way to move around, all over the world, is motor bikes, smaller utility trucks, and human-powered vehicles of innumerable variety.  In these parts of Asia motor bikes and little trucks, tuk tuks, and bike-carts were literally everywhere, and particularly moreso along the southern sweep of the journey (weather is warmer) where the shape and variety of vehicles exploded in diversity.

Maximum utility & ingenuity, borne out of daily necessity.  Another of my favorite shots - local living in gorgeous southern Vietnam. 

Downtown Saigon - world-famous pushcart drivers, yet another remnant from the French Indochina era of Vietnam.  The city is working to phase these guys out entirely, eliminating a whole segment of the transit infrastructure.  And a great tourist trap. 

 

Sharing the road has a wider application beyond the US.  A fun respite from the high-speed bumpiness of the road outside Mui Ne, Vietnam.

 Creative, effective, & totally illegal if this were the US.  Clearly its not an issue here.  Vietnam.

By rail!

Train is by far one of my favorite ways to move around when trekking anywhere.  Handing the hassle of the journey to the pro's, I almost always enjoy a great time-saving trip from one point to the other.  Some snapshots here reflect the diversity of global train experience, with an Asian twist this time. 

Freight & people, all over the world both share the same tracks on the older, established lines.  Train delays in most places are caused by the competing priorities of commerce and human transit.  Here, waiting enroute.. to somewhere, China.

Relatively clean, comfortable, and extremely timely - the awesome train system in China. 

 Where pop-a-squat takes on a whole new meaning, particularly when passing through the hillsides!  Train in China. 

Freight and passengers, all standing by.  A short train delay in Vietnam.

Its never hard to make friends on the train anywhere in the world.  Here, a fellow traveler was heading home with her mother for the New Years holiday.  Zaijian, pengyou!

Smudgy view along the riverside tracks, somewhere in central China.

The photos laid out heretofore are taken with an Olympus Stylus 1050 SW 

 
These works by Tim Paez are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Kicking it, Beijing-style

i <3 :=":" beijing="beijing" bj="bj" i="i" love="love" nbsp="nbsp" p="p">




                                                         
[18 July 2012.  It's well past time for an update.  After several more trips and much time since my last post, I still have words - and importantly for this blog, more photographs! - from my last travels to Asia (& beyond..) to share.  So here goes.]

  Smog-hidden farming village in winter, en route back to Beijing.

Light smog among valley farmsteads, en route back to Beijing.

16 Feb 2011 sees our return to Beijing and everywhere I find signs of the impending thaw.  If nothing else, the temperature no longer hovers below freezing on a good night but the days retain their blistery wind chill despite the clear, brilliant sun.  Even so, Chris and I took full advantage of slowly improving weather to explore Beijing either alone, or at times with Tim, Natasja, Sasha, Craig, and other friends.

Not all that is gold glitters.  It shows when looking downtown.  Here, UBS, HSBC, AIG, RBC watch over prolific new construction of the New Beijing.

  Long hallway (top) near the Temple of Heaven after-hours, and encircling pedestrian lanes (bottom), when the locals play mahjong and stroll about - an unceasing vestige of the Old Beijing.

Tiantan, or Temple of Heaven, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Original complex and site dates to ~1420 AD. 

Maybe I'll remove this one... Cats' eyes in the dark.

Gondola at ski spot outside Beijing.  Air pollution so dense you can barely see the top. 

Once forbidden for commoners even to glimpse under pain of death, the Imperial Throne now sits alone in the People's Republic. Forbidden City.

Veranda approaching throne room; expansive, but enclosed, view.  Forbidden City.

One of my favorite places in the world - Yonghe Lamasery.  Built in the early years of the Qing dynasty as a royal residence, it became national center for Lama administration; & it perists in this role.

While Chris & I did not get to visit the Great Wall on this trip (I had camped out overnight and hiked along a more remote section near Inner Mongolia 2009), we got to delve into contemporary Beijing with locals and friends.  Among regular forays into BJ's exuberant nightlife, jaunts through random districts and 'hoods with local friends, and exciting (but cheap!) street food adventures, we still had tons of time to check out standard hot spots for first-timers and off-track places.

Unusually placed lights along this alley in BJ made for a fun picture. Yup, more smog - visible on the same block!

En route to an Dashanzi art district (a la Factory 798), the walk gets (even) more interesting...

...to say nothing of what we see once inside the district.  Here: Concrete Mustang.

Bricks like dominoes. Wish I had seen it all go down..

Nice piece speaking to effects of carte-blanche experimentation of GMO worldwide.

Strike your warrior pose!

0_o

Buddha.   :)

Framing & context.  Yeah.

Speaks for itself....

..and so does this one.  Imagine rubbing elbows in this club.

By the same artists as above.  Brilliant - but what would say the State?

 

 Yet another piece from the same brothers.  Spent a good few hours conversing with these guys on a whole gamut of issues affecting Chinese societies.  Art as critique.

 

In summary - despite the modern facelift, the core of China survives.  And has great potential to thrive...

I look forward to my return to China - again.  More blog updates soon!!!

The photos laid out heretofore are taken with an Olympus Stylus 1050 SW 

 
These works by Tim Paez are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Once forbidden

27 & 28 May 2009 - So these two were days full of ancient & wondrous adventure among the keystones of a culture that has been long growing and evolving. Being in the capital city of one of the most influential empires on Earth has initiated a ridiculous paradigm shift in how I see the world, and the (long-term) significance of political entities that have and continue to shape it. Two of the most defining icons of the Chinese empire, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, were on my plan for the day.

The Forbidden City, or Gugong, is the among the most audacious, ostentatious, lavish, and awe-inspiring places I've ever been. It's like the most expensive mansion-palace-castles I've ever seen; complete with what seems like gold-colored everything. From the roofs, to the passageways, courtyards, gardens, and rooms, every part of the structure of this City within a city is carefully designed and meticulously created - at least certainly during the literal centuries of the emporers & empresses. Today, the structures stand, the gardens remain, but much of the detail and finesse of the place has fallen into a state of half-disrepair. Understandably, given the context of the state of 'modern' Chinese political history, this is less surprising than one woulud otherwise think. But still, being there and looking through the museum-like displays in windows throughout the acres-wide complex gives a glimpse into the splendor available for only the most priveleged (and mainly castrated) of classes. It was a pleasure to stroll through some of the most guarded and exclusive grounds, as an unabashed (and bodily intact) prole.

The spectacular Second Courtyard (foreground) to the Hall of Supreme Harmony (background), the largest of both structures & courtyards in the Forbidden City, reportedly capable of holding 100,000 people.

View of the Forbidden City from a hilltop on the opposite end of the complex from Tienanmen Gate (see 26 May). Seeing the near-perfect symmetry of the whole place along the North-South axis striking after walking through the maze-like interior.

This relatively small structure is 2 stories high, including the brass vent on top. I can appreciate the need for a solid incense burner.

This view looking North (& slightly East) of the Gate of Supreme Harmony is just past Tienanmen Gate. The central door in the gate (see the open side doors?) was reserved ONLY for the emporer/empress.

Closeup view of the (closed) Emporer's door inside the Gate of Supreme Harmony, from the South. The fact that it remains closed is an interesting juxtapose between the Communist Party's class-less rhetoric and Confucian tradition.

Looking South toward the other side of the Emporers door and the Gate of Supreme Harmony, from one of the east side of the lower tier around the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Even the bathroom in the Forbidden City remains a 4 "star-rated" kinda place.

At the Great Wall, Tim & I hoped to camp for the night - and so we did, campfire & all. I took few pictures during the night, so as to avoid a flash exposing our location; to avoid the 50yuan fee to camp (which we ended up paying, soberly, in the morning anyway) we stayed just outside the entrance and campground, sleeping under the stars. The flip side is that our early morning start made for one of the most magnificent views of a man-made structure I've ever seen. With our refreshingly early start, we actually got back to Tims just after noon, with plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the day.

This early-morning shot was made all the more striking because of the cool hues in the light of the pre-dawn.

Another pre-dawn shot looking across the hill crests lined with the Wall.

Other early hikers across the Wall reposing for a minute before the next leg of their journey rises up to greet them. Tim & I aren't far behind in coming up to this point.

One example of the dereliction that typifies many of the more remote sections of the Wall, most of which is only accessible by traveling on foot.

Looking way down into the next valley, we could see the trails used by local farmers to navigate from one section to the next. Given their proclivity toward hawking trinkets, souvenirs, & drinks to hikers, theirs is probably the best way to navigate the Wall with cargo with minimal hassle.

Another, daytime, view across the Great Wall's hillcrests and towers.

Upon our return I once again struck out on my own - after an especially needed nap. And, really I only went to this MASSIVE flea market-looking place to do just a bit of shopping for stuff I could use back home. I mention this place solely because of its enormity; this market was so freaking huge, it took up more several massive city blocks. You could find EVERYTHING there, from food & produce to paint supplies and building materials, clothes and household goods to electronics & toys - a cacophonous melange of sights, sounds, and scents of modern commerce in action. Now, I'm kicking myself for not getting any pictures there.
After I returned to Tim's, we (Tim & I & a few of his friends) went to hotpot. I'm a fan.


29 May 2009 - Another awesome day of solo adventures followed by a sick rendezvous with good people for great food. Now reflecting back on my last days in Beijing, I realize while not particularly adept, my confidence with the little bit of Mandarin (or puhtonghua) I know was sky high.
I followed Tim's directions toward another massive market, an exclusively electronics-related one. Rather than a single market, this was really 4 1-block square buildings, anywhere from 4 to 7 stories full of that now-familiar anarchic marketplace. I've never imagined such a collective of gadgets, media, and electronic... parts. Better yet, I (think I) got some pretty good deals - I only hope that being in the source country the labor force making what I saw & bought was treated equitably. One can dream, can't he?
While I didn't get a good picture of the whole place, I was there just in time to catch an amazing display of modern (Asian) teen culture - a cosplay contest! I had to look the term up: basically it was talent show between costumed role-players of manga & anime characters. Wow.

Dr. Frankenstein (or something) & company looking good and getting cozy for the cams.

Adorable and ready to kick ass. They were about midway on the prude-ish spectrum, but you should've seen some of the others.

In the afternoon, we (Tim, friends, & I) went back to Yiheyuan for a final stroll through that serene park one last time - on this trip. Today I snapped one of my favorite images from the whole trip, a telling snapshot of why China has persisted for long by that name. Maybe you'll get what I mean.

This unusually (for this place) long bridge boasts 17 arches. Count 'em.

One of my most favorite photos to date. The simplicity and ease of their pasttime amidst so much splendor (at the Summer Palace) leaves me with no doubt that having (& learning from) eons of history is wholesome.

30 May 2009 - So today, I grudgingly departed from Tim's place and snapped a few last shots on the way out. At the same time, my resolve to return to the city and Asia in general was solidified. Wo ai Zhongguo.

The long hallway that earlier greeted me now bids me farewell. Now, unlike when I arrived (around midnight) and I was greeted with darkness, the light guides me forward.