Hanoi Hilton

We were buying a salami and a baguette in a modern supermarket, when I realized why I liked the city. How pleasant to find oneself in a place without attractions. In Hanoi, there's no Splendid Tower Built By A Rich But Entirely Forgettable Personage. There's no Bulky Monument To Commemorate An Otherwise Uninteresting Historical Event. Not even some Extinct Religion's Temple To A Now-Unworshipped God. The curse of traveling is the oversold destination, and Hanoi has none of it.

Here we can enjoy an unembellished city. There is nothing particular to see and nothing important to do. It was raining today, but we donned hooded jackets and found ourselves again in South East Asia. The smell of spices and peppers, the beeping of thousands of horns, the chaotic traffic swirling about you like gnats as you cross a street, the apartment blocks wrapped in power lines and covered in creeping mildew—we were happy.

To provide some context for our visit, we decided to find the Hanoi Hilton. It was a prison built by the French, for whom it housed thousands of Vietnamese prisoners that no one cared about. After the French decamped, the Vietnamese Communists then housed about 25 of my own countrymen there, about whom many people cared a great deal. One of those prisoners is now running for president.

Today, 90% of the prison has been leveled to make way for an office tower and shopping mall—welcome to the New Vietnam. There Nicole and I sipped a coffee and shopped in a modern supermarket, purchasing, quite by accident, some French cheese, a Vietnamese baguette, and an American sausage. I'd like to point out that this historically ironic meal went quite well with a Thai beer.

Then we went over to the prison. Only about a quarter of it now remains as a museum, which excoriates the French and Americans. History is always written by the victors, of course. Do you want a description of the place? Thick walls, imposing gates, miserable concrete cells, the entirety of John McCain's flight suit, and a scale model of a guillotine. Prisons are not much fun though, so we left just before we got to the exhibit on Comrades Propagandizing the Revolution—fascinating though it most certainly was—and walked home in a driving rain.

Tomorrow, we will have more to report.

One Night in Bangkok

It's not entirely clear to me how Nicole discovers these things, but for the Macau-Hanoi leg, she unearthed a budget airline called Thai Air Asia. It was having a fare promotion that would bring us those 600 miles at a cost of less than a dinner and a movie in the States. But there was a catch. We had to book two flights, one to Bangkok, and another to Hanoi. That meant that between the two we would have to deplane, collect our luggage, go through immigration, check in again, go back through immigration, and get on another flight—all in two and a half hours.

Sitting in our cozy hotel room, snifters in hand, we came to the conclusion that it was doable. It might even be adventurous. The only downside was that if we missed the connecting plane, we would be stuck for a day or two in Bangkok. We love the city, though, and the prospect of green curry and mugs of Singha sounded just fine.

Of course, we were wrong. Getting stuck in Bangkok was not the only downside. There was also the possibility that we might get stuck in Macau. This unpleasant reality dawned on us as we sat in front of an empty gate at the Macau Airport, while the departure time for our flight passed. Not only was there no plane, there was no visible presence of Thai Air Asia. This had bad news emblazoned all over it. As a precaution, we immediately headed over to the duty-free shop and spent our last Hong Kong dollars on a two-pound Toblerone chocolate bar and a bottle of Macallan single malt scotch. It simply wouldn't do to be caught overnight in an airport without basic supplies.

About a half hour later, a young Chinese man with floppy hair—he looked like a high school freshman—walked up to the counter and commenced a boarding procedure that I'll charitably say was one of the most chaotic I've ever witnessed. Thai Air Asia does not have assigned seating, and, this being China, we had to all shove our way onto the plane like a herd of wildebeests on the annual lion-run across the Serengeti.

We arrived in Bangkok a half hour late. Thai immigration was agonizing. It's not normally so, but there was a religious convention of some kind going on that had attracted an enormous quantity of barefoot old men with Father Time beards. In our calculations, we had, somehow, omitted to account for this possibility. They were wandering through the immigration area, oblivious to the finer points of passports, customs, and, for that matter, lines. The Thai police soon rounded them all up, and we pushed through and gathered our luggage.

I love Thailand dearly, but it's not easy to navigate the 50 yards or so outside the arrival terminal at the Bangkok airport. Hoteliers and gypsy cab drivers block your path, grab at your suitcase, and understand the word "yes," but not "no." They're quite useful if you've come to the city with the intention of paying someone an absurd sum to drive you to an overpriced dump of a hotel, but that was not our intention.

Luckily, we guessed correctly that the departure gates were on the second floor. Working together, we quickly deduced the proper check-in counter, and managed to hit it exactly an hour before our plane departed. (In case you're wondering, that's about the bare minimum for ensuring your baggage makes it on an international flight).

With boarding passes that were printed on paper one grade above Kleenex, we sprinted off to immigration, where we received another shiny new stamp on our passports. At security, the Thai Home Guard inexplicably relieved Nicole of a jar of peanut butter, but allowed her to keep a —to my mind—far more dangerous bottle of Sriracha hot sauce. People of Thailand, your airport security men require more training, preferably in deductive reasoning.

Finally, we escaped, and made a final sprint to our plane to Vietnam. Total savings: about $600. Total stress: priceless.

Macau: Where Worlds Collide

It took one good long shower and a wrestling match with an iron to transform two scruffy backpackers into a pair of presentable adults. With our hair raked, our jeans flattened, and our nails neatly sandblasted, we stepped forth into a warm Macanese night.

A Reuters reporter recently wrote an article in which he declared that Macau was the new Las Vegas, and maybe even better than Las Vegas. You can only come to that conclusion under one of two circumstances: either you have never been to Macau, or you have never been to Las Vegas. There's a lot more to Sin City than a couple of megacasinos and dreams.

Even so, Macau offers a fascinating and easily-observed contrast between the two cultures. Our hotel, the Lisboa, sits across the street from the gleaming, new Wynn. The latter is said to be an exact replica of its Las Vegas counterpart. And while I can't shake the impression that the original Wynn is much bigger, the interior design of this one is spot on.

Why they've decided to build exact copies I don't know. But it is interesting. After weeks of being subjected to Chinese notions of design, we can now see ours inflicted on them. And I have to say that any American walking from the Lisboa to the Wynn will initially feel a burst of national pride. The latter is simply a different world, and one I like much better.

The Lisboa is a warren of scalloping passages, small shops, and cramped corners. Ghastly vases and sculptures jut out everywhere; shockingly ornate chandeliers dominate the foyers; busy restaurants shoehorn their customers into tiny tables; and the gaming rooms are low, circular, and claustrophobic. We have lost our way numerous times. Then again, it's thronged with prostitutes, a fact that some people might consider goes a long way to making up for its spatial deficiencies.

How different is the refined styling of Steve Wynn. As the creator of the most opulent casinos in Las Vegas (if you have never been to a Steve Wynn casino and your experience of Vegas included a $4.99 steak dinner, please do not extend your impression to this discussion), his design focuses on light and air. Passageways run like huge avenues through the casino, ending either in lights, mirrors or windows, which creates an illusion of immense space. Still, it is impeccably marked and organized. You could never get lost there. The gaming rooms are vast, but cleverly baffled with lushly folded curtains that absorb sound so well that you can talk in a whisper in a room full of hundreds of people. The triple-wide carport is never clogged; the reception desk never has a line. For someone who has spent weeks in China, this piece of convenient, transposed America can be exhilarating, even liberating.

Nicole and I lounged contentedly in thick armchairs, sipping perfect martinis that came in brimming chalices. (By definition, a perfect martini comes in a glass that is able to house a goldfish in comfort). We gazed lovingly out onto the casino, but soon realized that our fellow guests were not impressed with it. They were much more inclined to pull out their cameras and snap pictures of themselves in the star-spangled lobby of the Grand Lisboa. They want to stand in its pits and bet like a bunch of floor traders on Wall Street. They love gold leaf, neon lights, and shimmering crystal. Give them bangles, or give them death.

And they gamble like sailors on shore leave. Their favorite game is baccarat, which gives them decent odds, and the ability to lose their shirts in a hurry. If enough of them manage to do that, we may yet see Macau turn into Vegas. But it's a long way off.

Macau: The Other Las Vegas

The entire movable wealth of our pint-sized Hong Kong hotel room consisted of two packets of rose-scented soap and a water glass. It wasn't much of a haul, considering how we'd been swindled, but it was the best we could do. So, after turning the AC up for one last sustained blast, we shut the door on the Mirador Mansion forever.

The weeks of smog, traffic, and fighting old ladies have tired us to the degree that we've settled on two days of luxurious R & R in Macau. The former Portuguese concession, like Hong Kong, is technically a part of China, but it has its own customs and immigration policies. You reach it from Hong Kong by an hour long ferry sprint, which we passed mostly in fog, until the bridges and casinos of the New Babylon reared into view.

Macau would like you to believe it's the new Las Vegas. A formerly seedy enclave, it has reinvented itself as a hotel and casino paradise, filled with shopping, gambling, and sin. We may be travelers, but we remain patriotic Americans, and would like to inform the world, that we don't give a rat's ass that Macau turns over more money than Vegas or that its casinos are infinitely more profitable. That's merely because the Chinese are what Tony Soprano would call degenerate gamblers who don't understand that if you sit long enough at a roulette table, you will lose your home.

How is Macau not like Vegas? In the first place, we arrived at our hotel (the famous, venerable Lisboa), and were greeted with a small foyer dominated by an enormous crystal chandelier that obliterated the view of anything else. The lobby was upstairs, and had—of all things—a long, slow-moving line. In addition, they had changed our reservation from a double bed to twin singles. And, as we had arrived a mere hour early, our room was not ready. In Vegas, if you were a hotel manager and any such crimes occurred, you would be immediately taken out and shot. In fact, they might not even waste the time to take you out first.

Unlike Hong Kong, Macau is a small territory. The optimistic American company Avis offers cars for rent, though you can probably skateboard anywhere you need. Still, we are having great fun. Our hotel room faces the harbor, and there is both a Jacuzzi and a stereo in the bathroom. The in-room minibar is free, though it is remarkably deficient in potable wine and spirits.

The Macanese idea of luxury hotel is hard to describe accurately, except to say that it dovetails neatly with Saddam Hussein's notions of proper palace decoration. Every room features an explosion of crystal, fake gold, glistening glass, and faux luxury. They glitter like old Las Vaegas.

The casino floors sit behind metal detectors—none of your Vegas-style transparent security here. They consist of small, serious rooms, filled with thoughtful, intelligent people. Cocktail waitresses do not soak them in free alcohol. They don't shout and joke. But for all that, they still stand four deep, blithely wagering their children's education on red number four.

Our time so far included a turn around the Grand Lisboa, our next door neighbor and, coincidentally, the ugliest building in the world (a pear shaped, gold-bedecked monstrosity). Soon, we plan on checking out the new Wynn and Venetian casinos, both supposedly exact copies of their Vegas counterparts (this saves on architecture costs). Our goal for the evening is to find a package of linguica sausage and an honest Manhattan. If we do, you'll be the first to know.

Hong Kong: Two Tales of a City

Our first experience in Hong Kong was unpleasant. We'd booked a hotel room in a building named Mirador Mansion. Mirador is Spanish for "view," but the building is neither a mansion, nor, unless you fancy scabrous courtyards with pockmarked walls, does it have a view. Still, we are here, having secured a closet-sized room from a vicious old hag for a scandalous amount. To get her back, we have left the air conditioning on constantly and resolved to steal everything that is not nailed down. Unfortunately, she seems to have anticipated this, because most things are, in fact, nailed down.

Still, Hong Kong is a terrific city. We have seen two parts: the ultra-modern, towering Island, and the lower-rent, bustling peninsula of Kowloon.

We started out last night in Kowloon, in a neon-crazed neighborhood of restaurants and stores that mostly sell electronic goods and diamonds. There are also platoons of men with Indian accents offering you "copy watches" and tailored suits of clothes. We dealt with them by our usual method: a look that simultaneously communicates an extreme disinterest in their goods and an earnest desire to murder their grandmothers. The pace is hectic. Sidewalk vendors haggle with customers, girls tap you on the shoulder to drag you into stores, and every sign cries out that its owner is practically throwing merchandise in the street.

Exhausted by the lights and chaos, we retreated to our closet, and woke the next day to try our luck on Hong Kong Island.

This was a different city. A gorgeous, efficient subway dropped us off in a futuristic landscape of glass, marble, and steel. Impressively modern buildings reach dozens of stories in the air. They link to one another with intricate skyways, while elevated roadways snake between them at dizzying heights. As you follow signs from one place to the next , you find yourself passing through the gleaming lobby of some multinational corporation, and then, a half block later, through the kitchen of an open air restaurant serving bowls of noodles for $2. It's very fun.

After a trip up the funicular to view the city from Victoria Peak, we ate some soup and returned to our closet to plot an assault on Cantonese cuisine. Still, we already miss China. As we walked through the subway, I came within an ace of leveling a middle-aged woman with an armful of groceries. Unfortunately, she stepped aside at the last minute and politely inquired if I'd lost my mind. As Freud would have it, civilization has its discontents, and today I am one of them.

One final note: yesterday we able to check our blog stats for the first time in a while, and were surprised to find that some 438 people had viewed it in the last 24 hours. Considering that our previous best was 20, we wondered what had happened. Then we realized that our post on the Li River had contained the words "beating," "off," and "Angelina Jolie."

Our course, we deplore any additional readers brought to us by such low, underhanded means. Hot, free sex, get it here, get it now.

Guangzhuo, Night Adventure

I looked up from my morning paper (Yahoo news) to see a tour group gathered in the lobby. Its leader was urging them to take part in one of two pre-breakfast activities: painting or tai chi. Unfortunately, I'd seen several of them in the bar the night before, a bar that boldly advertises its creative cocktails, among them the Long Island Ice Tea, the Sex on the Beach, and the Bangkok Happy Slutmaker. Most of the people looked liked they'd had several of each. And they'd had more than enough of activities.

We'd managed to avoid all that, so instead, we embarked on a restful day in beautiful Yangshuo, in preparation for a late-night plane flight to Guangzhou. We sipped at a coffee, took a turn around town. Then we lunched on beer fish – the specialty of Yangshuo (excepting stewed endangered turtle and stir fried dog—and I'm not joking this time). How can I describe the complex symphony of flavors that caressed our palates? How about: "It sucked." Guanxi food is, in general, flabby, lifeless, and uninspired. Beer fish is no exception.

But beyond food, it seemed we'd been cursed. There are only a few cardinal rules in travel. You should never, for example, fly with an airline that asks if you have pilot training. You should not rely on a train's bathroom. And you should never arrive in a city after midnight without a hotel reservation.

By a long chain of unfortunate circumstances, this last thing is exactly what happened to us. Our first hotel rezzie fell through; our second never got back to us to confirm or send us directions. Any attempt to book afterwards was stymied by an inability to communicate by phone. And so, we found ourselves mulling about the Guilin airport, wondering if we should take off for Guangzhou. We did, taking odds on the likelihood we spent the night in anxious slumber on the airport floor.

We needn't have worried. Our plane arrived a half hour early, and a hotel booking service located at the baggage carousel found us a cavernous room near the airport for about $38. We woke to an excellent breakfast of noodle soup with eggs, and were soon hurtling in a taxi through old Canton (which looks like the worst parts of the Bronx times ten), and then on a very modern train towards Hong Kong. As I write, we are arriving in Kowloon, with more details to follow.

Yangshuo: Li River Trip

Nicole and I are happily ensconced in hotel in Yangshuo. ("Ensconce," by the way is a silly word, often used in travel writing. It is nearly as bad as "traipse." A sconce holds a candle, and, no, we do not feel as though we've been stuffed into a candlestick. We are quite comfortable.)

We have firmly entered China's western tourist region. Yangshuo serves a backpacking and rock climbing clientele and is overrun with Australians, Germans, French, and the odd American, who is skulking, mostly to avoid the loud anti-Yankee tirades unleashed by the others.

We have gotten here thanks to a boat ride the Li River from Guilin. One of the two Chinese poets whose names I know, Li Po, has called the Li a blue silk ribbon wandering through a forest of jade pins. His description can't really be improved upon. Unless, of course, you consider the pesky fog (smog?) that has shrouded the region in haze.

In any case, if you've never seen a karst landscape, hopefully the photos give you an idea of what we're talking about. The river rolls on for miles through these curiously tall, rounded peaks, covered with lush trees and faced with stern planks of stone. Of course, this being China, you see it all from one of a line of boats that crowd the river like a fluvial traffic jam.

But a boat trip is a very fun thing. The moment we shoved off, there was tremendous excitement. We all piled to the top rail with our cameras at the ready. For the next 20 minutes we shot everything from ducks and mountains to people picking up garbage on the side of the river. Time wears. Soon, we found ourselves standing wearily on the deck. Hours later, we had retired our seats and ordered beers. Near the end, a tour guide announced that Brad Pitt was beating Angelina Jolie to death just outside the boat. No one even bothered to look up, though someone did say, "Screw you, sir. We're going to sit here, get drunk, and read our books."

Still, I like a boat ride, and Yangshuo, though neon-bathed, is a beautiful place. Karst promontories tower above it, neatly framing a small lake and graceful stone bridges. This is postcard China, but it's also no secret. Sloppy backpackers and well-heeled Chinese throng streets lined with a familiar mix of cafes, bars, pizza parlors, and stores selling "native" art. We may not do much here but take a walk around: almost every activity involves booking a tour through an agent, and they all feature hard-sells and visits to dubious attractions. At any rate, the scenery goes well with a latte.

Future note: We've decided to fly east today to take in Hong Kong and Macau, and then shoot off an extended trip/rest in Vietnam. China has been fun but exhausting. Stay tuned.

The Great Taxi Race

We arrived in Guilin at about 1:30 in the afternoon, after a flight of about an hour. The train, for some reason known only to God and a few Chinese transit officials, takes 24 hours. We had booked a hotel, which sent a car to pick us up, driven by a hustling tour agent named Jerry.

Guilin is by Chinese standards a small town, which means that it is about the size of San Jose. It's also a big tourism destination for Chinese, a matter of rice paddies, caves, and river trips. It's also reputed to be filled with scam artists and pickpockets. Still, Jerry was friendly and well spoken, and he soon talked us into using his company to arrange our boat and bus tours. The combined rate was a little less than we'd expected from the Lonely Planet.

The next morning found us sipping good McDonald's coffee in our hotel. We were waiting for a van to pick us up so we could see the Dragon's Neck Rice Paddies, a curious feat of agricultural engineering worth seeing, apparently. Our appointed time went by and we grew more nervous.

As seasoned travelers, we'd been scammed before, but we felt Jerry was an extraordinarily gifted con artist if he was one. He had even, while driving us, handled a personal call from a South African tourist client who wondered if she should take a pee before entering a particular cave. "No, there's no toilet inside," he said. "You should go before you enter." Now that's service.

Luckily, he'd given us a card with his number on it. We went to our hotel desk and had the girl give him a call. For a few anxious minutes we waited--he had told me he played badminton, I remembered. How many badminton-playing swindlers could the world possibly contain? After a moment, the hotel girl's face brightened and she handed me the phone. "They didn't pick you up?" Jerry asked. "No problem," he said, "I'll fix it."

What followed next was something we'll call the Great Taxi Chase. The girl from the hotel took some instructions from Jerry and piled us into a taxi. And off we went, barreling down the road as fast as we could to catch up with our tour bus, which was well on its way out of town. I don't know if you've ever been in a Chinese taxi, but under ordinary circumstances, it's not for the faint of heart. In the United States, Asians have a reputation for being over cautious, plodding, and absentminded drivers. In China, they combine a NASCAR-like love of speed with aggressive road rage. Add in a driver promised a good tip for catching a bus, and you have a great recipe for angina.

In any case, we soon overhauled our bus and hopped on. Now that we could enjoy it, we noticed that the countryside outside Guilin featured high rounded peaks that drop precipitously onto yellow rice paddies. It was harvest time, and they were dotted with neat grids of drying sheaves, punctuated by groves of orange and pomelo trees, and flat mats covered with drying seeds.

Our bus soon wound into the mountains, switching back up between terraced fields and traditional Chinese farmhouses. Then we reached our first stop: a dreadful tourist trap of a town with women who grew their hair out to one meter lengths—a feat available to Nicole should she ever feel the need. For about $7 per person, they performed a "hair show" during which they combed and coiffed themselves to the caterwauling of what sounded like fifty cats in heat. Nicole and I excused ourselves; the rest of our party wished they had.

After that, we piled onto a different bus and shot up to the rice paddies, which you can see from the photo. They are quite curious, sitting as they do so high up, and capable of capturing and holding water. Still, the excitement only lasts about an hour and we were soon headed back to Guilin.

If you're ever in Guilin, Jerry's full name is Jerry Weng, and he works for the CITS travel agency. He's worth his weight in gold.

Farewell to Sim...

It had been our intention to ride the Yangtze down the Three Gorges, a tedious but beautiful three day boat trip. But the weather is not cooperating. An early winter has brought a lot of rain to the area; coupled with the ever present smog, we are doubtful of our chances of seeing much. And three days on an open boat in a driving rainstorm is no game at all.

And so, we've boarded a plane for the picturesque landscape of Guilin, famed for its pretty river, its enormous caves, and its natives' willingness to eat everything from garden snakes to civet cats. There, one simply does not order the "Special Meat Curry."

Before we arrive, though, we'll cast one last look back at Sichuan. Normally, we don't call out particular establishments, but owing to tragic circumstances, it might be well to bid a final farewell to Sim's Cozy Guesthouse.

This establishment is located in a 100 year old traditional Chinese courtyard house, sandwiched between the rising behemoths of the New China. Next door, an enormous office building is being jackhammered into place. On the other side, a mall is already going great guns. Still, when you're inside, you find a throwback architecture of ponds, gardens and fountains. Passageways turn into staircases that ascend into balconies, with old trees importunately thrusting their trunks through it all to reach the sky.

Like many guesthouses in China, it offers a complete ecosystem for the backpacker lifestyle. There are clean rooms, laundry service, a DVD library, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a place to get sloshed at night, and even friendly attendants willing to listen to piss-drunk 22 year olds from Rotterdam slobber on about their solutions to the world's problems.

Though Nicole and I did not avail ourselves of its services, most did. Its café did a nonstop business selling beer and wine—one older couple seemed to have viewed Sichuan entirely from its Table Number Three, sluicing down a long succession of bottles of Campo Largo. As far as we could tell, they never left.

Sadly, Sim does not own his cozy guesthouse; and property rights are not what they should be in China. Soon its gracefully sloping tile roof will be pulverized to make way for god knows what new concrete monstrosity. For that, we raise a glass to Sim, and wish him the best of luck, wherever his little establishment lands.

Panda-ring to our tastes

Sichuan is the land of the Panda, and Chengdu houses one of the world's foremost breeding centers. To visit it requires either a tour, or a difficult bus route involving a change between two stations.

Not many of the backpackers here wanted to attempt the bus, but Nicole and I have been impressed with the willingness of the people to help wayward westerners. So we set off with the Chinese names of where we wanted to go, and plenty of hope.

Luckily, it turned out to be a complete disaster. When we got off at our appointed station, we could not find the right bus, mainly because it was no longer running. The substitute route, unmarked in our instructions, left from the back corner of a cavernous bus station. How would we ever find it?

The key was simply to walk around the bus station looking like a complete idiot (difficult for you, perhaps, but we find it comes quite naturally). Within a few minutes of wandering, and all sorts of people pointing us in this direction or that, and we easily found the new bus. In fact, no less than five people piled off it to study our Chinese directions, and pantomimed us into getting on.

We owe them all a big favor, because there's nothing more wonderful than looking at a panda. I, being a part time journalist, might be prone to cynicism. I know a few colleagues who could eyeball a panda playing with a ball and say, "Great, it's a panda, very cute, now where's the bar?" But not me. Those roly-poly little fur balls are absolutely delightful.

Sadly, though, their environment is shrinking and if Chengdu is any indication, there's not much hope for restraint. When it comes to pollution, the city puts all others (including itself quite literally) in the shade. It is a mass of construction, dust, and ugly, faceless buildings, punctuated by the crushed remains of old apartment blocks waiting to be resurrected into malls and bypasses.

If you're ever find yourself with a warm feeling for Ayn Rand, and believe the market and unrestrained capitalism will always provide for the peoples' good, come to Chengdu and breathe in the retort to her arguments. It will be marvelously instructive.

Such Barbarians

We left Xian behind by boarding a train crammed full of people eating, drinking, and card-playing—all of it loudly. Nicole was scandalized by the fact that her bunk had been previously occupied by someone who had left it littered with food and hair.

This brings up the inevitable discussion of difference in manners between ourselves and our fellow travel companions. There are many culturally determined things about the Chinese, which by dumb luck play exactly into our notions of dreadful manners. And, we suppose, vice versa. One of these is bedding. Americans simply do not sleep in others' beds. Even on an airplane, we demand a clean blanket and pillow.

Another is eating. Where the westerner sits primly, mouth clamped shut, chewing impassively, the Chinese picks up a bowl, sets it an inch from his face and slurps and shovels its contents into his mouth, smacking his lips with joy. If he (or she) encounters, say, a chicken bone, it is sucked clean of its contents, which are then tongue-sorted into edible and inedible portions, one in each cheek. The former is ingested, the latter expectorated into one's hand and thrown onto the table.

I know this is all arbitrary stuff, totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Why should we, in eating, make such a Stoic go of it? We sit down to a bowl of steaming lobster bisque, which we should, by all rights, grasp with both hands and slurp down in a frenzy of unbridled gastronomic glee. But what do we do instead? We pick up a spoon and scoop up infinitesimal portions of it, with our faces betraying no more emotion than if we were taking down a plate of prison chow. Except that we say--usually in a hushed tone--"This is very good."

And presumably, we do hundreds of thing that the Chinese find beastly. We often find them looking at us with a "what the hell are you doing" stare. And we return the favor.

In any case, we began our train trip by giving in to our cultural norms and unrolling yoga mats on our (to us) filthy beds. We awoke in Sichuan to a different countryside, a hilly, riparian landscape marked by wheat fields with neat sheaves stacked up and drying. There were vegetable gardens, rice paddies, farmhouses—and, yes, the occasional smoke-belching, coal-fired power plant. It is still China, after all.

Now we have arrived in Chengdu, in the heart of Sichuan. It's actually the famous Szechuan of American Chinese restaurant lingo. And justly so. Food in China, though all eaten with chopsticks, varies greatly. We found Xian's love affair with star anise a little overpowering, but here the main event is the pepper, and we are happy. Much of the food is also served on a steaming cast iron platter, which does things for bacon that are indescribably delicious. Nicole and I have been doing our best to brush aside cultural norms and get down to some good, honest, Chinese slurping. We'll let you know how it goes.

Do you fancy luxury?

These pix were taken inside a high-end mall in Xian. There are several there, offering up everything from Prada and Louis Vuitton to Max Mara and Salvatore Ferragamo. They abound in polished glass and plasma screens, not to mention brigades of bored-stiff sales clerks. The only thing they lack is customers.

It's puzzling in the extreme. I used to live in downtown Palo Alto, one of the most expensive zip codes in the US. And we didn't have half of these stores within a 30 mile radius. Do the executives at Givenchy really think the natives of sooty Xian are going be slathering themselves with $100 per ounce face cream anytime soon? Especially, when you can buy buckets of perfectly useful imitation goop on the street for a few yuan?

I work in marketing at times, and my guess is that behind this are some really slick management consultants—presumably the army of well-heeled mattress salesmen and babbling idiot frat boys at McKinsey. They've told a tremendous tale of the need to build your brand in the burgeoning Chinese economy. They've backed that up with trend lines and statistics in handsomely bound volumes with quotes from the leading analysts at Goldman Sachs and Solomon Smith Barney. Who are themselves busy peddling Chinese stocks to their American customers...

Someone should have told these captains of commerce that it's impossible to build your brand if your store, which has no customers, sits in the middle of a mall, which has no customers. It's that age old Chinese proverb: if a leather hat is on sale for $800 in a Xian mall and no one sees it, is it really on sale?

They will read this and say I don't get it. I'll be honest. I don't.

Terra Incotta

We have spent the last two days in Xian, here to view the famed Terracotta warriors of the Emperor Qin. They lie about an hour outside town, a trip you arrange either by paying your hotel $20 per person, or by navigating a holy hell of a train terminal, where you catch a local bus for about $1. We did the latter.

The bus takes you northeast of Xian through what the Lonely Planet describes as a fertile river plain. The description is accurate so far as it goes. But it leaves out the nuclear power plant, the post-industrial ruins, and the moldering communist era communal apartment blocks that lie along the way. Pomegranates are grown alongside a muddy road with buses and trucks belching clouds of smoke over them. I like a good pomegranate, but I have my limits.

You eventually find yourself deposited in a vast parking lot. You cross this, and find a vast row of restaurants and gift shops. Then you have a fifteen minute walk through a gauntlet of shills selling food, dim sum, and miniature terra cotta warriors. Then, you reach the gate. Next, you have another fifteen minutes of slogging through lines of tour guides offering their services. Finally, just as you are about to give your mortal coil its pink slip, you reach the complex.

"So mind boggling it's hard to wrap your head around," writes the editor of the LP in a superbly executed mixed metaphor. Not entirely accurate, unfortunately. There are three main pits, the third of which contains about five broken shields and a crushed chariot. The second contains about 20 or so warriors, many with their heads cut off.

The first is very impressive, comprising several hundred (thousand?) warriors, each one made of baked clay with a different face. This detail is important because it means that molds were used only once, greatly increasing the work. They are also both realistic and in many cases touching. These were people. Their features are varied and human: here an eager young man on his first campaign, there a grizzled, wild-eyed veteran you'd want to avoid on the field of battle.

Nicole and I could study them well because we had a 300 millimeter camera lens with us. Otherwise, you're kept at such a distance from them that it's difficult to see them except as rows and rows of warriors standing in review.

They were the creation of the first emperor of China: Qin. A remarkable, crazy, madcap and cruel man, he conquered six kingdoms, enslaved hundreds of thousands, killed about as many, and generally put the world under his sway. He then created and buried this bizarre army underground so that he could continue his ass-kicking ways in the afterlife.

Beyond Qin, Xian is a tourism one-trick pony. The nicest thing about it is that the city walls remain in tact, giving you a good idea of how seriously the Chinese took external threats.

On to Xian

Getting out of Beijing involves--for the cost conscious traveler--a trip to the city's cavernous West train station. Its crowded waiting rooms resemble an American airport after planes have been grounded for three days. The trains themselves are another matter. Because of the ditstances, you typically go by "hard sleeper," a small room with 4-6 comfortable bunks. They're quite a nice and restful way to go.

Because we slept most of the way, we thought we'd leave you with ten observations about the trip so far:

1. The people are extremely friendly and nice, and they're quite happy to take a few minutes out of their day to point to you whatever you want.

2. They find Westerners so exotic that we were stopped several times on the street and asked to pose for pictures. We obliged, but held our wallets closely.

3. They are environmentally tone deaf. They dry corn for cornmeal on the sides of rural highways. Apparently the exhaust from the cars speeds drying. Problem: the cars use leaded gas which is then deposited on the corn. Yum.

4. The Chinese love McDonalds and KFC. They also have lots of western-style bakeries.

5. The Chinese have few Internet cafes and online gaming venues. Given government policy, we can understand the first, but not the second.

6. The beer in China is disgusting. Oddly enough, the Tsingtao you get in the US is quite good. And China consumes more beer than any other country.

7. If you enter a Chinese restaurant, regardless of linguistic difficulties, you will leave with a meal.

8. They stare at Nicole more than Joe. Of course, no one usually stares at Joe.

9. If you have to pay for a toilet, it is invariably ten times as foul as one that's free.

10. Through all the chaos, order eventually emerges. It is really not that hard to travel in China. They are nice people, just different.

The Great Wall

Somebody ought to be shot for saying that the Great Wall of China is visible from outer space. The most surprising thing about it is that it's not really all that wide. Or tall. If you could see it from space, you could easily see a three bedroom house at the same distance. Frankly, with Beijing smog being what it is, it's surprising you can see it from the ground. And it's a ridiculous proposition that you could see it on most days from a blimp.

But it is quite picturesque. More on that later…You get there by taking a bus, the 919, north of Beijing. Getting on requires the usual hand signals and misunderstandings. Luckily the pronunciation and tone pattern for "Badaling," the town where you see the wall, is nearly identical to "Badabing," Tony Soprano's favorite strip bar.

Once you get there you have a ¾ mile uphill walk—I mean, really, why the hell wouldn't you put the bus stop a full 3/4 of a mile from your destination? This is China after all! The town itself is a collection of souvenir shops, selling, as is the way with communist countries, all the same stuff.

So you arrive. And there it is, many feet high, 15 feet wide, built and rebuilt of rocks and concrete, most of it presumably 12 years ago with a crane, and covered for miles with hoards of Chinese. It's steep too. The wall snakes along the ridges of mountains, which ascend and descend with no particular regard for your feet, legs, and lungs.

The crowds are astonishing, and they accentuate a problem westerners will always have with the Chinese: space. In America, everyone gets a good foot and a half circumference and must be asked permission to be touched. Not in China. People simply bustle along, jostle and shove eachother, without so much as an "excuse me." We usually try hard to accept local culture, but for some reason, it is exceptionally difficult to do so with space. Whenever someone shoves you in a line, you instantly react, typically with a four letter word and an elbow.

But there are advantages to being a westerner. As we trudged through a particularly narrow doorway, Nicole and I were pushed out of the way several times by those trying to get there first. Then, she tapped my shoulder.

"What?" I asked.

"We're much bigger than them," she said.

It was true. Suddenly, a great weight lifted off my shoulders. The next second, an old lady tried to jostle past me, and I promptly hip-checked her over a baby carriage. I looked back, and saw Nicole stiff-arming a couple of schoolgirls. Then, to the doorway. A middle aged man was barreling through with a full head of steam. He saw me coming, my right shoulder lowered. He knew what had happened. He tried to reverse direction. But, alas, it was too late. I slammed into him like a freight train, knocking him back into his wife and three children. We emerged from the doorway, serene and triumphant.

Actually, it was a peculiar thing, because we soon realized that everyone had taken a right when they reached the wall making that side particularly crowded. We decided to go back and try the left, and for some mysterious reason, the area was nearly empty. After an arduous climb, we found ourselves high above the valley, with no one to bother us. We opened a bottle of water, sat down by ourselves, and quite enjoyed the peace and quiet for a good long stretch. The wall really is quite impressive, especially in its great distance, and worthy of the homage it receives.

So much tasty, so little stomach

Weary from yet another so-what tramp about one of Beijing's vast tourist traps, we found ourselves in a dumpling shop. Now here's something worth shouting about. The rest of Beijng may be smog filled, loud, huge, footsore, and tiring, but slip into a dumpling restaurant and you can, at least, taste heaven.

This delicious snack is available about a buck a half dozen and offers mouth-sized bursts of flavor. Succulent duck, pork mingled with pungent spring onions, shrimp mixed with ginger and garlic, all dunked in soy sauce and red pepper—does this sentence need a subject and verb? The best dumpling restaurant we've found makes them to order, and nothing in any Chinatown compares.

Then there's streetfood. This is what the Beijing-ers eat. And no one said they were fools. Most of it is half cooked and then finished in front of you. There are seemingly endless varieties—at first. Soon, you eat most of them. Our favorites are potstickers, spicy noodles, fried potatoes and eggs, baked dog (just kidding), and kebabs. A good dinner for a couple of dollars.

Third, last and most importantly. Peking Duck. Even if you've never liked duck, or duck skin, or duck fat, you can't say you won't like Peking Duck along with its skin, meat, and fat. You eat it with little pancakes, sugar, scallions and plum sauce. It's a little more pricey, but much more yummy.

Of course, there is one caveat about Beijing dining. If you're one of those people who prefers to eat his chicken feet, beef intestines, pork liver, and lamb stomach packaged as "cotto salami," "chicken apple sausage," or "hotdogs," fine. You may not like the food in Beijing. But remember, if you ever look at the steaks and chops at the butcher counter and wonder where the rest of the cow, pig, chicken, and sheep is, turn around and look at the deli counter. That is where they have magically transformed the feet, lips, hooves, ears, and assholes of those animals into cylinders of "baked ham," "bologna," and "chicken roll." Here, they just eat 'em. Without apology.

A Walk in the Clouds

We started our day with a plate of spicy tofu at the Fast Food restaurant on Tian 'anmen Square. Our objective was the masoleum of Chairman Mao, but outside something was already more interesting: smog.

It hadn't been so bad the days before, but now a thick fog attacked the back of our throats. It was easily visible looking across a modest sized street, and it steadily got worse all day. Eventually, we were standing inside a mall and noticed that the shops across the way looked a little hazy. Beijing's air is downright filthy.

In any case, we paid our respects to Mao, a process exactly as interesting as walking by a dead dictator can be (he's a fat, jowly fellow with a double chin, lounging, surrounded by white flowers, behind two layers of protective glass).

Then we headed out in the general direction of a big circular building called the Temple of Bountiful Harvests. The walk was more interesting than the destination. It took us through a hutong, a particular kind of neighborhood that the Lonely Planet refers to as quaint. And although that adjective covers a vast category of sins (most of them on the part of writers), it doesn't answer here.

Hutongs are the Old Beijing, gray concrete shacks, hovels, and courtyard houses built in adhoc arrangements around tiny alleyways filled with cats, dogs, chickens, and children; bridged by banners advertising god-knows-what; and cluttered with the rubble of hundreds of never-completed construction projects. We picked our way along, past stores and restaurants, women squatting over fires, men smoking in doorways, people hustling to and fro, and all sorts of character-laden jumble lying here and there. It was quite fun, but tiring.

Finally we accepted a ride from a bike cab—a world war one era contraption with a bench seat. At our destination, the fellow tried to charge us $35. We managed to bargain the number down to a couple of bucks by the usual method of flagging down passing cop cars.

From there we had a gargantuan slog through the gargantuan palace park, all to reach the gargantuan circular temple (obscured by smog at 200 yards). It was the usual Chinese whatever, impressive mostly in size. Signs, as usual, went into great detail about the number of times the thing was burnt down and rebuilt and no explanation whatsoever of how it was used.

You could tell we were ready for something good. And yes, we found it. (the next post will cover our discovery).

Impressions of Beijing

It occurred to us as we were standing in a courtyard at the Forbidden City. Courtyard, perhaps is the wrong word. There are Nascar tracks with less area. It could hold about 100,000 people comfortably. Nicole turned to me and said, "They didn't just lick this up off the street, did they?"

The "this" is scale. Beijing is big. In every possible way. It's a big modern city with big boulevards, big buildings, big theaters, big sidewalks, big benches, and big ambitions. Tian 'anmen Square is so big that the vast buildings that surround it look flat. The Forbidden City is so huge that even though it had tens of thousands of tourists in it, Nicole and I found a quiet cafe inside where we the only people having a cup of coffee. In certain corners of it, you could have conducted howitzer practice without worrying about raising your insurance rates.

That said, Beijing is so striving so hard to be modern that, except for scale, it is hard to describe. Think of any large city, add a few pounds, and then strip out whatever it is that makes it that city, and you have the parts of Beijing we have visited. They are modern, slick, and excessively clean (Beijing might be the only major city I've visited where I'd recommend the public toilets). But it's hard to say what it is beyond that. Of course, there may be other parts of it with more character. Without a decade to explore the place, you can't be sure.

We've spent the last two days walking through the tiniest fraction of this place, marveling at the number of skyscrapers, and being somewhat shocked at the smog so thick that it hazes up buildings a hundred yards away. Our first day, we took in Tian 'anmen (too large for pictures to do it justice), and passed on to a touristy hotel where we feasted on pig knuckles and two-colored tofu ($6). The next day, we walked through the weird Forbidden City, which took eight hours simply to walk through a few parts. It was the home of the emperors, and though described as a pleasure palace, it was a vast monotony of red-roofed buildings with ornate gardens, cold palaces, collections of indifferent gems, and concrete avenues.

Today, we are off to visit Chairman Mao.

(The photos are from the Forbidden City. In case there's any photographers looking at these, the sky is not washed out, it's actually smog-overcast.)

Day One

We're pretty beat, but we thought we'd share some photos. After a short night of sleep and a long day of slogging around the Forbidden City, followed by a plate of Peking Duck, we're not especially coherent. These are just a few shots of the city...

Beijing: A Dubious Arrival

Since we have arrived, we've found to our surprise that we can't see our blog. Of course, given its seditious nature and history of inciting conflict, this is hardly surprising. In any case, we're not sure if this will be broadcast or not.

That said, we're almost too tired to write anything anyway. It's mid afternoon here, and 11ish on the West Coast. We were also bold enough to forget the taxi ride and try to get here by bus, subway, and a short walk. We made it, barely, and it wasn't our fault

I'll give you our hotel's instructions to explain:

1. Take number 2 bus to Deng Zhi Men
2. Get off bus, continue for 30 meters to subway.
3. Get off at Jishuitan Station, exit and turn right for 20 meters, then right again. Walk along bank of Xihai Lake for 7 minutes.
4. Hotel has a beautiful terrace that overlooks the lake.

Here's the actual instructions.

1. Get a ticket for the number 3 bus, because the ticket lady is adamant that that's what you want in spite of your best efforts to convince her otherwise.
2. Explain to the bus driver that you really want number 2, and convince him you're correct.
3. Get off atDeng Zhi Men, continue on for not less than 100 meters.
4. Get off at Jishuitan Station, exit, turn right for 20 meters then walk along the bank of Xihai Lake, which is really a pond. Watch men fishing in this glorified puddle with poles capable of hauling out a shark.
5. Get lost, because 7 minutes is an absurd instruction and the stupid hotel isn't on the bank of Xihai Lake anyway. Circumnavigate the puddle, arouse the curiousity of the fisherman.
6. Finally, show your printed instructions to everyone and learn that your hotel is actually in an alley alongside a canal about 2 minutes walk (give or take) from teh lake.
7. Hotel is a bunker with a concrete roof, where you can sit and dimly view the puddle.

Actually, Beijing is very very very interesting, and we'll have much more to say about it when we've got our brains back.

Not impossible to do

It's time again, but this time, the goal is a little less out there than South Dakota. The tickets we have say China…

Of course, our friends have already called us idiots—most had the courtesy to do it behind our backs—for undertaking such a trip without a tour. Even my well-traveled uncle told me last night that "it's not impossible to do."

The problem is the language. Apparently Chinese taxi drivers don't have the common decency to learn English. So unless you've got a card with the exact address written on it in the Empress's Chinese, you're in for a long, meaningless conversation that ends with you on the side of the road looking for another cab.

The truth is, I have every expectation of this turning into a disaster. You may have gotten the impression that, with the amount of stamps in our passports, Nicole and I have picked up some rudimentary orienteering skills. Such an impression would be faulty. In fact, we have spent several days of our lives in aggregate staring at maps, streetsigns, and landmarks without so much as a single spark of recognition going off in our heads.

I remember fondly one occasion when we set out looking for a restaurant on a river. We spent an hour trudging around a market neighborhood, before we found the river.

In any case, don't expect any more posts for several days. We'll probably be wandering, broke, around Beijing.