How about dogs? Or a pig?

If you visit the small zoo attached to the Guanlan Mountain & Lake Garden Farm in Shenzhen, China, you won’t find the first two, but you’ll find plenty of dogs, cats, pigeons, pigs and other similarly exotic animals. And their sad eyes will bore into your soul from behind the rusty bars of their tiny, filthy cages.

See what I mean?

Right after entering, you’ll see cats in small glass boxes. Next to them, mice fill another glass box. I looked for a removable divider between the boxes, figuring the owners simplified feeding time, but couldn’t find one. Maybe I should have made a suggestion. After the cats, comes the dog above and a bunch of other dogs who don’t even get their own cages.

I wonder how often they injure their legs on those floor bars

Then the zoo’s most exotic animal:

An alpaca!

It took ten minutes to get that photo, since I had to wait for a steady stream of peace-sign-flashing Chinese tourists to finish posing in front of his cage. You can see how excited he is by all the commotion.

Following the popular alpaca, several rarely-seen species:

The pig

The rooster

And rarest of all: the pigeon.

Many of the cages were affixed with this sign:

Ask that dog how beautiful his earth is

You might think this is a cruel joke, but it’s China. They’re completely serious; not the slightest hint of irony.

After all the exotic animals comes the main attraction, the reason everyone enters this zoo: the animal show and its spectacular grand-finale:

Pig diving!

The show begins with a goat walking across a high-beam. Then a goat-tamer (AKA teenager working her way through college) places a vase on the beam. The goat steps up onto the vase and maintains perfect balance. Next another vase goes on its head. Then a ball. Perfect balance.

Finally, the goat’s shining moment. A monkey climbs on its head and poses. Just when you think it can’t get more amazing, the monkey does a handstand on the goat’s head while the goat balances on the vase, and the whole lot balance on the beam.

Pick your jaw up off the floor

The crowd eats it all up:

This was during the first part of the show where dogs listlessly jumped through hoops

Then comes the moment you’ve been waiting for. The moment everyone’s been waiting for. It’s time to force some pigs off a diving platform. They call it “pig diving,” but it’s more like “pigs falling off platform and flopping into water.” The Chinese crowd goes crazy. They jump out of their seats and lean over the barrier to get the best photo possible. I got shoved out of the way and ended up with photos that look like this:

The first pig goes soaring through the air

The next pig gets ready to top the his predecessor’s weak effort—that splash is way too big: 2.4

These two seem reluctant after the first couple of failures

After their dives, the pigs are supposed to swim to the end of the little river and line up for an exciting pig race. They didn’t. Two ran off in the other direction, one decided to stay in the water and another found a clump of flowers for a pre-race snack. The staff chased after them with bamboo rods and eventually got them to line up at the start.

One pig false started. No one cared and the others were quickly chased forward. The false start made no difference, since that pig found a new clump of flowers to snack on. The others flew past the frantic spectators and their clicking cell-phone cameras.

A pig won. Another pig came in second. A third kept eating flowers. My heart was pounding. And then…it was over. The pigs went back to their cages and the onlookers filed out of the zoo. But they didn’t stop chattering about the historic photo finish they’d just witnessed live and in person. A pig beat out another pig by a snout to take the title of Shenzhen’s Fastest Hog. I’ll never forget the day.

If you’re ever passing through Shenzhen, go see anything else. If you’re stuck there for a longer period of time, there’s still plenty of other things to do. If you work there and your company takes you on a trip to the Guanlan Mountain & Lake Garden Farm, you might as well pop into the little zoo and watch animals suffer.

And then go for lunch. The park is famous for its restaurants and coincidentally, they all feature multiple pork dishes. Just in case you were wondering what became of the flower-eater…

For suggestions on far more interesting things to see and do in Shenzhen, go here.

Like going for a relaxing bike ride around the city, for instance

It can also wreak havoc on transportation in rural areas. When the downpours get heavy enough, they can bring transportation to a halt in even the biggest cities.

But it takes a lot more than a few ‘roads turned to rivers’ to stop the buses from running.

They do slow down a bit, though. Too much for some people’s liking.

And this bus driver clearly believes: if you can’t see any lane marking on the road, they never existed.

Notice how traffic in both directions is trying to use the same lane in that photo? This kind of thing happens a lot in China. The river in the image is actually meant only for traffic flowing in one direction; traffic heading the opposite way has three lanes of its own on the other side of that little hedge. This bus—and about 20 cars and buses behind him—should be on that other side, but they thought this side had better driving conditions, so they simply switched over.

A cement truck on the correct side of the road.

It didn’t even cross their minds that there might be cars on this side of the road that were also trying to get somewhere. The result: the all-too-common standoff between cars heading in opposite directions. Naturally, neither side will ever back down and put their car in reverse.

In this instance, there were obviously two empty lanes and while the water was much deeper in those lanes, a few drivers soon lost patience and gave the deeper water a try. Others quickly followed and the standoff was over. They don’t always end so quickly. More on that in a future post.

Sometimes it’s simply easier to be a pedestrian. On another note, now that I think about it, I’ve never seen anyone in other countries (or in China, for that matter) wearing Chinese flag shorts.

This pedestrian seems a bit envious of the car. The BMW, not the toy, I’m guessing.

She’s probably wishing for a car, too.

He seems fine on his bike.

So does this guy with his oversized poncho.

He does not seem fine. On another note, all motorized two-wheeled vehicles are banned from Shenzhen. Obviously, that is not well-enforced. Some people call the local police lazy. Others say they take ‘donations’. Both are right.

Flooded streets inconvenience anyone driving (or walking, if they need to cross any of those flooded streets), but they can be beneficial to people with the right kind of job. When I lived in Shenzhen, I worked for the city government teaching English at a vocational school. We got the day off anytime there was a heavy downpour. The roads didn’t even have to flood—a storm warning was sufficient. During the rainy season, these occurred about once a month.

I would probably be pushing my bike, too.

This is probably your best bet during a flood.

It might sound like I got a lot of extra holidays, but I’ll let you guess which two days of the week saw most of the rain and which five days tended to be bright and sunny. If you need a hint, all the photos in this post were taken on a Saturday.

While I missed out on a day off because it was Saturday, this guy had to work despite the weekend AND the flood.

I’m not complaining, though. In total, I got two days off due to bad weather during my time in the city and two days is better than none. Plus, no matter what day of the week the streets flooded, I was able to step out on my balcony and enjoy my new-found waterfront views.

Here’s a video I shot (poorly) that shows just how swiftly the flood waters were moving:

Click here for practical information on Shenzhen, including the best times of the year to visit.

The camp sits at 4100 meters above sea level, 800 meters below Tilicho Lake itself. It consist of two hotels and an ice cold stream, known in the local language as “shower.” When I arrived in the afternoon, one hotel was already full of ‘super-trekkers.’

Looking out over Tilicho Lake Basecamp from my guesthouse balcony

I recognized these gods of the mountain instantly by their gear: they had every single useless trekking-related item some fast-talking kid in Kathmandu had convinced them was absolutely essential to their survival in the wilderness, like extra strength, glow-in-the-dark faux-Northface shoelaces and countless other less useful items. Many of them looked like walking Northface billboards. The rest were advertising for Columbia. Naturally, I went straight to the other hotel.

I found the owner—with a face so wrinkled and abused by the elements, he looked like he had been born some time during the 19^th century and had spent all of the 20^th in a tanning bed—and I asked about a room.  He was friendly; much too friendly actually, since he spent the next twenty minutes explaining the various functions of the room.

I’m glad he did though, because it had both a bed and a door. It even had a light switch, but with no power it was little more than a decorative touch added to make us westerners feel at home. Thanks to the thorough explanation, I was able to both open and close the door and when the time came, I even managed to lie down on the bed correctly.

The laundry and shower facilities at Tilicho Lake Basecamp

While I wrote that his explanation took twenty minutes, he was actually interrupted after a few by an angry voice from the dining room below. The voice wanted to leave and insisted the owner come downstairs immediately or he would take off without paying. When I say insisted, I mean he screamed and shouted, peppering in what English curse words he knew.

He was Israeli, but he knew a lot. He didn’t know how to correctly use any of them, though. This only made him sound more deranged. I couldn’t understand much of his ranting, but it seemed he had already been severely overcharged for his room and now the owner was holding him up on top of it all.

View of Tilicho Peak from the basecamp

The old man later told me he had charged the guy the standard 100 Rupees (about one Euro at the time) for the room. All along the Annapurna circuit, you can generally get room prices down to 100 Rupees, but that comes with the understanding that you will eat both dinner and breakfast at your hotel. Hotel owners rely on us eating their food to make a living and while the prices for food are very high for Nepal, they are actually quite reasonable (with the exception of Manang and one other town I can’t remember), especially considering the remote locations.

Apparently, everything got worked out, since the screaming soon subsided and the old man returned to demonstrate the door’s various functions some more (‘open’ and……damn, what was the other one? I should have paid more attention). About an hour later, I went downstairs to order some dinner.

The little hill behind my guesthouse

Who should I find in the dining room but the same guy who an hour before absolutely had to leave that very second. Instead of being on the trail somewhere, he was sitting in the dining room eating muesli. His own muesli.

After complaining about the slow response and the one Euro room charge at length, he was now taking his time eating a bowl of muesli he had brought with him using milk he had made himself with milk powder and his little propane stove. Not only had he done this right in the dining room, he had also made a huge mess in the process, spilling grains and milk everywhere.

The owner later informed me that the guy hadn’t ordered anything for dinner or breakfast either. If you’ve read the other parts of this long series on the Annapurna Circuit Trek, you may have put two and two together and realized this was the same guy I ran into in part 8. As such, I was already very familiar with his modus operandi.

When trekking you pay a lot for the food, as I said, but you also get humongous portions. This guy would take advantage of that by being very friendly to everyone in that smarmy way people like him have perfected, so that he could mooch leftovers off other people’s plates.

I also overheard a lot of his conversations and here is where we get back to my original point. Every one of his conversations quickly turned to him bragging about how little he was spending. His (and every person’s like him) dirty little secret is that he does not save that money by getting better deals on bus tickets or getting a good price from the hard bargainers.

Instead, he saves his money by bullying the nice people, people like the ancient owner of the Tilicho Base Camp Hotel, people who give everyone a fair price and people who are too nice to take advantage of the fact that there are no other options up there for travelers. They could easily charge whatever they want, since the alternative to paying is a few freezing hours outside followed by a cold death.

If you do any traveling that involves hotels without doormen, you’ll encounter this annoying tourist. I’ve run into them far too often and they’re almost always engaged in a game of one-upmanship over how cheaply they’ve done something. Wanting no part of this, I planted myself in a far corner of the room and buried my face in a book.

The other guests were all quietly busy with their own things, too. It seemed everyone knew exactly how to handle guys like this. The room stayed silent for the next 30 minutes, apart from our annoying subject’s continuous complaints about the unscrupulous guesthouse owner. Then the Israeli left and less than a minute later, everyone gathered at one table and began talking. And no one talked about money.

That is how you deal with this particular annoying tourist. The next time you find yourself in a conversation that enters the “I’ve only been spending…” territory, don’t counter with your own figure, don’t act impressed, don’t do anything but chuckle to yourself and walk away. If everyone does that, these guys will change, because their other little secret is: they don’t work so hard to spend so little for lack of money—they do it simply to brag. And if no one listens to their bragging, their saving suddenly becomes pointless. More importantly: they leave.

To be continued… as this was a long trek, I’m not writing about it all at once. I’m just adding pieces to the series here and there as things pop into my head.

Views like this helped keep me in Goa

When I finally decided to leave and head north to Varanasi after a month on various beaches, I started talking to some of the travel agents around the Palolem beach area to see if I could get some train tickets. Indian Railways has a horribly inefficient ticketing system that was apparently designed to ensure that no can ever buy the exact ticket they want. Goa is the most popular destination in India, so I expected even more trouble than usual.

This was Anjuna beach, where I spent my first ten days in Goa

Naturally I tried finding tickets online first, because travel agents in India are generally a pretty sketchy group, but everything was sold out for weeks. Travel agents were my plan B. I figured they might help me come up with some kind of creative work-around involving a combination of different train routes.

They had other ideas. Before I could even finish my question, I was told to forget about trains. Apparently, the only way out of Goa is a bus company called Paolo Travels. I got the same response at every single travel agent.

Now if there’s one thing I learned in India, it’s this: when someone is trying to get you to do something—especially if they have removed all other possible options—you can be sure that you don’t want to it. In this case, they were obviously trying to get me to book with Paolo Travels. I decided I needed to get back online and do a bit of research.

The road heading to the beach in Palolem, where I spent the next 20 days

Sure enough, I found several articles that laid out the Paolo Travels scam. Most (maybe all) travel agents in Palolem are paid by Paolo Travels to direct tourists onto their buses and/or tours. They also quote prices much higher than usual. Reports by other travelers who left Goa on a Paolo bus made one thing clear: I wanted nothing to do with them.

Of course, when I asked the travel agents about other bus companies, they flat-out denied their existence. When I pointed out several non-Paolo buses driving by on the road just outside their office, I was informed that those buses don’t stop. Apparently, they drive through the entire province of Goa without making a single stop.

It was clear the travel agents would rather forgo a commission than book someone with a company other than Paolo. That makes me think the relationship with Paolo Travels was more than financial. Perhaps there was even some kind of threat involved.

I could see I wasn’t going to get any help from the travel agents, so I got back online and booked a train leaving Goa two weeks later. More accurately, I booked myself a place on a waiting list. I was pretty far down the list, but I had been on a waiting list for all my previous trains in India and had always ended up with a ticket (like I said, you can never just buy get an actual ticket, outside of the most popular routes). I held out hope that I would get out of Goa.

An Indian Railways sleeper car

The day before my train was set to depart, I got an email confirming my ticket—for the first train. I had booked a combination of two trains, with a change in Pune. My name had moved up the list for the second train, but I did not have an actual ticket.

Several people assured me there would certainly be a few cancellations overnight while I was on the first train and I would arrive in Pune the next morning to find my name on the list of ticket holders for the second. That didn’t happen.

I arrived in Pune to find my name in the exact same spot on the waiting list. I went to talk to someone at the station ticket office and was quickly sent on my way. Three guys were in the middle of a lively conversation and when I asked for help, they waved me back out the door without a pause in their conversation or even a glance in my direction. I have no idea why the ticket agents wouldn’t help, or even acknowledge, me. Usually in India, such dismissive behavior is reserved for women.>>>>>

I talked to a few workers around the station and they all said I should just get on the train. I would be able to buy a ticket for the regular price plus a small fine once on board. Several ticket-less Indian passengers told me they were going to do the same. That sounded like a plan.

An Indian train at Delhi Station (it’s the only station where I took photos)

On the train, I waited between two cars with the other ticket-less passengers for the conductor to come by. When he did, he quickly issued tickets to the Indians. Then he started yelling at me.

One of the other passengers told me he was furious that I had boarded the train without a ticket and was demanding I either pay him a fine of around 10 times the original ticket price or jump off the (moving) train immediately. When I asked the other passengers why he was suddenly so angry at me when he didn’t seem to mind them not having tickets, they told me he simply didn’t like foreigners.

Obviously, I refused to pay the ridiculous fine and I wasn’t about to jump off the train either. Instead, I offered him double the original ticket price. That was a bit more than the Indians had paid, but I figured it’s probably the best I could do.

In the end, another conductor came by and he ended up issuing me my ticket after sending the racist to a different car. Since I was paying a larger fine than anyone else, the new guy even took me to an empty sleeping berth and told me I could sit there (none of our tickets came with a berth or even a seat).

At first I thought I might actually get to to lie down during the journey, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case ,when the conductor brought over a family of 10 or so and directed them onto the same berth. A few minutes later, a couple more random guys squeezed into any remaining empty space, despite there not actually being any empty space. I ended up squished into one corner with my bag on my lap. It was not comfortable. Luckily, I only had 20-something hours to go.

I had not slept well on the previous overnight train (where I had a berth) and things were not looking up for the coming night. For now it was still morning and my (very close) neighbors talked to me for a bit, but they soon exhausted their limited English. Besides, they all wanted to catch up on some sleep.

They were out within minutes. I was not so lucky. I got almost no sleep at all, but I’m pretty sure I managed to doze off briefly at some point, because I was sitting there in my little corner of the berth with my bag on my lap one second, then I was sitting there with two kids on top of me the next.

The only good thing about this train journey was a stop in Allahabad. 90% of the passengers got off, leaving plenty of sleeping berths for me and the few other people remaining on the train without a seat. I could finally catch up on some much-needed sleep. Unfortunately, Allahabad is only a few hours from Varanasi, so I didn’t get nearly as much sleep as I needed and arrived completely exhausted at 7am, with a whole day ahead of me.

In the end, I got what I wanted: leave Goa to continue my journey around India. Yes, I left two weeks later than planned and I endured the worst train journey of my life, but I was now in Varanasi. And the first thing I did, after finding a room to dump my bag, was secure a train ticket out. It left five days later. I was on the waiting list.

I know you’re thinking we just sat around all day doing nothing, but no. We did more walking. People who spend a day in Manang for altitude adjustment do two things: they watch a movie in the only theaters along the Annapurna Circuit and they go on an ‘acclimatization hike.’ The theaters were out of the question. I refuse to lose two hours of my life watching Shia LaBeouf pretend to fight off a bunch of computer animations and the other movies showing in town were even less appealing.

The town of Manang seen from above. This is how far I ended up climbing on my supposed day off.

That left the acclimatization hikes. The most popular one takes you a few hundred meters up the side of the valley to a little temple where an ancient entrepreneur holy man sits and takes trekkers’ money blesses trekkers to ensure good luck on their upcoming journey over the pass. Trekkers report returning from the temple feeling spiritually refreshed and uplifted (hint: that’s probably altitude sickness!). I’m sure you’ve guessed this wasn’t the hike for us.

Instead, we decided to climb toward a glacier on the other side of the valley. Once up a ways, we would get great views of the glacier, of a turquoise lake filled with water from the glacier and of the whole Manang valley. This sounded much more appealing than some old guy on a hill. It also sounded much more exhausting, but we don’t mind a bit of exertion if there is a payoff at the end.

The glacier. Not worth the effort on its own, but combined with the other views (like the one of Manang above)…

The town of Manang does not sit at the bottom of the valley, but on a shelf at the top of a cliff 50 meters or so above the river. To get to the other side of the valley, we first had to scramble down to the river and the bridge across. Then we started our ascent to the rim overlooking the turquoise lake. From there we could snap a few photos of the lake, but the drop down to the water was far to steep to actually get near it.

That’s the rim of the lake. And, yes, the water really was that color.

More accurately, I snapped a few photos of the lake, but couldn’t get near it. The other two were still far below and moving slower than ever. The guy who had been feeling sick the whole trek was doing even worse and his body was not happy with his decision to leave his bed, let alone climb a steep hillside. It wasn’t long before they made the decision to turn around and head back to the hotel. I continued on my own.

By this point in the trek, I had adjusted to the altitude and the constant exercise. I was in the best shape of my life. I realize that’s not an especially high bar, but somehow, I had actually become fitter than most of the people around me. I climbed quickly and before I knew it, I had reached a little plateau. I even passed a number of groups along the way. I also encountered a few groups heading back down. How early had they set out?

I also encountered the first snow on the trek, but just in shaded areas.

As is always the case, there was another hill behind the one I had just climbed and, of course, another behind that one and then another and another. I climbed one more of those hills and found an abandoned village. It wasn’t permanently abandoned, just temporarily. We came across several of these higher-altitude villages on the trek. In the summer months, local farmers live there and farm the surrounding fields or let their yak graze. When winter comes, they move down into the valleys until the weather warms up again. We were trekking in November, so all of these villages were empty.

The village

I took a bunch of photos of the village and the valley below. I noticed a group of trekkers far above me, just below the snow line and the point where the mountain turned completely to rock. I could tell the views from up there were amazing, but the ones I was enjoying were good enough for me. I had climbed four to five hundred meters already. That was plenty for what was supposedly a day off. I headed back down to rejoin the other two at our hotel. They were playing cards, as usual, and had even found another person to join them.

Some more views from the village. That’s Tilicho Mountain in the background, my destination for the next day.

That other person was an Irish woman. A bout of altitude sickness had kept her in Manang far longer than anyone who doesn’t live or work there should ever stay. Rather than heading back down the mountain, she had decided to wait it out and hope it passes. She had been wanting to complete this trek for a long time and did not want to lose her one opportunity. Unfortunately, she had hired a guide (and a very annoying one, I would find out a few days later), so she was on a strict time schedule. Every day in Manang was one less day she had on the other side of the pass, should she ever make it across.

The view of the little lake from above and the valley that heads toward Thorong Lo Pass

I definitely felt bad for her. For about ten minutes. That was all the time it took to realize just how much she enjoyed whining; it was also enough time to begin doubting the whole story. Ok, that’s not entirely fair. She was definitely suffering from altitude sickness; she was also definitely playing it up for sympathy. Every time I heard the story again (and there were many times) she had added a few ailments and hardships.

As for the other invalid, the German, he was not feeling any better and doubted he would be ready for more trekking the next morning. I had no intention of spending another day in Manang and listening to more Irish-accented sob stories (although I was curious what other symptoms or diseases might develop overnight), so I made the decision to set out the next day, whether the Germans were going or not.

The view back down the valley where we came from the previous day.

I learned the next morning they were not, so we split up and I was on my own for the first time on the trek. Most people leave Manang and head further up the valley to begin the ascent to the 5400 meter high Thorong Lo pass, but I decided to make a side trip up a different valley to Tilicho Lake.

The world’s highest lake—according to the Nepalese, but no one else—lies at an altitude of 4900 meters, which means a lot of tough climbing and a detour of several days. It had better be as beautiful as everyone was saying. Even if it was hideous, at the very least it would get me used to altitudes over 4500 meters. I knew this would make the climb over the pass a few days later a tiny bit easier (spoiler alert: it still sucked—a lot.).

The valley that heads up toward Tilicho Lake

The path to Tilicho Lake Base Camp at 4100 meters, my stop for the night, was the most difficult section of the entire trek. At least the trail I chose was difficult. There were two options. The first was the high trail, billed as ‘much safer,’ but involving a climb of over 400 meters and a subsequent descent of those same 400 meters. It made this climb to avoid several landslide areas. The second option involved no such climb, but cut directly through the landslide zones and was thus billed as ‘more risky.’ 400 meters? I’ll risk a landslide.

Just in case the steep slopes of loose rocks aren’t enough to figure it out, these signs mark the landslide areas

And I wasn’t alone. Everyone I encountered at the base camp that evening had taken the lower path, except for one Hungarian guy. He arrived several hours after everyone else and was seriously regretting his decision. I’m sure seeing us ‘lower path people’ in one piece and not under a pile of rocks at the bottom of the valley contributed greatly to his regret.

The path through the landslide areas

And the view down toward the river.

It wasn’t the threat of a landslide that made the lower path difficult, though. It was the path itself. It was very narrow and made up of loose dirt and rocks. Several sections were extremely steep. I had always thought the trekking poles (cheap ski poles rebranded and sold for a higher price) many people were using to help them walk were kind of pointless, but I have to admit, for this one section, I was wishing I had some. Without them, I had to crawl up and down a few of the steepest inclines on all fours to keep from sliding down the mountain.

One of those steep sections

And another one. The path basically heads straight up after the bridge.

It was a beautiful section, though and the weather was perfect once again. Thanks to my decision to take the lower path, there weren’t too many changes in altitude either, so I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I also moved much faster than any day previously. The relatively level path helped, but leaving the German anchors behind helped more (I wrote that for their benefit—I actually loved that they were happy to move even slower than me). Not only was I able to keep up with everyone else, I actually passed them and ended up at Tilicho basecamp in the early afternoon.

Series continued in part 13: Annoying Trekker Abuses Friendly Guesthouse Owner

An alleyway off Wangfujing street in Beijing

Wangfujing is the capital’s most famous shopping district. High-end brands line the main street and street stalls selling the standard trinkets line the alleys. Among the trinkets sits an area of food stalls. Many of them sell popular Chinese street food. Other stalls sell food more popular with camera-toting tourists.

Some of the more unusual snacks on offer in Wangfujing

We were just such tourists and took numerous photos of skewered, but still living, scorpions, crickets, spiders, starfish and countless unidentifiable creatures. It wasn’t long before a group of Chinese tourists challenged us to try some of these treats. We were planning on doing so anyway, but thought it would be nice to have some company, so we asked them to join us. They just laughed and told us they don’t eat that crap—it’s just for foreign tourists.

Lizards and worms…more crap no local seemed to want

We didn’t try any starfish, but someone later told me they actually tasted the worst

Sure enough, when we took a closer look at the hundreds of Chinese people around us, we saw many of them eating, but they were all enjoying dumplings or pancakes or other standard street foods. The only people eating insects were another group of foreigners—and they were surrounded by Chinese tourists egging them on and snapping photos. I’m sure the Chinese returned from their vacations with hilarious tales of idiot foreigners who will eat anything if you tell them it’s a local delicacy.

Not sure what those are…but isn’t your mouth watering?

Some kind of bird. Probably whatever was unlucky enough to land on this street that morning.

That said, I didn’t really care whether Chinese people actually eat that stuff or not. I was simply too curious to pass up the opportunity to have some scorpions. My friends and I each purchased a skewer of live scorpions and one of crickets. We watched the ‘chef’ sprinkle them with seasoning and briefly dunk them in hot oil. He assured us the heat should neutralize the poison.

“Should?” I didn’t like the sound of that, but I told myself it was probably just his poor English—he had simply used the wrong word. “The heat absolutely, definitely, 100%, without a doubt neutralizes the poison.”

The scorpion skewers. They were still moving.

The unusual meal had been my idea, so I went first. I started with the scorpions, since I figured they would be the least pleasant. I pulled the first one off the skewer with my teeth and put the whole thing in my mouth. It was crispy, just like fried chicken skins or any other deep-fried animal skin. They scorpion was so thin, that the whole thing had been fried to a crisp, with no softer flesh inside. The seasoning was nice, so it actually tasted pretty good. I ended up finishing the skewer.

Enjoying some scorpions

Everyone else followed my lead and polished off their scorpions without incident. The crickets were next. We though they would be easier than the scorpions, but boy were we wrong. They were fatter, so the insides were still mushy, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. It was the wings.

We didn’t know that at first. One of my friends put a cicket in his mouth and started chewing. Seconds later, he was hopping around and squealing and clearly not enjoying his snack. My description does not come close to accurately describing his little freak-out dance. We should have had a video of it, but the guy in charge of filming should not have been in charge of filming. He screwed something up and now no one but us will ever know just how funny this scene was. Eventually he calmed down and managed to tell us that the wings had gotten stuck in his throat and the feeling freaked him out. His inability to dislodge the wings freaked him out more.

Cricket skewers. Watch out for the wings.

Armed with this information, the rest of us chewed the crap out of our crickets before swallowing them. Despite that, we couldn’t get the wings chewed up enough to go down easily and they hung in our throats for longer than we would have liked. We were ready for it though, so we skipped the dancing and squealing. Afterward, we were informed by some helpful Chinese onlookers that people usually just pull the wings off and toss them. Thanks for the timely advice. I hope you got some great photos.

Not enjoying the crickets nearly as much as the scorpions

After the crickets, we were suddenly feeling pretty stuffed, so we passed on any further insect skewers. Luckily we all seem to have lightning-fast metabolisms, though. When we passed stalls selling dumpling and other more standard—and, let’s face it, much more appetizing—snacks 20 meters down the alley, we were suddenly starving again. Instead of turning around and going back for more insects, we just stayed put and had some dumplings. Due to the convenience, of course. I mean, the dumplings were right next to us.

If you’re ever in Beijing, you’ll definitely want to check out the Wangfujing area. If you enjoy shopping, I’m told you can’t miss it and if you enjoy eating, I’m telling you, you can’t miss it. Even if you don’t want to try any insects or other creatures yourself, you can join the Chinese tourists in watching other foreigners make spectacles of themselves, while enjoying your dumplings, bowl of noodles, pancake, ice cream or corn dog. Or maybe your scorpions?

This page has practical information on Wangfujing and the rest of Beijing.

I’ve previously written about the plumber who left his infected toenail on my bathroom floor in Shanghai. A few years later in Shenzhen, I had another water leak and that ordeal made me long for the days of a simple toenail and some dirt.

The floor of my bathroom in Shenzhen after the repairman left for the day.

In Shenzhen, the hot water faucet for my shower sprung a small leak. Hoping to avoid the hassle of a handyman, I tried wrapping it up in half a roll of duct tape. That didn’t work.

Next, I talked to the security guards in my building. I couldn’t really explain the problem in Chinese, so I shot a video of the leak and played it for them. Of course they started poking at every inch of the screen and opening every app on my ipod touch. I have no idea why my ancient 3G ipod fascinated them when they all have modern smart phones, but it did. Once the excitement died down, they assured me they would send someone to fix my leak.

Instead of an actual repairman, they sent one of their own. And not their finest—it was the security guard who had always struck me as the dimmest of the bunch. Nevertheless, he took one look at the leak and confidently assured me he could fix it in about 30 minutes. I believed him, since I knew I could easily fix it, if I had the tools (really just a wrench) and valued my time less than the few dollars he was charging.

An hour after he started, he told me he was finished. I checked out his handiwork and it seemed fine. He had installed a new faucet and while it was crooked, that was to be expected and not really a problem.

Also expected were the cigarette butts on my floor, since I had smelled the smoke as he was working. Less expected and a wonderful bonus were the chunks of phlegm oozing down my wall. I had heard him hacking those up and spitting them out, but I had assumed he was spitting into the toilet. But no, he had spit them onto the wall. And naturally, he had never once thought to ask if I minded him smoking or spitting or to clean up his cigarette butts and bodily fluids. I gave him his money and was happy to see him leave.

A close-up of the mess he left behind

Two hours later, I noticed puddles of dirty water in my kitchen and my living room. It had been seeping through the walls they shared with the bathroom. It turned out the guy had broken the pipe inside the wall as he was unscrewing the old faucet. While I can’t really blame him for that, since the pipe was old and rusty, I can blame him for trying to hide this by pushing the broken section of the pipe deeper into the wall and sealing it shut. As a result, the concrete wall was now saturated with water causing the plaster and paint to peel off.

I’m sure this will come as a surprise, but he was suddenly very hard to find. I eventually tracked him down and of course, he claimed there was nothing he could do (at least that was true), so he called an actual repairman. When this new guy showed up he was shocked at how badly this little job had been botched and explained he would have to drill a large hole into the solid concrete wall to replace the pipe. I called my landlord and had her talk to him. After a ten-minute conversation, he handed the phone to me and left. I never saw him again.

I contacted my landlord the next morning, after a refreshing shower in a jet of cold water blasting from the hole in my wall. She agreed to come by that evening and check out the problem. When she showed up, she had the same security guard in tow who had created the mess in the first place. She began negotiating a price with him. He was now charging $50 to repair the mess he had created for a mere $4 the previous day. I warned her not to hire him, but she assured me that he assured her he would have it fixed that evening.

After three hours of chipping away at the concrete wall with a hammer and a screwdriver, he informed my landlord he would have to come back the next day at noon to finish the job, since it was much more complicated than she had led him to believe. He seemed to have forgotten that she was relying on him to asses how complicated a job this was—not to mention the fact that he had created the whole problem in the first place. After he left, she admitted I may have been right about him.

The result of three hours’ work. This was also my shower for two days.

He did not show up at noon the next day and when my landlord called him, he gave her a flimsy excuse and said he’d be there in a few minutes. An hour later he gave her an even worse excuse and an hour after that another. Soon he stopped answering the phone altogether. At 8pm, my landlord showed up with another repairman.

He seemed to know what he was doing. Naturally, that also meant a much higher quote than before. After hearing the new estimate, my landlord promptly decided this new guy didn’t know what he was talking about. She had to work the next day, so she told me she would send her brother in the morning.

He showed up as promised with yet another repairman in tow. This one seemed to be a friend of the brother’s but he appeared competent and quickly got to work destroying my wall. He used a cement drill that sent vibrations through my whole apartment and ten neighboring apartments in every direction. This is actually a common occurrence in China—wherever you live, at least one nearby apartment is always being drilled at all hours of the day or night. This was the first time my apartment was the source of the noise. It was not pleasant, being that close to the drill.

Nevertheless, the new guy seemed to be working hard and actually making progress. He replaced the pipe and restored my water by the early afternoon. He also refilled the hole in the wall with concrete, but had to let it dry before he could finish it with plaster. He did re-plaster the other side of the wall, but that had to dry, too, before he could repaint it.

The result of his first day’s work.

This meant I would get to play host to a repair guy for one more day. At least this one didn’t smoke. Even more surprising, he and my landlord’s brother actually cleaned up the huge mess from all the drilling. I was shocked.

I thought it was simply the standard operating procedure for repairmen in China to leave behind their messes, but apparently those other guys were just assholes. Actually, my landlord’s brother informed me that the cheap pseudo-repairmen like the security guard will always leave a mess and treat your apartment like they would any disgusting public toilet, but a good professional will be just that: professional.

The final result—beautiful isn’t it? The faucet works, though and that’s the best you can hope for in China.

Notice how crooked it is. Even the best repairmen are only capable of a decent job. Something is always a bit off.

Whatever the standard practice may be, I was impressed with the final repairman, especially since he wasn’t actually a professional himself, but just some friend of the landlord’s brother. Even more, I was impressed with my landlord. She paid for all the repairs herself and never once suggested I was responsible. That is definitely not the norm here. Many, if not most, Chinese landlords would have flat out refused to do anything. Despite that, I really hoped nothing else would go wrong in my apartment. In fact, unless the next problem was one I could quickly and easily fix with duct tape, I was fully prepared to just move out and find a new place. It knew it would be less of a hassle.

We hiked down a dusty slope among red, yellow and green bushes and large needle trees (I was going to write fir trees, but I have no idea if that’s actually what they were; look at the pictures below—maybe you can help me). Despite the dust, this ended up being my second favorite day of the trek, right after the previous one. The weather was perfect again and the scenery had us stopping to take photos every 20 steps. This mountain in particular—Annapurna III, I believe—features in well over a hundred of my photos:

Annapurna III towering over the rooftops of Ngawal.

We took our time and enjoyed the relatively easy walk. Once we were back down in the valley, the enjoyment diminished a bit. Walking along the main road was not as pleasant as the smaller trails we had enjoyed for the past two days. While there was no motorized traffic (apparently this has since changed), there were a lot of people, horses and donkeys. Then there was the wind.

The dusty descent. Don’t let his outfit fool you—it was nowhere near that cold. Germans are always freezing.

The Manang valley is famous for its afternoon winds and they were blowing quite nicely on this day, kicking up dust all around us. That said, they were coming from behind and I wasn’t complaining about the boost as they helped us along.

Annapurna III again…

We passed a smaller town or two and briefly considered getting a room for the night. A lot of the trekking groups were doing so in order to avoid a night in Manang—at least that was the official reason. In reality, the trekking company guides were getting kickbacks from the hotels in those towns to take their groups there. Manang is not the nicest place along the trek, but seeing these other towns, dusty and windy as they were, I’m glad we decided to continue on.

…once more, this time behind a monastery…

And I say that knowing what I know now: Manang was easily our worst overnight stop on the Annapurna Circuit. Despite that, it is the place where most people spend an extra day to adjust to the altitude, since it is the last town before the Throng Lo Pass. Most trekkers spend the day off stocking up on supplies, watching movies (Manang has two movie theaters showing a selection of films I either never want to see or never want to see again—if I remember correctly, this included Avatar, 2012 and one of the 20 or so Transformer movies), using the incredibly expensive internet cafes (at the time, this was only the second town with internet) or embarking on one of several possible side treks to further help with altitude adjustment.

…now behind some trees

We didn’t really need that extra day since we had already spent two days in Upper Pisang, which is located at almost the same altitude and we had taken the upper trail from there and spent a night in Ngawal, several hundred meters above Manang. Nevertheless, we were not going to pass up an opportunity to take a break. On top of that, the guy who had been sick most of the trek was feeling worse than ever and was hoping a day of rest would help him recover.

…and across the Manang valley…

Our first order of business upon arriving was finding a place to stay. Unfortunately, the friendly and cozy tea houses that are a staple around the trek do not exist in Manang. They are replaced by stale hotels run by very impersonal and not at all cozy management. The quality of the rooms is generally higher than other towns around the trek, but the same can not be said for the mattresses. While a bit of searching elsewhere usually revealed at least one guesthouse with softer mattresses than the others, we had no such luck in Manang.

…and finally, at the end of our descent.

The price for any room is three times higher than anywhere else. The same goes for the food in the attached restaurants. The menus have far more options than those in other towns, many of them featuring various yak steaks with French-sounding gravies and price tags to match. One of the best meals I’d had in a long time was a yak steak burger in Shangri-la, China a few months earlier and it was still very fresh in my mind, so I splurged on a yak steak with a red wine and mushroom sauce. It did not match up to the burger, despite costing twice as much. It was completely average, about the same quality you would get in most chain restaurants in the US. And that’s really how all of Manang felt—like an average chain restaurant, designed only to separate you from your money, with no real personality or flair.

Looking back at the trail behind us

After finding a hotel, we took advantage of a free presentation about altitude sickness put on by international doctors working for an aid organization that was trying to bring basic medical care to the Tibetan villages in the area. With all the talk of altitude sickness among trekkers, much of it exaggeration and hearsay, it was nice to get some actual information from a trustworthy source.

We learned all about the causes (you might be able to guess this one) and symptoms of altitude sickness, along with ways to prevent it or to minimize the effects. As I’ve mentioned before, none of us ever had any problems with the altitude, since we took our time gaining it (not necessarily by choice), but it was an interesting presentation nonetheless. It turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about altitude sickness and now I know it.

The Marsyangdi River shortly before Manang

After the presentation, we went shopping. I had filled up most of my camera’s memory cards with the amazing scenery from the previous two days and I decided to buy another one. I expected to pay more out here, so far from modern civilization, but the price was only a few dollars higher. And the card still works today, almost three years later.

I also decided to buy a pair of sweatpants, since I was not at all prepared for the freezing temperatures of the Himalayan peaks, mainly because I knew I could buy more layers if I needed them and I preferred that to carrying any unnecessary weight. Unfortunately, the largest size I could find would have comfortably fit a starving 10-year-old girl. I set out to buy sweatpants and ended up with a pair of tights. They were not comfortable, but at least they were warm. I only wore them at night and I tossed them as soon as I got over the pass and the temperature increased.

Series continued in part 11: Trekking On Our Day Off From Trekking in Manang

Lychees on a tree at a farm in Shenzhen

When I worked in Shenzhen, my company scheduled monthly sightseeing trips for us. We’d meet up early in the morning on a Saturday and embark on a standard Chinese tour to two or three sites with a stop at noon for lunch. Most of my coworkers found them boring and stayed home in bed, but I signed up for the majority, mainly because of the lunch—a lunch I didn’t have to cook.

The flesh of a lychee. They’re a bit messy to peel.

The toughest test to my patience always came right at the beginning, when a tour guide would shriek information at us through a microphone at volumes that our family dog would find painful. That dog has been dead for over 10 years and is buried in the US. For me, sitting directly below the speakers and being alive, the screeching was unbearable. I learned to quickly put in a pair of earplugs as soon as I saw a Chinese girl with a name tag stand up at the front of the bus. With earplugs, the noise level is brought down to the upper ranges of a normal person’s speaking volume and you are able to follow along relatively pain free.

They have pits. The pits don’t taste good.

On this particular trip, our first stop was a lychee farm. When lychees are in season, thousands of city dwellers flock to the farms to pick the fruit directly from the trees. Apparently they taste much better when you not only save a farmer the trouble of hiring illegal immigrants, but also pay him for allowing you to take care of his manual labor. Paying a fraction of the cost to have the fruit vendor across the street toss a couple of lychees in a bag just doesn’t compare.

After an hour on the bus, we arrived at a large lychee farm and were escorted through the gates and set free amongst the trees. We visited right at the beginning of the season, so it was difficult to find completely ripe lychees. Most were hanging at the tops of the trees which meant that we not only had to pick the fruit in the hot sun, but also had to climb the trees to get at any fruit worth eating.

These are lychee trees. They’re full of lychees, but most of them aren’t quite ripe yet.

I ate about ten. They tasted great, but so do the lychees from the fruit vendor. It took me about ten minutes to pick and eat my ten lychees. Then I was ready to leave. Pretty soon, everyone else was ready to go, too. After a certain number of lychees, you simply don’t want any more and apparently, eating too many isn’t good for you anyway. That’s when I learned we had another two hours at the farm.

Obviously, I screwed up. Instead of quickly picking and eating my lychees, I should have paced myself. I should have eaten one every 30 minutes or so. I didn’t do that because it was hot, humid and dusty on the farm and I wanted to get back on the air-conditioned bus. And I wasn’t alone in my thinking, judging by the groans all around when our lychee time was announced.

Chinese visitors looking for that perfect lychee tree to pick

We spent the next two hours standing in the shade under a lychee tree. Time crawled. Sitting down would have helped, but most of the trees showed signs of recently having been used as a toilet and the chances were high that the trees without visible signs—i.e. toilet paper and feces—had also been soiled, just not as recently. Sitting down was too risky, so we stayed on our feet. We were also getting hungry. Lychees don’t really fill you up.

Luckily, our next stop was a famous food court at a lake resort. It was exactly what I expected: an artificial lake surrounded by newly built buildings constructed to look ancient. It was a typical Chinese destination. For some reason, they love these artificial re-creations. In fact, they seem to prefer them to the actual things. They would rather have a beautiful waterfall removed and artificially rebuilt than spend time at the natural one. Perhaps the natural one sat at slightly the wrong angle to get that perfect peace-sign photo or the spray of the water drifted a little too close to the onlookers. Whatever nature’s deficiency, it needs to be fixed.

The lake where we had lunch.

This place was a hundred percent artificial and completely uninteresting. Since we had come mainly to eat, I didn’t much care, though. We were promised a seafood meal and that’s what we got. Only seafood. It was nothing but fish with the occasional spring onion as garnish. No other meat and very few vegetables.

Visitors can rent these cabins on the lake

In fact, we learned that every single dish came from the same fish. It was some kind of gigantic carp and the chefs used every last part of the animal to feed us. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of this fish. Even the regular flesh had a strange rubbery texture, not to mention the various other parts that should have ended up in a dog dish, not on our plates. On top of that, large fish like this one are loaded with mercury and whatever other pollutants they’ve been swimming in their whole lives. Not that there are any pollutants in Chinese waters, of course.

The path that runs around the lake

After lunch we got twice as much time as necessary to enjoy the artificial surroundings. We did find an amusement park on one side of the lake. We didn’t have time to go in, but it didn’t matter. Looking at the park, it was clear the most amusing part was this sign:

I knew diving was popular in China and they love pork, but combining the two seems a bit ridiculous

We had one stop left before heading home. This time, they took us to an actual ancient village. The buildings were original, but had been renovated and in some case reconstructed and filled with art galleries. Most of them were closed, but this village and the surrounding farmland and hiking trails was the most interesting part of the day. Naturally, we left quickly.

The ancient village where we stopped after lunch

Many of the buildings have been turned into art galleries. Most were closed when we visited.

This building looks like someone’s home

This trip was my least favorite of those my company in Shenzhen sponsored. We spent way too much time standing around in the heat and humidity in a public toilet masquerading as a lychee tree and should have shifted one hour of that time to the final stop and used another hour to go home earlier. The lunch menu could have benefited from a little variety, too. That said, I didn’t cook it and that makes any meal at least somewhat enjoyable. I also got to spend all day playing with my camera. Overall, I’m happy I went on the trip, despite everything. Since I always keep my expectations low, these tours usually end up exceeding them. This one simply met them.

You can find practical travel information for Shenzhen here.

We saw a large variety of yaks in all shapes, colors and sizes over the next few days of trekking, but none made the same impression as this guardian at the gates to Ngawal. Its fur was shinier, cleaner and more luxurious than the rest. It was also the only one that bothered to make itself pretty for us tourists, with those gorgeous red earrings.

Dolled up for our arrival

Shortly after snapping that photo, we came to the first guesthouse. We were still a few hundred meters outside of town and while we generally heeded the standard advice to not stop at the first guesthouse you see, we ignored it this time. Being outside the town meant unobstructed views of the valley below and the Annapurna mountain range on the other side.

View across the valley

We made the right decision and not just because of the amazing views. The family that ran this particular guesthouse turned out to be incredibly friendly and we were the only guests. That was good for us, but we felt bad for them. Unnecessarily, it turned out. They told us that few trekkers spend the night in Ngawal, but most use it as a lunch stop, so they get a lot of daytime business. They just don’t get many overnight guests. That explained the huge dining room, larger than all the guest rooms combined. We did see a few other trekkers spend the night, but they all stayed at one of the guesthouses in the actual town.

The somewhat camouflaged town of Ngawal seen from our guesthouse

After getting our rooms, we decided to head into town ourselves to see if we missed out by choosing the first guesthouse and also to get some water. The first was easily accomplished. None of the places in town had the same views as ours. The second was much more difficult. We passed a water station on the way to town where a few children were doing laundry, but the water was coming from pipes directly below a field where yaks grazed. I prefer a water source that wasn’t so obviously pouring out yak sewage.

Children doing laundry in yak sewage

We figured we would be able to find one in town, but all the water we saw was soapy. Apparently, the whole town did their laundry in the late afternoons, contaminating the water supply. The soapy chemicals that poured out of every pipe were clearly unfit for drinking. No amount of purifying tablets or solutions could change that. Our only option was to hike to the highest water source in town and get above all the laundry women.

One of the many women doing laundry in town

The walk through town was pleasant. It turned out to be the nicest town we stayed in on this side of the pass. Brick buildings crowded the gravel paths and stone waterways carried (soapy) water throughout the town. At several points, multiple paths converged into larger squares built around ancient trees.

One of the old trees in Ngawal

A large monastery stood at the top of Ngawal and behind it a steep hill rose up with a stupa on the peak, overlooking it all. We briefly considered hiking up, but it was starting to get dark and we’d done more than enough climbing that day, so we quickly abandoned the idea.

The monastery above town

In the end, we never found a great water source, but we did manage to find one that was above all the laundry women. It was still below some of the yaks, but at least it seemed free of chemicals. The purification tablets would take care of everything else. I just had to keep from thinking too much about what the yaks may have done to my water. I didn’t get sick, so I suppose it was fine.

By the time we found my water, it was starting to get dark. We headed back to our guesthouse and had dinner in the large dining room. After eating, we played cards for a while and quickly realized the main problem with our guesthouse’s more scenic location. All the places in town were surrounded by other buildings that both shared heat and offered protection from the elements. Ours was isolated and out in the open, completely exposed to the wind and the cold. In short: it was freezing. Needless to say, we went to bed as early as possible. We did not sleep well.

The owner of our guesthouse in his kitchen

Throughout the night, we learned one of the major side effects of spending the day and night at 3700 meters above sea level: frequent urination. This is part of the body’s acclimatization to the lower oxygen levels and helps maintain the acid/base balance, but we did not learn that until we attended a presentation the next day.

For now, we just noticed that we were drinking significantly more water and that we had to leave the warm comfort of our sleeping bags for the deep-freezer-like outhouse every hour or two. On top of that, the low oxygen levels also have an effect on the sleep center of the brain, meaning you awaken more often during the night, apart from the times you have to run to a freezing bathroom. You also sleep much lighter and for a shorter period of time overall.

Some worn-down prayer wheels in Ngawal

I got up early the next morning to photograph the sunrise. Getting up wasn’t difficult, since I was on my way to the bathroom anyway. It was cloudy and I didn’t get any great photos, but I enjoyed trying, in large part because it gave me a reason to use my tripod. That thing is heavy and I had been lugging it around on my back for the past two weeks without using it once. I did not want to feel like I had been carrying that weight for nothing. That said, I carried the damn thing for nothing. I didn’t get any memorable shots that morning and only used my tripod one other time. That time came a few hours later, when we stopped to take some group photos. Those turned out well, but I could have just as easily set my camera on a rock or stump.

And a few improvised prayer wheels

Taking photos also allowed me to put off taking a shower. With no running water, let alone hot water, you can imagine why I might not be excited about the prospect. I suppose I could have just skipped the shower like pretty much everyone else, but showering helps wake me up. The owner of our guesthouse did offer to heat up some water for me, but he would have charged me quite a bit for that and rightfully so.

Heating water uses a lot of energy in general and much more so at high altitude. In this area, the only source of energy is fire and the only fuel is wood. As a result, the forests that used to cover valley have largely disappeared and I did not want to contribute to the problem more than I already was by eating warm meals. So I took my bucket of ice water (there were actually small pieces of ice still floating inside) and had a quick shower. A very quick shower. And it definitely woke me up.

Series continued in part 10: Arriving In Manang…Two Weeks Later Than Most