shaba daba da, shaba daba da

he's got a baguette tucked under one arm and a smile in his mind (but not on his face) after reaching the bottom of a cup of coffee so good he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. like everyone else in town, he's well dressed as he boards his little motor-scooter and slips away through narrow streets of gorgeous french-facaded buildings. no, readers, he's not the personification of a city in the museum that calls itself western europe - he is hanoi: home of patisserie, cafe culture, high fashion and motorcycle mayhem.


some of you may know how much i love streets and lanes. others have been witness to my love affair with the motorbike. put them together and what do you get? gerard and ondrej, clinging to man and machine as three become one and speed, swerve, slip and slide through vietnam's amazing capital.


traffic is hectic - i'm talking intersections where 50 motorbikes from each direction plough towards each other at the same time whilst children play and grannies hobble straight through the middle, unblinking and unscathed (usually). and to think that we too were in the middle of that fracas going for it! we (almost) didn't even have an accident. ok - gerard didn't have an accident, and i had only a little one: as i was mounting the kerb to park the motorbike on our last day, the bike jerked forward towards a parked pushbike and a garage fence, jerking my hand to cause further acceleration, in a vicious cycle that had spectators wondering what the foreigner was doing trying to ride up the side of a building. the moto and i got away relatively unscathed, but the garage door was injured and the pushbike was simply murdered.


we headed to tam coc for a day which was just like yangshuo in southern china, except that people were speaking vietnamese and bad french instead of chinese and bad english.



from hanoi we headed up to sapa in the mountains of northern vietnam near the chinese border to do a two day trek just like everyone else who's ever visited vietnam. despite this fact, it really wasn't very touristy, the mountains and rice paddies were simply gorgeous, and the pleasure of swimming in a deep and fast-flowing mountain river with fat warm raindrops hitting one's face can never be understated.



we stayed in a little tourist-hosting farmer's hut and ate dinner with the family. rice wine shots were had by the dozen, yummy food was gorged, more rice wine shots were had, speeches were made by the head of the family about god knows what, and finally more rice wine shots were drunk. with the family head eyeing another bottle, gerard and i slipped away before things got out of hand and passed out in the loft.



it rained for much of our hike, and the paths were just rock and mud. remember slip and slide? throw one of those over a few boulders at at least 30 degrees, turn it on, walk up it for a few hours with a backpack and you too can relive the magic of sapa.



community chest: go forward to cat ba island. if you pass go you may collect 200 dong (which is shit all).


after a day of motorbiking around cat ba island off the north coast of vietnam, we took a fisherman's boat (replete with cook and driver) and sailed for two days through world-famous halong bay.


the first day we did a bit of snorkeling, but the water was so dirty that we couldn't see anything. i stumbled upon a shallow area of coral, but was so scared of getting coral-induced lacerations (and subsequent infection) that i quickly swam away, only to find myself in super-shallow water surrounded by sharp coral danger. the panicked thrashing that ensued ensured cuts to every limb.


we later saw a jellyfish the size of a small submarine and it put us out of mind of swimming again for a while.


the scenery is stunning, there's no doubt about it. even the occasional coke can, plastic bag or load of human waste that floats by can't really dent the beauty, which is protected by its unesco status.


anchored near a small island in the evening, we pulled two mats on the roof of the boat and just lay back down under the stars. the wooden boat creaked and rocked from side to side and we just gently drifted away. tres ahhhhh.



we returned to hanoi a day early because we were just so fucking in love with the place. we saw a few things there, like the wax replica of uncle ho (only lenin to go now) and the famous water puppets, which were the shittest thing i've ever seen in my life (a shared opinion, apparently, as half the audience were on their feet and out the door before they'd even finished the final scene).


mainly, however, we were back in hanoi to just enjoy the city itself. sitting on little plastic chairs in sidewalk cafes, eating pastries, hooning around on the moto, and falling in love with hanoi, with life, and everything. shaba daba da, shaba daba da. peace.

cliquez ici pour la version française

sometime a fire

we’re sitting around a table in a hotpot restaurant in downtown chengdu, cooking ingredients in molten lard. i didn’t believe it was lard until a puddle of it solidified on the table. it’s an eclectic group – they’ve all just come back from tibet – and sibastian has been exaggerating about my chinese abilities again, which makes me feel shy, but it’s so good to see him.

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there’s this girl – maybe 14 or 15 years old - and her limbs fold like rubbery old celery as her mother ties the sickly body to her back with a blanket before picking up her begging bowl. i’m on the other side of the road in the tibetan part of town stuffing strawberries into my mouth. they're so tasty, these strawberries, but there's a new emptiness now.

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david and flori – the austrians from hainan – have explained the way group dynamics rule all of our social interactions, and i champion the omega role – the bottom of the heap. we’re looking out over the forests of qian shan from a taoist temple, hypnotised by the rhythmic beating of the wooden drum, and i suspect that something’s changing in the way i view the world. it always feels like that.

we’re doing 140km/h down the freeway towards the chengdu airport, and i’m surprised that my taxi actually gets overtaken. i’ve got the window open and the air feels like it’s flattening my face, as if i’m approaching the speed of light or something. cindi lauper’s ‘time after time’ is playing in my head so loud it might be an aural hallucination, and i feel filled with a deep-down goodness. the voice in me says something like ‘you’ve come a long way, baby’.

you can find love anywhere i realise. in the trajectory of a super-sized burger king drink on its way down from the second floor of the victoria peak observatory building, in a chinese medical clinic even after the doctor’s walked in and seen your dick by accident, in that market area in wan chai where the next bird flu pandemic will be born, and even in the hong kong ferry terminal, where i always seem to be leaving gerard with a racing, confused heart. i look over my laptop screen and see the way the end bits of my plain socks form a really nice pattern when i put my feet together, and that suggests a deeper truth about the life of boys.

the weekend before i leave again, vov and i head out of brisbane to the chilly beauty of bald rock and girraween. it’s a good end to a period of time in which nothing happened, but everything that needed to did. i’ve secured a job in darwin for the rest of the year, my legal problems haven’t budged, and i’ve arrived back at point A with with regards to my health, armed with realistic expectations. i ride my sister’s bike along the river looking up at a sky that is bluer than anything i’ve seen all year, and i’m really pushing myself. i say ‘if you can make it up that hill, you can do anything with your life’. i always make it up that hill.

so life’s tumbling along in its usual manner of unthinkable adventure and surprise that could be interpreted as heaven or hell depending on your mood. in 72 hours i’ll be in vietnam with my arms wrapped around a frenchman wondering how that door into the normal world of my past clicked shut and locked itself without my even noticing it. there’s a tinge of sadness in my great relief, which i’m thankful for. there’s still light out, so i’m going for a bike ride.

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the great wall of chinese

mum and i spent the third and final week of our tour in my hometown of beijing. despite having spent a total of more than three months there (on and off) over the last couple of years, i have never actually approached it as just a tourist, and the experience was wonderful. a city so rich with culture and character and contrasts - flying into the future at breakneck speed, makes for a perfect ending to a trip to china with your mum :)

the great wall of china - jinshanling to simatai

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though walls had been built by various chinese groups since 500BCE (to keep nasty northern barbarian people out), the original "great wall of 10,000 li" was built by the great emperor qin (of terracotta warriors and horses fame) some time around the turn of the first century. this wall later fell into disrepair and has all but disappeared. the current wall (that you can walk around on and look at with millions of your chinese friends) was built by the ming (~1500CE) as an alternative to continuous warfare with the mongols. the ming wall was much grander, used bricks instead of just stones and rammed earth, and is characterised by regular watchtowers, separated by twice the distance an arrow could be fired. contrary to popular belief, the wall cannot be seen from the moon, and cannot even be seen from an orbit of 500km.

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mum and i first headed out to jinshanling, a section of the wall that hasn't been reconstructed, and from there hiked our way along the megastructure to a part of the wall called simatai. check out the pics - it was bliss.

badaling

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still hungry for wall, we decided to join the throngs of domestic tourists out to the most famous section - badaling. this section has been completely restored, and though it's often bagged by others as being too touristy, i feel there's a reason everyone goes there - because it's so beautiful. it was may week, a golden holiday in china, and we caught one of the buses leaving every 20 seconds from a northern bus stop to the wall. i have now visited many parts of the great wall in many different provinces, but it was this final experience that made me realise that the greatest wall in china is not made of brick and stone, it is made of arms and legs, bodies and faces, and the personalities, sounds and smells that come with them. to look at the great wall rolling over to the horizon and not be able to see a single inch of its stone carriageway - just metre after metre of human body pressed together barely able to move - that is really something. i was in awe of this great wall of humanity, and it has been without a doubt my favourite great wall experience. to mum's discomfort and my excitement, we realised that if there was any sort of panic or push, an immediate leap over the edge to the rocks 6 metres below would have been our only chance at survival.

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. beijing

the rest of the week we visited various sites, lounged about in peaceful parks and rooftop restaurants, and generally enjoyed.

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it's not every day you get to tour an amazing country with an even more amazing person, and even less common for that amazing person to be your own mother. i love you mum!

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in what seems like a goethian repetition, i've just left beijing again. though i'll be back in australia soon, the adventure certainly hasn't finished - in fact (eyes twinkling, tentative grin)...

i wish you all delicious virtue.

terra-australis warriors (and horses)

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ahhh xi'an...ancient capital of 12 chinese dynasties, birthplace of chinese civilisation, start and end of the ancient silk road, tourist magnet. mum and i braved an 18 hour seated train journey from suzhou in order to partake of its splendour.
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banpo village

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about seven thousand years ago, our ancestors built a village near xi'an called banpo. featuring semi-subterranean houses, central meeting places, graveyards, pottery kilns and a deep defensive moat around a settlement capable of holding over 200 people, banpo is one of the oldest and best-preserved neolithic villages in the china. (for reference, it's 2000 years older than scara brae in the orkneys). it's exciting to think about our ancestors potting around in these places - what were they thinking? what language were they speaking? our guide said that banpo was a matriarchal society in which everyone worked together for a common ideal and enjoyed complete equality, but i couldn't respond appropriately because i'd forgotten my little red book at home.
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what fascinated me most was the burial process - in general, people were lain on their backs with painted pottery placed on their legs, heads turned to face west. several bodies, however, were placed face down - noses squashed into the dirt - without a chip of pottery in sight. the guide didn't know why that was, but to any australian, what this 7000 year old clan thought of the recently deceased was obvious:
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you were a prick mate, get fucked.
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terracotta warriors and horses

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they say the terracotta warriors and horses are the biggest disappointment in china, and we were not disappointed in being disappointed. discovered in 1974 when a peasant was trying to drill a new well (photo with now-famous peasant for only twenty dollars), the 8099-figure army was built around 210BCE by the emperor of the qin dynasty to help rule his empire in the afterlife. the sheer arrogance is mindboggling. the figures occur in three separate pits - one being a huge army in battle formation, another being a sort of shed area with guards standing along the walls, and a third pit that is yet to be excavated. the actual emperor is interred in a necropolis nearby, which remains unexcavated because the government believes current technology is not advanced enough to ensure the process occurs without ruining the artefacts. i respect that.

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the pits were broken into and most of the statues were smashed after the emperor's death. what i found more fascinating than the rebuilt statues, was looking at the fragments of smashed statues - faces, arms, hands - all lying around randomly on the ground.

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every single warrior has a different face, facial expression and lines on his palms (apparently). my favourite terracotta warriors and horses fact is this: in 2006, a german art student infiltrated the exhibition and hid among the army, dressed as a terracotta warrior. his disguise was so good that he wasn't found for a full two days, but because he hadn't damaged anything and was only living out a life-long passion to be a warrior, he was released with only a simple warning. what a hero!
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xi'an town

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as an ancient capital and the start of the ancient silk road, xi'an was a hive of activity for people of all nations, and even 3000 years ago had a foreign population of over 50,000. can yous believe it? persian and greek coinage has been found littered throughout the suburbs.

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today, xi'an is fresh, relatively pollution free, and lots of fun to be in as a tourist. within the massive city walls - which have been restored so that you can now ride a bike around the entire perimeter - lies the old muslim quarter, with a 1300 year old mosque and an active 50,000 person strong muslim hui minority whose purpose in life seems to be making and selling lots of yummy food.

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mum and i strolled about the muslim quarter on a nightly basis, cramming food into our face-holes, and taking in the sights from the beautiful drum and bell towers that we lived next to.

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just outside the city is the big goose pagoda, a 1300 year old buddhist structure built to hold sutras and buddhist figurines (boring). more interestingly, next to the pagoda is a massive cascaded concrete area impregnated with hundreds of small squirters and lights, and at night an area about the size of 5 tennis courts erupts in the best water show on earth! best of all - you can run through it all if you have the courage. xi'an is a university town, so in the middle of summer, i have a feeling the nightly water shows will be transformed into an orgy of wet panted and t-shirted youths getting sprayed and splayed at all angles. yum.

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so ends part two of mum and bondy's tour de chine. with arses still bruised, we opted for a softer option and got a sleeping compartment on our way from the ancient to the modern capital. find out next time how it's possible to still be in love with beijing after all this time, but first things first: and not necessarily in that order. peace