CHENGDU, CHINA

Eats, shoots and leaves

SPECIAL THANKS 1: Due to the oppressive, authoritarian nature of the People’s Republic of China we are currently unable to update our blog. Fortunately, using hollowed-out statues of Chairman Mao we have been able to smuggle updates out of the country and our fearless executive tea boy Raj Malalgoda has posted them online from his London base. Many thanks to Raj, (c/o Reebok Sports Club, London, in case the Chinese Ministry of Interior is monitoring this blog - sorry mate but I can’t do solitary confinement) for sacrificing his personal safety in the interests of mild amusement.

Bloody Commies

SPECIAL THANKS 2: To Rhaani’s brother Nickos whose birthday gift to Rhaani was a night’s accommodation at the awesome Buddha Zen hotel. As Rhaani said “This is amazing, it’s just how I imagined China to be”.

Best hotel ever

WHERE: CHENGDU

WHERE (less detailed): the People’s Republic of China

WEATHER: uurgh, rain, and cloudy, and kinda cold. Unfortunately it feels just like London. Dammit, this is supposed to be the smug part of the blog where we get to make everyone back home feel envious!

this is not fair, it’s supposed to be warm on holiday

TEMPERATURE: in Chengdu a measly 12degrees (compared to London’s 13, yes I checked) on top of Mt Emi -5.

LOCALS: really friendly – I think. They can’t speak a word of English so I’m only guessing. But they don’t leap out of moving vehicles to try and sell us something or chase us down the street asking would like to buy something/ go somewhere/do something.

FOOD: touch and go, too often go. Strange as it sounds you want to say to some of the restaurants “You should really visit The Golden Dragon on Kensal Rise High Road, their Szechuan Chicken is a perfect example of how the dish should be”. When you find a dish with some meat in it tastes amazing. Unfortunately on our Chinese All-Star tour there was more tofu than at a Hippy convention...at Stonehenge... on Summer Solstice. Rhaani contends that there were plenty of meat dishes on the tour but a) lung doesn’t count as meat and b) I’m still not sure that was lung, it was too disgusting to be animal... The random street foods were sometimes pretty tasty, sometimes edible, and sometimes regrettable. Perhaps not knowing what the hell was inside the dim sum contributed to this. To be fair the biggest problem was finding somewhere where you could see what the hell you were ordering. We visited a rare place that had English translations and got three awesome main dishes, some top quality fried rice as well as drinks and it came to less than £10. So when they get it right, they get it right.

Bag of Duck Anyone?

PRICE OF A BEER: 60p for a 500ml of SNOW BEER the sweetest, least alcoholic tasting beer you’ll ever drink, even more girly than a stein of German strawberry beer.

OF RANDOM INTEREST: all the soft drink cans in Chengdu tend to be old-school pull-off ring pulls. Even the newer brands like Pepsi Max.

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS: never before have I been so utterly and completely lost. Not just physically but socially, culturally and, were I a 19-year-old sociology student, I dare say spiritually. From the second we stepped off the plane it became clear that no-one spoke English. Our taxi driver looked blankly at us as we repeated our hotel to him: BUDDHA, ZEN, BuDDHa zEN. His controller was equally as confused by this strange and foreign word. Luckily our hotel was in the shadow of the city’s famous Wen Shu temple
so at least the taxi driver will have heard of that... the driver’s blank stare continued... even while we pointed to the temple on a map... of his city...with roads on it... and local landmarks.

Wen Shu temple, apparently not a big deal in Chengdu

In the end an English speaking person in the taxi office managed to help us out...arriving at our excellent hotel (home to Rhaani’s dream bathroom) we found ourselves in the middle of what looked like Chengdu’s Chinatown, which technically must just be town?? ...dumping our bags we headed out for food, and walked passed some of the foulest, most disgusting market stalls known to man, all of which had massive queues of eager customers by the way... realising that no matter how far we walked or how many restaurants we passed the fact remained that that none of them had any English wording on their menu’s or pictures of dishes or any waiting staff that spoke English...

Wen Shu temple, apparently not a big deal in Chengdu

fortunately a client had given me a book with pictures of various foods in it and we ended up eating chicken, of some sort...in a big pot...with bok choi...and mushrooms... China is definitely the place to go if you’re an underperforming child. Whether they’re thanking you for saving their life or lambasting you for running over their newborn baby their vocal tone and volume doesn’t seem to change, it’s all one long loud shout....Panda tour... Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin could learn a thing or two from these guys. We were snapping away for ages and somehow all we got were useless arse shots...Did you know? Pandas eat for 16hrs a day...

A rare face shot

... but the baby panda’s were “the cutest things [Rhaani]’s ever seen” -....Chinese fish market, never mind Saw 3, if you have to baby sit your blood-thirsty teenage nephew take him here and let him watch frogs being skinned alive and fish being gutted while still breathing. Much like fresh lobster in fancy restaurants the fish are kept in small tanks. Customers tell the fishmonger how much fish they want and the fishmonger selects prospective candidates. He plops the fish on the scale to see if it’s the size you want. If it is, he bashes it on the head with a lump of wood. If it isn’t he throws it back into the tank. I swear you can see the fishes craning their necks to hear how much the customer has asked for, then puffing out their chests or sucking in their guts accordingly. “2kg? Nah that’s not me, I’ve been hitting the gym hard this week. Been doing my lengths, I’m a solid 4kg now, 4kg easily. Pick larry, he’s dead on 2kg”...Best of all, after the fish has been twatted with the lump of wood it’s then gut it while it’s still flapping around on the counter. You can see it breathing and sometimes it jumps on the floor only to be whacked another couple of times. Meanwhile the customer just stands around having a cigarette, chatting and waiting for the finished product. Next time your fishmonger swears to you that your fish is the freshest in town ask him to prove it....

Goddamit, I’m 2.4kg, ask anyone. I’ve been using creatine

...our 2-day all-Chinese tour of the Leshan Giant Buddha, funnily enough a huge Buddha carved into the side of a mountain, and the sacred Buddhist mountain Emi Shan...a truly surreal experience. Everyone else on the tour was Chinese and only two of them spoke broken English (unlike the tour guides who didn’t speak a word of English). Best of all was the fact that Rhaani didn’t want to appear rude and so sat and listened attentively to the tour guide whenever he explained something to the group...

dear god I thought he was only going to talk for 2minues, it’s been half an hour and he’s yet to take a breathe

...the Chinese people have absolutely no problem with pushing passed you. Even when there is space to you either side. Perhaps this has to do something to do with the fact there are so many people in the country....no-one was more guilty of this than the Chinese version of Little Britain’s Marjorie Dawes who banged into us countless times during our mountain trip.

Hello Fat Fighters...

The absolutely stunning Ebony Museum, a complete surprise but the 20ft long sculptures of Chinese history was breathe-taking. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photo’s and they didn’t have any souvenir books...Paul’s almighty cock-up - leaving our gloves in the bus while we ascended Mt Emi Shan, it might be one of the four holy Buddhist mountains but with a temperature of -5 and a chilling wind as Rhaani pointed out “This is, like, the worst place ever” as her non-existent at the best of times circulation took an almighty battering....

I don’t care how my hair looks just take the f$%king photo....

...tour food, after spending a night in an ashtray of a hotel room we turned up for our 5:30am breakfast to be met with what looked like gruel and catfood...

Breakfast of Champions

...Chengdu has the strangest traffic situation. Stand with your back to the road and you’d swear the streets were empty. Turn around and there are four lanes of bumper to bumper traffic as well as hundreds of motorbikes and motorised bikes flying along. But none of them make any sound at all. It’s bizarre....in addition the city has this confusing Highway Code whereby there are traffic lights and marked pedestrian walkways on every corner but none of the cars take any notice and none of the pedestrians seem that upset about it. You’ll wait for the green man and when you go to cross there’s more traffic than when you were waiting. In addition motorbikes and push-bikes also use the crossways when they’re turn green...

Everyone you are green for go

Also all school children 7-18 years now wear baggy shell suit tracksuits. At first we thought Chengdu must be hosting the biggest School Sports Event on the planet but it turns out tracksuits are now school uniforms. Pretty sure this has put a severe dent in Anne Summers China’s profits.

****NEW FEATURE****

TRAVELLERS TIT-BIT: Did you know that Mother Pandas only look after 1 of their offspring. So when a Panda has twins it just abandons the one to die, nice.

Eenee... meanee...minee... moe

****NEW FEATURE****

THE CHINESE EAT WHAT?: Pea flavoured Ice lollies. Sounds like something my mother would buy me in the interests of nutrition. “Great news Paul, they didn’t have any Fabs or Feasts... but I did manage to find a Pea-licious!”

This better count as one of my 5-a-day

UP NEXT: the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges.

**********************ADDENDUM********************************************

A "THE CHINESE EAT WHAT?" SPECIAL

Culinary Delight

 
I probably should have mentioned this earlier but we're currently in Sichuan province, home to Szechuan cuisine. Turns out the province's signature dish is "hot" pot, and it's spiritual home is Chongqing which is where we are currently spending a few of days before setting off on our Yangtze River Cruise.

So armed with the name - in Mandarin swiggles - of top hot-pot restaurant Fatty Zhou's we head out for a taste sensation. Having now tasted hot-pot I can categorically state that hot-pot is a total misnomer. It should really be called "oh my god, oh my god, my mouth is actually on fire, i'm not kiddin, oh jesus, oh crap, it's like i just licked the sun" pot. The cooking process is different. They put this big pot of boiling oil filled with chillis and millions of Szechuan peppers in front of you then you select numerous little uncooked dishes to drop into the boiling oil. The hidden kicker is that the longer you take to eat the food the longer it stays marinating in the chilli oil and the hotter it gets. The more cleverly hidden kicker is that things like lettuce and bok choi which you think will be nice and mild instead soak up vast lakes of lava jettisoning them into your mouth on the first chew.

Returning to the meal the entire menu is in Mandarin but as luck would have it a waitress managed to find an English translation and the real fun started. Turns out dishes available for our dining pleasure include pork aorta, fresh duck intestine, deboned chicken feet, fatty intestines or brains. In the spirit of Indiana Jones I decided to go with brains. I'm not actually sure which animal they belonged to but they were brains nonetheless.

Mind over (grey) matter

Admittedly the brain only made up a small selection of what we ordered - pork dumplings, meatballs, pork sausage, potato, bok choi, beef strips, Indian bread and egg fried rice - but we had (Rhaani by accident) our fair share of brains. The weirdest thing though is the absolute revulsion at the sight and thought of eating it. Like there is some sort of your hardwiring that says: "dude this is the most vital part of the body, I am not going to let you get in the habit of eating this" - anyway it turns out brain is quite slushy.

But the slushiness was an afterthought, completely overshadowed by the absolute fiery heat of the hot-pot. Each diner is given a small serving of sesame seed oil, soya sauce, garlic salt and plain salt to flavour their own serving, but this was pretty pointless as nothing - not even the 1litre of full fat pepsi I inhaled - takes the slightest edge off the Tongue numbing, mouth scalding experience. Forget a beef vindaloo as the epitome of spicy this thing was obscene. my eyes, nose and ears didn't stop running throughout the meal and my tongue only started to consider forgiving me after we found a dairy maid stand on the way home and I treated it to a double whippy ice-cream.

ANNAPURNA SANCTUARY



Are you sure the map says straight ahead?


Where: Himalaya mountain range

Where (less detailed): just a little left of Mt Everest (and a lot downwards)



Alright base camp was pretty easy, reckon we can make the summit by morning?


Weather: freezing cold at night, Rhaani "I'm wearing everything I own and I’m still cold", roasting for breakfast and torrential rain for lunch.



I swear she’s like a frickin vice


Locals: What locals? Our guide and porter were Nepalese (and awesome) but the mountains belong to the continental Europeans (Dutch, German, Swiss, Spanish).



Quite possibly the only sunrise worth getting up at 4am for


Food: Government issue menus meant food became very repetitive very quickly....most expensive chocolate bars anywhere -although in fairness some Nepal kid broke his back carrying them to 4,000m



Paul always knew his love of cock would cost him dearly one day (870=£7.90)


Highlights, lowlights: our winning run with public transport continues, our 7hr trip to the mountains takes 14hrs and includes a 3hr wait as police allow 1 vehicle to cross a bridge at a time... the scenery, just a pity it takes 100,000 steps to get there...our utter shock that climbing a mountain would require so many upwards steps... discovering Nepale flat (500 steps up, 500 steps down, 500 steps up, 500 steps down)...after conceding that we do need a porter to carry our 20kg backpack Paul’s ego forces him to share the load with the hired help, 4hrs and over 3,000steps later Paul decides the porter must be feeling upset at not being able to do his job and delegates all heavy lifting responsibilities for the rest of the trek…



Pretty bloody cool


…the utter ease at which our borderline midget porter carried the 20kg backpack...our guide turns his back for 5mins and Rhaani takes us 200 vertical feet and 20mins passed our stopping point... Paul breaks his climbing boots in while Rhaani just breaks her boots....



That’s right Greek a P-34 is winging its way to Merrell as we speak




Eat your heart out MacGiver


…overheard in our £1 a-night tea-house: "these mattresses are quite hard, do you have anything a little softer?” ... the joys of nocturnal toilet breaks: head torch, squat toilets, thermal underwear - a winning combination… Rhaani gets clamped Nepalese style, only a 20rupee note makes the child release her grip... Rhaani adopts a bamboo walking pole...Paul’s fruitless search for an iPod charger...discovering our guide uses the "girl in every port" system to select where we stop each night - no matter how much further we have to walk as a result....a Nepalese basket case....

The trek? A lot of people struggled with it but I found it pretty easy

…discovering we are goal-oriented people, the second we hit base camp we declare were done with trekking, the next 4days should be fun...a personal message to Dmitri



Dmitri, even he’d heard about your antics at Chris’ wedding


… to the man who brought his guitar on the 4am trek to poon hill, you're a cock, if you love music so much use an ipod like everyone else...to the couple who had the room next to us and brought their 18month year old along (and whose screams pierced the wafer thin teahouses walls) you're selfish and your kid won't remember any of this anyway...Rhaani discovers the dual meaning of getting high....



So this is why the porters sprint up to the top


Up next: due to our travel agent’s cock-up Chengdu, China and not Tibet. Although on the bright side the change of plan means we miss out on the 5-day “Friendship” Highway drive (so-called because you and a bunch of other tourists spend 9hrs a day stuck in a 4x4 jeep for 5 days. In our case it would be called the “Paul and Rhaani turn on each other, threatening to go their separate ways until they are brought back to speaking terms by their joint hatred of their infinitely more annoying fellow tourists” Highway. Also avoided was our much-anticipated 42hr train journey from Lhasa to Chengdu.



Thank f*@k



KATHMANDU

It’s like his eyes follow you wherever you go

Where: Kathmandu

Where (less detailed): capital of Nepal

Weather: good old solid sunshine - how’s London by the way?

Ahh, so this is Durbur Sq, now this does look like the guidebook

Temperature: 30s

Locals: very friendly and a lot less money-grabbing than the Indians - although they seem to have the highest concentration of dope sellers in the world, you cannot take two steps without someone, man, woman or child, offering to sell you some.

Food: stayed away from the traditional Dal Bhat meal that consists of a mountain of rice and a ladle of watery chickpea stew. Did over-indulge on the local momos though (Nepalese gyozas - potstickers to our American readers).


Now where did I leave my orange floral headgear?

Highlights, lowlights: after the 14hr bus ride from hell Paul and Rhaani collapse into the welcoming bosom of Hotel Courtyard: amazing soft beds, boiling hot water, wi fi, a movie room, a library and pancakes for breakfast - who says we can't slum it... Kathmandu may be massively touristy, with more trinkets and neon lights than Blackpool but after India it’s a most welcome relief... judging by the wall-to-wall imitation North Face clothing Nepal hasn’t really embraced conventional copyright laws...Paul’s new £13 North Face ski jacket… Durbur Sq. Rhaani: "I don’t mean to criticize but the temples look far better in the guidebook" Paul: "this isn’t Durbar Sq"....Living god or not I’m not hanging around in this crowd….as Paul takes a photo of Rhaani the homeless person he tried to ignore steals our water and map...

If she’s a living god you’d at least think she’d be punctual

…our first disaster - our idiotic local travel agent waits until 7pm the night before we set off for our 10-day trek to mention that our £150, two month Chinese visas will be cancelled when we start the 1week tibetan tour we just paid him £850 for. For some reason his "don't worry you'll get a $25 refund" justification fails to placate Paul....we demand our money back and he promises a full refund minus a 13% sales tax... Rhaani gives travel agent a quick lesson in accounting and explains since he now has no revenue he won't pay any tax as he can just writeback the sale on his ledger....Rhaani finally gets her perfume care package, you're the best Hoolie!!!

Number of people who stopped me in the street to take a photo of my Bono=twat t-shirt: 2

Arty Nepalese pic

Number of grown men spotted wearing Avril Lavigne t-shirts: 11

Up next: Annapurna Sanctuary trek

VARANASI to KATHMANDU

Warning: due the extreme distress and discomfort recently suffered by Paul and Rhaani this blog features whole, reasonably grammatical, sentences rather than the disjointed and fragmented thoughts previously posted.

even this ...

So it appears the popularity of our blog has grown to the extent that it is now read by the residents of the countries we are visiting. At least this seems the only explanation for the punishment that was served upon us after our not so glowing reflections on India.

We had thought our next blog would be about breathtaking Himalayan vistas, sweeping mountain valleys and jaw-dropping cliffside views.

Instead thanks to the lying, scum-sucking people at “Paul’s Travels, Varanasi,” we’re producing this special "I swear my left buttock has suffered permanent paralysis" edition of the blog.

Our escape from Varanasi was supposed to be relatively straight forward. The “Paul's Travels” brochure had promised breakfast in Varanasi before an 8hr journey on a luxury AC tourist bus- yes that's the new definition of luxury, a dribble of cold air intermittenty blown in your face - to the Nepalese border; a night in a local hotel, then the next morning another 8hr trip by luxury bus to Kathmandu.

...can't make up for this

Things didn’t take long to veer off track. On our arrival at Paul’s Travel office we were informed us that as there were only four other tourists heading to the Nepal boarder we wouldn't be taking the luxury bus for the first step of the journey. Instead we would have to carry our luggage the 1km to the local bus station were we would join India’s hoi polloi for the 11hr journey- actually it turned out to be 13hrs, but don’t worry we’ll have our own seats!

The journey was your typical extraordinary rendition experience, actually a spot of waterboarding would have been a welcome break from the sweltering heat and the grime the bus offered. Our seats were so devoid of padding that even the fattest Weighwatcher would forgo the diet coke with her burger and fries in the hope of adding a few more pounds of comfort to her buttocks. Our driver was under strict instructions not to exceed 30miles an hour and to stop to let passengers on every 100m. For Londoners just think Charing Cross to Embankment. At one point I thought the conductor was marking the next stoppage point by spitting out the open door but in fairness we didn't stop that many times.

One brief respite from the never ending boredom of the journey was when we were rear-ended and the culprit drove away. Our driver was out the door to inspect the damage, returning with a mangled rear wing panel he sped off in hot(ish) pursuit.

After our all to brief excitement we continued into the dark and at 10pm, after what seemed a lifetime or at least a whole Hollyoaks Sunday omnibus episode we arrived at the border and the 1km walk to our hotel.

insurance claim exhibit a

Having secured our visas in advance - oh yes Greek, they were planned and included in the spreadsheet - we sailed thru customs and had an extra hour to enjoy the home comforts of "Hotel Paradise". Like a stripper who calls herself "chastity" our piece of paradise was guilty of more than a little false advertising. No AC or towels or bedsheets. No soap or toilet paper. No hotwater or light in the bathroom (which was probably a blessing in disguise). One feature the room did boast was a ceiling fan capable of waking the dead and which actually carved a hole in the space time continuum each time it rotated. That and a small but highly motivated colony of mosquitos. It also turned out that our little slice of Paradise was located next to the kitchen. This meant we got to experience close quarters the little known Nepalese method of cleaning dishes by throwing them into a massive metal bowel and shaking it repeatedly until the germs get so traumatized they voluntarily remove themselves.

With the restaurant having a closing time of 1am and an opening time of 5am there was little point in setting our alarm clock. Just in case we did sleep passed the shouting that accompanied the restaurant opening we set the pipes in the bathroom to slow continual drip.

welcome to the cross your fingers school of travel

After having our desired 40minutes sleep we waited next to our luxury AC tourist bus which bizarrely was driven away and instead replaced with a regular local Nepalese bus. They best part of the new bus was the open air luggage rack which used blind faith rather than any sort of strapping system to stop the bags from falling overboard.

While on the bus I managed to get a sneak look at a Nepalese Highway Code manual. In particular the rules on mountain overtaking. Here is a direct quote: if driving a battered old bus full of disgruntled western tourists and uninterested locals please refrain from attempting to overtake two articulated lorries at a blind corner unless armed with a car horn. Studies by Nepalese scientists have established that 60 tonnes of steel can safely occupy the same space when the intermittent blasts of a certain audiowave frequency is added.

all of which left us needing one of these, if only Nepal respected copyright laws

But despite the best efforts of our clearly suicidal driver and the far too frequent stops in a little more than 11hrs we were staring at the “Welcome to Kathmandu” road sign and then two hours later we were actually in the city centre.

By the end of the trip I was conflicted. Part of me wanted to endure the torturous two day journey back to Varanasi, just to find the little prick at “Paul's Travels” and knock him into next week. But I fear if my ass ever got wind of my plan it would form an alliance with my legs and the second I stepped off the bus my legs would give out thus leaving me lying prostrate in the street waving my fist and screaming "next time you little brown shit, you're frickin mine!"

Note: no travel agents were harmed in the making of this blog – unfortunately.

INDIA REFLECTIONS

Kerala backwaters

• never have I met a race of people with such a problem with phlegm, if you were to produce a "relaxing sound of India" CD it would be filled with the sounds of hocking, snorting and spitting, with a backdrop of sitars, panpipes and car horns, honestly not a minute goes by without being bombarded by nasal fluids

kids, blood, stone, more chance

• the surreal combination of beautiful historic architecture against modern streets filled with rubbish, homeless people and cattle

and you know that's not gold paint

• the nationwide inability of Indian men to pee anywhere near a toilet, I swear a blind man, with an erection, peeing in the dark, having been spun around 10 times would have more accuracy - and this is coming from Paul

what do you mean there's no McDonalds

• if India truly is the fourth most powerful economy in the world I dread to think who the fifth is

my arms sting just looking at this

• the impossibility of finding a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc - which undoubtedly contributes to the daily death toll from drinking countryside "Hooch"

look everyone's got one, we have to keep up

• general cleanliness, while on a train we finish our local snacks and look for a bin for the wrappers , we are advised by a well-dressed local to just throw them out the window, obviously the "keep Britain tidy" message came after the fall of the Empire (which still doesn’t explain the state of Forest Gate)

travelling in style

• it's hard to make a general comment about the people as frequent exposure to locals who are blatantly out to scam you means you believe everyone has the same agenda; being asked to pay 20IRS one day then 150IRS the next for the exact same journey is a perfect example

the scale of some of the landmarks is truly inspiring

• a massive thumbs-up to the designers and tailors of India whose intricately embroidered saris and silks leave even the homeless looking fabulous - although those who chose to go Western seem to shop at “Lucky’s 1970s Emporium of Raylon and Polyester”

beautiful...from a distance

• a big thumbs down to the restaurant napkin manufacturers who have managed to create a substance with absolutely zero absorption

from a distance I said

• never has a country required so many people to do so little work. Every restaurant has at least seven waiters, six of whose sole responsibility is to sit around chatting while every hotel has at least 10 staff eight of whom do no more than sit and drink tea, I swear a one-man band in India would have five members…

he only came to Varanasi for a long weekend, in 1951

• India is definitely not a place for the over-protective “Are you looking at my bird?” boyfriend. Were such a question ever to be asked a “Yes” of thunderous proportions would echo from every nook and cranny, high and low, near and far. As well as every man within view, men would emerge from dark alleyways, from behind window shutters, from under cars, even a few would appear from the grave, all saying “Yes”.