Kunming to the Laos border
December 14th- 21st, 2007
By Dan Murdoch
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”Confucius
KUNMING was beautiful, I felt very much at home.
Busy, warm, vibrant, large university population, very much a modern city, but with a distinctly Chinese twist- huge government buildings that could have come from the New York skyline, except they had subtly curved roofs, a little nod to a pagoda.
Walking back from watching the United-Liverpool game, at 2am on a Sunday night, the streets were still busy.
A little oasis of stalls around a street lamp, filled with fruits and foods I didn’t recognise. Dozens of people sitting out in the night, eating and chatting.
A patrol of policemen passed, about half a dozen all swinging long clubs as they sauntered by. The back two cops were arm-in-arm, laughing.
The cars were meant to arrive here and be shipped out to the border on Friday (December 14th). But the delivery company must have been infected by Trabbi Time, as the last car, Fez, didn’t arrive ‘till Wednesday and didn’t get shipped ‘till Thursday (December 20th)- another week long delay.
Carlos and I went down to the shipping company to pay them and check on the cars.
Ziggy was surrounded by a swarm of men. They had the windows down, the doors open. They were rifling the inside playing with walkie talkies, three men had the boot open and were going through the stuff inside, waving our 8mm camera about.
We approached by stealth and I shouted a loud English greeting in an attempt to scare them. But they just looked up, shameless, and waved our stuff at us.
I gave them a tour of the engine, to much laughter.
We got a night bus south to a town nearer the border to wait for the cars. There were three rows of double beds on the bus, which was nice, except Carlos, TP and I were in a five-person bed at the back, sandwiched between two Chinamen.
A sweaty and frustrating night. Sleeping with five men was everything I’d imagined it to be.
It is a shame not to have driven the length of China. It would have been some road trip alone, and a real missed opportunity, especially considering how much we paid to do it. Instead all our efforts were limited to the dull northern desert. It would have been interesting to watch that dry, dirty, grey landscape develop into the humid, lush, greenery that we’ve seen in the south.
Looking outside the window on our long journey south (65 hours of trains and buses) I had seen the usual ebb and flow of city to countryside. Rural wooden shacks and chocolate cake hills drifting to suburbs, mixing old thatched homes with light industrial, low-rise factories, then the neck craning city centres, thirty and forty story apartment blocks and offices, filthy decrepit estates near shining new glass and metal skyscrapers. The image would rebound as we left the centre, returned through the fading development and arrived back at hillsides carved into terraces, sweeping like grand colonial staircases down to sun-kissed green fields and heavy streams topped with a head of floating mist.
It is sad we couldn’t drive, but driving Trabbis is a two edged sword.
On the one hand, you never know when you are going to stop (i.e. breakdown). So the little cars take you to places you would never have normally visited, places that don’t make the guidebook, that aren’t even on the map, that few westerners have visited.
This is awesome: no guesthouses, no internet, not even any restaurants- you have to rely on the hospitality of locals, and they always come through.
On the other hand, you never know when you are going to stop. So the little cars take you to places you would never have normally visited, places that you don’t want to visit.
So you end up staying five days on the Turkmen-Uzbek border, instead of getting to know Ashgabat. You live a week in tiny Tajik villages, instead of exploring the Pamirs.
Here in China we spent a week in Xilinhaote, it’s a big city but not worth a visit, we could have used the time doing anything- Three Gorges Dam? Shanghai?
So we have seen China in a completely different manner to all the other countries we have visited. We have been on the tourist trial. Refreshing in some ways, but still, a missed opportunity.
Hopefully tomorrow, Friday December 21st, Fez will arrive and we will cross into Laos.
Of course, none of the cars work. We will be pushing all three of them across the border. Truly stumbling out of China. I don’t know how much no-man’s-land there is. On the Tajik-Kyrgyz crossing there was 22km of mountainous tracks between the countries.
Let’s hope China and Laos enjoy a closer relationship.
Either way, we will be limping in, struggling over the last few miles to the home straight, South East Asia.
I can already smell it in the food, see it in the foliage and feel it I the air- sticky and humid.
Six weeks late, but we’re nearly there.
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Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs visit: http://danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org
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