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Curzon
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Curzon

Date

December 23rd, 2005

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Safe in Kunming by the skin of my teeth

After a night train to the border, a day in Sapa, and a night bus from the border to the center of Yunan we’ve arrived safely in Kunming, but not after a hair-raising few days.

  • We rented a motorbike and biked around the mountain town of Sapa (my traveling partner drove, I hung on and took pictures). The bike was not meant to carry two fat Westerners and we popped a few wheelies when trying to change gears going uphill. See below for some shots of the beautiful landscape.
  • Our laptops were almost confiscated by Vietnamese border guards because we didn’t declare them upon arrival. (I have a customs form on me, and there’s nothing whatsoever to suggest we would have to declare a computer.)
  • We were shakendown at the bus station by “Manager Tom” for a “gasoline surcharge” which apparently only applies to Westerners.
  • Rode a sleeper bus from Hukou, sharing a 18×6 ft. sleeping space with my traveling partner and three Chinese men.

Kunming is nice place and probably the cleanest major Chinese city I’ve seen, save the toilets which are typically grotesque (China hands know exactly what I’m talking about). The temperature is warm (45F/10C) and the scarf-wearing denizens are horrified to see my traveling partner, who is from Michigan, wearing shorts. The town has a vibrant commercial center with most clerks decked out in tacky Christmas outfits (think Santa hats ala our current theme). Alas, I’ve discovered that despite a long history of Islam, the old mosques have all been torn down and replaced with kitschy, Las Vegas-esque mosques with the PRC flag on display out front. A local church will be holding a Christmas Eve service tomorrow which I will attend if we’re still in town, but we may have moved on to Dali by then. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed tonight.

Photos of China to come later; in the meantime, here are six photos from the aforementioned Sapa.


Sunrise enroute from the border to Sapa


View of Sapa from the nearby radio tower. You can see the Fansipan Mountain in the distance.


The mountains, about 10km out of town.


The Silver Falls, the tallest waterfall in Vietnam (don’t be fooled by the picture, the falls are at least 200 feet tall)


The H’Mong village of Cat Cat.


The Sapa Church.

A quick word of thanks to Lirelou for his pre-departure advice about Vietnam and his excellent comments on the Vietnam posts explaining snake wine, the Hue massacre, the War Museum, and much more. Alas, we never made it to Nha Trang per your advice, but with the weather that turned out to be a good thing—more later.

Comments to this entry

Saru
December 23, 2005
3:27 pm
_the old mosques have all been torn down and replaced with kitschy, Las Vegas-esque mosques with the PRC flag on display out front._

Reminds me of Urumqi.
Dan tdaxp
December 23, 2005
4:31 pm
Nifty seeing the Hmong town. They are a highly visible minority in Minneapolis, so it's interesting to realize they didn't always live in cold prairie wasteland.
Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace
December 24, 2005
4:59 am
I imagine that the church is French and Roman Catholic... is that correct? Any evidence of Protestant or Mormon missionaries?
Yago
December 24, 2005
5:07 am
Where's Lirelou from? Just saw his post in Spanish.

Btw, that Church is quite cute. As cute as some Romanic churches back home.
I once attended a catholic mass in Gulangyu, Xiamen. It was in English. I always wondered if anyone actually understood the stuff.
lirelou
December 28, 2005
12:32 am
Dr. Alfred. Churches in the north would be Roman Catholic. Contrary to the popular view of Roman Catholic Vietnamese as being pro-French, the northern Vietnamese catholics tended to be staunchly nationalist. So much so that the French Army had to mount an operation to force them into "the fold" (Operation Anthracite, Oct-Nov 49). I would not doubt that LDS missionaries are now plying the hills. Most protestant sects are in the Central Highlands, between Pleiku and Dong Xoai to the south. The Christian Missionary Alliance had been in that area for many years. I did spot two LDS missionaries in Saigon this past October.

pd para Yago: Para repetir el refran de Facundo Cabral, Yo no soy ni de alli, ni soy de alla. El personaje "Lirelou", capitan de paracaidistas franceses al seno del Bat. ONU "du Coree" (51-52), era tanto veterano de la guerra civil espanola, como de la segunda geurra mundial y la Indochina. Por supuesto, se podia expresarse en castellano, como su catalan natal y frances. Taraea fuera del alcance de este servidor.
lirelou
December 28, 2005
12:36 am
On an educational note. Anyone interested in reading what it was like to serve in the mountains along the Vietnam-Chinese border in the old colonial army might find Roger Trinquer's account his biography, "Le Temps Perdu", of interest. An account of serving in the nearby "Bac Kan" country in the late 40's can be found on the internet on Jacques Jaubert's site. Trinquier's account is the more interesting, dealing as it does with the various ethnic groups, smugglers, and Chinese factions.