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It appears that fate was determined that Kahlil and I wouldn’t get to Everest base camp and equally determined that we should have as bad a time as possible trying to get there.  In my last post I wrote that we would be leaving for the trek the next day.  This as it turned out didn’t happen because Kahlil got sick.  This was ok though because in a couple of days he had declared himself fit again and we rebooked the bus tickets and arrived in Jiri only 3 days later than we had originally planned.

We set out on following day morning. The thing with the first week of the Everest base camp trek, is that if you start in Jiri, you spend the first week going up and down about a 1000m each day. Having done our first 1000m up and then down again we reached a town called Shivalaya where we stayed the night.

I woke up the next morning to find that we wouldn’t be going any further that day.  During the night Kahlil had developed a temperature, a headache and a cough which sounded like he was about to lose a lung.  He slept most of the day but the next day he was no better.  In fact he was worse.  I asked the people running the guesthouse if a doctor was available.  The doctor, it turned out was in the next down (about a 4 hour walk away), so his father came to take a look.  I was never able to figure out if the doctor’s father had any medical training or it was simply the fact he was the doctors father that qualified him to come. It’s seems a bit like someone might asking my Mum about a computer problem.  (I have to use my Mum as the example as my Dad actually knows quite a lot about computers).  Anyway the doctor’s father took Kahlil’s temperature.  It was 102 degrees (which despite not being a doctor myself I knew was high).

The doctor himself arrived that evening.  As anyone who been to Asia knows, personal space and privacy is virtually non existent and it’s no different if your sick.  Luckily for the locals the room was kind of setup like a viewing gallery.  Anyone who was interested could come and stand on the balcony outside and stare in at Kahlil though the windows.  We managed to keep the room itself free from complete strangers and it was only myself, Kahlil, the doctor, the doctors father, the man and woman who ran the guesthouse and a couple of their kids who were allowed in.  While the doctor was examining Kahlil I spotted another old lady sitting on the bed.  Someone must have noticed my curious glance at her as it was quickly explained that she was the doctor’s mother (this apparently explained the need for her to be there too).  It didn’t take long for the doctor to diagnose the problem. Kahlil had Pneumonia.  The doctor basically told Kahlil to continue taking the antibiotic that he had already started taking the previous day and gave him a few other tablets as well.  Other than that we just had to wait until he got better.

The problem was that we weren’t just waiting for him to get a little bit better we had to wait until he was well enough to walk the 1000m up and down back to Jiri.  You can read Kahlil’s account of the joys of having Pneumonia when he puts up his post.  It certainly didn’t look like a fun experience and the recovery was very slow.  Meanwhile as you might imagine I was struggling to entertain myself.  Ensuring that Kahlil had everything he needed didn’t take up much of my time.  He only really needed sleep and the occasional bottle of water.  The family obviously considered Kahlil their responsibility which meant that I was virtually made redundant.

On the first day I took myself for walk and explored the local area.  The rest of the time I was forced to entertain myself with a pack of cards. This was the only entertainment I brought with me apart from my MP3 player as I had foreseen weeks of healthy exercise separated only by meals and deep sleep.  I was surprised by how few things I could thing to do with a deck of cards.  The only single player card game I could remember was Solitaire. I couldn’t even remember FreeCell, after all those hours of playing it on computers when I was supposed to be doing something more important.  In the end I played patients a lot. In fact I played it every day for several hours a day.  I did think of a few other things to do with the cards.  I added up the values of all the cards in the pack (several times to be sure).  Another favorite was to shuffle the deck and then deal 3 cards, calculate what the value of the 3 cards multiplied together was, then deal another 3 cards and so on. Needless to say my mental arithmetic has dramatically improved.  Of course there was also the classic building prymids of cards as well. (You can see the photo).  I would have enjoyed getting on with some kung fu practice but outside it was either raining, or so hot I would be distracted by watching my skin turn red as I watched it. The only reading material we had with us was the insurance policy which, despite being rather boring, did pass an hour or two and was still better than sitting on the balcony staring at the river which was how I spent the remainder of my time.

The family who ran the guesthouse was really great.  They looked after us really well, in fact almost too well. The longer we were there, the more attention they paid to our well being and the more they started to interfere with our lives. They seemed to be under the impression that as English people we were completely incapable of knowing what was best for ourselves or doing anything much for ourselves as well. I would come back from a short walk to find all my stuff hanging up outside. Each mealtime they would carefully watch how much I was eating and try and force more down me.  I would try explaining that one large plate of rice was plenty, when the only thing I had done since the last large plate of rice was stare at a river.  They generally accepted this but I’m sure they didn’t really believe that I could be full after only one large plate.  They of course all ate many plates of rice each meal.  If I were at home under these circumstances I would simply be able to explain to my family to leave me alone and let me look after myself. My family would understand that it wasn’t that I ungrateful for their care but was simply going crazy with boredom staring at a river all day long and it would be better to leave me alone. I did really appreciate the effort they were making but felt it was just a little over the top.  Anyway, being English I didn’t tell them to go and jump in the river, which I would have liked to do (not through any personal dislike but simply through a desire to make the river a bit more interesting).  Instead I was frightfully polite and thanked them a lot for all their help, told them they were being very good to us and then ran away to see how the river was doing.

Initially this boredom only affected me.  When your lying in bed with a fever of 102 degrees your primary concern isn’t how to keep your self occupied, you have quite enough to be getting on with trying to get better. Slowly though, Kahlil started to get better and the family started to force feed him rice, make him go for walks when his brain was still doing back flips inside his skull and fuss around more than was necessary.  Exactly a week after we first arrived Kahlil was a lot better and made my day by saying that he thought he was well enough to make the walk back.  The father and daughter of the gu
esthouse walked with us back to Jiri carrying Kahlil’s stuff.  The father continuously telling us exactly where to step and which stone each of us should sit on when we stopped for rests.  By this point we were both so happy to be escaping that we didn’t even try to explain that we had a fair amount of experience walking and were quite capable of choosing our own stone to sit on.  We just did as we were told.

As you can imagine we were very happy to arrive back in Jiri.  Unfortunately the experience was not yet over though.  The next day we discovered that there was no ‘express’ bus back to Kathmandu only a ‘local’ bus.  This meant that instead of the type of bus we had arrived on, where everyone has a seat and there is only a minimal amount of boxes and other stuff in the gangway, we would have to get the local bus.  The local bus is the cheaper alternative that, that takes longer.  When all the seats are full people cram on with their sacks of onions and live chickens and fill all the space available.  Then a few more people squeeze in.  Then a few more.  Meanwhile the roof of the bus also completely fills up, so the remaining people who wish to come along just hand off the side of the bus.   On our bus there was only one chicken and that was quickly put in a cupboard above people’s heads and I never saw it again.  There were plenty of people.  Our bus to Jiri (which had seemed pretty bad at the time but now seemed like positive luxury) had taken about 7 hours.  We knew that this one would take longer, much longer.

Luckily not everyone was going to Kathmandu like us and gradually the bus got less crowded and we could breath again.  Then it started raining once more and everyone on the roof came inside so we were back to where we started.  I’m not even going to go into the pain caused by sitting in a seat with no back support because the seat was broken. We had to stop once to change a tire but this seems to happen on most bus journeys.   After 11 hours we knew we were close to Kathmandu but then we hit traffic.  It turned out there had been an accident and that the bus would not reach Kathmandu till the next day.  We were told we were welcome to sleep in the bus.  There was no way we were sleeping in the bus.  It was incredibly uncomfortable and stunk of sick.  We got our bags and walked a few km to get past the accident. Then a few more km and found some guys with a van and paid them to take us the rest of the way.  We finally reached Thamel.  What a relief

Well that’s about everything.  If you got slightly bored reading all that, think how I felt waiting a week with nothing to do.  I’ve decided against reattempting the trek.  Hopefully I’ll come back to Nepal sometime soon and have another go at it then.  So that’s it.  I’m going to be booking my flight home today, so I guess I’ll see you all soon.

Just a short little update. Since getting back from the Annapurna trek we have been quite unproductive. We seen a few sights in and around Kathmandu but mainly we have just been chilling and working our way through books. Tomorrow though we finally leave on the everest base camp trek. I’m really looking forward to it.

For those of you who are asking me my plans - The everest trek should take about 3-4 weeks. After that I’ll come back to Kathmandu and book my flight home! It’s going to be weird coming home after all this time but there is plenty for me to look forward to. I’m going to be an Uncle in October and Rob and Helen are getting married which I’m sure is going to be quite a party. There is of course Rich Fest as well to look forward to.

Anyhow I’ll let you all know how the trek goes when I get back.

You can see photos here

I arrived here in Kathmandu about a month a go now. I have to admit that the first thing I realized was that I knew almost nothing about the country apart from what had been in the news recently and that there was plenty of good walking to be done. Consequently one of my first tasks was to go and find a guide book and find out a little bit more about the place. A quick look though a Lonely Planet and I discovered that I was here at the wrong time of year. In the "when to go section" it listed all the months in the year with the draw backs and benefits . For June it basically said "Don’t go in June, esspecially if your trekking ". It seemed that all I could expect in June was cloud (obscuring the impressive peaks), rain and leaches. Still a little bit of advice like that wasn’t going to stop me, after all I didn’t know when I would next be back so when Kahlil got here too we make our plans to do the Annapurna Circuit trek

The trek turned out to be fantastic. We only had a couple of days at each end of the trek where the monsoon was a problem. Even then we only got caught in the rain a couple of times. After that we were high enough that there wasn’t much rain and the weather became a lot cooler and more pleasant . It was comparable to walking in wales when you get a day of bright sunshine in February . Just the right temperature for walking.

The best thing was that there was absolutely no one around. In the whole of the trek we saw maybe between 10 and 15 other western trekkers . It seems the combination of the lonely planet saying don’t go in June and all the political problems kept everyone else away. the down side was that there was a lot more cloud about so we didn’t get as many chances of seeing the big peaks as we would have liked. At one point we were wondering if we would see any at all but towards the end of the trek we had some brilliant views. You can see the photos when I put them up.

The altitude itself was no problem for me. In fact to be honest I didn’t really feel it that much. A few times I was out of breath a bit quicker than I expected but then i found that when i was lower down too. Kahlil and I ended up adopting a kind of 1/2 day approach to walking. We found we could easily do the recommenced full days walk in the Lonely planet in 1/2 a day and then take a more relaxed afternoon and feel reasonably fresh for the next day. Our excuse for this laid back altitude was that we shouldn’t increase our altitude too much each day by going to far.

When we came to the main high pass we though it was going to be hard work. We had to climb about 600m up to 5400m ish and then descended 1000m on the other side. Doing it in june was definitely an advantage. It took us
excatly 3 hours to go up and 3 hours to go down. The Lonely planet said it would take 4-6 to just reach the top. I guess when there is no snow at all it’s a lot more easy!

All along the trek there are guest houses so we didn’t have to take food or a tent or anything like that. The food they all served was really good. You could get anything from curry to pizza. Impressive when easily everything has to be carried in by donkey taking up to 9 days from the road.

Anyway you can have a look at the pictures here. Kahlil and I are now just planning the next trek, which is to Everest base camp. If youhaven’t read it already don’t forget to read my mammoth post about Tibet .

Ok - I’ve got a little behind with the updates.  I wrote the update below a few weeks ago before I went treking and then didn’t manage to actuallt post it.  I just got back from treking so there are plenty of photos etc to come.  Untill I get round to it though you can read about Tibet.  I split the photos up so you know what they are.  You can see them all here or see the links futher down. 

Well in total now I’ve been in Tibet for about a month. This includes the time I spent in the Tibetan area which is outside th Tibetan Autonmous region (the administrative region that the Chinese government calls Tibet . As I said in my last post, this area in many ways reflects the "real Tibet " as thee are less restrictions. - I’ll come to these in a minute.

My last post was from Chengdu the place where most people organize a flight to Lhasa. Instead though I opted for a train trip to Golmund (which took 44 hours) and then a bus from there to Lhasa. From Golmund there are 2 different types of bus you can get. the first is the official tourist bus which costs as much as flying. This is because to get on it you need the official government travel permit. The only way to get the permit is to buy a bus or plane ticket which effectively means they ca charge what they like. The much cheaper option that i took was to find a bus for locals and the driver a suitable amount to take me as well.

Just before the bus left I was taken off it (leaving my rucksack on it which alarmed me a bit) and put in a mini van which drove me through the checkpoint, paying off the guards as required. I then met up with the bus again and climbed on to my bunk. The journey took about 22 hours and was uneventful . At certain points i was instructed to hide under my blanket for a few minutes to avoid be spotted by police. Also they weren’t very keen about me getting off the bus in case I was spotted. Needless to say I was glad when I finally arrived in Lhasa.

As Kahlil says in his post the only 2 real options in Tibet are to hire a jeep or to hitch hike. There is virtually no public transport. Kahlil chose to hitch hike and as he pointed out there is a great advantage to this as you get to see the sights that the jeeps just roar on past.

I however took the jeep option. I’m glad because there is no way I would have got to see so much in the short space of time I had. This solves the permit problem - You need a variety of permits to travel out to western Tibet . Along the way are various checkpoints where these permits along with passports are checked. We picked up one hitch hiker who we dropped off about 1 km before the checkpoint so he could walk round it, unseen. While we were having some lunch in the town on the other side of the checkpoint we saw the poor guy being marched to the Police station by 5 men in uniform. I doubt much worser happened to him than a fine and being sent back to Lhasa but never the less it’s not a great thing, if your short on time.

I had been in Lhasa about 6 hours when I organized a trip to Nam-tso lake. 12 hours after that I was in a jeep heading out of Lhasa to Nam-tso . I had hoped to take a rest after my mammoth trip to get there but I decided that sleep was for wimps. The drive up to Nam-tso was quite spectacular. When we got there the sky was bright blue and the lake was turquoise. We spent the afternoon exploring the side of the lake but were forced to return to our tent when a blizzard started. With nothing to much to do I started reading the Lonely planet to find out something about the lake. The first thing I discovered was that it was at 4700m. That’s pretty high. In fact it is so high that the Lonely planet says you should stay in Lhasa at least a week before going there to acclimatise to the altitude. Oh well … What with it now being cold and dark we went to bed. I had the best nights sleep I had had in ages, Unfortunately the other three didn’t and in the morning they were complaining about the cold stopping them from sleeping. The next day we went to Reting Monastery and stayed there the night before returning to Lhasa the next day.

Have a look at the photos to see more

After I was back in Lhasa I started looking into another jeep trip out west. In Lhasa it’s really easy to find other people to share the cost of a jeep with. I found a group easily enough that wanted to go to the right places and left in a couple of days so I had enough time with my fast running out visa. As I had just a few days left in Lhasa I decided to get on with some site seeing . Unfortunately on the evening of the 2nd day before we left I had my camera stolen! I then had to spend all of my day running around trying to sort it out. I had to get a police report, which required my passport, which was at the travel agency, so I had to meet some one at he permit office, get my passport and finally many hours later get a loss report form. I could then go and get a replacement camera from the less than well stocked camera shops of Lhasa. Luckily I managed to find a good camera at a 1/2 sensible price.

It was a long jeep ride out to Mt Kai lash . We stop and saw a few things on the way but these were only to break up the journey a bit. As you can see can see from the photos the scenery started getting really good.

The main highlight of the trip was a 3 day walk round the kora of Mt Kailash . The kora is a 52km trek round MT Kai lash and the highest point the kora passes over is 5630m. Many tibetens do the whole thing prostrate. We decided walking would be more straight forward. We had marvelous views and good weather. You can see the photos here.

From Kai lash we went to the Guge Kingdom in the far west. The scenery here was really different to the areas we had already seen. There were fantastic sand stone canyons and and we visited an amazing monastery called Tsaparang. The monastery has been in ruins for quite a long time but you can easily see the destruction from the cultural revolution. This is the first time that I have seen the direct results of the cultural revolution . Other places like Reting monastery had plenty buildings in ruble which is apparently due to the cultural revolution and even more places have been destroyed and then rebuilt. This is the first time though I been somewhere and you can see the smashed up statues, wall paintings and other things still lying in the temples.

The Photos are here

We had a great day on lake manasova, staying in a guest house with a view over the lake. I had a nice walk till I was attacked by flies and then I retreated further away from the water and practiced some kung fu.

Lake Manasova Photos

Next it was too the border. As we drove towards he checkpoint the scenery became much greener and once we crossed into Nepal there was a sub tropical feel to it.

Before I went to Tibet I met people who said they wouldn’t go to Tibet because they didn’t want to support the Chinese occupation of Tibet . Most of these were people who had already been to Nepal and India and seen and spoken to some of the millions of Tibetans who live outside Tibet and are unable to return because of the Chinese. Having only just arrived in Kathmandu I haven’t yet experienced this so perhaps I will reserve a final judgment . One thing which made me feel better about my going to Tibet was
reading an article by the Dali Lama which basically says it’s good for people to go and see whats it is actually like.

I agree with Kahlil that a "Free" Tibet is unlikely to happen. at least in the sense of a Chinese withdrawal. There are many Chinese for whom Tibet is home and Tibetans who consider them selfs Chinese. Whether we like it or not a complete withdrawal is a virtual impossibility . However a "Free Tibet" is possible in the sense of Tibetan people continuing to to gain freedom in there everyday lives and not having police stations to watch monasteries or checkpoints that they have to be afraid of crossing. At the moment there are still many restrictions. Photos of the Dali Lama aren’t allowed and it isn’t right that our driver should feel nervous at the checkpoint even when he has all the correct paperwork and is doing nothing wrong.

From the people I have spoken to who traveled in china 10 years ago it sounds like it is similar to Tibet now. (at least from the travelers point of view.) Closed areas, areas needing permits etc. I hope that in the next 10 years, Tibet itself will be much freer . Already there has been in much improvement in the lives of average Tibetans. Despite the years of religious repression the spiritual side of Tibet is now blooming .

I met with Kahlil again yesterday. Tomorrow we are off to do the Annapurna circuit trek. It takes 3 weeks so don’t expect to hear from me. I’m sure I’ll have even more to write about by then.

Hi,

Thanks for your comments.

I just thought I would let you know I have arrived in Lhasa after a 44 hour train journey - followed almost straight away by a 22 hour bus journey. I am going to stay put here in Lhasa for at least a few days to recover!

Click here for the photos

http://www.markdoughty.co.uk/gallery/Tiger_leaping_gorge_and_more

Well it’s time for another update again. As planned we traveled to Dali from Kunming where I spent a few really pleasant days. It’s the sort of place where you can get a pizza or English breakfast and little old ladies come up to you to try and sell you bags or Marijuana. I left Kahlil in Dali where he was learning some Yang style tai chi. Unlike Kahlil I haven’t learned any of it before, and as I already have more kung fu and tai chi to practice than I have time for I decided to move on by myself.

The first stop was a town called Li Jiang . I wasn’t a very big fan of it as it was full of Chinese tourists and the only thing to do seemed to be shopping, which isn’t one of my favorite pastimes. I only stayed one night in the end as I was keen to get on to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the must see sights in China. It’s basically a 3 day trek through the gorge. There is a trail which is quite high up and gives really impressive views. Along the way are several guest houses so there is no need to carry too much stuff like food or sleeping bags etc. Also there is not much chance of getting lost as the trail is really well marked out all the way. Although I did the actual walking on my own there were loads of people in the guest houses on the way so I never got lonely . Have a look at the photos. It’s probably the best way to get an idea what it is like.

The next stop was Zhongdian , otherwise known as Shangra La. It is basically a Tibetan town even though it is not in the area classified as Tibet . My original plan from here was to go straight into Tibet . when I started to talk to people there about it I found out that 1. - It was really expensive to enter Tibet from this side and 2. - The route to Chengdu was actually more like the real Tibet because of the lack of rules and regulations that exist in side Tibet itself. So in the end I went on a bit of a marathon bus journey.

The first stop was in Xiangcheng. The views from the bus were amazing (again see the photos). The bus broke down twice which was actually a relief as it was good to get up and stretch my legs. Also on the bus were 2 girls one German and one Swiss. When we arrived in Xiangcheng (after 10 hours) we found out that there was no bus to Litang (our next stop) for the following day so we were forced to hire a minibus which was much quicker and a smother ride. I stayed in Litang for a couple of days. I’m not sure what altitude Litang actually is because all of our guide books conflicted. It seems that it is somewhere between 3900m and 4680m. Either way it is quite high. One day I went for a walk on the grass plains. The altitude definitely slowed me down a bit but I since talked to people who were sick and had really bad headaches at 2500m so I guess all in all it wasn’t too much of a problem. The people in Li jiang were mostly Tibetan and were all really friendly.

The next leg of the journey was a nightmare. We spent 8 hours on a bus with no suspension and by the end of the journey we realized that the exhaust must have been fed into the bus somehow because we were all coated in black soot from head to toe. We only stayed in Kanding overnight as there wasn’t much to do there and the next day we headed on a luxury bus to Chengdu where I am now. The plan from here is to catch the train to Golmund where hopefully I’ll be able to catch a bus to Lhasa.

Well thats about everything up to date. I’ll let you know when and if I make it to Lhasa.

Don’t forget to look at the photos

http://www.markdoughty.co.uk/gallery/Tiger_leaping_gorge_and_more

 Click here for my latest photos

 or

Click here for Kahlils photos 

Well after 2 months of training in Yong Chun we have finally started doing some actual travel again. Our first real stop was in a town called Yangshou in Guangxi province. Yangshou is a fun place to take a rest and enjoy a few western luxuries. The main thing was the food. I was able to get a full English breakfast with baked beans. The scenery is very spectacular and there is lots to do and see, such as rafting, caving and jumping into rivers.

After about a week I left Yangshou with the plan of going to see some rice terraces while Kahlil stayed in Yangshou to lean some traditional medicine. We were going to meet up again in about a week. Good plans make themselves though and ours changed when I arrived in a city which was only about an hour away from Yangshou . As I checked into the hostel the girl at the desk pointed out that my visa had expired the day before. Whoops !! It’s our own fault for not checking our visa properly. We assumed that the visa we bought in Hong Kong was the same as the one we got in the uk. That is that the visa starts when you enter China. It turns out though that it was valid for 90 days from the day of issue. When we spent two weeks in Hong Kong we thought it was visa free time but in actual fact our 90 days were already ticking.

Luckily it all worked out ok. I went to the visa office straight away and they didn’t seem very bothered. They just let me fill in the application for an extension as usual and I was able to pick it up the next day. I phoned Kahlil and let him know he was an illegal immigrant. He came up and did his the next day, so we are now both legal again.

The second reason our plans changed was that we were planning to a town called Kaili for a festival. Kaili is a village of minority miao people (instead of Han which most Chinese are). Unfortunately about the same time as we were getting our visas extended we discovered that the festival was sooner than we thought. So we both ended up going straight toKaili and forgetting our original plans.

The festival turned out to be really good. There was loads of stuff to see. Lots of people in traditional dress with singing and dancing. There were also activities like bull fighting and duck hunting. Duck hunting was different to what I was expecting. I thought maybe there would be people with guns shooting ducks. In fact it’s all done on the river. Everyone taking part stands on the bank of the river while boats in the middle of the river release ducks on to the water. Everyone the dives in to the water and swims after the ducks to catch them. It was quite entertaining to watch.

By far the best thing we saw though was the Dragon dancing. As you all know I do a bit of dragon dancing at home. Until now I’ve never actually seen a dragon dance that I haven’t been part of so I was quite keen to see what it would be like. It started quite tame. The dragons seemed to be moving quite slow and not doing that many moves. Kahlil and I had just decided that they weren’t particularly good compared to us when suddenly the fireworks all appeared . The crazy locals got all these home made roman candles and pointed them at the dragons. Surprisingly the people doing the dancing didn’t seem to be getting hurt despite the dragons themselves going up in smoke. The fireworks weren’t only for the dragons. Once in a while one would be let lose on the crowd who would all run away. We assumed, to start with, that everybody involved knew what they were doing. However when a policeman handed me a massive firework and told me to have fun I realized that it was in fact total mayhem. It was fun though.

Having survived the Kaili festival we are are now in Kumming (Yunnan Province). Tomorrow we off to a place called Daili which is supposed to be another backpacker hangout. Should be fun. I’ve got loads of photos but unfortunately I can’t plug my camera in at the moment.

Finally got round to putting some photos up.

http://www.markdoughty.co.uk/gallery/YongChun

Finally time for an update.  We have now been in Yong Chun for 7 weeks.  For the first 3 or 4 weeks we had a couple of University students here that helped by translating for us, and also taught us some Mandarin.  They have now returned to university so we are pretty much on our own.  It was really good to have their help but now they have gone we finding that we are managing OK.

To start with we were spending 4 hours a day at Kung Fu.  As we learnt more however we have started doing an extra hour in the morning to give us enough time to practise everything we have learnt and well as leaning new stuff.  So far we have leant 3 hand forms and we have just finished learning the staff (which still requires plenty of polishing).

As far as learning Mandarin goes … we are improving.  We defiantly understand much more than we can speak but in general we are able to communicate enough (via our Mandarin and sign language combined) with our teacher and his family. Mandarin is quite a hard language to learn for several different reasons.  First of all it’s character based, not phonetic writing system.  This mean that by learning to speak it you still can’t write in it.  There is a system called Pingyin which is used to
write the words phonetically in the Roman alphabet but even this isn’t straight forward as you’ve still got to learn the exact sound to make for each letter. For example the letter Q is pronounced with a kind of "ch" sound.

Another problem is that it is a tonal language.  Mandarin has 4 tones.  A flat tone, a rising tone, a falling then rising tone and a falling tone.  Depending on which tone is used when  a word totally changes the meaning.  The all means that there are a lot of words which to our untrained western ear all sound the same but in fact have subtle differences and totally different meaning.

A further problem that we also have is that in Yong Chun they speak the local dialect of Hokien not mandarin. Everyone can understand and speak mandarin but it’s not the language we hear all around us all the time.

We only train 6 days a week.  This gives us one recovery day.  So far on these days we have been to a few temples, visited some of our teachers other students and have also been to two wedding receptions.  I think at pretty much each of the above I ended up getting quite drunk. (Yes even at one of the temples I found myself downing red wine out of a soup bowl.)

All this heavy drinking was partly due to a miss understanding about the word Gambi.  Our understanding of the word was that it was the equivalent to the word "cheers" in English. When we first arrived we were keen to use the small amount of the language that we had and when ever we were drinking would use it.  We would then look on in surprise when everyone else downed their drinks and expected us to do the same.  "These guys like to drink a lot" we thought.  It was only about 3 weeks later when we discovered Gambi actually means "drink it in one".  So all this time we had unwittingly been making ourself (and everyone else) down just about every drop of alcohol we came across.  

The two weddings were by far the most drunken experiences have had in a while. Chinese wedding receptions seem to be pretty similar to those back home.  Lots of food, wine and guests.  At the first one there was another language misunderstanding which meant that once again I was downing shots.  Kirk our student translator came along to the wedding with us.  I told him that "I don’t get drunk
much anymore".  What I meant by this was "I don’t that much anymore".  Unfortunately he thought I meant I could drink a lot without getting drunk. He then translated this to our teacher and the brides father.  This only boosted my growing reputation a heavy drinker.  The brides father then took me round to each of the many tables at the wedding reception so I could have a drink with everyone.  At the fist table there were 5 men.  The each drank a shot of 53% rice wine while I had to drink 5. It didn’t much better at the other tables and I only just remember leaving at the end of the night.

The second wedding reception was a lunch time rather than in the evening. Once again Kahlil and I had plenty to eat and drink.  This time red wine was our poison.  It was quite amusing because all the young waitresses wanted to have their photos taken with me.  I think I must have had more photos taken of me than the bride and groom. After the main reception was over we went to a kareoke bar, then ended up at the house of the family of the bride and groom.  Despite it being her wedding day the bride was busy mopping the floor and bringing food out for yet another meal.  Once again the wine flowed and my memory fails me 1/2 way through the meal.  My next memory is of waking up at home in bed.  Kahlil tells he vaguely remembers being helped to walk outside the house and being put on the back of a moped.  We still don’t really know what happened.