Posts for August, 2024

An early start and then a comfortable but boring flight got this much anticipated adventure underway. We arrived in Singapore about 40 minutes ahead of schedule and after a short wait our pickup ride appeared and then on to our hotel - Robertson House Hotel. The hotel is well situated on the banks of the Singapore River close to a myriad of restaurants and bars.

Today is Wednesday and we don't meet our travel group until midday Friday. So we have a few days to ourselves, so what to do. Well our neighbours back in Sydney just had a short holiday in Singapore and they recommended the Singapore National Museum, so that was the excursion for the day. As it turned out the museum is within an easy walk of our hotel and on the otherside of a hill that is the sight of Fort Canning and Fort Canning Reservoir

This morning we caught the local subway to The Marina Bay Sands Hotel, that famous Singapore building consisting of three towers with a boat resting across the top of the towers. The metro station at Bay Front is in the shopping mall that sits between the hotel and the harbour. So we started our visit to this tourist mecca by walking around the mall. It is breath taking in its opulence, every up-market brand you have ever heard of and many you have not.

Today was a big day; the convening of the tour group, first (very short) train ride, and first border crossing. And all of this happening on the day that celebrates 59 years of the nation of Singapre.

An early start today, breakfast at 6:00, a 7:30 departure from the hotel, and a new route from hotel to station. Why a new route ? Well the shopping center we traversed yesterday evening was not open early enough.

Another fast start today. Out of the hotel at 9:00 for a 10:00 train to Pandang Besar, a border town between Malaysia and Thailand, where we do border processing and pickup a night train to Bangkok. That all sounds pretty straight forward and certainly the first train was. A modern Euro-style electric train that went as fast as 150km/h. There were a lot of stops along the way and a significant number of locals getting on and off. There was not much to see during the ride because of heavy jungle close to the track that obscured ones vision. Where a view became available one noticed that palm oil forests were still plentiful but compared to yesterday there were now more rice fields. Late in this leg we saw a number of large limestone outcroppings, each attended by its own cement factory.

Despite the antique nature of the sleeping carriage Nina and I got a good nights sleep. By about 7:30 activity in the carriage picked up with passengers going through their morning rituals and merchants walking through selling various foods (almost non of which I could recognize) and drinks. About 1 hour before the schedued arrival in Bangkok the cabin staff started the process of returning the carriage to its day-time seated configuration which in addition required the rolling up and collection of all the bedding. Quite a process to witness.

There was a shortish tour this morning to a place called The Prasart Museum. This museum seems to be the personal effort of one man (whose picture is on the Museum pamphlet but whose name I cannot find) to restore to Thailand, and display, historic artifacts, furniture and ceramics, collected and removed by other nations. Some of the photos below try to capture the nature and quality of those restorations.

We were rousted out of bed about 6:30 this morning so the cabin attendant could reconfigure our cabin for day time seated travel; and also to prepare us for disembarcation at Nong Khai, the border town where we would complete our Thai exit and Lao entry processing. Thereafter we would take a local train on the short remaining ride into Vientiane. At least that was the plan.

Our first sightseeing stop today was a place called Buddha Park, and to be frank I was a bit weary of Buddha and was not enthusiastic. But the place was a pleasant surprise. It was located a good distance out of town and on the banks of the Mekong River and is a lovely garden setting for some enormous statues. The statues of course are all depicting Hindu themes but the size and the variety made it more interesting.

Today was a noteable day as we had our first ride on the Laos-China Railway. It is a new joint venture between China and Laos and runs a new high speed railway line from the Laos capital Vientiane, via Luang Prabang to the Chinese city of Kunming. Today we travelled the 230km section from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. It was an impressive experience from the enormous new terminal buildings at Vientiane (unfortunately it had holes in the roof so they were mopping up water in various places) to the new station at Luang Prabang. The speed; which regularly reached 265km/h meant we completed todays journey in under 2 hours with a few stops along the way.

We were on our way at 5:30 this morning to watch the walking monks. There are a number of Buddhist monestaries in LB and every morning the monks from these monestaries walk along the local streets collecting food. The locals, and now tourists also, sit on the side of the streets and place food (usually boiled rice) into the begging bowls of each monk that passes by. The monks periodically unload their collection into large communal bowls and then continue their walking. Nina noticed that in a few places the monks actually also distributed food to some local people from their begging bowls. We assumed these receiving locals are identifiable as poor or in some other way deserving.

There has been much talk in the group about todays onward journey on the Laos-China Railway to the city of Kunming. This is a very new rail link and there is little info available on the internet about it. In particular there is little info available about the exact procedure for the boarder crossing. So the whole group started the day with anticipation.

Our first stop on this morning tour agenda was Yuantong Temple a complex of Buddhist temples built around Dianchi Lake. Apparently the temples are in different Buddhist styles although I did not catch the names of the styles but there were evident differences even to the novice Buddhist-observer like me. The lake in the middle of the complex was home to many fish and turtles and they appear to survive on the copious treats dropped into the lake by the numerous visitors. It was a nice relaxing place, with well tendered gardens. Even though it was more Buddhas it was a beautiful setting.

Our excursion today was to a Wolrd Heritage geological feature 1.5 hours drive SE of Kunming called the The Stone Forest. It is a region about 300 km square of fluted limestone pillars which were part of a sea bed 270 million years ago that had since been uplifted and eroded to their current shapes. Some of the region of limestone pillars has been turned into a recreational park with impressive facilities including a substantial fleet of small electric buses for moving large crowds around the recreation area. Today the visitor crowd seemed mostly to be local Chinese tourists, and numbered many thousands.

Another day on the train, this time from Kunming (population approximately 9million) to Chengdu (population approximately 21 million). We were on a Dclass train, China's second fastest train class, capable of speeds up to 250km/h, though today we did not experience speeds over 170/h. Never the less the journey took 8.7 hours (9:50 to 18:30) inlcuding stopping at 8 stations for at least 5 minutes each. Thats an average of about 137km/h. On top of that much of the route was through mountainous terrain, and I mean through because again a significant portion of the route was inside tunnels. From a railway technology point of view this was an amazing journey.

Today was Panda day, and then an overnight train to our next stop the city of Xining (the capital of Qinghi Province and a stop on the old silk road), and it is also the first of two consecutive overnight trains that will get us to Tibet. But let us start with the Pandas. Chengdu is the home of the Chinese Panda Breading Program and this program is accommodated in a huge complex close to the city. Within this complex there are extensive facilities to accommodate very large crowds of tourists wanting to see the famous Pandas.

We arrived in Xining about 8:30 in the morning, met our local guide and walked to a nearby hotel where we were to have breakfast after our all night train ride and where we had rooms for the day. As we were going to catch another overnight train at 21:50 this evening. After checking in we were adviced that we could get to the breakfast room by taking the elevator to floor -2 and follow the signs. For a little while this seemed like strange advice as floor -2 was the parking garage. But with a little persistance we found the breakfast room on the other side of the garage.

We woke this morning at about 7:30 on the train to Lhasa and boy was it an unpleasant experience, headache, shortness of breath, and tingling in the fingers. Then I looked at one of my mapping apps and noted we were at an altitude of 4500 meters. So this is what a sudden dose of high altitude feels like. Trying to look on the bright side we rationalized that Lhasa will be a little bit lower, maybe 3500 meters, yeh right, but before then it will get a little bit higher 5072 meters to be precise. The 5072 point arrived about midday or 14 hours into the trip. There is a bit of a sign marking this point as it represents the highest railway line in the world and the Chinese are pretty proud of this achievement. The train was scheduled to arrive at 17:30 but would not actually arrive until 18:30 so we had a lot of time to kill. So our day was take up looking at the scenery and sleeping. The altitude makes the latter activity very attractive.

Lhasa of course was the capital of Tibet and is now the capital of The Tibet Autonomous Region in China and that change is evident everywhere. Today Lhasa is a Chinese city, from the highrise appartments, the shopping malls, the elevated freeways to the large government office buildings China, not surprisingly, is everywhere. It is only on that second look does one see the Tibetan influence. And today we were off to take a more detailed second look.

Nina and I organized our own car, driver and guide for today as the itinerary for the group was 3 more temples/monestaries. So at 9:30 our guide (Chinese with English name) Susan and driver (also Chinese lady with English name Fay-Fay) arrived at the hotel and we were off. The plan was to see a little of the local country side. On the train journey to Lhasa we had noticed that grain harvesting was under way and we wanted to get a closer look. Similarly with horses. Tibetans are as enthusiastic about horses as Mongolians so if possible we wanted to get closer to some guys and their horses.

I have combined Aug 27th and 28th into a single entry but will provide separate photos for each day. On the 27th we were at the Lhasa train station by 9:00am for a 10:00am overnight train back to Xining. In addition I was not feeling well a condition I ascribed to the altitude. Fortunately we had an entire 4 berth cabin to ourselves so I could sleep all day and again all night while Nina played games on her phone, edited recent photos and took in the expansive views of the Tibetan plateau. That was about the sum total of the 27th.

Today was to be a short day of sightseeing and activities as we had another overnight train to catch this afternoon. The first item on the agenda was a visit to the cities museum which apparently has a high ranking amongst Chinese museums. At the time I was not sure what that meant but might expand in a later post.

We arrived in the city of Urumqi late in the morning and went straight to our hotel in order to freshenup a bit after the night on the train. At the risk of stating the obvious Urumqi is part of the "wild-west" of China and has a population of Han Chinese, Muslim Uyghurs, Kazaks and other minorities that I cannot remember. It is a small city by Chinese standards with a population of around 4 million and has obviously undergone significant devleopment in recent years as it is part of the Belts and Roads initiative. The strange "saddle" shaped building in the first picture is seen as one exits the gigantic train station and somehow sets the scene for the rest of the city.

The plan for the day was that we would do some tourist stuff until mid afternoon and then return to the hotel, get our bags, go to dinner and then catch another overnight train this time to the town of Yining which is close to the border town of Khorgas. We (being the group) do not really know why the train does not go all the way to Khorgas. The first tourist thing of the day was a visit to the cities Museum.