Macritchie to Bukit Timah Trek 2nd May 2010

28th May 2010 to 31st May 2010

I’ll be leading a group of age 40+, normally sedentary dentists up tropical alpine peak, Mt Kinabalu 4095m on an expedition dubbed Not Quite Over The Hill.

Team members include

Chan Joon Yee
Chew Teck Hong
Raymond Lee
Leslie Ng

This is my 4th time climbing the mountain and my second time leading. Unlike the young ladies I led some years ago, this group comprises middle-aged people who are not into adventure travel at all. Nevertheless, I see it not just as a mammoth task but a worthy challenge to put everyone on the summit.

Wish me luck.

Greetings from Sunshine 3 Hotel, Hanoi. I touched down this evening at about 9.00pm and Hanoi turned out to be unexpectedly challenging.

First challenge was trying not to get ripped off by the airport taxis. The guy in charge quoted a fare for my destination, but once I’ve boarded and tried to reconfirm with the driver, I was quoted another fare, much higher. I got out. Tried to get another operator. This time, I was quoted a very low fare. The driver showed me to his car. And that’s what it was - a car. I refused to board and gave up getting a taxi at the airport terminal. I wandered around the airport carpark and found a non-airport taxi parked there. The driver waved to me. I confirmed the fare with him and my instincts told me that this guy was OK.

I arrived safely at my booked hotel without paying more. In fact I paid less than what the meter showed. All the giant billboards on the highways reminded me of Thailand. Some parts of Hanoi looks like Chiangmai. Some parts look like Bangkok and some parts look like Kathmandu.

Like in Thailand, English is not very well-spoken in Hanoi. And this problem seems to exist where it shouldn’t. Hotel staff, taxi drivers, waiters, shopkeepers need a lot of repetition before they understand what you’re trying to say. Strangely, many guys you pull out from the streets (those who don’t deal with tourists), seem to understand me and express themselves better.

Hanoi is unusually warm this winter. The traffic is totally chaotic, but not as dangerous as what some writers described it. Perhaps the motorbike riders have grown so used to the chaos that they instinctively know how to avoid hitting people.

The eating places were scattered on the sides of the narrow streets. Low chairs, low tables and heaps of rubbish under the tables and chairs. Passing motorbikes spray exhaust fumes on the diners. My guts may not have the time to adapt to these conditions.

I had supper at a more enclosed bia hoi joint in the Old Quarter near Hoan Kiem Lake. The place was packed with locals imbibing the “house pour” - home-brewed bia hoi. They also served food which included hotpot and many other local dishes. I had a fried beef noodle, sharing the table with a couple of Vietnamese gem dealers who could speak some Thai and pretty good English. They told me they are frequent visitors to Thailand. The moment they said they were gem dealers, I grew suspicious and told them a lot of lies about myself.

But they turned out to be genuinely friendly folks. One of the guy’s wife joined us a while later. They bought me a Saigon Beer and made no mention about buying gems. I felt a bit guilty for being over-cautious.

Just one night in Hanoi and I’ll head for the border tomorrow morning. Stay tuned.

I thought I could beat the sunrise, but I was greeted by a bright, cloudy and someone hazy morning in Hanoi. I checked out of my hotel and boarded a taxi to the bus terminal where the bus to Lang Son departed. The obviously underaged driver was unsure, but he agreed to take me for 50,000 dong. After that, he stoppped the taxi a few times to ask for directions. I was worried if I would get to the correct destination, but a row of buses soon appeared on the side of a road and when I shouted “Lang Son”, one of the drivers nodded and pointed to his already full vehicle.

I squeezed inside the 8-seater which was probably carrying 12 people. The interior of the bus was abuzz with Vietnamese chatter. Then, suddenly, I heard Mandarin. A bespectacled middle-aged gentleman sitting next to a young man were conversing in Mandarin. The former spoke in a very crisp northern accent. The latter sounded like a Malaysian with his somewhat distorted pronunciations. I thought he was Vietnamese.

The bus took hours to get out of the city’s grip. Once it reached the highway, the picked up a little. Motorbikes, bicycles and even pedestrains shared this highway, making progress a lot slower than expected. It was almost noon when we arrived in Lang Son. The air was a lot cooler than in Hanoi, probably about 18 deg C. From the 2 Chinese gentemen’s conversation, I realised that the bus was going all the way to Friendship Pass. I might as well stay on. I wrote “Huu Nghi Quan” on a piece of paper and passed it to the driver. He immediately understood and I stayed on the bus, only to discover that there was another Mandarin-speaking passenger on the bus. Very fluent in Vietnamese, he helped us translate.

The driver would pick up a few more passengers at Lang Son and drop them at nearby villages before sending the 4 of us to Friendship Pass. Friendship Pass on the Vietnamese side looked like some SAF firing range of the old days. Dry, dusty mud tracks, lots of “natural” vegetation and a few small, ugly buildings. After getting off at the bus terminal, we walked to the border.

The middle-aged gentleman was from Xian. The 20-year-old young man he was with hails from Guizhou. Our Vietnamese translator, in his mid-20s, lived just across the border at Pingxiang town. As we walked and talked, I found out that our man from Xian had a niece studying in NUS. He actually had trouble understanding his 2 comrades as their accents were so Malaysian-like. In fact, he remarked that the foreigner’s Putong Hua sounded better than the 2 southerners’. Quite true.

The Vietnamese immigration was a small building with only one functioning counter. 2 immigration officers sat behind the glass panel, looking calm and relaxed in their neat green uniforms, totally oblivious to the mayhem outside. Entry and exit - all the same counter. No proper queue, no proper line. Just chuck your passport through the opening in the glass panel and wait for the 2 blokes to notice it. In no particular order, the Vietnamese officers stamped the passports and read out the names. Once your name is read out, squeeze through the crowd to collect it, then get the hell out of the place.

A different world greeted us on the Chinese side. All-weather roads, sheltered paths, patches of manicured greenery and an imposing immigration checkpoint building. There were individual counters and proper queues here. We entered one by one, had our luggage scanned and were off to the iconic Friendship Pass gate.

Many mainland Chinese make their way here for a daytrip. We saw them posing and snapping away. The whole place looked like a park - in sharp contrast with the scene just across the border. 4 of us regrouped after immigration and shared a taxi to Pingxiang town. The man from Pingxiang gave us a brief introduction of his hometown, only to be interrupted by the taxi driver who tried to correct him. An interesting, heated debate followed, bets were placed, but nobody went away richer or poorer.

I found out that Cantonese is very popular in Guangxi. Not only Guangxi, our young man from Guizhou also spoke Cantonese. The accent sounded a bit different from Hongkong’s but the notorious “t##w” word sounded exactly the same. It took us less than 20 minutes to get to Pingxiang town. At the time of the war, this place was just a village. Now, there are banks, shopping centres and a bus station. Everywhere, there were signs encouraging people to speak proper Putong Hua. Everywhere, I heard Cantonese.

It was about 15 deg C at Pingxiang. I pulled on my fleece jacket. Then, I changed my money at the bank and proceeded to the small bus station where I bought a ticket to Nanning. No trouble at all. There were many buses going to Guangxi’s provincial capital. I boarded the bus at about 5pm and 2 and a half hours later, I found myself surrounded by shopping centres and KFC at the monstrous Langdong Bus Station at Nanning.

It was already dark. I decided to get as far away from the border as possible, then make my way back. There was quite a crowd at the bus station, but this was the tail end of homebound migrant workers. I managed to get the last ticket on the bus to Guilin, departing at about 9pm. I had not eaten anything since breakfast, so I made my way the the canteen and ordered a chicken set meal. It didn’t taste good, but I was starving. Then, as I emerged from the toilet, a familiar face greeted me. It was that young man from Guizhou! What a coincidence. We sat down at the waiting hall of the bus station and had a good talk. He has been working in Vietnam for only a few months. His company dealt with power grids and the man from Xian was their consultant.

“Chan dai gor, I really envy the way you can travel for pleasure.”

“You too can do it if you make it your priority. You see, many people are so caught up with wealth-accumulation that they neglect some of the most basic and simple pleasure in life.” I said.

My bus was about to leave. I gave him my email address and and waved goodbye.

It was a business class coach, a huge improvement from the rusty sleeper buses I took in Yunnan 15 years ago. The no smoking regulation was also strictly enforced and apart from a few old and loud folks, spitting has become a far less a problem that it was years ago. On the bus, a uniformed hostess handed out drinks and snacks. Actually, the snacks included a bun and a banana. About 4 hours later, at 1am, we pulled into Guilin bus station. I stepped out of the bus and the cold wind told me that I hadn’t brought enough warm clothing. It was about 0 deg C.

From the bus station, I took a taxi to Daxin Fandian. It was 1am, but the counter was still manned by a young lady and her mentor. Y120 for a very nice room with heater, hot shower, TV and internet. From the window of my room, I could see the Sun and Moon Pagoda on the Rong Lake.

The hot shower and the room heater took a while to heat up. I used the kettle in the room to boil some water to make tea and instant noodles. The cold gave me the perfect excuse to uncork my bottle of Johnnie Walker Double Black. By the time I was ready for bed, it was almost 3am.

It was a cold and wet morning in Guilin on the 13th of February, Chinese New
Year’s Eve. I could vaguely see the Sun and Moon Pagodas from the window of my
hotel. The distant peaks were hardly visible at all. After a breakfast at KFC,
it started to rain. All hope of taking good pictures got washed away. I decided
to give the Li Jiang cruise a miss.

Instead, I went to Duxiu Feng, a 20-storey high outcrop that is said to offer good views
of the surrounding peaks and rivers. Interestingly, this feature has been
thoroughly exploited for profit. First of all, the peak is enclosed within the grounds of an
ancient palace (called Jing Jiang Palace) where descendents of the first Ming
emperor Zhu Yuan Zhang once stayed. Part of the palace is now the Guangxi Normal
University. Another part is a tourist trap. Y70 entrance fee gets you a guide
who will take you “into history”. It’s all pretty academic but interesting at
first. One of the buildings has been carefully constructed, displaying static
and dynamic exhibits with drama and special effects. There was plenty of
explanation on Fengshui or Geomancy and the meticulous attention to Fengshui
principles in the construction of the palace.

Finally, we came to Duxiu Peak. My whole aim of going there was really just to
climb this peak, but there was actually an entrance into the peak. Inside, the
guide showed us how to identify our “tai sui” or guardian angels according to
our year of birth. There are some 60 of these angels carved on the walls of the
cave. Once you’ve identified your “tai sui”, there is an elaborate way of paying
respect to it. The only straighforward gesture would be dropping money into the
box beneath each “tai sui”. Judging from the sheer number of people kneeling
down and bowing to their “tai sui”s, I couldn’t help wondering why decades of
Communism hadn’t placed even a dent on traditional Chinese beliefs.

After coming out of the cave, we were herded into a room selling paintings of
“tai sui”s. Some were worth thousands. There were also all sorts of lucky
charms. The guide kept shouting “don’t be in such a hurry to get out”. He must
be kidding. I found the stairs leading up to the top of Duxiu Peak and proceeded
to climb. It was a very easy climb, especially soothing was the background
music. Yes, they’ve actually embedded speakers in the rock to keep us
entertained while we climbed. Such is the “thoughtfulness” that goes into so many
tourist spots in China. Well, the view up there was bad due to the rainy weather.

Just before nightfall, I went to Elephant Hill Park. It’s a small park just a
short walk from my hotel and there is a very interesting rock formation that
requires little imagination for the beholder to see an elephant. It was still
drizzling at nightfall. It was Chinese New Year’s Eve. Except for a few
provision stalls, all shops were closed. The only eateries still open were KFC,
McDonalds and Pizza Hut. This must be the first time I had a burger for dinner
on Chinese New Year’s Eve. But all was not quiet. The cold and wet streets were
bombarded with firecrackers and fireworks, all privately sponsored and
unregulated. Deafening, smoky, random and uncoordinated. That’s what Chinese New
Year is all about.

Temperatures dropped further as we went deeper into the night. It must have been
subzero. Yet, no snow but a very light, persistent drizzle fell. Seeing the
beautiful lights, I took some night scenes. The lightings over Rong Lake were
simple yet elegant. The Sun and Moon Pagodas shone like a couple of swords
emerging from the lake. All through the night, a continuous burst of fireworks
from private individuals showered the pagodas with colourful shooting stars.

I realised I had no time to wait for the sky to clear. I decided to head to
Yangshuo and Li Jiang the next day.