Words is all good and well, but travelling is also all about the sights. And so far I’ve had the pleasure of some amazing ones.
So true to form I’ve started uploading pics from my travels to my Flickr account. First up is Beijing and the Beijing to Hanoi train ride.
Beijing to Hanoi train ride Flickr set
Vietnam coming up next.
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I made it to Saigon two days ago. The train ride from Hanoi to Saigon was a lot different to what I’d expected. For some reason I guess I thought the trains would be nicer than the Beijing to Hanoi ones. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Maybe I got the wrong train after all, but while they’re good, they’re also far from modern. More like run down and shaky. Still you can’t complain. The beds are comfy enough to sleep, even if the rocking of the train would probably keep light sleepers awake. Failing that Vietnamese kids running rampant until the early hours and again from the early morning will probably be enough to stop you from sleeping.
The scenery though was a lot more amazing than anything I’d hoped for. The China to Vietnam ride was nice, but far from really captivating in terms of scenery. Maybe it was the grey skies and pollution, but while the landscapes do offer some interest and surprises going through China, they’re something entirely else in Vietnam - a lot more breathtaking, varied and impressive.
The highlight, always mentioned if you read about taking the train through Vietnam, is the leg between Hue and Da Nang, south of Hanoi and just before you reach the middle of the country. The train goes up the moutains along the coast, giving you stunning views of the coast, and if like me you’re lucky to also have sunshine and clear skies during the ride, it’s all the more hypnotic and attractive. Beautiful, unspoilt beaches give way to rugged coastlines where the forest drops into the sea, boats laze in the bays, and small towns pop up in the mountains and the coast, giving you an insight into countryside life in Vietnam. This leg of the journey lasts maybe about 2 or 3 hours, and if you take the 7pm train from Hanoi, it starts at around 9am, the perfect way to start a long day on the train.
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Without a doubt one of the reasons and motivations behind my trip, apart from wanting to take a break and see the world, is food. Having the chance to try out local dishes, taste new flavours, discover new things as well as see markets, ingredients and just how people are around food, is something I really love. It was a big reason behind my move to Japan, and I indulged aplenty while there, and now that I’m travelling around South East Asia it’s still one of the things that gets me really excited and hyped when I arrive somewhere.
I’ve been meaning to write about Japanese food in more detail, for well over 6 months now, but lazyness and life got in the way. I’ll get round to it eventually. Looking at my trip so far though, and considering I finished work at the beginning of June, my own little food oddisey started in Japan. With two weeks to kill before I left for China, a friend of mine came over for a holiday and we indulged in all manners of Japanese culinary delights, which was a great way to leave the country.
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I made it to Hanoi early yesterday morning after a 2 day train ride through China and the northern border between it and Vietnam.
The train ride itself was a lot nicer than I’d hoped. The train was comfortable, safe and reliable. Buying the tickets in Beijing wasn’t as tricky as I’d feared and overall it was an amazing journey, giving me a glimpse into China, even though I didn’t stop anywhere along the way. Just looking out of the window was enough to get a sense for the country - field upon fields of rice paddies interrupted by big cities, all concrete tower blocks, dust and factories. At times in the distance you’d see factories pumping out smoke, and as we got further south, jagged rocks and small mountains started to crop up, like those you see on the South East Asian coast, but strangely enough, these were all inland, a weird and fascinating sight. Amidst the fields the sights of people in traditional hats sowing seeds and picking up rice alongside ox pulling carts was a strange - a typical cliche, postcard picture but yet one that is still very true for a lot of rural China.
The cities were also pretty interesting. Having left Beijing’s oppressing pollution and strange architecture, it was actually pretty much more of the same. The influence and power of China’s communist past obviously stretching in all directions, which when you consider the size of the country is a pretty impressive feat. Most of the cities were all concrete tower blocks, dust and busy streets. Very grey, a feeling only made worse by the cloudy sky and huge amounts of smoke emanating from factories both on the outskirts of big cities and randomly found across the countryside.
Arriving in Hanoi, the feeling of chaos and noise I’d felt in Beijing only continued, and much to my surprise turned out to be a lot worse. Though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I’m realising now one week into a month in South East Asia, once you let the chaos just flow around you and learn to walk through it rather than be stunned and scared by it, it’s really not that bad at all. I think more than anything, my time in Japan really made me forget how life in a big city can really be, and this sensation of chaos is only amplified by the relative calm and order I came to learn to live with while in Tokyo. And when I say that, it’s not that Tokyo doesn’t have its own chaos, but it really is a lot more ordered and contained than anything I’ve seen on the Asian continent so far.
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Having now left China behind, there are still a few things I’ve been thinking about regarding the country and its people. I took a train from Beijing to Hanoi, a two nights, one day journey which gave me plenty of time to think but also observe the rest of the country as we crossed the majority of it going south.
As I mentioned in my earlier post one of the things that really shocked me about Beijing, and which seems to be echoed by a lot of people who visit it or live there, is how polluted the city is. The fact that I visited in early summer when the heat was going up definitely didn’t help, but I was really taken back by how smoky the city was and felt, how dusty you ended up after a few hours of walking around and just how oppresive the pollution felt.
Taking the train south, that feeling was only continued as we crossed provinces, all covered by clouds and a definite sense of more pollution, white smoke emanating from countless factories either on the side of the tracks or in the distance. In nearly 6 days spent in China I saw the sky for maybe 4 hours in total on one day. And that really makes you think.
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To go hand in hand with a series of features I’m doing on a new wave of hip hop and electronic producers, which I mentioned a little while back, I’ve finished a mix featuring tracks from these very same producers.
In the past some of that stuff has been labeled glitchy, more recently wonky or bassy even but really it’s not about a term or another box to put things in, to me it’s just some fresh and exciting music. Of all the terms that can be used I like wonky the most because I find that in a lot of cases it does really define the music some of these guys make quite well. But I use the term really loosely and it’s really more of an excuse to mix stuff together which has got me really excited over the last 6 to 12 months. To me all this stuff is really a throwback to the days of the old boom bap, when tracks just made you want to bang your head and break your neck. It’s a real breath of fresh air for hip hop and music in general.
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I left Japan on wednesday this week, on a little ‘world tour’ of places I’ve always wanted to visit. It’s nice to be able to take a break for a couple of months even if the specter of money and ’security’ always hangs up somewhere in the background. Still you only live once and having lost my job at the paper in Tokyo, the occasion to take a break and travel was too good to pass, especially as being in Tokyo meant that parts of the world I’ve always wanted to visit were a lot closer and easier to get to.
The trip started in Beijing, where I’ve been for about 4 days. It wasn’t the place I originally wanted to start my trip from, but I realise now that it’s actually quite a fitting way to start. And that’s because Beijing is truly a world away from Tokyo in many many ways.
Even though my time here has been short, it’s been really vivid and enjoyable, full of surprises, impressions and discoveries. If I had to try and sum up Beijing in a few words it would have to be: smoky, chaotic and surprising.
Chaotic is definitely the impression that will stay with me the most after I leave this town. Coming from Tokyo with its relative organisation, cleanliness and hypercapitalist overtones, Beijing just hits you upside the head. The place is chaotic in so many ways, it took a little while to get my head around it after being in Tokyo for so long. But while this chaotic element is surprising, and daunting, it’s also incredibly refreshing.
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