Like two ships passing in the, er, early afternoon

"Is this the right way to put in the ticket?"

The question came from a tall thin gentleman in his late fifties, on the 373 bus. He was holding up his ticket and looking directly at me. The tickets here have big red arrows on them, indicating which way they should be inserted into the stamping machine. And I had a big red face on me, that should have indicated that I'm not from around these here parts, and so shouldn't be relied on for local information (or much else, for that matter).

I was confused by the question. I knew the answer alright, but I was still having trouble dealing with the fact that he had decided that I was the authority on that subject. In fact given the bloody great red arrow, I was having trouble dealing with the fact that the question was posed at all.

When I nodded in the affirmative (though in a wrinkle-browed, open-mouthed kind of way - I must have looked like a Barrystown pony boy) my new ticket-wielding friend looked very pleased with himself and went off to stamp it. When he came back, he saaid "Not bad eh? It's been 6 weeks since I rode a Sydney bus. The ol' memory hasn't let me down eh?"

Now when it comes to poor memory, I'm in no position to be casting first stones. But I have yet to find myself getting excited about remembering how buses work, or which way arrows point. There's time of course - as I mentioned, the gentleman had a good 20-year lead on me. But in the meantime, I reserve the right to be confused and slightly disturbed by this kind of misplaced triumhalism.

I just couldn't get my head around this conversation and it must have shown. I think at this point, the veil of stupidity that I sometime wear must have fallen suddenly and heavily over my features, and prompted the gentleman to explain further.

"I'm from the Bush", he said and sat back smiling, as if everything should now be clear.

It wasn't of course. I was now moving from general confusion on the content of this conversation, and how I might appropriately respond, to the more specific question about why anyone would describe themselves - much less excuse themselves - in these terms. "The Bush", as I understand it, means pretty much anywhere that isn't city, and correlates pretty closely with "down the country" - a phrase that Dubliners use when referring to any place in Ireland, at whatever compass bearing, that isn't Dublin. I can't imagine apologising for example, for not having exact change on a Dublin Bus by pleading "Sorry boy - mucksavage. Only up for the day."

As I sat there, teetering on the brink of this new confusion and unable to reply, he struck again.

"Canberra" he said.

I didn't know if he was elaborating on the previous answer, offering me an alternative one, or starting a whole new conversation. But I knew one thing for sure. If I didn't say something quick, he'd just keep going, and I'd have to do something that I'd never done before - ignore a perfect stranger attempting to strike up a conversation on a bus. If my mother ever found out, I wouldn't be able to come back home. I had to act.

"Canberra!" I shouted, with completely inappropriate enthusiasm. "We're thinking of going there!"

This, as it happens, is true. But I was in verbal defense mode, desperately aiming for a draw, and keeping one eye on the clock. I was capable of saying anything. Canberra - my uncle played silly mid quarterback half stop for the local cricket team between the wars. Or Canberra! Great town. I was born there - no no not in this life of course. But I resisted the rising panic.

"You must drop in!" he parried, without adding any further useful detail like an address, or for that matter, a motive.

I fumbled terrbily now. My bus stop was approaching. I gathered together my grocery bags, mumbled "Er, right" and headed for the exit. I may, or may not, have waved and shouted back "See you there" just before getting off the bus.

Sorry Mam - I tried.

Chinese Rules of the Road

I don't think you'll find these rules written down anywhere, but I have observed Chinese driving for 2 weeks now, and extracted the following basic rules:

1. The car is king, pedestrians are expendable scum. Every other form of road user fits somewhere between these two. Know your place.
2. The direction of flow of traffic for a given lane is subject to change without notice, and based on simple majority rule.
3. The meaning of the car horn, like the chinese language itself, depends a great deal on context. One sound can mean :
   
   a. I am going for that improbably small space - don't get in my way.
   
   b. I am about to overtake you (in a lane of my chosing) - don't try to stop me.
   
   c. I'm in a car. I'm travelling at speed. I'll honk if I bloody well want to honk.
4. Precendece is always given to those with the least to lose.
5. Traffic lights are not only decorative, they also serve as an indication of traffic conditions immediately ahead.

I may have missed some, in which case I'll add them afterwards. Assuming I survive another week of these rules.

Buckbeak in Xi'an

Beijing is already a 24-hour old memory. It is a monumental city. Quite literally. I think that almost every day we were there we visited a UNESCO World Heritage site. And it's changing almost daily. Our Rough Guide was bought only a year ago, but already it needs updating - including some of the maps! One of the last images of the city was of the face of a new tall office block builiding, with its glass front being hoisted into place one window at a time, while a steady raiin of welding sparks fell from the top floor above. And I have never seen a train station as large as Beijing Xi. It's larger than any airport in Ireland, and is relatively centrally located in the city. But again, it was well orgainized and I found it easy to make my way to the correct section to wait for our overnight departure to Xi'an (I found it a great deal harder to convince Letizia that I had found the right place, but I'm kinda used to that).

Xi'an is an altogether different proposition. From the outset, let me tell you that I think it's a fantastic spot, and even though we haven't gone to see the Terracotta Warriors yet, I'm very glad it was on the itineray. It's an older city than Beijing, with a longer imperial history. The warriors that we'll go to see tomorrow were created as part of the funeral ceremonies of one of the most important and most terrible of Chinese emperors: Shi Huangdi of the Qin dynasty, which although it goes back more than 2 millenia is probably where this country got it European name. Xi'an was Shi Huangdi's capital after he united, for the first time, what is now China.

Now it's a well-to-do provincial capital which thanks to its surviving city wall, has a walkable inner city. The highlight of this place has to be the Muslim quarter. This is a foodstall and market area spread across a large number of streets and alleyways. But there is nothing like the in-your-face street vendor attitude of Beijing. We still stood out like sore thumbs, and drew the occasional prolonged stare, but for reasons that I can't explain, this provincial capital seems more urbane and at ease with foreigners than the national capital.

Needless to say we got thoroughly and royally screwed at the market today - at least at the start. Letizia bought a set of chopsticks which I (very proudly) haggled down from 16 euro to 14, only to find the exact same ones around the corner for less than 4. We hadn't much intention of buying much or indeed anything today, but once we realised how lame we had been, we embarked on a series of terrifying reprisal purchases, buying things we neither wanted nor needed (which we will now have to post home from Shanghai) for prices that enduced scowls from the vendors. We're not proud of what we did, and we know that in the end, there were no winners here today(except for the bugger with the 16 euro chops).

On an unrelataed note, a Beijing Harry Potter poster provoked a dinnertime conversation about who in the family corresponded to which charactor in the Potter books. Sara needed almost no time to figure me out: Buckbeak. I ask you!? A combined 5000 pages or so of heros both major and minor, and I get Buckbeak. I think I might be posting more than just chopsticks from Shanghai.

Our original Great Wall plan was to go to the 3 hour distant Simatai section. In the end we opted for the closest and more touristy Badaling section, given that it's not high season. I wanted to find the #1 or #5 tourist bus which leaves from the very street our hotel is on, but I couldn't find it and we ended up on a tour bus. The price was more or less the same, and the kids went free. So no damage done.

The organisation and cleanliness of the first day gave way finally to the kind of chaotic mess that I was expecting. We were bumped from bus to bus, each one messier than the last before we finally got underway. The windows of the bus, like those of the hotel, werre cakes in dried, fine dust, and indication I suppose of how things can be here when the sky isn't as blue as it continues to be for us right now.

Most of the other tour passengers were Chinese, and our relative rareness as Westerners continues to surprise me. It took 1.5 hours or travel time to get to the Badaling section, and then out we got and started marching. We ignored the cable car option and walked to the main entrance. It was busy enough but not crazy, there were vendors aplenty but not as many as Tiananmen square, and everywhere were signs of present-day China. But the wall was magnificent.

The steepness of certain sections bordered on sheer drop but that didn't stop Sara. She hit the trail like a bargain hunter in a sale and we struggled to keep up with her. If she had her way we were going all the way to the Yellow Sea. She slept all the way there, and all the way back, but she gave the wall, and the overpriced hot chocolcate afterwards, her undivided attention.
(you can check out all our photos uploaded so far here)

It's already 2008 here in Beijing, and the jetlag has another day to run, I think, so I'm wishing you a Xinnian kuaile (Happy New Year) from a pre-dawn hotel room in Beijing.

Thanks for the comments on the previous entry. The Great Firewall of China lets me post to my blog, but not to read it (and so, not to reply directly to comments). Tomorrow we'll be staying nearby, going to the Temple of Heaven (that's right Mam - I'm going to to a church, and it's not even Sunday) and wandering slowly North to Qienmen to browse the older alleyways (hutong) of the city. We got a small taste of them yesterday when we needed a pharmacy, and I think it's going to be an interesting experience. We might even take in a show - more tomorrow.

Australian Car: Rent or Buy

Back to the theme of the budget, specifically with regard to transport.

A few months back, I was looking into the choice between renting a car for 12 weeks in Australia, and actually buying and reselling a car over the same period. The Rough Guide suggests that 8-10 weeks is the threshold over which buying and reselling starts to make economic sense. According to AutoBarn, the cutoff point is more like 6 weeks. But there are certain inherent risks involved as well, that rental doesn't entail:

• Breakdowns are at your own expense, and will delay you more;
• You may not get the resale price that you expected, especially if you have a plane to catch;
• There is a lot more paperwork and additional expense involved in becoming the owner of a car rather than the renter.

But renting in Oz is not cheap, and is in very stark contrast to the cost of car rental in New Zealand. I wonder why this is. The markets should be similar: Lots of tourists who want to cover long distances over extended periods of time. Whereas in NZ, there seems to be excellent competitive downward pressure on prices, in Australia, there's nowhere to run.

I asked Simon in Brisbane what he though, and he was able to give me some numbers, based on some visitors they had a while back. This is how it worked out for them (all prices in Australian dollars):

• Bought a car for around $11000
• Spent about $1500 on services through the 6 months
• Up for sale on a consignment lot, where you leave your car on their lot which they sell and take a 10% cut.
• Sold for around 8000.

Total cost: (11000 + 1500) - 8000 + 800 = 5300.

Insurance and registration will add a few hundred dollars to that, let's say 5500 in total.

The travellers in question were in Oz for 6 months, so this price was pretty good value (I think it was a station wagon). But 6 months is a long way off the cutoff that either the Rough Guide or AutoBarn are suggesting. Bringing it back to 3 months, the value is less tempting, especially considering that an equivalent rental for that time (calculated here) would work out at about $4300.

When you are travelling with kids it's vital that the car be comfortable and spacious. We discovered in Canada that the people carrier we rented was a big kick for the girls - they had a choice of seats, good views out of the windows and lots of 'secret compartments'. For that kind of vehicle, you have to add another $1700 for a rental, but a lot more to a purchase price.

The solution we've come to in the end is to not rent any car while we're in Sydney (that's 5 weeks), to rent a people carrier while we're on the road (3 weeks), and to rent a smaller car for the 4 weeks in Brisbane. Allowing an occasional weekend rental in Sydney, the budget works out at €2100 or AUS$3500. I'm happy to pay that for the comfort and peace of mind of rental.

Chinese Recycling and Travelling by Moral Submarine

It seems that in eco-vandal China, there might be more recycling going on in than in right-on Europe, even if folks there don't separate their rubbish. But as the article points out, there's plenty of fly-tipping going on too.

On matters environmental, Letizia has an interesting article over on her blog (italian and english versions) about the modern day equivalent of the medieval practice of selling indulgences: offsetting your own carbon emissions.

I must admit that I'm torn on this issue. I confessed (blimey - even more antiquated religious behaviour!) up front on this blog a long time ago, that our trip is indefensible from an ecological point of view. Folks who sail around the world with their kids (they exist!) are safely on the moral higher ground here. Given my lack of sailing expertise, I'm happier for us to travel physically well above sea-level even if we're in a moral submarine. (That was one of the more contorted metaphors you are likely to read this week. Altogether now - We All Live in a Moral Submarine...). But I do like the idea of a building the environmental impact of an activity into its price, and letting market pressures do the rest. Of course the marketplace only works well if there is transparency and trust in place - elements that are usually underwritten by national governments or international bodies. There's no sign yet of any standards being put in place, or met, by private sellers of carbon offsets. And that means more time in purgatory for me. Pass the chestnuts, will you?

China: Plane or Train

According to the Rough Guide, the price of a Soft Sleeper on the train (example pictured below) is about the same as a flight. I'm really tempted to fly in order to see more in the 3 weeks we'll be there, perhaps taking the train just once or twice. I have to confess that the main problems with the train is the toilets. From what I've learned, it's a case of 'first up, best dressed' - the soft sleepers don't have their own toilets, and if you want to be more sure of a clean start to the day, you need to get there first. Otherwise, all bets are off.



It wouldn't be a big deal for me if I were traveling on my own, but with wife and kids, the levels to which I'm prepared to descend are limited.

There's also the consideration of time saved. Instead of a 12 hour overnight trip to Xian from Beijing, for example, we're talking about a 2 hour flight. Perhaps a mix would be best - sticking with the train where I'm fairly sure the quality and cleanliness is likely to be high.