Belize: pink gins or coco locos?

Standing by a dusty jungle road in the blue pre-dawn gloom, fending off hungry mosquitoes and cursing the crowing cockerels, we waited for a bus which was more than a little behind schedule.

Once more I found myself questioning what I was doing. What was it that made me willing to crawl out of my comfortable cocoon at such an offensively early hour?


I was still struggling for an answer several hours later as we bumped along a pitted road as the sun climbed lazily into the sky.

It was only when the road ended abruptly in a small collection of ramshackle huts that it came back to me. It was a border crossing and we were leaving Guatemala and crossing over into Belize.

Belize. Suddenly my grumpiness melted to be quickly replaced by eager anticipation. The Caribbean! Sunshine! Big smiles! Paradise beaches!

Even better than all this we’re entering a country which finally speaks in a language I can understand, for here in Belize, unlike anywhere else in central America, English is the main spoken language.

Strange. Thousands of miles from home and six weeks into Latin America and suddenly I find myself speaking my own dear mother tongue. Shakespeare! Wordsworth! Morrissey!
How could this be?

Well it’s a story equally as colourful as the country itself, with vague and twisted versions abounded but, in brief, it seems to have happened thus:

Thanks to the exploits of a few honest pirates, some plucky adventurers and frankly insane logcutting ‘baymen’ this tiny piece of central America came to be coloured in pink on the map, another odd part of the global jigsaw which once was the British Empire.

Like many wax-moustached imperial romps it seems to have occurred more by accident than design. The various aforementioned ner do’wells dwelt in the swamps and lagoons of this piece of what was, at least nominally Spanish territory, much to the purported rightful owners ire.

Despite Spain’s best attempts to claw back their territory these doughty fellows held out, stubbornly withstanding the might of Spain rather like the indomitable Gauls of Asterix’s village defied the Romans legions.

Though tacit at first, the British government soon found itself lending support to these buccaneers and rascals, quickly embroiling itself in rather an embarrassing situation, repelling the furious advances of Spain’s embassies at home and navies in Belize.

Eventually, following a bit of a skirmish on the cayes the British found themselves, almost reluctantly, in possession of a new little bit of real estate bordering the sun-kissed shores of the Carribean.

They soon set out their task of bossing people about whilst wearing knee-length socks and pith helmets and generally anglicising their new little tropical garden, calling it British Honduras in case anyone forgot who it belonged to. Oh and they made sure that everyone spoke English, for the future benefit of homesick travellers.

Fast forward to the present and although Belize has a different name and has been a fully independent nation for nearly thirty years I wondered, as we crossed the border, does the colonial hangover still linger?

There were certainly still some symptoms: besides the language there was the Queen on the currency and, as our bus set off into the Belizean interior (along the Western highway, one of only two roads connecting Belize to the outside world) we spotted red fire engines, village associations and post offices.

It was threatening to morph into some weird, sun-baked version of 1950s Britain, mutated by the Caribbean sun.

I half expected to bump into a retired colonel, resplendent in double-breasted blazer, cufflinks and panama, pink gin at the ready. “Are the papers ironed yet, Jeeves?” Surely at least, I’d be in with a shout of a decent cuppa (certainly the greatest deprivation I‘ve had to endure on this whole trip).

But this was Belize not Britain, and soon the country proved to be something quite, quite different. And very beautiful to boot.

We trundled through a gently rolling landscape of lush green hills, thick forest, coconut palms and banana plants. The villages were small and straggly, full of white clapboard bungalows, some on them on stilts, all with corrugated iron roofs painted red or green.

Signs advertised crocodile parks and attorney-at-laws. They pointed to places with new-and exotic-sounding names: ‘Spanish Creek‘, ‘Duck Run’, Iguana Creek’, ‘Roaring Creek’.

There wasn’t much on the road and what there was seemed mainly to head in the other way. It mostly seemed to be composed of a curious mix of either lycra-clad cycle touring groups, out for a Sunday speed, or British army convoys headed for jungle adventures.

What little else traffic there was our driver appeared to know personally, greeting approaching cars with a casual wave of the arm or a brief shouted exchange of greetings.

It was peaceful and relaxed, no-one moved fast in the blazing sun. A woman hung out washing on a rickety wooden front porch; vultures scavenged at a dump; Land Rovers stood for sale at a grassy car lot; a huge trailer rattled by, stuffed to the brim with oranges.

Somehow I could feel the Carribean ahead of us, just over the horizon, tempting us on with promises of white sands and tropical waters.

It didn’t take long in coming: we whizzed past Belmopan, the smallest capital city in the world (population 5,000), past mangrove swamps and ‘Gentle Ben’ boats, small skiffs with large fans on the back to power them across the shallow waters, and into the raffish port of Belize City, set on the edge of the twinkling, turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

It was more seedy than seductive. Large blokes in grubby vests lounged around munching on chicken and rice, chomping through thick slices of watermelon.

We took a stroll up towards the seafront, the heady whiff of marijuana drifted across the swampy air as we tripped over rusting cannons and admired fading old white clapboard houses, the peeling paint on their white picket fences dating from the days when Belize City was the capital.

Eyeing up the lovely Lara, ‘taxi’ drivers rumbled slowly past in creaking old pimpmobiles, offering to ‘drive you to airport mon, cheeep. Airport? What’s one of those?

It was scruffy but intriguing, and none more so than the people. As a result of its colourful past and vibrant present the various cultures which have adopted Belize as their home present a list of ingredients which together add up a heady cocktail which is uniquely Belizean.

First, to make your base, take a liberal helping of the indigenous Mayan tribal people, the original inhabitants of the region.

Next mix in a generous drop of Creoles and a jot of Garifuna, most of them descendents of slaves brought over from other Caribbean colonies.

Add to this a good splash of Ladino (itself a good mix distilled over 500 years of breeding between the descendents of the Spanish conquistadors and original Mayan inhabitants) and let it settle.

Then, to give the cocktail a European twist add a few English pirates and logging prospectors, before chucking in a handful of East Indians and other (former) colonials.

Finally bring your cocktail bang up to date with Westerners gone to seed and a new good dash of Chinese and Robert’s your Mother‘s brother.

Some of these groups have become gradually familiar to us as we have headed along our route, others have appeared suddenly and visibly.

Take the Creoles for instance, who suddenly appeared as we crossed over the border. They’re much larger than the Maya over the border, and speak an entirely different language.

Though based on English it sounds rather different than standard home counties, spoken in a wonderfully rich, lilting accent, seemingly unchained by rules.

I’ve always made an effort to communicate in the local lingo (invariably to little effect) and so took the trouble, when reaching this country to consult the appropriate section of my guidebook.

What I’ve found is a whole different ball park. I can’t even attempt this - surely I’ll sound like I’m taking the mick.

Try saying this for instance:

Eksyooz mi, weh di poas aafis deh?

Apparently this means: Excuse me, where is the post office?

Or this one:

Ah gat sohn doti kloaz fu wash

(I have some dirty laundry for washing)

Could you keep a straight face?

It sounds even more bizarre when spoken with a Chinese accent.

Chinese? Yes there’s Chinese people here. Lots of them.

Indeed the first thing we saw in Belize was a clutch of Chinese restaurants and ‘lucky‘ stores, straggling along the road into the country.

And the first thing we saw at our destination, the idyllic island of Caye Caulker was a bunch of Chinese shops.

What are they doing here? The locals furrow their brows and mutter about them ‘buying up the country’. I hope they make a better job of it than back in Yangzhou.

For now any approaching sino-apocalypse seems a long way off, particularly as I kick off my boots, feel the sand beneath my feet and take in the scenes around me.

The sun beats down on the shallow blue and green waters of the Caribbean, surf breaks on the coral reefs offshore and pelicans, frigate birds and ospreys fill the blue skies.

Reggae booms out from the bars by the shore and barefooted tourists stroll slowly down the car-free streets; dreadlocked locals greet us with big toothy grins and invite us to try their coco locos. We pass by a sign with the island’s motto displayed on it: ‘Go Slow’ (surely this is the spiritual home of World in Slow Motion) and I wonder: is this paradise?

A beach towel hangs from a nearby shop nearby; the slogan emblazoned across it reads: ‘Ya better Belize it!’

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A dragon, awake?

From high up on our ship, the Hugo, I gaze out across Hong Kong’s International Container Terminal.

This pulsating new world is full of strange new sights and sounds, like some massive new planet straight from the mind of George Lucas.

Against a backdrop of tower blocks, between the sea and sweeping expressways this massive port never rests. Huge metal containers are neatly stacked up, one on top of the other, row after row after row, like some monstrous supermarket.

Giant machines preside over these containers, mechanical monsters staking out their territory. War of the Worlds meets Bladerunner.

The huge cranes run on rails, their massive legs either side of the rows of containers. One in front of us slides regally up to a heavy container, plucks it up into the air and plonks it onto a waiting, long, gaunt trailer.

The lorry’s chassis shudders under the impact; in this land of giants large trucks seem tiny, one of hundreds of automobile ants scuttling around the crowded loading bays, in a constant rush to keep their Queen fed.

She waits at the dockside - an enormous gantry crane.

This leviathan, one of many lined up along the waterfront, dwarfs even the picker cranes, her operator, high up in his cabin, a mere speck in the sky.

With a pull of a lever his charge reaches down and relives the lorry of its burden, whisking a 40 foot container high into the air, his cabin shooting out over a waiting container ship, and swiftly lowering the cargo into the bowels of the boat.

Another container loaded - a few thousand to go.

A few hours sailing up the coast, from the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong to ‘the mainland’ proper and the port of Yantian, the scene is repeated. Great containers taken on board, others unloaded.

Yantian is the port for Shenzhen - one of China‘s maritime gateways to the world. As we waited at the dockside I mused on our recent visit to this city.

Back in the 1980s, in the days of Deng, the enlightened Premier opened up this little settlement, on the borders of the British-held New Territories to outside economic forces.

As one of his Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen was allowed to wander down the path of the ‘capitalist running dogs’, to experience the pleasures and pains of capitalism relatively unhindered - something unthinkable only a few years before.
Shenzhen rocketed in size, from a town of 30,000 in 1970 to the present bulging megalopolis of some 14 million. It’s ballooning was such that, by 1990 the city had even outgrown the local energy supply, requiring the construction of a brand new nuclear power station.

Today other Chinese cities have caught up and share the same appearance as Shenzen. Booming metropolises in this overstuffed duvet of a country.
There’s less to distinguish them from each other (and perhaps from many elsewhere in the world?) as they tend towards the universal blueprint from which many local authorities seem to take their cue.
They’re becoming identikit cities, as if they are constructed from some massive ready-to-assemble pack. Cram your steel and glass skyscrapers into the centre; thread your huge, radiating freeways out to the edges.
We hurried headlong through Shenzhen into Hong Kong, crossing the border into Lo Wu.

A filthy little river, strewn with rubbish and framed by barbed wire and huge hoardings for the latest electronic gadgets denotes the border. You cross it via an enclosed pedestrian walkway, through shopping arcades and following signs reading ‘please leave the country by [the] lift’.


By doing so we followed in the footsteps of millions of immigrant Chinese who once left their homeland in search of a better life in the West.

Back to the present, on board the Hugo, I considered how these migratory patterns are changing, as the balance of economic power in the world shifts East.
China’s ’economic miracle’ is by no means unheard of back home. It’s origins are dissected in the Sundays and Newsnight specials, its knock-on effects muttered about down the pub and the gym.
It’s expanding its economic muscles, growing in confidence and might.
From the 50 million containers it moves annually at present this is projected to grow to a gobsmacking 100 million in 2020.
This region is right at the forefront of this.
I need look no further than the scene in front of me, unfolding before us. Mountains of manufactured goods, all bagged up and ready to be shipped, direct to our doorsteps.

Indeed here in Shenzhen are produced all the world’s ipods and apple computers (surely then without this city our global civilisation would take a terrible tumble).

Yet it seems strange that this is occurring in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line, where people still pull handcarts.

Economic progress in China it seems comes at different speeds for different people.

Still the giant - or perhaps more appropriately, the dragon - is awake, he’s fully alert and throwing all his muscle into it.
The forces of global power are shifting, revolving around pivots such as Yantian.

In the West we seem to delight in prophesizing our doom here, scaring ourselves silly. Of course that doesn’t stop us relocating our factories and services here, or buying their products, in our desperate lust for a bargain.
Nor does it allow for there the argument that perhaps there is room for more than one economic superpower in this new world order.
Must the international order follow the laws of Newtonian physics, where the rise of one will see the consequent decline of the other?

In this other power, the United States of course, there’s considerable concern: talk about power already seeping away; the inevitable end of the American hegemony, the inexorable decline of US might.
Is this the true picture of what’s happening? We’ll soon find out for ourselves as we travel between these two great countries.

Uncle Sam’s up next but in the meantime there’s the small matter of a great Ocean to cross.




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Hong Kong - in between China and Los Angeles

Hong Kong is, as Tom would call it, a WISM* hotspot. It is a place where the cultures of the country we are leaving and the country we are headed towards collide. Like two records being mixed, rustic, exotic, communist China is faded out and the modern, familiar, capitalist West (in this case Los Angeles) is added in. Hong Kong is those moments in the mix when you wonder if the DJ will miss a beat or make a seamless transition.

As soon as we crossed the border from Shenzhen in China to Lu Wo in Hong Kong (an easy border crossing; simply follow the signs to Hong Kong once you get off the train; British passport holders don‘t need a visa) it felt different. It felt like the concourse at a large British train station and the train into the town centre (Tsim Sha Tsui) was like an overground London underground train. Hong Kong felt unusually familiar with British road names (Dundas Street, Lambeth Walk), double decker buses and fish and chips readily available.
Hong Kong is unashamedly consumerist and much more established in comparison to mainland China. The whole point of Hong Kong seems to be earning money and spending it. The stacks of skyscrapers are emblazoned with the flashing names of banks and financial institutions whilst at street level Prada, DKNY and all the other labels that have been so carefully faked elsewhere in China are authentically on sale.

It is so easy to spend money in Hong Kong. Along with the labels are all the Western coffee shop and restaurant chains, exclusive patisseries and fashionable boutiques, that make parts of it feel like Hampstead in London. Everything in Hong Kong is a lot more expensive than mainland China, but it’s probably cheaper than Los Angeles. After the cheap living of S.E. Asia we needed to prepare for the transition. No more eating in restaurants three times a day, now it‘s convenience stores and cheap holes in the wall.

Like the other island between China and the United States, Hong Kong feels a bit like Japan. Both have a similar blend of East meets West, but whereas Japan cherishes its history, all that obviously remains of Hong Kong’s heritage is the steadfast Star Ferry. Hong Kong has swept the past away and is all about the future, whereas Japan has taken the past and given it a modern edge. Like Soothe, a fantastic Japanese band we saw in Hong Kong harbour, whose tagline is ‘tradition and modernity’ - an edgy modern band performing on traditional Japanese instruments (they were so good I couldn‘t resist a plug).

Another key concept in Hong Kong is up. Everything happens above you. In China life happens on the street, in Hong Kong it happens in the sky. Here, land is at a premium and rents are high, so shops, restaurants and internet cafes are all hidden away up narrow staircases with only a sign and sometimes a tout to let you know they exist. Watching the cranes in the port load cargo onto our ship reminds me of Hong Kong. Upon entering a building, the lift, like the crane, picks you up and drops you off in your box. For rooms there are no more than boxes. It’s a very claustrophobic city.

Hong Kong is a real feat of human engineering and looks quite fantastical. How this tiny island and block of mainland can be such a powerful economic dynamo is amazing. And it’s still growing. Land is being reclaimed from the harbour to build more skyscrapers for the financial sector to fill.

As well as being an awesome creation, to me it looks how I imagine the end point of human civilisation to look. The point when the land is so full that the only place to move is into the sea and where the environment is so polluted the air is brown and it is never gets dark. It does make for an amazing light show though.

Sad as I am to say good bye to Asia’s noodles, dumplings and squiggly writing, Hong Kong has whetted my appetite for cheese, red wine and the ability to communicate in a common language. Hong Kong was the perfect go-between between China and the United States, and the next two weeks on a ship across the Pacific will provide the ideal time to reflect and look forward. Out of the mix and onto the next record.

*World in Slow Motion

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Yangshou: dead dogs, bicycles and randy water buffaloes

Yangshou, Guangxi. I’d read that, in the past, this was a sleepy little backwater, a haven discovered by those mystical wandering itinerants: ‘early backpackers’ (sounds like some new age of man).

Back then they adopted it as some hippy hangout, a quiet and relaxed place where everything was genuine and they could see some of the ‘real China’.

Today, if you consider yourself a spiritual descendent of these hippies don’t bother to visit: it’s an empty shell of its former shelf. Yangshuo is a town ruined by tourism, a monument to its excesses, where the corporations have taken over, bussing the groups in, buying up the streets and filling them with flimsy, tacky replicas of their former selves.

This is the living nightmare of mass tourism, Chinese-style. Any new hunk of meat cruising into town is sized up, chewed over and squeezed for every yuan they’ve got. Hotels are the worst - cold and damp prisons where staff are rude and obnoxious, pressing you to take tours or visit their friend’s shop.

The streets heave with tourist toot, useless merchandise and hideous variants of local traditions, scrubbed down, dressed up and flogged to death.

In Yangshuo it was one of my pet-hates: stupid reedy flute-type thingies. Usually fashioned out of a gourd or a piece of driftwood or something else suitably rustic their musicians whack out an incessant tuneless warbling, their faces a picture of timeless bliss, as they try to flog you a scratched CD from their shelves.

It turned the whole town into some kind of outdoor beginners recorder class, though I’m sure even my chums and I produced a better noise back when we were seven.

I might sound jaded, perhaps even cynical but I’m sorry there’s nothing authentic about this - they are not bucolic tunesmiths, they are aural menaces.

I must have been in this part of the world too long. Or perhaps it was the sight of great lumps of dead dog hanging up in the market, either way something had gone bang in my mind, causing me to suddenly loathe this country, blind me to natural beauty around us.

After all, this was Yangshuo and the Li River, home of the world-famous and unique landscape of Karst peaks.

I needed something different to put me right, something that would get me away from all the filth and the storm.

I needed a bicycle.

Across Asia, pedal power has been a fine friend of ours. From the suburbs of Kyoto to the Hutongs of Beijing, we have found no finer way to see the life and get up close to daily life. It had never let me down and now I needed it more than ever.

We hired a couple of basic rides, wheeling them out of the shed at the back and through the hairdresser’s salon from whom we’d hired them. Pointing north we took to the road, pedalling furiously to put some distance between us and the flute and dead dogs.

The road was busy and noisy, we were coated with dust thrown up by large trucks. We stayed to the verges which, surprisingly sensibly the Chinese had a habit of incorporating into such roads.

The peaks pushed up all around us, crowded out corn fields, casting large shadows.

We turned off the road and headed for the sticks, choosing a rutted little track leading towards a little group of mud brick houses.

The roar died down behind us, we slackened our pace.

Breathe.

Peace.

It’s beautiful.

The track shadows a small river, weaving in and out of the odd house. In between lie hayricks and harvested paddy fields where water, water buffalo wallowing in muddy holes, and modest little orchards.

The rice may have been gathered but the scene is still fecund, the trees in the orchards groaning with fruit, apples and persimmons, oranges and pomellos.

And all around the Karst peaks dominated, towering over the scene like giant sentinels. Poking up suddenly through flat fields like mushrooms after the rain.

The scene is bewitching, so much so we had to stop every few minutes to take yet another photograph.

Soon we come across a wreck of a building, hard to tell whether it’s going up or coming down. A signs reads “The restaurant at the end of the Universe” - perhaps they need to work on their sales pitch.

Lara’s been excitedly eyeing up the pomellos - huge, light-green fruit, like monstrous pears - ever since we arrived in Guangxi. Now she spies an orchard full of the monsters on the other side of the yard.

A woman shuffles up to us, a baby cocooned up in a bundle on her back. She watches the new Caucasians admiring her trees and picks a couple of oranges, handing them to us. They're green on the outside, delicious on the inside.

Lara hands over three yuan and gets the pick of the orchard: choose your pomelo. She zones in on a particularly impressive-looking specimen and soon it's filling up the basket on the back of my bag, like a mutant prize from an easter egg hunt.

We cycle on, only stopping soon after for yet another photograph.

A woman trots past, leading a large water buffalo.

The creature becomes excited as it spied a female in the field up ahead. The bull starts communicating with the object of its affection, uttering strange squeeking noises, more bird-like than beast.

The female turns and he charges forward, dragging its helpless owner behind it.

An old man sitting nearby, puffing on his bamboo pipe, watches this and laughs, then comes to the woman’s aid, thwacking the randy old bull with a branch as it gets intimate with its new female friend.

We cycle on, past a woman washing clothes in a pond, and a group of boisterous blokes playing cards, their loud dance music booming out across the still air, incongruous in such a timeless, bucolic setting.

They shout out excitedly to us; we continue, bouncing on the worn stones peeking up through the dirt.

People working in the fields look up as we approach and wave, a stooped old man in a dirty Mao hat grins through a gappy mouth.

Others run up to us and motion taking a photo, gappy smiles, wind-chaffed faces, posing for nice rustic pictures, hands out for yuan.

Two woman loom up ahead, each carrying a young child in a basket slung on shoulder poles. Too good to resist: I take the shot and soon my notes are being rifled through - grubby yuan gone for that perfect framed photo for the lounge.

On again, through more fields and small yards, where chickens scatter in front of us, past another grove of persimmons, more banana plants, more bamboo thickets.

A kingfisher darts across the track in front of us, an electric blue bolt in the dimming light.

Finally a t-junction appears and we tip into the narrow streets of a village. We draw stares, people sizing us up but we’re past before they can catch our attention.

Back onto the tarmac and across a bridge and we’re back on the road to Yangshuo.

Back at one with China once more my mind turns to dinner. Hmmm perhaps I'll have dog tonight, serenaded with a nice reedy flute in the background...

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Laos. Enchante.

We have crossed the border from China, south into Laos. En route we passed through some of the wildest, most remote terrain I have ever encountered.

It was also some of the most beautiful.

Our road wound along river valleys, their thick, muddy waters chocked with debris from the recently-passed moonsons. We skirted steep mountain sides and passed through tiny villages, with small thatched huts sat on stilts, children, chickens and little pigs scattering in our path.

And all along the thick, green jungle shadowed us, lining the route and stretching out across the hills as far as the eye could see.

The road was long, the journey arduous and slow. Our tiny little road bumped up and down, veered left and right and never ever seem to run straight for more than a few metres. No wonder Laos wasn’t accessible by road until about ten years ago.

Finally, after nine hours of bumping up and down we arrived at our Eldorado: Luang Prabang.

An ancient imperial capital of this wondrous country…an enchanting town of golden temples and the exotic mysteries of the east…an outpost of mankind standing at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers...and all a bit….French.

Upon arrival I was amazed , and rather charmed, to be addressed in French by the elderly Madame of our guesthouse. Enchante.

It didn’t stop there. The town is chokker with battered old French-style buildings, crumbling colonial houses with long thin shutters, rickety balconies, and outside walls whitewashed against the tropical sun.

On the main street, Sisavangvong Road, all kinds of treats await the homeless Parisian, from baguettes and quiche lorraine to tarte aux pommes and milles feuilles. And of course the excellent, thirst-quenching Beer Lao - a French lager if ever there were one.

I half expected Arthur Bostrom’s hapless gendarme/British agent character from ‘Allo ‘Allo to saunter by, waving his nightstick and greeting us, ‘good moaning’.

Across the road from our guesthouse we can hear young children learning French at the French language school; around the corner we had a nice chat with a friendly chap from Clermont-Ferrand who runs one of the town’s numerous bookshops.

My Francophile father would love it, though it did leave me wondering quite why the French went to the trouble of colonising a place which, despite it’s numerous charms, is rather inhospitable.

There must have been good reason to do so, after all the French were only one country in a long line of others to which the Lao people found themselves rather reluctant hosts. The Burmese, the Thais, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, even the Americans have also left their mark on this little nation.

Add into the mix a whole host of different ethnic groups, stir in the rise and fall of an imperial family and add a good measure of communism and Laos comes out with a rather interesting and unique flavour.

The people have certainly changed from those amongst whom we walked yesterday, on the other side of the Chinese border. Not only do they look decidedly different but their character is a refreshing change to the ebullient, noisy Chinese.

Quiet and shy, Lao people seem reticent to accost the numerous wealthy foreigners strolling about their town.

No shopkeepers hassle you here, rather you have to hassle them, waking them from their slumbers as they doze in the afternoon heat.

No rickshaw drivers harangue you mercilessly, instead they crouch in the shadows, perhaps offering a rather halfhearted sales pitch: ‘cheap cheap’.

No crowds, no pushing, no shoving, no spitting.

You can put your elbows away when you leave China and enter Laos, for it’s suddenly very well mannered once more. Smiles, apologies, bowing. Is it all going Japanese again?

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How to…travel from China to Laos overland

Mohan is the only border crossing from China to Laos. There are a number of ways to get there and once you do the procedure is simple as long as you have dollars and long arms.

We took the 15 hour night bus from Dali to Jinghong [180 yuan]. Buses also depart for Jinghong from Lijiang and Kunming. From Jinghong it is an easy three hour bus journey to Mengla [35 yuan] where we had to spend the night to take the morning bus to Luang Prabang, Laos. There is one bus daily that leaves at 7.50am and takes a good 12 hours including immigration and customs time [98 yuan]. It is a sleeper bus so has beds for lounging, not seats; rather a luxurious way to travel when you don’t need to sleep. Buses also depart from Kunming to Luang Prabang and Vientiane.

The bus stops at Mohan, the last town in China before Laos, where everyone disembarks and you walk 100 metres down the road to the immigration queue. Hand is your China departure card and get an exit stamp. You then have to wait to get back on the bus while Chinese customs search under the beds, open people’s boxes and shake coconuts. Then you drive on to Laos.
Three minutes later you get off at Boten, the first town in Laos after China. You can buy your Laos visa upon arrival. Go to the window with the blue sign reading ‘Visa arrival unit’ to fill in a form, and hand over a passport photo, your passport and $35 dollars. You are then given your Laos visa (30 days for Brits).

Next you need to get your arrival stamp. Go to the next window on the left and fill in an arrival form. Take it to the window with the red ’Check in’ sign and join the scrum. Most people going into Laos are Chinese so the Chinese queuing system applies. Sharpen your elbows and wade in. Thrust your passport and form through the window and keep pushing until an official takes it and stamps it. Then you can get back on the bus. For another ten minutes.

Laotian customs follow and depending on what your fellow passengers are carrying this can take some time, an hour or more. Our coach contained boxes of chillies, bags of rice and flour and a sack of cabbages. Why would you take rice and cabbages to Laos?

Finally on the road for the nine hour bus potholing experience and the scenery starts to change. It gets warmer, there are more banana plants and concrete box buildings are replaced by thatch huts on stilts. It starts to feel very tropical and remote. There are noticeably more children in Laos than China and an abundance of potbellied pigs that decrease in number as you head south. Women wear sarongs, not trousers and there is a lot more mud and dust. It is the most extraordinary way to enter a country and was quite a surprise when we terminated in the French style backpacker oasis of Luang Prabang during their Ork Phansa and Lai Hena Fai (end of Buddhist lent and end of rains) Festival. Talk about arriving with a bang!

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Turning to the bottle?

“We should get some plastic bottles to wee into”.

It wasn’t a typical suggestion from Lara. But then, we weren't in a typical situation.

We found ourselves crammed in with 30 other Chinese people on a sleeper bus down to the south of Yunnan province.

Catching the bus at Dali, we found the bus almost full. The choice of beds was thus limited…to the very beds any traveller wishes to avoid on China rudimentary rural roads - those right at the back.

Squeezed into our five-foot berths, clutching our bags tightly to our persons, we weren’t exactly eagerly anticipating this journey. 15 hours, through the night, on a bus reeking of BO and full of scary-looking types. Oh and with no toilet on board.

We had been warned about these buses: ripe for thieves; poor safety records; drivers popping funny-looking pills to keep themselves awake.

Perhaps we should have headed back to Kunming rather than attempt this shortcut, skirting along the edge of the Burmese border all the way down to Xishuangbanna in the tropical south of Yunnan.

A tubby chap in front of us didn’t seem to share our concerns. He yawned, scratched his crotch and smoothed his whispy moustache, a soup-strainer teasing the corners of his mouth.

Tubby wore the usual attire of polyester jogging bottoms, a worn-out t-shirt and pungent nylon socks. No wonder the bus stank.

After an hour and a half on the road, the driver turned off and steered his vehicle into a dusty yard. On opposite sides dirty fuel tankers were lined up. A couple of mangy dogs drifted about in front of them, sniffing each others’ behinds.

At one end I could make out what looked like a public lavatory, at the other a chap in a old cream suit and spotty tie implored this new batch of potential customers to savour the delights of his dingy restaurant.

I plumped for the WC. I soon wished I hadn’t. A stygian nightmare of a place.

Stepping inside I was almost overpowered by the reek of a thousand digested stir fries.

Beneath bare bulbs a line of grunting men squatted, their behinds clearly visible to all for each ‘cubicle’ consisted of a low wall, minus door. Above an overspilling trench, which had clearly long since had a good flush through, they crouched, shouting to their mates and even smoking cigarettes.

I desperately searched for a free, and perhaps slightly sanitary spot and made my leave as soon as possible. Back on earth’s surface I staggered out into the yard, gulping in air like an asphyxiated asthmatic.

Walking over into the half-light of the restaurant entrance, I came across Tubby and his wife. He stood proud, his legs far apart and hands on his hips, making half-hearted stretches and fully-committed guttural sounds.

Tubby’s copious burps rattled the windows, his hocking-up rocked the ground. The earth nicely coated in his spittle he raised his t-shirt and patted his rotund midriff contentedly.

At last, when he had run out of cigarettes our driver reappeared and squeezed into his seat behind the wheel. We were back on the road.

Many passengers chose to eschew the charms of Jackie Chan on the temperamental on-board televisions and got down to the serious business of sleeping. We did similar. Or tried to. A good night’s kip on this night bus soon proved to be rather elusive.

The road conditions were atrocious, with more bumps than flat. And our driver seemed to have a taste for offroading. Indeed, speeding through the mountains, I wonder whether our bus touched asphalt at all during that long, long night.

Lying in my prime anti-gravitational positions at the back of the bus I seemed to spend more of the time in mid-air than on my bunk.

Whilst Lara had wisely found a belt of some sort with which she managed to strap herself firmly to her berth I contented myself with shooting up into the air at every bump. Crashing back down onto my bunk I winced with the impact

Sleep, or at least more than the odd doze, was impossible. Instead, in between the snatched periods of semi-conciousness, I grasped the handrails and admired the landscape, bathed in the light of the full moon.

The road intermittently followed the course of the Lancang River, destined to become the mighty Mekong at the Laotian border.

Having already come across this river, on the fringes of the Tibetan plateau, this river will soon become an old acquaintance, as we follow it, on and off in the next few weeks, through Laos, along the border with Thailand, across Cambodia and down into Vietnam, where it finally empties into the sea, chanelled through the Mekong Delta.

Leaving the river behind for now, through my sleep-deprived haze I watched the mountains of the north gave way to smooth green hills, decked with rice terraces and rubber plantations, interspersed by banana plantations and the odd remote village.

We had crossed the tropic of Cancer.

By first light the scenery was decidedly tropical and I was decidedly disoriented as we pulled into our destination, Jinhong, a staging post for our journey down into Laos.

Still, mustn't complain: at least I didn't need to turn to the bottle.

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How to…travel around China

With an area of nearly 10 million square kilometres and a population of over a billion, a good public transport system is essential to China. We have been surprised and relieved at how easy it has been to get around.

Trains
Travelling by train in China is the best way to see the bits in between; the real life away from the sights and cities. However, catching a train is manic and buying a ticket a trial. It’s a very Chinese experience.

You can only buy tickets from the city you are departing from. In Shanghai main station this is at window 43 and in Beijing main station it’s at the window labelled ’foreigners’. You can also buy tickets at ticket booking offices in town or from your hostel, for a small commission. Staff at train stations rarely speak English so get a local (such as hostel staff) to write down your destination and desired class of travel in Chinese before you go. You can find train routes and timetables at http://www.chinatripadvisor.com/ or http://www.china-train-ticket.com/.

There are five classes of train travel: soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, standing. The quality of each depends on the age of the train. The Z trains are the best, with T and D being the next best. We went for soft sleeper on a Z train, or should I say hotel on tracks, from Shanghai to Beijing. We were sharing with Mr Chair and a woman who’s husband lived in Shanghai (she lived in Beijing), in an air conditioned berth with clean, crisp sheets, duvets, towels and two pillows each. You are given complimentary slippers (useful in the rather sloppy toilet) and a flask of boiling water to make tea and pot noodles [475yuan, 12 hours]. From Beijing to Xi’an we took another Z but this time an older model and only managed to get beds in a hard sleeper carriage. It’s not called hard because the beds are hard (they’re not) but because it is hard to sleep. You are squeezed in with five others in a cabin that doesn’t have a door. Not great for security or slumber. Only one pillow this time and no slippers, but the flask of boiling water remains. Our third and final train was a K from Xi‘an to Kunming. Steam engines may have gone out in 2000, but the rest of this train was pure 80’s. We were in soft sleeper with one pillow, no towel or slippers and a lot of Trans-Siberian Railway style chintz. The problem wasn’t so much the cabin as the brakes. This wasn’t a hotel but more of a chicken shed on wheels. To slow down or stop the brakes would be suddenly clamped on lurching everyone forward. In my disturbed sleep I imagined us dropping off a cliff. That said, this was the best journey of them all. Forty two hours watching China change as we headed north to south. We passed people ploughing paddy fields with water buffalo, men smoking skinny pipes on the stoop, tiny coal mines, smoky factories and deep limestone ravines eaten away by jade rivers. Further south women were carrying pails of water on yoke sticks, farmers harvested corn in the fields and set the chaff ablaze into the night sky. There are so many people here to watch and as Paul Theroux noted ‘a hill is not a hill in China, it is a vertical way of growing rice.’

Soft seats are normally recliners, hard seats are wooden benches and if you can’t get anything else you can buy a ticket to stand in the hard seat carriage. Upgrading looked to be an easy process. On our journey from Xi’an to Kunming most of the train disembarked at Chongching giving us the cabin to ourselves. A stroll down the train to an empty bed you fancy and a chat with the carriage attendant should enable you to upgrade.

There is reams of information on how to prepare for the Trans Siberian Railway but very little on the Chinese Railways. So, bring toilet paper, soap, food and drink. Hot water is available for tea and noodles and a food cart is wheeled up the corridors regularly selling meals and snacks. The meals are good. In hard sleeper cabins there is only one light so take a torch to read and ear plugs and an eye mask to block out the light and piped music, which starts early.

When catching your train leave plenty of time get to the station (city transport and roads are unpredictable) and to go through the departure procedure. Allow 30 minutes to an hour before boarding time to put your bags through security scanners and to work out where to go in the gargantuan train stations. The neon board will give the departure lounge number for your train. From here you will be told thirty minutes before departure which platform you need and then the scrum beings. This is a remarkable and unforgettably Chinese experience. A trainfull of passengers all pushing, shoving and elbowing their way to their carriage so that they can be the first on the train. The scrum is all over in ten minutes and then you can leisurely stroll on and find your berth. I don’t understand the rush, all tickets are numbered. Once the train has departed the carriage attendant will swap your ticket for a plastic card. She will then wake you up an hour before arrival to swap it back again. Another unfathomable feature of train travel in China.

Buses
Where there are no trains there are buses. Big ones, small ones, express ones and sleeper ones. During our limited travels in Yunnan province, the roads were pretty good and the buses frequent and adequate. Turn up at the station on the day of travel to buy your ticket. The sleeper bus is a new phenomenon to me - beds instead of seats on a bus. It’s not as bad as I thought although I offer the following tips:
*Board at the point of origin and arrive early to get seats at the front of the bus (minimises the impact of bumps) by a window (for views and to control air flow);
*Take a pillowcase or T-shirt to put over the pillow. The mattress and bedding are filthy;
*Use the seatbelt. It’s the only way to stop yourself being propelled into the air over every bump (we were at the back). I fastened it tight around my waist and arms and slept on my back;
*Use the duvet as a pillow/padding to prevent your head being bashed against the sides when cornering; and
*Don’t drink very much. The bus has no toilet but does make occasional stops.
As a bonus on the bigger buses and journeys over 3 hours you will normally be treated to a film that features at least three kung-fu sequences.

Around town
Beijing and Shanghai have excellent, if not heaving, underground networks. City buses are slow but to the point and can be packed to a rib crushing density. Taxis are affordable, but of course, bike is best.

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How to…trek Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province is a stunning and refreshing change from the cities of China. The air is clean, the views breathtaking and there are only a few people working the fields and living in the scattered mountain villages. Getting to this remote part of China and trekking the gorge is straightforward and rewarding once you have gathered the information, but it can be hard to come by.

The trek starts from the village of Qiaotou, where you pay the 50 yuan entrance fee to the Gorge. You can get here by bus or minibus from Lijiang bus station (25 yuan) or from a hostel. We found the easiest way was to book the minibus from Mama Naxi’s Guesthouse in Lijiang. It departs at 8.30am, takes nearly three hours and costs 20 yuan.

No official maps of the trail exist, so times and distances vary according to which hand-drawn photocopied map you pick up. The map below served us well. From Qiaotou it is a good hour to the Naxi Guesthouse, the perfect place for lunch. Then begins an arduous slog up the infamous 28 bends to a height of 2,670m (too low for altitude sickness, great height for views), taking a couple of hours. Men with horses may follow you up the hill teasing you with the option for an easy ride up costing 100 yuan. A further hour downhill takes you to Tea Horse Guesthouse with comfy beds and the cheapest beer we found in the hills.

A leisurely hour’s amble on the second day and we arrived at Half Way Guesthouse. The views from the swing chairs on the café terrace are amazing and it looks an excellent place to stay as well. The guesthouses are well spaced to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner when you want them and all sell bottled water. You just need to take waterproofs, suntan lotion, a hat, warm clothes for the evening, your toothbrush and a spare pair of pants.

Another three hours walking through waterfalls takes you to Tina’s Guesthouse (passing a couple of others on route) where you can get a minibus back to Lijiang at 4pm (50 yuan). Alternatively there is a minibus to Qiaotou (where you can take the bus back to Lijiang or on to Shangri-La) that costs 80 yuan - wait around and split the cost with other travellers。

There are more guesthouses along the road from Tina’s, but if you’re planning to spend a few nights in the mountains I’d recommend staying in the guesthouses earlier along the trail (before Tina’s) away from the road. You can carry on to the very end of the Gorge in Daju, but the walk is on a road and is apparently less spectacular and the ferry across the Yangtze difficult to get in time for the last bus back to Daju at midday.

The trail is interesting and varied in features from waterfalls and overhangs to Naxi villages and a temple in the rock. Red arrows painted on rocks point the way. The ground is clay so very quickly gets slippery when it rains. Check the forecast before you go and ask the locals because the mountains are prone to landslides. The drive back along the low road is a clear demonstration of the power of nature over byways。

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a rare treat to get into rural China and escape the noise and hassle of the towns and cities. For more detailed information ask Sean at http://www.tigerleapinggorge.com/.

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Special price

“Hello lady! Good price! Special price!” These calls echo around me as I stroll down the street, any street, anywhere in China. “Hello watch!” “Hello T-shirt”, are also common; it’s enough to give you an identity crisis.

The informal free market is alive and kicking in China. And Caucasian inflation is rampant. Goods are rarely priced and haggling is expected. The Chinese have a saying, ‘foreigners are easy to fool’, and they try their best to do so. The cheeky vendors initially quote exorbitantly high prices. The most ridiculous quote I received was 180 yuan (£14) for a postcard. Needless to say I laughed in her face and walked away. As Mr T might say, I pity the fool. You can expect prices in shops and the market to be inflated by at least 100 percent. But the sellers know they are pushing their luck and usually come down to a more agreeable price; £1 rather than £15 for a mug, for instance.

Bartering can be an amusing process. I am rubbish at it, but Tom has skills. Given that neither seller nor buyer speak the same language it becomes a battle over who can spout more rubbish. Tom gives them the low-down on Grangehill or discusses the Credit Crunch in exchange for whispers from the sellers of, ‘Okay, normally I give people this price but for you I give you this [shows calculator] but sshhhh [finger on lips] it is our secret.’

When you enter a shop you are routinely followed. This especially happens in book shops, pharmacies and clothes shops. The sales assistant silently glides behind you peering over your shoulder. I have no idea why. They don‘t offer any help and seem affronted when you ask a question as if their cover has been blown. It must therefore be the Chinese version of in-store CCTV. It can be quite fun giving the assistants the run around: taking the most convoluted route between the shop shelves, doubling back, going down dead ends and stopping to ponder the more embarrassing products such as laxative tea and pants. But whatever you do you can’t shake them off.

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The numbers game

China is an enormous country, sprawling across a fair chunk of the globe, yet it often feels overwhelmingly, stiflingly crowded.

Unlike their Japanese neighbours, crammed in on a relatively small slither of land and yet still fanatically well-behaved and respectful of each others’ privacy, the Chinese have no concept of personal space.

And if you’re unlucky enough to be a ’foreigner’ in this land you will find yourself under constant surveillance from thousands of inquisitive pairs of eyes. Smile, you’re on 24-hour TV.

But whilst you’re an object of attention don’t expect any special privileges, particularly when it comes to travelling around. You’re just another animal fighting in the frenzy for a place at the water trough.

When the bus or train hoves into view, you must resolutely suppress your English sense of justice and fair play, forget any pretence at politeness and never ever attempt to queue. Rather, roll up your sleeves, dive into the maelstrom and bash them out the way with 50 pounds of backpack.

This may seem the very height of rudeness but in China it seems vital for survival as demand outstrips supply.

As we push our way through the throngs crowding outside train stations, bus stations and just about every point in between we frequently find ourselves asking: just how many people live here?

Travelling around China has become for us a bit of a numbers game. In a country of 1.3 billion the population of the average city in this country seems to put their European equivalent in the shade.

20 million in Shanghai…17 million in Beijing…higher!, Brucie, higher!…8 million in Xi’an…10 million in Chengdu…5 million in Chongqing.

Chongqing? A few months ago I’d not even heard of it yet this is a city which, if you extend it to the municipality, numbers some 30 million souls - equivalent to half that of the entire UK.

Like many others cities we passed through Chongqing seems to be further expanding. Above the murky brown waters of the Yangtze the skyline is crowded by cranes constructing high rises for the burgeoning population.

Further up the river, we passed two huge power stations in quick succession, each surrounded by massive heaps of coal. Such is the scale of China’s population growth and economic expansion it is building on average two of these CO2-spewing monsters every week.

Jung Chang, in her extraordinary account of living in Mao’s China, Wild Swans, apportions considerable blame for the population explosion to the Cultural Revolution.

One of the effects of the many barmy policies introduced by the revered Chairman was to loosen birth control, hence increasing the population by 200 million.

Not that subsequent leaders haven’t recognised the need to act. The Chinese government maintains its one child policy has been at least a partial success, claiming it has prevented 400 million births since its introduction in 1979. However, despite this the population is set to creep up yet further.

It all left me wondering: how is china going to cope with population growth on this scale? Where will it find the resources need to sustain this growth? How will the country meet the growing consumer demands of its citizens as economic growth allows more of them to aspire to Western standards of living?

And, for those of us in the West, how will we cope?
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Made in China

I knew there was something I had forgotten to pack - my pink illuminated horns. Come to mention it, I could also really do with my clip-on flashing shoe wheels. I really shouldn’t have left England in such a hurry.

Or so the pedlars on Shanghai’s Bund seemed to think. Relentlessly touting their wares: miniature kites, dancing beans and squishy fish, never taking ’no’ for an answer. The only successful method to avoid hassle was to out freak them. Our fellow travellers were very successful at this, dancing alongside the pirated CD cart, playing African music balls and trying to sell donkey sex. I had a go at the intellectual approach, asking their opinion on sustainable consumption and production and whether, perchance, they had read the I Will if You Will report. They merely shoved their flashing gismos further into my face and then scuttled off.

China makes Japan seem sober. Consumerism is rampant. Everything is for sale and people go out of their way to drag you from the street into their shop. Most of the rip-off goods and tat are, of course, locally produced. On the way up the Huangpu River into Shanghai International Ferry Port we passed scores of factories and hundreds of ships all making and moving resources and goods to and from China. The air on deck was so thick with smog that you couldn’t see the top of the skyscrapers and pictures became ghostly. Nearing China the water turned from a healthy blue to a murky brown to match the air above. I have never seen or tasted (literally) industry on this scale. This is the home of the three pound hair straightener and novelty balloon. Seeing where it all comes from brings a whole new meaning to the label ’Made in China’.

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Can I press you to an opium fish head?

Shanghai offers, apparently, some of the finest dining in China.

So it was with some excitement that we, alongside our increasingly international retinue of companions - a kind of gastronomic group of UN food inspectors perhaps - set off up East Nanjing Rd in search of sustenance.

Whilst the range of options was not disappointing, the lack of English - or indeed any comprehensible language - was a bit of a hindrance. We were therefore delighted to meet a friendly chap who accosted as we strolled down a little street, bathed in neon, seething with suicidal cyclists and raucous street vendors.

A few minutes later, having been ushered into his restaurant, we congratulated ourselves on our good fortune, our enthusiastic waiter hovering over us and pointing our particular delicacies we might like to sample.

We surveyed the range of options - a mighty impressive variety. Looking down the menu, particular dishes which caught one’s eye included the following:

The oil explodes the ricefield eel silk food
The hairy crab meets the oil
Steams the young lad chicken
The peas fry the sausage
Burns the juice eggplant to clamp the meat
Grandmother red roasted pork
Fried bamboo shoots with shepherd
The hairy crab fries the lunar new year cake
Opium fish head

Hmmm...seems like the Chinese are not just talented at manufacturing products, but their marketing is rapidly becoming the envy of the world as well.

Surely the great titans of British retail could learn a thing or two here. Tesco would mop up any remaining vestiges of the market they may have failed to penetrate if only they detailed such hairy crab adventures on their packaging.

And whilst they're at it, why not go a little further and experiment a bit more with the ingredients. I'm sure the adventurous customers at Waitrose would just die for a good deep-fried granny or sauted shepherd.

Can I press you to an opium fish head, vicar?

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The old slow boat to China cliché

Sometimes it is very hard to escape the old clichés about the countries you travel through. And we’re sitting on one now, steadily swaying about in the indigo waters of the East China Sea, as our ferry ploughs a slow path between Japan and China.

There’s no doubt about it: the MS Su Zhou Hao is definitely a slow boat to China.

It’s hardly the image I had in my mind of course, you know the romantic one of am old-style Chinese junk, all rigging and multiple different decks, laden with manufactured goods and opium, and calling in at various exotic ports on a mission to discover the secrets of silk.

But it is certainly slow and, I would imagine rather more comfortable than some rickety old wooden tub.

I rather like leaving a country by ship, indeed I prefer it to leaving by plane. The pace of travel gives you time to relax and reflect on your time in the country you have just left and to anticipate what lies ahead in that to which you are headed.

Rather than zoom into the clouds in burst of kerosene, on a ship you can slip gracefully away, giving you chance to bid a long farewell to the country you’re leaving .

It allows you to appreciate the physical space between countries - so important in determining the character of a nation such as Japan - as you watch the land slip slowly out of sight and you enter the embrace of the open sea.

Time to digest your adventures in one country before scanning the horizon for the first sight of the next.

I found this a particularly pleasurable experience doing this from the luxury of my own large, albeit slightly grubby Japanese-style communal bath. As the sun set and I sloshed about in the warm water, I could gaze out the window across the island-strewn Inland Sea towards the lights twinkling on the shore and reflect on a month in Japan.

We had spent the previous day in the somewhat down-at-heel port city of Osaka.

Perhaps it should be expected, typical of port cities the world over, or perhaps it was just our chosen part of town, but after clean, tidy, well-behaved Japan, Osaka was a rude dose of reality.

The city seemed populated entirely by gaunt, middle-aged men in grimy vests, its streets lined with cheap hotels, gaudy pachinko parlours and discount manual clothing outlets for manual workers.

It felt like a great receptacle for all Japan’s unwanteds: down-and-outs; drunks; and disabled people, airbrushed out of the tourist sites and dumped here like some embarrassing mad Aunt locked away in the attic.

Osaka is looked down on by citizens of some other cities, seen as less glamorous than Tokyo, less refined than Kyoto. It proudly boasts of its status as ‘Japan’s kitchen’ (well it sounds better than ‘Japan’s answer to Southampton’) and seemed stuffed with cheap, slightly grubby eateries where you could enjoy the pleasures of battered octopus balls and other such greasy delicacies.

Indeed the food seemed to lean more towards China rather than Japan, drenched in oil and served up with little of the excessive finesse we found elsewhere.

It wasn’t just the food either which came with a distinct Chinese flavour. We the influence of Japan’s largest neighbour in the Mahjong parlours in the scruffy arcades, where old men gathered to smoke rollups, and amongst the people, where Chinese and Korean immigrants remind you of Osaka’s role as Japan‘s gateway to the world.

Raffish, bawdy, lively, exuberant; was Osaka a harbinger of what was to come for us in China?
Leaving Japan for China, I anticipate some clear similarities but perhaps many more differences.
Certainly the Japanese I encountered have always stressed that, though echoes of their Chinese-influenced past resonate throughout many aspects of modern Japan, theirs was a very different path towards the 21st century, and one which has made them very distinct from their continental neighbours.

I don’t expect to make many of the same wonderful discoveries in China as I did across the Sea of Japan: the Shinkansen bullet trains; excessive politeness and incessant bowing; Salaryman and Visor Woman; ’washlet’ space-age toilets with built-in bidets and fart-disguising fake flush sounds; not even Blueberry yoghurt drink.

And in China I hope not to encounter some of Japan’s other excesses: the emphasis on ’saving face’ which compels hotel receptionists to hang up on me rather than risk embarrassing themselves by attempting to speak English; the ridiculously over-packaging of food; the frankly-annoying and pointless us of multiple slippers; the utterly irritating emphasis on the supposedly ‘cute’ and kitsch.

I will miss this - the wonderful, whacky, eccentric Japan, seedbed for a million mad inventions, home to a million crazes.

It is a country you enjoy on the surface, but one that takes years to fathom its depths. Still insular, comfortable being isolated Japan does not seem to absorb its immigrants like Britain has - as Will Ferguson notes in his excellent book ‘Hokkaido Highway Blues, like it or not, in Japan you will always be a gaijin - a ‘foreigner’.

I can’t imagine we’ll blend in that well upon making landfall in Shanghai either. Another country, another language to decode, another whole set of cultural mores to understand.

We’re entering a world of superlatives: the largest population on earth; one of the largest countries on earth; a booming economy; an emerging superpower that is making the rest of the world a little nervous.

A Japanese friend told me that the US is seen as ten years ahead of Japan, Japan as ten years ahead of Korea and Korea ten years ahead of China.

Does this mean that two days on a boat will take us back to the 1980s? Or was Japan a vision of the future?

I thought that China was now being looked to as a vision of the future.

I’m sure we’ll find out. But first we’ve got to dodge this typhoon, brooding somewhat uncomfortably close on the horizon…

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