To China... and Beyond!

This is the last of three posts on traveling in Japan on a budget. In previous posts, I wrote about the cost of a trip to Japan and the Shanghai-Osaka Ferry.

Dan and I set off for Japan last month armed with very little in the way of research under our belts. We had a copy of Lonely Planet: Japan and figured that two days on the boat would be enough time to plan everything else. The sole thing we’d arranged ahead of time was the Japan Rail Pass, which we’d bought without knowing whether it would really save us money.

The Rail Pass allows for unlimited travel on Japan Rail lines throughout the country, including all but the fastest of the ultrafast shinkansen lines. The passes ain’t cheap — a 14-day pass costs ¥45,100, or roughly $500 (USD) — but they are universally recommended as a moneysaver. At a minimum, we knew we would be traveling from Osaka down to Hiroshima, up to Tokyo and back down to Osaka, with plenty of stops in between. The Rail Pass seemed like a good bet, and in fact, it saved each of us ¥34,640 yen ($383) on train travel. That’s almost as much as the cost of the pass itself.

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Filed under: Travel Beyond China by Jess on March 10th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, budget travel, Japan, Japan budget, Japan Rail Pass, trains
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This is the second of three posts on traveling in Japan on a budget. Yesterday, I wrote about the overall costs of a Japan trip. Come back tomorrow for part three, on the cost-effectiveness of the Japan Rail Pass.

To be honest, when I began thinking about where I would go this winter, Japan was pretty low on my list. It was supposed to be so expensive, and it had always been more my brother’s interest than mine. But then I found out about the boat.

That’s right, it’s possible to get from China to Japan — or vice versa — by sea. I’m a sucker for quirky forms of transportation (like pick-up trucks turned public buses in Laos) and unusual ways of getting from point A to point B, so the Shanghai-Japan Ferry seemed like just the ticket. If I was going to go to Japan, there would be no airplanes for me. Not only does the ferry make a better story, but a round-trip second-class ticket on the ferry cost just 2,225 RMB, or $325 (USD). This was about $200 less than the cheapest flight we could find during the peak Chinese New Year travel season.

Our first, blurry, view of Japan came on the second night of the trip.

The potential downside of sea travel is, of course, time. Instead of a short couple of hours in the air, we were committed to 48 hours on the ferry. As we embarked, we had no real idea what the accommodation would be like or what we would do during all of that time on board. But the ferry turned out to be an almost entirely pleasant traveling experience. Technically, we were in class “2A,” which is organized into four-berth cabins. The berths themselves are quite a bit bigger than those in Chinese sleeper trains, and the cabin also includes a small common area equipped with a television. Thus, on our return trip, we found ourselves in the middle of the Sea of Japan, watching a very fuzzy live broadcast of the Olympic women’s figure skating finals, which were happening on the other side of the planet in Vancouver.

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Filed under: Travel Beyond China, Travel in China by Jess on March 9th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, boat, China, Japan, Osaka, Shanghai, transportation
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This is the first of three posts on traveling in Japan on a budget. Come back tomorrow and Wednesday for parts two and three.

One of my biggest concerns before leaving for Japan last month was how much it would cost. The country is famously expensive, and since I make my living teaching in China, I’m not exactly rolling in dough. My traveling companion is in the same situation, so we knew we would have to really stick to a budget. And we basically succeeded — in the end, I spent a bit less than I had expected/feared.

Excluding the cost of getting to Japan, the total cost of the 15-day trip was ¥146,187***, or about $1,640 (USD). The Japan Rail Pass was a fixed cost, and on Wednesday, I’ll look at whether it paid off or not. Taking that out of the equation, I was spending an average of ¥4,000 ($45) per day on sightseeing and daily expenditures and another ¥2,600 ($29.50) on accommodation. That turned out to be a bit less than had been suggested by online sources. Posts on Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum suggest a daily budget of ¥90,000 to ¥110,000 per day, excluding the cost of the Rail Pass.

Here’s what we did to keep costs down:

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Filed under: Travel Beyond China by Jess on March 8th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, budget travel, Japan, Japan budget
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This Buddha statue sits in one of the smaller buildings at Wat Xieng Thong.

This Buddha statue stood out from others at Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang because the gilt on his face and neck was not the usual smooth gold paint that I had seen on other Buddhas in Laos. Instead it appeared as if small postage-stamp-sized pieces of gold leaf had been haphazardly applied over the original surface. There was no one around to ask, but I’m pretty sure that the gold leaf was not part of the original statue. The pieces were probably applied by worshippers at the wat as a form of offering to Buddha. I saw a similar thing at Sarnath in India, where pieces of gold leaf now adorn the giant stupa marking the site of the Buddha’s first sermon. On the smaller Buddha statue in Luang Prabang, the effect is distinctive and, I think, quite beautiful.

This is part of a new series of Friday “snapshot” posts featuring photos from my recent travels. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed to automatically receive my latest posts.

Filed under: Photos, Travel Beyond China by Jess on March 5th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, Laos, Luang Prabang, Northern Laos, Photos, snapshot
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After more than two months on the road, I am officially back in Changsha and staying put for awhile. When I left in December, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about such a long stint of traveling. Reading about others’ round-the-world trip plans was exciting, but I wasn’t sure it would suit me. Wouldn’t all the temples, museums and new variations of noodle soup start to blur together? Wouldn’t I get tired of schlepping my backpack all over the place — not to mention sick of packing and repacking it day after day?

Now that I’m back at home, I can say that I was pretty much correct. I don’t think I will be starting a “RTW trip” savings account any time soon. The two major sections of my trip — Southeast Asia and Japan — were wildly different from one another, so they didn’t exactly blur together. But I did notice that by the end, I was losing the ability to focus on some of what I was seeing. The day after we visited the Tokyo National Museum, I had to work to remember anything that we’d seen there. I found myself wanting to skip sites that seemed too similar. (Did we really need to visit another reconstructed Japanese castle?) While certain experiences will be unforgettable — visiting an onsen, watching fish be bought and sold at the Tsukiji Fish Market, visiting the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima — my enthusiasm had dimmed a bit.

The best fish is displayed like a precious gem at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.

However, I think some of this has more to do with the way I was traveling than simply the duration of the trip. This is (officially, at least) my last semester in China, and I wanted to cram a lot of stops into this, my final long vacation. This was especially taxing in Southeast Asia, where the transportation is slow and mostly uncomfortable. In an ideal world, I would have been able to spend a few more days in some places, and fit in a few more days chilling at the beach rather than looking at temples. On a real RTW trip, that slower pace would be possible. So the idea of long-term travel still has some appeal. The notion of spending six months in South America is still appealing, for instance — but I would want to spend it mostly in one place, studying Spanish.
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Filed under: Life on the road, Travel Beyond China, Travel in China by Jess on March 3rd, 2010 | Tags: backpacking, long-term travel, RTW travel, travel style
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Happily for those who spend a full week there, Luang Prabang has more to offer than just wats, wats, wats. In February, I spent two full days taking a weaving course through OckPopTok, which operates two shops in the town and a weaving center just outside of it. I had never done any weaving before (or shown real aptitude for crafts of any sort), but my mother has instilled in me an abiding interest in textiles. A class seemed like it would be a good way to learn something more about how they are produced and how they fit into Lao culture. At the end of the day, I would take home a silk scarf that I wove myself.

Boiling sappan wood to make a natural red dye.

On the first day, my classmate Lynne and I began by learning something about natural dyes. Traditionally, Lao weavers used everything from turmeric to rusty nails to produce beautiful colors of silk. We got some hands-on practice: Lynne mashed annato seeds to make an orange dye while I chopped up sappan wood to produce both red and purple. Fun facts: Boiled by itself, the wood produces a pink dye; if you throw in a handful of rusty nails, it becomes red. And if you let the red dye ferment for six months, it becomes purple.

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Filed under: Travel Beyond China by Jess on March 1st, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, class, Laos, Luang Prabang, Northern Laos, textiles
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Wintertime at the Hida Folk Village outside Takayama, Japan.

After two weeks of all cities, all the time, it was a bit of a relief to arrive in Takayama, a small town* in the Japanese Alps. We’d seen Japan’s hypermodern side on display in Tokyo and learned about its 20th century history in Hiroshima. In Takayama, we would get in touch with its rural past. Takayama has preserved a historic district where dark, low wooden buildings allow you to imagine that you are back in a pre-electronics, pre-convenience store Japan. During January and February, you can tour hundred-year-old, low-tech sake breweries still operating in their original locations. And if you venture a half-hour outside of town, the Hida Folk Village has collected examples of old-style farmhouses from around the area. The gassho zukuri houses, like those pictured above, were designed with steeply slanting straw roofs to keep snow from accumulating on top. Today, they are filled with old agricultural implements, silk-making equipment and household tools to show how Japanese villagers lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even on a short tour of Japan, this was a worthy stop — and, in winter, it was full of opportunities for frolicking in the snow!

Written from the road in Osaka, Japan, en route back to China (by boat!). If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed to receive my latest updates! For more great travel photos, check out DeliciousBaby’s Photo Friday.

Filed under: Travel Beyond China by Jess on February 25th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, Central Honshu, Japan, Photos, snapshot, Takayama
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Earlier today, I received the following inquiry from another travel blogger via Twitter:

@chinaandbeyond have you got a ny recommendations for a months stay in china. leaving hk nxt week

This got me thinking. A month is long enough that you can really see a range of what China has to offer, but you still have to be selective (unless you want to spend every night on an overnight train). Based on the places I’ve traveled, I’d suggest an itinerary something like this one:

• Guangzhou (1-2 days) — This is one of the economic hubs of modern China, and makes a nice segue from Hong Kong to the mainland. The food is mostly the same, but the zeitgeist is much more “Chinese.”
• Shanghai (2-3 days) — Of course you’ll visit, it’s China’s financial capital. But you really don’t need that long to see the main attractions.
• Suzhou (1 day) — The gardens are beautiful, and it’s doable as a daytrip from Shanghai.
• Beijing (4-5 days) — The sites and the food are iconic. In 4-5 days, you can see almost everything, including a day visiting the Great Wall at one of the more remote locations like Mutianyu or Simitai.
• Xi’an (3 days) — The Terracotta Warriors are a must-see, but the other sites (especially the Han Yangling tomb) are well worth your time.
• Lanzhou (only as long as you need to be here) — There’s nothing much to see in Lanzhou, but it is a necessary transit stop.
• Dunhuang (2 days) — The Mogao Caves. Enough said.
• Xiahe (2 days) — Meet monks at the Labrang Monastery, one of the most important in Tibetan Buddhism, and explore the Ganjia Grasslands.
• Langmusi (2-3 days) — Trek into the grasslands and spend a night with a family of Tibetan nomads.
• Guilin (1 day) — Much like Lanzhou, this is a necessary stop for transit without too many exciting sites of its own.
• Yangshuo (2-3 days) — Take a break from the heavy sightseeing and enjoy Yangshuo’s natural wonders. Rent a bike, take a boat ride or simply walk around and enjoy the magnificent karst scenery.
• Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces (2 days) — Marvel at the fact that the terraces, which stretch as far as the eye can see, were carved long before the days of bulldozers. The hike from Dazhai to Ping’an will take you through a few different ethnic-minority villages.

But there are plenty of places I still haven’t been. You might want to replace the week in Gansu (Lanzhou, Xiahe and Langmusi) with a trip to Sichuan or Tibet — places I’m hoping to explore in the next few months. For hiking and a glimpse of China’s minority culture, Yunnan is a possible alternative to Guangxi (Guilin, Yangshuo, Rice Terraces).

If you can stay longer, you might add a stop to Hangzhou or Nanjing near Shanghai, or visit Jiayuguan on the way to Dunhuang. The Chengyang Wind and Rain Bridge is near Yangshuo and the Rice Terraces in Guangxi. Really, the possibilities are practically endless.

Send more questions my way via Twitter (@chinaandbeyond) or e-mail (jessica –at– tochinaandbeyond.com)!

Filed under: Travel in China by Jess on February 21st, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, China, Q&A
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Kiyomizu Temple was our first stop in Kyoto, due mostly to its status as a World Heritage Site (I’m traveling with a collector) and its proximity to our hostel. It turned out to be an ideal introduction to the city. Kyoto is famous among tourists for its temples, shrines, and gardens, and quaint streets like Sannen-zaka allow you to imagine that you are in “old Japan.” Yet these pockets of religious tradition and natural beauty are surrounded by an entirely modern city, complete with confusing subway system, ubiquitous convenient stores and strangely automated dessert restaurants. The view from Kiyomizu captures the way in which these two sides of Kyoto are, of course, inseparable.

Written from the road in Hiroshima, Japan. If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed!

Filed under: Photos, Travel Beyond China by Jess on February 17th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto, snapshot
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Japan is full of wonderful things, many food-related — among them, okonomiyaki pancakes, conveyor belt sushi and convenience-store food of the highest order. But nothing screamed out to be written about here until last night, when we discovered Kyoto’s truly weird “Sweets Paradise.”

We were trolling the streets of Kyoto in search of something sweet when Dan, my travel companion, spotted a sign for the restaurant. The name was innocuous and our demands were minimal, so we headed up to the top of a department store to check it out. When we reached the sixth floor, we were confronted by the machine at right, which resembles nothing so much as a Japanese subway ticket vending machine. Although we were momentarily fazed by the Japanese-only buttons, we eventually pieced together the fact that Sweets Paradise was no ordinary dessert restaurant. Your 1,480 yen, paid directly into the machine, would buy you the right to stuff yourself silly with desserts for 80 minutes. The exorbitant cost was  clearly going to be far outweighed by the chance to see exactly what a Japanese-style dessert buffet would entail.

Happily, it did not only mean mochi (though a few varieties lurked on one of the trays). Virtually all of the desserts were Western-style cakes and puddings, cut into bite-sized pieces perfect for sampling. After six months of inedible Chinese baked goods, Sweets Paradise’s offerings were a refreshing change of pace. There were no red beans masquerading as chocolate, and the pastries even contained butter! But there were a few cultural miscommunications, nonetheless — I only narrowly avoided topping my ice cream with beef curry, which bears an unnerving resemblance to fudge sauce.

After a plate (or two), we could sit back and contemplate our strange surroundings. Sweets Paradise is perhaps not a top-notch culinary experience. But it is orderly, Western-influenced (though not Western-dominated) and unnecessarily automated — much like Japan itself.

Filed under: Travel Beyond China by Jess on February 15th, 2010 | Tags: blogsherpa, food, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto
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