End to End control

I’m a little late to the party but I’ve just finished reading Steve Jobs’ autobiography by Walter Isaacson.

It’s a fascinating read.

One of the things that struck me the most was the big ideological battle between Steve Jobs’ idea for a close operating system with end to end control by the manufacturing company and Bill Gates’ preference for an open system that allows multiple end users to tinker with and make changes to the basic operating system provided by Microsoft.

I’ve never owned a single Apple product in my life (*GASP*) because even though the products look absolutely gorgeous, the tight control by the Company feels a tad too Big Brother-ly for my comfort.

While we were in Yuan Yang (元阳), we stayed in a place called Pu Gao Lao Village (普高老寨 )(yes… Pu Gao Lao) in the Duoyishu area (多依树)(yes… Duoyishu).

Beside sounding like a sailors’ favourite adjective, Pu Gao Lao is a place that people in Yuan Yang find “remote” and “difficult to get to”. To put things in perspective, Yuan Yang is four hours of bumpy/windy mountain road away from the next nearest township.

Yup...STILL wearing THAT jacket

While we were in Pu Gao Lao, everything we ate/drank/shat/slept (吃喝拉睡) was pretty much controlled by the two Guesthouses in the village – Sunny Guest House and Jacky’s Guest House. (We eventually chose Sunny through a very deliberate and extensive research process of walking into the village and stumbling upon it first)

I know it’s a bit of a stretch to compare computer operating systems and the workings of a tourism spot, but I think that the two Guesthouses having a monopoly on the end-to-end experience of its tourists is comparable to the Apple philosophy. The user has no control and no alternative, so the service providers don’t need to give a flying sh*t what their customers think.

Luckily for us, they did.

Even though we asked for the cheapest private accommodation, we were given a room with a gorgeous view of the rice terraces…from the side. The owners were lovely and never behaved like they were the only ones that could provide us with a bed for the night. They could, but they didn’t.

One of the biggest (and most important) things the Guest Houses control was definitely the food.

We were told that the Guest House serves dinner, but it was not compulsory for us to eat there. Seeing that the alternative to that was to chew on raw (and unripe) rice stalks from the terraces, it wasn’t that much of a choice to us.

Dinner at Sunny’s was served at a communal dining room. Again, they could’ve charged us the moon and served us whatever food they wanted (including raw and unripe rice stalks). We’d have no choice but to eat it, but again, thank goodness they didn’t.

Instead, for a princely sum of 30Rmb, the owner took to the kitchen and churned out dish after dish after dish of wickedly tasty food using herbs and vegetables plucked from his own backyard. (Yes, the rice was from his own terrace too. Yes, they taste superb. No, there was no taste of feet from the thousands of tourists trampling over them)

He was still merrily preparing dessert when one of the guests shouted that his stomach was going to explode from all the food.

My key take away is that this demonstrates a closed system can only work if the owner of the system cares enough to give a flying sh*t about what his customers want instead of just obsessing about the bottom line.

Having said that, I still believe there’s a lot of room for abuse in a closed system.

Exhibit A: The only bus service that could bring us the full 13 hours to Xishuangbanna (yes..Xishuangbanna)

Nope...that's not a smile on Jo's face

No, I am not using this post to make a commentary on the public transport system in Singapore.

Or am I?

A Different Kind of Pain

Don’t tell anyone, but Jo and I are blessed with two not-so-secret mutant abilities that make us perfect for travelling.

1) We are able to fall asleep in almost any environment.

2) We are able to ride on most vehicles without getting motion sickness.

As a result of the combination of these two abilities, we are able to get a lot of our rest when we travel from point to point. It’s not unusual to see either (or both) of us happily snoring away as the people around us puke their guts out.

We’re simply not affected.

It’s one of the reasons why we planned a purely overland journey for our trip through China. We would take 15-hour bus rides, instead of 2-hour flights to get from one point to another. It saved us the money on a night of accommodation, and we’d normally wake up bright and bushy-tailed for a brand new day of adventures.

I know I’ve bitched about the questionable living conditions when travelling by train in China. Even though it was a bit of a challenge, we were still able to sleep through most of our 13-hour hard seater train ride from Zhangye to Xi’an. We just had to make sure one of us was awake at any one point in time to ward off incoming spit and other bodily fluid.

It was a great bonding experience. I know we are married, but it was only at the end of that train ride that I felt like I could truly trust Jo with anything.

Even so, it was definitely not the most ideal situation. That’s why I was kinda glad when we heard that one of the 18 Strange Things about Yunnan (云南十八怪) was that rail services in the province bring you out of the country but not from place to place within Yunnan itself (火车不通国内通国外).

This means that we would have to attempt most of this leg of our travel by buses!

You know those comfortable long-distance coaches you see on TV where a slightly rounded semi-famous comedian/actor was able to blissfully recline fully in his seat with a look on his face that would probably have looked more appropriate post-coitus?

That’s the complete opposite of what travelling on an overnight bus in China feels like.

I know… for a lot of you, reading this part of the story is probably like watching that slasher flick where the hot female “supporting actress” decides to go take a shower, or the token Asian guy decides that the best thing to do when being chased by a psycho killer is to run up to the attic where there is no way to escape.

Bad things are gonna happen.

And happen they did.

THIS was our first taste of overnight bus travel in China.

You think it doesn't look THAT bad? That's because you haven't smelled it yet

It was a full-blown assault on all our senses.

To top off being crammed in a space the size of a very grimy coffin stacked onto one another, we were treated to the smell of various feet that had just been liberated from shoes after what seems (or smells) like 100 years. The joy of this whole experienced would occasionally be punctuated by the lovely soundtrack of someone going SCCHIHAKOORRCCCHCCHHH *ptui* ONTO the limited space of the aisle between the beds.

The only thing that made the experience any more unpleasant was when our up/down/side neighbours decided that the incredibly valuable breathing space could be enhanced by their cigarette smoke.

Like I said, it was a total sensory experience.

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To answer the question a lot of you are probably asking…

Yes, we eventually managed to fall asleep on these buses too.

We are THAT good, but I am sure it stretched the limits of our mutant abilities. And I don’t think we’ll ever be the same again.

Crossroads

After our very positive experience with Mama Naxi in Lijiang, we decided to stay in one of her franchises, Mama Naxi #2 while we were in Dali. Mama Naxi #2 has a totally different feel from #1, because, let’s face it, there can only be one Mama Naxi.

#2 was franchised by Mama Naxi’s “disciple”, Joker (seriously!) and is located in a very small alley off Renmin Lu in Dali Old Town. We walked through most of Dali Old Town looking for the hostel and was only able to find it when a raving mad Golden Retriever barrelled into us on Renmin Lu (more on this later).

Like the Mama Naxi we stayed in while we were in Lijiang, Mama Naxi #2 is probably not the most amenities-filled hostel you’d expect to find in Dali. Furthermore, Joker was outta town for most of the time we were there.

But this is where the magic happens.

In Joker’s absence, the hostel was run by his cousin Ah Ze and (I shit you not) some of the long term guests staying at the hostel.

We’ve noticed that just like a lot of other parts of Yunnan (Lijiang and Shuang Lang), Dali attracts a lot of tourists who like the place so much that they set up their homes and businesses there and just never left. In addition to that, another demographic of travellers seemed drawn to Dali (and specifically Mama Naxi #2) –  those that are at a crossroad in their life.

I can totally see why that is so.

With majestic Cang Shan looming over the town on one side and sitting at the edge of the beautiful Er Hai on the other, you’ll never be short of a place to sit and clear your mind and think in Dali. Dali Old Town is also “compact”. It’s composed of two main streets running North-South and East West. It’s not as “touristy” as Lijiang but developed enough that it is not as boring as Shuang Lang (notice the lack of inverted commas).

There’s just enough room to breathe and think the next step through… and be comfortably un-bored at the same time.

Amongst others in Mama Naxi #2, we met:

1) Lao Lu (老吕), a businessman whose business suffered a big setback. He spent the last three months in Dali debating whether he should just call it quits and embark on another venture (often with the very mind-clearing help of a couple (dozen) bottles of beer).

2) LuLu (陆陆), a girl who was enroute from Sze Chuan to England via Dali for further studies. The plan was for her to stopover in Dali while waiting for her connecting flight to Beijing then London. She never got on that flight and had already been soul-searching in Mama Naxi #2 for seven months when we visited.

3) Ella, the mad Golden Retriever that attacks and slobbers on anything with wild abandonment and crazy joy. Ella was left at Mama Naxi after her French owner decided not to bring her along after he left the country. Ella is now under the care of 17 (十七), another one of the helpers at Mama Naxi #2.

Lao Lu and LuLu are paying customers at Mama Naxi #2, but they take it upon themselves to make sure that all new guests are entertained and feel as welcomed as they must’ve felt when they first stepped into the hostel.

Before I met them, I would’ve thought that these people are, for lack of a better word, cowards. They are afraid to take the next step forward and commit to a course of action that would demand all their time and attention for the next few years or so, and hence take the easy way out by escaping it altogether.

Jo, on the other hand, thinks that it takes tremendous courage to say “No” to a set course of action. Especially a course of action that they and/or the people closest to them had already invested considerable amounts of time, money and effort into.

I’m not sure which one of us is closer to the truth, but it definitely got me thinking. I guess (Yoda speech coming through….) sometimes, not making a decision for a while is making a decision.

Or maybe the dog has it right all along.

Who cares what happened before or what’s going to happen next. I’ll be happy for now, thank you very much, as long as there’s a meatbag for me to love and leave my slobber on.

A Small Fishing Village

After Lijiang, our next stop was supposed to be Dali (大理). We (ok, actually “I”) loved Lijiang, but after five days in Lijiang, we (actually “Jo”) wanted to take a short (actually “loooooong”) break from Old Towns.

That’s why we decided to make a detour to Shuang Lang (双廊), via a hot springs resort in Eryuan. This detour was not mentioned in any of our guide books and we only got to know of it from our hotel owner in Shangri La. According to her, this is the route her family would take for their annual getaway to avoid the “hustle and bustle” of Dali.

There was one thing we did not take into consideration… Yunnan is one place where the extensive train network of China does not really connect to. We would have to attempt this part of our journey by… BUSES.

Buses that we had to share with chickens, assorted livestock and fridges... yup... fridges

And to make things even more interesting, the buses don’t even stop at Shuang Lang. We were unceremoniously dropped off on the side of a country road and told to hike down a hill “towards the water” to reach our destination.

So was Shuang Lang worth all the hassle to get there?

Well… let’s just say that when someone came up with the term “small fishing village”, they probably had Shuang Lang in mind.

Picture perfect water front houses...

Lonesome boats drifting across the water... fish left out to dry (??)... if these are your kind of things, Shuang Lang's THE place for you

True, the scenery of Shuang Lang was gorgeous, and this was especially so around Er Hai (洱海), a lake so big they called it a “sea” (海). (it’s either that, or the Chinese’s penchant for exaggeration was rearing its ugly head yet again)

But there was seriously NOTHING TO DO in Shuang Lang. There aren’t even that many cafes for us to hang around in.

That’s why it’s probably a good thing we were staying in Hyacinth (风信子) , a small B&B opened by two world travellers. Hyacinth has one of the best views of Er Hai. The decor is  chic and the architecture of the building is so unique and so well done up that we could already see a few other constructions with eeriely similar blueprints sprouting up around Hyacinth.

Hyacinth... Note the huge french windows of the top floor "Presidential Suite"

NOT Hyacinth's dog. This dog belongs to a neighbouring shop, but she spends most of her time hanging out at Hyacinth because her boyfriend is there

The "Presidential Suite" at Hyacinth... available for a king's ransom of SGD30

Allegedly, you know you’ve made it in China when someone is copying what you are doing.

Anyway, after two days of vegetating aimlessly in Shuang Lang, Jo suddenly decided that she is ok with Old Towns again after all!

*Sidenote: It’s possible and probably easier to visit Shuang Lang as a day trip from Dali. We just decided to stop there on the way from Lijiang to Dali because we got boogers for brains.

Big Mama’s House

There are two things that we remember about Shangri La:

1)  The awesome views we saw when we were cycling through the outskirts of the “town” area.

2) The constant niggling feeling that our brains might turn to popsicles and slide out of our heads (I heard someone mentioning that it was so cold you might even be able to see a lawyer put his hands into his own pockets)  (true story)

In the end, we could not stand the blistering cold and hightailed it back to Lijiang after two very long nights wrapped in seven layers of clothing. (Jo and I were wrapped in the seven layers of clothing, the long nights just needed three) (I know… not THAT funny)

Claudia (from Tiger Leaping Gorge) had told us about “Mama Naxi Guest House”, the place she stayed in while she was in Lijiang. The Guest House was run by “Mama”, a gregarious Naxi woman. She claimed that staying at the Guest House and being mothered by Mama was a “quintessential Lijiang experience”.

The legendary Mama

Since we were back in Lijiang, we decided to give the Big Mama a visit and stay at her place for a couple of days (days we had originally catered for Shangri La).

Mama’s presence was felt the moment we entered the hostel.

“You want dinner?” she boomed at us.

“Dinner! Here! 15 minutes!” she continued without giving us much of a chance to reply.

It took us a while to realize that the first question was (more or less) rhetorical.

We were soon lumped into a communal dining table with other travellers while Mama piled on dish after dish after dish of Naxi cooking goodness (we had a crazily delicious 15-course dinner for a paltry 40RMB).

Maybe it’s due to the very mothering nature of Mama, but eating at the communal table felt… good. It feels kinda like dinner with VERY distant relatives, so it was easy to strike up conversation with the other travellers at the table. At the very least, the communication did not feel forced. Pretty soon, we were even making arrangements to go for tiramisu and yoghurt in the Old Town together. Then again, it could also be because of the obscene amount of beer that we’d ordered.

In any case, Mama’s presence could be felt the whole time we were there. She’d make sure you took a (free) banana away with you just before you went off in the morning. She’d hug and kiss you on the cheek just before you leave. Jo actually came down with a slight flu and had to stay in bed for a day during our time in the Guest House. Mama checked in constantly to make sure that I was keeping Jo well-fed and comfortable. She even poured me some special (and allegedly precious) herbal medicine pills from her own private stash to give to Jo.

I’ll be honest, Mama’s Guest House is not the most amenities-filled guest house you could stay in. Guest House #1 (which we stayed in) was old and under renovation (there’s supposed to be a newer Guest House #3 just around the corner). The walls are paper thin, so you could hear people going about their chores as early as 6am in the morning. The rooms are small and the fittings are rather dated. There’s even a 12am curfew when the whole guest house would go into lockdown! (although if you let them know before hand and ask them nicely, they’ll open the gates for you well past the lockdown time)

The good thing is: Mama’s is located at a side-road JUST off the main “touristy” area, but more importantly, it is CHEAP!

I mean, more importantly, there’s Mama!

Comfort is over-rated.