tbaroundtheworld

The roll of thunder rattled down the slopes of Big Black Mountain informing me that we were almost certainly going to get caught out in the rain for a second day. We were a thousand feet up a mountain road on our way to a temple nestled in a misty forest; ahead pigs were blocking the road. Between travel to Ireland and poking around this place on the weekends I hadn’t done much bike riding lately. I always feel bad when a weekend rolls up and I don’t get out on both days but living alone in the city makes it almost impossible to get out on a bike in the evenings between cooking and shopping and drinking coffee. So the weekends become even more important. Despite spending the dough and taking the time to ship a nice set of rollers over here, my indoor riding has amounted to nothing – the pieces and parts are still in the box. From both a mental and physical standpoint my exercise suffers if I don’t devote Saturday and Sunday mornings to riding. I made a plan with my riding buddy Dermot ...

That title sounds considerably more ponderous than this blog might merit. But I did want to take the time to post some pictures of the houses in the villages along the road into Bin Yu Gou. One of the things I like a lot about traveling out in the countryside is getting to see how the people live. While I’ve been out of the cities many times, my trip last November to the temple in Haicheng was first time I was really off the road – driving down dirt lanes between tall corn sheaves and stacks of dried bamboo. Forage for the animals and fuel for the homes stored up to get everyone through the hard northern winter. But while the farmyards and the fields are interesting to me, it’s the architecture that I find most fascinating. Stone houses with those canonical Chinese roofs, upturned on the corner and paved with shiny red or blue tiles. Most houses have a gate that encloses an inner yard, home for the small animals and whatever vehicles the dwellers might own. The walls are always brightl...

Every single car trip I have taken in China has been done with drivers. Between the cabs and the vans and the guys who worked only for me, I’ve always been a passenger and the continuity of the conversation has always been my responsibility. It’s a challenge to be in charge when you’re not the driver, and sitting there for hours in silence is never an alternative – it’s been up to me to keep things lively because in general these drivers are not used to boring long hauls down a bland highway. They’re used to dodging cars on choked city streets where you have to stay on your toes. So when my friend Ben asked if I wanted to join him and his wife Sasa on a road trip over the weekend I jumped at the chance. Not only would we be heading to the one local place I’d not yet visited, I’d be able to sit in the backseat of a car and just do what I wanted to do. No discussions about the merits of the prostitutes at each of the local bars (Driver #1), no painful garlic-scented silence (Driver #2) o...

I did something really out of character the other night; I went out to the local red-light district for a couple of beers with a friend. While I am no stranger to saloons on this assignment, most of my visits involve food and conversation and a group of people. This night I had only three things in mind – beer, conversation and wandering around checking out the place. The seedy part of my neighborhood is called 5 Colour City, why I do not know. It’s a strange place with oddly sinister fairy tale characters climbing the walls and sitting on the edges of the buildings. It’s dumpy, shabby, dirty and it looks a lot like those early theme parks my dad used to drag me to when I was a kid – Frontier Town, Pirate’s Bay and the like. Compared to the high octane packaging of the modern version, these seem quaint and simple and stuck in an older time. And I’m sure that 5 Colour City seemed that way once too but that would have been before it got filled up with bars catering to tattooed chain smok...

I bet you never thought words like that could be uttered but when you live a life in a foreign land, where everything is so foreign , you rely on little things to keep you grounded in your own world. Well, they can at least make you think you’re grounded, even if you’re really not. On last week’s shopping expedition I was really sorry to discover that the store was completely out of my favorite morning beverage, blood orange juice. I’d discovered it many months ago and being a fan of the actual fruit, I became an instant devotee to the rendered version. Knowing that I would be starting my day with a glass of that glorious blood-colored nectar has given me the energy to haul my carcass out of bed on more than one occasion. I came to rely on its tart “hello” as my ticket to happiness, at least until I went outside and got in the car. And so you can imagine how low I felt when not only was it absent from its place on the shelf, but its place was filled with something else. I moped off to ...