I usually don't write travelogue as most of travel spans several days or so except for recent trips to Japan, and was not gonna write my trip to China for 43 days. But travelling for any place over a month becomes quite interesting to anyone, my friends asked me about it and I end up answering some of their questions over and over again.

Rather than repeating my impressions on travelling Silkroad of China repeatedly, I finally decided to write some note on it as I had to repeate the same stuff repeatedly, and not commenting on some subject to someone friends while which I answered to other friends became too offensive to those friends.

I put few pictures I took during the travel on my homepage, but that is not even satisfiable to me, not to mention visitors to my homepage to see it. As I took about 21,500 pictures, it become quite difficult to organize it nicely or succinctly to feel a sense of overview of what I saw in my 43 days in China.

Initially I planned for 2 2-week-long trips to China so that I can see just essentials of more than enough places to see. So I applied for a dual-entry visa to China from the consulate of China in Los Angeles, before heading for Korea.

But due to the unexpected schedules in Korea and back home in Los Angeles, I decided to have one 3 week or less tour when I booked the airplane ticket to Beijing from Seoul. As I had an urgent and must-be-taken-care-of business matter in Hong Kong, I booked the Beijing-in Hong Kong-out ticket from Seoul, Korea.

From Seoul to Beijing, it's less than 2 hours by plane and while on the plane, I decided to extend my trip for more than 30 dyas and cancel my schedules in Korea.

I planned to just 3 days in Beijing, but ended up staying there for 6 days and there were delays in moving between cities all the time. It took me 32 days to go from Beijing to Urumqi, which I figured 2 weeks would be enough on my day one. So most places I visited, I was less prepared to see what I wanted to see.

From Chengdu to Hong Kong, I had to fly from Chengdu to Shenzen, then take a train to Hong Kong, which saved me 2 days against taking train from Chengdu to Kunming to Guangzhou to Shenzen to Hong Kong.

And it was getting closer to May 1 holiday season, I noticed every prices were going up and getting a room became difficult without a reservation. So towards the end of the travel, I stayed in and around Chengdu for 5 days, as I didn't have much options to move around, which I appreciated greatly afterwards.

Thus I saw more of Chengdu without much prior informations, or pre-conceptions. I got so impressed at the landscaping and functions of Dujiangyan, which became a great motivation for me.

As for sculptures of Sanxingdui museum, that's the most eye-widening experience for me during my last visit to China. That's where I saw the beauty of procelains, vase and china for the first time. Preveiously I didn't know how to appreciate the china at all. Masks for the most mentally shocking experience for me. The site is still under excavation, so decades later history book must be written again.

As for grottes, those were my primary goal of visiting China and saw more than I wanted to see. What's lacking was my Kodak 6490's limitation, and I regretted painfully for not buying Canon 350D or Pentax ist DL before the trip.

Travelling alone is sometimes difficult as I can't talk at all, especially you're on the road where you don't know the local language. I used to be fluent in Chines but forgot most of it as I haven't used it quite some time, although I still could read some.

Afer a couple of weeks in China, my ears got opening to the Chinese language again, and could understand pretty much half the language spoken. But I still could not speak much at all.

I understood what people said in Chinese, but could not speak the language at all, so I had to speak in English which were not comprehensible to them was frustrating. I understood but could not express I understood it. That was even more frustrating than not knowing what they were talking at all.

As my main purpose of visiting China was to see as much grottoes I coud, I spent less time in streets to see how people live or cafes to run into new people, or in famous traveller's sites in town. I guess I was on less-frequently-visited places quite often.

The best of my companion was iPod 60G, which I filled 40 GB of mp3 musics I liked. I just packed it as it didn't take up much space, but didn't expect iPod would be that convient for me to relax a bit each day. Wherever I was, I could rely on iPod to get away from the surrounding environment I was.

I guess my iPod was my only entertainment while travelling China. Although I've enjoyed going Karaoke, going Karaoke all by myself in a new city was not necessariy safe at all, and I didn't know friends in cities at the time I visited to go Karaoke with me to relax a bit.

If I had iPod with voice recorder, it could have been perfect as sometimes I heard local music and wished to buy those songs. If I were able to record it, I could have played it at the record store and purchsed the music.

At Lanzhou, I heard many exotic songs, but could not record those at all for reference. After leaving Lanzhou, I've never heard those songs from other cities, and all those rhythms have faded away in my memories, other than I really liked those songs when heard.

With a voice recorder on iPod, I could have recorded some conversations with local people or some incidents in the streets which got interesting to watch. As I didn't have camcorder at all, sounds were not be recorded. Although Kodak 6490 and Sony T-33 have video recording capability with sound, the sound recorded were miserable to hear.

FM tuner on iPod could have been handy, as I wanted to hear sounds or musics broadcasting on radio. Radio receiver is burdensome and I don't listen to radio much at all, but with FM/AM receiver add on on iPod, it could have been handy to hear what local people was broadcasting and listening.

This trip was lucky for me, as it rained only one day while at Lanzhou out of 43 days although I suffered seriously from Yellow Sand Wind (huangsha), which forced me to change the itinary. Without rain, I was able to go out someplace, while it rained it's safer to stay at hotel.

(October 12, 2006)

Copyright© 2005 Daniel SW Kim