Walking in the Mountains of China

About the Author:

Keith Jones specializes in gray whale tour, blue whale tour, gray and blue whale combo tour, giant panda bear tour, walk a tiger tour, shark tour, African safari tour, African gorilla trek, arctic narwhal tour and Magdalena Bay whale watching tour. He also writes about Baja travel and gray whales. Keith Jones is the author of Gray Whales My Twenty Years of Discovery.

He will share to you his experience in Ya’an City, Sichuan Province

Today our Panda volunteer group will begin their second day of volunteer work.  I was at the Bifengxia Panda Preserve yesterday with them as they began their first day of actual work with the panda keepers.  So today I had free time. 

I rode in the van with our small group of 5 to the entrance gate.  This entry point is 30 kilometers from the City of Ya’an or Yaan, where our hotel is located.  My goal was to walk back to the hotel from Bifengxia.  30 kilometers is about 18 ½ miles.  The road is two lanes, one in each direction and it has some very steep uphill and downhill sections.  This seemed like a challenging one day endeavor.

Thinking that I would not need to carry a lot of excess stuff on this walk, I left my daypack in the hotel room. 

My attire for this mini-adventure walk consisted of a brilliant red Russel Athletic T-shirt with black accented sleeves bought in Covina, California for $17.95 in March, a pair of mud brown cargo pocket shorts that I had a seamstress cut extra short and that I bought in 2006 for $8 at a Bass Pro Shop in Southern California, wicking type fast drying underwear from REI circa 2008, a pair of black low top socks from Costco and my trusty Columbia Birke hiking shoes with the very good skid resistant soles that I bought at REI for $69.95.  Sadly this pair of shoes is worn out.  I have a new pair recently purchased online and waiting for me back in the USA, but until then I am walking on a less than perfect pair of foot beds. 

Leaving the van I pushed a broad brimmed hat that I bought two years ago in Vientiene, Laos for $1 down on my head.  The neck string dangled loose beneath my chin, but was still capable of keeping the lightweight hat from blowing away as I crossed bridges and river beds.  A pair of Polo sunglasses with gray smoked glass lenses that I purchased on Wangfujing Street in Beijing, China in December of 2007 for $150.00 dangled from a black string around my neck. 

My small digital camera went into the right front pocket and my cell phone and some small Yuan notes like one, five and ten Yuan bills went into the left pocket.  In the front right button pocket I placed a small rectangular package of toilet tissue that sells in China for 1 Y. or about $.15 US and is an essential element of every outing in Asia.  In the left button down pocket I placed a small glass cleaning cloth.  A waterproof gel type pen was slid onto the neck of my quick dry T-shirt.  My passport and some 100 Yuan notes went into the left rear button pocket.  The right rear button pocket held my reading glasses and a small notebook that I bought in Manila for about 4 Philippine Pesos or about 10 cents.  I carried a 500 ml. bottle of water along with me switching that from hand to hand as I walked. 

Before leaving the hotel I prepped my face and neck with SPF 50 sunscreen and I felt I was ready to go.  Because I wanted to be in an adventurous frame of mind, I did not shave.  The dark black stubble gave me the appearance of someone who had stayed up all night, but also making me feel as if I had a little Indiana Jones’ spirit within me.

The morning air was languid and heavy with moisture.  Warmth from yesterday’s sun still emanated from the gray concrete of the parking area at the entrance gate to the Bifengxia Panda Preserve.  At 8:00 AM there were already cars and buses parked haphazardly around the paved area.

A dense growth of trees and underbrush, growing on three sides of the parking lot, shrouded my view of the surrounding mountains.  Drops of water like tiny crystals glistened on the spider webs that industrious arachnids had woven between pine trees and the bamboo growing in the shade of those evergreens.

At the entrance to the parking lot the green forest crowds in on both sides of the roadway.  This idyllic atmosphere was shattered by noisy groups of Chinese tourists walking up the road from two local style inns.  The scent of pine and bamboo was smothered by billowing clouds of black diesel soot blowing from the exhaust of a dozen buses.

Our van with my guide and small tour group drove through the park entrance stopping momentarily to drop me on the edge of the parking lot.  Today I had decided on a small adventure that seemed perhaps a bit more than I could manage to complete.  I planned to walk from the entrance to the Bifengxia Panda Preserve back to the Ibis Hotel in the city of Ya’an, where our group is staying in the evenings while they do their volunteer work program at Bifengxia.

At the entry gate to the Panda Preserve as I stepped from the van I wished the group a good day and told the driver to keep her eyes wide open for my BRIGHT RED shirt as she drove back to the hotel at 4:00 PM.  There were so many things to see along the way, I did not know how far I would get.  Thirty kilometers seemed like a very long way.

The first 2.6 kilometers were easy to measure because a huge sign at a Y in the uphill roadway points to the left and says “Bifengxia 2.6 kilometers”.  There is a large electrical generating plant at this Y in the road, powered by the rushing Qinyi River. 

My walk from Bifengxia to Yaan began at precisely 8:00 A.M.  I arrived at the Y in the road at 8:40 A.M.  Along the way I stopped to talk to various local people working the small plots of vegetables that they have planted along the roadway.  Most of these workers were women 45 to 80 years of age.  Each of them carried a round basket on her back, shoulder straps holding the basked in place and in which they loaded whatever vegetables they were harvesting this morning.

It was really funny to stop near one of the workers, say Nee hau and then listen to their reply.  Then we would carry on a one or two minute conversation, during which neither of us understood one word that the other person said.  After a couple minutes, I would say goodbye and wave, they would laugh and smile as I walked away.

Along this stretch of road, carved into the rock face of the mountain I came upon two small shrines.  These were in the local style and depicted an old time demi-god.  The work was intricate, exotic and the paint had been renewed many times.  The name of this figure is “Grandfather Earth”.  In Mandarin they call him Tu Di Gong Gong. 

In the ancient religious/political beliefs from the earliest times of the Warring States (roughly 2,500 years ago) and the Imperial Families, there is a hierarchy of Godliness.  At the top of this pyramid is God and below God stands the Emperor along with several other all powerful gods.  Below this level were the animalistic, natural bound demi-gods such as Tu Di Gong Gong (Grandfather Earth).  Each of these demi-gods was believed to have power over some particular area of the natural world.  Father Earth could affect crops and weather and movement of water and the earth, such as an earthquake. 

These demi-gods were and are now looked upon with fondness rather than fear. Farmers burn incense at the shrines I passed to wish for a good crop or a badly needed rainstorm.  In current popular Chinese entertainment Grandfather Earth and occasionally Grandmother Earth are depicted as short jolly looking figures who come up to about the waist on the average Chinese.  They frequently provide the comic relief in dramatic works on TV.  They are similar in current comedic drama some ways to the Leprechauns of Ireland or the happy dwarves of European mythological fantasy.

I stopped and paid a minute of reverent silence to this interesting Grandfather Earth figure before my revelry was broken by the harsh strident sounding of a very loud electric horn as a big bus whipped around a 120 degree turn in the road.  I walked away from the roadside shrine wishing the road was quieter, but thinking that even with the frequent interruptions by traffic passing by, this is the kind of thing that you just cannot see unless you take the effort to walk a few miles in a strange place.

I continued downhill, passing through an area of cool morning air and enjoying the walk because I did not have a 15 kilo pack on my back.  Somewhere around the two hour point in the walk I began to feel a bit fatigued.  So I sat on one of the many concrete road markers and took a 10 minute break.  Starting up again, I felt renewed and my stride seemed to pick up speed. 

There is a section of the road that is carved into the side of the mountain bedrock.  The rock actually hangs out 25 feet from the inside vertical face of the roadside, looking like an enormous ocean breaker about to break onto the roadway.  The outside of this rock overhang has no support.  It is almost incomprehensible that this half of a tunnel doesn’t collapse and bury the entire roadway. 

Beneath the overhanging rock canopy, rivulets of water splash continuously onto the road.  The road was slippery with moss and algae, but I could not avoid walking through this downfall for fear of downhill speeding vehicles.  I walked fast here and was glad to get past the rock overhang without falling on my butt.

A few hundred yards downhill from the overhanging rock two old women who looked like great-grandmas, were at work in the drainage ditch that runs alongside the roadway.  One woman repeatedly pushed a two wheeled wheelbarrow across the road and dumped mud and rocks over the side into the steep river gorge.  The second woman was down in the ditch, roughly one meter below the road level.  She was shoveling mud and rock up into the barrow to clean the drainage ditch.

I stopped and the three of us chatted together, laughing but not understanding a thing that we said to one another.  As I walked away, their supervisor drove up on a motor scooter.  He was wearing a bright orange safety vest and carried a walkie-talkie.  He stopped in the downhill lane closest to the river gorge and shouted over to the pair of workers.  They said something back and the conversation got louder.  At first I thought that they were arguing with one another.  But suddenly he laughed and they laughed and he just drove off.  It was a typically loud, three way Chinese conversation.

My walk was going very well.  It felt good to be walking in the overcast and wet climate that dominates these mountains.  It felt especially good to be walking without a pack on my back.  I think that at times I was almost speed walking.  Something that is quite unusual for “Slow Walkin’ Jones”.

Again I stopped for a two minute break at a point where the road got particularly steep.  Walking downhill here was jarring my shins.  While I was sitting on another of those common concrete road markers a motor scooter came slowly up the incline. 

It wobbled and weaved back and forth.  There were two men on this slow moving scooter.  It was weaving erratically because it was moving so slowly that in fact it was barely moving.  They went by me slower than I had been walking.  We said Neehau to one another and the guy in the rear gave me a really large toothless smile.

Behind them a second scooter wobbled toward me.  This scooter held three girls aged 18 to 22.  They were laughing and shouting as they approached me.  If possible their scooter was moving even slower than the first one.

When they were just 5 meters from me the scooter suddenly veered into the other lane heading toward the river gorge, then wobbled back toward me and then straightened out, just before they drove into the drainage ditch.  This brought a new round of laughter and giggles. 

When they came alongside me, I mimed giving them a helping push uphill.  This proved to be just too funny and the girl in the rear jumped (or fell) off the back of the nearly motionless scooter.  The second girl also jumped off and the scooter suddenly leaped ahead, before the driver brought it to a safe stop.  Once the scooter was pushed to the side of the road, the three tried to talk to me. 

Finishing our brief and unintelligible conversation, they began to push the scooter up the steep incline and I continued my walk downhill.

At 10:20 I passed another power plant. 

At 10:45 AM I was ready for a long break.  Fortuitously a small nameless town appeared in front of me.  I came upon an ancient stone home which had a small store in front.  There were four older local people sitting there.  I noticed some dark red tomatoes and stopped to buy one.  I picked one up and said “du xou chen” which means how much.  The man tending the fruit stand was very old.  Perhaps 85 or 90 years (or perhaps just 60 it is so difficult to judge age here).  I handed him 2 Yuan.  He turned to a younger (perhaps 75 years) woman who said something to him.  He then handed me back one of the Yuan.  So my tomato was one yuan or about 15 cents.

Another old man pointed at a water tap and indicated I could wash my tomato there.  I said XeXe (thank you) but washed the tomato with some of the water I was carrying with me.  That tomato was perfect!  Red, vine ripened, fat and juicy with a couple minor blemishes where some insect had bit into it, which assured me it was organic and toxin free.  The flavor of that tomato was so good.  I finished and turned to walk away, when I realized that the old man was walking back to me, carrying some 1 jiao notes.  These are really Chinese pennies.  Ten jiao = 1 yuan.  1 yuan is about 15 cents U.S.  So 1 jiao is worth just over a penny.  The old man handed me back 4 jiao, so that tomato cost me around 10 cents.

I left that produce stand feeling very good.  Five minutes walk brought me to a roadside café.  Outside the café, by the road there is a large statue of an ancient fisherman.  He is holding a fishing rod, with a fish on his line and his head is thrown back in laughter.  That ancient fisherman was obviously thrilled with his catch.

I walked up to the two women sitting in front of the café and asked them if they had any tea.  Cha!  One smiled and nodded yes.  The second woman got up from a chair she was sitting on and offered the seat to me.  I sat.  By then I had been walking almost 3 hours and I was feeling really good, if a bit fatigued. 

I sat and sipped tea while making an entry in my notebook.  At 11:00 AM, my 15 minute tea break was over.  I felt refreshed and ready to continue.  Before starting I retied my shoes and then asked them “du xou chen”.  They shook their heads no.  When I started to reach into my pocket one of the women waved her hand back and forth.  They wouldn’t let me pay for the tea even though this was a roadside café.

Again I walked away with a smile on my face.

I wasn’t sure how far I was from the City of Yaan even though I had been up the road two times before starting this walk.  Things always seem so different when walking.

The next hour I passed through rural housing on both sides of the road, with large and small plots of corn, rice and other vegetables.  The traffic became heavier, but the road widened a little bit so that I felt a lot more comfortable walking.

At almost precisely 12:00 noon I came into the actual city of Yaan.  I saw a woman selling produce from a three wheeled cart.  What caught my eye was more juicy red tomatoes.  I walked across the road and waited while she finished selling some peaches.

I had picked out a nice big tomato and held it up for her to weigh.  She shook her head no and made a motion that made it clear she did not want any money.  It seems like a foreigner with a smile on his face can walk through rural China and never have to buy a meal.

Once I finished this second tomato I headed toward the Ibis Hotel.  At precisely 1:00 PM I walked into the lobby of the hotel, ending the one day walking adventure.

When I got to my room I looked down and realized that my ankles, above the low top socks, were almost as dark from road dust as those black socks.  I was a little bit tired, but it had been an interesting walk and I’m glad I did it. 

What’s next on my adventure list?  Perhaps I should try to walk across the Sichuan Province without ever buying a meal. . .

The End

by

Keith Jones

July 22, City of Yaan, Sichuan Province, China

Wolong Panda Preserve

Sichuan Province, China

Trip Log, Day two at the Wolong Panda Preserve

November, 2006

Today is our second day panda trip at the Wolong Panda Preserve.  This morning we met at 8:00 A.M. as usual, for breakfast in the Panda Inn dining room.  This is where we eat most of our meals while at the panda preserve.  The restaurant staff is always friendly and very quick with service.  As soon as I sat down they brought me tea.  We eat our meals traditional Chinese family style, so everyone has the opportunity to taste many different dishes.  For breakfast I usually eat a plain bread roll and a hard boiled egg.  There are many more choices, but I eat light in the morning.

We were all excited and anxious prior to beginning our first work day here at the preserve.  We were told to meet our “masters” at 8:30 inside the panda garden.  The masters are the panda keepers, trainers and veterinarians who will be our mentors during our volunteer work days. 

Each of us was assigned his or her own master, who we will work with and assist as they perform their regular work chores.  Each of these professionals has a regular schedule of pandas they care for.  The number of pandas varies from 1 to 5 or 6 depending on what work effort is required for the individual animals.

My panda trainers name is Sung.  She is a very experienced panda trainer who had only one panda in her care while I was there.  Sung was responsible for rehabilitating and training Drong Drong.  He is an addition to the Panda Garden who was discovered by local mountain villagers.  When they found him he was sick and in need of care.  The Preserve rescued him from the wild.  This is how many pandas find their way to the panda preserve.

Sung was given the responsibility of getting Drong into good physical shape and then to train him with all the behaviors necessary for him to become one of the strong male breeders.  She must train him to react to many instructions including climbing into the cage that is used for physical inspection and manipulation by the veterinarians.  This training is time intensive, which is why Sung had only Drong Drong to care for.

At 8:30 we all walked from the dining room over to the Panda Garden, just a few hundred yards away.  It is a real treat to come out of the hotel in the morning, walk to the preserve and be one of only a handful of people in the park.

The Panda Garden is vibrantly alive in the early morning.  There is usually a misty haze covering the mountains that climb steeply from both sides of this narrow river canyon.  The pandas know that the keepers are on their way with the morning treats.  They look forward to receiving the days supply of fresh green tender bamboo.  Every enclosure has pandas on the move.  Up in trees, down along walking lanes and just sitting near the entrances to their private homes, the pandas are all waiting.

I was introduced to Sung, who is a get to it, straight forward kind of person, just as I am.  We hit it off right from the start.  Sung has limited English and I have very limited Chinese, but we had no communication problems whatsoever.

The first thing Sung did was take me to the bakery where we picked up the morning ration of panda cake.  Panda cake is made from a special formula developed at the Wolong Panda Preserve.  The mix consists of corn meal, ground bamboo, carrots, apple, oil and some other tasty ingredients.  It is considered too rough on the digestive system for humans to eat, but of course I had to take a taste.  Like corn bread, but better!  The finished panda cakes are wheels about 10” in diameter and 3 or 4 inches thick.

The pandas love this tasty treat which makes it perfect to use as a training aid.  Because it is vitamin and calorie loaded, it is very good for those pandas being rehabilitated after rescue from bad situations in the wild

Once Sung had carefully measured out the morning quota of panda cake for Drong Drong we grabbed a large two wheeled cart, a couple of rakes, a scooping device and headed over to Drong’s enclosure.

Baby pandas are cute and cuddly and we all want to hug them.  Adult pandas are kind of cuddly appearing too, until you see the very large bear-like claws.  We are instructed to stay out of reach of those sharp claws, which they use to defend themselves in the wild.

Using the panda cake, Sung began the morning training session with Drong Drong.  First she had him sit on the scale that is permanently mounted in one corner of his house.  Drong weighed in at 106 kilos.  Sung said that was good.  This is close to Drong’s ideal weight.  They estimated his age at about 8 years old.

Next Sung put Drong through a series of stretching and flexibility exercises.  These are designed to strengthen his hind quarters ( a weak point in panda design).  This strengthening will make Drong a better breeding panda male.

When the exercises were complete for the moment, but some panda cake remained, Sung handed it to me and motioned that I should break it up into bite sized pieces and hand feed Drong Drong.  I accepted this assignment with a big smile on my face.

Drong knew to sit against the cage door and place his face close to the bars.  He would open his mouth and stick his long pink tongue out, then wait for me to place a bite onto his tongue.  I couldn’t resist enticing him to lick my hand.  (I probably wasn’t supposed to do that because I imagine putting your hand inside a pandas mouth could be considered dangerous.)  I discovered that if I withheld the panda cake, just a moment, Drong would lean forward and stick his tongue out even further. 

When he accidentally licked my right hand this way, I immediately pushed the small piece of cake into his mouth while his tongue was still touching me.  We did this a couple times in a row and Drong being the smart guy that he is, picked up on the routine.  From then on when I placed my hand just outside the bars Drong would lean forward and give my hand a good lick.  When I related this experience later, I was surprised to find out that I was the only one of our group who got their hand licked.

Anyway, after this training exercise Sung closed Drong Drong inside his house while she and I went into the outside enclosure and cleaned the fallen leaves from the moat.   I guess fishing for leaves took us an hour or so.  Then we returned to the workers private area, where we had a 45 minute wait until the next training and feeding exercise.  I left the employee rest area and wondered alone through the panda garden, enjoying my private time here at the Preserve.

My second session that morning with Drong was a repeat of the first one, except there was no cage cleaning required.  We just put Drong Drong through his training exercises and hand fed him panda cake.  My morning work period ended around 11:15 AM. 

I went back to my room and organized some notes while waiting to meet everyone else for lunch.  Lunch found all of us over talkative and excited about our morning.  Not one of us was disappointed in how the morning had gone.  The “work” was really not difficult.  Raking leaves and scooping a few piles of bamboo green panda poop barely qualified as work. 

A special training session was scheduled for Drong Drong in the afternoon.  So immediately after lunch Sung and I took some more panda cake and put Drong through his regular exercise training program one more time.  Then a short rest break, which I used to explore a different part of the Panda Garden.  Around 2:30 Sung and I wondered back to Drong Drong’s cage where we met with two of the vets and the head panda keeper.

Sung called Drong over to the door to his house.  The training cage was already pushed up against the bars.  One of the others slid the bars aside and Sung directed Drong Drong into the small training and handling cage.  Drong obediently crawled inside.  At Sung’s direction he lay down on his back and extended his right arm through the main cage into a specially built appendage that sticks out one side of the cage.  This small cage encloses the pandas arm and paw. 

The small arm cage makes it easier and safer for the veterinarians to work on the pandas.  The arm is exposed so that if they need to draw blood samples or to give injections the pandas arm is exposed and accessible.

Next Sung had our panda grasp the bars on the side of the cage with each of his four paws.  To reward him, Sung used a small training clicker which she repeatedly clicked, just as she fed him small pieces of panda cake.  Over time the clicker noise becomes attached to the taste of the panda cake and the animal can be rewarded with just the clicker.  This is important because the rich panda cake must be rationed.  Too much is not good for the pandas digestive system and causes a very messy clean up the next morning.

The training exercise consumed our afternoon work period.  Once we had muscled the cage back into the panda house and released Drong Drong to his outside enclosure, Sung said we had another 45 minute break before the next session. 

I used this time to watch some of the baby pandas being hand fed their bottles.  The babies are fed and cared for inside a special nursery area.  The workers are very protective of the babies.  For some reason the public is not allowed to look at the baby pandas when they are out getting some sunshine or playing.  The only time the public can view the panda babies is when they are in the nursery being cared for.

Us volunteer workers were able to sit alongside the babies as they played and just lay in the warm sunshine, soaking up the sparse mountain sun.  Each baby had his or her own personality.  At two months of age they were still not real strong and active.  Most of them would just lay and enjoy the warmth of the sun.  However, there was one precocious child who would not stay with the group.  As soon as he was placed on the warm asphalt, he began crawling away from the group.  His babysitter would let him get about 10 yards from the others, then she would scoop him up and carry him back to the others.  This action was repeated over and over all the time I watched the squirming pile of panda babies.

My last work session of the day began around 3:00 and went until 4:00 PM.  We carried some fresh bamboo over to the cage and took away the old stuff.  Then Drong did his exercises one last time that day.  By that time he had the hand licking routine down pat.  I placed my hand next to the cage, he would reach out and give me a big tongue swipe and I would place some panda cake on top of his tongue. 

Drong being a male panda can be really vocal.  The males like to make noise while going through their exercises or while just sitting around wasting the day away.  The females are quieter and more reserved. 

My “work day” was finished at 4:00.  Dinner was at 6:00 PM so I had two hours to go and explore a nearby canyon.  There is a stream that runs from this canyon and it looked like it would be a great spot to explore alone.  I put on a warm jacket and headed out to see what was up that canyon.

15 minutes up the trail I came to an old animal enclosure.  I learned this was where they sometimes housed new pandas when they first arrived at the Panda Preserve in the earlier years when the preserve was just getting started.

The trail was steep and slippery.  The mountains are always misty.  Light rain showers are not uncommon here in the foothills.  The stream flowed quite fast with many gurgling ponds.  It seemed like the perfect environment for trout, but the local people all assured me there were no fish in the streams.

There were dozens of mushrooms.  Everywhere you looked there were various fungi growing.  Golden yellow, wood brown and even some that looked like they would glow in the dark.  I was really tempted to collect some, but the danger from eating strange mushrooms kept me from gathering any.  Next time I will find a local expert to walk with me and gather some fresh mushrooms.

I got back to the hotel in time to shower before dinner.  Dinner consisted of 8 or 9 different dishes.  Every meal is an adventure all its own.  By now we all had a favorite dish we liked to see, but the other dishes were always something new and interesting to taste.  In the mountains, peppers and cabbage are two staple foods and each meal had at least one dish of each.  There was always some type of chicken or fish and usually a pork dish as well.  Several tasty vegetable dishes were also the norm.

That night I planned to go out in search of a wild leopard, so as soon as we finished eating I went to my room for a nap, while everyone else took off to explore the countryside around the Panda Preserve.

All in all my first day of work at the Wolong Panda Preserve was everything I hoped it would be.  I could not have asked for anything different than what I got.  Because this is a real life experience that unfolds in real time as the panda trainers go about their daily work, every persons experience is different. 

I was the only one whose panda licked their hand.  I like to think that is because Drong Drong and I formed an instant and very special bond.  But probably it was because Drong is a pretty smart guy and figured out right away what I wanted from him.  Of course I have lots of animal training experience which might have helped us get the hand licking action down right away.

That’s all I have time to write at the moment.  I hope you enjoyed my first day volunteering at the preserve as much as I did.

Keith

In Search of the Giant Wild Panda in the Qinling Mountains

A big hike in search of Wild Giant Pandas

The trip comments  below are from my Wild Panda search the week of July 20, 2006.  We can set this trip up for you, with a recommendation that you stay a minimum of 5 nights, but a full week is really advised.

    

Our trip really begins when we stop at a roadside inn for lunch.  Jane our very attractive

translator, leaves the table and slips into a room across from where we are eating.  She enters that room a stylish and classy Chinese woman who could be dressed for business most anywhere in the world.  She comes out dressed in military style camo clothing and heavy duty hiking boots.  She is now G.I. Jane.  

   

After lunch we drive up the narrow and winding mountain road another 30 minutes and then stop and begin unloading.  Several local people stand around the car waiting.  We have reached the trailhead.  Jane advises us that the local people will carry our packs.  At first I hesitate, then I decide to go along with the game plan they have laid out.  Later, I'm glad I let someone more accustomed to the elevation and steep trail carry my pack.  

The hike to the campsite takes about 6 hours.  We travel about 15 miles horizontally and make a vertical climb of 3,000 feet.  Much of the hike is exceedingly steep.  I'm really glad I took my own advice and worked out for a couple months on a treadmill while carrying a 50 pound pack.  

My good physical conditioning keeps me in the game all the way.  Even though I'm the oldest one along, by 18 years.  It turns out I'm the second oldest person they know to have made this climb.  I just refuse to believe that 58 is OLD.

Along the way we spot much wildlife including Takin and Jane's first view ever of the Golden Monkeys.  During our week in the mountains we spotted the following wildlife:

Golden Takin

Goral

Serow

rock squirrel

chipmunk

bamboo rat

vole

golden monkeys

It was a very good 5 days of wildlife viewing.  At the end of this article is a detailed mammal sighting list.

There were hundreds of birds.  Some species that stand out were the black pheasant, a sparrow hawk that was the only raptor we spotted, a bustard and so many different small species that flitted in and out of the bamboo, tracking our movements all the time.

We saw several poisonous snakes, no common name, but thankfully a species that is exceedingly shy and was always spotted slithering away into the bamboo.

There were at least a half dozen, maybe a dozen species of bee.  Some tiny ones that hovered and darted about and some really big fat black bumblebees. We also saw a cloud burst of fireflies one evening after dinner.  I hadn't seen fireflies since I was a young child.  They were only seen once.   

Also a shy ground squirrel nested a few yards from the cabin we stayed in.  He came out to eat leftovers that were rinsed from our pans and dishes.

    

Sleeping quarters were tight.  A raised sleeping area provided group sleeping accommodations for about 10 men during the time I was there.  The two women each had a room to themselves.  The door to the outside of our shack was ill fitted and made a horrendous squealing noise each time someone went in or out during the night.  Still, with earplugs and noise reducing headphones I slept very well.

   

Food was cooked and served family style from a couple of big pots.  The camp cook was quite good.  I was pleasantly surprised by his skill and his happy demeanor.  When I made a special request for low sodium, low fat food he just smiled and made me the exact same food as everyone else, but as I requested.

July 20, 2006:

   

Today we're hiking in a conifer forest whose trees are densely packed together.  There is a scattering of deciduous trees spread through the forest.  Beneath the trees, growing luxuriantly in the dark shade is the umbrella bamboo that these pandas love and thrive upon.  The umbrella bamboo is even more dense than the first two days of searching.

  

This dense growth of bamboo and overshadowing trees makes the forest eerily quiet.  The lush green growth sucks up every sound.  The damp and moist earth is a great sound deadener.

   

There are a dozen bee and fly species that constantly hover around us.  Sometimes landing upon us.  They are irritating, but in general don't bite or sting us.  The exception are the cow flies that sometimes bite and draw a drop of blood.  They are slow moving, hovering a few inches away, before choosing the tastiest piece of bare skin to draw blood from.

Moss, fungus and mushrooms grow everywhere.  There is so much moisture in the air that they grow beneath fallen trees, along the trail, in takin poop, and even high in the trees, where we spot some golden monkeys chowing down on the arboreal fungus.

     

I have seen more wildlife on this hike than I have seen on all of my other China trips combined.  There is takin spoor everywhere.  Panda poop is common and we regularly came upon signs of pandas that were only hours old.  

During this panda search only one live wild panda was spotted.  He was moving away and the guide in the lead position spotted his black and white butt waddling quickly into the dense bamboo as we approached.  Does this mean the trip was unsuccessful?  I don't think so.  I cannot guarantee panda sightings on this trek.  

It is difficult to spot them, not impossible and not unlikely, but also not a certainty.  The signs were all around us.  This location has the highest probability of a successful sighting of Giant Panda of any location in the world today.  Researchers regularly make this habitat their locale for study because of the high concentration of pandas here.

This is not an easy hike.  It is a rugged journey that shouldn't be undertaken by anyone not in reasonably good physical condition.  I'm 58 and overweight.  I worked out hard and diligently every day for two months before going and I was glad I had done so.  

To give some perspective to the difficulty level I took along two pair of long pants because I knew my clothing would be wet all the time.  I kept the dry pants for around camp and each morning would slide the slightly soggy, cold and very uncomfortable pants on.  These pants were specially purchased for this trip.  Quick drying, highly puncture resistant, hi-tech fabric that at the end of the trip were so tore up by the bamboo that I threw them away.

I am a veteran of hundreds of hikes and camping expeditions, so there were no surprises for me in terms of how difficult the hike was.  Nor were the living conditions unbearable.  We had a wood cabin to shelter us, which was certainly better than a tent.  The food was excellent and plentiful, which is all you can ask for on a mountain expedition such as this.  

We were accompanied by two extremely skilled trackers, Fung and Jung (pronounced young).  They slipped through the bamboo like ghosts, while I bulled my way through like a crazed Golden Takin.  During our search for wildlife Fung was first to spot the takin and the golden monkey, although I like to think I would have seen them first if I had been in the lead.  He was

quite talented at spotting animals.  Later, after Fung spotted the Golden Monkeys, I spotted both the black pheasant and a Serow first and so I redeemed myself.

    

My overall impression of the trip is that it is a truly fine adventure, but it is not for everyone.  You must be willing to live rough for a week and to hike a tough trail.  If you are up to that challenge, then this wild panda search will probably live in your memory as a top rated hiking adventure.

End

Searching For the Cheapest Massage In Bangkok

About the Author:

Keith Jones is the founder of Baja Jones Adventures, Jones Adventures, Tigress Tours in Thailand and Butanding Tours in the Philippine Islands and has led thousands of people to Mexico and other interesting locations around the world. He specializes in gray whale tour, blue whale tour, gray and blue whale combo tour, giant panda bear tour, walk a tiger tour, shark tour, African safari tour, African gorilla trek, arctic narwhal tour and Magdalena Bay whale watching tour. He also writes about Baja travel and gray whales. Keith Jones is the author of Gray Whales My Twenty Years of Discovery.

This wasn’t the best Thai massage I have ever had, but it was the cheapest.  After months of searching and hundreds of Thai massages, I had finally found the cheapest massage in Thailand. 

Every visitor to Thailand has heard of Thai massage.  Most visitors plan to get at least one good massage while in Thailand. 

Given my slightly obsessive-compulsive personality, I couldn’t just come to Thailand and have a good massage at my hotel and pay the $10 or $15 dollars there.  No, I had to go out and look for the best massage in Thailand! 

My search for the best Thai massage eventually came to an unimpressive end after two weeks of trial massages, when I finally conceded that almost every massage seemed like the best one at that moment. 

But I couldn’t just drop the massage quest.  My OCD driven quests never end so easily.  Buried deep inside my brain lives a complex psychic trigger that once released cannot be reset.  Unwillingly and against my more rational thoughts, I knew that I would continue some kind of massage quest until the end of time, unless I achieved a satisfactory goal.

For several weeks while I worked, played and explored different parts of Thailand, it seemed there was to be no final outcome to my quest for the best massage.  With my OCD driven impulse left unfulfilled I would most likely sink into a serious case of the psychic doldrums.  An unrelenting feeling of something undone, much like that feeling you get as you drive away on vacation, but then 30 minutes from home wonder if you have left the iron on or the gas stove on, would nag at me until I resolved the massage issue.

I was busy working in Bangkok, but the OCD placed a subtlety relentless pressure on me.  I found myself suddenly turning from my current task at hand, to enter some massage shop I happened to be passing.  I had only the barest control over this impulse.

One massage in a day was no longer enough.  Two massages in the same day barely suppressed that nagging at the back of my brain.  Three massages led to four.  My body began to feel like a piece of tenderized meat.  When I lay down on a massage mat, my muscles were so tender from the continual ministrations of one masseuse after another that the very thought of another massage made me want to run the other way.  Two weeks of this and my work began to suffer because of the time I was using each day just lying on massage mats.

One afternoon, around 4:00 PM while on another massage mat in a small roadside shop, it came to me that what I should have been searching for all along was not the best massage.  No, I realized that I should be searching for the cheapest massage in Bangkok! 

After all everyone loves a bargain!  And if every Bangkok visitor wants at least one good Thai massage, then it was a certainty that many visitors had tried to find a bargain massage.  Had they been successful?  I don’t know.  Could I discover that elusive bargain?  I was sure I could do so. 

With that decision made, the unrelenting pressure instantly became just an elusive shadow hanging in a back closet of my psyche waiting to nag at me should I fail in this revised search. 

Lying on that mat while the masseuse pushed and pulled me one way and then another, I imagined where I might find the cheapest massage in Thailand.  I visualized a small shop, located in some seedy, tight quartered part of Bangkok.  Outside the shop, a dozen people would be standing on line waiting their turn to get cheaply pummeled and twisted.  But, as with most things in my life, the expectations and the reality didn’t quite match.

The most expensive massages in Bangkok are found at the more exclusive hotels and resorts.  These four and five star rated hotels all have some kind of beauty salon, spa or health spa.  A good Thai massage at one of these hotels will run you anywhere from 300 up to 2,000 baht or more.  These luxury spas offer aroma therapy, hot stone massage, oil massage, facials and just about anything you can imagine to primp, preen and tone a body. 

The masseuse or masseur is sure to be an accomplished and polished professional.  The salon décor will be tasteful and expensive.  Pleasant Thai or New Age music will play softly in the background.  Given the relatively high price of those salon treatments, that is as just as it should be.  You can’t go wrong with one of those high end massages.  You’re sure to walk away appreciating the fine art of Thai massage.

But once you leave the hotel spa and head out into the real Bangkok, the price of a good Thai massage drops significantly.  The next day, after a morning that included 2 inexpensive massage stops near my hotel, I decided to check one of the bar districts, in an area of Bangkok known as Sukhuvit. 

The Bangkok bar areas famous or infamous, depending on your personal viewpoint, for the sex tourists who come to visit are also home to scores of massage shops.  I figured that anyplace with such a high concentration of massage shops, would also have a few cut-rate shops.

I was now on a tight timetable, so I decided I couldn’t cut back to just one massage a day.  I would try to do two or three massages in a day - maybe even four or five if I could stand the pounding.  With that decision made and feeling oh so good about the new direction of my massage quest, I headed into the heavy traffic that is always present in Bangkok.

The bar district I visited is called Soi Cowboy.  There are loud, brightly lit bars lining both sides of a 500 yard long walking street. . . .and hordes of excited tourists walking or drunkenly staggering their way up the neon lit street.  I knew this wasn’t my kind of place, but for the purposes of research I forced myself to join the throng. 

After wandering around for an hour I decided to try only one massage shop in this area.  I felt out of place here, but since I had come this far, I would carry on.  I chose one shop that on the outside seemed a little bit worn and battered.

Once inside I realized I had opted for a slightly upscale shop with an appearance similar to that of an expensive European or American spa.  The girls sitting around in the dark wood and marble clad entrance lobby were young, wore bright lipstick and sported eye catching jewelry.  Every masseuse was smiling and beautiful. 

There was a glossy brochure on the counter, written in excellent English that listed and described the types of massages available including; traditional Thai massage, oil massage, soapy massage (normally only available in the bar districts), facial massage and foot massage.  After reading the menu of offerings carefully and taking sharp note of the prices, I had to back out of this shop somewhat gracelessly. 

With half a dozen beautiful young women staring at me, I handed the brochure back to the older woman behind the counter, shaking my head no as I turned away.  Blushing and feeling a little bit like a shy teenager who has just been turned down when asking a pretty schoolmate for a date, I slouched out the front door and moved quickly down the street, until the shop was just a distant memory and my red face had dimmed to a normal tanned color. 

I had cheap massage on the brain, not a sexy 500 baht massage.  I couldn’t afford to waste my precious massage time on such an overpriced massage, even if delivered by a beautiful masseuse with a dragon tattoo on her left thigh.  Deciding the bar street hadn’t been such a good idea, I flagged a passing taxi.

I asked the driver to take me to a healthful massage shop.  He smiled and I could tell that he didn’t understand me.  But he nodded his head and then whipped a sudden U-turn across the two tight lanes of traffic, leaving the sound of squalling car horns echoing down the narrow soi behind us.

Quickly I speed dialed my trusted Thai translator.  I shouted into the phone, “Onanong, quick tell the taxi driver I need a healthful massage shop”.  She is used to getting these unexpected calls from me and simply replied “Okay”. 

I handed the phone to the driver.  A quick Thai conversation ensued.  He just said “kah, kah” (meaning yes,) as Onanong explained where to take me.  Eventually he closed the cell phone and without looking at me, began weaving his way through the heavy Bangkok traffic.

Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of a small massage shop on a typically seedy Bangkok commercial street.  A sign in both Thai and English read “Healthful Massage”.  Onanong had taken me literally at my word. 

To the left side of the massage shop was an open air store that advertised canvas work.  Half a dozen workers sat inside the shop, in front of industrial sewing machines, working away at huge pieces of bright yellow canvas, while smiling, laughing and obviously enjoying their work.  It was a very colorful shop. 

On the other side of the Healthful Massage shop was a store that displayed jars filled with preserved snakes, frogs and strange twisted roots.  Each jar in the store window contained a different plant or animal part and held about three gallons of liquid.   Some jars were filled with clear liquid while others were cloudy white or amber or orange.  This street was strictly local Bangkok all the way.  I had a good feeling about this stop.  It just looked cheap.

Still, I entered the shop with a bit of trepidation after my last aborted attempt back at Soi Cowboy.  Once inside instead of half a dozen beautiful masseuses, I saw this shop had two wrinkled old men sitting on a hard straight bench against the back wall of the tiny shop. 

The receptionist was a woman, maybe 65 years old or maybe 105.  Her face was a pattern work of the kind of deep wrinkles that only come from years of hard work outside in the rice fields beneath the harsh tropic sun.  She still had a few teeth, that glistened a frightening brown when she smiled up at me.  The whites of her eyes were red rimmed and had a yellow jaundiced appearance.  I smiled back at her, gave a half-hearted wai and made some hand motions indicating I wanted a massage.

The shop didn’t have a brochure nor a price list.  Although the two old guys smoking stinking Thai cigarettes in the back of the shop made me want to turn and run, this was beginning to look like I might be in the right place.  How expensive could a massage, given by a 72 year old masseur, actually be? 

I jumped in without any further hesitation.  I didn’t understand a word they said, of course.  But it was clear that the soiled sponge rubber mat on the floor in the far corner was to be my massage table.  I took a deep breath and lay down on my back.

I should point out that in traditional Thai massage, the massage is performed with your street clothing on or with a set of loose cotton tops and bottoms, provided by the salon just for the massage. Of course for oil and soapy massages, you must disrobe leaving on only your briefs, which you should cover with a towel that is thoughtfully provided by the upscale salons, and even more thoughtfully not provided by those massage shops near Soi Cowboy.

Unlike European style massages the Thai massage uses no oil or skin lubricants and usually begins with the recipient lying on his or her back.  The masseuse begins on the legs and feet and moves up from there.  The back is not given as much time as in a Swedish massage. 

Traditional Thai massage is performed using a series of pressing moves.  The muscles are pressed, sometimes softly and sometimes quite hard.  The masseuse uses her elbows, knees, thighs and other parts of her body to leverage your body around as needed.

The old masseur knelt on the edge of the dirty massage mattress.  He performed a high wai aimed to the small shrine near the reception counter  and immediately got to work.  He might have looked decrepit, but he had no problem with pressing, pulling and twisting my body around. 

I closed my eyes and tried to fantasize that the working over I was getting was being done by one of the young masseuses I had just abandoned back at Soi Cowboy.  But when the old guy started coughing and had to go hack something up into the gutter outside the shop, I knew this massage wasn’t going to make my top 10 list.  In fact I didn’t wait for him to come back. 

While he bent over coughing his lungs into the gutter, once again I decided to abandon a massage shop.  After only 15 minutes of my massage time, I sprang up from the filthy mat and not knowing the price of this massage, handed a 500 baht note to the old lady up front. 

She handed back 400 baht.  100 baht was the cheapest massage so far, but I knew I could do better!  This crappy massage couldn’t mark the end of my quest.

I flagged another taxi.  I directed the driver back to my hotel to re-group my thoughts.  Maybe I should develop a more organized plan of action.  What I had done so far that day wasn’t too successful.  It certainly wasn’t anything I wanted to brag about.

Back at the hotel, I walked out onto the boat dock that juts out into the Chao Phraya River, thinking maybe I would take a water taxi and try a massage shop located near one of the many docks that provide access to the waterway. 

Leaning on a wood railing overlooking the river, I noticed a brightly colored gold and red rooftop up stream from the hotel.  It looked like a temple, but I thought it might be a restaurant.  I was hungry so, I walked out to the road.  After taking a couple of false starts down dead end soi’s, I found the right alley to take me to that pier. 

When I stepped into this narrow alley, I couldn’t help but feel the end of my quest was near.  Every storefront along this alleyway advertised Thai massage.  In just one short stretch of alley there were more than 15 narrow storefront shops advertising Thai massage.  Some said 100 baht and a couple even advertised 80 baht.  I smiled. Maybe the end really was near.

         

By the riverfront, at the end of this massage alley, I entered a fancy gold colored patio structure that turned out to be part of the Temple Wat Varashanayawat.  Don’t bother looking in your guidebook, this temple is not there!  I already looked through mine.  I had really struck massage gold this time. 

Later, I learned that this temple provides government accredited massage instruction.  They run a massage school that has hundreds of students enrolled at any time. Not as well known as Wat Po, this temple has scores of masseurs and masseuses working or studying from early morning till late into the night.  The basic course here takes one month to complete.  It consists of hands on massage work Monday to Friday and then classroom study Saturday and Sunday. 

         

Under cover of a gaudy brilliant gold colored roof are a series of shrines.  Huge brass gongs and really big drums sit there just waiting for someone to bang on them.  I couldn’t resist pounding the big drum.  It’s deep bass sound echoed through the hall.  A hundred heads swiveled my way and I felt like I should crawl under a massage mat and hide.  Dropping a few baht into the offering dish next to the drum, I walked on toward the river.

         

I was the only farang in sight.  Unexpectedly a woman grabbed my wrist.    She could speak some broken English.  I understood as she said “massagy 50 baht”, “50 baht” and so I allowed her to lead me.  She gently pulled me toward the dock.

The massage shop she dragged me to had no solid walls.  The front wall was my height at about 6 feet tall.  The wall was an open block design that allowed a breeze to move through.  A flat rusty metal patio style roof covered the massage area.  The river was visible through the lace-like block.  Taped onto the glass of the entry door were two posters.

One poster displayed a colorful schematic of a foot and in large bold letters in English said REFLEXOLOGY.  The other poster showed the musculature of a human body.  Various pressure points and nerves were diagrammed.  I wondered if I was entering a study hall or a massage parlor?

         

Inside there were a dozen Thai massage mats laid out in two rows.  There were also a couple of hair washing stations and three stations for Thai face massage.  Still holding my shirtsleeve at the wrist, she showed me to a mat, which was clean and inviting.

I lay down on the mat, face upwards, waiting for a masseuse to come over.  As things turned out, the woman who dragged me there, was to be my masseuse.  While she worked I quizzed her about the school and about the Temple. 

         

No, she wasn’t a student.  This question made her laugh.  She works for the Temple and shares the proceeds of the massage 50/50 with the temple administration.  Since her English skills were limited two other masseuses came to crouch by my mat and the three of them joined together to talk to me.

This one hour massage was only 50 baht.  That’s only $1.70 US.  Thanks to a little help from Buddha, I had finally found the cheapest massage in Bangkok. 

PS:  If you find one less expensive, please don’t write me.

                                                          End