Andaman Islands

So we left this.


For this... Pretty much a no brainer for us.
The Andaman Islands lie far off the east coast of India much closer to Myanmar and Thailand than India. They are all protected because of there amazing marine life and native populations. Foreigners are allowed to stay 30 days and can only visit certain areas of the islands and have to pay higher fees than Indian nationals. When we first arrived we landed in the only large town Port Blair. It's a really dirty busy town full of diesel exhaust and trash. We were a little disappointed. You have to go through Port Blair to go to any of the other island though so we stayed for a few days and rode around the South Andaman island on a motorcycle. We decided after a few days to take the eight hour ferry south to Little Andaman.

That cost us about 40 cents each. The ferry was surprisingly not that uncomfortable. When we got to Little Andaman we were pretty excited. The main (only) port is on a five mile golden sand beach with crystal clear water. Once we got to shore we found a little different story. Little Andaman was hit really hard by the tsunami and while there used to be some tourist hotels and restaurants there now is very little. We were the only tourists on the island that we saw. There was one decent hotel but no restaurants. One guy had a small food shack that was really good but he left town the day after we arrived. So we ate alot of dried nuts and potato chips. The island itself is gorgeous but what you can't see from the ferry is that almost every inch of it is covered in manure. Cow, goat, dog, cat and people. The golden sand arc that lines the bay is used as a cattle road and is completely covered in fertilizer. You really can't even walk on the beach without hitting a land mine. After a few days of non stop rain and manure we decided to head back to Port Blair ready for some hot food.

We were about to give up on the Andamans when we talked to a couple from Tazmania who told us that another island, Havelock, was worth a look.
Havelock is the main tourist island so we were going to give it a miss but after Little Andaman some tourist facilities sounded pretty good.

India

As it turns out India has quite a lot of people also. We used the lonely planet guide book to find our hotel and when we arrived we were not impressed. The conditions of the hotel were about the exact opposite of the book's description. We now know from talking with many people that while usually very good the 2005 India lonely planet may be less than accurate. One of our freinds calls it the crap book. We agree. Delhi was a little much for us so we decided to get out after a few days and head to the Andaman Islands far off the east coast. We booked a flight to Calcutta spent the night in an overpriced hotel that tried to rip us off and then flew to Port Blair the next morning.

Qsingtao

Keg Beer for sale on the sidewalks all over Qsingtao they give it to you in a plastic bag.





This is the beer garden near the Qsingtao factory I could only finish one beer.











This Fujia the cop who saved us. Thanks Fujia!



The internet connections have been few and far between lately so just to let everyone know we just arrived in Tanzania last night. I did want to bring the blog up to date though so I will try to start off where we went off course. China. We arrived in Beijing and we knew that it would be pretty tough to get train tickets to Tibet since the train has only been running for one year so we made that a priority. We didn't know that it takes ten days of waiting and paying the ticket scalpers a hefty commission for the tickets but we still wanted to go that route so we did it. After site seeing in and around Beijing we still had a few days to kill so we took the bullet train over to QsingTao on the east coast. The town is renowned for its international beer Tsingtao. Once a German colonial town the city looks as if it could be part of Europe.


The part with many Chinese people.





We arrived late at night and went for some food at one of the nearby seafood shacks on the boardwalk. After eating we received our bill and it was about ten times what it should have been. We argued over the price but ended up paying the bill and leaving. All night I plotted on how to destroy the shack and the owner and did little sleeping. The next day I told Elle about the excellent plans that I had devised for revenge but somehow we came to the conclusion that going to the police might be our best option. We were both pretty sceptical about the success of this maneuver but we figured it was our only choice. The Qsingtao police turned out to be the best police force in the world. Instead of laughing at us they brought in a translator from a nearby hostel and we went over the story and then went and confronted the store owner. It was a fantastic scene because it was lunch hour rush and the place was full. We marched in with three police officers and they made the owner give us our money back and then apologize. Sweeeeeet justice!





After the ordeal the officer who helped us the most (Fujia) invited us out to dinner and brought us gifts!!!!!! L.A.P.D. if you're reading this take note.





After that we returned to Beijing and then left for Tibet. In Tibet we contemplated going over land across the border to Nepal because we were so close and then continuing on to Delhi our next stop. However this turned out to be fairly expensive and since we already had air tickets out of Shanghai we decided to take an even longer train back to Shanghai 51 hours. We spent a few days in Shanghai but it was a week long national holiday and very hard to do anything. I don't know how busy Shanghai normally is but it was hard to breathe there were so many people. Luckily we only had a couple of days there and then we were off to uncrowded India!

More China

These are some of the delicious kabobs you can get on the streets of Beijing. The second one is our favorite restaurant down the street from our hotel in Beijing. It's decorated in dark wood and the walls are stained yellow from all the cigarette smoke. It looks like a place that would be in an old western movie so Elle and I did our best old western poses.

The Mao portrait is at one of the old Beijing gates and is the entrance to the Forbidden City which is also pictured.

Mt. Everest

Pictures Tibet

Elle 's B-day cooking class!





Tibetan high mountain lake seen from 17,000ft pass

Summer Palace Sigatse Tibet






One of the many windy roads on route to Mt. Everest

Everest

Yak it's what's for dinner.

This is our awesome crew Ben (London), Tam (whales) Hester (Holland),

Jitske (Holland), Roman (Austria), and Richard (USA) we travelled with Hester the hockey star and Jitske the photographer in the same land cruiser and met up periodically with the international man gang at various locations. Their catch phrases included "yak shaggers" and "dude!" and we mostly stuck to "Better than nothing!" The guys continued on to Nepal and we headed back after two fun airless nights at base camp with all the Yak butter tea we could handle.