Asia Travel News Commentary, Reviews, and Insights

This year’s benefit climb of Mt. Rainier in Washington State is scheduled for July 14th to 16th.

The Climb for Himalaya Children raises money to support the Mitrata Orphanage and the Centre for Child Studies and Development in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The participants will climb the 14,411-foot-high Mt. Rainier, one of the highest and most glaciated mountains in the lower United States, to help ensure that the children of Mitrata have access to food, shelter, clothing, and education in a country where orphans are constantly subjected to the dangers of malnutrition, child labor, and prostitution.

This year, Red Lantern Journeys and their trekking agency partner in Nepal, Himalayan Holidays, will award of an all-inclusive trek to Mt. Everest Basecamp in Nepal to the biggest fundraiser!

Please consider supporting one of the climbers or teams by making a donation and helping them achieve their fundraising goals on this web site.

 

The University of Washington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship feature Red Lantern Journeys (and myself) in an article in their latest newsletter. I’m an MBA alum from the University of Washington Foster School of Business and it’s nice to be recognized by my alma mater! Check out the article here:
 

News agencies are reporting that China officials have verbally ordered Tibetan tour agencies not to accept foreign tourists beginning in advance of the March 14 anniversary of the 2008 pre-Olympic crackdown during which Chinese government forces killed. Read the article in the UK’s Gaurdian here:

Guardian Article on the Closure of Tibet

This closure marks the fourth year in a row that China has closed the country to foreign tourists in March to avoid witnesses to any demonstrations that may occur during this time. These closures are never announced in advance or even to foreign agencies who arrange travel to China and Tibet. They seem to be symptoms of China’s political paranoia over it’s occupation of Tibet.

After you’ve had your fill of pho and springrolls in Vietnam, try the Ashima Mushrrom Hotpot Restaurant for a unique experience. Here, you get to choose from a selection of four different broths, an extensive list of mushrooms (the most I’ve ever seen in restaurant menu), plus a wide variety of vegetables, meats and noodles. Meat choices included items such as chicken, black (Hmong) chicken, pork, beef, frog, ostrich, and all kinds of seafood. Each item, including the broth has a price to it.

After being seated, the waitress will bring you 2 small plates of cashew nuts and peanuts and wet napkins for each person. Beware that each of these things will be charged! You can send them back if you like and there are dry napkins on the table that suffice.

After taking your order, they will bring the big bowl of broth and set it on the burner in your table and turn it on. The waitress will do all the cooking. After allowing the broth to boil for a couple of minutes, she will serve up a small bowl for you to drink.

The mushrooms and meats are then added to the broth and allowed to cook with the lid on for a few minutes. We had ordered 2 different kinds of mushrooms and the black chicken with egg noodles. The chicken was a whole chicken (head, neck, feet, and all) chopped into small pieces in the Asian way that leaves bones splintered making it difficult to eat for Westerners.

Since Asians don’t really like soggy vegetables, the waitress doesn’t add those to the broth until you’ve had a chance to eat some of the meats and mushrooms. The veggies are cooked only a short time before being served.

Finally, the noodles are added towards the end and you’re able to just snack and nibble on what’s left until you’re stuffed silly.

All-in-all, the experience was very unique. It was reasonably easy to order as the menu had English translations as well as pictures of the different types of mushrooms. And, because the waitress brought everything out in the proper order and did the cooking and serving, it took the stress out of having an unfamiliar assortment of food in front of you with no idea how to start. Our waitress also spoke enough English to get by. It’s a busy restaurant with mostly Vietnamese patrons.

There are several of the Ashima restaurants in Vietnam, including 3 in Ho Chi Minh City, 1 in Danang, 3 in Hanoi, and now there is also 1 in Tokyo!

 

I attended the ASEAN Tourism Forum last week in Phnom Penh. It gave me an excellent chance to inspect hotels in the city and give me updates on tourism in the country.

The aging Raffles now has a formidable competitor since the Sofitel Phnom Penh Phokeethraopened in December 2010. It was under pressure to open for the Forum, so they are still finishing up with some details and ironing out the kinks in their services. However, it is by far the most luxurious hotel and will have the best range of services. The drawback is that it is an international chain with a slightly out of the way location and gives you the sense of being isolated from the local culture. You’ll need to take a tuk tuk to anywhere from there–which is only $1 or $2 normally, but because you’re being picked up from this hotel, tuk tuk drivers will try to charge you a premium of about $4.

There are some really quaint boutique hotels in Phnom Penh in mice locations along the waterfront and in some residential neighborhoods. On the waterfront, I’d recommend the Amanjaya Pancam. The rooms are very spacious and well decorated with views of the river. The waterfront can be a bit noisy for some, so you might consider The Villa Langka or the Pavilion.

The Pavilion is on a street with really interesting local shops and has a beautiful garden courtyard surrounding a swimming pool. A couple of rooms have private plunge pools, but the rooms were small with no storage and the pools not that nice.

The Villa Langka doesn’t have the interesting shops surrounding it, but is on a quiet street and the rooms are biigger and slightly nicer than the Pavilion.

Myanmar has quit issuing visas-on-arrival in advance of it’s November elections. They had implemented the visa on arrival policy on May 1st of 2010, so to have it suspened just a few months later indcates that they are probably concerned about people taking advantage of it to enter the country in order to observe events during the elections.

For more details, see the article in the Winnepeg Free Press.
 

I had posted earlier that Bhutan was planning a rate increase for 2011. However, they’ve delayed the increase until 2012 because of the relatively slow economy. The new base rate will be $250 per person for groups of 3 or more. That’s a $50 increase over the old base rate of $200. Surcharges for groups of 2 are still $30 per person, and $70 for individual travelers ($40 surcharge plus $30 single supplement for hotel room). Our experience has been that rates for longer treks are even more expensive than the standard rates. In addition, there will no longer be low season rates.

Bhutan is an expensive country and will be getting signicantly more expensive. So, plan your trip soon.

I was at the Adventure Travel and Responsible Tourism Conference in Kathmandu last February and delegates were talking about how Bhutan had hired McKinsey consultants to analyze their tourism industry and we’re told that they should increase their rates and let 10 times more people in the country than they currently do. We think that would be a travesty, but realistically it would take many, many years iof infrastructure development to handle a 10-fold increase in the numbers of tourists.
 

During the last year, 18 people took on a dual challenge to help orphaned and needy children in Nepal. They challenged themselves to get in shape to climb Mt. Rainier in Washington State and to raise a minimum of $1000 for the Mitrata-Nepal Foundation for Children. Those 18 participants and 4 climb leaders ended up raising over $30,000.

Of the 22 participants and climb leaders, 18 of them started out from their high camps on two different routes at just after midnight on the 17th of July. They climbed through the night roped together, with crampons on their boots for traction in the frozen snow, and with headlamps on their helmets lighting their way. They successfully negotiated the crevasses and steep slopes and all of them summited the 14,411-foot Mt. Rainier in cold, but beautiful weather and light winds between 6:30 and 8:30 am–and more importantly, descended safely after the long and grueling day.

The Mt. Rainier Climb for Himalaya Children is organized annually by Seattle-based Red Lantern Journeys to raise money for the Mitrata-Nepal Foundation for Children, a St. Louis-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports the Mitrata Orphanage and children’s education in Kathmandu.

Please join us next year for the climb. Visit the Red Lantern Journeys web site for more information about the climb, signing up, and important dates.

Please join me this September for my inaugural Red Lantern Journeys’ President’s Tour. This year, I’m going to Northern Pakistan to raise money for the Central Asia Institute. This tour is a unique opportunity to visit the cultures and landscapes made famous in the book Three Cups of Tea and to raise money for the local schools in the area we’ll be visiting.

My annual President’s Tour is your opportunity to travel with me to visit an off-the-beaten-path destination in a small group of travelers who are equally inspired to explore and understand some of the remote parts of our world.

Greg Mortenson founder of the Central Asia Institute and author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, has inspired me to visit the cultures and mountains of Northern Pakistan. We’re proud to be working directly with the CAI as one of their official fundraisers and will donate $300 per person on this tour. Personal donations by participants are also highly encouraged and will be collected and forwarded to the CAI by Red Lantern Journeys.

Also traveling with us will be photojournalist Beb C. Reynol. Beb has traveled extensively in Pakistan over the last ten years and his experience will be invaluable for exploring the sights and local cultures. He will also advise us on the best travel photography techniques and conduct daily reviews of our photos during the trip.

Despite what you’re hearing in the media, the regions in Northern Pakistan that we will be visiting are safe, and the people are very welcoming. The small size of our group, between 6 and 10, will help ensure we don’t disrupt or intrude on the cultures and villages we visit.

Tour Highlights:

• Driving over the Shandur Pass, site of the world’s highest polo tournament
• Visiting local families in small villages with ancient cultural histories
• Spectacular mountain scenery
• The famous Gilgit Suspension bridge – the longest in Asia
• Travel photography instruction and advice from a seasoned Pakistan traveler and photojournalist, Beb C. Reynol
• A chance to travel with Red Lantern Journeys CEO and adventurer, Ambrose Bittner

15 Days: September 25 to October 9, 2010

Rate: $6,850 per person (based on double occupancy)

For more information about the itinerary please visit our web site : www.redlanternjourneys.com
Or, call me toll-free directly at the Red Lantern Journeys Office: 1-877-362-2793

The Central Asia Institute name is used with its permission, which in no way constitutes an endorsement, expressed or implied, of any product, service, company, or individual.

I’m seeing a frustrating trend of political parties and other organizations to use demonstrations and organized civil unrest to unseat goverments and get their way. For the last several days the Maoists in Kathmandu have been striking and demonstrating. They’ve been forcing all shops and business owners to close and nearly all vehicles off the road.

Evidently, clearly marked tourist vehicles are allowed on the roads so that people can still be picked up at the airport and transferred to their hotels and taken on tours.  That’s one of the advantages of being on a pre-arranged tour or trek like Red Lantern Journeys offers.

Here’s a good article in the New York Times describing the situation there.

The director of the Mitrata Nepal Foundation for Children, Dr. Christine Schutz, is currently in Nepal and reported to the Mitrata board members (of which I’m one) on the situation. Here are excerpts from her report:

Dear Friends,

Greetings again from Kathmandu! This is the 4^th day of the bandh [strike] and there are demonstrations every day.   In the mornings, the demonstrators come through and you can hear them all around the city from far away. It is strangely otherwise so much quieter and less polluted than usual.  The air is clearer and it has rained several times. So the blessing of the bandh is better air and no noise pollution either! No cars and no traffic.  Lots of riot police with big shields and army around though. I think this is actually reassuring to everyone at this point. The police were gearing up for this days before as we saw a lot of them as we came back into KTM form Bathali. Otherwise, during the day, in Thamel people walk around aimlessly. No shopping for the tourists! But it is easy to walk around now.

Everyone walks everywhere now or they stay home. The Maoists have banned the use of any vehicles except emergency ones and water trucks. We see lots more bicycles out. No shops are open as everyone closes since the Maoists go around and extort money or threaten shop owners if they stay open. All schools have been closed for days and the children are bored too. The Maoists allow 2 times per day of opening  6-8 in morning and at night only.  At those times, everyone scrambles to buy food and other needed items. The restaurants are not even staying open. The only place to get food is in a hotel except during those short times of opening.  Our food is mediocre at best so we are sampling some others.

All my friends are frustrated as they cannot do business. Tourists and other business people are glad to leave  KTM since they can’t get out of the city to travel or do business normally. No transportation at all. There are some rickshaws around Thamel only. It is also hard to have meetings with the folks that we are supposed to be having. Anjoo lives in Baneshwor and this is a major area Maoists congregation and far away to walk. So she has not come in to work for days now.  My meditation practice is coming in handy as patience and flexibility are needed. I never know what we are going to be doing each day. No planning is possible.
.
.
.
This morning at 4 am there was a loud crashing noise and the electricity went out completely. It sounds like  a transformer and not just the usual loss of power. So  as I sit in early morning darkness and the strange silence of a city, I admit that I have considered trying to get an early flight out.  The prime minister is not resigning and the Maoists are not quitting, so I am not sure what will give here. I have heard that the UN envoy is coming in later this week, so maybe that will help. The Maoists are also going to run out of food and supplies soon. They have usurped schools and other buildings to house their massive numbers of people that they brought in from outside the capital for the  demonstrations. But with the water shortage and power outages, they will run out of supplies soon. Some I hear are walking back to their villages. Many of them did not understand why they were here in the first place!.  Crazy!

So I will keep you informed on our situation. It is a political stalemate at present. For now, I think there is nothing to do as I don’t think we could get a flight out anyway (there are only a couple each week to Hongkong) and we are safe here. The biggest challenge may be getting to the airport on Saturday as there are no taxis running. I have heard the Maoists are letting through some tourist buses clearly marked for the airport and we may be able to get on one of those. I think it may be a bit of a walk with luggage to that point though. I may be leaving a couple of those extra suitcases behind!.

So I am going up on the roof to see the city and morning light as it is now 5 am. Peace and love to all of you,

Christine

——————————