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.

 

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!

 

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.