Tag Archives: mountain

Iron Wall, Silver Mountain

On this week's show, I talked with Paddy Robertson about our two-day bicycle trip from Beijing to the Iron Wall Silver Mountain, AKA the Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest. This is officially recognized by the national government as a AAAA scenic spot, and it was one of the 28 designated tourist destinations during the 2008 Olympics. It's a sacred site of Buddhism, originally built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The current incarnation was built during the Liao Dynasty (907-1125).

Officially, the Silver Pagodas have been closed since 2014, but, as you'll hear during the show, Paddy and I found it easy to get into the park anyway.

Tianmen Mountain, a Glass-Shattering Experience?

Tianmen (天门山) is a famous mountain, located near Zhangjiajie City in China's Hunan Province. Before we were allowed to walk on its glass walkway, we had to put red slippers on over our shoes. Unfortunately, I couldn't stretch the tiny slippers over my hiking boots. Two months before this, a similar glass bridge on Yuntai Mountain (云台山) cracked shortly after opening. Officials claimed that even though the glass was cracked, it “will not pose threat to safety.”

Can you really pay to be a guest?

There were no cockroaches on my overnight train ride to Lau Cai, on the Chinese border. As soon as I stepped off the train, I, along with every other passenger, was hounded by bus drivers looking to take us to Sapa. I bargained one driver from 100,000 dong to 50,000. He put his index finger over his lips and said, “Shh” as I paid him. Apparently he didn't want me to tell any of the other passengers that they had gotten ripped off. Or maybe they had paid even less than I had, and the driver didn't want me to find out. In Vietnam, one never knows.

Good Morning, Hoi An!

The owner of the "home stay" was a short and slim man with crooked yellow teeth who wore an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt on top of a wife-beater. All day he sat on his living room couch, smoking cigarettes, playing with his iPad and awkwardly flirting with every female who entered the place. He didn't flirt with me, but he did grab my arm and try to sell me stuff whenever I walked past him. “You could use a suit. My sister has a tailor shop, she'll give you a great price.” “You want to take a tour? My friend can set it up.”

Serial Killers and Silent Dog Trees

Now that I had my food and supplies organized for the Overland Track, the only question that remained was “How will I get to the trailhead?” I could take a bus all the way from Devonport to Cradle Mountain. But along the way, I wanted to check out the small town of Sheffield, famous for its murals, and the bus didn't stop there. Instead, I decided to hitch a ride to Sheffield, look at the murals for an hour or two, and either hitchhike the rest of the way to Cradle Mountain, or catch the bus as it passed through town. After my experience of “hitching” to the campground in Devonport (where I didn't even have to ask for a ride), I figured hitchhiking in the rest of Tasmania would be easy.