Ho Chi Minh City

I have arrived. The train pulls into the station a little late, at about twenty minutes past six. I have been photographing the sunrise with Misha, a Korean sculptor and poet. It stops, I rush to get my bags off, feeling just as dazed as one does after 36 hours on board. Its almost a cliche to say that I didn't feel any of the cliches when my foot touched the platform. Everyone else was just glad to get to Ho Chi Minh, to go home and see their families, find a taxi, find a place to stay, start working, start selling, just get on with life. I'd just finished three months of travelling, covering over 11,000 miles. I felt as though I should be jumping around, planting a flag, kissing the ground. Instead I took a photo of the train and then followed everyone through the doors into the station, my ticket flashed for inspection.

After that I felt a little drained, as though not jumping up and down was in fact more tiring. I sat down and tried to record some of my thoughts but in my deflated state I was worried they wouldn't be positive enough. I'd started this trip positively, determined to end the same way but right now I couldn't conjure up much in the way of joy. I wasn't disappointed in people though, really I was more disappointed in myself: rueing mistakes made, interviews missed, rip-offs purchased. People had in many cases surpassed expectations considerably and without the many acts of generosity and kindness, on the rails and off them, I might well not be slumped here on my rucksack. Some of these people were suffering as the result of the actions of their fellow man and on a more trivial scale I was still smarting from some of the 'good' deals I still seem to manage to pick up along the way. Also a recurring theme, that cropped up all along the trip, was concern about the harm we're doing to the world around us. Mild winters then spring blizzards in St Petersburg, unseasonal warmth in Krasnoyarsk and at Lake Baikal, dying grasslands in Mongolia, China smothered in smog, the Halong Bay. Everywhere strange weather and pollution were talking points, though in most places Nature is still considered something to survive rather than something to save.

The important thing, away from the bigger issues, which I tried not to dwell on in conversations, is that there were many, many people who were keen to talk to someone else on the train. Some stared at me with stony faces, faces I never thought could crack into smiles and if I hadn't been doing this programme I'm not sure I'd have made eye contact, let alone talked with them. But a few words later and things changed, faces were injected with warmth, stones cracked open into smiles. Obviously I sometimes had to look hard for people to talk to, a problem compounded by a few fairly high language hurdles, but I think on reflection it was surprising how often that wasn't necessary. Frequently I'd start to talking to the person next to me and though they'd initially protest that they had no stories no interest, something fascinating, often something they were passionate about usually came to the fore sooner or later. There's a danger that now I'll just stay quiet on trains now, having shredded me nerves building up the courage to ask the hundredth person whether they speak any English, but I think, whether the program gets made or not, I've gained so much from these stories that it would be silly to stop looking for them now.

Hanoi - Saigon

After a quick trip to pay my respects to Respected Uncle Ho at his Mausoleum I head to the train station on the back of a moped. With a large rucksack and two people, driving through the crowded streets is something of a lottery, a Deer Hunter roulette with every crossroads another spin. The helmet doesn't have a strap, so one hand has to be used to hold this on. The other to hold the bag or for taking photos and the third for holding onto the moped. You may have spotted the flaw in these safety proceedures.

On the train my carriage is full of group of German travellers who are having an incredibly merry time in the corridor, offering swigs of various international alcohols to every train employee that tries to squeeze past, offers often accepted. Eventually the party adjourns to one of the cabins, with younger members of the party on the top bunks and older ones on the bottom. Cheese and biscuits are brought out and celebrations continue. Mr Hung, who I met earlier on the platform with his young son, comes to the cabin to find me, but is a little taken aback by the revelry. We head up to his carriage instead. Here the dinner ladies, with their carts full of all manner of fare, mysterious, sometimes in a way that piques the curiosuity and sometimes in a way that makes me want it to remain a mystery indefinitely. I have some egg rolls and rice.

The views as we traverse through the Hai Van Pass, meaning Sea Cloud, are spectaular. Between Danang and Hue you have on one side a gorgeous turquoise and on the other a deep, lush green. The train climbs the winding pass through the mountains slowly, while I am playing Chinese chess in the cabin of Mr Ngyuen, assisted by the 92 year old Mr Le, who speaks French. His daughter and grand-daughter are there too, but they don't play. After a couple of games I go to take some pictures. As we descend, following the line of the shore past large tidal fishing nets suspended from four poles, we often have to slow almost to a stop to cross fragile bridges. Here people jump up and grab onto the train, hitching a lift until the the next town, where the leap off again.

Chinese chess is a little like normal chess, except there is a river in the middle of the board and you move along lines instead of in the squares. The game is immensely popular in Vietnam and always draws a crowd, a crowd who will often dispense much advice, all of which sounds extremely sage and wisdomful. However just because the person nodding slowly while giving the advice looks like the old master from the last Chinese film I saw doesn't mean he's the best player.

Before I go to bed a woman requests that I marry her daughter. This doesn't happen very often but its wise to have practiced the art of politely declining in case the situation ever arises. When I get back to the cabin a tiny mouse politely declines my request that it leave. Tomorrow morning both he and I will be in Saigon.

Halong Bay

I guess traveling is a bit like fishing. To catch the best experiences you have to be prepared to wait. They’re not just going to jump into your boat, or onto the bank of the river. Which means you have to put your rod out there, choose the right bait, bring an umbrella in case it rains and a jam sandwich or two for when you get hungry. Tourism can be like a seafood restaurant, with all the possibilities on a menu. The problem is you want to try them all, you feel bad when you miss one thing and then or you’ve eaten so much you end up feeling sick. Or the restaurant is so popular its become like a school canteen. Halong Bay: the tourism equivalent of a nightmarish school canteen. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I was last in Vietnam. I arrived in Hanoi early in the morning, got my Vietnamese Dong on the black market and then mixed up the exchange rate when paying for a Chinese chess set. Took a moped through town, rucksack and all to a nice little hostel and here, looking at beautiful pictures of the white islands of Halong I thought I would arrange a trip there. In fact I had wanted to head onwards towards Ho Chi Minh as soon as possible but I had arrived on the day before Liberation Day, the anniversary of the Vietnamese driving the Americans out of Saigon. Because this year it falls on a Thursday, with International Labour Day (May 1) the day afterwards and then a weekend after that it is effectively a four day holiday and many were taking the chance to go and see family, something they would normally do during the Tet holiday earlier in the year. The upshot of this is that there are no tickets at all on the trains traveling South for the next three days. So, in the hostel, looking at pictures of red sunsets and red sails only a few hours drive away I thought I would be mad to miss it.

Mad, indeed. Halong Bay City, in the morning. Our guide goes off to find us passes for being inside the national park. Admirable though it is to have set up a system for controlling the entry of tourists into an area of outstanding natural beauty, I begin to question whether the motives were entirely motivated by a love of nature as I make my way down the jetty. 600 tourist junks operate out of this harbour, 300 are large junks with sleeping quarters for up to 60 people. The smog is worse than the centre of Hanoi in rush hour, the engines on these hulking beasts have one smoky finger stuck up permanently at the atmosphere. These junks then process between the small number of spots permitted for tourist use by the Vietnamese government, another piece of legislation that might be admirable, were it for the greed that led these few spots to be populated daily the huge numbers from this filthy flottilla. We narrowly escape the parking crush by the Marvellous Cave. Is this as bad as it gets? I ask our guide. This is the low season, he replies with a smile forced on top of ruefulness. He knows its wrong but knows he has to smile to get the money he needs. We stop for the night and jump off the boat. On my last jump I unfortunately land on a jelly fish. Luckily for me its a direct hit, right on the dome, feet first and I don't get very badly stung.

At night we catch cuttlefish by the light of a powerful lamp. This is not really very traditional fishing either. I accidentally hook a jellyfish, probably not the one I landed on earlier. In the main dining room the crew are drinking some sort of firewater and eating sour apples. "We don't usually drink this much, but as your here..." Is probably what they're saying in Vietnamese. What they are definitely saying is "tram phan tram" which means "100%", meaning you're expected to drain your glass and also "Chuc suc khoe" which is "to your health". There is never any irony in the latter, even as I hear my liver drawing up a complaint to lodge with my health in the near future.

In the morning I wake up to see sunrise but its a dull grey. I go swimming again, try to get away from all the boats. I reach a large island with the tide rushing through an arch at its base. Some men are fishing here. I start to head back. A woman in a rowing boat, one of the floating stores that ply the junks with a wide range of over priced goods, comes round one of the small islands. She offers to tow me back, saying that the guide is worried about me. I say I'll be fine. I realise that the bubbles my strokes make are topped by the rainbow film of oil, I must have a good shower when I get back. On the way home the school canteen analogy really hits home. Actually, its more like the waste bucket at the school canteen on a day when the the dinner ladies decide to do something experimental with the left-overs and diesel. What it is not like is fishing.

Hong Kong

The Luxe Guide to Hong Kong, which was written by one of the guests at this rooftop barbecue, starts something like this: “Don’t start planning a holiday to Hong Kong on a budget. If you’re already on Holiday in Hong Kong with a budget, start crying”. Thankfully, some exceptionally kind friends of my cousin whom I’d never met before were very understanding when I rang the bell of their apartment on the 37th floor, dropped my rucksack and flopped down on the sofa. The view is awesome; it’s the picture you’d see next to an article about Hong Kong in the Economist. It is certainly better than the view from the room I looked at on Nathan Road, global microcosm with an extra helping of backpackers and disarmingly honest “copy-watch” salesmen. The view there was either a wall or someone’s laundry. Here I can see the lightshow that is the Hong Kong skyline at night, the dazzling, incredible, multi-coloured, flashing carbon footprint. In the daytime the carbon footprint is a more conventional browny-grey or greyey-brown making the view a lot less dramatic than it might have been. I have to say, after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and here I have come to appreciate that air pollution is not a problem to be sniffed at. I’d thought wearing a mask seemed a little effete, why couldn’t you just manfully suck in a few noxious vapours? The problem in Asia is on a different scale. The moment I was truly convinced was in one of the interviews on the train. A Chinese guy had been to Sheffield for work experience and so I asked him what he liked about England. The weather, he replied. I searched through my phrasebook, sensing I must have misheard. But no, he meant the weather. OK so it is often windy and rainy, he conceded, but at least the air is clean. I can think of no better illustration. If people are going to start coming to England for the weather, surely people must recognize that change is necessary.

Amazingly though, 75% of Hong Kong is actually green. I had heard that before but thought perhaps it was one of those statistics which prove you can prove anything with statistics. But its true, even the addition of the sugar coated plastic trees of Disneyland caused only a small dent in the figure. I headed over to Lantau Island, home of a monastery with a big bronze Buddha. I was joined by Babu, a delightful retired Indian bus driver from Leicester. He told several very humorous anecdotes on the bus from the port, all with a distinctly Indian flavour. For example, one joke set in a restaurant next to a Spanish bull fight had the protagonists eating bull testicle curry and rice for one pound a head. I decided not to quibble. Up through dense forest we drove until we arrived at the Tian Tan Buddha as it is properly known. It is the tallest outdoor sitting Buddha in the world apparently. I have to say I’m becoming a little cynical about these Buddha records. I have seen various Buddhas that have claimed to hold various obscure records. This seems slightly childish and I can’t help think that this is another aspect of the rather overblown modern Buddhism that probably has Siddhartha turning in his Nirvana, if there is anything to turn and anywhere to turn to when you’re in a heavenly state of peace and nothingness.

Talking of records one other thing I was really keen to see while I was in Hong Kong was the Central to Mid-Levels Escalator, the world’s longest. Except it’s the World’s Longest Outdoor Escalator System. So that means its not 800m of intense, heart-pounding diagonal action but several quite long sections strung together. It is still heart-fluttering even though it turns out the really long single span ones are actually on the Moscow and St Petersburg Metro systems. For heart-pounding try arriving in a rush at the wrong end of the (One way) escalator when it changes direction and take the stairs instead. Babu enjoys it as it saves on his taxi fare. He doesn’t enjoy the walking bits in between as he feels we have already walked enough today.

After the Buddha we ate at the monastery's vegetarian restaurant, where Babu regaled me with more stories, some about curry. Then we took a taxi to the stilt village of Tai O. It may be only a few miles by boat but Tai O a whole world away from the skyscrapers of Hong Kong. The residents are propped up above the river by ramshackle balconies, boats tied to the stilts that are sunk deep into the mud below. Others are selling fish, fresh from the boats on the water or dried from the shops on dry land. Puffer fish with plastic teddy bear eyes spin mournfully, alongside some rather striking but tatty auditionee's who failed to make the grade for Hirst. The longer you spend in China the less strange shark fin soup seems. Crossing a bridge we encounter Mr Le, a thin, effusive man carrying too many bags. He takes us to another monastery where here they are celebrating a big feast held in honour of their generous donors. As with many institutions donations are recognized with names and photographs. These are then prayed over by the monks, ensuring you more good fortune, some of which may be able to fund a bigger photograph. At the moment the monks are chanting before an altar, with their voices amplified by a mic and speaker for the benefit of the crowd. Nearby stacks of prayers are being burnt on a small fire, watched over and blessed by the abbot, who in turn is watched by the two-abbot-high, glaring papier mache statues that are doing an excellent job of scaring away evil demons, as there are none to be seen. There are terrapins however. Actually, the stuff about donations reminds me of a sign I say at the monastery earlier. The monks there had a long explanation next to the cashier’s desk about how donations would be matched, not by the government, as with GiftAid, but by karma. Seriously, the sign said that any donations would result in corresponding karmic gains. I’m still not sure its what Buddha would have wanted. Mr Le says he wants to have his picture up there some day, but I think he is joking. It starts to rain. Babu is walking slowly, because we have walked a lot today and he is talking to his son on the phone. I offer Mr Le the umbrella I bought in Shanghai. He says he will walk under it but he does not want it, as he hates umbrellas. I decide not to delve too deep.

Acupuncture in Shanghai

There's alot of things that are just how you expect them to be. For example in Mongolia I had Aaruul, which is yoghurt that has been dried over the summer months. This tasted what I'd expect yoghurt that has been dried over the summer months to taste like and there is a reason I haven't tasted that up until now. Actually what surprised me was how hard it was, I met a missionary who'd broken a tooth on it, so in fact it was perhaps even worse than I expected. Acupuncture felt a lot like I'd expected needles in the flesh to feel like, the electric shocks were another unexpected negative point. Another negative was the location. Not far from the centre of Shanghai, the Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine is a tall glass fronted building, full to the brim with the emergency room bustle. It takes several stabs to find the acupuncture department, from the dispensary, which has one window for Chinese and one window for Western medicine, to the reception, the cashiers, another waiting room and finally Dr Wu on the fourth floor, a short man with not very much bristly hair, large glasses and a lot of needles. He tells me I need an appointment and for that I must go to the eighth floor. Here I fill out the forms that allow me to be registered into the Chinese medical system, then I receive my card and details of my appointment. I say I'm registered in the Chinese medical system, in fact it is EDVNCAD GRELO who is going to be the lucky recipient of this treatment, this being the receptionist's imaginative interpretation of my handwriting. I guess the problem is that Chinese writing is all about the look of the whole, rather than these boring individual characters, so I guess the name is close enough.

I pass a couple crying on the stairs. This is not a holiday spa, an alternative therapy retreat for tourists. This is a real hospital. This is probably not a good idea. It is not in fact Dr Wu who will be seeing me today; it is a female colleague of his. I smile encouragingly to those stoically imitating hedgehogs with patchy steel prickles, while I wait. No one looks like they are having fun. There is a pot of needles in a dusty wooden cabinet by the door, soaking in alcohol, alongside some of those glass suction cups that I last saw being used to treat mad King George III. I tell myself that these must be the used needles and that somewhere there will be one of those sterilizing ovens. The doctor comes in. I was a little worried that I would have to make up some ailment and while this is largely the case I do still have a fair amount of residue backache from the Mongolian horse riding. I try to explain. Thankfully a lady wearing a red sweater and a white mac tied loosely at the waist with the sleeves rolled up, which I assume must just be a very informal gown favoured by hospital interpreters, comes in to translate. To lighten the mood, I ask in Chinese: Does it hurt? Blank looks, mood stays the same. Minor headaches and tiredness get thrown by misunderstandings into the symptomatic mix but I veto ringing in the ears. Eventually I am told to lie on the bed and pull my shirt up. I was wrong about the pot needles. The good doctor selects some of the least rusty and begins to jab them in my back. People can’t die of this very often; so many people are still using it. This is China though; there are quite a large number of people, probabilities work differently here. Oh shit. Another needle goes in. The lady in the mac asks: Does it hurt? I struggle for the blankest look I can manage. Then the crocodile clips are attached and the electricity is switched on. Does it hurt? Err… Well. Perhaps a little stronger? The doctor fiddles with the dial. This has the same effect as someone flushing the toilet while you’re in the shower, except with needles and electricity instead of relatively tame water. I think I let out an ooof of pain which seem to satisfy the Doc. Half an hour, says mac lady. She then takes off her mac and the Doctor starts sticking needles in her ears and head. She has tinnitus apparently.

The time passes, pulse after pulse, shock after shock. I hold on to my bear Fydor for comfort. I try to take a photograph of him and my back. This is ridiculously painful. If you ever find yourself with needles in your muscles, try first to remove them. If this is not possible, try to use these muscles as little as possible. If you’re not sure whether a particular movement will exercise a particular muscle all I can say for sure is that muscles in your back are definitely required if you try to lift a camera over your head to photograph them. Beyond this you’ll have to work it out yourselves. At the end of the session my needles go back in the pot of alcohol.

Times of the signs

Another radio programme I would enjoy making is a quest through China to find the worst sign, for the competition is fierce. If anything gives the impression that the rest of the world is only an afterthought here it is the signs written in Chinglish. True Chinglish should not just be wrong; it should be completely incomprehensible to anyone. Occasionally some lateral thinking may allow you to divine the meaning, with the possibility for humour or a sense of satisfaction. However, for a true connoisseur the most sought after works seem like a random jumble of words, or even letters. In a small village in the North West this might be forgiven, but in fact official government signs in the major cities are some of the worst offenders. In many cases it seems churlish to point out the mistakes, not to mention the fact that the signs are, if not set in stone, already quite permanent and on top of that, a brief stroll is enough to convince you that the task of correction would be something of a Sisyphean labour. However, I have always wondered about the design process of these signs. If there was some helpful language input at the crucial planning stage would it be possible that a sign might go up error free? Having walked past so many stunning examples I was lucky enough one day to stumble upon a shop that was being fitted out for a grand opening the next day. And wonder of wonders they were in the process of putting up their sign. Less surprisingly, there was indeed a mistake. This clothes shop was catering for more expensive tastes, located as it was near Beijing’s Russian district. The Cashmere was all present and correct but unfortunately the second half of their range was currently scheduled to consist of Sheard Sheep Skin, making it sound more like a restaurant than a clothes store. In the absence of a phonebooth in which I could turn my underwear inside out, changing from a mere man to EnglishMan, I content myself with pulling out my phrasebook and attempting a daring rescue. The mistake with Sheard was easily explained but when I searched among the wooden letters that were to define this establishment, there was not a spare ‘e’ to be found. I try anagrams but the best I can come up with is SkinheadS herpeS. I tell them about wool, and how really this is an altogether more palatable description of sheep’s clothing, one that the more squeamish wolf will have less trouble in donning. However, I think I have arrived too late, I am talking to the sign writers, who would prefer that the errors were not pointed out. The owner seems grateful, perhaps only because whenever a Westerner engages in any activity other than walking on a Chinese street they will almost always draw a crowd in a matter of minutes. The heels of his attention are constantly nipped by his two mobile phones however, so I leave written copies of the two correct possibilities and head on my way.

One evening, Pekka the Finn and I head to a small back alley restaurant. For some reason we take a the mouldy torso of a clothes dummy with us which then so terrifies one of the waitresses that she screams loudly, runs out and doesn’t return until we have nearly finished our Lemon Chicken. Seemingly without reason, a man in his pajamas shuffles in, from the door through which the poor waitress swiftly exited, grabs some chopsticks and shuffles on. For another reason, possibly because I politely pointed out/guffawed at a mistake on the current menu, the manager decides we should work for our meal and brings out the secret new menu. I point out a few mistakes on the first page. He proffers a pen. I make the corrections. He proffers some paper and indicates page two. I get to work. Shamefully, I probably did more writing in an hour to correct this menu than I have done in any single hour while working on this blog. It isn’t because I don’t care; I guess it just helps to have food incentive. Some of the entries are pure Chinglish so I have to look at the original Chinese which is helpfully placed beside it. Unfortunately, my phrasebook tells me that the menu is now going to have several sorts of “Rape” on it. I search for another solution but to no avail. Amazingly there is also a prototype Finnish menu for Pekka to peruse. This also yields some classics, at least I deduce they are from Pekka’s uproarious laughter. The best example of “FinnChin” (You saw it here first language fans) was the name of the menu itself, "mokalista" which Pekka reliably informs me is "the list of things that are screwed up". There is a pleasing irony there for Finnish speakers, along with disbelief for English speakers that the Finns even have a word for this.

A few days later I am walking past the clothes shop and I see that they have gone with “Cashmere & Sheard Sheep Skin”. I am a little disappointed but not entirely surprised. Perhaps they will get more custom with this slightly quirkier moniker. Perhaps most of their customers will be looking at the Chinese characters anyway. Perhaps I should have tried an anagram of the whole sign. In the face of Chinglish might I now feel a sense of futility and “a Sharp & CheriShed meeknesS”.

Beijing

As you can imagine, after walking up several hundred steps, the view from the top of Longevity Hill should be excellent. Unfortunately, imagine is all you can do, because in Beijing pollution is so bad that on a clear day you can just about see your hand. OK, so that's an exaggeration, but you certainly could not see far beyond Kunming Lake that occupies the majority of the gardens. As such a large percentage of the gardens was comprised of water I decided that it would be a waste of my entrance fee if I didn't take a quick swim. The water was not exactly crystal clear but I thought I'd be fine as long as I avoided swallowing. Now I'd left a trail of wet footprints and bemused Chinese people all the way through the Long Corridor and the Cloud Dispelling Temple and up to the Tower of Bhuddist Incense, to be confronted by murk. I'd never really been to bothered about smog until now, but this view demonstrated not only the speed with which China has grown but also how tough solving the pollution problem will be. As is often the case however Beijing does have a novel solution to make sure there'll be blue skies over the Bird's Nest Stadium come August 8th. To reduce pollution the Party has decided traffic must be halved. But rather than some roundabout disincentive route like a Congestion Charge, they've fashioned a policy of delightful simplicity. Half the cars can drive on one day, while the other half can drive on the next. And how can they police this ambitious scheme? Simple, it'll be number plates ending in odd numbers on Monday, even Tuesday, odd Wednesday and so on. Simple, effective and I'd wager completely unworkable anywhere else.

The thing is China is not like anywhere else. The reason a scheme this blunt could work here becomes apparent at 5 o'clock every morning in the streets surrounding Tiananmen Square. People are running, not too quickly so as not to appear undignified but they are running all the same. I am running with them, trying to get in front of a huge tour group, all wearing red caps, following their leader's up-stretched umbrella. What could possible draw so many people out of their beds at such an early hour? It is the dawn flag raising in Tiananmen and thousands upon thousands are in attendance. There is nothing that would get this many Britons up so early in the morning, save perhaps a World Cup final, but people have traveled from all over the country to see the immaculately turned out soldiers of the PLA march in perfect time up to the impressive pole and raise the red cloth to the top, where it hangs disappointingly limp in the still morning air. Perhaps in advance of the Olympics, or perhaps because many Chinese now have cameras too, photographing the army no longer earns a stern frown. There are many opportunities to snap the impeccably drilled squads marching through Beijing's tree lined avenues or standing to attention to wait for the Metro.

As I stand up to look inside the lady's barrel the audience starts applauding and I realised I have made a mistake, perhaps a terrible one. I am eating in a restaurant as the guest of John Bee, whose father I gave some help to when we met in Lithuania and later in Moscow. The lady on stage is a World Record Holder, able to spin a larger barrel with her feet while lying on her back than anyone else. Or at least anyone else who has tried. After seeing her spin a barrel that apparently weighed eighty kilos I felt I must check and when John said to stand up and go to the barrel I thought he meant just to look. Unfortunately my slender grasp of Mandarin had not alerted me to the fact that the preceding speech made by the hostess, who had already undergone more costume changes than an incontinent panto dame, was in fact a call for volunteers. I realise that the lady is not going to stop at spinning 80 kilos tonight and is keen for a bigger challenge, a challenge very much the same size as me. It had taken four of the waiters to lift the last barrel into spinning position and now two more join them. They usher me to the barrels opening. I peer in, it does not look comfy even stationary but before I can request a cushion I am firmly maneuvered inside. Don't move, don't move, is their urgent and oft repeated refrain. I must look mentally unstable if they think I'd do anything to further destabilse this already precarious position and crush their star and possibly the front row of the audience. The six men take the strain and then I am lifted atop the woman's feet, the cries of Don't move losing none of their urgency. Then the spinning starts, thankfully round and round, not over and over. I have enough time to flash a couple of terrified glances from the mouth of the barrel to the watching diners and in a fit of daring I even flick the peace sign, which is well received by the almost exclusively Chinese crowd. After making it back to terra firma, the slight dizziness is not helped by the large number of Chinese men who want to down congratulatory shots of Bai Jiao with me. It looks like my alcoholic albatross will be with me throughout this journey.