Background

We would like to explain to our readers a few details about some of the places we intended to visit on our Trans Asia expedition. We do have a purpose and are not setting out haphazardly on a journey around Asia. Our leader has covered most of these places of interest but he always felt hampered that he wasn't behind the driver's wheel at the time, as he will be now. Some of the information about these destination that we present here has been published by Stephens in various magazine and newspaper articles and will be shown as they appeared in print. It's our pleasure to share our world of discovery with you, for, after all, that is our purpose, and we trust you will follow our expedition.

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• Bangkok, Why Home For The Expedition
• The Vanishing Khmer's Of Angkor Wat
• The Day Hue, The Ancient Capital Of Vietnam, Was Destroyed
• Southern China, Home Of The Asian Big Foot
• Admiral Zheng He, The Port From Which The Admiral Discovered The World
• A Driver Through Old Shanghai
• A Place Called Tsingtao, Founded By The Germans
• Great Wall Slowly Starting To Crumble
• When Beijing Was Peking
• After You, Genghis Khan -- Into Mongolia
• The Search For The Missing Bones Of Peking Man
• Xi--An, The Walled City Where The Silk Road Began
• Journey Into Tibet
• Over The Himalayas Into Kathmandu
• Death In Benaras, India's Holy City Across The Ganges
• A Breath Of Air In Calcutta's Black Hole
• The Mountain Road To Bhutan, The Lost Kingdom
• A Port Called Chittagong, Bangladesh
• Penang, Malaysia, Where It All Began

THAILAND -- A PLACE SOME EXPATS CALL HOME

by Harold Stephens

(Published by Tourist Authority of Thailand, this article explains in part why Trans Asia Expedition chose Bangkok as its headquarters. If for no other reason, Bangkok is the hub for travel and adventure in Asia and Southeast Asia, as explained in the author's book, Return to Adventure.)

Thailand is more than a place: it's a mood. It's this mood that makes the country alluring to foreigners, and home to many thousands of expatriates. But why Thailand in particular? Can we not find what we are looking for in other places perhaps Paris, or maybe Tahiti, or any of the thousands of dream spots around the world?

We all search for that place in the sun where we can find those things that appeal to us the most, whether it be our mental and emotional requirements or our physical and worldly needs. Thailand offers these.

For the expat living in Thailand, it's not the lack of love for one's home country, or the desire to flee from an unhappy home, nor is it for political, economic or social reasons, that brings him here. The reason might be more complex, but their motives are quite simple. It's not so much to escape as it is to find, and they find what they are looking for in Thailand.

Look at the image that Thailand presents to the world. It's one of enchantment and excitement: a land of golden temples, with tiny bells tinkling in the breeze; a country with lofty mountains, tropical forests and endless off shore islands; a nation of smiling people and happy children, and monks in saffron robes moving in silent animation; a country interlaced with rivers and canals, called klongs, with rice barges, "rafts" of teak logs, ferryboats and river buses all gliding along in a kaleidoscope of changing colors. It's a Mecca for shoppers looking for the exotic, for superlative silks and gemstones, and intricately decorated objects; a country of tropical resorts with palms and white sand beaches; a country with great food.

A few years back, a large Buddha, being moved to a new location, cracked. Examination revealed that the Buddha was coated with a concrete veneer----placed there, no doubt, to fool invading armies centuries ago----beneath which was a statue of solid gold, weighing some 5 1/2 tons. The government tried to place the Buddha under guard in a locked museum, but the monks and people objected. The Buddha, they said, belonged to them, meant to be seen and worshiped. Today, the Golden Buddha is in Wat Trimitwitthayaram near the railway station, where devotees go to pray and tourists come to stand in awe.

At a press conference, writer Robin Dannhorn, an expat who lives in Bangkok, was asked why he chose Bangkok to work and live. We expected an erudite answer that would be deep and psychological. Instead he simply said, "On the tiny soi where I live, a cock crows in the morning and during the day chickens scratch in the dirt." Robin lives off Silom Road, with all its high--rises, McDonald's and shopping malls at hand.

Austin Berry, another expat living in Bangkok, when asked a similar question, gave a two--word answer -- "no graffiti".

Both these remarks have something to say for Bangkok. To the Thais, the residents of Bangkok, this may not be meaningful, but to the foreigner, who may come from cities littered with graffiti, it is. Bangkok has the standards of an international city, and yet it can be rustic. You find people fishing in the river that runs through the heart of the city, and even in the small klongs. And where else but in Bangkok can you see elephants walking down main thoroughfares. Anything can happen in Bangkok, and does.

Thailand is art that's seen everywhere. One expat told me he doesn't need to buy paintings to decorate his apartment in Bangkok. All he needs do is open a window. "Everywhere is a painting," he said. And how true! Glittering temples, so numerous that no matter where you are, there are always one or two in view. Shrines and stupa tower, protruding above shops or glimpsed between modern high--rise buildings, poking up from forested hilltops, jutting up on rocky shores. Palaces with crenellated walls like those in storybooks. Monuments at every turn.

The irony is that these places stand side by side with magnificent five--star hotels, shopping plazas with brand names, cinemas with the latest movies and theatre houses with Broadway plays, and vast green parks and open areas.

The mood of Bangkok was captured in print by a seaman who sailed up the Chao Phraya River a hundred years ago. "One early morning we steamed up the innumerable bends, passed the shadow of the great gilt pagoda, and reached the outskirts of town. There it was, spread largely on both banks, the oriental capital which had yet suffered no white conqueror. Here and there in the distance, above the crowded mob of low, brown roof ridges, towered great piles of masonry, king's palaces, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated, crumbling under the vertical sunlight, tremendous, overpowering, almost palpable, which seemed to enter one's breast with the breath of one's nostrils and soak into one's ribs through every pore of one's skin." The seaman later gave up the sea he loved so much and took up the pen. His name was Joseph Conrad.

The mood that Conrad found is still here. You can find it on Bangkok's river, as he had, or at a simple temple procession marching down a dusty lane in Chiang Mai, or upon a lonely sun--drenched path leading to a hill--tribe village. In Thailand you feel very alive, and like Conrad, feel life is to be felt to the very tips of your fingers. There is always something happening, or not happening, depending upon what you want.

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THE VANISHING KHMERS OF ANGKOR WAT

(The following is an excerpt from the book Return to Adventure Southeast Asia, The Search for Lost Cities)
by Harold Stephens

Ever since man learned to build great cities, he also somehow developed the knack of losing them. It may sound impossible but it's a fact. Cities simply disappear. When this happens, if it isn't a farmer plowing up his field that makes a discovery, it's the countless stories, legends and myths that keep our imagination fired up. And they have done so for centuries. The tales of lost cities are endless.

But how does a city become 'lost'?

Man for centuries has sunk foundations and built cities on shores of sheltered bays, at mouths of rivers, high on plateaus and deep in jungles. But not always did he give thought to the column of smoke rising from the distant, cone--shaped hill. And did he consider the sea world rise up and deluge the land, or that the lake would swell up and swallow his fine temples within their stone walls?

Not much more than a hundred years ago, a great archaeological discovery was made. Henri Mouhot, a French naturalist, exploring in remote Cambodia, heard tales of a lost Khmer city in the jungles north of Siem Reap. Was it merely rumor? He persuaded a local missionary to guide him to it. They traveled first by dugout and then by foot. Finally, after chopping the last few kilometers through dense jungle, they came to a stone wall which was completely overgrown. Mouhot was stunned. Could this really be? He followed the wall until he came to an opening, and after cutting his way through tangled vines and thorny creepers he stepped through. What he saw surpassed the wildest imagination of any explorer. Indian Jones would have turned green with envy. Before him was a city forgotten for centuries, almost totally devoured by the jungle. Great arches and lintels and heaved upwards. Roots of banyan trees held in their powerful grip the stone heads of gods and goddesses. Massive walls had been split open not by earthquakes or violent eruptions but by the slow overpowering might of the jungle. And where were the inhabitants? There was not a soul, only the cry of birds and the humming of insects as they probed the eerie ruins.

Because it was so overgrown, neither man could fully fathom the magnitude of the discovery--kilometers of roads, hundreds of temples and walled courtyards and an intricate network of canals, moats and waterways.

The Frenchman's discovery was, of course, the famous ruins of Angkor. Men of letters who followed pieced together the tragic story of the city. It was built by the Khmer's between 1181 and 1218 and prospered for 200 years, but in the 15th century King Pona Yat decided to abandon his all--too--splendid capital which was vulnerable to the war--like Siamese tribes.

King Pona Yat and his people left the city and went south to the great lake where Phnom Penh is today. Angkor was soon overrun by the Siamese but they did not remain. In time the jungle reclaimed its own.
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THE DAY HUE, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF VIETNAM, WAS DESTROYED

The following abridged article appeared in the Bangkok Post.

RETURN TO VIETNAM

by Harold Stephens

How many hundreds of thousands of GI's the world over remember Vietnam, and how many of them would like to go back for a visit? Or how many never want to see the country again?

Some thirty years ago I covered the fighting in Vietnam for the Bangkok World, and I was one of the latter who had no desire to return. I wasn't interested in bringing up old memories, although, I have to admit, I was curious about what the country might be like today. My chance to find the answer came, unexpectedly, when Thai Airways International invited a number of journalists to join their inaugural flight to Danang. "Only a three day trip," the public relations director assured me. It did sound intriguing, and only a short visit. I accepted. We all had some surprises waiting us.

The inaugural began as a very pleasant trip, with an interesting group that gathered at Don Muang Airport in Bangkok. All were in a jubilant mood. The flight was to be an epic event that would open Danang as an international port--of--entry into Vietnam.

I had forgotten much about those war years, but it all started coming back when our Boeing 737 began its slow descent and glided peacefully among puffs of white clouds on its final approach. It wasn't this way when I arrived the first time aboard a military aircraft. The pilot, for fear of drawing fire from the open countryside, climbed to 20,000 feet above the airport, and then dropped in rapid circles to land us on the tarmac. It was scary, and we didn't have colorful lion dancers and waving flags to greet us, as we had now.

Thirty years ago, the Danang airport was undoubtedly one of the busiest airport in Southeast Asia. Signs of those past days are still there--moss covered bunkers and pillboxes surrounding the airfield, and concrete Quonset--style hangers at all the approaches where fighter planes sought protection from enemy shelling.

The noise then was deafening. Helicopters whizzed overhead, huge C--130 transports warmed up while cargo was being loaded, fighters made ready for take off while others were landing. And Jeeps with GI's in white helmets and MP bands on their arms zoomed around the airport in some urgency or other.

The wartime importance of Danang can't be over emphasized. The French built the first landing strip before World War II, which the Japanese used extensively during their long occupation. From both Saigon and Danang they made air raids on the rest of Southeast Asia.

But there were no military trucks now, no Jeeps with MP's, no jet fighters, no guns. There were military men, for sure, guards of sort, dressed in ill--fitting uniforms, but they smiled and didn't mind having their photos taken.

Not in an army trucks, but now in new tourist vans, we drove through the streets of Danang to our hotel on China Beach. The war machinery is gone but the old French colonial influence is still there, mainly wide, tree--lined boulevards and European colonel buildings along the riverside promenade.

The French called the city Tourlane. It was Paris of the East. Then came the partitioning of Vietnam in 1954, placing Danang less than 200 kilometers from the 17th parallel.

The first American combat troops arrived nine years later on March 8, 1965 when an advanced guard of two battalions of Marines landed at Red Beach on Danang Bay. More troops arrived, and the base expanded at an extraordinary rate. In a short time Danang became a small American city. It had its own water purification plant, electric generators with enough powers to supply the entire city, three hospitals, movie houses, laundries and dry cleaners, ball parks, tennis courts, bowling alleys, jogging tracks, supermarkets and bars. Bars galore. Avenues lined with bars and signs like Cheap Charlie's and Harry's Place appeared. Danang became an R&R center, for it was here GI's came to relax and take a break from the war. China Beach became the most talked about resort in Southeast Asia.

At the same time the city swelled by countless thousands of Vietnamese refugees, mostly villagers, evacuated from the "fire--free zones." They provided laborers, cooks, laundry workers, carpenters, taxi and trishaw drivers, pimps, prostitutes and drug pushers. They occupied the base perimeter called "dogpatch."

The town grew from 20,000 in 1940 to 50,000 in 1955, and to over a million when the Americans were there in 1966. Today the inhabitants number about half a million.

The next surprise was China Beach. It was empty. Not a soul. China Beach thirty years ago was jam--packed, with hardly space to sit on the sand. GI's on R&R, government workers, AID and relief workers, businessman who came to sell beer and potato chips, all with their dates, sitting under umbrellas.

Where shacks once stood there is now the splendid Furama Hotel. We checked in but only had time to unpack, and were then whisked for an afternoon of sightseeing to Hoi An, Vietnam's oldest city. At a stall along the river, a pretty vendor with green eyes asked where I was from. She spoke very good English. "I thought you might be from Texas," she said after I told her. "My father is from Texas. Maybe you know him." I had to tell her I didn't know her father. "I keep asking," she said. "Some day I'll meet someone who knows my father."

I was anxious to visit nearby Marble Mountain. It was out--of--bounds when I was in Danang in 1966. "No foreign army could drive us from the mountain," an elderly man said when he saw me looking up at the mountain. He was so right.

Early the next morning we boarded buses for the 80--kilometre trip over a high mountain pass to Hue, the old Imperial city. It's a three to four hour drive over the mountains, via Hai Van Pass, from Danang to Hue. It's a beautiful drive, but GI's may remember it as something else. When I traveled over the same route during those dreadful war years, it was done at a great risk.

Today vegetation along the road is lush and green, due to fog and mist that drifts in every morning. During the war, the hills were without trees or any growth. The land was denuded, preventing hiding places for Vietcong fighters. They still managed to block convoys, sometimes for days on end.

From the hills we entered a large plain with rice fields on the left and a vast lagoon on the right. Abandoned military sites and bases loomed up every few kilometers. The barracks where soldiers were once quartered were now empty.

We reach Hue, drove through the city to Century Hotel, built by the Russians 14 years ago, and checked in. We were greeted by drums and gongs and a clatter of Oriental sounds. We lunched in the hotel, and under a downpour of rain, we made our way to catamaran barges, called Dragon Boats, and toured the River of the Perfume. Dragon Boats have replaced gunboats.

We visited Thien Mu Buddhist Pagoda, the Heavenly Lady Pagodas, the oldest in Hue, built in 1601. One of our buses got stuck in the mud and had to be pulled out. We then continued by bus to the Citadel, the Imperial City.

I remember the Citadel well. To reach the walled city before, I had traveled to the gate by trishaw, and was immediately awed by its stark beauty. I spent the better part of two days then, wandering around the various palaces, taking photos.

A year after I left Hue that time, this beautiful city was destroyed. In February 1968, the Tet (the Vietnamese new year) offensive occurred, and news reached the world that the Citadel was taken by Communist forces. Tragic news followed. The Imperial City was virtually destroyed by US bombing during its recapture by Allied forces.

Again, 33 years later, I stood at the main gate to the Citadel. There it was, rebuilt, still standing. What a grand feeling.

The mammoth task of rebuilding Hue has been going on for thirty years, with a big boost that came in 1993 when UNESCO listed Hue as a World Heritage Site.

Stephens concluded the article by stating he would like to return. He plans to, with the Trans Asia Expedition



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SOUHTERN CHINA -- HOME OF THE ASIAN BIGFOOT

The below story on Big Foot, written by Harold Stephens. originally appeared in Argosy Magazine, and updates were printed in the Bangkok Post for time to time.

Call it what you will--Big Foot, Abdominal Snow Man, Yeti, Orang Dalam, Interior Man, Squatch Giant, Yeren, or for the more scientific name shared by some scientists, the Gigantopithecus-but regardless of what name I use, whenever I mention any of them, people immediately say, "You don't believe that, do you?" It's not an easy topic to defend, and I usually end up changing the subject.

But the subject isn't something that goes away. Last fall I was visiting the redwoods in northern California when a ranger reported seeing a "big foot" crossing the highway in front of his pickup one morning. He refused to make further comments. In summer last year, news reports from China tell of another sighting.

Now Big Foot is in the news again in Southeast Asia. The headline in The New Straits Times newspaper read: MALAYSIA TO INVESTIGATE "BIGFOOT" SIGHTINGS. The report went on to say: "Malaysia's wildlife department said it would investigate claims that "Bigfoot" man--like beasts are roaming the jungles of southern Johor state." The director of the wildlife department's Conservation Division, Siti Hawa Yatim, said they would examine the prints, which reportedly measure up to 45 centimeters (17 1/2 inches).

Workers reported seeing two huge creatures and a youngster. The Wild Life Department is setting up cameras in jungle areas to try to capture images of any such beasts.

I don't want to confirm or deny that I believe in Big Foot. But I might mentioned that years ago while exploring the jungle of the central Malay Peninsula I did come upon giant, human--type foot prints on a riverbank, and for those who are interested, I wrote about it in detail in my book Return to Adventure Southeast Asia. What I would like to mention here is that Big Foot supposedly exists in Southern China, an area through which Trans Asia Expedition will pass.

Stories about wild men in China go back 3000 years. A chronicle of the Warring States Period (476--221 BC), relates how a captured wild man was presented as a gift to the king of the eastern Zhou dynasty. Newspaper articles published in Beijing have quoted 17th century records as saying: "In the remote mountains of Fang Xian country, there are rock caves in which live hairy men as tall as three meters."

More than 300 sightings have been recorded there since the 1920s. A dozen scientific expeditions have searched for the wild man since 1976, mostly in the thickly forested Shen Nong Jia region of northwestern Hu Bei. In 1980, Meng Qing Bao, leader of one expedition, found more than 1000 footprints stretching for about one--and--a-- half miles. The team made plaster casts of prints, some more than 20 inches long.

In Guandong, China, there is a permanent exhibition on display of the legendary "Abominable Snowman." The Yangcheng Evening News reported that Mr. Fang Zhong Shi, head of the China Wild Man Research Association, has a standing offer of a 10,000 yuan (about US$10,000) reward for anyone bringing in one of the wild creatures.

Readers will be hearing more about this when Trans Asia Expedition enters Guangdong.
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ADMIRAL ZHENG HE, THE PORT FROM WHICH THE ADMIRAL DISCOVERED THE WORLD

I remember my history class in school, and the teacher telling us about US President Teddy Roosevelt sending his "Great White Fleet" around the world in a display of American might. What a fleet that was--16 battle ships, and 14,000 crew members. Wow! The date was December 1907 and they sailed from East to West around the horn. They visited every important port in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, from Manila to Singapore and then on to Ceylon and India. We kids listen with awe of this great voyage that took more than a year to complete. Even in World War II there was not another fleet like it on the high seas.

What the teacher failed to tell us was that there was another fleet that visited the ports of Southeast Asia, and this one had 62 ships and 37,000 men. It took place 500 years earlier, in 1407. The man who led it was a Chinese admiral named Zheng He. When he arrived in Malacca on the Malay coast, he had aboard his command ship the daughter of the Emperor of China, and her 500 handmaidens, to be presented to the Sultan of Malacca for her hand in marriage. With such a precious cargo, and to show his loyalty, Admiral Zheng He (sometimes called Cheng Ho, or Sam Po) offered his services as a eunuch, meaning he was castrated. In the courts of China they called him the Three Jeweled Eunuch.

But there's more. This wasn't Admiral Zheng He's only voyage. History tells us he made seven voyages in all. And there's even talk that he sailed around the world and discovered America. But more about this later.

Much like Teddy Roosevelt did in 1907, Emperor Chien--wen, first ruler of the Ming Dynasty, in 1402 sought to display China's naval power by bringing the maritime states of South and Southeast Asia in line by sending his fleet in a display of strength.

For 300 years prior to this, the Chinese had been extending their power out to sea. An extensive sea borne commerce developed to meet the taste of the Chinese for spices and aromatics and the need for raw industrial materials. When Genoa and Venice in Europe were still in their infancy, great, pulsating ports of Southeast Asia were thriving. Names like Malacca, Batavia and Ayutthaya became household names.

The Emperor of China selected Zheng He for his loyalty to be commander in chief of the missions to the "Western Oceans." Zheng He first set sail in 1405, commanding 62 ships and 37,000 men. The fleet visited Champa (now South Vietnam), Siam, Malacca (with the emperor's daughter and her maidens as its cargo), and Java; then through the Indian Ocean to Calicut, Cochin, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Zheng He returned to China in 1407.

On his second voyage, in 1409, Zheng He reached Ceylon, and in 1411 set out on his third voyage. This time, going beyond the seaports of India, he sailed to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. On his return he touched at Samudra, on the northern tip of Sumatra.

Zheng He left China on his fourth voyage in 1413 and visited all the principal ports of Asia. Singapore had not yet been founded but he does tell about the treacherous passage through these waters which he called Dragon Teeth Gate. When the British founded the port of Singapore, they dynamited the passage and cleared the rocks to widen the canal. He called Malacca the Five Islands Port. There are five islands that mark the entrance to the port today. Zheng He's passage up the Chao Phraya River to Ayutthaya in Siam is also noteworthy. He mentioned heavy chains across the mouth of the river that had to be lowered to let his fleet pass. His scribes wrote glowingly about Ayutthaya.

During Zheng He's fifth voyage (1417--19), the Ming fleet revisited the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa. A sixth voyage was launched in 1421 to take home the foreign emissaries from China. Again he visited Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and Africa.

Zheng He's seventh voyage left China in the winter of 1431, visiting the states of Southeast Asia, the coast of India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the east coast of Africa. He returned to China in the summer of 1433 and died in 1435.

Zheng He's naval expeditions did extend China's influence over all of Southeast Asia for nearly a century. Although they did not lead to the establishment of trading empires, they lead the way for Chinese emigration resulting in Chinese colonization in Southeast.

Zheng He traveled farther than any other admiral in history at the time. He visited more than 35 countries during his voyages. His largest vessels were treasure ships, each averaging 149 metes in length. The fleet visited most of Southern Asia in the first voyage and, by the seventh and last voyage, Zheng He had been to east Africa, the Persian Gulf, Egypt, and Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka). Almost 30 countries sent envoys back to China to give homage to the emperor, and all of the countries eagerly welcomed Zheng and traded for Chinese goods. He set up diplomatic relations in all the countries he visited and received tribute from most rulers that he met.

Zheng He's voyages not only established Chinese trade routes throughout Asia and Africa, but also established China as the dominant power in the known world. China was far more technologically advanced than any other culture on the planet, even those in Europe. It's interesting to note, however, China had no contact with Europe, and it was unlikely that any European fleet would have challenged China's fleet anyway.

A British author is now claiming that Zheng He reached America. Gavin Menzies, a retired British Royal Naval Submarine Commanding Officer, put forward his theory in his book, "1421: The Year China Discovered the World. Published in 2002, Menzies cited what he called overwhelming evidence to support his concept that Chinese ships under the command of Zheng reached America 70 years before Columbus, who reached America in 1492.

In view of this, Shanghai held an international maritime expo in July last year honoring the admiral. Seminars, television programs and a maritime exposition in Shanghai marked the 600th anniversary of the first of the seven epic voyages.

His book title 1421 is reaching high claim but unfortunately its only theory and not all historians agree with it. Zheng He's voyages are well documented and there is no mention of his sailing beyond Africa to the New World. The Chinese government however loves the book. To the Chinese this is the year of Zheng He.

Unfortunately, with the death of the Emperor and soon after Zheng He's last voyage, China banned all naval expeditions, this time indefinitely. Future emperors practiced strict isolationism and Chinese influence on the world ceased, thus opening the door for the rise of European superpowers.

The Trans World Expedition will visit the sites where the armada was built, and the ports from which the admiral set out.

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A DRIVE THROUGH OLD SHANGHAI

We hear so much about Shanghai these days. It's growing; it's expanding; its economy is booming; it's leaping ahead at an unprecedented growth. It's all true. Shanghai is totally unlike the city I knew after the war. It's not even remotely the same. I remember the Bund, the promenade along the Huangpu River. It's still there but no longer are there signs that read: NO DOGS AND CHINESE ALLOWED. It was here on the promenade along the riverfront that foreigners, from the "Foreign Quarters" and legations, once gathered. Now it's tourists with cameras and guidebooks in hand. I found the Park Hotel on Nanking Road. It is still there but now a bit seedy and gloomy. It is totally unlike the new luxurious and fashionable Shangri--la Hotel across the river, in an area they call Pudong, where I bunked. The Shangri--la sits side--by--side with the Space Needle and with a view (I had a room on the 14th floor) that overlooks the whole city.

In my book, Take China, the Last of the China Marines, I wrote about the first time I arrived in Shanghai over 50 years ago. I came by US destroyer. "With pomp, pride and a display of showmanship, the helmsman brought our whaleboat--packed with sailors from the destroyer, going ashore on liberty--up the congested Huangpu River, past ships flying the ensigns of a dozen nations--United States, Britain, France, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Panama, Nationalist China, and many more I couldn't recognize. Pulling at their anchors midstream were war ships and gunboats, river scows, costal steamers, oil tankers, rusted freighters, smart cruise liners, huge sea--going junks and even an African dhow. There were still more: Chinese lighters with painted eyes, white--hulled government launches with shiny brass rails and hundreds of more vessels. And sculling back and forth, from ship to shore, was a sea of tiny sampans and bumboats carrying passengers and cargo. Some bumboats were so heavy--laden with cargo that their freeboard was but inches above their waterline and it appeared that the slightest wave might swamp them and send them to the bottom. The entire waterfront was pulsating with vigor. We continued smartly, our own ensign flying from the stern, up the Huangpu headed for the US Navy Fleet Landing a couple of blocks north on Soucho Creek. It was a proud feeling.

"All along the waterfront cargo vessels, moored to the docks, loaded and unloaded their wares, while whizzing cranes swung their booms back and forth overhead, and sweating coolies tottered up and down narrow gangplanks with loads heavy enough to break the backs of ordinary men."

The scene, of course, has changed. Smart young Chinese in Nike shoes and brand--labeled clothes sauntered up and down the Bund, while out in the river polished cruise boats and tourist ferries scurried up and down the river. No men--of--war, shattered junks and rusted freighters.

One place I wanted to see was Blood Alley. I remembered about where it was and we began walking. Avenue Rue Chu Pao--san was the official name for Blood Alley. In Take China I describe the street as it was when I first saw it. "Customers were in every stage of drunkenness, from 'feeling good' to staggering blindness. Each bar was like a time bomb, ready to explode at a slight side glance." I even remembered the names of many of the bars-- Monk's Brass Rail, George's Bar, Palais Cabaret, Crystal, the New Ritz and Mums.

Today Blood Alley is a street of posh shops and department stores. I found no one who even remembered the place, as if it never really existed. Perhaps the Old City might prove different, if it was still there. Before 1949, the Old City remained under Chinese law and administration while the rest of central Shanghai was carved up by foreign powers. Most of the residents in these old back alleys were from the Chinese underworld. The place was a notorious gangster--and--opium slum. We were warned to keep out of the Old City but that didn't stop us.

I was surprised now when I returned. The tiny lanes and crowded streets are still there, minus the rickshaws--but what a difference. The vices are gone and the neighborhood looks like a Hollywood movie set. The same buildings, the small houses, but what a little cleaning up and refurbishing had done.

At one time the old city was enclosed by a wall and moat but in 1912 the city walls were knocked down and the moat filled in. The colonial powers thought this might eliminate the vice but of course it didn't. At the heart of the 0ld City is Chenghuang Miao, Temple of the Town God and the Ming dynasty Yuyuan Garden, a classical Chinese garden. The garden was kept up. Legend has it that the garden was built in the 16th century by an eccentric and gifted landscape architect named Zhang Nanyang. His statue is there. The rock--and--tree garden is filled with artificial hills, carp--filled ponds, dragon--lined walls, and pavilions connected by zigzagging bridges.

Just west of Yuyuan at Henan Road is the Fuyou Road Sunday antique market, which is situated inside an old factory. The tiny lane hustles with people selling their wares. Looking for an iron to press your clothes, one that you must fill with hot coals, or a pocket watch that tells the phases of the moon? You can find them here. Other items might be old maps of Shanghai, baskets and boxes, porcelain and scattered modern goods including Mao paraphernalia. I imagine some of the same stuff that we Marines didn't buy years ago is still there on sale.

I visited the Old City in the afternoon, returned again in the evening and went to the Huxinting Teahouse, the city's oldest teahouse. It is situated in the middle of a small lake and dates from the Qing dynasty. The second floor of the teahouse serves some of the best tea in town. I remembered leaving my boozing buddies at Blood Alley one evening and finding my way to the teahouse. Sitting at postage--stamp size tables were Chinese men in long robes (the standard dress), listening to sing--song ladies in white make--up doing the entertaining to tunes played on one--string violins and gongs. My buddies back at Blood Alley didn't know what they were missing. When I heard musicians congregate below, playing traditional Chinese music, I was taken back to those days and was told that the spontaneous music was a nightly affair here at the Huxinting Teahouse.

We will be back, driving two vehicles with Trans Asia Expedition.

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A PLACE CALLED TSINGTAO, FOUNDED BY THE GERMANS

When Marco Polo traveled through China in the 13th century, he declared Hangzhou as the world's most beautiful city. He never went to Qingdao, that we know, but I imagine if he had, Qingdao might head that list. But then when Marco Polo was in China, Qingdao was nothing more than a tiny fishing village. It was the Germans who changed all that when they took possession of the port in 1898. Then things began to happen. They built a marvelous resort town with a Teutonic influence and, in German style, they established a brewery which today produces some of the finest beer in Asia. They called their new town Tsingtao and the beer, naturally, Tsingtao Beer.

It was in Tsingtao that I landed with my regiment as a 17--year old US Marine, fresh from the Battle of Okinawa, soon after the war ended. We went there to disarm the Japanese, who had been in the city for 18 years, and to repatriate them back to Japan. And, it was in Tsingtao that I was to grow up. I spent the next three years of my life there--when kids back home were going to football games and Saturday night parties--and so vivid are those memories that to this day I can recall details as though they had happened yesterday. I wrote a book Take China, The Last of the China Marines, about that experience.

And now with the Trans Asia Expedition I am going back to Tsingtao, or to Qingdao as it is called today. The city will be a brief stopover on our way north to locate the eastern end of the Great Wall. But not too brief. Brian wants to visit the Tsingtao Brewery. His goal is to sample all the beers of Asia. He has some surprises coming, especially with the beer they make in Mongolia from sour yak butter.






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GREAT WALL SLOWLY STARTING TO CRUMBLE

The Great Wall of China is a World Heritage and is well known the world over. It's said that it is the only man--made construction that can be seen from outer space. There's another side to the Great Wall, however, that is little known, and that is China's greatest cultural achievement is falling into ruin with seemingly little being done to stop it. To check out the Great Wall is one of the purposes of our forming Trans Asia Expeditions. We intend to drive the length of the wall and report what we find.

I first began exploring the Great Wall when I was a young US Marine in language school in Peking after the war. I borrowed a jeep and drove westward for a hundred or more miles, and wanted to continue on, but with the Red Army closing in that was impossible. I have been back to China several times since then, and have visited the wall a few times. From a tourist point of view, it looks good. Renovations that have been carried out as we can see at Badaling, the wall closest to Beijing that most tourists visit. I guess it is what tourists want. They can ride toboggans and cable cars, eat at a KFC outlet and have their picture taken with camels and life--size cutouts of Mao Zedong. And they go home satisfied. But this is not the "real" Great Wall of China.

The fact is sightseers, developers and erosion have destroyed two--thirds of the Great Wall. I quote from Beijing's state--run media that reported in a warning that the world heritage site is crumbling out of existence. Survey teams are said to have found large new breaches in the ramparts, which are believed to have once stretched almost 6,400 kilometers. Other sections are said to have been vandalized, covered in graffiti and ripped up for use in pigsties and coalmines.

"Booming tourism, development and lack of funds for protection are nibbling away the Great Wall," reported the xinhua news agency. "Only one third of the wall now exists and the length is still shortening."

The vastness of the structure makes it difficult to maintain. Carol Michaelson, assistant keeper in the Asia department at the British Museum, said the Chinese government tended to try to carryout "rescue acts" on its monuments. "When something becomes really bad they do something about it"

However, she accepted that preserving the whole length of the wall was an "impossible job". "The wall is of such a length that it is impractical to keep it all up and in pristine condition. In an ideal world the whole wall would be preserved but you have to be pragmatic abut it," she says.

According to Chinese chronicles, the oldest sections of the wall date back more than 2,000 years, but most of the structure was built during the Ming dynasty (1368--1644). Millions of laborers were conscripted and often worked to death to build the seven--meter high, seven--meter wide ramparts, which ultimately failed to prevent invasion by "foreign barbarians". (See the section on Genghis Khan.)

Although the wall survived the Mongol hordes, it has fared less well against sand storms, erosion and human activity. Two years ago, the World Monument Fund put it top of its annual list of the planet's most endangered architectural sites. The Badaling area, which is run by a company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, is the most popular section of the wall, attracting 10 million visitors a year.

Conservationists say the government needs to promote education and devote more resources to the wall. This is where we, Trans Asia Expedition, hope we can help promote awareness of the deterioration of the Great Wall. We would like to stimulate public funds which will hopefully will help save the remaining third of China's greatest cultural asset.

In its latest report on the wall, the New York--based World Monument Fund describes it as "one of the most extensive cultural landscapes on earth." But the report adds: "Less protected areas far from the Chinese capital, known as the 'wild wall' and its surrounding landscape, have come under ever increasing pressure from uncontrolled tourism and commercial development."

The fund report further says since it listed the wall in 2002 as one of the world's most endangered monuments, media attention had prompted the Chinese government to legislate to protect areas near the capital. But it warns: "Significant portions of the wall remain unprotected, at risk of damage wrought by age and exploitation."

In deed, Trans Asia Expedition has some exciting times ahead.

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WHEN BEIJING WAS PEKING

by Harold Stephens, Bangkok Post

Beijing is one of the great cities of the world. It's an ancient city, and each conqueror, each ruler, and each emperor in turn added to its splendor, from Kublai Khan to the Dowager Empress. It has gone by many names, Cathay, Peking, Peiking, Beijing and perhaps a few more. The traveler who visits the city wants to see the major sites, naturally, and these might be the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Ming Tombs, the Alter of Heaven, and for certain, the Great Wall of China. In deed, each one is worth a visit. But these sites only scratch the surface of the countless things there are to see in and around the city. To really get to know Beijing one would need weeks, no, months and maybe years. It's that vast, dramatic and mysterious. I lived in Beijing when it was Peking, right after the war, and when I return each time I discovered things I had missed. When people learn I was China before Mao they all ask the same question--What was it like?

With the exception of Forbidden City and sites like the Temple of Heaven, the city has not changed. For what the city once looked like, that's another story. Let me quote from my book Take China, The Last of the China Marines. I arrived the first time by train.

"The coal--burning train to Peking can hardly be called an express. Stops lasted an hour or more. At one stop we saw two Marine guards run past our window with their weapons drawn. A half--hour later we saw them returning and threw open our window and asked what the delay was all about. A tank guarding the line ahead ran over a Chinese man on a donkey cart. Both were killed, and the driver of the tank was fined: $10 for the man, $20 for the donkey.

The train was an ancient conveyance. The coal--burning engine huffed and puffed and sent out belches of steam and messy black soot. It left Tientsin and reached out for the outer edges of the great Gobi Desert, possibly along the same route Genghis Khan had taken with his hundred thousand mounted horsemen when he conquered Peking.

We watched the great empty landscape of China, arid and dust--swept, pass in slow motion. The earth was brown, all brown without color. Farmlands were flat with the houses low to the ground and surrounded by mud walls. Burial mounds of hard earth dominated much of the landscape. The mounds seemed to be endless. The sun, only a mellow disc in the sky, lay low on the horizon, without giving warmth, and played hide--and--seek behind the mounds. The motion of the train was hypnotic. The click--idy--clack, click--idy--clack was mesmerizing. It was easy to fall into a reverie.

We didn't move, we crawled across the wasteland, and by the next morning, after endless stops, I grew weary and left the compartment to walk along the hallway to exercise my limbs. I opened the door to the next car and came upon an open area between the cars. A steel ladder led to the roof. I climbed the ladder and found I could sit on the roof with comfort, with my legs dangling over the side. I had a splendid unobstructed view.

For the next few hours I sat there, studying the unattainable horizon. The tracks before us unrolled like a black ribbon upon an endless waste, and behind us we left a finger of smoke that lingered motionless in the lacquered sky. I became dust--covered my eyelashes, my hair, my clothing. Then I saw it. First I saw the dust, a sky of dust, and then the outer walls. It was Peking. The great city loomed up like a picture in a child's storybook. Peking, the mighty and ancient capital of Cathay. What a magnificent sight."

It seemed forever to close the distance; there was something so strange about it all. There appeared to be nothing else except a city surrounded by a wall. There was no hint of what might be beyond that wall. It was, if anything, a bit frightening. The track led into an arched opening, with barely enough room for the train to slip through, and certainly not enough for me sitting on top of the car. I leaped down between the cars, but to my horror the conductor had locked the door. I had to climb back up the ladder and lay flat on the roof, and at that instant we entered the tunnel. I was suddenly in a black void, enveloped in a cloud of acrid smoke, choking and gasping for air. We emerged from the tunnel with me coughing and covered with black soot.

But in another fleeting moment I forgot my discomfort. It was like an explosion. A new and fascinating world opened up before me, strange and unbelievable. Everything caught my attention. I wanted to stop the train then and there, as though once we passed it might disappear and be gone forever.

As we edged deeper into the city, I could hear the sounds, even above the roar of the train, and I could even catch the smells. Rickshaw and pedicab drivers shouted warnings as they padded along, vendors clicked wooden blocks to gain attention, wood--burning trucks tooted their horns and there was the general clamor of an excited city."

The train journey from Qingdao (Tsingtao) to Beijing today can't compare. It's a luxury overnight journey, and at times so smooth is the ride that you don't even know that you are moving. But my big disappointment was to discover the wall that I just mentioned no longer exists. It was torn down by the People's Government to make way for a beltway around the city, like they have in the West. The only difference is in the West they didn't have an ancient wall to tear down.

And now I was back. There were two place in particular I wanted to concentrate on: The Great Wall of China and Zhoukoudian, the site of the discovery of Peking Man.

First, The Great Wall of China. I don't think there is another phenomena like it in the world. We can talk about the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Machu Picchu located in the lofty mountains of Peru, and so many others, but none can compare to the Great Wall. Tourists who visit it on excursions from Beijing see but a fraction of the wall, a minuscule portion of it. Imagine, it stretches for 2,500 miles; it's 30 feet wide and in some places 50 feet high; and then try to figure out what it took to build such a wall. Was it built to keep out invaders or to bolster the ego of emperors. For certain it was not one emperor who built the wall but many. And there is the question why Marco Polo never mentioned the Wall in his Book of Travel. The wall that we see today when we visit Beijing was more or less a ruin, a pile of rubble, when Marco Polo was visiting the city. Another interesting note for those skeptics who say Marco Polo never actually visited China, for he never mentioned neither the Great Wall nor the Chinese use of chopsticks. Marco Polo visited China when the country was under the domination of Mongols, and Mongols were Muslim. They eat with their fingers, and certainly Marco Polo must have done the same, ate with his fingers.

To repair and rebuild the Great Wall today would be more costly than it was to build. Much of it is in ruin, but it's still a marvel worth seeing.

(Trans World Expedition will report on the wall as we drive from one end to the other.)

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AFTER YOU, GENGHIS KHAN -- INTO MONGOLIA

The Tartar nomadic people to the north of China brought a number of other Turkish tribes into a military confederation and achieved such a series of conquests as has no parallel in history. These were the Mongols. Their leader, Temujin, proclaimed himself supreme ruler of all Mongols in 1206 and assumed the title of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan invaded China, swooped down on Peking with a hundred thousand horsemen, captured the capital, and then conquered an empire that reached from the Pacific to the Volga River, and under his successors nearly all Russia became tributary to the Mongols (or Tartars as the Russians called them) for over two hundred years. The Trans Asia Expedition will journey into Mongolia on the trail of the great Mongolian leader--After you, Genghis Khan.

But who was this man? And the Mongols?

Born in Mongolia, and named Temujin, his early life was difficult. His father delivered him to his future wife's family when he was only nine. He was to live there until he reached the marriageable age of 12. But then, while returning home, his father was murdered by the neighboring Tatars. This gave Temujin the right to claim to be the clan's chief, but his clan refused to be led by a boy and quickly abandoned him and his family. For the next few years, he and his family lived the life of impoverished nomads, surviving primarily on wild fruits, marmots and other small game. In 1182, he was captured in a raid by a neighboring tribe and held captive. They planned his execution, but he managed to escape with help from a sympathetic captor.

With his father murdered, young Temujin's mother, Hoelun, took on the task of teaching him lessons in survival in the harsh landscape and even in the grimmer political climate of Mongolia. This was especially true in the need to establish alliances with others, a lesson which would shape his understanding in his later years. Jelme and Borchu, two of Genghis Khan's future generals, joined him around this time. Along with his brothers, they provided the manpower needed for early expansion and diplomacy for the future Genghis Khan

Temujin married a sixteen--year old Borte of the Konkirat tribe, arranged by their parents as a customary way to forge a tribal alliance. She was later kidnapped in a raid by the Merkit tribe, and Temujin rescued her with the help of his protector, Wang Khan of the Kerait tribe. She remained his true love and only empress, although he followed tradition by taking several concubines.

Before becoming a Khan, Temujin united the many Turkic--Mongol confederations of Central Asia, giving a common identity to what had previously been a territory of nomadic tribes.

Starting with the conquest of China and consolidating through numerous conquests including Persia, Genghis Khan laid the foundation for an empire that was to leave an indelible mark on world history. He did it with his invincible Mongolian Horde

Mongol horses were small, and their riders were lightly clad and they moved with greater speed. These were hardy men who grew up on horses and hunting, making them excellent warriors. Their main weapon was the bow and arrow. The Mongols of the early 1200s were highly disciplined, superbly coordinated and brilliant in tactics.

The Mongols were illiterate, with a population of no more than around 700,000 in number. They were herdsmen on the grassy plains north of the Gobi Desert and south of Siberian forests. Before the year 1200, the Mongols were fragmented, moving about in small bands headed by a chief, or khan, and living in portable felt dwellings.

The Mongols endured frequent deprivations and sparse grazing. They frequently fought over turf, and during hard times they occasionally raided, interested in goods rather than bloodshed. They did not collect heads or scalps as trophies and did not notch wood to record their kills.

In 1206, at the age of 42, Temujin took the title 'Universal Ruler', which translates to Genghis Khan, and he addressed his joyous supporters thanking them for their help and their loyalty. He continued organizing. He improved his military organization, which was also to serve as a mobile political bureaucracy, and he broke up what was left of old enemy tribes, leaving the ethnically homogeneous tribes that had demonstrated loyalty to him.

As Universal Ruler, Genghis Khan moved to secure his borders. To his south he made an alliance with the Uighurs, who were closer than the Mongols were to the Silk Road and to wealth, with their caravan laden with gold, silver, pearls, brocaded fabrics, silks and satins. The Mongols had only leather, fur and felt. Genghis needed booty to pay troops securing his northern border and subduing an old enemy there, the Merkits. Genghis then attacked the rulers of farmers and herders in northwestern China, the Tangut, who also had much in goods and wealth.

In strength, the Mongols were often outnumbered two to one, and they had to learn a new kind of warfare, against fortified cities, including cutting supply lines and diverting rivers. Genghis Khan and his army were victorious, and in 1210 Genghis won from the Tangut recognition as overlord.

Also in 1210, the Ruzhen, who ruled that northern China that included present--day Beijing, sent a delegation to Genghis Khan demanding Mongol submission as vassals. The Ruzhen controlled the flow of goods along the Silk Road. Genghis Khan remembered well the tortures and killings that generations of his people had suffered at the hands of the Ruzhen. In 1211, Genghis Khan and his army attacked. The Ruzhen had a large and effective army but they could not halt the onslaught of a hundred thousand mounted horsemen. The Mongols had an advantage in diet, which included meat, milk and yogurt, and they could miss days of not eating, better than Ruzhen soldiers, who "like cattle" ate grains. The Mongol army crossed the Great Wall of China in 1213, and in 1215 Genghis besieged, captured, and sacked the Chinese capital of Yanjing, later known as Peking, or Beijing today. Genghis Khan and his army then pushed into the heartland of northern China.

Triumphant Genghis Khan and his Mongols returned home and with them were engineers who had become a permanent part of their army, and there were captive musicians, translators, doctors and scribes, camels and wagon loads of goods. Among the goods were silk, including silken rope, cushions, blankets, robes, rugs, wall hangings, porcelain, iron kettles, armor, perfumes, jewelry, wine, honey, medicines, bronze, silver and gold, and much else. And goods from China would now come in a steady flow.

While Europe lingered in the Dark Ages, Mongolia reigned supreme over the known world.

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THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING BONES OF PEKING MAN

It's called Zhoukoudian, the site of Peking Man, one of the biggest mysteries of our times. The bones of Peking Man are missing. What happened to them? We know for certain, in 1941, the fossils from some 40 individual bodies, collectively called Peking Man, were under study and kept at Peking Union Medical College. However, when the Japanese were invading China, there was an attempt to smuggle all of the fossils to the United States for safekeeping. When the boat arrived in the US the bones were missing. That's one version, that the bones never arrived. Another is that they were lost at sea after being put aboard an American vessel and Japanese bombers sank the vessel, and others believe the bones are still in China. Nevertheless, to this day, they are still missing.

As a student at the university in Beijing after World War II, I had to fight many battles, and this was one of them, over the bones of Peking Man that everyone claimed were stolen by the US Marines. I was called a thief. At the time, Marine headquarters in Beijing was ordered to look into the matter, to quiet the public, and I was assigned to go to the site with others to look into the matter, not that we ever expected to uncover any clues.

I was given a report to read on the trip there, which stated that when Japanese troops advanced on Peking, the bones were handed over to the commander of the US Marine garrison at the US Embassy, packed in military footlockers, and prepared for shipment to the United States for safekeeping.

But within hours, before the footlockers could be moved, Pearl Harbor was bombed and Japan and the U.S. were at war. The Marines surrendered to the Japanese and went off to POW camps and the footlockers with their priceless contents disappeared. The Marines were released from POW camps in 1945, and among them was one Gerald Valentine. He returned home, was discharged, and then turned up in London. He had changed his name, and he wanted two million dollars for the bones. When the authorities closed in on him, he too disappeared, like the bones.

Now back in Beijing, I wanted to retrace my steps. It took me little more than an hour in an air--conditioned van to reach the site. In 1948 it was much different, as I wrote in Take China:

"By late afternoon we had reached Dragon Bones Hill in Zhoukoudian Township. The site was screened by rolling mountains and ridges on the northwest and adjoined a vast fertile land to the southwest under a boundless blue sky. The Zhoukou River rushed down the mountain valley and zigzagged its way south and emptied into the Glass River.

Digging at Peking Man Site

All work on the excavations had stopped years before. Mud and clay walls on the open pits had collapsed into piles of rubble. Our report said that Dragon Bones Hill was formed by limestone in the Ordovician period. It rises nearly 300 feet above the Zhoukou River. It is estimated that Peking Man lived in a big cave on the northern slope of the Dragon Bones Hill about 500,000--600,000 years ago.

It was interesting poking around in the ashes but other than that, there was little that we could report. We camped that night on Dragon Bone Hill, under a star--filled sky, with a sliver of a moon on the horizon. We felt affinity with our early ancestors who must have sat on the same spot a half a million years before. And most likely they too looked up at the same stars and the same moon and wondered what it was all about.

We lingered at the site the next morning, and by nightfall were back in Peking."

Zhoukoudian is on the tourist map but compared to the Great Wall it doesn't have many visitors. With Trans Asia Expedition we will visit the site again and talk to the experts to see if any new discoveries have been made.







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XI-AN, THE WALLED CITY WHERE THE SILK ROAD BEGAN

by Harold Stephens, Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways

When I first saw Beijing, or Peking as it was then, I was most impressed with the wall that surrounded the city. That was right after the WW II. Years later, when I returned to Beijing, the wall was gone. It had been torn down to make way for a motor beltway around the city. Sad but true. By the authority of the Peoples' Republic, the wall had to go.

Fortunately, some cities fought urban renewal. One such city was Xi--an, an hour's flight south of Beijing. Xi--an still has her wall, an ancient one, much like the old wall of Peking. I discovered Xi--an, for myself, a few years ago and since then I have been back several times. Each time I am awed by the wall. It is surrounded by a moat and offers great opportunities for the photographer. Along the inside of the wall are endless shops in tiny alleyways, like the Hutongs in Beijing that are a delight for shoppers. But, to fully appreciate the wall, one can rent a bicycle and cycle around the city on top of the wall. No place else in China can you do that.

Other than to see one of the last remaining city walls in China there are several reasons to travel to Xi--an. Foremost are the Terra Cotta Warriors that attract world attention. Another reason is for the arts. Xi--an is a city of art. Paintings, calligraphy, pottery making, silk production, carpet making, ceramics--name it and Xi--an has it.

But why Xi--an more than any other city in China? It has to do with its history. Aside from being the oldest city in China and the birthplace of the first emperor of China, it was where the Silk Road began.

The city lies in the protected valley of the Wei River and served as a capital for more than 1,100 years for some thirteen imperial dynasties. During the Tang years (615--907), it was the largest city in the world, then called Changan. As a result it was the destination of thousands of foreign Silk Road traders and it developed into the starting point of the route. In addition to silk, the route carried many other precious commodities. Caravans heading towards China carried gold and other precious metals, ivory, precious stones, and glass. Glass was not manufactured in China until much later. In the opposite direction, furs, ceramics, jade, bronze objects, lacquer and iron were carried. Many of these goods were bartered for others along the way and objects often changed hands several times.

By 742 A.D., the population had reached almost two million and census figures showed that five thousand foreigners lived in the city: Turks, Persians, Indians and others from along the Road, as well as Japanese and Koreans (as they're known today) from the east and Malays from the south. Many were missionaries or pilgrims, others were merchants; but every other occupation was also represented, including artisans and craftsmen. Many moved on but artisans and craftsmen remained--and their crafts.

As a result Xi--an has some excellent offerings that include Chinese calligraphy rubbings, Tang pottery replicas, Terra Cotta Warrior replicas, Folk paintings, traditional Chinese paintings, Folk paper cuttings and priceless porcelain, both Green and Tang.

In the Muslim area of the city, near the Bell Tower, there is a huge outdoor market that sells almost everything you could ever want: clothing, antiques, musical instruments, Mao memorabilia as well as other souvenirs and cultural items, all for sale.

But most important, Xi--an is a storehouse of ancient Chinese culture--calligraphy included. There are more than 300 steles--that look like tombstones— dating from the Han, Wei, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties and can be found in the Forest of Steles. At the shops along the wall in the south one can find books of rubbings for sale from some of the most famous Chinese calligraphers. Any one interested in Chinese history, language, or calligraphy can spend hours browsing here.

I was not familiar with Green Porcelain and Folk Paper Cutting until I went to Xi--an. Green Porcelain (Qing Ciqi) is a method of making porcelain that was handed down from the Song Dynasty. Lifelike animals and flowers are the major decorative themes and are favored for making teapots. Green Porcelain is not to be confused with Tang Pottery Replicas with themes that include figurines and ceramic camels and horses. Tang Pottery is the pride of Xi--an.

Then, who ever thought that Paper Cutting would become a popular folk art? But in Shanxi Province it is. On days of celebration, holidays and weddings, villagers like to decorate the doors and windows of their homes with colorful paper cuttings. The designs of the paper cuttings are rich and varied but they always feature symbols of good luck and happiness as the main theme. They are inexpensive and make good souvenirs to take back home.

You might want to take a statue of a Terra Cotta Warrior home with you. Many different types of replicas are available as souvenirs from a few inches tall to life--size statues. Prices range from one US dollar to several hundred dollars for the largest statues. The price of the life--sized statues usually includes shipping. I found a life--size statue of a warrior at a shop in the Shangri--la Hotel where I was staying, and came near to buying it but settled for a smaller replica (which sits on my desk) at the Xi--an Friendship Store. What I found at the Friendship Store was even more fascinating than the warrior replicas for sale--the man who found them. He was there autographing his book. His is an interesting story. Before he became famous, he was a farmer who one day in 1974 was digging a well on his farm. Suddenly he was making headlines. He had made one of the most astounding archeological discoveries in history. What he had discovered was the famous Terra Cotta Army. The site had been buried and forgotten for two thousand years.

In the main vault--there are several--archaeologists have uncovered more then 8000 life--size Terra Cotta figures of warriors arranged in battle formation, comprised of officers, soldiers holding spears and swords (many of them authentic weapons), and others steering horse--drawn chariots. Seven hundred thousand workers spent 36 years building the tomb on the emperor's orders. The Terra Cotta Warrior Army is a highlight of any visit to China, vying with the Great Wall and Forbidden City as China's most famous monument and their discovery has put Xi--an on the tourist map.

A particular kind of Chinese painting found in Xi--an is most interesting. Some call it modern folk painting; others, "farmers' paintings." From the name, one can guess that they are the work of farmers. Of course, the question that comes up, do farmers paint?

Indeed they do.

Farmers' painting dates back to the late '50s when the new government formed mass cultural activities. Professional artists were given the task of teaching farmers the art of painting. It has grown and there are forty such art colonies around the country with a village near Xi--an having the largest and the most significant colony. Sponsored by the State, local mass art centers and cultural centers provide these folk artists with places to work and the assistance of professional artists.

Menial tasks like washing clothing, erecting a new house or picking mushrooms hardly seem to be subjects that could start an artistic movement but for Chinese farmers that's exactly what they were. The paintings are instantly recognizable by their bold, exaggerated forms and excessive use of color. These amateur artists make full use of the canvas with virtually every inch filled with scenes from daily rural life. What I find most striking about them is the similarity of work from one artist to the other. I think it would be most difficult to distinguish one artist's work from another. Still, one can't help admiring the art form. They are eye--catching and colorful paintings and overflow with the atmosphere of Chinese country life. The Shangri--la Hotel in Xi--an has used Farmers' Paintings exclusively to decorate the hotel. They are seen in rooms and hallways and include a wall--size mural in the main conference room.

That, in a nutshell, is Xi--an, China's city of art. Trans Asia Expedition will visit Xi--an and from there plan our trip into Tibet following the Silk Road.

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JOURNEY INTO TIBET

(When Steve asked a friend about the driving conditions from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to Kathmandu in Nepal, his friend sent him the below report. At present to is difficult to find information about the road from Xi-an in China to Lhasa. We may have to wait until we arrive in China to find out.)

From Lhasa, capital of Tibet, we drove back to Kathmandu visiting Samye, Gyantze, Shigatze. Everest Base Camp, Shelkar and Tingri on the way. It is a long drive from Lhasa to Samye. The road meets the Tsang-po (the Brahmaputra) and crossing a bridge takes a U-bend towards Samye. Here one encounters the bleak landscape for the first time. The gleaming façade of Samye monastery is a contrast to this arid setting. Founded 770, after Trisong Detsen invited Santharakshita, it was in Samye that it was decided that Tibetan Buddhism would follow the Indian school.

From Samye, the road to Gyantze climbs through a series of hairpin bends passing stone buildings with swastikas, sun and moon symbols painted on their walls similar to the Vaishnavite Namam.

At the head of the trade route from Sikkim and Darjeeling, Gyantze is the most Tibetan of cities, where the two-storeyed houses look Tibetan and its markets sell goods which the nomads use as they go about in their traditional robes.

The approach to the monastery is like that of a typical South Indian temple town with street hawkers following you with their wares. The dzong (fort) is on top of a hill with a spectacular view across the plains. The Pelkhor Chode temple has survived relatively unscathed and has a tantric chapel with a mural depicting sky burials and death. The sky burial of the Tibetan dead is similar to the Parsi ritual where bodies are exposed to the elements to be eaten by vultures.

One of Tibet's architectural masterpieces is the multi-tiered Kumbum Stupa whose protective painted eyes look down on the townspeople as well as devotees as they climb up the hill. Built in the shape of a 108-sided mandala it is distinguished by many 15th Century murals painted by Nepali artists.

The next stop was Shigatze where the Tashilhumpo monastery, the seat of the Panchen Lama, is located. The monastery has a 26-metre tall Buddha and a huge tangka wall in the background. Worthwhile bargains can be had in the carpet factory.

A long drive (232 km) and many high passes lie between Shigatze and Shelkar. From Shelkar, we motored to the Everest base camp en route to Tingri. Even though the weather was bad, we got a clear view of the high Himalayan peaks - Everest, Makalu, Lhotse, Cho-Oyu, Shishpangma and Gaurishankar. The view is so clear it is as though these peaks are within reach.

A day's motoring where the road descends from 3800 m to 1300 m through scenic Himalayan landscape filled with gorges and waterfalls brings one from Tingri to Kodari, the Nepalese border town. From here, it is a four-hour drive to Kathmandu.

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OVER THE HIMALAYAS INTO KATHMANDU

by Harold Stephens, Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways

Kathmandu, Himalayan capital at the top of the world, the city of mystery and magic, of stone gods and goddesses, of kings and princesses--it was dark the first time I saw it, and I wasn't too impressive. I had come overland by Jeep, a most arduous journey via the Tribhuwan Rajpath, the highest highway in Asia, and as darkness was falling we dropped down into the Valley of Kathmandu. No lights, and gloom. The only accommodation we could find was the Snow View Hotel, another disappointment. I had driven all the way for this, I thought. But the next morning, when I threw open my windows, I changed my mind completely, irrevocably, forever. I had awakened in a land of fairytales. I had found Shangri--La. It was that powerful.

That was more than 30 years ago, and I wrote about that first trip in detail in my book Who Needs A Road? Since then I have returned to Kathmandu time and time again, at every chance that came my way. Most memorable was after I became travel correspondent for Thai Airways, and management sent me ahead to be on hand when THAI inaugurated its jet service to the capital. Then too I had to come overland from Calcutta. But this was no ordinary inaugural. No large jets had landed high in the Himalayan capital before. The THAI Caravelle was to be the first.

With other journalists I stood at the end of the runway. Tension was high, and the excitement grew when we heard the roar of engines coming through the overcast from far above. Then through the mist, an aberration coming to life, the jet appeared, and no sooner had the wheels touch down, the moment we all been waiting for, arrived. A parachute popped out aft from the aircraft, bringing it to a halt, and Thai Airways made history. That was in 1968.

Nepal grew to become a prime destination for visitors from around the world. With its popularity, however, came criticism. Everyone now said Nepal had let tourism grow too rapidly, without considering the environment. It was true; the country was not ready for mass tourism. Most damaging was the battalions of mountain climbers who appeared on the scene, all wanting to "the youngest," "the oldest," "the first women" "the fastest," and even a blind man, to climb the highest mountain in the world. Many succeeded, and made names for themselves. But they also left behind another legacy, a less favorable one: tons of garbage and discarded mountain climbing gear.

"But that has changed," admits Lisa Choegyal, a leading travel authority on Nepal. "The government now requires that everything that goes up must come down." It has made a big difference.

But let's get back to Kathmandu. Why Kathmandu? First, the beauty of Kathmandu is unsurpassed; it belongs to another world. Most of Nepal's art and architecture are indigenous, and what impresses me most about the city is that these treasures are all in use. The people are using buildings that in other countries would have been chained off, with guards selling tickets to tourists for a hurried view. In ancient temples, built centuries before when Europe was still in the Dark Ages, bells ring as they always have; and massive doors with heavy iron hinges, constructed when the armies of Genghis Khan marched across Asia, still swing closed each night and open with the first light of dawn.

Perhaps the unique nature of Nepal, like Thailand, is the result of never having been colonized or exploited by foreign powers. It was the Rana family--the ruling aristocracy who had usurped the powers of the kings, and turned Nepal into their private estate--who forbade visitors to enter the country. The mountainous terrain made it easy to enforce the ban. Only when India achieved her independence after World War II were the King's supporters able to secure aid from the sympathetic Indian government. When the King's revolution succeeded, the Rana prime minister resigned, and the country began to emerge from obscurity. In 1951 King Tribhuvana regained power, to be succeeded in 1955 by his son, Mahendra. In 1956 the first road connecting Nepal with the outside world was completed. And in 1968 Thai Airways made travel to Nepal possible.

The old section of Kathmandu, a city within a city, is encircled by a wall with narrow openings for gates, where the streets are cobbled and narrow and overhung by carved wooden balconies. In dimly lighted shops, craftsmen sit cross--legged and practice their ancient arts and sell their wares. By midmorning the streets are crowded. From the highlands come men and women in colorful costumes. The men wear strips of cloth wrapped around their waists, from which hangs the kukri, the Nepalese scimitar. The women wear ankle--length robes, and adorn themselves with bangles around the wrists and heavy jewelry about their necks.

Since there are no beasts of burden in Nepal, the task of transporting supplies is left to porters. They hurry through the streets in never--ending streams, jogging along in single file, carrying their heavy loads in baskets held in place by straps around their heads. And since the Kathmandu Valley is predominately Hindu, the sacred cows wander freely through the streets. In fact, in Nepal it is a capital offense to kill a cow.

Twenty years ago, the main tourist area in Kathmandu was centered around Dubar Square. In the late 1960's and early 70's, during the so--called heyday of hippy overland travel, the most popular place in Kathmandu was centered around the square. Its main street, where all the back--packers gathered, was Jhochhen Tote, a narrow congested thoroughfare that runs south from the square. But they didn't call it by that name then. It was better known as Freak Street. And, in deed, that's just what it was, a street for freaks, the place for cheap hotels, cheap restaurants, and, undoubtedly the major attraction, the many hashish shops.

But times change. Freak Street today is but a shadow of its former self, and, while there are still cheap hotels and restaurants, it's now the Thamel area in the north of the town that has become the main gathering place, for pack packers and affluent travelers as well. The big change came in 1975. Freak Street lost its luster when Kathmandu began a major a citywide clean up in preparation for King Birendra's coronation. Number One was to ban hashish and marijuana, and next was to ride the town of it impoverished visitors. Trucks drove through the streets and the authorities loaded aboard those whose visas had expired or who couldn't support themselves. They were then trucked down to the Indian border and unloaded.

Some shoestring travelers still stay around Freak Street, and with its historical connections, it's still an interesting place right in the heart of old Kathmandu. It's one place in town where a taxi or trishaw will do you no good. The only way to get around is by foot. A stroll will lead the casual wanderer to many intriguing sights, especially in the crowded maze of streets, courtyards and alleys in the market area north of Durbar Square. There are temples, shrines and many individual statues and sculptures hidden away in the most unlikely places.

The area is like a museum, but one that's open to the public. And what makes it interesting, other than a few freaks who still gather, are the people who push through the streets--Buddhist monks, Hindu sadhus, Sherpa's with huge loads on their backs, Tibet porters in long black robes and fur caps, school girls in western dress and housewives in saris and jewels doing their daily shopping. Trishaw's push their way through the crowd, cows look for refuge to eat in the gutters, hawkers call out for passersby to buy their wares and carpet salesmen look for potential customers. All the walks lead to markets, temples and chowks, the center of Nepalese life. Everywhere are courtyards, some quite large and dotted with chaityas and shrines.

Thamel is now the place, especially in the evening when you can feel its pulse beat. It has atmosphere. It's crammed with shops and stores bulging at the seams, restaurants and bars, book shops and pizza parlors, hawkers and trishaw drivers calling out to strollers, and all the weird and strange sounds--but its the people who make it interesting, tourists included. Occasionally there's the passing freak, but the majority of visitors these days are serious--minded tourists--hikers, trekkers, climbers and determined sightseers. They come with climbing boots and rosy cheeks, with bright woolen sweaters and sweat pants, some walking, others riding bicycles. They come to come to gather in the restaurant in the evenings, lingering over their tables, drinking coffee and hot toddies in front of warming fireplaces. The crowd in Thamel is fun to be around.

Trans Asia Expedition will enter Nepal and reach Kathmandu from Tibet in the north and exit to India in the south. We will be driving over some of the highest mountain roads in the world.

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DEATH IN BENARAS, INDIA'S HOLY CITY ACROSS THE GANGES

(Driving across India is a great experience. Trans Asia Expedition will be entering India from Kathmandu in Nepal at a town called Patna, not far from Benares, India's holy city. We will cross the Ganges River and make the drive for more than a thousand miles to Calcutta. Stephens made the same motor trip when he led The Trans World Record Expedition, and wrote about it in his book 'Who Needs A Road'. Here are abridged excepts from Chapter 15 that tell about motoring in India, and a few words about Benares.)

Crossing the border into India is like opening the pages of Kipling and being greeted by turbaned soldiers wearing long coats and bright sashes. The great subcontinent of India, land of fabled color contrasts, lyric sweetness, and jeweled temples, land of nearly a billion people and half that many sacred cows, stretched before us on 2,000 miles of broken roads, under torrential monsoon rains.

It is well said that a man who can drive across India can drive anywhere. The roads were as narrow, the shoulders as steep, and the truckers as rude as those in Pakistan. Huge carts, drawn by oxen, blocked the roads in front of us. When the monsoon rains struck, as they did almost every afternoon, they obliterated the road and made driving treacherous.

Our biggest problem was avoiding an accident with the villagers and the cattle on the road. Most of India's billion people and half billion cows wander around with little to do, and all of them seem to prefer the highway, above all other places, for meeting, walking, sleeping and even defecating. The cows were everywhere. They walk the city streets, they sleep in the doorways of shops and homes, they wander along the roads. In a country where they are regarded as the repository of someone's soul, and consequently never killed or restrained, and rarely even chased out of the grain fields, they have grown defiant. No amount of honking or hollering would get them out of our path, and they'd stay there until the spirit moved them.

The people of India, 83 per cent of whom live in villages, use the roads for footpaths between the villages and as meeting places within the villages, and only with the greatest reluctance would they interrupt their conversation long enough to let us pass.

But worst of all were the people who slept on the road. They used it for a bed at night because it was warmer and dryer than the ground around it, and because, like so many poor Indians, they had no real home or bed of their own. Ten or twenty times a night we'd come to a harrowing stop inches from some recumbent form who'd awaken to blink in the glare of our headlights and slowly shuffle off the road to let us pass.

We reached Benares on the Ganges, India's holiest city, some 3,000 years old. What Mecca is to the Arab, Benares is to the Hindu, for it is to Benares that he must make at least one pilgrimage in his lifetime. He comes there to descend the steps (ghat's) to the Ganges, and with the sacred water of the river wash away his sins. And there also the pious Hindus come to burn their dead.

After we had set up camp, we hired a skiff to take us out on the river. We pushed off from the stone steps and let the current carry us downstream. Hindus by the thousands lined the banks, many standing waist deep in the turbid water, others immersing themselves completely. Some took the water into their mouths, swished it around, and then blew it out through cupped hands as though in offering.

Sitting on the steps above the worshippers were the holy men, many completely naked, with penetrating black eyes and painted faces. And beyond the steps was the skyline of Benares, with 15,000 shrines and temples. We continued to drift, toward columns of blue smoke twisting skyward. Here were the burning ghat's of Manikarnika, the holiest cremation site of India. As we drifted closer, we watched two men prepare a pyre by piling logs in even rows. A corpse wrapped in a bright orange sari waited its turn. A few yards away, four men carried a body wrapped in white silk on a bamboo stretcher down to the river for its final cleansing. At another ghat, a man with a long pole poked into the ashes at the base of the pyre and lifted a charred leg which he threw back into the flames. At another ghat, an old man with white hair, naked to the waist, prepared to light a pyre which held the body of his wife. He stuffed straw between the logs and walked seven times around the corpse, as is the custom. He then set fire to the straw, and soon his wife's body was engulfed in smoke and flame. As the sari burned away, he heaped more wood upon her naked body, while from the steps above, disinterested faces watched the solemn ritual.

We saw no tears, no wailing, no displays of emotion. Children ran along the banks of the river, playing hide-and-seek among the burning ghat's. Holy men sat on the steps, inured to the stench of burning flesh. Cows and goats walked among the pyres. A dog gnawed on a burned leg he had pulled from the ashes.

As we turned to head upstream, a boat rowed across our bow carrying an uncremated body wrapped in a sari. When it reached the middle of the river, the corpse was dropped overboard. Our oarsman explained that not all Hindus are cremated. He said that many of the Brahmin priests are not, nor are children who die before they are three; others considered unfit for cremation are those who die of smallpox or leprosy. They are merely dumped into the river.

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A BREATH OF AIR IN CALCUTTA'S BLACK HOLE

(Calcutta will be an important stopover for Trans Asia Expedition.)

Calcutta, now called Kolkata
By Harold Stephens, Bangkok Post

I like Calcutta. That's a broad statement, for most travelers dislike the city and bypass it. What's the attraction then?

Calcutta is known for its poverty, a reputation it really doesn't deserve. It's a compelling city, a city with a soul, and a visit there is one of the richest experiences on Earth. There's no other city like it on this planet. First impressions might be overwhelming; so my advice, expect a bit of a shock.

Most exciting to me is when I am motoring and drive across the Howrah Bridge over the Hooghly River, one of the many tributaries of the Ganges, and enter Calcutta, to be swept into the currents of a human river of ever-moving, life-moving, but going nowhere, it seems.

Three hundred years ago Calcutta was just a small fishing village. From this she has grown to become the second largest city on the mainland of Asia. Her problems have grown with her. People came to Calcutta from all over India to find work in the new factories, and when famine struck their rural areas they came to beg and steal food. During the great famine of 1943, they came by the millions to the city. Garrisons of soldiers blockaded the roads, and those starving people who didn't die in the streets of Calcutta died in the big camps outside.

Calcutta was also the scene of the worst communal rioting between Hindus and Moslems. On the afternoon of August 9, 1947, 16,000 people were killed in the streets. Corpses blocked drains and choked back alleys. It was believed that the matter could only be settled by the partition of India. The partition took place, and Pakistan was created for the Moslems, but nothing really was settled, for the disorganized rioters of 1946 became the organized armies of 1965. What is so tragic about the affair is that the Pakistanis and Indians are ethnically of the same stock, of one inheritance, and once all Hindu. Their differences are solely religious, and both sides, once brothers, are now prepared to die for their beliefs.

Calcutta is history. British history. Gunga Din, Sabu and the Jungle Book, Kipling and John Masters. The Sepoy revolt. Intrigue. Take the Black Hole. The Black Hole of Calcutta was a small dungeon where troops of the Nawab of Bengal held British prisoners of war after the capture of Fort William on June 20, 1756. According to a disputed account by a survivor, 123 of 146 prisoners died of heat exhaustion in the confined conditions. Certain historians now believe the number to be at most 43.

Holwell had erected a tablet on the site of the Black Hole to commemorate the victims, but at some point in the 19th century (the date is uncertain) it disappeared. Lord Curzon, on becoming Viceroy in 1899, noticed that there was nothing to mark the spot and commissioned a new monument, incorporating the wording from Holwell's; it was erected in 1905 at the corner of Dalhousie Square, which was said to be the site of the Black Hole. At the apex of the Indian independence movement, the presence of this monument in Calcutta was turned into a nationalist cause celebre. For reasons that are somewhat obscure, Subhash Chandra Bose, an influential Indian National Congress leader, lobbied energetically for its removal. The Congress and the Muslim League joined forces in the anti-monument movement. As a result, the obelisk was removed from Dalhousie Square in July, 1940 and re-erected in the graveyard of St John's Church, where it remains to this day.

To feel the history, one must go to the Victoria Memorial. This beautiful monument built as a memorial to the Queen Victoria. Built of white marble brought from Jodhpur, it stands in the south east corner of the Maidan. It was opened on 1921.There are enormous oil paintings in the Royal Gallery, illustrating episodes from queen Victoria's long, eventful life and reign - an impressive collection of the British colonial period.

I have my favorite place too. One place I hate to tell Brian, our enthusiastic member of the expedition, is about Manton & Co. Gun Makers. Brian is a gun collector, and here at Manton's he will go mad. Manton & Co. Gun makers was established in Calcutta, India by Frederick Manton in 1825. Managed by John Augustus Manton, and when I first went there in 1965, it was run by Mr. Greengrass. How wonderful to sit in the shop, in great old rattan chairs, drink tea, and talk about guns. Mr. Greengrass I am sure is long gone but there must be another there to manage and carry on great tales of tiger hunts and jungle safaris.

That is Calcutta in part.

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THE MOUNTAIN ROAD TO BHUTAN, THE LOST KINGDOM

If one asks is there a Shangri--la, I have to answer yes. It's called Bhutan. It's perhaps the last outpost on earth, and certainly the most difficult one to enter. The government permits only a few tourists a year, and all are high--paying for the privilege of a visit. The question is, can Trans Asia Expedition get authorization to enter the country? I am confident we can. I was invited by the Bhutan government half a dozen years ago. Below is an article I wrote for the Bangkok Post, and it explains why I went.

SEVEN DAYS IN BHUTAN

by Harold Stephens, Bangkok Post

The pilot of the 16--seat Dornier 228 that flies from Calcutta to Bhutan has to search the high Himalayan valleys for an opening in the clouds to land at Paro, the only airfield in Bhutan. Sometime, if he can't find an opening, he has to return to Calcutta.

Our pilot, Captain Blaggana, a retired Indian air force wing commander with 24 years flying experience in the Himalayas, dips the starboard wing to the right and then to the left, searching for that opening. He can't seem to find it.

Everyone is tense. At a last attempt, he climbs to 16,000 feet, where the air is thin, and there, below, appears a break in the clouds and a valley beneath it. We drop through the skies and land at Paro, the only landing field in Bhutan.

A minibus, brand new, with driver and guide awaits us at the terminal. It's a two--hour drive from the landing field at Paro to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. We are still mystified by the whole experience. We can't believe we are in Bhutan, the most remote kingdom in the world.

We are a party of six who have come to explore the possibility of tourism for this fragile destination. Niels Lumholdt from the head office at Thai International, Khun Vivat, THAI area manager for India and Nepal, Tom Hackett from THAI in Seattle, hotelier Alex Goerlach, writer Robin Dannhorn and myself. We have no idea what to expect, and no idea what we will report.

Everything is new, and strange. An isolated mountain kingdom that has been independent for all its recorded history, more than I two thousand years. And only in 1974 did the monarchy open its doors to the outside world. Less than a hundred tourists arrived that year. Last year the number stood at about a thousand. Don Muang International Airport in Bangkok sees that many visitors within a few hours.

As we step from the plane at Paro we look around. A vast emptiness. High surrounding mountains that seal us in; a monastery with white walls perched on a cliff; we can almost feel the stillness. We wonder, when James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon and called the dream Shangri--La, did he have Bhutan in mind? It did, indeed, appears that way to us.

And where else but Bhutan? There isn't a television set in all the country. Newspapers -- there's a weekly, but it can't be found readily outside the capital. Radio broadcast are limited to a few hours daily. There's no crime, no beggars, no prostitution, no suicides, and no threat of bombs, hijackings or terrorism. In fact, you don't even see policemen, except traffic cops in Thimpu. Nor are there jukeboxes, pool halls or neon lights. There are but 2,000 kilometers of roads and less than 5,000 vehicles. The country's biggest expenditure is maintaining the roads.

Bhutan is a country that functions without the rest of the world. It's self--supporting, we were told.

Two things stood out most, aside from the mountainous, curving road, as we set out on our drive from Paro to Thimpu--the local dress and the architecture.

Everyone, even the mechanics who worked on refueling the plane, wears the national dress. The men's costumes, called khos, are full--sleeved, long robes which come up to the knees and are tied with a belt. They don't wear trousers, only high stockings--Scottish plaid when they want to be stylish and shoes. Women wear kiras, full length dresses, tied with a belt at the waist and held up by a pair of broaches at the shoulder. We learned later it's possible to tell from which area of the country they come by the design of their skirts.

The national dress is appealing, for foreign eyes. You don't see local people in shabby, unsightly Western garments that have turned to rags. Even farmers in the field look neat.

The architecture is unlike any we have seen before. Houses are large, square buildings, made of tamped mud, stone, wood and clay. The outer walls are whitewashed with raised roofs above the main structure. The roofs are shingled and are held in place by large stones evenly spaced apart. Our guide Loti tells us the stones prevent the shingles from being carried off by the strong winds which sometimes sweep through the valleys.

We stop to watch villagers build a house, a community effort. Women standing upon the high walls tamp the wet earth held in place in wooden forms, while the men carry baskets of mud up makeshift ladders. They chant as they work.

A valley widens and Thimpu appears ahead. It reminds me of Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, a one--street town, built on the slope of a hill (there is little flat land in Bhutan), except this place has more drama than Cameron. Cameron doesn't have a royal palace built in the style of a vast monastery, where a young king and his family reside.

I am struck by the shops. They are open in front, and customers stand on the sidewalks outside to do their shopping. They turn to watch us pass.

Our minibus doesn't stop. It has a rendezvous elsewhere and whips us through town to the Motithan Hotel, which overlooks Thimpu.

The hotel, like the town, comes as a surprise. It sprawls, with wings and corridors and spacious bedrooms. Everything is neat and clean. The style of decor, characteristically Bhutanese, includes splashes of color with hand--painted ceilings, eaves and beams all decorated with minuscule designs. There is an abundance of hanging banners and drapes of all sorts, fashioned from brightly colored cloth. Framed black--and--white photographs from a past era hang on the walls.

Dinner is curry, Indian style, and it's early to bed. It's cold, and the blankets are thick and welcoming. Breakfast is scrambled eggs, and pots of coffee and tea.

We don't have time to linger: the bus is loaded and ready. But before we depart, the tourist office has sent a troupe of Bhutanese dancers to entertain us on the lawn of the Motithan: They perform their famous mask dance. Then we are off, without further delay. We have miles to go, across the backbone of Bhutan to the northeast. The names of places are complicated and elude me. They take on meaning later.

Loti, who speaks English with a commanding voice, tells us we are heading to places like Punakha, Tongsa and Bumthang. We will camp the first night by a river and stay in inns and lodges other nights. He has brought two casting rods for fly fishing.

The road is one curve after another, and at times it's treacherous, with sheer drops of hundreds of feet into deep canyons below. Or could it be thousands! It appears that way when we look out the window, especially when another vehicle approaches and our driver has to give way, for the road is only one--way without guardrails. We find it best not to look.

An army of Indian laborers work endlessly to keep the potholes filled and the landslides cleared. They do a remarkable job.

We cross a high pass, where great Mongol hordes once marched through this east--west passage on the first silk route. Now the pass is marked with hundreds of tall poles with white prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. These flags, seen on many distant hills, give the countryside an eerie animation.

Sheep, cows and even yaks feed along the roads. Their herders make no effort to shoo them away. At times we drive through the clouds. Villages are scattered, where old folk gaze and kids wave as we pass. The mountainsides are gardens of flowers; some trees in blossom look like exploding fireworks. Magnolias and rhododendrons predominate.

We arrive at the outskirts of Punakha to find a tent city has been set up, and that night, with a campfire to keeps us warm, we dine, among other things, on fresh trout Khun Vivat and Tom Hackett have caught in the river. Then, silently, out of the dark appear a dozen villagers, women and young girls. They have come to sing and entertain us. In gratitude, Khun Vivat leads our group in a ramwong. We are more amused with ourselves than the villagers are.

The next morning we drive into Punakha, the old capital, and visit the monastery, and that afternoon we reach Tongsa. The Tongsa monastery, dating back to 1543, is impressive, built on the bank of the Mangde River. The monasteries, or dzong as they are called, are closed to visitors, but we have permission to see the one at Tongsa. Here, cloistered behind thick walls, 700 monks live out their lives. Unlike in Thailand, Bhutanese monks are in the monkhood for life. Their robes are thick dark--red hand--woven cloth. They do not shave their heads, but their hair is clipped short, unparted and ruffled, like all the men's styles in Bhutan. The monks are as baffled by us as we are by them. They offer us salted yak butter tea. It's inhospitable to refuse them.

The monastery is as impressive inside as it is from the outside. We can feel its great age as we walk across stone courtyards and step upon wide plank floors. Trankar--like paintings, some quite ancient, adorn the inner walls. There are embroidered drapes hanging from lofty ceilings, altars with heavy silver trays and bowls flanked by ivory tusks cracked and yellowed with age. Pillars are square timbers painted red. Huge wooden doors swing not on hinges but on pins. Chambers are dark and ladders that connect the levels are steep and menacing to climb. Everywhere are large brass bells and gongs. In small hidden side rooms, monks chant, doing their pujas, and in the stone courtyards blackbirds and crows disrupt the silence with the heavy flapping of their wings and their mocking cries.

We spend the night in an inn overlooking the valley.

The road to Bumthang is even more thrilling and nerve shattering. After we pass a narrow section, the road collapses into the canyon. We know we have to return the way we came, and that night we sit around a log fire at the bar in our inn. We try to decide what drinks to have from the bottles behind the bar, all locally made--Pure Malt Whiskey, Bhutan Mist, Magpie Apple Brandy Khambu Spirits, Dragon XXX Rhum; Jachung Brandy.

We try the rhum, and soon forget about the road.

The next day, as we return, we find an Indian work force has the road patched. But still we decide to walk and let the bus follow. It isn't so bad!

Eventually, after a week and a dozen monasteries (in one of which Robin and I got lost and couldn't find our way out), and an estimated 12,000 curves, we arrive back in Thimpu.

The town that first appeared so comically small now looms as big as Paris does to the farm boy seeing it for the first time. It's a welcoming sight.

This time we check into the Druk Hotel in town. In two days, while our THAI delegation is in discussion~ with government officials, Robin and

I visit the market, watch the Bhutanese at their national sport of archery, shop in all the shops, have coffee and pastry at the Swiss Bakery and meet the managing director of the Bhutan Tourism Corporation. And we are invited to dinner at the home of Lonnie Doris, uncle of the king and ex--prime minister.

We sit in his elaborately decorated house, with skins and tusks on the walls and elephant feet with red stain covers for stools to sit upon. Our host tells us about hunting wild boar and leopards and mountain thar and game we never heard of before. And he has fishing stories to tell, about trout bigger than New Zealand trout, giant carp, and mashseer which grow up to five feet in length. Then he laughed. "In the rivers in the lowlands you might snag a crocodile."

That night back in my hotel room I check my reference book on Bhutan for the facts. Lennie Dorji is right. There are crocodiles, and Bhutan is the home of the snow leopard, tiger, elephant, sambar, barking and swamp deer, rhino, wild boar, wild buffalo, gaur, thar and Himalayan bear.

The index of birds in Bhutan goes on for pages. And there are cobra and mountain pit vipers, banded adders and coral snakes.

The next morning we hear that bears were spotted behind the Motithan Hotel on the hill where we stayed the first night.

After our visit to Lennie Dorji's we soon realise that parts of this grand world in which we live have not changed. There is still a Bhutan.

Back in Paro we wait for our flight. We hear an airplane engine above the clouds but it fades. Captain Blaggana has gone back. He couldn't find an opening. He may return in a few hours, then we can leave. Or maybe tomorrow, or the day after.

Loti tells us about a cliff--side monastery, the one seen in all the photos, a few hours up the Paro Valley. We go by horseback, Mongolian pony actually, to Taktsang, meaning Tiger's Nest. It is built around a cave and clings dizzily to a sheer precipice. We are tempted to take the daredevil challenge to reach the monastery but the skies clear and to the north Mount Chomolhari with its snow--covered peaks tells us it's time to leave.

We are right. Back in Paro the weather is clear; we hear the plane before we can see it. It lands and we bid our goodbyes. We roar down the runway, swerve to the left to miss a mountain ridge and turn south.

It's been quick, a short seven days, and as we look below we watch the sharp peaks of Bhutan turn into rolling hills and then into the flat! plains of India. We look back and the snow--capped peaks of Bhutan vanish into the horizon. We wonder if it happened at all. Had we really discovered James Hilton's Shangri--La? Will we, too, turn old and wither away?

For many, Bhutan is just that, Shangri--La.

The scenery is overpowering not only the towering lofty mountain ranges but the wide valleys that open up like a cinerama screen as you cross over a pass. Each valley differs from the other.

The Bhutanese are a magnificent, proud and extremely friendly people. I had not seen one hostile person all the while I was there.

The monasteries, of course, are a main attraction. However, many are closed for fear visitors may disturb the monks. Special permission is needed to enter some. To visit one is truly an unforgettable experience.

There's good shopping for local crafts, and for the adventurer, the choices are river rafting, camping and canoeing, trout fishing and trekking to the borders of Tibet.

But perhaps, above everything else, the real appeal of Bhutan is that here is a land seen by so few outsiders. It is still, mainly, a closed land, access to it limited to only a few.

The government is considering, cautiously, raising the tourist quota from 2,000 to 10,000 a year. They want to keep tourists in groups that they can manage. No lone travelers.

Thai International has been invited to assist the government with their planning, and it may very well be that in the near future THAI will include Bhutan in their Royal Orchid Holiday Package Tours. Bhutan is even considering purchasing larger aircraft to connect directly with Bangkok and Kathmandu.

The government is, with reason, deeply concerned about tourism. They are worried that it might bring the ills of Western civilization with it. They want selected tourists under a carefully regulated program. To preserve their lifestyle, they insist upon no tipping, and there are signs everywhere warning about the hazards of smoking, a Western influence. To preserve their tranquility, other signs remind motorists not to blow their horns.

Bhutan is not a large country, less that 47 000 sq km with fewer than 1.3 million inhabitants. The government is a constitutional monarchy and the religion is Mahayana Buddhism. With weather conditions the way they are, tourist travel is restricted to certain months. The peak periods are March, April and May and October and November. During the other months it's either wet or the country is snowbound.

(Little has changed since my visit, and now to see if our expedition can enter the country.)

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A PORT CALLED CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH

As Trans Asia Expedition winds up it its eight month motor journey through twelve countries in Asia, it will arrive in Chittagong. Where's that? Below describing this unknown port is a story Stephens wrote for the Bangkok Post.

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK: A TALE OF AN EXCITING PORT
by Harold Stephens. Bangkok Post

Want to get off the beaten path, to the rambunctious days of yesterday? There are such paces, and I'm thinking of one such place. It's a port and it's called Chittagong. What more exciting name can there be than Chittagong? Just the very sound of name and the adventurer wants to head to the ticket office.

What is it about a name? Is Chittagong only a name in fancy gazetteer? Hardly. It is real and like its name it has a mystique about it. For those who haven't seen them, the closest thing is to watch the late TV shows of old Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart, movies that have their settings in the Far East: a seething tropical waterfront filled with intrigue--hotel lobbies with cane chairs, revolving ceiling fans and uncertain characters moving about; and strong cigars, coffee-eyed women and rum in tall glasses. This, without frills, is Chittagong.

I first saw Chittagong when I was making an overland jeep trip from Europe to Singapore. That was thirty years ago, but I understand the place hasn't changed, except Bangladesh then was called East Pakistan and the capital was Dacca.

When I arrived in Dacca I discovered I couldn't drive through Burma to reach Thailand. I had no other choice but to drive south from Dacca to Chittagong and ship my Jeep from port for their Foreign Service officers: "Chittagong, East Pakistan's largest port, is a small town, hot, with malaria and a variety of tropical diseases. There is no entertainment or nightlife, except for trips over weekends and holidays to Dacca, 160 miles north."

Nevertheless, the drive from Dacca to Chittagong was packed with interest and excitement as I discovered. The road skirted the Assam border. River barges with huge triangular sails moved slowly up the rivers and looked like picture post cards. The road was narrow and straight, with little vehicular traffic, and followed a rail line. I caught up with a coal-burning train pulling a dozen cars, when abruptly it stopped. The engineer, fireman, guards, all suddenly leaped from the train and took cover in a ditch. I could see puffs of smoke coming from the forest beyond. Rifle fire! Someone in the forest was shooting at the train. I drove the Jeep down over the bank and also took cover. Presently, a platoon of soldiers came running down the road. I then heard more shooting. In twenty minutes it was over, and again I was headed south. It could have been a Humphrey Bogart movie, except I saw the bullet holes.

Darkness came when I was 10 miles from Chittagong. I stopped to eat at a small roadside stall. A Moslem spoke English and asked where I was going. He suggested the rest house in Chittagong. He pointed to a man in a white robe and said if I carried him, he could show me how to get to the rest house. I agreed, and it was fortunate that I did. Chittagong was a congestion of ox-drawn carts and oil burning trucks rumbling over rutted streets and railroad tracks. Rickshaws pushed in between the lines of traffic. It was unlike any town I had ever seen.

We found the rest house and I took a room on the second floor. Nine boys, I counted them, came to my aid and unloaded the Jeep, and of course, nine boys held their hands out in the end. It was worth the nine rupees.

I asked about food, and was told most of the restaurants were closed, but one room boy knew "a place where I could eat." He brought along a friend and we started off in the Jeep, turned down a mud road that actually was a watershed and parked at a dead end. The friend stood guard while the first boy led me across a bamboo bridge with one pole serving as a guideline and another pole to walk upon. In the dark we came to a railroad track where, as it happened, a slow-moving passenger train was en route. We ran after the train, jumped aboard, squeezed through the crowded compartment and jumped out on the other side.

We hurried down a wide avenue through a very primitive village and came to the waterfront. Riverboats were tied together. We jumped from one to the other until we came to the end boat, the largest one. We darted through the engine room past sleeping bodies and climbed a ladder. On the second level we encountered a man dressed in white. The room boy spoke to him and we were then led to a dining room-the captain's.

I said to the man in white: "Do you think the captain will mind? He answered: "I am the captain." I paid him five rupees and dined on soup, curried fish, chicken and mango for dessert. I skipped the coffee. When I returned to the rest house I was anxious to jot down my notes. Some day, I thought, I might want to recommend a place to eat in Chittagong. I just have.

That was Chittagong. To the south of town is one of the world's longest beaches, Cox's Bazaar, some 90 miles in length. And in the hills nearby are the Chittagong hilitribes, not unlike those in northern Thailand. The beach can get awfully boring, with no one on it, but exploring the hilltribe villages was exciting. In one village I met an Englishman married to a hilltribe princess. He kept me entertained for two days with stories, and he proved that Humphrey Bogart characters are still alive in Asia.








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PENANG, MALAYSIA, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

RICKSHAWS NOT TAXIS ON PENANG

by Harold Stephens

The view of Penang from the air is awe-inspiring. Your jet drops lower into the dense air and the island and surrounding reef begin to take shape and form. It's a high, mountainous island, with vegetation clinging to the very summits of the highest peaks. And if the plane makes the approach from the north, and banks to the starboard to make its approach, the town of Georgetown come into view. What a magnificent sight.

But one that I think is even more powerful is when you approach the island from the sea. If you arrive by train, which many visitors do, it's a short walk from the train station in Buttersworth on the mainland to the ferry landing. Ferries have two levels: the lower deck for vehicles, the upper for passengers. Passengers make up half a dozen races-Malays, Chinese, Tamil Hindus, Sikhs, and all the foreign nationalities, Ukrainians, Norwegians, Americans and English. Malays and Tamil's are most always in their native dress. You can't help feeling Asia to the very tips of your fingers when you ride the Penang ferry.

I like to stand at the railing at the bow and watch Georgetown come into view. Off to the right, Fort Cornwallis appears. Here Sir Francis Light founded the British settlement. He was searching for a suitable site to establish a free trading port for the British East India Company. After rejecting Phuket Island, he settled on Penang.

The island was totally covered by wild jungle, with tigers lurking in the bush. The Indian sepoy's aboard refused to go ashore and clear the area for a fort, so Captain Light loaded two cannons with silver dollars and fired into the jungle. He got his site cleared in no time.

You don't find many places like Penang any more in our modern world. The island is one of the great destinations of Southeast Asia.

Georgetown, the capital, is unchanged-well, almost- since the colonial days when the British ruled the Empire. Penang is developing, for sure, joining the 21st century, with new high-rises and tourist resort areas suddenly appearing, but mostly they are not in Georgetown. They are confined to the northern coast of Penang, at Batu Ferringhi. A visit to Georgetown is going back in time. It is what Singapore must have looked like 50 or 60 years ago.

At the ferry landing, both taxis and trishaw's wait in line, but I prefer trishaw's. The men who peddle these three-wheel vehicles are from a bygone age. Many speak English and make good guides. A ride in a Penang trishaw is unforgettable. Passengers ride in front of the driver, in a kind of scoop that's prepared to serve up helpless riders to on-coming traffic. But it never happens. Traffic gives way to trishaw drivers.

I took a trishaw to the E&O Hotel before checking into the Bay View where I had booked a room. I was disappointed when I saw the building. Four years ago the new management decided to completely rebuild the hotel, and I had expected the work to be finished by now. It wasn't. It was completely gutted, only the shell remaining. I took several photos, until a guard came running and waved for me to stop.

The E&O was one of my favorite hotels in Southeast Asia. It was built by the Arab Starkie brothers at the same time they built the Raffles in Singapore and the Strand in Rangoon, a little more than a hundred years ago. Anybody who was anyone stayed at the E&O, as they did at the Raffles and the Strand.

No sooner I settled in the Bay View, I went to my favorite dining place on Penang, an Indian street-side restaurant on Penang Road-mutton curry, baby squid in garlic sauce, cabbage in coconut milk and fresh green beans sautéed, with nan flat bread and hot Indian coffee served in a glass. I had doubles of everything.

In spite of a light rain that began it fall while I was dining, I went for a stroll through the narrow little streets of Georgetown, past Hindu and Chinese temples, where the sounds of clangs and gongs and the scent of incense fill the air. Busy shop houses line the street level while the Chinese live in quarters above. Clan house are most intriguing, and mysterious, with their dark interiors and Chinese writing on all the walls. Most interesting are the doors of Penang. Many are massive, studded with bolts; some are carved; while others are painted with Chinese warlord in ancient dress.

I stopped at the Hong Kong Bar on Chula Street to see old friends. It's one of the great, family-run bars of Asia. It's a seaman's bar with photographs of naval ships on the walls and ships' pennants decorating the bar. Every customer who enters the swinging doors has his photograph taken, which are kept on file in albums. When customers return, the barkeeps (the owner's daughters) dig our their photographs and bring back memories, and often laughs. Except for Jenny, all the daughters are married and off in different countries around the world. Only Jenny and her brother run the place. Their mother, who could be seen behind the cash register, passed away earlier this year. Jenny's brother is worried about the fate of the bar, which is more than half a century old. "Young people prefer to go to the new wine bars," he said.

There's a great museum in Georgetown, right down town, with a statue of Francis Light in the courtyard. And for more history, not far away is the Protestant Cemetery. On the head markets is the solemn history of the island engraved in stone. Francis Light is buried here, and so, to my surprise, I discovered the grave of Anna Leonowens' husband. He died two years before she came to Bangkok to teach the children in the court of King Mongkut.

There are some fine old "junk" shops in Georgetown, like the one on Rope Walk Street-I like those names. It's run by Ahmad Arif Bin Md. Noor who took over from his father more than 70 years ago. In any other city around Asia it would be called an antique shop, but not here. You can find just about anything in the shop you don't need and aren't looking for--but which you like. But you have to search, and you might get your clothes soiled while you do, but there can be great discoveries.

Before turning in, I went back Penang Road for more Indian curry. I walked back to my hotel, through the crooked little streets. I love that town, and that island. Maybe next time the E&O will be open.

(Note, The E&O is open for business.)

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