My backpack trip through Asia with Jesper Lindholt

Jesper had planned his trip in details for many months and I am afraid he was slightly annoyed that I screwed up his travel dreams by joining in at the last moment. He went to China by the Trans-Sibirian Railway, which was hugely popular at the time, and of course it was completely sold out, so I had to fly to Beijing and meet him there. It was the first time in my life that I was flying, and I was deeply impressed. Jesper got a lot of friends on the train, that we kept running into the first month of our trip. One of them, a Chinese dancer, Xu Tau and his wife, An Dong Li took us out to a little, unimpressive restaurant, where we had the best meal of our life. Especially the deep-fried Yellow River carpe in sweet-and-sour sauce has never been beaten before or since. I think the food was what impressed me most about China. I can see from my letters that the low price level also made a big impression, though.
The same Chinese couple also took us out to the Summer Palace, which was a real treat. It was so hot in Beijing that it was really nice to get out in a forested area and especially to be in a boat on the lake.
After having seen what we wanted in Beijing, we took a train south to Wuhan on the Yellow River. And from Wuhan we caught a bus to Iychang. It was a horrendous 9 hour bus-trip and we were glad to switch to a boat to go further up-river. As real back-packers we traveled third class, which was OK except for the food they served. Jesper was in perpetually bad mood on the boat after he discovered half a rat head in his dinner. I was not as dependent on food as Jesper, so I enjoyed the spectacular trip. We shared a cabin with two really nice guys. Hugo, from Holland, very quickly cut the line to the irritating Chinese-babbling loud speaker in our cabin, and Thomas from Copenhagen provided atmosphere by singing and playing guitar for us instead. We got off the boat in Chonquing and unlike real back-packers we took a plane to Chengdu. All the hotels in Chengdu were full because of a big conference, so we had to spend the night in a very suspicious hostel/night club in a bunker. I was appalled, but slept as a baby in the darkness and silence underground.
	Also unlike real back-packers, we took a flight from Chengdu to Lhasa instead of spending two weeks on the train. Lhasa is back-packer paradise and there sure were many of them. It's a beautiful and colorful place with lots of tourist facilities on the one hand, and on the other hand it is difficult to get on from there because the road to Katmandu gets destroyed every year in the rainy season. Many of the people from the Trans-Sibirian train arrived in Lhasa while we were there. We were still right on the beaten track, although we were in front of most of the others, because Jesper was eager to get to Hong Kong and civilization again. We spent 10 days in Lhasa before we found a bus that could take us most of the way to Katmandu.
	It was a beautiful trip at a slow pace that allowed for breaks and communication with the local people. After a couple of weeks in the high lands and four days on the bus, it was nice to get down to lower and more fertile altitudes, however.
Nepal felt like paradise, both because of the rich air, the tropical vegetation, and the fact that we could get all kinds of western food again. In Nepal we went River Rafting, which was a great experience because everything went wrong. We were a party of 10 people in two boats, and the other boat tipped over in a rapid and the raft with passports and money, but without people, continued down river.	The guys who ended up in the water, were so disillusioned by the experience that they just wanted to go home. They had to wait for their passports to be recovered, before they could go though, and in the meantime a dry German guy from our boat slipped on the rocks and cut his foot, so that he also had to go home to get hospital treatment. By the evening there was only Jesper and I and the owner of the boat left and we slept in a little village by the river, because we had missed our supply-bus with tents and food. After the chaotic river rafting trip we spent two days in a National Wildlife Park. One of them was my birthday and the camp crew managed to make me a banana birthday cake without an oven.
	We saw a lot of wildlife, including several of the rare one-horned rhinoceroses. This one actually chased after Jesper, because he disobeyed our guide and wore a white T-shirt, instead of a to rhinoceroses invisible green or blue one. They also took us on a canoo trip to see crocodiles. The canoo was so full of people, though, and lay so low in the water, that we were not at all thrilled when we saw a big crocodile. The elephant ride was pretty peaceful, but we got sore behinds and preferred to walk instead of taking the ox-cart when it was time to go home.
	The chaotic river rafting trip got us close to the owner of the boats, D.B., and he later invited us to a religious ceremony outside the city. He offered a hen, which we then ate for picnic together with his family. After our adventures in Nepal, we dropped the visits we had planned to Burma and Thailand, and went straight for civilization in Hong Kong.
We spent one week in Taipei and almost all of that time was spent in Taipei World Trade Center or with some of the business connections that Jesper made there.	We stayed un Hong Kong a couple of weeks and it was one big shopping spree. We got a real bargain flight to Los Angeles with stop-overs in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Hawaii, which made the final blow to Jesper's original travel schedule, which was handed out to friends and family with addresses of all the General Post Offices. Jesper's father had some connections in Hong Kong through the company he worked for, so we got a chance to visit a couple of families there. The first family was local and they lived 5 people in a tiny apartment on the 24th floor in a big apartment building which looked more like a prison to me. But they seemed happy enough. The second family was a recently arrived expatriate family from England. They lived in a lovely, big house by the beach outside the city, but had clearly not yet adjusted to their new circumstances.
Our stop-over in Kyoto, Japan lasted only a few days, because we were afraid Japan would be too expensive for us. But it was not so bad and Japan's old capital was very beautiful and we found a nice little place to stay called Green Peace. Most of the other people staying there were Americans teaching English to the eager Japanese.
Seoul was very impressive, especially the preparations for the olympics, but also the shopping possibilities. We bought a combined Ralph Lauren and Benetton sweater, which we thought was an excellent symbol of Koreas copy-mania.	We were lucky to be upgraded to first class on our Korean Air flight from Seoul to Honolulu, so we enjoyed wild luxury for the first time in our lives, and certainly for the first time on our trip.
	In California we stayed with the Holmes family for three weeks, and had a wonderful and relaxing time. Our sightseeing possibilities was slightly impaired after Jesper completely damaged one of their cars in an accident, where, fortunately, nobody was hurt. After relaxing in California we crossed the US by Greyhound bus visiting Robbie in Kansas and Lise in Rochester on the way. It was a beatiful trip and I grew to feel at home at Greyhound stations, even though Americans tend to find them scary. Jesper knew a lot of people in the US from his time as a Rotary exchange student, and I was very impressed by their friendliness and hospitality. The spectacular and wildly varying landscape across the states also impressed me. The last week, however, we counted the hours until our arrival in Denmark. It was fantastic to be back home again.