This is the last post for Marita Paige on the Blogbelles site. It has been a real blast. All thanks to Chet for helping me out with this site. She’s been generous and a great help. It’s now time to move on.

All the old posts will still be here for you to peruse, but there will not be new posts after this.

I hope to have something new up in time to come. But with my crazy work schedule, I don’t know when. Meanwhile, feel free to contact me anytime at maritap@myjaring.net. If you would like to read more of my stuff and enjoy more photographs, I’d be happy to email you when my new site comes online. I don’t know when that is. Let me know so I can contact you. I’d be pleased to hear from you regardless.

I leave you with one of my all time favourite photos. A single leaf taken at Niah Cave National Park near Miri, Sarawak. It represents life. But to perpetuate more life, it must die one day to give life to other plants.

All the best and God bless,
Marita Paige

Banana flower at Expo ’99 Garden, Kunming.

Too tired, too busy, too many things to do for words.

The Golden Temple, Kunming.

I’m off to KL and the wilds of Peninsular Malaysia for a longish stint come Thursday. I will not have much time to post photos. Certainly not new shots since the digital camera is still being serviced.

As far as work is concerned, all I can say is, I’m on stepping on my line of stones. All things are preceded by a plan. My plan is in progress. I shall now bide my time.

Then we grew up and life has a strange way of bringing you away from all that you know and are familiar with to establish new familiarities and new old people.

Two nights ago, we hadn't seen each other for years. Oh, we bumped into each other every 10 years or so, but always at in circumstances that didn't allow us to reacquaint ourselves. I'd always walk away feeling like I'd lost her all over again.

Two nights ago, I decided I'd really just want to catch up and see if we still had that link to each other.

I lost her in the crowd. But I wasn't going to let it go so frivolously this time.

So a few phone calls later, we connected again.

And you know what? It was like we never let geography and life put a distance between us.

We talked. And talked. And talked. She is a single mom. Her son is nine years old. The same age we both first met.

It was just. Incredibly. Nice. To have that friendship still flowing after decades apart.

Expo ’99, as the name implies, happened in 1999 in Kunming, China. But it was such a success that they kept the ground permanently. Expo ’99 Garden in Kunming was one of the places I visited in my brief stopover there.

The place is ab-so-lute-ly HUGE. The massive displays of flowers were of a scale that blow minds away. It seemed like I walked on forever, but could not find the an end to the place. I gave up after five hours or thereabouts.

I really like this pink flower. I don’t know what it is, but I like it.

So it was an interesting evening. We talked about…oh, lots….from logging to bad english and local cats, while chewing on delicious sambal barbequed fish. 

She was on the train en route to Dali. I was there. My camera was there. So, snap. It’s fuzzy, I know. What can I say, we were in a train.

I’m experimenting with this at the moment. Comments, please.

Flowers at the Expo 99 Garden in Kunming. The place was so friggin' big, I walked until my legs went on strike. The flowers were fab though. The ship in the distance is made of flowers.

For big ass photos, go here.

A lovely face in Shangrila, China.

I love taking photos of people. Especially older people. The lines on their faces are quite beautiful. They are the rivers of a lifetime of memories and experiences.

The lady in the photo and her daughter run a little stall in Shangrila, China, selling fruit grown from their own little orchard. She sits by the side as her daughter calls out to potential shoppers. By all appearance, they have a great mother-daughter relationship. It was nice. For me. Seeing them.

There is an old lady who lives down my road. She is very old now; and bedridden. Once, on a Saturday when I was home, End and I heard her calling to her daughter…and calling her…and calling her. There was no answer. And finally she started to plead.

For her trouble, she got a mega yelling at from her daughter. She was a lot of trouble, and gave a lot of trouble.

There was a short silence, ending in a heart-rending sobbing by the old lady.

End and I stood there, horrified by what just went on; disgusted that a daughter should treat her own mother like that.

Related post .

A taste of yak – well, just yak butter. Right corner: a pot and two bowls of yak butter tea. Left corner: stirfried brinjal, Tibetan (or is it Yunnan) style?

It is said that a Tibetan bathes three times in their lifetime – once when they are born; once when they are married; and once when they die.

I can’t verify that. My nose was blocked when I went to Shangrila, or Little Tibet, as it is also known. And I wasn’t particularly sniffing around any of the locals.

But that is what someone from Lijiang told me after I got back from Shangri-La.

Shangri-La’s original name was Zhongdian. It is still called that by locals. The name Shangri-La was holliwoodized by the movie The Last Horizon. In the film, Shangri-La was an unmapped paradise on earth somewhere between China, Tibet and Nepal; and symbolized the ultimate exotic escapism, quite a gem for the tourism industry.

If it existed.

And so the Chinese government decided that, by George, if Shangri-La didn’t exist, we will claim that name for Zhongdian; and watch the nirwana-seekers, backpackers, tourists and everyone else game for it roll in.

Pretty much because of the film, the name ‘Shangri-La’ has become an incantation of a mountain paradise where peace reigns, people live good long lives and life is nirwana. I don’t know about the nirwana bit but the Shangri-La I went to IS pretty much a mountain paradise and people DO live good long lives. I met a hundred-year-old granny sitting out in the sun with her buddies. She was in perfect health. I asked her permission to take her picture, and she smiled and answered me with a ‘yes’, followed by what I call a Tibetan bow (palms together in prayer position and a bow of the head).

Shangri-La is the last town before you hit Lhasa (Tibet). It is located in the self-governing region of Diqing. It’s still China, like Tibet; but just self-governing, like Tibet. But not restricted, like Tibet. The main population is Tibetan, with a pinch of Naxi, Bai, Lu and a few others. Hence, Little Tibet.

Boy it was a tad chilly there for Spring. I had to go buy a windbreaker. Oh, if you’re ever in the market for mountain climbing, trekking and hiking gear, GO TO SHANGRI-LA. Oh, you get pretty good deals in Dali and Lijiang. But I found the best deal in Shangri-La.

Now, let me tell you about the food in Little Tibet. I didn’t get to taste a lot of other stuff. But man, let me tell you about the food in Little Tibet.

Three words.

Yak Butter Tea.

Six words.

Not for the faint of heart.

Or the weak of stomach.

But I wouldn’t have missed that experience for the world. And I’d do it all over again if it were another first time in Little Tibet.

It came in a ginormous tin pot. And bowls to drink with. It looked like tea latte. And it tasted…..weird. That was my first thought. I’ve never drunk savoury tea before in my life. But it wasn’t that. It smelt like yak.

Now, I don’t know what yak smells like. I didn’t see any in Little Tibet. But I’m telling you. That tea smelt like yak.

Well of course it would. It had yak butter in it, init?

Ok. Salty tea. Piping hot. Great. Interesting. Very rich, yakky-milky. I couldn’t quite decide what I thought of it.

Then I made a perilous mistake.

I left the tea on the table, and yakked to my backpacking buddies for about 15 minutes; by which time the tea had gotten below room temperature.

Then I took a swig. All of it. Down my throat.

Well now.

Ahem. I..ah..had to compensate by pouring another bowl of it. A hot one this time.

Let me assure thee, cold yak tea is not something thou wouldst want to inflict upon thyself if thou lovest thy stomach.

Boy, I have never seen projectile stuff **mutter mutter**…..Well…that’s all I’m going to say about that. If your curiosity gets too much to handle, feel free to ask me for details. But I warn you, I started to say something about this and Chinese toilet stories in a car in KL. There were some very silent greenish faces at the back.

I tell ya. Yunnan will forever be etched in my memory. Tribes and peoples who look like me, speak a common language as me; but are so many worlds apart nonetheless. For the record, I found the local peoples of Yunnan exceedingly lovely in spirit and body. Amazing. Man, THIS is the type of travel I dig.