…I was dubious about it from the first for three reasons: first, it was called a “Chinese” restaurant, which I figured no self-respecting local restaurant would actually call itself inside the country; second, there was a sign indicating that it was open 24 hours, always a bad sign; and finally, it had a picture of a caucasian chef beside the entrance. Despite all this, something drew me to it and it did looked like one of the better options in this area (better, at least, than the coffee lounge of the Novotel!) Well, it was a surprise inside and a dinner worth reporting in detail.

After entering the huge revolving doors, the way split in two, but a lecturn was directly in front with two women in full traditional dress standing behind it. Approaching them, I indicated a table for one and was lead through an ornate entrance into a spectacular room with marble tables, large wooden chairs, golden eating utensils, excessively ornate decorations on every wall, with the eye drawn down the room to an enormous throne and it’s accoutrements of decorating spears, materials and carvings. The room was completely empty of customers, despite an obviously extensive staff of varying roles. Being empty, it was also a little dark and some of the lights came on at the hands of hidden assistants with my approach. There were bottles of French wine on every table, as well as a golden spoon and gold-weighted chopsticks set on golden holders at every place. Right, I had come to the right place for an extravagant last dinner in Beijing.

As I settled myself, being helped off with my jacket, I was presented with the two kilogram menu. After looking through and seeing a number of enticing options, but not spotting any dumplings, which I knew Beijing was known for, I decided to see if I could get them anyway. One of the traditionally-dressed waitresses approached, but my lack of Mandarin and her limited English meant that I was referred on to another woman, who I believe was up in the ranks for the waitress, wearing a business suit. Understand here that I’m not trying to reinforce a ranking or power structure, but it was a strange arrangement that bears telling. There were also waitresses without traditional dress or a suit but dressed, I suppose, in smart but fairly standard waitress gear – seeing that they were instructed by the waitresses and undertook tasks like clearing away dishes, I took these to be the third level down staff. Anyway, the woman in the business suit, who spoke very good English, and flanked by three other wait staff, took my query as to whether they had dumplings. Half-way through trying to ask the question I realised I was now placing an order, no longer asking a question – in this place, perhaps, all requests might be met.

So, they were to make a plate of twelve dumplings – vegetarian, and, I was later to discover, organic – to order, stuffed with mushroom and Chinese cabbage. It was clear that the chef was to make them from scratch when I was asked if I was happy to wait an hour. I figured it was worth waiting for something that promised, if the decor was anything to go by, to be special. A waitress then brought a selection of three magazines for me to read. The other thing I ordered was an orange juice – “fresh squeezed?” they asked me – unheard of since I left Darwin, I eagerly agreed.

At this point – about ten past four in the afternoon – I realised that it would be dark by the time my food was ready and I would have lost my opportunity to visit Tiananmen Square, with my train leaving for Mongolia at 7:30am the next morning. I decided to hold on to my growing hunger and make my late lunch a dinner, heading out for an hour – the Square was within walking distance – and returning by five.

I’ll cover my little walk later, but suffice to say for now that I returned at 5:30pm and sat down to be presented with my freshly squeezed orange juice and, a few moments later, my plate of steaming dumplings. There were still no people in the main room of the restaurant but now all the lights were on, highlighting every corner of the room in all it’s regal splendour – in fact the restaurant was called “Royal”, though I hadn’t noticed this on my entrance. There was now a party in one of the private rooms which came off the main room, separated by decorated traditional sliding doors. In this place, what wasn’t decorated? Also of note was the bowls laid out for each guest – mine was removed, I suppose because they were for shared dishes and rice. The bowls were set inside an ornate golden holder which stood off the table and had a smoothly sliding hemisphere lid which covered the dish, keeping it warm when closed and slid beneath the bowl like the dark side of the moon when open.

The dumplings were amazing and well worth the wait despite my now ravenous hunger. I’m no food writer, so perhaps I don’t have the correct vocabulary to express my culinary appreciation, but these dumplings were something to indulge the mouth. Fresh, not too sticky, not too heavy, no glutinous pastry feeling, juicy… no more or less than delightful.

By this stage, as I say, my hunger was ravenous, so I asked for the menu again, also ordering a Jasmine tea. Looking through the tome of a menu it was difficult to decide on something, but I eventually settled on a bean curd dish. It was at this point, I think, that I started reading some of the information at the table – small promotional menus and descriptions of the restaurant as well as the advertisement for it in one of the magazines that had been left for me on the table. I then discovered that the restaurant served organic food and that it was set-up around the recreation of dishes from a massive banquet served at one time to some emperor or another. At the time, this had included many new, innovative dishes as well as specialities from the length and breadth of the vast territories that he controlled. The decoration which I’ve described was obviously designed to re-create the feeling of this imperial banquet and I saw now that the space was well arranged to cater for medium-sized or large groups around big tables in private rooms where variations on the set menu of the emperor’s banquet would be served.

The Jasmine tea was excellent, and got better as they kept refilling my cute little painted and lidded cup. Given the infrequency with which I drink Jasmine tea, I think it’s safe to say it was the best I’ve ever had – a description shared by the dumplings and the tofu, which was cooked to perfection. Again, I have not the words to describe the delicacy of flavour and the wonderful texture of this dish, but glean what you may from the photo.

I wanted to top the meal off with this yoghurt and freeze-dried fruit dish but I was dissuaded, once again by the business suit lady who explained that they had changed to a new type of yoghurt and it was too sour. I was recommended to try another dish which was lightly cooked apple pieces set in a kind of toffee which was served hot and melting with two waitresses stepping in to separate the pieces with deft and dramatic gestures of their chopsticks before it cooled and solidified into an unmanageable mass. Naturally, it was an excellent recommendation and I accompanied it with another fresh squeezed orange juice – remembering that by now I had been there an hour and a half or two since returning from my walk to Tiananmen Square.

With fresh Jasmine leaves, a little more contemplation and finally a coffee, I completed my culinary extravagance for the evening. The coffee was probably a mistake, being just on the acceptable side of ordinary, a wild deviation from the remarkable standard of the rest of the fare.

I went back to my guest-house in a state of deep satisfaction.

The condensed version is that I took a trip out to Ha Long Bay, stayed on Cat Ba Island, met some great fellow travellers, wandered the streets of Hanoi then took another train (53 hours again) to Beijing where I’ve now ensconced myself in a very cute little traditional courtyard guest house. Yesterday I went up to the Great Wall of China and one of the Ming Dynasty tombs and tomorrow I leave early in the morning for Mongolia – this time a 30 hour train.

However, read on for the gory & pretty details of each adventure.

The 34hr train ride to Hanoi concluded in the dark at 5am. At this point I was very glad to have a hotel to go to, where I found the staff asleep on mattresses in the lobby and a Norwegian & American guy discussing the price of taxis. Surreal. I had to take a rickshaw ride before leaving Vietnam, so later that day I settled down for a 5 minute ride to the lake in the centre of the city, crossing my fingers that we weren’t hit by 3 motorbikes at once…

Right by the lake was a Buddhist shrine overhung by a beautiful old tree. Beneath it sat a man who unerringly swung a little clicking toy. Across the walkway from him was a blind man busking with a flute. Like any self-respecting lake in the evening, it had entwined lovers looking out from beneath weeping willows (or jacaranda’s, if that’s all you can spare) and a religious monument on a miniature island in the middle.

Continuing on down the street I passed this completely random set of (I think) installation art pieces – either that or someone picked a really bad spot to start building their house.

Anyway, that night, it turned out to be a momentous occasion in Hanoi and indeed all of Vietnam – they won the South-East Asian soccer cup for the first time in 10 years in a clincher match against Thailand (scoring in the 93rd minute or some such thing). Consequently, patriotism was (even more) rife with flags waving everywhere & there was partying until the wee hours in the streets.

As dusk fell I continued wandering the streets and was rewarded with a bonsai competition (seriously, is it just me?). Pretty amazing, though I don’t go in for bonsai much myself – not sure why people have to bend all other living things to their will.

Next morning I headed out to Ha Long Bay – the mecca of Vietnamese tourism, I guess. Along the road we passed a coal-fired power station around which everything looked fairly conclusively dead and toxic with all the people in a five kilometre radius wearing face masks. There were quite a few industrial zones on the highway between Hanoi & Ha Long City and all looked more than worrying in terms of health & environmental impact. I was also baffled by the houses – in a country with so little wealth to spread around it’s 85 million people, why are they so ornate? They’re a funny shape too, but I learnt that’s (apparently) because there’s a special street frontage tax, so they build everything upward and back, even in the countryside.

Well, I was on a tour in Ha Long (I would have preferred to go it alone, but the people at the hotel were extremely persuasive – it took me about 10 minutes just to actually ascertain that there was a public bus & how much it cost) so inevitably I was lumped with a whole bunch of other foreign tourists.

No matter how annoying the other tourists are, there’s no ignoring the incredible limestone formations of Ha Long Bay as you jostle (really, look at this) among the other “Junk” in the water.

Predictably, the first stop was a couple of caves. Stunning geologically, but the coloured lights and the filing along in lines of tourists definitely dampened the experience. Not that it’s a competition, but Wombeyan tops it for me. My favourite spot in the cave we visited was a natural spring (though they’d installed a pumped water fountain, sigh) surrounded by little mounds that faintly resembled faeries – the locals had called it Faerie Spring. No photo of that one, sorry.

Passing by a stranded dog and some water-dwellers drying their undies, we eventually drifted off into a fantastic (drum roll for recurring theme…) sunset.

Another two shots here and here. And not forgetting it was a patriotic sunset too. The guy on the right in the background of this shot was a really loud, obnoxious American (there’s always one, right), a self-proclaimed sex tourist – which, thank you, I really didn’t need to know.

Next morning was bright & early with kayaking, though we’d learnt by this stage that Vietnamese time was always about half an hour behind. They actually left me behind when we went kayaking – the guide said to be back by 8am but upon dutifully arriving at 7:55 where we’d picked up the kayaks, my boat had totally disappeared! At first I thought I’d come back one bay along, but it turned out they had indeed abandoned me. No matter, the boat returned somehow about 10 minutes later, but though none of the crew said anything it was blatantly only to pick me up. It was really peaceful on the water at that time and gave me the opportunity to get up close to a cave and into little coves.

The boat took us back to Cat Ba Island – the largest of the Ha Long Bay archipelago – where there’s a small town with hotels, a fishing port, a few tiny villages and some decent tracts of rainforest.

I’d opted to insert a day without plans into my tour package so that I didn’t feel quite so much like I was being shunted around non-stop, so I was here for two nights. The budget version of the Ha Long Bay tour included luxuriant transport – see here – and no-one ever knew what was happening next. I did meet some great people on the tour – in particular, a motley crew made up of three lawyers and a superannuation guy (seriously). The lawyers (Harshan from Sydney, John from Ireland & Jeanne from France) were doing internships with the UN in Cambodia, working in the international court on the yet-to-be-had trials of the Khmer Rough leaders. Ned (actually, Eamon), another Irish, was a friend of the first travelling through Asia. They were all really lovely and fun people. In the back is also Johanes from Switzerland, who was great too. Not that it was their job, but they really made up for the obnoxious American who otherwise might have been really depressing.

New Year’s Eve was ok. I had lunch and dinner at this beautiful restaurant, the Green Mango, which Harshan & John had tracked down – definitely the best joint on the island. Really, the dinner was exqusite (no photos though). I must have looked pretty desparate sitting there by myself having the special New Year’s Eve banquet – first a middle-aged tour group then a couple of American girls invited me to join them afterward for revelry. The tour group were singing lame karaoke songs (ok, so the point of karaoke is lame, but this was 100% Abba). Moving on to the bar where the American girls were I think pretty much every tourist on the island ended up there at midnight, which was a bit of a laugh. When a girl from Perth started trying to pick me up, it was time to leave. I did squeeze in a discussion about organic certification standards sometime after midnight though, which was pretty hilarious. Just to cap the night off, there were some foul men hanging around inside the only other place open at 1am – a “hairdresser” and massage “plus anything” shop (red lights in every window) – just a few doors down from my hotel.

The sun was out the next day for the last part of my tour and the ride back to the mainland.

We stopped at a floating village and took an overloaded wooden dingy through a short tunnel cave to emerge in a lake created by an island that completely surrounded it, in a doughnut shape.

On the way back to the main boat, I met the youngest spruiker I’d seen yet with a floating fruit stall.

Not to be outdone by the nursery-bikes back on the mainland.

Or the bicycles, for that matter, where, depending on your stock, balancing must be quite a challenge.

On my last day in Hanoi I visited the Ho Chi Minh museum, masoleum and presidential palace, before my 6:30pm train.

The border crossing with China was in the middle of the night, but no probs there and in fact the Chinese train we switched to was much nicer and cleaner than the Vietnamese one. The first stop was Nanning where we had to get off the train for a couple of hours while they addeed another ten carriages. I got out and had a quick look around the city in the immediate vacinity of the train station. The strongest feeling I had was of unpreparedness. Sure, I was only in China for 4 days, but no-one – really, no-one – spoke English and on my first wander I didn’t find one sign which even had roman characters on it. Anyway, there was a Mongolian in my cabin who I later had a great chat to who bought me some breakfast at the cafe across the road – shallot stuffed pancakes. His english was broken, but understandable – he had completed high school in Japan. He ended up offering for me to stay in his apartment in Ulaanbataar and to drive me out into the wilds of Mongolia beyond the capital, so we’ll see where that offer ends up in the next few days. In Nanning, I did manage to sniff out some organic banana chips though.

Coming in to Beijing, it was -3°C, so I got my first taste of proper cold. I took a taxi to the traditional old courtyard guest house I’d randomly decided on from wiki travel. It’s really lovely (and cheap compared to what I hear other tourists are paying).

Well, that’ll have to do for now or I’ll miss my train to Mongolia. You’ll have to wait till next time to find out about the Great Wall, Beijing subway and other adventures.