Having been in the city for a few days now, my favourite area of downtown Vancouver has got to be the interestingly named Gastown. The oldest section of the city, comprising just a few blocks along the riverfront, Gastown is a delightful collection of cobbled old world streets from another time - not a high rise office block in sight. In fact, nobody seems to have made any effort whatsoever to change the way things have always been here, and I simply wouldn't have it any other way. It could be argued, in fact, that the whole of downtown Vancouver was born out of Gastown, as it was here in 1867 that a British seaman by the name of Jack Deighton - later to be known as Gassy Jack - decided to create the city's first drinking establishment. Of course, wherever there is somewhere to drink people will suddenly start to appear - and Gastown was no different. Before long, the downtown area of what would eventually become known as Vancouver started to spread out around it, and the port soon rose up alongside a growing number of businesses. Ship's crews began to come to town, and soon Gastown was a thriving hub of activity - most of it, perhaps rather predictably, not altogether wholesome.

All things considered, Gastown hasn't exactly had a lot of luck over the years. In 1886, the town and surrounding settlements had just been officially named as the city of Vancouver when they suddenly and unexpectedly burned to the ground in the Great Vancouver Fire, leaving all but a handful of buildings as nothing more than a pile of glowing embers. Rising from the ashes, the city quickly built itself up once more and established itself as a centre for trade and industry, welcoming people from all around with the promise of a lively nightlife in any of its fine bars and drinking holes. No sooner had they done this, however, than prohibition arrived in Canada, banning the sale of alcohol and putting a stop to all the fun. Gastown quickly became known as that area downtown with the funny name that nobody goes to.

At least, that's how it was until the seventies, when somebody noticed it and decided it had to go. It's incredible how people can totally ignore something until there's a chance it might be lost forever, at which point they suddenly come crawling out of the woodwork with a protection order - in 1970, a proposal was put in front of the council to have the whole of Gastown, along with nearby Chinatown, demolished and replaced by a freeway to carry commuters into the city. This didn't happen. Instead, just about everybody on the west coast threw a collective wobbly and both Gastown and Chinatown were declared as areas of national historical interest. Suddenly, for the first time since anybody could remember, they found themselves being looked after by people who actually cared what happened to them.

Today, Gastown is an interesting mix of designer boutiques and souvenir shops cashing in on the interest the old world feel of the area creates in tourists. The highlight of Gastown, by far, is the famous Gastown Clock. Unsurprisingly, this is a large ornamental clock which dominates the main street. Perhaps slightly more unusual, however, is the fact that the clock is entirely powered by steam. It's impossible to walk through Gastown without seeing people crowding around the clock trying to work out how it operates, so much so that you can sometimes see the ever-present street entertainers standing on their own wondering why nobody wants to watch them set themselves on fire. The two brass plaques attached to the base of the clock tell the history of both the clock and the immediate area perfectly:

The Gastown Steam Clock

Designed and built by Raymond L. Saunders, Horologist

The World's first steam powered clock has been created for the enjoyment of everyone. The live steam winds the weights and blows the whistles. Every 4.5 minutes one steel weight will travel by steam power to the top of the clock. The gravity driven "falling ball" drive was engineered by Douglas L. Smith. Each quarter hour the clock will sound the Westminster chimes. The large whistle will sound once on the hour. The steam is supplied by the underground system of Central Heat Distributers Limited. The component parts cost $42,000 and the clock weighs over two tons. This clock is located at the western boundary of the old Granville town site, known as Gastown. In 1870, the shore of Burrard Inlet was only a few yards north of this point. Through the early 1900s, Gastown was the commercial centre of Vancouver. By the 1960s, it had become the centre of Vancouver's "Skid Road". In the early 1970s it was rehabilitated to its former stature. The success of its rehabilitation was due to property owners, retailers and all the people of Gastown working together with city council and civic departments. The townsite committee, composed of the property owners of Gastown, were responsible for the beautification of the streets. John W. Parker served as chairman of the committee between January 1967 and September 1977.

Another area of downtown Vancouver which drew my attention was Chinatown, as it claims to be one of the largest Chinese districts on the continent. Being a bit of a fan of Chinese architecture and all things related to Eastern culture, I was looking forward to having a bit of a wander in and out of the Chinese gift shops and around its narrow streets and alleys - and this is exactly what I would've done if it had been able to supply any of these things. The main problem, for me, with attempting to create a section of any city which embraces the culture and lifestyle of another nation is that, quite often, local rules don't allow it because nearly everything that speaks of that other culture doesn't tie in with local sensibilities. Well, isn't that sort of the point? Not unreasonably, I had been expecting to turn a corner into Chinatown and find narrow streets lined with thousands of neon signs displaying fifty foot tall Chinese letters which I couldn't understand, restaurants sitting in the gutter beneath makeshift tarpaulin umbrellas, market stalls up and down every street and the smell of Chinese food everywhere I went. Not that they call it Chinese food in China, of course - they just call it food. I wanted somebody to have taken a section of Hong Kong, Or Beijing, or anywhere else in China, and dropped it with a thud on top of Vancouver. Instead - and I really don't know why I was surprised after the number of so-called Chinatowns I've been to over the years, of which the best by far was the little one in Broome, Western Australia which had at least made an effort - what I found was a collection of perfectly ordinary Canadian roads covered in Canadian road signs and looking, well, Canadian. The only thing that really stood out as being Chinese in any way were the grocery and souvenir shops dotted along the street, filled with exotic looking lanterns and other assorted Chinese paraphernalia. Still, I suppose any Chinatown has got to be better than the one in London - you can walk through that from one end to the other and not even notice you've done it.

Vancouver's Chinatown wasn't always like this. In fact, in the 60s it was all but covered in glowing neon welcoming visitors to a little bit of Hong Kong in the West. In the early 70s, however, those ever-present stick-in-the-muds in government introduced a new law which severely limited the ability to put up signs all over the place, neon or otherwise - a similar law, in fact, to the one which caused so much trouble for Wall Drug in the United States. If cities are going to embrace different cultures like this, can't they at least make a little effort to meet them half way - it's not as though allowing a few neon signs along your streets is going to cause the collapse of Western society, after all. Hidden among the streets of Chinatown, however, there are still a few treasures. In particular, the Sam Kee building has an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for being the narrowest commercial building in the world - it wasn't originally supposed to be that way, but when the council decided to make the adjoining road wider they compulsorily purchased all but about a five foot strip of their land. Rather than selling off the remainder of the lot, a long thin shop front was designed on the remaining land, and the basement, which extended under the road, opened up as a profitable public bath, allowing the owners to stick two fingers up at the council.

If you look carefully enough, there are also little pockets of real China to be found in Chinatown, such as the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Gardens. I've certainly been to other miniature Chinese gardens on my travels, but this is the first full size attempt to recreate one outside of China itself. Traditionally, these are places where local people can come and relax at the end of a hard day and get back to nature. Whereas western parks are very much places to play or picnic, and are usually nothing more than a strip of grass with a cricket pavilion and people in white jumpers running around while people with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon stand around and slow-handclap them, Chinese gardens (or "Scholars Gardens") are places to sit and meditate and surround yourself with nature. In fact, a Chinese Garden can only really be called by that name if it contains a great number of specific features, such as the presence of incense burners and wind chimes. Feng Shui must also have been used when selecting the site and laying out everything within it - which is perhaps why there are so few authentic Scholars Gardens outside of China, as you can't just choose any old piece of land and plonk down a garden. Scholars Gardens always place a heavy emphasis on water, and the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Gardens - named after the first president of China, who stayed in Vancouver on several occasions while seeking support for his Chinese Nationalist movement - are centred around a large pond containing both turtles and fish. Next door to the gardens is a more traditional park, from which you unfortunately have to pay to pass through the wall into the Chinese gardens. I can sort of understand this, as they must've cost a fortune to build - but I've never really been a big fan of gardens and parkland which demands an entrance fee, for the simple reason that it would stop me from being able to just wander in and sit down whenever I fancied. I've also never quite got over having to pay to get into the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge, England, where I was dismayed to discover the most boring piece of grass and formal arrangements of flowerbeds I have ever seen.

Interestingly, there used to be a collection of roads next door to Vancouver's Chinatown known, for reasons so obvious that I'm not going to patronise you by explaining them here, as Japantown. However, the area - probably one of the only places of its kind in the world - vanished overnight during the second world war as the Canadian authorities moved much of the Japanese population into internment camps. There has been a certain amount of effort to relaunch the area in recent years, with Japanese restaurants and Karaoke bars moving in, but it is still very much overshadowed by Chinatown.

My only issue when I arrived in Canada was how best to make my way across the country without it costing an arm and a leg. Well, thanks again to Stuart and Emily pointing me in the right direction, I think I've hit on the perfect way to see Canada in the short time I have available. It seems that there is a train which leaves Vancouver three times a week, travelling through the Rockies and across the country from the west coast to the east, passing through the most incredible scenery Canada can offer and with a special observation car where I can sit in a glass dome and watch it all go by. How cool is that? The entire journey takes an amazing five or six days, and the train calls en-route at various cities and small towns in the mountains on its way towards Toronto or Halifax in the east - so I can even hop off en route, spend some time in somewhere like Edmonton, and then rejoin the train a couple of days later. But the news only gets better - due to the amazingly good exchange rate with Sterling at the moment, I will apparently be able to buy a rail pass which will allow me complete use of the Canadian and United States rail systems for the next month for the bargain price of just £250. A European rail pass for only half that time would cost me about four times as much - and the locals seem to think this country is expensive! This is definitely an offer I can't refuse - but first, I have Victoria to see.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.