Mostly I just want to remember what all has been going on the past few days, but also for anyone who might still read this blog, hopefully this will be somewhat entertaining....(an online journal of my vacation in Yunnan)
Day 1: Hong Kong
So, I said this before, but basically HK is like the New York City of China. It was really, really crowded and busy. I liked riding the double-decker bus from the airport and walking around the city at night a little. Wish I could've seen it during the daytime, though....I think I had enough of it in one day to last me for a while, though. It was much cleaner. No kids peeing on the sidewalks, no adults spitting on the streets. In fact, people know how to use a crosswalk and to wait for the little walking man light. They drive on the left side of the road (British colony, go figure). The harbour was really cool, even at night, and I just thought it was fun to see a place where Jackie Chan filmed one or several of his movies. :) I have to say, though, I just don't like cities where you can't see the sky because too many buildings are in the way.
Day 2: Train
From HK we took a train to Guangzhou, a city in Guangdong province in southern China. You know, it actually reminded me a *lot* of Bangkok -- mostly the climate and the way the streets were set up. There we met up with a student for lunch (delicious!! I love Broccoli!!! -- "she's choppin' broccol-ai") then we got on to -- get this -- our 25-hour train to Kunming. Woo-hoo! 25 hours in a train wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. It helped that one of us had a soft sleeper and the other people in the room were really nice and let us visit indefinitely. And it was way cool waking up at, like, 7:30 a.m. to see how the landscape was changing. When I woke up we were in mountains (going through a tunnel, actually) and they were all green and covered in fog. Oooohhh, it was so pretty! When we went to sleep it was, of course, dark, but I think we hadn't seen such a cool landscape before. Interestingly enough, we were on the train for the Chinese New Year. We got to see lots of fireworks that night when it was dark. :) Life's little annoyance #1: I discovered late at night in our hostel in Kunming that I left something important to me on the train. My pocket Bible. Mostly I'm just sad and ashamed of myself for not noticing before I left that it was missing. Well, I know what I want for a welcome home present!
Day 3: Kunming/train
After checking into our hostel we walked around the city at night and ate with another student. I ate these little roots that looked like worms. But they're really roots. Sweet....and the really interesting thing about our hostel is....the bathrooms are squatties. Yep, no western toilets here. No doors, even. Just walls about waist height dividing one squatty from another. At least they flush properly.... :) I do love a good adventure!
Day 4: Xi Shan (west mountain)
This was pretty cool, but I had a headache most of the day. We hiked around the mountain all day. It wasn't exactly what I expected, and at first I was kind of disappointed by the lack of trail and lack of paved road (I kind of wanted one or the other, and it was kind of a hybrid). Eventually we got to the highlight of the mountain, which was this way cool area built into the side of a cliff. There was a gate called Long Men ("Dragon Gate") and all these cool, narrow twisty paths carved through the rock to get up to it. We got up to the peak, and by that time we decided it was late enough that we took the cable car down. Boy, that was fun too. It was an open-air ski-lift type thing. Pretty relaxing. I realize more and more that I enjoy motion. It's very relaxing to me. Overnight train rides (feel like you rock to sleep), the top of a double-decker bus, open-air cable car, etc. Life's little annoyance #2: my camera decides to stop working. This may be the batteries' fault (although they were brand new) or maybe my camera just doesn't like me anymore. In any case it means most of my pictures will have to be taken by my friends instead of by me. Oh well, I think they're more talented photographers anyway. ;) Another fun story from today. So for dinner we went down this little side street, much like the night market in my beloved home town, and we ate at this restaurant where you have to sit on little stools around the tables. We were waiting a long time for our food to come out, but pretty soon after we got there the lights went out. Okay, so they got them back on after a minute or two, no problem, but then they kept going out again. And then back on, then off, and so on, sometimes like a strobe light. Eventually the waiters just gave each table a candle, and we all ate in the dark! It was kind of a romantic, candlelit dinner.... :) Well, it was more the sort of situation that is really annoying at the time, but lots of fun to remember and talk about later. After dinner the other girls went to go watch a movie! I kind of wished I'd gone with them, but I had such a bad headache that I knew I just needed to rest. And, what do you know, it was just what I needed. They saw "Fearless" -- a Jet Li movie -- all in Chinese. ;)
Day 5 (today): Shi Lin (stone forest)
This was WAYYYYYY cool!! First, Life's little annoyance #3: people who overcharge and lie in order to make a few bucks off of foreigners, i.e. bus drivers/bus money takers/tour guides.... Grrrr.... so, basically there are all these rocks that have been worn away by water into sharp jagged points and little narrow paths that you can walk around. There were lots of things about this particular place that I loved, not the least of which was that there were places you could go where there weren't any other people, at least for a few minutes. We got to climb through this little hole to a place that I thought would be great for devotions. We got to climb all over rocks and see beautiful plants and even lots of GREEN grass. I was kind of sad to leave. Not kind of, I was *really* sad to leave. No, maybe I was ready because I was hungry and little tired, but mostly I could've just stayed there for a long, long time. Dad would've LOVED that place. :) I'll get lots of pictures from my friends, don't worry. ;) Oh, and I got to experience the joys of a Chinese outhouse. We think we have it bad in the U.S., but.....so again, no doors, just waist-high walls, and this time no flushers. Imagine just a square hole in the ground. I'm not even going to describe what you would see if you looked down into one. It was late when we got back to town, but we ate at a nice Korean restaurant. And now I'm here, letting you all know that I'm having a great time, enjoying myself lots, enjoying time with friends and seeing new places, doing new things, having adventures, all that jazz. Love to anyone who still reads this! ;)
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