Asian Transportation

In Hanoi I met two Norwegian guys who were planning on going to China and then Tibet, so we decided to roll together. Friday our visas arrived and we got on an overnight train to the border. Its an Asian holiday now, so there were no sleeper beds available, we bought soft seat tickets. The seats turned out to be not so soft, quite uncomfortable, with lots of sharp metal corners to limit mobility. So that was a rough ride. We got in in the morning, then crossed the border and waited for an overnight bus to Kunming.

 

Sleeper buses are arranged like this: Think of a five lane swimming pool, lanes 1,3,5 have beds, 2 and 4 are aisles. In the very back of the bus its a continuous bed, so 12345 are beds. Well we got beds in the back. So that means that on the horrible roads that are all over China, I was getting airborne from the bumps while trying to sleep. I feared I that my back would be stabbed by some metal bar near the window.

 

And while I've been traveling, people and guide books are always talking about how not to offend the locals, customs, courtesies etc. Like not showing people your feet, not putting your feet above someones head etc. There are things you can do however that won't offend most Chinese, that would surely offend or piss off most people, regardless of race or religion. Like: spit on the floor of a restaurant, throw trash out the window of an automobile, or throw trash anywhere for that matter, answer your cellphone when it rings at 1am on a bus full of sleeping people and proceed to have a conversation by yelling into the cellphone, smoke anywhere you please, in the company of anybody, and apparently knock the ash of your cigarette onto people sleeping below you, and then burn the guy sleeping next to you with your cigarette while trying to reach over him and throw it out the window. It wasn't me that was burned but I witnessed it as this dude reaches over an English guy sleeping on the bus with us, and when the cigarette hit the airstream coming in through the small window opening, the ashes flared up and went all over the white guy, who woke up and was a little annoyed. I was just awake because I was busy getting launched into the air by the bumpy road, and so I told the Chinese guy he had no courtesy, smoking on the bus and doing what he did. I'm not really good at cussing in Chinese, because they don't do it too much, I hear it surely starts a fight, and I didn't want to have issue any beat downs. So anyway, it was a long 36 hours in total of traveling.

 

The Norwegian guys headed off to Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge. I went to Mojiang, Dr. Yin's hometown, because his friends showed up at my hotel yelling my name saying we're leaving now, get ready to go! So since they have been very nice to me by paying for nearly everything in Kunming, and helping me etc, I felt I should go with them on their holiday to say thanks. But I really just wanted to say hello to this girl that lives there, the daughter of one of their friends. They were to then continue on to another town, and wanted me to come, but I said I had to go to Tibet quickly. I really did not want to sit at every single meal with them, not understanding them speak their local dialect, and being forced to drink lots of alcohol when every single guy in the room has me drink with him. The Chinese guys are weird when we eat. They sit there and every 5 seconds give cheers to somebody else and take a drink. They peck at the food like picky little kids, but eat a bowl of rice. This is while they are telling me what to eat, saying Greg, eat some of this, or "are you full?" me "yes" them "ok, eat some more of this". So I eat more than all of them combined. They also seem to talk a lot about the food, when ordering, or forever commenting on what I'm eating. Its weird. So they order enough for 4x the number of people who are present, but they just eat 10% of it, I eat another 10%, then they get the rest in doggy bags, so they can munch on it later. So I decided I had enough of that and went back to Kunming.

 

I went with Dr. Yin and his wife (who stayed in Kunming) to a wholesale market and bought a bunch of minority outfits for Mrs. Schuler back home in VA. She requested I buy them for her so her Chinese class can use them for a performance. Mrs. Yin did the negotiating, and to get the non white person price, she told them I was a student from Beijing who came down here to buy a sample of outfits for my class, and would come back for a whole slew more of them if my classmates liked them. So yeah.

 

Next day I took an overnight train to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, to the north of Yunnan. This time the ride was pretty nice, trains don't bounce, some of the smokers would actually go to the bathroom to smoke. Here in Chengdu I'm staying at a hostel with lots of backpackers and some Chinese backpackers too. This morning I went to a panda breeding center, and saw some pandas. They are neat, they just like to sit and eat bamboo. Pictures should be up on Flickr.

 

Now I'm just waiting for the Norwegians while I visit parts of Sichuan. When they arrive we will go to Tibet.