What Goes Down, Sometimes Comes Up

---

Today's entry has something that hopefully you'll find pretty funny, but you might also find a bit disgusting. So, if you're about to eat lunch, or you just had your lunch, be warned...

We had a good few days in Beijing and now we're in Xian which is about 1200km SW. Last night we took a night train, first class baby! It was pretty lux and the train was very very modern. We shared our cabin with 2 Chinese business-type-persons. From the guidebook and prices we gather that only foreigners, party officials, and successful entreprenuers can afford to take this class. It was nice and we got good sleep.

For the record, neither of us has ever seen a train station as large as the Beijing West station. As the taxi passed it it on the way to making a U-turn (to drop us at the front door) we both gasped because we've never seen anything like it! Jees, it had this mixture of modern/traditional Chinese architecture and looked something like a moon station for space ships.

Once inside we were surprised to be able to somewhat easily find our platform and train because we knew what train we were on, Z19. If not for that, it would've been very very hard, all the timetable was in chinese characters only.

Also yesterday we did Ting's tour to the Great Wall of China. We had a walk up to/along/over the wall and it was... well, great. Ting is the guy that we met on the street in Beijing a few days ago. He didn't give us the tour though, his 'brother' did. It wasn't much of a tour, really more of a ride. Our 'guide' didn't speak a lick of English, but the trip was excellent!

The section of the wall there was dilapidated and there were signs posted saying that the wall is 'closed for reconstruction'. No doubt this is part of the Beijing 2008 build up for the Olympics. They're building/cleaning and even changing the culture here in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Spitting and its close cousin the oh-so-pleasant phlegmy 'hock' are no longer the norm here. Also, the populace is being encouraged to learn more English. Good for us! There are over 1 billion Chinese and my thinking is that they could easily try to have it be the other way, there are so many people here and some of our experiences here have us thinking that they really could give a damn about us and our language. Of course our consumer culture, they're eating that up...

So, back to the wall. Our driver paid a little cash and gave some cigarettes to admit us to the area of the wall, then he guided us up a little way and there we were. Standing on the Great Wall of China, nobody else within sight. There were 6 of us, a couple of Israelis and 2 Russian guys and us.

We had great views and a bit of a walk/climb on the wall. This was spoiled a bit but an extremly quick to arrive bout of food poisoning for me. After lunch, mild stomach discomfort quickly became major which quickly had me positioning myself in a notch in the wall, yes the GREAT Wall, leaning over the side, and projectile vomitting (the spray easily carrying itself over a clean drop of 25 feet) to the base of the wall! Yechh!

...I tried my best to not disrespect or otherwise dirty this historical treasure, but I must admit that I did get a few drops on the wall itself. I'm sure its seen worse though, such as the blood of many conquerers/defenders over the years.

Anyway, I can't tell you how much better and I felt after blowing a few chunks (and who doesn't!?). The direction of dischrage was off to the North side of the wall (Mongol territory?) for those keeping track. For those interested in details, sorry but I don't have a GPS coordinate, but I do have an 'after' photo available for those that are interested.

It also felt pretty 'cool' to have a good travel vomitting story of my own. My friend Rusty has told a pretty good one where he had to end up puking into his business briefcase in the back of a car driving around Paris. Rawley too has one that involves the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

As for the cause of all of this, I think that it was this unidentified deli meat that I bought at a Chinese grocery store. It looked like bacon/pork/ham, but I have no idea what it was. (We have actually seen Dog on English language menus here.) Anyway, it's good to know that my body is able to so quickly get rid of something that is bad for it. It wasn't 30 minutes from the time I ate it for lunch until it came back up.

I felt better pretty quickly after 'the incident', but unfortunately we had to sit around for the Russian dolts that were 1 1/2 hours late getting back to our van, which made us late getting back to Beijing, which meant that we cut things pretty close at the train station. But, we made it.

The plan for the next few days is to see terracotta warriers near Xian and then also to see some of the city here. We are close to the Yellow River. Keeping with this theme, tomorrow night we'll take another night train to Chongqing (14.5 hours baby!), and we'll depart there for a 3 night cruise down the Yangtze River. We just booked all that here with some guy named Jackie. Hopefully for a decent price. We, or I actually, try to haggle down every price, and I think that this is a good idea. Based on some of our info, some items (souveniers mostly) can be haggled down to 10 percent of the first price. I haggled my brand-name new balance shoes down about 25 percent. We saved between 10-15 percent by haggling our Yangtze River tour. Sherry is still picking up the custom of haggling and she's learning quickly.

For those interested in prices. In Beijing we paid around 40 USD for a hotel. Here in Xian where prices should be less, we are indeed paying only 20 USD. We're in a Youth Hostel that is really only a floor in a larger hotel, foreigners (that'd be us) not allowed to stay in the hotel, but okay to pay at the desk in the hostel and then stay in a hotel room like Sherry and I are doing.

Hope all is well back home.

---

Comments

[Shaw]

Yak Yak
Dude, send me the picture of the Yak. I want to make it my screen saver.

[Timoney]

disappointing story
After I read the 'tease' in the opening paragraph, I was all set for a good diarrhea tale. And all I got was projectile vomiting at the Great Wall???

[Mom]

Cute
Cory, your friends are as humorous as you are. Love them... Hope your taking good care of yourselves. Proud Sherry hung on during your bout with vomiting on the Great Wall. Surprised she didn't barf herself (LOL). Miss you and can't wait for the next great experience. Love ya!