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Published: November 4th 2011
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What Traveling is all About (One Bus Trip)
First things first, apologies for not having a new blog up sooner. The apartment computer has decided to poo itself again which means no internet and no writing. Most of my days are spent trying to carefully nurse it to power on so I can watch Star Wars episodes and try to get on any site that isn’t actually blocked.
What I wanted to do in this blog is try to explain the feelings and share the experiences of traveling alone. You hear people come back from overseas telling you about all the cool things they did and people they met. You think geez hope that happens to me, hope random stuff pops along while I’m traveling solo. Secondly you think how did they do it on their own; how will I survive! Well I had one of those turning points, one of those moments you get while traveling on your own and experiencing things you wouldn’t get at home … all in One Bus Trip.
I went to the Xi’an Horticultural Expo, another thing you might want to check out on Wikipedia. Now don’t get your knickers in a
twist, it was nothing fancy. Just miles and miles of grass and trees that kinda all looked the same. You were slugged 100RMB to get in and from there it just kept going. 100RMB to see a panda, 200RMB to ride a bike etc. I spent most of the day cruising round with the old heads before deciding enough was enough when Dave said he wanted to check out the agricultural implements museum. I could imagine miles of hoes from each dynasty and not much else. I left them to it and headed home for the first time doing something on my own …
I went outside the front gate to be presented with roughly 50 buses to choose from. Right, if only I had remembered my bus number. I picked the one with the shortest queue and lined up. Just before I boarded I thought I better flash my volunteer card and see if this bus was going to home. No! No! No! I was told, go over there! This bus was heading for Inner Mongolia. Of course none of this was in English, just lots of pointing and arm waving. Finally I found my bus, stood in line for an hour and jumped on board.
I ended up down the back next to three very old grannies who were giving me a lot of stink eye. Every time I looked up I would find three pairs of beady eyes looking back at me. The one right next to me (squashed thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder) pulled at the biggest apple I had ever seen and started to munch away. She worked by every second bite she would spit the contents of her entire mouth into her hand. Truly delightful to watch. After spending a decent half an hour on the apple she then pulled out a plastic bag. She looked up, smiled at me and then proceeded to vomit up everything from yesterday’s breakfast to today’s apple into the bag. Now let me tell you, when you sitting on a crowed bus next to a vomiting person you get the urge yourself. It was a huge effort of will power to keep myself contained as she filled her plastic bag up and then neatly tucked it away.
But this bus trip was only getting better. After the bag incident there was quite a commotion in the middle of the bus. Catfight! Two girls were going at and weren’t holding back. Hair pulling, bitch slapping and pushing. Everything was going down while everyone was offering encouragement. I decided to weigh in and offer my two cents. Boom, back of the bus went silent when I yelled jaio, which means go. Everyone looked at me … then yeah right on! Everyone got back into it until the driver stopped the bus and kicked the offending parties off. I now had a vacant seat next to me which I offered to the closet bloke who turned out to be a cop.
Meet Summer John, a 22 year old member of China’s massive police force. Now you may be wondering while Summer John was called Summer John. He proudly informed me that it was because he loved summer and hated winter. Ahhh very logical. Summer John and I had a big chat about personal safety, looking after my money, discussions on catching bad guys and how he learnt all his English from cartoons.
It was now time to get off the bus, say goodbye to John, vomiting Grandmas and crazy catfights. As the bus pulled away I thought yep, that was my first proper traveling moment on my own. I managed to get on a bus with no English, figure out when to hop off, meet a few cool people and see a few cool things on the way. It was also a great confidence booster for when I leave Xi’an and head out into the great unknown. Now when I hear stories from people on how they did this or did that I can think yeah, I’ve been there.
Next blog should be same old, same old but there are two new blokes coming tomorrow. For those of you that are interested my next stop should be Chengdu some time soon.
Over and out,
Zin
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woah
hey zin, pretty mad bus ride eh? haha liked the part where everyone went silent when u flexed your chinese then went back to gee up the fight :P glad you are having a ball mate! when are you volunteering next?