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Published: December 7th 2011
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With that wonderful statement scribbled on the toilet wall in my hostel in Chengdu I start my long overdue blog. The reason for that kind of graffiti is that Chengdu is the home of the famous and legendary hot pot. The next morning is pain and no gain for anybody that has tried this delectable dish. Toilet humour aside, what have I been doing since my last update?
I decided to hang in Chengdu for a little longer and do a few touristy things after our pointless tea trip. The next day we were up bright and early to check out the Leshan Buddha. The pictures don’t really give you a sense of scale. He is actually 71 metres tall, his ear is bigger than me. We climbed down the cliff face, took a few happy snaps and got out early before the crowds of Chinese beat us to it. The Buddha actually wasn’t that exciting, he was a little bit inanimate and didn’t say much. There was a upside though, I went and checked out a temple that was part of the complex. This was my first proper exposure to religious China and it was rather beautiful. The whole
temple was lit by a golden light and the hum of the monks chanting echoed through the building. It was nice to see another side of China that I hadn’t yet experienced. I also got talking to a baby faced monk who turned out to be 38 and spoke perfect English. I’m not kidding you about the baby face either, he could of been thirteen.
I decided that I was over travelling and in a moment of madness decided I wanted to stay in China, go back to Xi’an and learn Mandarin! Looking back I can see that wasn’t such a wise choice. Xi’an is now minus 2 to 4 at night and visibility from pollution is down to 500m. I would of come back with one lung and a amputated leg from gangrene. You don’t realise how good Australian air is until you travel.
After lots of umming and ahhing over what to do next I decided to head to Guilin and check the vibe. If it was good I would stay a while and if not head down to Hong Kong to my Uncle and eat some cheese. For those of you that don’t know, cheese
is in very, very short supply in China.
I got on my train for a epic 27 hour trip down to Guilin. Two sleeping pills later and I was asking myself what trip and my does time fly. I found my groovy little hostel (Wada Hostel) and paid the princely sum of aussie $4.50 for the night. Upon entering my dorm room I found ... two crazy Russians!
I was sitting on the front lounge talking to one of the staff when the Russians came out of there room. They walked up to me, pointed and said in heavily accented English, “You.Drink.Come.” Ok boys, whatever you say. We headed out for the nasty arse bajiu, mandarins, lemon, beer and iced tea. Back we came and the drinking process was explained to me and acted out all in terrible Russian English.
1. Pour shot 2. Smell lemon or mandarin 3. Complain that there is no black bread 4. Take shot and yell stuff in Russian 5. Smell lemon/mandarin 6. Eat lemon/mandarin 7. Grab your drinking partner’s head and smell that and say it is closest thing to black bread 8. Chase with beer, I decided against this and
went with the iced tea.
These guys could seriously drink, I mean seriously drink. I left them at one bottle and came back to the dorm to find them passed out on the floor. I put one into bed and when trying to help the other I was kindly told to fuck off. You gotta love these fellas. Guilin was freezing cold and the next morning I thought it was time to go. I hung out at the hostel all day before boarding the train to Shenzen, this one a relatively short 13 hours.
I jumped board, went to my carriage and was greeted by ... Pong Pong! A smiling little one year old who was deciding to spend the night with me, his mum and his grandma. I thought oh oh, I’m in trouble here, I’m going to have to spend 14 hours with crying, shitting and general small child activities. I wasn’t that wrong but first we had to sort out Grandma. I had booked the bottom bunk seeing it was wider but G’Ma had decided to book the top. Now no way was she getting up there. For those of you that haven’t travelled in
a Chinese train to get to the top involves a bit of mountain climbing. You first stand on the bed, then on a tiny shelf stuck on the wall before hauling yourself up into your bed. I looked at Grandma’s missing front teeth, white hair and hands that were working before the cultural revolution and kindly offered her the bottom. If I hadn’t Pong Pong might of been with one less family member on alighting. The little fella was all right but he was the master of staring straight into my soul. Everyone time I looked down from my lofty perch I would find him looking straight back up at me without blinking. He seemed to instinctively know when I was looking and would stop making noises if I talked, even if he couldn’t see me. We all settled down for the night until Pong Pong decided to do the 2am cry and scream. I felt like calling down to Pong Pong like a voice from the heavens and asking him what was wrong. Telling him if cried he would never play ping pong, marry Ling Long or learn how to play the gong. I decided to hold the peace
and let him do his thing, in the end it wasn’t that bad as the family left early, Grandma included.
We finally rolled into Shenzen where I met some English guys to stick with for the boarder crossing. It was all right until you get to the paranoid Chinese border staff. A good 5 mins looking hard at you, hard at your passport, hard at you, hard at your passport and so on before finally letting you through with a haughty look. The border guard next to me was questioning each person about where they had been. One girl had to lay out her entire trip in China which consisted of 20 destinations. The Hong Kong guards on the other hand didn’t even look at your entrance card and just waved you through. I was beginning to think Hong Kong would be entirely different...
So stay tuned for the Hong Kong blog and I also might be swinging over to Macau, make it three countries before I come home.
Peace.Love.Pong Pong.
Zin
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