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Published: November 16th 2010
PARTY LIKE A ROCK STAR!
My last week in China has been a rather good / eventful one. The excitement started after my hike through the Tiger Leaping Gorge (pics in last entry) when an Israeli guy and a Dutch girl I hiked with asked if I wanted to go celebrate our safe return by grabbing a beer at one of the bars for Chinese tourists. These places all had crazy fog/light shows and waiters/bartenders who would go up on stage and sing and dance in costumes, so I thought it would be a fun thing to check out. Somewhere during our first round of beers, I looked over and noticed that the table across from our was packed, and there was a guy signing some sort of book. After looking over a few more times to figure out what the book was, and old guy from the table came over to our booth and tried to get the Dutch girl to dance. When she was reluctant, I figured it was my "duty" (or possibly opportunity) as a traveller to get up and make a fool of myself dancing - which I proceeded to do with great gusto (though not
Call the Police
The police station for the whole region around Lexiaguoon stage or in a cage as I have done other times).
Well, those few moves I busted settled our fate for the night. It turns out that the old guy (who was very happily tipsy) was best friends with the owner of the bar (the guy who also happened to be signing the books). From that point on we got all the beer we wanted on the house, and we ever got free, autographed copies of the book - a graphic novel that the owner wrote and drew. Granted, I had to do some more dancing throughout the night, but I'd say it was well worth it!
. . . AND DOGGONE IT, PEOPLE LIKE ME!
After the night of craziness at the bar in Lijiang, I decided it was time to really get off the tourist / Lonely Plant path and see a less-travelled piece of China. At the suggestion of a friend of my mom, I made my way out towards Luoxiaguo - a village, outside a town, outside of a city, none of which were even mentioned in my guidebook. From Kunming, a big city (medium well covered in the Lonely Planet), I
had to find two buses just to get out to the regional bus terminal, and from there I had to catch two more buses out to the village. The place was so unknown that the tickets ladies in the last bus station had never heard of it even though it was only an hour away. I had to get some help from an older man in the station who walked me to the bus I needed to get on (he was taking the same one) and who helped me figure out where to get off. And, just so you know how crazy the road was to get there, two different people puked as we wound our way 1000+ meters up a mountain.
Now, the reason for explaining how off the beaten track this place was is because I want you to understand just how nice the people there were. For 3 nights in a row I never had to pay for a meal, though I definitely tried. On the first night I had dinner with three Chinese tourists from Guangdon. I ended up eating with them because they dragged me into a taxi with them to go look at
the famous village and hillside (see pics below). We were there for a couple of hours, and then we hitch-hiked our way back on the back of a small tractor and a donkey pulled cart. What a great day!
The next two nights other travellers pulled me over to their tables. The group on the second night spoke English, but on the third night I was reduced to a lot of smiling and arm waving to communicate - my Mandarin was infinitely better than their English. Needless to say, it was a really great three days. I'll definitely need to look for a few more places like that.
GANJA LADY
A quick, funny story from my hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge. In the middle of a tough climb, and just before the most difficult section of switchbacks called the "28 Turns," I cam across a lady selling snacks. Or course I was huffing and puffing as I came up to her stall, so she said to me in broken English - "You tired. Need snack for climb. How about . . . Snickers? . . . or Banana? . . . or Marijuana?" And, sure enough, when
I looked at the table, there were a handful of Snickers, a bunch of bananas, and 10-12 good-sized bags of weed just sitting out there. Obviously she wasn't too concerned about a police raid 100s of meters up a mountain, but it just seems very funny and out of place to me. Also, I can't really imagine marijuana giving you the "energy" to keep climbing. I rather thought it had the opposite, demotivating effect, but it sure would help business if she had a second snack stall and hour down the trail.
SHANGHAI SALES PITCH
I don't have much time to write about Shanghai, so I'll just give you a quick list of the 5 most common things I was offered on the streets:
1) "Lady Massage"
2) "Sexy Lady Massage"
3) "Watch"
4) "Bag"
5) "Sexy Sex"
Don't let that give you the wrong impression of Shanghai. It's a great city. I just thought that was the funniest highlight.
VIETNAM - A few quick thoughts after just one day so I can see how they hold up after three weeks
1) It seems very strange to be carrying around 6 million Dong (about $300US
in the Vietnamese currency).
2) Traffic here is absolutely nuts, but it feels safer than China. Here there really are no signs / signals to give you a false sense of security (crossing a street with a green walk sign in China is sort of like playing Russian Roulette). All of the traffic just seems to have an organic flow. It kind of looks like a school of sardines with all of the cars and motorbikes moving at the same speed in the same general direction but all undulating back and forth.
3) Everyone answer the phone with "hello" and then busts into a complete conversation in Vietnamese. It's both funny and a bit confusing.
4) The people are incredibly nice!
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cherise
non-member comment
some things are apparently true across all cultures ... heh, who wouldn't keep the beer flowing to get more of andy's crazy dancing? =p