Super-China Vol. 2 (to be continued)

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keep checking it out, if you must....

Things that suck at first that you eventually get used to
babies pooping in the street
constant diarrhea
being offered cigarettes upon meeting someone new, and being required to accept it to avoid insult
ubiquitous prostitution
constantly having to waste time haggling over even the most minor of purchases

Things that suck at first that you eventually start to like
Ass-guns (like the spray extension on some kitchen sinks, to be used in lieu of TP or bidet) - BTW, TP is outdated as of now
Cheap, Dirty Street Food
Squatters in Public Bathrooms (squatting is cleaner than sitting, right?)
Chopsticks
Watching the wheels turn in shop-keeper's heads during the interval between you asking the price and them determining how much they wanna screw you; I plan my walk-out strut

Top Asia Travel "Bugs"
1) Dysentery (Alex) - no doubt!
2) Dysentery (still Alex) - that shit went misdiagnosed at the Lao hospital, so 2 weeks on the charts earns it tops AND second billing. Finally destroyed by a (literally!) 3-week regimen of over 200 pills (of 4 distinct varieties) taken usually to the tune of about 9 per day.
3) Ankle-Elbow-Sinus Trifecta (Alex) - So I climbed a ridiculously oddly bolted (this means poorly prepared) route at Twin Gate in Yangshuo and fell a solid 12-15 feet or something, and twisted my ankle. I was cool with it for a few days and even climbed with it that way until it somehow caused a "staph-ish" infection in my elbow (WEIRD, but true), so my elbow swole up like I had a golf ball in there, right at the same time that I got a sinus infection. The Chinese doctors (of course!) gave me a penicillin IV, and after a weird delirious fever-breaking night, plus 2 weeks of recovery, the infections and the ankle injury were gone. But the elbow took a further 2 months before the swelling subsided.
4) Knee, 5 stitches (Alex)... - Nothing can quite explain the high you get when you huff romance at 15,000 feet. The sound of destitute children's barely-shod feet scampering across calichi roads in the Karakoram makes you forget that scaring children always results in someone crying... and today that someone is you, my friend... and you means me. And romance means exaggerated bike pedalling. And huffing means crashing. And 15,000 means feet of elevation descended via taxi, rather than via bicycle and camping, as intended.
...as opposed to
5) Knee, 3 stitches (Alex)... climbing Space Buttress in Yangshuo. Cut the crap out of the knee at the very beginning of the very first climb. Climbed all day anyways. That beer shared with Julie and Alex Whitman a few hours later on the bike ride back diluted my blood just enough to turn my lucky Crips bandana into cotton irony.
5) Eternal Splinter (Julie) - What I thought was a splinter turned out to be a strange viral infection, which was far less dangerous than Ebola and also, far less bloody.
6) Food Poisoning(Julie)- After boasting for nearly a year about my far-superior immune system, I got knocked back by some innocent looking dumplings.

Closest Animal Encounters
1) Papa Gibbon grunting and charging, crashing through the bamboo forest, to scare us away from the rest of the family on the Gibbon Experience, Laos
2) Startled Wild Pig Surprise Party on Ko Tarutao, Thailand
3) Wild Elephants (with baby) at and around the elephant tower in Ban Na, Laos
4) Crab-Eating Macaques fishing for crabs at dusk, Ko Tarutao, Thailand
5) The less-wild macaques on Tarutao stealing food from your plate while you eat
6) Snake Janitors at the Snake Farm playing with cobras right in front of us in Bangkok
7) Baby Chimp smooching (with tongue) the glass between us and him on a trip to the Shanghai Zoo

Best T-Shirts
1) A Call to Arms to All Chunkily-Penissed Boys... Do Her Right and Do Her Good (worn by a girl in Alex's class)
2) HERPES (in red glitter)
3) Sex Instructor Certified (escorting her 4-year-old son to camp)
4) "I'm OK" with a giant weed leaf - Roger, who works internationally for Motorola, wore this anytime he was meeting someone new, because he thought it made him look non-threatening. Cuz botany is non-threatening.

Hottest Lady-Boys
1) Chiang Mai, Thailand - "that's like the tallest woman in Asia," says Alex; "that's not a woman," says Julie. I didn't believe her. Pinch me!
2) Ko Tao, Thailand - complete with a cabaret show
3) On the train from Beijing to Shanghai
and the award for least convincing trannies goes to... Ko Lipe, Thailand

Most Inadvertent and/or Racist Examples of Inadvertent Racism
1) "Julie, are black people black on the inside, too?" -- Titanic (that's his name, and he's a serious and curious adult)... although he did qualify his curiosity with "... because sometimes when you cut open a black rooster, it's insides are black." Is that true?
2) Shanghai Zoo displaying photos of infant chimpanzees and orangutans next to photos of young black children. Like, "see, monkeys are just like black people!"
3) "We don't have racism in China, because we don't have any black people." -- Julie's student criticizing America.
4) Whitening Powder -- this shit is everywhere in this country.
5) Chinese, in political conversation, will totally call themselves "yellow people."

Young Chinese's Most Common Heroes
1) Bill (aka Slick Willie, aka William Jefferson Clinton)
2) Mr. Bill (aka Dr. DOS FX, aka William Henry Gates III)
3) Kobe (aka Black Mamba, aka you don't get to choose your own nickname so I'll call you Lil Gabe Muoneke Wannabe)
4) Nick (aka Nikolai Bakstritemov, aka Mr. Carter-but-not-Jay-Z)

Most Irritatingly Ubiquitous Noises
1) Roosters! - they don't wait for sunrise
2) Chinese Whores Arguing at God-Awful Hours of the Night
3) Car Horns in Vietnam (the fact that we're naming a specific country screams volumes)
4) Jack Johnson
5) Firecrackers during the wee hours in China
6) Construction... on the restaurant in which you are eating... while you're eating there.

on a similar note...
... Most Ubiquitous Tout-calls
1) Hello ? ... you buy something!
2) You want tuk-tuk?!?! (as you pass him... and you're riding in a tuk-tuk... would you like another?)
3) Hello, sir. Coin collection. (somehow these kids have Liberian coins but lack American)
4) Chinatown closed today...
5) No joking price.
6) Hello! Just looking!

Most Annoying Traveller Types
1) Jasper - snobby, obnoxious, irresponsible, and super-patronizing
2) The Old Man Whore-Justifier - "the women over here just respect wiser and more mature men" - actual quote from a guy who wouldn't let us ignore him
3) The Guru - he was everywhere first, back when it was still cool, and his "unique" world-view will surely leave you breathless
4) Fratkids Abroad - "the full moon party will blow your fuckin mind, bra"
5) Chinese Shutterbugs - at the Shanghai museum, they were actually taking photos of all of the photos... constantly

Most Blatant Examples of Official Corruption
1) entering Cambodia, Julie didn't have the required passport photo; so the border-dude said "gimme a dollar... ... thanks, go ahead"
2) Alex slid a Chinese 5er in his passport for the unofficial "medical exam" as per instructions; it fell in the guy's lap when I handed it over; then he charged me the official $5, gave me a receipt for it and kept both bills
3) A co-worker (unofficial candidate for douchebag of the year) named Chris got stopped by police and didn't have his license, which they usually ignore anyway; they confiscated his motor-bike and he didn't request a receipt; of course when he went to the police station to get his bike back, they had no record of any such stop

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