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Hello Everyone,
Been 11 days since my last blog, I really need to make time to update more often cos I keep forgetting what ive done. Its been crazy, last time I was in Shangrila, unfortunately I suffered a mild case of altitude sickness as the town sits at over 3500m, also the night before I hadnt slept due to the same problem so I decided I needed to make it to lower ground as the lack of sleep was getting to me. I spent the morning at a Tibetan monestary before boarding yet another bus. I got on a bus back to Lijang which i was told would take 3 hours... huh! 5 and a half hours later... I picked up my luggage and went to the long distance bus terminal and boarded a bus bound for Kunming, one of the nice sleeper ones. Unfortunately this particular one had three rows of beds wide with 2 levels but in the back row they had five beds accross. And lucky me was given a spot on the back meaning I was squashed in between 4 Chinese people. Was a fun night, i spent most of it trying to have a conversation with the 18 year old Chinese guy next to me using my phrasebook and my ipod as a torch, he was fascinated to see that I had hair on my arms, my face, my chest. No sleep that night as a result of the older lady on the otherside who was spooning me most of the night and the Chinese guy who kept waking me up and pointing to random things. So with 3 days without sleep I got to Kunming and straight onto a train to Guiyang, I got the sleeper train during the day and rested as much as I could, at the end of the trip I got talking to a Chinese policeman who helped me out a lot as he spoke a bit of english so was able to help me find somewhere to sleep once I got to Guiyang at 10pm. I was tired and thought I could sleep anywhere... i couldnt. Halfway through the night I had to find somewhere else to sleep because the place was terrible, when we had found the place origanally the policeman had told me not to stay there but i had assured him id be alright. I ended up changing from a 30 Yuan a night room to a 3 star hotel which was 100 yuan ($15) a night down from 200. Got a much better sleep. I realised the next day that I was in Guiyang on bad information from Tayne, he told me I could access the minority villages from there but I couldnt meaning I was there for no reason, the city was huge and quite unappealing, polluted and crowded. I was expecting it to have been a wasted day but it turned out to be quite interesting. Here is a list of things I never expected to do that day.
1. Be in a city i'd never heard of, and be the only white person I saw all day
2. Get hijacked by a guy who helped me to buy a bus ticket to the next town
3. Get dragged around the city all day with him and his brother
4. Get paraded to his friends and family I met his brother and 2 of his sisters
5. Get treated like a celebrity everywhere I went ( I swear they had never seen a white guy before)
6. Get begged by a group of testers to advance try 'sky runners' in the middle of the city (there a bit like stilts, but way more extreme)
7. Have my photo taken like a million times by a million different Chinese people
8. Get roped into dancing with a 50 year old woman in an older peoples dance group in front of a massive statue of Chairman Mao in a park in the middle of the city in front of about 200 onlookers all giving me the thumbs up.
9. Actually having a really good day in Guiyang
The next morning I got off the bus in Guilin where I should have gone to in the first place, I decided to relax a bit and found a Youth hostel, in total I spent 5 days in Guilin and managed to avoid getting sucked into the tourist trap that is Yungshou, I hung out with local people and chilled out, I didnt go to any tourist attractions but really enjoyed hanging out with some locals that I had met through a Chinese guy I met in a bookstore who had helped me to get name cards made up, I paid $5 for 100 name cards that have a coloured world map on the back (because noone knows where Australia is.. or Aud-ray-lia as the chinese call it) and on the front it has my name (because people have trouble pronouncing it) and my email address because I have been meeting so many people that I have gotten sick of writing on scraps of paper. I did attempt to go to a minority village but ended up stranded for a day with only a dollar to spend after all 4 of the atms in the town would not accept my mastercard, so I went back to Guilin and enjoyed doing nothing.
I got the overnight train to Xian, I thoguht it would take only 12 hours so I just got a soft seat rather then a sleeper... i was wrong, it took 26 hours- thats 26 hours sitting in a booth of 6 people all staring at me and trying to engage in conversation no matter how many expressions I gave them to show that I don't know Chinese.
Now I am in Xian, the first day I went to the small and big wild goose pagodas and just walked around town, yesterday I went to the terracotta warriors which i thought were amazing i did an organised tour where I was the only one in the group so it worked out good. There were more foreigners then chinese people at the terracotta warriors which is something I have seen nowhere else in China. I met a spanish guy who was staying in the dorm with me which was cool as I am attempting to learn spanish. I even found a bookstore in Xian which sold all the spanish language materials I could ever need. I stayed in the dorm room 3 nights and only 1 night was there someone else in there other then me. Then today I hired a bike and rode around the Xian city wall, it is the only city in China with a complete wall surrounding it, it was very enjoyable just riding around listening to my ipod with noone else around. Xian is really cool but now I am about to board a train to Beijing, my final destination in Asia, these 2 months have gone really fast. I am spending the next 6 days in Beijing, a few days of site seeing then a few days of relaxation before i get to London.
In the last 2 months I have spent 282 hours on trains, planes and buses- thats over 11 days!!! Mostly overnight trains and buses which has saved me many nights accommodation! i dont regret a thing, its been the most amazing time, I have some lifelong friends and seen and done things that I could never imagine I would be doing. I can't wait till the next stage of the trip.
- comments
Zara WOW! You have had an amazing journey! Incredible hahah. I am planning on a trip to china next month and I was planning on visiting Beijing, Shaghai, Hong Kong, kunming, and Xi'an. Do you have any advice?