In Leshan
I'm in Leshan. It's really hot but I'm not complaining because the sunny, cheerful heat is a change to the somewhat cold and depressing mountains around Kanding. I just realised I'm a sun person and need a lot of sunlight even though I call myself a creature of darkness and spend a lot of time inside and in the shade. I like there to be sunlight outside though! Leshan is gorgeous and my hotel is GREAT but I'll start from the beginning!
Leaving Kanding
I left Kanding at 7am this morning. Again, I was at the front but to my misfortune I was squashed next to a Very Smelly Inconsiderate Man from Somewhere In Guangdong Province. He and his family spoke Cantonese but judging by their clothing and accents, they definitely were not from Hong Kong. He kept trying to squash me in my seat, he was very inconsiderate about where he sat, he hadn't used a toothbrush in years judging by his breath, at one point he emptied his nose out onto the ground outside the bus, wiped his hands on his pants and then without washing either hands or pear, ate a pear. I was really grossed out. It was for reasons like that that I had decided to wear my muddy pants from the hiking in Kanding.
The trip was very bumpy so everytime we rounded a corner, I took the opportunity to shove him and his legs over to his side of the seat. Worse was when he started burping. His breath smelt soooo bad that I was considering offering him some chewing gum but decided against it.
The drive from the mountains was just as beautiful as the way up. Some part were the same but as Leshan is South East of Chengdu, road we took was slightly different. Again, I admired the misty mountains, the forest, the river. At one particularly scary turn we saw that a small minibus taxi (called miandi - bread roll taxi because of its shape) had fallen over the edge. We learned that the day before yesterday, the car had gone over the edge killing all 7 Korean students ....... It was such a depressing thought - dying so far away from home, the roads near Kanding are so remote and cut off. It would have been ages before anyone came to find them, ages before medical aid came and assuming that they were dead already, in the search for their identification I'm sure that all their money was taken. 7 Koreans travelling would have had a lot of USD or RMB on their persons. Anyway, it was a sobering start to the morning.
The drive was a long one and there were many stops because we had a dodgy corrupt bus driver who let people on who paid him directly for the privilege. Technically, tickets are supposed to be purchased at the stations but he was just taking their money and pocketing it. Only RMB2-3 each time though, I noticed.
We had what appeared to be the same tracklist of music as the bus to Kanding but the difference was our driver seemed to have the pirated mtv version instead of the legitimate version the other driver had. Then he played "XXX The Next Level" with Ice Cube which I did not watch. I was trying to breathe because dodgy bus driver kept smoking on a non-smoking bus. Fortunately everyone else on the bus followed the non-smoking guidelines.
I have a real conflict with the travel issue. I love travelling, I love seeing beautiful sights especially natural beauty - but I hate dirtiness and bad smells. Who doesn't, I know but I'm particularly sensitive and China can be particularly excessive.
I was downplaying the hotel in Kanding but now that I'm Leshan in the lovely, sunny, open-spaced THREE rooms with a clean WESTERN toilet, I can confess that I disliked that dirty, smelly hotel room in Kanding which smelt like urine even when I closed the toilet door. Worse, the bathroom which contained the Chinese toilet absolutely STANK of what you would expect ...... there was nothing I could do about it. I tried pouring quantites of water down the drain but that was no help, it was just an awful, awful smell. I know that's what I have to expect in backward places like Kanding which are basically frontier territory .... but it just means that my desire to travel and see beautiful things has to be extremely strong given that eg I never go barefoot because I hate dirty feet, I hate gardening because I don't like getting my hands dirty, I don't like eating with my bare hands etc etc.
The trip on the bus long and the absolutely beautiful scenery more than compensated for everything but there were a few things that really got to me. I can understand why a Tibetan herder with only a yak would be dirty, but the people sitting near me were on holiday and had a nice camera. If they could afford all of that, you would think they would wash their clothes, their bodies and brush their teeth more!
A VERY long rant about hygiene
I know I am being super judgmental and critical and am going to be sent to the hell for atheists but there's something really gross about the fact that sooooooooooo many Chinese men are heavy smokers. They wipe their hands on their dirty clothes, open a mouth full of crooked teeth stained brown and yellow and spit and snot with impunity everywhere. Almost every single foreigner I meet comments on it.
I know that this is an education issue - none of my teachers acts like this, but to be honest, I know for a fact that even lawyers at my former firm do it too! Julian, Scott and Nick were always complaining to me that the lawyers with whom they shared an office would burp and fart all through the day, and Julian mentioned one lawyer who would make the long wind up sound as if to hock - and then instead of spitting, would swallow but the effect on Julian was the same. He felt unwell.
I didn't mean to rant for so long on this topic, I knew China was like this before I came but today was seriously extreme as the Smelly Man next to me and his wife were burping, hocking and snotting with impunity. It was horrible! :) It's easy to make me queasy early in the morning so it was bad for me.
Then the bus stopped at a "truck stop" kind of food place and I got out and looked at the food and could not for the life of me bring myself to eat anything there. The bowls of food had been sitting there for ages, the place was filthy and I felt really sick just looking at the food. I decided to wait until I got to Leshan and in the meantime ate some biscuits I had bought in Chengdu.
The other thing is that I deliberately dehydrate myself for these long journeys because the toilets are so frightening. The smell is so bad that I physically recoil when I come close and I usually take a deep breath, unzip FIRST and then go in, then dash out and THEN zip up.
Today, I went into this small hut and this HUGE pig roared at me in a terrifying fashion. I felt like snapping back at him in Chinese:"Don't be so smug, you're a pig in China. I don't think they're keeping you as a pet."
The petrol station toilets are cleaner but some of the toilets are so bad I almost want to cry I'm so scared of them :) It's only because I want to see the beautiful places so much that I put up with the dreaded Chinese toilet. Honestly, I have seen more bare butts than I ever wanted to and I certainly hope that I never, ever again encounter the women who might have seen my bare butt. Yes the cleanliness issue is a poverty issue but there are sooooooooooo many surplus workers. At the airports each cleaner seems to be given an area of 1m square to clean and they clean it over and over and over. Why can't the same attention be given to litter and keeping toilets clean?????
Am I being too simplistic? :)
Beautiful scenery
As we came out of the mountains, we left the mist behind. The road was nuts and we were flying all over the place but everywhere was so flat and green. It really reminded me of Vietnam with rice fields. Except here I could see row upon row of corn fields.
There were colours everywhere - particularly bright yellow as people dried corn on the road. There were also splashes of bright red when they dried chilly peppers. I can't believe the contrasts in China - the dark, mistiness of the mountains around Kanding with horses and yaks.
Then down towards Leshan it's corn, water buffalo and all sorts of fruits and vegetables. The reason I think of Vietnam is for another reason. Despite being a poor and depressing place, it doesn't feel depressing because of the sunlight and the simplicity of the countryside. The part of Sichuan I saw today was like that.
In the mountains around Kanding, the scenery was stunningly beautiful but I got depressed thinking about how on earth people eke out a living in such an unforgiving place. Down South, although they are still poor, I could see markets where they had all kinds of fruits and vegetables and people walked along the streets with baskets on their back filled with all sorts of green plants.
The bad thing was, even in such beautiful countryside, unlike Vietam and Australia - the sky is not blue. It's hazy and polluted still and I realised that there were smoke stacks spewing out huge quantities of thick, black smoke into the air. It's a shame.
Leshan
We got into Leshan after about 9 hours. I almost fell off the bus I was so limp from the bumps :) A pesky pedicab driver helped me put my bag on and showed me where I could buy a ticket to Yibin because I decided to buy a ticket in advance to save time. He was kinda friendly despite being annoying so I hopped in his pedicab for him to take me to my hotel. RMB2 was what he said it would cost which is ridiculously cheap given that it is soooooooooooo hot here and he pedalled me and my 10kg bag for about 45minutes!!!!!!!!!
Leshan is gorgeous. It's surrounded by mountains and forests, there's a river,the sky is clear and clean. The city is small but looks incredibly modern and "nice". It's not all China grungey - there are stretches of modern-looking stores that look like a suburb of Australia but then there are gorgeous little side streets filled with Chinese people sitting around playing mahjong, watching the world go buy and selling fruits and vegetables using old-fashioned scales. There are pedicabs everywhere and there's a really nice, relaxed vibe in the air.
People look happy and relaxed and I feel relaxed here.
The cab driver tried unsuccessfully to try to persuade me to go to other hotels - presumably ones for which he receives a commission :) The hotel is really nice and is recommended by the Lonely Planet. When I got here, the little guy was sooooo hot and sweaty so I gave him RMB3 instead of RMB2. Yes I had visions of American GIs destroying local Vietamese economy during the Vietnam War so I didn't want to overpay him and inflate prices, but I also thought he deserved more than RMB2for his hard work.
The people at the desk were so nice. I think they felt sorry for me because I looked so muddy, tomato-faced and crumpled from my bumpy 9 hour journey next to Smelly Man because they gave me the room for RMB100 instead of RMB280. They also saw my Lonely Planet and said: "Oh she has one too. All the foreigners have that book!"
Sichuan dialect is hard to understand but I can get the basics - on the bus all the instructions were in Sichuan dialect including: "We will break for 30minutes" and "there are toilets at the place we will stop to eat". :)
They took me up to my room. I almost started crying it was so nice. Sunny, smooth wooden floor with a sofa. On the left was a HUGE long bathroom with clean handbasin, Western toilet, shower/bathtub. There was also a watercooler in the living room with hot and warm (?) water. In the other room was a large bed, air conditioner and tv. The only downside - mosquitos galore. I was bitten 3 times in the first 10 minutes and have already swelled up. I covered myself in Aerogarde and have asked them for a mosquito repeller thingy for my room.
Then I took my laundry down to have washed. I had my socks in a separate bag. After the hiking in Kanding, they were almost toxic. They smelt sooooooooooooooo bad. I had already decided that if anyone tried to mug me, I was going to wave my socks at them and watch them die :) I was so embarrassed at the laundromat as they went through my filthy clothes to count the items for cost purposes. I mean the little old lady was fine but the sweet little old man sifting through my undies was just embarrassing but he was absolutely gorgeous and so friendly.
Then I went for a wander to look for this Internet cafe. I accidentally bought "Blue Sword" water when looking for mineral water which is mint flavoured water which tastes like you're drinking toothpaste. It's awful so I tossed that out and bought a new bottle. I'm going to wander somemore before it gets dark but it really is very nice here!
Leaving Kanding
I left Kanding at 7am this morning. Again, I was at the front but to my misfortune I was squashed next to a Very Smelly Inconsiderate Man from Somewhere In Guangdong Province. He and his family spoke Cantonese but judging by their clothing and accents, they definitely were not from Hong Kong. He kept trying to squash me in my seat, he was very inconsiderate about where he sat, he hadn't used a toothbrush in years judging by his breath, at one point he emptied his nose out onto the ground outside the bus, wiped his hands on his pants and then without washing either hands or pear, ate a pear. I was really grossed out. It was for reasons like that that I had decided to wear my muddy pants from the hiking in Kanding.
The trip was very bumpy so everytime we rounded a corner, I took the opportunity to shove him and his legs over to his side of the seat. Worse was when he started burping. His breath smelt soooo bad that I was considering offering him some chewing gum but decided against it.
The drive from the mountains was just as beautiful as the way up. Some part were the same but as Leshan is South East of Chengdu, road we took was slightly different. Again, I admired the misty mountains, the forest, the river. At one particularly scary turn we saw that a small minibus taxi (called miandi - bread roll taxi because of its shape) had fallen over the edge. We learned that the day before yesterday, the car had gone over the edge killing all 7 Korean students ....... It was such a depressing thought - dying so far away from home, the roads near Kanding are so remote and cut off. It would have been ages before anyone came to find them, ages before medical aid came and assuming that they were dead already, in the search for their identification I'm sure that all their money was taken. 7 Koreans travelling would have had a lot of USD or RMB on their persons. Anyway, it was a sobering start to the morning.
The drive was a long one and there were many stops because we had a dodgy corrupt bus driver who let people on who paid him directly for the privilege. Technically, tickets are supposed to be purchased at the stations but he was just taking their money and pocketing it. Only RMB2-3 each time though, I noticed.
We had what appeared to be the same tracklist of music as the bus to Kanding but the difference was our driver seemed to have the pirated mtv version instead of the legitimate version the other driver had. Then he played "XXX The Next Level" with Ice Cube which I did not watch. I was trying to breathe because dodgy bus driver kept smoking on a non-smoking bus. Fortunately everyone else on the bus followed the non-smoking guidelines.
I have a real conflict with the travel issue. I love travelling, I love seeing beautiful sights especially natural beauty - but I hate dirtiness and bad smells. Who doesn't, I know but I'm particularly sensitive and China can be particularly excessive.
I was downplaying the hotel in Kanding but now that I'm Leshan in the lovely, sunny, open-spaced THREE rooms with a clean WESTERN toilet, I can confess that I disliked that dirty, smelly hotel room in Kanding which smelt like urine even when I closed the toilet door. Worse, the bathroom which contained the Chinese toilet absolutely STANK of what you would expect ...... there was nothing I could do about it. I tried pouring quantites of water down the drain but that was no help, it was just an awful, awful smell. I know that's what I have to expect in backward places like Kanding which are basically frontier territory .... but it just means that my desire to travel and see beautiful things has to be extremely strong given that eg I never go barefoot because I hate dirty feet, I hate gardening because I don't like getting my hands dirty, I don't like eating with my bare hands etc etc.
The trip on the bus long and the absolutely beautiful scenery more than compensated for everything but there were a few things that really got to me. I can understand why a Tibetan herder with only a yak would be dirty, but the people sitting near me were on holiday and had a nice camera. If they could afford all of that, you would think they would wash their clothes, their bodies and brush their teeth more!
A VERY long rant about hygiene
I know I am being super judgmental and critical and am going to be sent to the hell for atheists but there's something really gross about the fact that sooooooooooo many Chinese men are heavy smokers. They wipe their hands on their dirty clothes, open a mouth full of crooked teeth stained brown and yellow and spit and snot with impunity everywhere. Almost every single foreigner I meet comments on it.
I know that this is an education issue - none of my teachers acts like this, but to be honest, I know for a fact that even lawyers at my former firm do it too! Julian, Scott and Nick were always complaining to me that the lawyers with whom they shared an office would burp and fart all through the day, and Julian mentioned one lawyer who would make the long wind up sound as if to hock - and then instead of spitting, would swallow but the effect on Julian was the same. He felt unwell.
I didn't mean to rant for so long on this topic, I knew China was like this before I came but today was seriously extreme as the Smelly Man next to me and his wife were burping, hocking and snotting with impunity. It was horrible! :) It's easy to make me queasy early in the morning so it was bad for me.
Then the bus stopped at a "truck stop" kind of food place and I got out and looked at the food and could not for the life of me bring myself to eat anything there. The bowls of food had been sitting there for ages, the place was filthy and I felt really sick just looking at the food. I decided to wait until I got to Leshan and in the meantime ate some biscuits I had bought in Chengdu.
The other thing is that I deliberately dehydrate myself for these long journeys because the toilets are so frightening. The smell is so bad that I physically recoil when I come close and I usually take a deep breath, unzip FIRST and then go in, then dash out and THEN zip up.
Today, I went into this small hut and this HUGE pig roared at me in a terrifying fashion. I felt like snapping back at him in Chinese:"Don't be so smug, you're a pig in China. I don't think they're keeping you as a pet."
The petrol station toilets are cleaner but some of the toilets are so bad I almost want to cry I'm so scared of them :) It's only because I want to see the beautiful places so much that I put up with the dreaded Chinese toilet. Honestly, I have seen more bare butts than I ever wanted to and I certainly hope that I never, ever again encounter the women who might have seen my bare butt. Yes the cleanliness issue is a poverty issue but there are sooooooooooo many surplus workers. At the airports each cleaner seems to be given an area of 1m square to clean and they clean it over and over and over. Why can't the same attention be given to litter and keeping toilets clean?????
Am I being too simplistic? :)
Beautiful scenery
As we came out of the mountains, we left the mist behind. The road was nuts and we were flying all over the place but everywhere was so flat and green. It really reminded me of Vietnam with rice fields. Except here I could see row upon row of corn fields.
There were colours everywhere - particularly bright yellow as people dried corn on the road. There were also splashes of bright red when they dried chilly peppers. I can't believe the contrasts in China - the dark, mistiness of the mountains around Kanding with horses and yaks.
Then down towards Leshan it's corn, water buffalo and all sorts of fruits and vegetables. The reason I think of Vietnam is for another reason. Despite being a poor and depressing place, it doesn't feel depressing because of the sunlight and the simplicity of the countryside. The part of Sichuan I saw today was like that.
In the mountains around Kanding, the scenery was stunningly beautiful but I got depressed thinking about how on earth people eke out a living in such an unforgiving place. Down South, although they are still poor, I could see markets where they had all kinds of fruits and vegetables and people walked along the streets with baskets on their back filled with all sorts of green plants.
The bad thing was, even in such beautiful countryside, unlike Vietam and Australia - the sky is not blue. It's hazy and polluted still and I realised that there were smoke stacks spewing out huge quantities of thick, black smoke into the air. It's a shame.
Leshan
We got into Leshan after about 9 hours. I almost fell off the bus I was so limp from the bumps :) A pesky pedicab driver helped me put my bag on and showed me where I could buy a ticket to Yibin because I decided to buy a ticket in advance to save time. He was kinda friendly despite being annoying so I hopped in his pedicab for him to take me to my hotel. RMB2 was what he said it would cost which is ridiculously cheap given that it is soooooooooooo hot here and he pedalled me and my 10kg bag for about 45minutes!!!!!!!!!
Leshan is gorgeous. It's surrounded by mountains and forests, there's a river,the sky is clear and clean. The city is small but looks incredibly modern and "nice". It's not all China grungey - there are stretches of modern-looking stores that look like a suburb of Australia but then there are gorgeous little side streets filled with Chinese people sitting around playing mahjong, watching the world go buy and selling fruits and vegetables using old-fashioned scales. There are pedicabs everywhere and there's a really nice, relaxed vibe in the air.
People look happy and relaxed and I feel relaxed here.
The cab driver tried unsuccessfully to try to persuade me to go to other hotels - presumably ones for which he receives a commission :) The hotel is really nice and is recommended by the Lonely Planet. When I got here, the little guy was sooooo hot and sweaty so I gave him RMB3 instead of RMB2. Yes I had visions of American GIs destroying local Vietamese economy during the Vietnam War so I didn't want to overpay him and inflate prices, but I also thought he deserved more than RMB2for his hard work.
The people at the desk were so nice. I think they felt sorry for me because I looked so muddy, tomato-faced and crumpled from my bumpy 9 hour journey next to Smelly Man because they gave me the room for RMB100 instead of RMB280. They also saw my Lonely Planet and said: "Oh she has one too. All the foreigners have that book!"
Sichuan dialect is hard to understand but I can get the basics - on the bus all the instructions were in Sichuan dialect including: "We will break for 30minutes" and "there are toilets at the place we will stop to eat". :)
They took me up to my room. I almost started crying it was so nice. Sunny, smooth wooden floor with a sofa. On the left was a HUGE long bathroom with clean handbasin, Western toilet, shower/bathtub. There was also a watercooler in the living room with hot and warm (?) water. In the other room was a large bed, air conditioner and tv. The only downside - mosquitos galore. I was bitten 3 times in the first 10 minutes and have already swelled up. I covered myself in Aerogarde and have asked them for a mosquito repeller thingy for my room.
Then I took my laundry down to have washed. I had my socks in a separate bag. After the hiking in Kanding, they were almost toxic. They smelt sooooooooooooooo bad. I had already decided that if anyone tried to mug me, I was going to wave my socks at them and watch them die :) I was so embarrassed at the laundromat as they went through my filthy clothes to count the items for cost purposes. I mean the little old lady was fine but the sweet little old man sifting through my undies was just embarrassing but he was absolutely gorgeous and so friendly.
Then I went for a wander to look for this Internet cafe. I accidentally bought "Blue Sword" water when looking for mineral water which is mint flavoured water which tastes like you're drinking toothpaste. It's awful so I tossed that out and bought a new bottle. I'm going to wander somemore before it gets dark but it really is very nice here!