3 August to 5 August: Return train trip from Kunming to Beijing
I'll keep this brief because I'm feeling decidedly fluey. I guess I'm relieved that my body decided to hold off being ill until I got off the road. I should be grateful for that much! :) Stephen has just reminded me that I tend to be overdescriptive (he even went so far as to say he should read on an empty stomach!) so please be warned that I'm fluey so didn't even bother to censor my account of a 40 hour train trip from Kunming to Beijing ;)
Departure from Kunming - train station
I forgot to mention that my last night in Lijiang, I met some really funny Scottish guys on the roof of the hostel. They had those really rich, lovely Scottish accents that sound like they should be in a movie. They knew I was Australian immediately.
The train station in Kunming was huge. I blinked when I got into the waiting room - there just seemed to be people EVERYWHERE and everyone was carrying several bags and boxes tied up with string. I still don't quite understand the Chinese preoccupation with carrying many items in many little bags tied up with knots and string. It seems really inconvenient to me. There were separate smoking rooms but to my dismay people were smoking in the main area too - I was hoping that this wasn't going to be an omen of what the train was like ....
I was sitting there waiting for the train when a skinny young man with dyed hair, faux crocodile skin pants and shoes spat near my foot and I exclaimed: "Oh gross!" in English and the man next to me asked where I was from. He was going to Beijing too but unlike me, he had only been able to buy a hard seat ticket - so that was 40 hours sitting! The guy I sat next to on the bus to Kunming had it worse than me as well - 9 hours on the bus followed by 58 hours on a train to Shanghai...... That's long.
Description of hard sleeper
Even all the seats and beds were preallocated, for some reason all the Chinese people got up and jostled with one another while waiting at the platform gates. I asked the guy next to me why they were jostling and he shrugged and said they were just sick of waiting, probably. The platform was brightly lit and clean-looking.
I boarded the train and each open compartment had 3 bunks on either side. I was on the middle bunk of number 13. Everyone else in the compartment except one woman from Harbin was together so they all sat together on the bottom bunks. We didn't feel like we could sit on their beds so we sat on the seats by the window.
The middle bunk is quite good. The top bunk is too close to the ceiling so there are a lot of cracked heads and it's very claustrophobic. The bottom bunk is very roomy and nice but everyone sits on it including strangers which has got to be annoying. The only disadvantage with the middle bunk is that it's still quite narrow so you can't sit up so you have to climb up the ladder and then crawl in and then crawl backwards to get out of the bunk. Also, if you turn to the centre, you're pretty much face to face with the guy in the opposite bunk which would be all right if he was really good-looking but in my case, the guy was not so I spent most of my time facing the wall :)
I only gonked my head twice I think. I stowed my luggage and watched as all the Chinese people came hurrying on dragging bags and bags, boxes and boxes. The scary thing is, I think they were all full of food.
Neighbours, tickets, ID and lights out
The group in the compartment next to me were arguing very loudly with two Chinese peasant women who had come on board. The women had been assigned the top bunk and the old woman was too old and frail to be able to climb to the top. On one side, the bottom bunk was taken by a teenage kid and his four year old sister. I could understand why they wouldn't want to swap - the little kid was best on the bottom bunk. On the other side though was a teenage boy about 15 or 16 but his sister/girlfriend was extremely loud and bitchy and told the woman that they weren't going to swap. She was very very loud and outspoken about it.
The conductor then came and swapped our tickets for plastic cards - no idea why. Then the police came down and studied our ID (in my case my passport) and wrote down our berth numbers and out id details. It's usually lights out at 10pm but because we boarded at 10pm, that first night it was 11pm.
I got into bed after brushing my teeth and washing my face and discovered that it was quite comfortable in the bunk - the rocking of the train is actually quite comfortable. No one pulled my toe like they did on the way to Inner Mongolia.
Oh something horrible happened to me as I was brushing my teeth. I was at the handbasin finishing up when the woman next to me took her foot out of her shoe and put it IN THE HANDBASIN near my FACE where I was brushing my teeth and proceeded to wash her feet, one by one.
"That is so gross, I can't believe you did that." I exclaimed in English before I could stop myself. It didn't even occur to her that she was doing something wrong......
I notice that the poor little old ladies hadn't been lying. They sat on the seats all night and slept like that. They must have been exhausted. I would have swapped my bed if I could but my bed was in the middle and also required a climb up a ladder so it wouldn't have been much use to them either. I suspect that the boy would have swapped if it wasn't for the bitchy girl in his group. I just hope that one day the karma fairy visits her and one day when she's too old to climb up a ladder that someone refuses to swap bunks with her!
Waking up
I woke up at 6am. People are pretty inconsiderate. Usually when it's still early and people wake up early, they will try to speak in quiet voices so as not to wake other people, but on a Chinese train as soon as one person awakes they start yelling, talking loudly and laughing as if to say: "I'm awake so you should all be awake too!" I was glad to be awoken early because it meant I could brush my teeth on my own before the morning rush which was bound to be horrific.
And it was.
When I went back a little later to splash water on my face, there was a woman who was spending a good 10minutes there just hocking up phlegm into the sink without caring about anyone around her. I ran away immediately, bumping into a woman who was hocking up phlegm into a garbage bin. I wanted to cover up my ears as I ran back to my seat :)
Is it any wonder I read Harry Potter with such deep concentration? :)
Constant eating, eating and eating .... (and the inevitable result!)
I also know why Chinese always seem to leave such huge elephant-like turds in public toilets which they inconsiderately do not flush and leave behind for horrified koalas to confront, causing said koala to lose all desire to eat food for the rest of the day..... There appears to be an obsession with continuous eating!!!
I lay in my bunk from 6am and from 6am until 10pm when there are lights out, there is the constant sound of munching. Meals are on the dot - 9am for breafast, midday for lunch and 6pm for dinner but in between there are sunflower, pumpkin seeds, biscuits, cakes, various types of weird dried meat, various types of weird dried vegetables, processed meat sausages in red plastic wrappers, chips made of different substances, instant noodles (I have never seen so many instant noodles in my life), lots of different types of fruit, buns etc etc. Sometimes I lay there and close my eyes, heard and felt the rocking of the train and just listened to the munching and drinking. Poverty in China? What poverty? They eat all day - and non-stop!!!! I don't know why they eat so much, it's like they are stocking up for the winter or something
The girl diagonal from me was a hoot. She said in a loud voice: "It was 5am and they locked the toilet" (the lock the toilets when the train is at a station) "and I had a really bad stomach ache and had to go to the toilet". The thing was, she was still eating at that moment - a bun thing followed by rice. I wanted to say: "So eat less!" You would think that on such a long journey with so many people sharing the same bathroom that you would want to eat less but that is not their philosophy and they certainly kept the train staff busy as they had to pretty much clean the toilet every half hour.
I walked in to the bathrooms few times and recoiled in horror, waiting around until after I saw the staff member walk in, shudder, clean things up with a bucket and then emerge again.
I learnt a weird thing this trip. I had always incorrectly said: 去厕所 qu ce suo which literally means go to the toilet. I found out that you're supposed to say 上厕所 shang ce suo which literally means to sit/mount the toilet. I never said that because it sounded so .... vulgar and crude???? The thing is, I found out that if you say 去厕所 qu ce suo it means that you are literally inside it ie inside the bowl, which is also gross. I am now wondering if I can find another alternatively like go to the bathroom which is less crude. I know it's silly but I just do not want to say 上厕所 shang ce suo ...... Maybe I'll just be super-euphemistic and say: "I'm going to go and wash my hands". :)
Good news: Chinese trains now non-smoking!!!
One positive - Chinese long distance trains are now non-smoking!!!!! People smoke between the carriages so the smoke still floats in a little bit but for the most part they are non-smoking and most people honour that. Also, people tend to go to the bins between the carriages to spit so that is good as well.
Harry Potter 6
As mentioned, I finished Harry Potter more quickly than I intended. My review is here. Fortunately the countryside from the train is absolutely breath-taking. Grass, hills, mountains, ride fields, little vllages, dingey polluted towns, lakes, lakes surrounded by mountains. It's really amazing and occasionally you wish you could stop and go out for a closer look.
Feet, how people pass the time, loss of speaking abilities
I looked up from my reading and would see feet everywhere from people who were lying in their bunks. It was a very funny sight. One of the old ladies who has a black birthmark covering half of her face was using a little metal hook to clean out her ears and as the train frequently gives unexpected, violent jolts, I didn't want to look at her because I was afraid that at any moment she was going to remove half her brain.
By the time the train trip finished, I was absolutely exhausted and had almost given up using Mandarin, lapsing into almost entire sentences in English which were completely incomphrensible to those around me .... :)
Back to Beijing and an encounter at Beijing Bookworm
Then I got home, immediately had a blissful shower and tossed off the clothes I had been in for THREE days and soaped myself senseless. Then I headed out to Bookworm to borrow Order of the Phoenix to refresh my memory.
While I was there, I bumped into an older lady from Oklahoma named Sue who was there in China to teach English. She was really nice and was picking up dinner for her kids. She obviously really, really wanted to talk and at one point I asked her: "Are you sure your kids won't mind that their food is cold?"
She said: "Oh, if I'm disturbing you ...." I didn't mean it like that all and explained that of course she wasn't disturbing me, I was just worried that her kids might be upset. I think she was just rather lonely and wanted to talk.
Her kids are both in primary school - one almost in highschool. The problem is, international schools are really expensive here - USD20,000 to USD30,000 a year for each kid so her kids are studying at the Korean school.
"Oh so the classes are conducted in English?"
"No, they're in Korean."
Her poor kids! I can't even imagine what I would have said to dad if he had told me partway through primary school that we were going to China and from then on all my classes were going to be in KOREAN. Her kids don't even speak Korean and Korean is a category 3 level of difficulty language for native English speakers. My heart goes out to them.
We swapped email addresses because she wanted details of cinemas, the Pass By Bar and the Bookworm Book Club. After she left, to my embarrassment I discovered that the waitresses had charged MY dinner to poor Sue!!!!!! I meant to email her as soon as I got home but saw that she had already emailed me, so I emailed her back to say we had to meet up in any case because I had to pay her the money for my dinner!
Gosh she was enthusiastic, she has emailed me back four times already. I can't do it right now because I'm feeling so fluey but I'll definitely catch up with her soon. She was funny though, she said what a lot of Americans say: "You have a lovely accent - I can tell you're English!"
"Errr, no I'm Australian ...." ;)
I am uploading some song requests for people at sharebigfile. What I don't understand is why the system has to wait until AFTER I have uploaded the file to tell me it has illegal characters. It could tell me that at the start couldn't it? Anyway, I need to buy some groceries while I'm still mobile! I'm worried I might get sicker and not be able to get out of the apartment for a week :)
As this was my last holiday post, it's my last public post (apart from book/movie reviews). I'm going back to being a locked journal!
PS: A pleasant surprise on my return. I can now access Google News from Beijing. It used to be blocked. Still no BBC News but having Google News is wonderful. Those poor Russian submariners though :( Still, some good news on Alzheimer's Disease. A possible Aussie breakthough.
PPS: No word from Ori - bad sign. It probably means he hates the Bamboo Sea and will blame me for it ;) Oh dear.
PPPS: Minor dramas. I ducked off to the post office to post various items which I would have liked to have posted from Lijiang and Dali but ran out of time so instead they come from Beijing. Then I went to the bank to withdraw money to pay my rent. It's US dollars, I'll have to take it to another bank to convert to RMB before I give it to my landlord. Then I went to Carrefour when I had a bit of shopping trolley rage but managed to buy some items I needed. Got home, put my things in the freezer, went to check my email and realised that for some reason my computer was running on batteries. So I ran around in anxious circles, realised I had no power.
I ran around anxiously a bit more, checked the meter outside and saw that it had dropped to zero and I had no power left. Thank GOD I came back when I did or else everything in my fridge would have been gross when I got back.
I quickly ran to building 2 to the office and said to Helpful Man #1: "I'm off to buy more electricity - but will I be able to use it immediately or will there be a delay?"
"Should be able to use it straight away!" he told me so off I ran to the agricultural bank where the helpful security guard helped me fill in the form and in response received a rant from me: "In Australia, we notify people before we cut off their electricity! We don't just cut it off!!!!"
I queued up, thinking nervously about my cheese, fruit and frozen dumplings then ran back to my apartment, charged up my meter so that I had 150 units compared to the 24 and 54 everyone else has. Waited. Nothing. Waited. Nothing.
I waited five minutes then ran around in circles like a headless chicken chicken and then ran to building 2 where the service office is.
I burst unceremoniously through the doors of the office where Helpful Man #1, Helpful Man #2 and Helpful Man #3 gaped at me.
"It still doesn't work?" Helpful Man #1 asked me accurately.
"Yes, I bought the electricity, stuck the card in. My frozen dumplings are done for!" I exclaimed in outraged.
"All right, we'll look into it!" they told me as I ran out the door again.
Helpful Man #2 and Helpful Man #3 came running after me, out of their air conditioned office into the heat.
We ran to my apartment where to my embarrassment I discovered that the power had returned :) How embarrassing. Fortunately they were very nice about me giving them the run around ;)
Such dramas, but this, after all is China.
PPPPS: I just sent an email to Antony and Andrew for being such a cruddy correspondent:
Hullo fellow Aussies
Sorry for vanishing off the face of the earth. I just got back to Beijing (after a 9 hour bus trip and 40 hour train trip) from travels in Sichuan (Chengdu, Kanding, Leshan, Southern Sichuan Bamboo Sea) and Yunnan (Kunming, Dali & Lijiang).
I saw giant pandas, giant panda babies, horrifying Chinese toilets that would turn your hair white, Sichuan opera, bamboo seas, yak meat dumplings, 7 coloured lakes in mountains, biggish buddhas, rabid hordes of Chinese tourists, crusty Western back packers, cobblestoned ancient towns, monasteries, crimson robed Tibetan monks, Naxi tribeswomen, flaming torch festivals, mountains floating in the clouds, puking peasants in buses, fairy grottos in the cliffs, Sani Tribespeople, temples above waterfalls, chickens strangled slashed drowned and plucked one metre from where I was eating, towns nestled at the bottom of misty mountains, Naxi goat cheese, Bai tribespeople, Stone Forests etc.............
I hope you are both too well (sic) and will forgive me for being such a cruddy correspondent :)
Koala
Then Ant replied. Should have known he'd pick up on my embarrassing typo:
come back, come back, all is forgiven!!
work has been hell, so could not lay claim to being "too well". other than that...
so, didn't see too much interesting on the trip then, hey? huhuh.
see you soon.
Departure from Kunming - train station
I forgot to mention that my last night in Lijiang, I met some really funny Scottish guys on the roof of the hostel. They had those really rich, lovely Scottish accents that sound like they should be in a movie. They knew I was Australian immediately.
The train station in Kunming was huge. I blinked when I got into the waiting room - there just seemed to be people EVERYWHERE and everyone was carrying several bags and boxes tied up with string. I still don't quite understand the Chinese preoccupation with carrying many items in many little bags tied up with knots and string. It seems really inconvenient to me. There were separate smoking rooms but to my dismay people were smoking in the main area too - I was hoping that this wasn't going to be an omen of what the train was like ....
I was sitting there waiting for the train when a skinny young man with dyed hair, faux crocodile skin pants and shoes spat near my foot and I exclaimed: "Oh gross!" in English and the man next to me asked where I was from. He was going to Beijing too but unlike me, he had only been able to buy a hard seat ticket - so that was 40 hours sitting! The guy I sat next to on the bus to Kunming had it worse than me as well - 9 hours on the bus followed by 58 hours on a train to Shanghai...... That's long.
Description of hard sleeper
Even all the seats and beds were preallocated, for some reason all the Chinese people got up and jostled with one another while waiting at the platform gates. I asked the guy next to me why they were jostling and he shrugged and said they were just sick of waiting, probably. The platform was brightly lit and clean-looking.
I boarded the train and each open compartment had 3 bunks on either side. I was on the middle bunk of number 13. Everyone else in the compartment except one woman from Harbin was together so they all sat together on the bottom bunks. We didn't feel like we could sit on their beds so we sat on the seats by the window.
The middle bunk is quite good. The top bunk is too close to the ceiling so there are a lot of cracked heads and it's very claustrophobic. The bottom bunk is very roomy and nice but everyone sits on it including strangers which has got to be annoying. The only disadvantage with the middle bunk is that it's still quite narrow so you can't sit up so you have to climb up the ladder and then crawl in and then crawl backwards to get out of the bunk. Also, if you turn to the centre, you're pretty much face to face with the guy in the opposite bunk which would be all right if he was really good-looking but in my case, the guy was not so I spent most of my time facing the wall :)
I only gonked my head twice I think. I stowed my luggage and watched as all the Chinese people came hurrying on dragging bags and bags, boxes and boxes. The scary thing is, I think they were all full of food.
Neighbours, tickets, ID and lights out
The group in the compartment next to me were arguing very loudly with two Chinese peasant women who had come on board. The women had been assigned the top bunk and the old woman was too old and frail to be able to climb to the top. On one side, the bottom bunk was taken by a teenage kid and his four year old sister. I could understand why they wouldn't want to swap - the little kid was best on the bottom bunk. On the other side though was a teenage boy about 15 or 16 but his sister/girlfriend was extremely loud and bitchy and told the woman that they weren't going to swap. She was very very loud and outspoken about it.
The conductor then came and swapped our tickets for plastic cards - no idea why. Then the police came down and studied our ID (in my case my passport) and wrote down our berth numbers and out id details. It's usually lights out at 10pm but because we boarded at 10pm, that first night it was 11pm.
I got into bed after brushing my teeth and washing my face and discovered that it was quite comfortable in the bunk - the rocking of the train is actually quite comfortable. No one pulled my toe like they did on the way to Inner Mongolia.
Oh something horrible happened to me as I was brushing my teeth. I was at the handbasin finishing up when the woman next to me took her foot out of her shoe and put it IN THE HANDBASIN near my FACE where I was brushing my teeth and proceeded to wash her feet, one by one.
"That is so gross, I can't believe you did that." I exclaimed in English before I could stop myself. It didn't even occur to her that she was doing something wrong......
I notice that the poor little old ladies hadn't been lying. They sat on the seats all night and slept like that. They must have been exhausted. I would have swapped my bed if I could but my bed was in the middle and also required a climb up a ladder so it wouldn't have been much use to them either. I suspect that the boy would have swapped if it wasn't for the bitchy girl in his group. I just hope that one day the karma fairy visits her and one day when she's too old to climb up a ladder that someone refuses to swap bunks with her!
Waking up
I woke up at 6am. People are pretty inconsiderate. Usually when it's still early and people wake up early, they will try to speak in quiet voices so as not to wake other people, but on a Chinese train as soon as one person awakes they start yelling, talking loudly and laughing as if to say: "I'm awake so you should all be awake too!" I was glad to be awoken early because it meant I could brush my teeth on my own before the morning rush which was bound to be horrific.
And it was.
When I went back a little later to splash water on my face, there was a woman who was spending a good 10minutes there just hocking up phlegm into the sink without caring about anyone around her. I ran away immediately, bumping into a woman who was hocking up phlegm into a garbage bin. I wanted to cover up my ears as I ran back to my seat :)
Is it any wonder I read Harry Potter with such deep concentration? :)
Constant eating, eating and eating .... (and the inevitable result!)
I also know why Chinese always seem to leave such huge elephant-like turds in public toilets which they inconsiderately do not flush and leave behind for horrified koalas to confront, causing said koala to lose all desire to eat food for the rest of the day..... There appears to be an obsession with continuous eating!!!
I lay in my bunk from 6am and from 6am until 10pm when there are lights out, there is the constant sound of munching. Meals are on the dot - 9am for breafast, midday for lunch and 6pm for dinner but in between there are sunflower, pumpkin seeds, biscuits, cakes, various types of weird dried meat, various types of weird dried vegetables, processed meat sausages in red plastic wrappers, chips made of different substances, instant noodles (I have never seen so many instant noodles in my life), lots of different types of fruit, buns etc etc. Sometimes I lay there and close my eyes, heard and felt the rocking of the train and just listened to the munching and drinking. Poverty in China? What poverty? They eat all day - and non-stop!!!! I don't know why they eat so much, it's like they are stocking up for the winter or something
The girl diagonal from me was a hoot. She said in a loud voice: "It was 5am and they locked the toilet" (the lock the toilets when the train is at a station) "and I had a really bad stomach ache and had to go to the toilet". The thing was, she was still eating at that moment - a bun thing followed by rice. I wanted to say: "So eat less!" You would think that on such a long journey with so many people sharing the same bathroom that you would want to eat less but that is not their philosophy and they certainly kept the train staff busy as they had to pretty much clean the toilet every half hour.
I walked in to the bathrooms few times and recoiled in horror, waiting around until after I saw the staff member walk in, shudder, clean things up with a bucket and then emerge again.
I learnt a weird thing this trip. I had always incorrectly said: 去厕所 qu ce suo which literally means go to the toilet. I found out that you're supposed to say 上厕所 shang ce suo which literally means to sit/mount the toilet. I never said that because it sounded so .... vulgar and crude???? The thing is, I found out that if you say 去厕所 qu ce suo it means that you are literally inside it ie inside the bowl, which is also gross. I am now wondering if I can find another alternatively like go to the bathroom which is less crude. I know it's silly but I just do not want to say 上厕所 shang ce suo ...... Maybe I'll just be super-euphemistic and say: "I'm going to go and wash my hands". :)
Good news: Chinese trains now non-smoking!!!
One positive - Chinese long distance trains are now non-smoking!!!!! People smoke between the carriages so the smoke still floats in a little bit but for the most part they are non-smoking and most people honour that. Also, people tend to go to the bins between the carriages to spit so that is good as well.
Harry Potter 6
As mentioned, I finished Harry Potter more quickly than I intended. My review is here. Fortunately the countryside from the train is absolutely breath-taking. Grass, hills, mountains, ride fields, little vllages, dingey polluted towns, lakes, lakes surrounded by mountains. It's really amazing and occasionally you wish you could stop and go out for a closer look.
Feet, how people pass the time, loss of speaking abilities
I looked up from my reading and would see feet everywhere from people who were lying in their bunks. It was a very funny sight. One of the old ladies who has a black birthmark covering half of her face was using a little metal hook to clean out her ears and as the train frequently gives unexpected, violent jolts, I didn't want to look at her because I was afraid that at any moment she was going to remove half her brain.
By the time the train trip finished, I was absolutely exhausted and had almost given up using Mandarin, lapsing into almost entire sentences in English which were completely incomphrensible to those around me .... :)
Back to Beijing and an encounter at Beijing Bookworm
Then I got home, immediately had a blissful shower and tossed off the clothes I had been in for THREE days and soaped myself senseless. Then I headed out to Bookworm to borrow Order of the Phoenix to refresh my memory.
While I was there, I bumped into an older lady from Oklahoma named Sue who was there in China to teach English. She was really nice and was picking up dinner for her kids. She obviously really, really wanted to talk and at one point I asked her: "Are you sure your kids won't mind that their food is cold?"
She said: "Oh, if I'm disturbing you ...." I didn't mean it like that all and explained that of course she wasn't disturbing me, I was just worried that her kids might be upset. I think she was just rather lonely and wanted to talk.
Her kids are both in primary school - one almost in highschool. The problem is, international schools are really expensive here - USD20,000 to USD30,000 a year for each kid so her kids are studying at the Korean school.
"Oh so the classes are conducted in English?"
"No, they're in Korean."
Her poor kids! I can't even imagine what I would have said to dad if he had told me partway through primary school that we were going to China and from then on all my classes were going to be in KOREAN. Her kids don't even speak Korean and Korean is a category 3 level of difficulty language for native English speakers. My heart goes out to them.
We swapped email addresses because she wanted details of cinemas, the Pass By Bar and the Bookworm Book Club. After she left, to my embarrassment I discovered that the waitresses had charged MY dinner to poor Sue!!!!!! I meant to email her as soon as I got home but saw that she had already emailed me, so I emailed her back to say we had to meet up in any case because I had to pay her the money for my dinner!
Gosh she was enthusiastic, she has emailed me back four times already. I can't do it right now because I'm feeling so fluey but I'll definitely catch up with her soon. She was funny though, she said what a lot of Americans say: "You have a lovely accent - I can tell you're English!"
"Errr, no I'm Australian ...." ;)
I am uploading some song requests for people at sharebigfile. What I don't understand is why the system has to wait until AFTER I have uploaded the file to tell me it has illegal characters. It could tell me that at the start couldn't it? Anyway, I need to buy some groceries while I'm still mobile! I'm worried I might get sicker and not be able to get out of the apartment for a week :)
As this was my last holiday post, it's my last public post (apart from book/movie reviews). I'm going back to being a locked journal!
PS: A pleasant surprise on my return. I can now access Google News from Beijing. It used to be blocked. Still no BBC News but having Google News is wonderful. Those poor Russian submariners though :( Still, some good news on Alzheimer's Disease. A possible Aussie breakthough.
PPS: No word from Ori - bad sign. It probably means he hates the Bamboo Sea and will blame me for it ;) Oh dear.
PPPS: Minor dramas. I ducked off to the post office to post various items which I would have liked to have posted from Lijiang and Dali but ran out of time so instead they come from Beijing. Then I went to the bank to withdraw money to pay my rent. It's US dollars, I'll have to take it to another bank to convert to RMB before I give it to my landlord. Then I went to Carrefour when I had a bit of shopping trolley rage but managed to buy some items I needed. Got home, put my things in the freezer, went to check my email and realised that for some reason my computer was running on batteries. So I ran around in anxious circles, realised I had no power.
I ran around anxiously a bit more, checked the meter outside and saw that it had dropped to zero and I had no power left. Thank GOD I came back when I did or else everything in my fridge would have been gross when I got back.
I quickly ran to building 2 to the office and said to Helpful Man #1: "I'm off to buy more electricity - but will I be able to use it immediately or will there be a delay?"
"Should be able to use it straight away!" he told me so off I ran to the agricultural bank where the helpful security guard helped me fill in the form and in response received a rant from me: "In Australia, we notify people before we cut off their electricity! We don't just cut it off!!!!"
I queued up, thinking nervously about my cheese, fruit and frozen dumplings then ran back to my apartment, charged up my meter so that I had 150 units compared to the 24 and 54 everyone else has. Waited. Nothing. Waited. Nothing.
I waited five minutes then ran around in circles like a headless chicken chicken and then ran to building 2 where the service office is.
I burst unceremoniously through the doors of the office where Helpful Man #1, Helpful Man #2 and Helpful Man #3 gaped at me.
"It still doesn't work?" Helpful Man #1 asked me accurately.
"Yes, I bought the electricity, stuck the card in. My frozen dumplings are done for!" I exclaimed in outraged.
"All right, we'll look into it!" they told me as I ran out the door again.
Helpful Man #2 and Helpful Man #3 came running after me, out of their air conditioned office into the heat.
We ran to my apartment where to my embarrassment I discovered that the power had returned :) How embarrassing. Fortunately they were very nice about me giving them the run around ;)
Such dramas, but this, after all is China.
PPPPS: I just sent an email to Antony and Andrew for being such a cruddy correspondent:
Hullo fellow Aussies
Sorry for vanishing off the face of the earth. I just got back to Beijing (after a 9 hour bus trip and 40 hour train trip) from travels in Sichuan (Chengdu, Kanding, Leshan, Southern Sichuan Bamboo Sea) and Yunnan (Kunming, Dali & Lijiang).
I saw giant pandas, giant panda babies, horrifying Chinese toilets that would turn your hair white, Sichuan opera, bamboo seas, yak meat dumplings, 7 coloured lakes in mountains, biggish buddhas, rabid hordes of Chinese tourists, crusty Western back packers, cobblestoned ancient towns, monasteries, crimson robed Tibetan monks, Naxi tribeswomen, flaming torch festivals, mountains floating in the clouds, puking peasants in buses, fairy grottos in the cliffs, Sani Tribespeople, temples above waterfalls, chickens strangled slashed drowned and plucked one metre from where I was eating, towns nestled at the bottom of misty mountains, Naxi goat cheese, Bai tribespeople, Stone Forests etc.............
I hope you are both too well (sic) and will forgive me for being such a cruddy correspondent :)
Koala
Then Ant replied. Should have known he'd pick up on my embarrassing typo:
come back, come back, all is forgiven!!
work has been hell, so could not lay claim to being "too well". other than that...
so, didn't see too much interesting on the trip then, hey? huhuh.
see you soon.