The Chinese government may be after me. I was getting Internet at the
airport so was trying to take full advantage of it. It wouldn't load
Facebook though. After probably trying 12-17 times (yes I really
really wanted to get on) I remembered that social networking sites are
blocked in China. This is the first time I've had steady access to
Internet in the last three months and i can't get on anything good. No
twitter. No Facebook. No YouTube. No blog. No google. Lamest thing
ever.
Oooh so my parents will be so proud of me! Our flight from Hong Kong
to Guilin is technically an "international flight" but we didn't
really realize that so we were sorta in a hurry. They pushed the
flight back though so we had tons of time after we eventually made it
through customs. I started taking off my coat and shoes for security
and everyone gave us these weird looks. You don't have to get
undressed here. Awkward....
Since we had so much time we stopped and got food and a few drinks.
Our gate was close, so two minutes before we were suppose to board we
left the restaurant only to find out we have to take a shuttle.
Crapola. So we ran through the airport (I've only done that once
before...thanks dad) arrived ten minutes late only to find everyone
sitting at the gate still. We decided to grab a quick coffee which
turned into magazines and books too. Well they don't really make
boarding announcements like the US so we re walking to the gate again
only to run into this guy who asked us if we were on the Guilin
flight. He said they were waiting for us. Yup. We made the plane wait.
There was one guy after us but still. That situation would have never
happened ten years ago. I think I'm becoming less gold by the second.
I really hate having everything in another language. For all I know
the stewardess could be announcing that our engine has failed and
we're going down. Every time they make an announcement I watch the
faces of the other passengers. I haven't seen extreme fear yet. Good
sign. (They do repeat it in English but by that time we could be
skyrocketing downward).
When we got to Guilin we realized we didn't have a place to stay, it
was nine at night, and 1 out of every 100 people speak broken
English. Awesome. We ran into two other SASers and ended up at the
Swan Hotel thing. No one at the front desk spoke English. Not one
person. How do you run a hotel without anyone speaking English? (I
realize how egocentric Americans actually are. I know we hear that all
the time and everyone thinks "oh thats other people I'm not." I'm
sure you are Many times I get frustrated and end up thinking, "god,
you don't speak any English. How do you not know one word? Like
really? And you can't read this map that is written in English? What
kind of taxi driver are you? I mean please." I'm 90% sure that you
(whoever you are) would get the same way after the stress of a
continuous language barrier. )
Anyways. Thanks to Maggie we survived. We watched some table tennis
and went to bed. The next day Maggie had arranged a tour down the
river to Yangshou (see back on a boat). It was gorgeous! I'm not a
huge scenic person but it was phenomenal. We went to a little village
as well. They had this type of fishing where pelican like birds caught
fish and spit them out for the fisherman. I guess it takes a lot of
training so there are only five people who can do it. (watching it was
kinda sad).
We ate there as well. I realized I have eaten Chinese food once with
my parents. Once. It was a PF Changs and I was in college. Thanks
padres. My chopstick usage is sub par. I'm proud though because I'm
getting really good at it. I think after I perfect the art I will
finally completely fit in (never mind my looks, language, and style).
Our tour guide's "American" name he chose was KFC. He said no matter
what country people are from they always understand KFC (I may have
mentioned this before but I thought mcdonalds and coke were going to
be the continuous things in my life. Not true. KFC and mentos win that
prize).
After, we had the lovely task of finding a hotel/hostel in Yangshou.
It's a process. First communicate wi fi, then find place on Internet,
then communicate to cab what hotel. We didn't even make it to the
first step so we walked around until we found one.
Oh my gosh. It was a holiday in China (from what I could pick up it
has to do with going to your home place and worshipping your
ancestors). It did not help with finding a hotel. Our place had a
really sweet key.
I think I've used more hand sanitizer here than in Ghana. I wasn't
expecting that. The bathrooms are squat ones. If they don't have
toilet paper, they smell because they're usually not the best. And if
they do, they still smell because you don't put the toilet paper in
the toilet you put it in the wastebasket next to the toilet. Eww. A
bunch of old used toilet paper just sitting there. Not cool.
PS. Before our tour to Yangshou we went to the Sheraton to get
coffee. In the taxi on the way back to our hotel Jen spilled hers all
down herself. I thought ha, that sucks. So anyways, as we're
checking out of the hotel I notice that the receptionist people (there
were like six of them) kept laughing. We had experienced this
multiple times before this (it's like they are amused by us) so my
only thought was, "yeah ok we're white, we know, get over it."
Probably ten minutes later I realize that my whole front was wet. The
lid to the coffee didn't seal the cup completely, so every time I took
a sip it would also leak out the top straight down my romper. Those
beotch faces were laughing at me spilling on myself whenever I took a
sip. Why the heck wouldn't you tell me???? All they had to do was
point at the coffee and I would have figured something was up.
No comments:
Post a Comment