Cierpliwość

Patience. I suck at patience. I’ve never not sucked at patience. There have been a few points in my life, where I put a lot of time in, and I sort of started to get good at acting patient, but deep down I was still silently willing everything to hurry up, everyone to get out of my way, and to have it all happen according to my schedule. Where is this utopian reality that cares only for my needs? It certainly ain’t in Asia.

I’ve always known this about myself, but I’ve never had to confront it in such a blatant way before; I don’t like people. Face to face, one on one, a human being is a delightful thing, complex and full of insights and surprises. Start adding one or two more people into the mix, then egos and personal agendas can begin to cloud up the landscape of lovely and bring the storms and dog pooh streaked sidewalks. Enter into the masses, and we just turn into straight up donkeys, trampling each other, thinking small, and only looking out for ourselves. I’m guilty. I am not above it. The only way I can get back to feigning patience is to find some space and think long and hard about my donkey ways. Where do you find space in a city so packed that it’s considered the most vertical city in the world because there’s no space left on the ground? My recommendation is to go hang out in a graveyard.

I was walking around today, pushing, shoving, rolling my eyes, and actually saying out loud, Oh my god when people got in my way (my way), when I realized that I probably should cease and desist on my mission to trudge down every street in Hong Kong. Yesterday I found this amazing graveyard built on a hillside, near the water, and jammed up next to a whole mess of high rises. In a city where you can’t move an inch without bumping into someone, this place was completely deserted. Once I realized I needed some relief or I might do something that would get me deported, it was the first place I thought of.

I picked up two beers, a couple of cheeseburgers, and set myself up on the tallest hill. There are memorials with stone tables and benches, I sat and said hello to the folks who were hosting me. I bet they enjoyed the company. Yesterday there was a pack of five black dogs that retreated when they saw me, but watched me carefully as I walked through the graves. They had left me with this incredibly spooky feeling, like I was in an Anne Rice novel. I kept hoping they’d show up again, and bring their vampire friends. They just drink blood, so I wouldn’t have to share my beer or cheeseburgers. Nothing and no one, dogs or otherwise, manifested. I spent the evening in solitude, watching ships sail on the harbor, bugs scuttling by me feet, and the shadows of people as they passed in front of their curtains, on the way from the couch to the refrigerator to refill their iced tea. It was wonderful.

Odpoczynek

I’m couchsurfing right now. That’s the view from my bedroom window, and I have a door that I can close to take a nap, without having to worry that three or four other people will come in during and start rustling around in crinkly plastic bags, unpacking fake Dolce&Gabbana sunglasses, rip off Prada purses, and copy Rolex watches. Ahhhhhh…! Traveling has renewed my appreciation for doing nothing. I’ve always been a fan of it, but people look at you funny when you tell them you’re not doing anything on Saturday night, a holiday weekend, for your birthday, or as a career. People want answers, and “nothing” is not enough. So, you either start doing something, or start making stuff up. It’s exhausting. Actually, you can also just let people look at you funny. I guess that’s OK too.

I really gained a respect for doing nothing in Los Angeles, where a social life can be expensive and hard to get to in traffic. I protested on Friday and Saturday nights, opting instead to take walks, read books, and get in bed by 10:00, so much so that I couldn’t manage to stay up later than that even when there was something I wanted to do. When people would invite me to do things after 10:00, I would spend the day getting psyched on it, and almost always without fail I would cancel at 9:30. Thus began the phase in my life in which people started calling me grandma. I embrace it, welcome it, and love it in fact. You all go out and lead interesting lives. I’ll stay home and knit you some socks.

I also have a renewed appreciation for chemicals. Early on I ran out of a few key ingredients for the recipe of feeling fresh and clean; shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant. In London I picked up some natural deodorant, and in essence what I actually did was toss my five pound note into the toilet and flush it. Regardless of the fact that all it did was make me feel slippery, I was religiously rolling it on, at the bare minimum there was at least some placebo effect. And my hair, it didn’t smell, but it was awful and twiggy, impossible to brush, and I just let it go on like this for a long stretch because I couldn’t find the right stuff. Someone told me Koreans are lacking some enzyme that causes you to have body odor, so they don’t need deodorant. They really hit the jackpot on that one, but it was a bad deal for me because I couldn’t find any of the real stuff for a month, and then I kind of forgot what deodorant was really suppose to do. Finally I’ve found some with real Alzheimer’s causing, effective, and flowery smelling chemicals in it. It’s stupendous. I also got back in the swing of things with my hair and I’ve been walking around absentmindedly stroking it. I look insanely vain, but I don’t care, it’s too damn soft to not pay it any attention. I used to sort of have a suspicion that none of this stuff really did anything, that they were just selling us goo to smear on ourselves that would give us cancer so then we’d have to go to the hospital and pay for that too. That could still be true, but at least I know for certain now that I’m getting what I paid for. Yay for chemicals!

Did you see Harry Potter? I’ve got to admit, Neville Longbottom’s speech at the end got me all choked up.

Kosmiczny krajobraz

Hong Kong

I love both cities, and in fairness to Beijing, I really only explored a small area of it, but my knee jerk reaction is to say Hong Kong all the way. I suppose it depends on what kind of experience you’re looking for. My impression is that Hong Kong is much more cosmopolitan and easier to get along in as a foreigner. There’s a lot of western style food, books, magazines, and movies, if you’re in need of some comfort, but more than that, Hong Kong just seems to be on the cutting edge of things, fashion, technology, ideas… But if you’re looking for a huge shift in your cultural outlook, Beijing could be the place for you. I loved all the history there and then things that just seem straight up weird and mind bending as an American. I think long term Beijing could be more challenging, but mind opening… You probably can’t go wrong with either one. That sounds fun! Good luck!

W drodze do Hong Kongu

If you want to see me sob like a small child, play Vincent (Starry Starry Night) by Don McLean. China has been trying to make me cry since I stepped off the train in Beijing. The other day it almost succeeded. On the long distance busses here they blast music videos to drown out the din of the yammering passengers. On the way back to Guilin from the rice terraces they played Starry Starry night, and I almost lost it. The only thing that saved me was the fact that it was a cover done by a woman who sounded like a mix between Feist and Cat Power. The singer actually could have evoked in me the proper emotions to get the tears to spill, but the producers elected to go down a path that has been blazed by others, such as Milli Vanilli and their management team. They chose a face over an artist for the video. A small and fragile Asian girl, who could not summon the strength to move her lips with any conviction, was pretending to sing. She was clearly not the owner of the voice coming out of the speakers installed in the ceiling of the long distance bus to Guilin, and she was pissing me off. I was supposed to be crying. Instead I was daydreaming about strapping her to a dolly and wheeling her into a room with a defibrillator. It was probably for the best, no need to freak out the other bus riders unnecessarily.

I was sitting next to a guy I had met on the bus to Dazhai. They pulled this strange move on the way up there. They stop about a half hour before you reach the city. Women in uniform get on and tell you that you need to pay them 80 yuan or get off the bus, not in an extremely kind or explanatory fashion. All the Chinese passengers were readily paying, and the only two westerners, him and me, were confused, questioning, and flipping through books trying to understand what was going on. The woman robbing us spoke perfect English, but she was kind of a bitch about it, clearly fed up with the stupidity of travelers such as ourselves, and not overly willing to walk us through the reasons we were expected to pay her. She said we needed to pay to enter the scenic area, and everything we wanted, food, accommodations, etc., was inside the scenic area. Even though they had a huge gate and ticket booth set up at the entrance to the town (scenic area), for some reason you couldn’t just pay there when you arrived. Baffling.

Out of necessity, I’ve become comfortable living in a state of perpetual bafflement. When my waffles and ice cream scoops are garnished with tomatoes, I no longer question it. When they consider it rude to blow your nose in a tissue, only to walk outside and watch people farmer blow on the sidewalk and summon wads of phlegm from the depths of their bodies, hurtling it into the small circumference surrounding you, which could be considered personal space, I don’t judge, I simply hum a cheerful ditty to myself. When the upscale coffee shop provides tiny television monitors at each table for entertainment, and plays a video of a monkey, in scarf and overalls, leading a bulldog wearing a fanny pack around the city on a leash, through the park, brown puddles, the grocery store, and appliance shopping, I don’t ask myself why, instead, I set my mind to deciding if I would prefer to be the monkey or the bulldog. I’m finding it’s best not to ask questions in China.

Back on the bus, the only other westerner and myself became friends. Our shared confusion united us. After a small chat we found out we were staying at the same guesthouse. We decided to split a room, which left us each paying just a couple of dollars per night. This sounds like a deal, but really it was only almost a fair trade, as we had to share the place with all kinds of other life forms; roaches, slugs, spiders, beetles, mosquitoes, and years worth of dirt and grime that couldn’t be scrubbed away, even if someone were actually trying to.

We spent the next couple of days together, along with other travelers we met, hiking the rice terraces, and sharing beers and strange meals. For breakfast I had what was called A Kind of Omelet. Just as I was discovering it was, in fact, a bug omelet, a man trying to sell us a cucumber descended upon our table, scooping up one of our coffees, putting his thumb in it, and helping himself to a slobbery sip. The owner of the guesthouse chased after him with a broom, in a way that would suggest this was a common routine for the two of them.

On our final evening in Dazhai, we got into a philosophical debate about the fate of the human race, as dictated by the usage of Facebook. I’m pro Facebook. I consider this mode of interaction a necessary and inevitable step in our social evolution. I hesitate to make declarations about it consuming us to the point that we’re no longer able to have face-to-face relations. I think it’s leading us to something that will ultimately connect us in a deeper way, rather than isolate us. I got pretty intense about it, and this encouraged the boys to be equally as ridiculous, by comparing the author of an article in favor of abandoning Facebook to Galileo. Completely unreasonable, but I appreciate the comic effect. In light of the tone of our final night together, I’m happy that the faceless woman’s rendition of Starry Starry Night wasn’t able to bring me to tears on the bus. Although, sometimes it’s fun to be perceived as an emotional basket case, that day I wasn’t really in the mood for it. I was more in the mood for being a monkey in overalls, shopping with my companion, the bulldog.

Once we were back in Guilin, we said goodbye without exchanging our Facebook info. I hadn’t showered in two days. It seemed futile to shower in a bathroom that I was cleaner than. I was thinking about staying one more night in the hostel I had been in before, to clean up then make arrangements for the bus to Hong Kong. I went there for lunch and to use the Internet, but decided not to stay after listening to the guys at the neighboring table exchanging stories about different places they had puked throughout China. I started having flashbacks to the first night I had spent in the hostel, where I ended up sitting in the lobby for a sleepless evening, with fifty or sixty mosquitoes drinking blood from my ankles, because even though I had asked nicely, twice, the guy in the bunk below me wouldn’t stop having sex with the girl he had brought into the room. Rather than hanging out with drunken tourists again, I opted to stay unshowered for a third day and get on the bus right away.

Getting places in China is really difficult. Nothing is written in English, and even when the sign language routine kind of works, everyone has a completely different version of what you need to do.

There’s no bus there. You have to transfer. Take the train. No, get the bus from the train station, not the bus station. You have to go through another city. What are you doing, why don’t you just get a direct bus?

It’s hard for everyone involved. I can see the frustration on the faces of the people trying to help me. I feel a lot of guilt over it. I’m in China and I can’t really say anything in Chinese, but it’s just not possible for me to learn the language of every place that I’m traveling to. I’m waiting impatiently for the day that we will have microchips installed into our brains that allow us to instantly download an entire language and speak fluently. We all managed to combine our brainpower and I got a ticket on an overnight bus to Hong Kong. I boarded the bus and to my absolute delight it was filled with rows of beds. YA-HOO! It was like coming home and finding out mom bought Coco Puffs instead of Corn Flakes. Thanks mom!

Riding the bus recumbent is an amazing experience. Watching night markets, people having dinner, neon signs, and masses of traffic flying by while lying down is surreal. There’s a window the length of your sleeper right next to you, so everyone on the street can see you stretched out in bed. I kept checking for reactions from people outside, like, Hey I’m horizontal! No one but me seemed to find it all that noteworthy. I was woken up often, by the sensation that the bus was about to tip over. This was followed by the memory of a couple of head-on truck collisions and an overturned van we saw on the way to Dazhai. As far as I can tell, the only rule of the road here is to get out of the way. One of the hostel owners I met said that traffic in China is much more chaotic, but there are fewer fatal accidents because no one feels they own any part of the road. Cars, bikes, busses, vans, and trucks are everywhere, all over every side of the road, so you’re more aware, and more willing to yield. They’re extremely fearless and artful in their maneuvers, and I’m here to type about it, so I guess we did OK.

Hong Kong has a totally different feeling from Mainland China. It’s very cosmopolitan and easy to navigate, also expensive. It’s been dumping rain since I arrived, so I haven’t done much, aside from walking around in some markets and along The Avenue of Stars. Right now I’m in Starbucks and they’re playing Buena Vista Social Club. I used to laugh at people who frequented Starbucks when they were in other countries, but now I totally get it. I’ve started to have little episodes of homesickness. Sitting here with my computer and coffee I can completely lose myself in the illusion that I’m in Los Angeles, where I have my own bed and home, with two cuddly cats there waiting to meow me a hello, and sit in my lap while I watch a movie. Wanna come over for dinner and then go get a drink? Cool, see you at 8. xoxo.

Just got off the sleeper bus from Guilin to Hong Kong.

Tarasy ryżowe

Kolorowa noc

China knows how to party.

The nightlife in Asia is where it’s at. During the day you could take me to just about any of the places I’ve visited, and I’d never give them a second thought. Wait a few hours, until the sun starts to set, and it’s another world. The whole city is out catching cool breezes, strolling, swimming, buying cheap junk at night markets, grilling, having picnics, drinking coconut milk, dancing in the park, kids wearing shoes that have squeakers built into the soles are running around and playing hide and seek with their patents, eating popsicles, screaming their heads off. It’s unlike anything we have going on in the states. I love it.

My new modus operandi, because of the heat, has become to mess around during the day doing things that don’t require me to sweat, and then hit the streets around six and wander until I bump into something that makes me happy. It works. There are a lot of happy accidents to bump into. China’s got everything lit up like a nightclub, city streets, lakes, mountains, parks, trees, bushes. I gotta be honest with you China, that’s just how I like it.

Guilin is a great place for night walks. Tonight I decided to just follow the river to wherever, and I saw all these tents set up on the opposite side. I was trying to find my way over there. I ended up on the edge of another houseboat shantytown, walking through alleyways in an old part of town where all the houses are still just cement walls and floors. It was getting progressively darker and the whole neighborhood was sitting on plastic chairs in front of their doorways. I decided I was going to turn around. I always feel like a total imposter when I walk through these little streets. They’re really intimate. You can see into people’s homes, and it’s obvious everyone knows each other. I feel wrong being there.

I started to turn around and this old guy carrying a basket of fruit was waving at me to go back. I turned to go back and then turned again to give up on going back, again. He kept waving and waving and then finally decided to turn around himself and just walk with me. He walked me to the street that led out to the tents on the river and pointed me in the right direction. He sat and watched me go. When I stopped to take some photos he started shouting, Hello, hello! and waving me on again. OK, OK, photos later then.

I made it down to the water’s edge and there was a whole pop-up beach resort thingy happening. The entire strip was occupied with plastic chairs and folding tables with little hotplate restaurants serving beers and grilled stuff, and tents with sheets hung for dressing stalls next to lockers they brought in, rugs thrown over the big rock pebble beach, selling swim suits and inner tubes, and people frolicking around in the river. Amazing! Chinese people just make their own fun.

On my way home I decided to sample a green pea popsicle. You heard me right, green pea, not green tea. It was alright, I guess. The aftertaste was rather unfortunate. I’m definitely not recommending it. I’m on the move tomorrow, so I’m going to hit the hay. See you soon. xo.

Długie czasy w Guilin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reed Flute Cave. It was immense inside. They had a laser show, and symphony music blasting. Rock.

Klasyka, obiektyw CCTV + PEN

 

 

 

 

Yangshuo - na długo w pamięci

      I leave Yangshuo tomorrow, and I am ready. I’m so bored. Don’t get upset. Don’t get upset! I know. No one likes to hear anything that could sound potentially negative or gloomy. Trust me, all you chuckle-head-smiley-faces, this is a good thing. It was necessary for me to get a little ho-hum in order to be excited about the world again. You know when you go to a really big art museum, like the Louvre, or something, and after an hour or so you’re kind of saying to yourself, “Oh who cares, obviously everyone can paint a masterpiece, otherwise there wouldn’t be a million here.” You’re arted out. Well mass destination traveling can feel kind of like that. Oh, another river, more trees, and gigantic mountains with caves, and markets with weird stuff everywhere? Everyone’s got that. You just get over stimulated. You get crabby, tired, you need a snack. You just need to sit somewhere for a while and become unimpressed, until you’re ready to be impressed again.

In preparation for my departure I’ve been going through the hostel’s travel books and trying to figure out what’s hot. This kind of thing turns me into an exasperated maniac. There is something to see, something amazing, literally everywhere. How are you supposed to choose? Photography is a big fat liar, and you can base your whole itinerary on a place because of one great photo. Then you get there and realize it was just good lighting. Someone was telling me that about Xian, and the Terra Cotta Soldiers. They basically said, the photo was better than the real thing, and there wasn’t a lot else in the city to hold their interest. Hmmm… This makes planning hard. In some ways I almost feel it’s better to do no research, have no expectations, and then when you run into something incredible (and you will) you’ll be ecstatic, and you’ll feel like you discovered it all on your own.

This is a difficult state of consciousness to adopt. When I left Los Angeles I was looking forward to getting away from circular conversations; Hey, how ya doing, what do you do, what are you working on… whatever. The unfortunate reality is that conversations in the life of a traveler are much more shallow, it’s; where have you been, where are you going, and there’s always a sense of one-upmanship about it, which I find strange, as we’re all doing the same thing. The result is feeling a tremendous amount of pressure to just say you’ve been somewhere that everyone else has been. You end up having urges to do everyone else’s top ten lists. It’s like listening to Top 40 radio only because you know the words and they play the songs at all the clubs.

I’ve been avoiding the entire where have you been, where are you going conversation, and trying to just go. My experiences, and the experiences to come, are just as interesting and valid as any of the others that I could plan out. The point is to live them, which is hard to do when you’re so worried about whether you’ll be able to hit up all the spots that everyone else has placed on your itinerary for you. I’m not pooh-poohing people’s recommendations. I think it’s great. They’ve been around and they want to share their stories. We need to do that. I just think it’s important to remember that their story is not mine, and it doesn’t need to be.

Yangshuo was fantastic, beautiful, relaxing, just what I needed. I’m ready to move again. Hopefully a little slower now…

This is a cell phone photo, so the quality is not great, but that’s the moon up in the left hand corner, peeking around the mountain.

Łowy na kormorana

 

 

Some of the boys from the hostel and I got on a boat and went to see the Cormorant Fishing Show. It’s a style of fishing where the men have these extremely well trained birds, that catch the fish for them. They tie a string around their neck, so they’re not able to swallow the big fish. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole thing, but watching it was kind of incredible. Towards the end the fisherman took the string off their necks and they were eating everything they caught. They dive under the water and then glide along, very fast, searching for fish. When they catch one they pop up and flip it into their mouths. When they need a break they get up on the boat and stand there with their wings spread, drying out. I tried to pet one and in turn he tried to bite me. Yes sir! I hear you loud and clear

Beer and barbeque

               Asia is really showing me how to do it right. Remember that flashlight restaurant on the Li River I mentioned before? All week I was walking by it and wanting to go sit at those tables on the edge of the water and have some dinner in the dark, but it felt like something I needed to do with other people. I wasn’t feeling like asking anyone, so I ignored the urge to go. Last night I was wandering around feeling mildly bored. I’m booked for three more nights in this hostel. I still feel like I’ve got some doing nothing to do, even so, I’ve been feeling a little bored. I was walking around trying to get re-curious about this little town I’ve walked around four hundred times in the last four days. Then I passed by the riverside flashlight restaurant again, and this time I said, let’s do this.

They didn’t have a tourist menu, only one in Chinese, so there were no westerners down there. The menu was big, but they said they only had beer and barbeque. I think the rest was too difficult to try to explain. I ordered a beer and barbeque. The beef showed up raw, with a cup of oil, a brush, and a grill. DIY barbecue by candlelight! Wielding a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks over the flames, I began my cookery. About two minutes in, my candle went out. Through the blackness it was difficult to see what was raw, cooked, and totally crisped. Regardless, it was delicious.

      Split ends. I has them. I gave myself a haircut in the hostel bathroom yesterday. I kept stressing that the maid would come in and get upset by the mess. She did come in, but she gave me a thumbs up. I guess she’s all for the DIY revolution.

I took my bike ride today and they sent me through heck and back. (My mom and my uncle requested that I not swear so much.) The route was definitely not built for bikes. A good portion of it was only a foot or less of dirt, with plenty of boulders stuck in, and right next to the river, so if you hit a glitch you were sure to fly in. I almost did. The whole time all the bamboo boat vendors were screaming at me from across the river, “Hello! Bamboo!” that’s all they ever say. “Hello! Bamboo!” over and over. They were so insistent, it led me to wonder if it’s a common practice for riders to wade through the rushing waters with their bikes to get to them.

I got back for dinner and the woman who seated me was moonlighting at the place across the street. She took my order and then all of the sudden I saw her through the window, seating people at a totally different joint. Do her bosses know? As I was sitting there, four Chinese college students came in and said they’d been given the assignment to interview a foreigner, and could they ask me some questions. They were really cute, all taking turns with their questions; do I like China, where have I been, do I know how to eat with chopsticks, what is my favorite movie, and they all seemed to like the polka dot dress that brings the mobs for photos. They were taking notes and I was kind of peeking at the paper. One of my professor friends in South Korea said her students had never really been grilled on their spelling before, and they weren’t very good at it. I think it’s the same in China. They all agreed I was brave, so the girl doing most of the talking decided to make a note of it and jotted down “brain.”

I found a “restaurant” down on the Li River last night, which is basically a folding table set up on the landing of the stairway leading to the river. It’s got a cutting board with a knife, a hot plate, and some ingredients, and then they have a whole mess of little folding tables and plastic chairs right along the edge of the water. The waitress comes to the table with a flashlight to take your order. I gotta get myself down there.

Marzenie turysty

 

Li River