Back from China, and feeling the heat already, literally. I'm still bler-bler about when school starts, but I reckon it's next Thursday, where we start our orientation and holding hands with girls :O I hate orientation camps where they make us hold hands with girls.
I'm still waiting to upgrade after managing to make hand contact with my cousin's dog Cookie.
Ok China trip has its ups and downs, like how I made semi-friends with a hyper-active guy whom I couldn't stand (which must be a big deal seems it looks as if I'm hyper-active enough). I dao-ed him for the rest of the trip, because if I made any attempt to answer any of his questions, it would make it look as if I were INTERESTED to continue the conversation, and that would be that.
I would be stuck talking to him forever and ever, amen. I wouldn't mind if "him" started with a capital letter, but unfortunately, it isn't.
You see, you wouldn't really want to talk to a person who interjects in every conversation about the same soccer game (the game in question would be Arsenal's draw with Aston Villa). We could be talking over dinner about politics, and then suddenly this hyper-active kaki of ours would refer back to this game which took place years ago, and how he wouldn't mind sacking William Gallas for hacking down a player if he were Arsene Wenger.
You could have told me how you would wish you were white if you were Obama, and I wouldn't care.
But anyway yes, all the cousins came to a consensus that his intellect was questionable, and we left it to that. At least I was tolerant and I didn't scream at him when he told me how Arsenal drew the game with Aston Villa (for the 4th time) while I was taking a pee. Never should have told him I was an Arsenal supporter. Never should have told any of you! Haha now I'll be teased till the end of my days.
Our Kunming tour guide was fantastic, she was really strict and firm about everything, but she was funny and sarcastic, so we all liked her. The local tour guide (that is, the Singaporean tour guide) was so passive all the while, and the only thing he did was to tell us to watch our step everytime we got off the bus.
Us kids started betting on what new vocabulary he would add into his arsenal of greetings. Paddy Power gave us the odds of 1 to 2 that he would greet us with Merry Christmas on 25th of December, so that wasn't much of a big deal. He...never had much character development, although he played an important part in this Chinese theatre later in the show.
After Kunming we went to Dali, and as I had previously mentioned, all the rural town areas were turning out like ghost towns, with only a few scooters or motorcycles around, and the not-so-frequent cars being covered with sand, concrete and dust. Jolly, it sure did look like a war-zone, except there weren't any corpses around.
But there were roadkill though, and more often than not the bus driver (who was widely hailed as one of the best in the world) had to dodge stray dogs and carcasses that lined the road. And yes, throughout the entire trip I only managed to see 3 cats, and I reeally had to do my best to spot them - one was on top of a random roof, another one was maneuvering its way by a river bank, and another one camoflauged on the floor of a village house, by a fireplace, right in front of my feet. It took me a while to see it. Gosh, cats are sneeeeky.
We went to a dinosaur park in Dali, took wonderful wonderful pictures which I would (not) upload shortly, though I have a whole of a mind to show it to people. We also came to a stone forest.
Picture a forest of trees, but replace all the trees with huge stones, and voila! Stone forest. Keh.
Anyway it was a majestic sight, with stones lining the horizon at every turn. We finally managed to reach a pagoda built to allow people like us to take in the sights, and the results? Absolutely stunning. Managed to capture sun rays that cut through the clouds, casting a faint glow upon the random ranks of rocks.
But there was another stone of a different kind, and the tour guide mentioned to us that if we were to avoid the toilets because of the smell, certainly kidney stones would start to develop. Yeah, she told us about one woman who decided not to open her dam gates, and when finally knew could not pay enough rent to hold it any longer, took an opening ceremony at the side of the road, shielded with an umbrella.
She took a biblical time of half-an-hour, and the police had to be called. What a bizzare situation, an umbrella propped up in front of her and police surrounding her. Drop the umbrella, madam!
Yes, the toilets are notoriously fragrant, with a wall of pungent smell constructed at least 4 metres from the entrance. Anyone who was smart enough to talk would talk in short bursts, followed by a rapid intake of caustic air, with constant curses.
There was no lack of bad English, an itinary which showed the dance programme in the afternoon featured a "sheep her ding song". "Sheep her dong song" might have sounded more musically correct, but ding song takes the cake.
Ding.
We arrived at Lijiang, and I swear, the waters were so clear. That was when I had my first contact with a computer, a living room computer provided in the bungalow that was situated in a villa. Erm, picture a villa with like, 40 bungalows in a huge compound, and each bungalow has 5 rooms, a huge living room, cooking area, dining area, and a computer with Internet and MSN. Aaaand, a matron who would cook for the entire family.
The wide-screen TV featured ESPN, HBO, CNA, and all the channels you could think of, what a joy. Of course, I had to make full use of the MSN service provided. Heh heh heh heh *cough* *hack*.
The waters were not polluted, as previously thought, and when you could see movement of all the fishes, with flashes of orange, white, black and gold, in the sparkling water, you think life couldn't get any better. I took leave of MSN and decided to take a step out into the cold winter night at 11.30pm, dressed in long johns, sandals, and a bath robe. The night sky was peppered with stars of various brightness, and the icy breeze brought the robe gently off the ground, rooted by my shivering stature.
I managed to take another look into the pond that was directly outside the bungalow, with a mini bridge that was placed purposeless-ly across it. Ice drifted at the surface, and it was the first of the many icy encounters I had in China.
The road that let directly to the front of my bungalow circled around the pond and led back to the main villa, and staying opposite us were my other cousins. As kids would do what kids do, we would run over and prop ourselves up in front of the TV with a can of Pringles. Yum. Not forgetting KFC, [I think I mentioned this in my last post] double yum!
After two nights at the villa, we got ready for the 5 hour trip to Shangrila, and the latest fashion fad - oxygen cans - were all over the town/bus. But no matter. I sat at the back of the bus from the very first day, mostly by the window, with my dear cousins. The ride provided the sight that impressed me most. There were so many colours in play. As the morning sun rised over Lijiang, I took notice of a stream that stretched for miles which ran beside the road, running downstream. Silver rocks punctuated the waters, with huge ones on the banks, and sometimes in the water itself.
The water was unquestionably clear, shadowed by grey trees stripped of their leaves in the wintry weather. The stream was placed right below the hundreds of small mountains that towered over us along the way. Shades of golden, orange, green, silver and grey bathed the area, creating a view of fantasy-like picturesqueness.
Heavenly, and my small red Canon would never do justice to the sight I saw, except for the previously mentioned sun-rays-cutting-through-clouds picture.
We were reaching altitudes of 3000m above sea level, and already one boy had been completely left out from the Shangrila part of the trip, because he was suffering from high fever. Sigh, as Nigel mentioned, come to China pua-beh (Hokkien for sick), waste his parents' money. With much coincedence, this boy is the younger brother of our hyper-active-hugely-daoed friend.
The aunties were suffering from headaches and medical oil was in huge demand. I already had my share of health shit-tiness - right from the moment I touched down to Kunming on the first day, I was leaking (from the nose) so badly that it felt like a hell-hole. My eyes were constantly watering, my nose was clogged with blood (from the dryness) and mucus, and it looked as if I were on a commission to shiver as much as possible in the space of a minute. I awoke the next day with renewed vigour, and never looked back since - I sneezed only twice for the rest of my days in China, and my eyes never teared.
Back to Shangrila, it really started to look like Tibet - the stretching fields covered with golden sand and sparse patches of grass - a huge difference from what we saw leaving Lijiang. The temperature hovered at around -3 to 9 degrees. To much laughter but purely for my own health-wealthiness I wore four to five layers of clothing everytime I went out, and yes, a reason why I was healthy throughout the trip. Extremely good advice from someone to bundle up and drink loads of hot tea.
I'm good. We caught the first sights of the beautiful mountain cow, with its huge horns and long fur, and the mountain pig, also covered with fur, but less pretty in the sense.
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