Starting this email on my iphone while sitting on the side of the road waiting for the bus to Dali to get going again. Dali being the next overtouristy "traditional" old Chinese town on the trail south. By overtouristy I generally mean overpopulated with Chinese tourists not Westerners. Lijiang was lovely, in spite of the rain (flooding apparently washed away a few towns and people with them here in the past few days), and I highly recommend the Panba hostel, in spite of its inexplicable Christmas themed decorations- (we had a Merry Christmas stocking hanging on our door- perhaps we are close to the factory?)
Yes, our bus is not broken down, but once again, something has happened in the distance and we are stuck waiting. So I realize I've written a lot about the driving here, and i relize also that there are certain unfortunate stereotypes about driving out there that I don't want to perpetuate, but I will say that there are unique qualities to road travel in a country where 95% of the drivers learned to drive in the past five years. For example, heading out of town in a taxi to the bus station (in a car whos brand uses the starfleet/ star trek logo), we drove on a three lane road- no, not three lanes in either direction, just three lanes with white dotted lines. Our taxi to the bus station took us down a terrifying but not atypical three lane road- sort of a lane for one direction, sort of a lane for the other, but most cars, including ours seemed to prefer swerving in and out of the middle lane, feinting left and right at oncoming traffic like some insane video game. We talk in America about cars being an extension of ourselves, and its true here, but people drive the way they walk- a line is more like a funnel shape, and occasionally someone will be just stopped at an intersection reading a newspaper as we saw yesterday.
Secondly, without exaggeration and without exception, every single busride of over two hours has resulted in waiting for well over an hour for the bus to wait for an accident. Sometimes a minor fender bender, often a truck or bus gone over the side. And you just wait, meanwhile, police appear, sirens blazing, but only seem to have on their sirens to get PAST the accident, not resolve or help with the issue by exercising any kind of authority whatsoever that could speed things up. Eventually, some settlement is reached, perhaps by the crowd who stand aroud taking pictures and watching and contributing to the debate of fault. Of course, when one lane of traffic stops, the traffic in that direction merely crosses the line and doubles up both sides of the road, resulting in miles of cars and buses backed up in either direction again taking up both sides of the road with both directions of traffic. At least today we are waiting in a scenic rice paddy. Ah, and moving again, and now that the movie has ended, the bus is now showing Karaoke videos, which the passengers thankfully are (mostly) not singing along with.
Anyway, now in Dali, aka Xiaguan, an "ancient" town on the shores of a lake with some holy 1000 year old pagodas nearby. I have to say, these towns are starting to blend together like the Unesco-fied colonial cities of Latin America. Beautiful to be sure, but we are ready to do sonethong else pretty soon. I have to say though, although tourist, Dali is less touristy than Lijiang and Shangri-La, and more oriented toward western tourists than Chinese ones, and feels a little down at heels/rough around the edges which lends it some authenticity that I like. Either that, or its a little more friendly and familiar to me as a Westerner, and its nice to get a decent cup of coffee and even, yes, a slice of cheesecake. We checked out the temple in the rain (Which has not let up in what feels like weeks), which in the rain and fog, bore little resemblence to the photo attached.
With the rain, we only stuck around Dali for a day and headed out by bus for Kunming, a small Chinese city of a few million in Yunnan. The trip started well on the expressway, past traditionally dressed women harvesting their rice paddies as they have for millenia seemingly oblivious btoy the sudden sprouting of an expressway in the middle of their rice paddy. But soon we were off the expressway and going very slowly chugging up nearly washed out dirt roads pocked with craters. We were moving along decently until gradually things slowed and then heart sinking feeling as the bus shuddered and the engine shut down, just before nightfall. A few more hours waiting on and off the bus as the sun set on the side of the road, walking up and down past villagers, and Chinese texting, eating and chatting and a makeshift casino where men were shouting in Mandarin- with cigarettes and cards in one hand and fistfulls of Yuan in the other. I have to admit I was starting to grow suspicious, given that the villagers had a strong economic incentive to cause breakdowns given the money they were making selling tea eggs and boiled corn. During the wait we even watched a local set up some logs, stretch a tarp over them and start boiling water, making soup and setting out benches. In our hunger by midnight we found ourselves busily slurping soup with dozens of other Chinese denizens of the makeshift restaurant. Finally a ways after midnight we were moving again, but not before the passengers of whichever bus had broken down had piled into ours. Note to all planning to travel by bus in China- don't forget to pack four meals, three books, a headlamp, raincoat, pillow, tent, extra money and hopefully a strong bladder- be like the boy scouts, be prepared...
Kunming was pouring with rain when our bus pulled up at three AM along with every other bus that had been stuck in the same traffic. Cab competition was predictably fierce but manages to get one to the weird Chinese hotel that our last hostel had booked for us. We arrived and fell immediately to sleep, waking up the next day to discpver that our hotel room was on the 8th floor of an anonymous skyscraper and our room was next door to various business offices- the hotel rooms seemed to alternate with office suites and apartments. With no clue where in this giant city we were, we successfully navigated ourselves from filled up hostel to filled up hostel until we decided to just leave our bags at the Hump Hostel- Kunming's primary megahostel, and try to get train tickets OUT of Kunming. The station, while not more insane than Indian rail stations, was impressively insane and of course entirely in Chinese and no foreign ticket office as in india. We tried waiting in a few different lines as we attempted to decode the Chinese characters on the schedule boards, only to deduce that the next three days worth of trains to Chengdu were sold out. A plane ticket was a no brainer though, at less than $100 and less than an hour, compared to 60$ and twenty-two hours. See you later Kunming.
But not before we attempted to find the comforts of home in this foreign city. We wandered in the worst rainstorm I've been in since Cambodia in '06, around Kunming's answer to Times Square, made ourselves sick on Big Macs and attempting to take in an American movie. After much pointing and then photographing and showing the picture of the movie we wanted to see, we settled into the air conditioned theater. A few Chinese subtitles popped up in the credits and we relaxed, looked like not dubbed but subtitled. Until Tom Cruise starting speaking Mandarin and we began wondering if the movie was dubbed into Mandarin with Cantonese subtitles. Oh well, we killed enough time to beat the rain and escape to Chengdu that night, the largest city in Szechuan provence.
More on Chengdu, its amazing food and its charming whitish yellow air in a few days. We are currently in Emei, site of a holy buddhist mountain which we will be climbing for the next few days while crashing in monasteries. Hopefully the smog won't kill us here either!
And I don't mean to sound so negative- the trip remains quite a memorable adventure, in spite of some illness and travel difficulties. Still, looking forward to getting home and seeing everyone and acting like an incorrigible snob about Szechuan food!
PHOTOS: Rice Paddie where bus broke down, Dali, Dali...
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