The last entry was one of things that seemed like a good idea at the time and also at the time made so much sense…alcoholic ramblings are definitely not one of my strengths. It’s hard to express so much of what’s happened through a few words and I definitely don’t have the patience to sit down and punch it all out over the space of about a week. That’d be like a job and I’m no paid writer. New things are always popping up so I’m not going to get into any details of the past few weeks in China, so I hope you’ll be content with this overview. Before the last night on the town in Nanning we left off at Christmas shenanigans. December 31st was spent in a place called Yangshuo, north of Nanning and in the middle of some very picturesque countryside. I unfortunately peaked far too soon and was in bed by about 9am (2 years running now!!) but from the many pictures and bandages I saw the next day, the crew seemed to have a pretty good time, but not quite what we had expected…no real big celebrations and no late night snogs with the opposite sex…how boring, 1 Jan we made up for it with roman candle wars, our own fireworks displays, crackers, whizzers, poppers and all sorts of things that go fizz, bang or pop. Everyone had a little pyromaniac trying to get out…especially Dave.
Escaping from a crowded city is great, but getting stuck in a tourist trap is pretty bad so we legged it to a one horse kinda town called Xingping and spent a few days roaming the riverside, mandarin orchards and doing a bit of climbing and caving..ahh the serenity. No traffic, less hassle to buy trinkets and bamboo boat rides and a slower pace of life. Things never seem to go smooth on these trips, but where’s the story in a seamless journey? After thinking that we got a bargain to catch a bamboo ferry raft up river, we get ditched and stranded half way to the destination in a one shack village and no one speaking any English. After a bit of await we finally get help from a friendly Chinese tourist, pay more to get to the end, only to miss everyone’s planned train back that night and we end up in Guilin for 2 days instead of none. This turns out to be a great chance to see the city, some of the crew stay out till 6AM and we find out they wandered into a sex hotel – swiss ball, bondage gear and gyrating bed included. Never a dull moment, even if they didn’t stay there.
Finally getting back to Nanning, my visa is about to expire, but in classic form, I leave it to the last minute. Thursday was my birthday and I’ve decided to take the passport in on Friday for a 7 day extension. Well it turns out now at 10AM Friday I don’t have the right forms, the office closes at 12:00PM for the weekend, my visa expires Sunday and I’m in no state to go home, get the forms printed, filled and peddle my way back on my busted bike. “Yes” I promise, “I’ll be back soon to have it all sorted.” Unfortunately the moment I get back home I just pass out from exhaustion, not to mention a skull that’s carrying around a mess of shit, no longer a brain. Deal with it on Monday. We had a great weekend of bbq (normal meats this time) in the sun, a 20km roundtrip bike ride to some hot springs that turn out to be a holiday resort, but very posh..ahh such a hard life.
Monday rolls around, I have all the forms, printed, copied, ready to go and am then told I need to write a statement as to why I didn’t return on Friday. I’m not going to go through it, but lets just say whatever it was I wrote worked, no be then told “Your passport can be collected on Monday.” Umm, no, I leave on Monday, from a city 5hrs drive away...stressed? you know it. With a bit of persistence Wednesday I get my passport, get to Guilin on Saturday, receive a lovely bout of food poisoning from a place that actually looked sanitary (oh the irony) but make it to Singapore in the end, just in time to get some washing done, re-pack the snow gear and now here I sit in Narita airport, waiting for Snaza to arrive so we can go meet Swami in Nozawa Onsen for 8 days of pristine Japanese powder snow. Don’t expect much writing until Feb, when its time for waves in Indo….happy happy days.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment