life's adventures This is the story of my wanderings through Asia

Waiting at the airport is always interesting. You can either feel filled with excitement – I’m going somewhere I have been before, where it will be an reunion of friends or family, or you can feel even more excitement for the unknown destination that awaits you, an adventure where you can’t imagine the outcome. For me here in the Kunming airport – which is clean and spacious and generally rather modern, I feel the same mixture of sadness that has plagued me for the last 2 days.

Leaving Kunming, wonderful, amazing, beautiful Yunnan, I felt like I had a hole left inside of me. At the airport I had a few winks before it was my turn to board the flight back to Zhengzhou, the flight was full of nods, noodles and noise. Chinese people tend to get very loud when speaking over the top of everyone else in their vicinity. Luckily the flight was only a few hours, even though it seemed like an hour in itself coming in to land.

I had, the previous day sent messages and emails to all those great people I was looking forward to seeing, in hopes of a couch or spare bed. The one I got offered was by Pablo, who wasn’t at his apartment, it was dark and I was tired. After trying many different buildings, calling and asking, I gave up in a haze of frustration and teary, dramatic finality. Off to Red’s bar, where I could see Teresa whose birthday it was that day.

I was plied with whiskey and most importantly hugs. Getting to see those solid people, whom for some strange and unknown reason have made Zhengzhou their home, was enough of a solvent to my heavily exaggerated emotions after leaving Dali and returning to this polluted, noisy, smelly city.

Beautiful, lovely Julia offered me her couch, so off we went in the small hours of the morning to find it, while I could still walk; carrying the pack was quite a mission. She has a gorgeous wee apartment, which I immediately felt right at home in. That’s lucky because when she popped off for work the next morning I was alone until she returned. The door had jammed and in my fragile and extreme hung-over state I was left with a bare fridge, a bottle of orange juice and some cereal.

She came to my rescue at the end of a long days work, a neighbor unjamming the door, and I (and my stomach) rushed her out the door again in the direction of the best –and only- Indian restaurant in Zhengzhou.

Yesterday morning I straightaway jumped off the couch and lunged for the door. It opened, thankfully. So I went to meet Ana, an Argentinean friend, for a Japanese lunch. It was a challenge I relish: speaking in Spanish for a day, and with a good friend at that. We walked around in search of nothing, chatting and catching up in that unhurried way that makes close friends spend hours in each other’s company with ceaseless conversation flowing, even though I felt my language abilities to be inadequate at times.

That evening was the goodbye party for Nilson, a Brazilian friend who is leaving. I have excellent timing it seems. Soon enough the Brazilians apartment was packed with the riotous foreign contingent of Zhengzhou. Of course it was an epic night, drunkenness and debauchery, and all the rest. I had great fun warning the newcomers of the scoundrels amongst the laowai* present, and of course I had many of those astonishing moments where I felt super incredibly glad I had made the trip back and had the opportunity to solidify some excellent and special relationships with all the most wonderful weirdoes living in what I do like to call an absolute hell hole of a city.

Julia had disappeared. The key didn’t work to her apartment door, I was devastated, and had to count out my yi kuai* to taxi back into town at 4am and beg a bed from my old flat mate, the luck I have. Poor Julia called around 7 to let me know she had come home, and what do you know, after a loud and bumpy five minute bus ride to her apartment, up the elevator and knock gingerly on the door, the key worked.

I have now just spent about an hour brushing my hair ready for Paul and Yoko’s wedding in a few hours. BaiJiu* anyone, ahh the pure entertainment of a Chinese slash American wedding, today will be fun.

*LaoWai – common term for foreigner

*Yi kuai – one Yuan