After saying goodbye to Xie I got my bags
together and headed downstairs to pick up the taxi that she had arranged for me
to take me to the airport. It was
incredible to me that I had only to leave the money for my plane ticket at Xie’s
house and the travel agency could go there to pick it up sometime well after I
had already flown into Kunming. Communism, hey.
I slept most of the flight and got into Kunming pretty
early and headed from the terminal outside.
I was accosted by a number of van services flashing cards at me and
heading me off before I got to the real taxis and I foolishly accepted a ride
and climbed into a van. I showed them
the paper on which I had written the address for Henrik and Gertrud and we took
off. The driver kept looking back at me
in the rear view mirror and he had that kind of creepy vacant look in his eyes,
but also like he was constantly nervous I would do something. I had a pretty sketchy feeling about it the
whole ride, and kept imagining in my head that they would turn down some back
alley somewhere and bring me to their gangster lair of evil. Turns out I was not too far off the
mark. They dropped me off at War-Ma (Wal
Mart).
“Great” I thought to myself, “drop the
foreigner off at Wal Mart and he’s happy, right?” I had read about the taxi scams a number of
times in the lonely planet and other books, but I was foolish enough to take an
unmarked cab anyway. Fortunately, they
didn’t kill me, but I was pretty doubtful that my Swedish friends who had
stayed with me in Kyoto were actually living in the Wal Mart. So I did what any first time traveler would
do in that situation. I wandered around
like a drunken idiot until a better solution presented itself.
Then I remembered that I had a phone number
for Henrik and Gertrud so I decided to find a phone. Easier said than done. Communicating with the War-Ma staff in
English is like extracting teeth from a duck.
I doubt it would be much better in Chinese. At one point in War Ma I saw one of the star
employees sawing a blue basket that had gotten stuck in the escalator. That’s right, with a hand saw. I love China.
Anyways, after about 45 minutes of finding
the phone and calling the numbers and them not connecting and then walking back
and forth in front of the War Ma with two very lovely police officers who
offered me their assistance and them asking about 5 different people who asked
about 10 other people, eventually in the end we determined that my friends did,
in fact, live in the War-Ma. Which is to
say they are in the same building as the War Ma, albeit on a much higher floor
and in a place that does not consistently stink of dog, vegetables, and
armpit. When I finally knocked on their
door I felt as though it was the end of a long and arduous journey. But it was only the beginning.
(Side note:
I am writing this from Hanoi, where I am sitting outside on the balcony of my 4 dollar a night
hostel and watching the street play out its unchanging drama below. It is hot here. Extremely hot, but as I was sitting here and
writing and watching people just now, there was the sudden sound of plump rain
drops hitting the tin roofs and within two seconds the skies had turned from
blue to grey. It was a momentary deluge,
enough to coat the ground with rainwater, enough that all the old women rushed
outside to take in their laundry that is hung up so colorfully all around the
town. And now again it is hot. It is hot and the rain has stopped and the skies
are once again the color of a blond baby’s iris. But the relief of those 30 or 40 seconds of
heavy rain must be what keeps people from drowning in their own sweat. That brief respite from the heat was nothing
short of heavensent.
And now back to your regularly scheduled
program.)
Stepping through Henrik and Gertrud’s doorway
and taking off my pack was like being back on dry land after months of floating
on a coconut. It was so wonderful to see
them, and even though we had met on couchsurfing and were technically “couchsurfing
friends” I felt all that melt away as soon as I saw them again. They were wonderful hosts, feeding me mango
and special Chinese Puar tea within seconds of my arrival. And it just felt like home. For the first time since leaving my own house
3 weeks prior, I felt completely relaxed.
We talked, we remembered, we laughed loudly
and often, and the whole time it was almost as though we had been friends since
the dawn of time, as though they had never really come to stay with me in
Kyoto, nor I with them in China, but simply that we were together, that somewhere
and sometime, on some level we are always visiting each other in one of our
various strewn about domiciles.
It was then that I brought up the possibility
of heading out to Li Jiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge and they had actually been
thinking about going there with me as well, but my initial plans did not give
me enough time because I was planning on taking the 40 hour train ride. We agreed to do that together, and then
walked around Kunming for a while.
Kunming as a city is not a bad place.
It is known as the city where it is always spring, so it has that going
for it, but other than that it seemed to me to be a bit drab. Of course it does have all the necessities,
and the apartment that Henrik and Gertrud were staying in was quite nice, but as
a city, Kunming does not rank too high on my list.
Its like Diet Coke. I’d take it
if it was the only thing left in the fridge, but wouldn’t buy a case of
it. That being said, Henrik and Gertrud
are doing wonderfully there. It
definitely seems like a great place to settle down for a few months, just not
the best tourism destination.
The next day we went to the lake and hiked
a ways up to this gate called Dragon Gate or something along those lines. This was actually quite a nice hike and we
stopped at a temple along the way as well where I took about a million
photographs. It is interesting how many
elements are similar between Chinese and Japanese architecture and yet how
vastly different they are. Just like the
two cultures, which at heart are quite tuned into the same things, have become
so completely different from each other.
I have posted some of the pictures I took
that day and hope you enjoy them. And
now, its time for me to start packing up my bags because I need to get ready to
get on another sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hue. The next blog will be about
my Trip to Li Jiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge, which was amazing.
