This entire trip turned out to be one big birthday party! What a classic trip, to have a bunch of oldies for passengers and yet we had fun everywhere we went :-) Between the 8 oldies (and 4 youngers) we had 3 birthdays on a 12 day trip! Good times. One lady in particular, Jan, was celebrating her 60th bday and told me it was part of her ‘Bucket List’ to have her 60th bday on the Great Wall! The photos are great because she brought a ‘Happy 60th Birthday’ banner with her to the Wall. We celebrated Phil’s birthday on the overnight train to Xian, during which I introduced them to rice wine and they were all totally down for drinking games! At one point we had all 12 pax and me in one train compartment :-D Barbara’s birthday was two days later in Xian, which we celebrated despite the pouring rain, with dinner and cake. Dinner that night was so funny because we wound up with a ‘grown-ups' table’ and the ‘kids' table’! And the conversations that went around the grown ups table…. us kids ears were burning! Jan’s actual birthday we celebrated a few days later in Yangshuo at a place called ‘The Best Coffee’ (and it really is). She’d gone out that morning to get a facial and came out with a haircut she hadn’t asked for! She shrugged it off though and told us, ‘I’ve had my hair permed in Peru, colored in Brazil, and now cut in China!”
The Funniest moments of the trip without a doubt were:
1. 1. Sitting next to Sue on the overnight train, she was a bit tipsy and we were singing ‘I’m just a teenage dirtbag, baby!’ HILARIOUS
2. 2. On the same train, Oliver, a young guy from Germany, when we had to drink rice wine for penalties (which is harsh stuff), started singing, ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again, and you’re never gonna keep me down!’ and about 5 of us had the whole chorus going :-D
3. 3. And on the same train (it was a really fun train!) when I had trouble finishing my beer, Sue admonished me that I had to finish it because ‘there are people in China without beer’! (like when your mom used to tell you to finish your dinner because there are kids in Africa without food…. It was really funny)
4. 4. I bought a roll at a bakery in Xian that was labeled in English ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Bacon’… I kid you not.
5. 5. Sue spotted a sign outside a store that said, ‘No Guns, Drugs, or Nuclear Weapons Allowed Inside’!
6. 6. We visited a section of the Great Wall called Mutianyu that I hadn’t been to before, and at this one we got to take a cable car up onto the wall, and a TOBOGGAN down! So fun! :-D
The great thing about travelling with oldies is as much as I ‘mother’ my passengers, these guys have a tendency to ‘mother’ right back, hehe. Phil and Sue in particular, who are a very sweet and fun British couple, had been visiting their son before the trip started – he’s been living in Beijing for the past year. When it came time to say goodbye to him Sue had a hard time because she won’t see him again for a few months, so she found some comfort in temporarily adopting me. Ironically though she was also the first on the trip to call me a ‘Mother Duck’ and I didn’t even suggest it – I think it has something to do with how I herd them through traffic. :-) I’ve got to give these folks credit for life experience too… Jan is recently widowed and travelling the world a bit before going home to pick up her life again, and Sue is a cancer survivor herself.
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We got a dose of mortality early on in the trip with the earthquake that struck Sichuan province. We were still in Beijing at the time, 700 miles north of the epicenter and I didn’t actually feel it, but it was a 7.8 in Sichuan. 2008 has seen so much chaos already this year…. Since the beginning of the year there have been the worst snow storms in 50 years, the Tibet uprisings, the beginnings of the visa problems that will continue to the Olympics, now the earthquake, and all the madness that will come along with the Olympics in less than three months. What started out as a lucky year is turning into something we’re all just trying to survive. This morning’s newspaper reported the current death toll in the earthquake area at over 51,000 dead and nearly 30,000 still missing. They are calling for aid in supplying tents and temporary housing to the 4.5 million people who are homeless right now. My pax and I made a donation from our trip money that was originally allocated to go to another charity in Xian, but we felt it was more appropriate to send it to Sichuan, plus Intrepid will double every donation. <<If you’re interested in contributing through Intrepid let me know and I’ll send you info.>> They’re also predicting rain in the quake area this week, so please pray with all your heart that there’s no rain, or additional land slides, or anything else that goes along with that. On a positive note, out of tragedy there are always the wonderful stories of people helping out; the Olympic torch was supposed to pass through Shanghai while we were here, but a week after the quake China designated three days of mourning across the entire country. The torch relay was paused during that time; the last city that it passed through before stopping, the torch bearers collected 500,000 yuan to donate to Sichuan, and the city as a whole donated over 2 million yuan :-) Now its looking like every city that the torch passes through for the next three months on its way to Beijing will collect donations, and I’m getting goosebumps as I write this. The relay was also rerouted so that the last cities it passes through before the Olympics will be the four major cities in Sichuan province. It’s been very emotional following the news on all this the past few weeks.
I realize that was a bit heavy, but reality has been a bit harsh the past two weeks…
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So my trip is wrapped up, my pax are running free in Shanghai and I’ve got 3 days off here before starting my next trip; I’ve already spent most of today sleeping, so I should be ready to rejoin the land of the living tomorrow :-D
Currently Reading: nothing good… I’ve really got to find some better books!
Current Injury: none! Unless you count the fact that I sort of fell into a manhole in Yangshuo, but I didn’t really hurt myself….. LOL
