Whew, just finished a 3 week long trip and I'm exhausted! This is the longest trip I've done so far, plus I had SIXTEEN passengers! Good gracious, every time I did a head count I had to do it 3 times to make sure they were all there! At first I didn't know what to make of this group because they're all pretty quiet. I mean, they were museum-going, site-seeing, early-to-bed and out all day doing as much as they can fit into our time. Honestly most of them went to bed straight after dinner! They would rather read books than play cards, and forget about going to bars. And it's not like they were old or anything, they were all under 30 except these three older ladies, Helen, Carry, and Jane, and those three were the most likely of all to stop for a cold beer in any given city! Hehe, they were actually quite fun :-) Add to the fact that most of them were very independent and the trip gives them a lot of free time, I think I ended up spending more time with my friends throughout this trip than I did with my pax! (as the photos will show...) I had a week off in Beijing before the trip started, and EJ and I... oh lord, I had to spend the first few days of the trip recovering from my time off! Then in Yangshuo there were 7 leaders in town, which means = NO SLEEP :-D Come to think of it, that may have contributed to the exhaustion ;-) hehehe, but it was worth it! I just wish I didn't look so bloody tired in all my photos! <Side note: yes, I say 'bloody' now, I am officially British! It was almost inevitable really, I had 8 Brits out of 16 pax on this trip>
"Roaming China" as this trip is called has been amazing. I finally got to see new places like Xi'an and Shanghai, which means you all get to see new photos! (and a mighty cheer went up! ;-) I even got to see the Great freakin' Wall for the first time after being in China for 5 months!! It was very cool being on the Wall; we climbed a section of the Wall called Gubeikou, which is one of the least renovated areas near Beijing. If I had known there were options I might have picked another part for my pax as it was very hot that day and I almost had one girl pass out! However I was running this trip "blind" as we say, meaning I'd never done it before; I'd been to 4 of the 7 cities so I decided not to mention it to my pax, telling myself I was only doing this "half-blind". The only place I 'fessed up to not knowing was Shanghai because it's so incredibly MASSIVE that there was no way I could pretend to know my way around >> 15 MILLION people in Shanghai! :-O It's a very cool city though, spreading out every way from the river, with an extremely unique skyline. Well, maybe "cool" isn't the right word, it was unbelievably HOT, in fact throughout this whole trip we've had average temperatures between 33-39*C = 91-103*F. The day we got to Shanghai was record setting, the hottest day in 73 years. oy. And yet, every single day at 5:00pm it would pour down rain, which of course I got caught out in, twice.
Xi'an... Xi'an was the coolest new city I've been to. It's an ancient city, used as the capitol of China from 1000BC to 1000AD. The heart of the city is still surrounded by an ancient city wall, 4 stories high and 30 meters wide. You can ride a bicycle around the top, which I did, and it captured my imagination. From above, the residential and commercial cluster inside spills over into urban sprawl outside, with hardly a break but this one partition. The red lanterns, carved dragons, ornate watchtowers and fluttering red flags recall an Imperialism long passed, but make it easy to imagine a time when this wall protected the heart of the city from invasion.
I've seen new places and I've tried new things on this trip, mostly trying to improve my leading abilities. I'm taking steps to be a stronger "leader" and less of a "buddy" (sound familiar to anyone from the BWIP?) and it seems to have worked! I can see that now, but acting it out during the trip was difficult; here I was trying to distance myself, while the pax were already so independent and they were all so naturally quiet that for the first two weeks really I thought I'd gone too far and pushed them away! As it turned out it was all a matter of time, comfort, the structure of the trip, etc, and by this last week I knew everyone was getting along and having a good time. And even though I wasn't "buddy buddy" with any of them I still got several very sweet thank you cards at the end :-) I dont know if any of this makes sense, it's difficult to sum it up here, but this trip has been a significant learning curve for me.
Random highlights ... one of our Chinese local guides told me that I am "so Chinese!" because of the pretty hairpins I use and because I have a Chinese name (Jiang Mei -- spicy flower ;-) ... one of my pax went to supposedly "vegetarian" restaurant in Shanghai, but strangely there were many meat dishes on the menu; when she asked the waiter about it he told her very seriously that the animals had only eaten vegetables! The animals were vegetarian! LOL ... the same pax was in a taxi that had a sign warning "No psychos or drunkards allowed in the taxi without a guardian", can you imagine! hehe ... I got the sweetest card from one girl the last day, with cute illustrations throughout the trip:-)
Currently Reading: The Secrets of Jin-Shei
Current Injury: a bruise the size of my hand on my left knee from walking into a concrete pole outside the Xian train station, ouch!
Currently eating: chips and salsa!!! :-O woo-hoo!
