LOL!! What a crazy-ass day yesterday was. So we decided to hike Mount Qing Cheng Hou. We got up around nine, had a delicious breakfast at this cafe near our hotel with our adorable Chinese waiter, Jack. Went to the bus station for ten, realized we had to wait 2 hours for the next bus....
Well ok, so we waited, killed time by going to an internet cafe. When we got back down, we of course had to battle the swarms of Chinese, and avoid the gobs of spit being flung around in the station and those that were already on the floor, really gross when you slip on one. We had to wait in line because the bus hadn't arrived yet. Chatted with this dude from Holland who just got back from Tibet, calling the people there "real people" (as opposed to the crazy mofos that live in mainland China).
Anyways, when the time came to get on the bus, god if it wasn't a damn circus. People shoving, pushing, I have an infected scratch on my left elbow from a woman who clawed at me trying to get on the bus first.
See we've realized if you LOOK like a foreigner you're treated like a God, everywhere, and you move through China in a kind of protective bubble. Screwed out of money, but still treated nicely. The Holland guy got his own personal escort onto the bus he was taking. If you look Chinese, you have to battle the pit. So basically, any of you who come to China, and don't have Asian features will have a far more tame experience than what we're having.
So back to this bus line. I get pushed for the umpteenth time, and lose it on this guy beside me. Turns out he was just the conductor trying to get on the bus to get his money purse. I felt really bad about this the next day...to be explained later.
So we're on the bus and people are physically climbing over Pauline (I'm NOT joking or exaggerating, they are using her body as a fucking stepstool), who's behind me, causing her to scream, "I fucking hate this country!" It was a pretty funny image. We battle our way back to the front and take the only two seats left.
Two and a half hours later, we arrive at our destination, attacked by hawkers as soon as we're off the bus. We're too tired to fight, end up just letting one take us to a restaurant, where they promptly overcharge us for our meal...of course. We couldn't be bothered to argue and just paid. So we hiked the mountain, through BEAUTIFUL gorges and 'dramatic vistas'...took the longest coolest chairlift down the mountain...it took 30 minutes for the first lift, 20 minutes for the second. The hike was fabulous.
5 hours later, done our hike, we're hungry, so we go back to this guesthouse place, we'd booked into earlier in the day for a cheap price, mostly because the lady was a sweetie...or so we thought. We eat at her restaurant and they screw us over by feeding us a dish we didn't order...we thought it was one of the dishes we HAD ordered and ate it, only when we were finished did they put the actual dish in front of us. She inflated the prices, and insisted we'd ordered everything that was on the table, which was difficult to argue because words for prices sound similar in Chinese and the Mandarin here is so accented with their dialect, Pauline had a hard time understanding her in the first place. But it's pretty certain we got butt-fucked. So we ended up paying practically triple what the meal should have cost us. Still didn't add up to much in Canadian dollars, but it's the fucking principle. Seriously, really sick of not being able to trust people here.
So we get back to our room, she shows us how to work the shower, it's like a big metal tank on the wall, with this huge ELECTRICAL switch beside it. Pauline took one look and was like, I don't know if i want to shower...so I went first. Had to flip the switch first, which spits green electric sparks at me, and I'm like...is this safe in a SHOWER??? then I open the water pipe, the tank is groaning and making weird sounds, but I still open it more...slowly... and then instead of the water coming out the nozzle, like it should, it starts shooting like a geyser from the top of the tank, wetting the cord, and there are sparks shooting from the plug...so I'm yelling, Pauline comes running in thinking the worst, we manage to switch off the water, laughing our asses off at how ridiculous the whole thing is...and decide to not take showers.
So we spend a night, sleeping in our own grime from hiking all day, on wet, clammy beds because the room is too humid, with windows that don't shut and a door that doesn't lock properly on the ground floor of a chinese sorta motel room. Felt real secure. Then this guy was trying to bang down our door, because simple knocking isn't enough apparently, because he wanted to bring us a mosquito coil. The place was just seedy.
To boot, I wake up the next morning with food poisoning from the stupid dish we didn't order in the first place...shoulda not eaten especially after we saw all the restaurants washing their meats in the gutters....and they wonder 'how did SARS spread so quickly in China??'
Anyways, we decide to leave, at 7 in the morning, realise they've locked the door leading out of the yard, so we have to sneak through the kitchen, and sneak out this half-open shutter. We just jumped out of the room, left our door open and the lights on, we were out of there so fast...felt like a jailbreak. We head down the mountain to the bus stop, me stopping every few feet, to spasm with stomach pains. When we get to the stop, there are NOOO buses..and we're like fuck, how long do we have to wait for one, I'm thinking, my stomach is not gonna hold up. Then, on cue, a bus with a Chengdu sign comes rolling down the hill...and wouldn't you know it, the conductor sticking his head out is the same guy i screamed at the day before....
They see us and the driver is the same dude too and they're like, hey didn't you take our bus yesterday, what are you doing here? Pauline is like, Fiona's sick, we need to get back to Chengdu. They're like, there aren't any seats, but you can hop on anyway. So we do, and the driver and conductor were SOOO nice to us...the conductor guy cleared a seat on the cushion for us to sit, meaning he had to stand the whole way. And they were super friendly with us. The conductor guy hit on Pauline.
So they took us back to the station beside our hotel, even though it wasn't on their original route...and i was so grateful it was them who picked us up and felt super bad about yelling at the guy earlier.
Anyways, my system seems to be better, a mild poisoning case only, just have to deal with the occassional stomach pains. Hanging out with other foreigners though has really shown us the different treatment one receives when they don't LOOK Chinese. Either way, can definitely say our experiences wouldn't be as memorable if we weren't treated like every other chinese in this country, but our bruises would be far less.
We fly to Tibet in two days, really looking forward to that. China is a really amazing place, but the people are energy vampires and ridiculously money-driven. I'm not exaggerating when I say for the right price, they will do ANYTHING...it takes a whole lot out of us everyday to deal with the accostations of the hawkers,the Chinese tourists, the transport people, etc. And talking to other foreigners has also shown us it's impossible for them to understand what it's like to be a foreigner but Asian in China and to not be treated with respect and awe everywhere you go.Basically, Mao really fucked up these people, after living where they've had to share everything and own nothing, now they have completely no regard for others, only themselves....and foreigners who they see as cash cows. I suppose it is good to look Asian in a sense, you don't get AS fucked. Pauline was saying, one woman tried to sell her a book for 2 yuan in Leshan and when the Brits we were hanging with came by 5 seconds later, her price was 30 yuan for them.
We're taking it easy for the next two days until we fly out to Tibet, a little shopping, a little city sight-seeing...nothing rigorous until we get to Tibet and have to deal with altitude sickness, where people who've come from there are telling us, you're lucky if all you get is vomiting and a headache.
So excited! :)
