I was in China

[PhoneLobster]

I'm back now.

There was this water lily based conference. And a mad lotus based anti-tour-guide.

It was so awesome that I caught a high fever, a week of diarrhea, a nasty sore throat and a hacky cough.

Mostly during the important professional conference bit.

Interesting observations about China. And comparisons between China and Australia.

1) The entirety of China is covered in what appears to be a permanent and rather thick smog cloud. Sometimes you can't see past the second city block. Or even the end of the country road.

2) Take any single road side garden project anywhere in China. It has more new plants and trees than the ENTIRE Australian horticulture industry could possibly provide at all. Let alone in that quality with fairly specific and appropriate selections. Also the entire horticulture industry in Australia would be unable (and unwilling) to maintain any such single road side project. While in China they are maintaining it all really rather nicely keeping most of the plants alive and have the god damn transplanted trees on DRIP FEEDS.

3) The next good GTA game (screw you liberty fucking city) will be set IN CHINA. Why? Awesome traffic chaos, kick ass crazy roads, and a wide selection of hilarious and unlikely vehicles all mingling together. Someone get right on that. Also, fuck you liberty fucking city, from China.

4) In China it is totally OK to introduce all important speakers to the stage at a professional/academic conference with a brief cut of Star Wars music.

5) Go visit a Chinese museum, in China. They invented EVERYTHING first. By many hundreds of years. Sometimes while they were waiting for everyone else to invent it they would forget about it then invent it again several hundred years later. Also the Dragon and Tiger thing? At least 5000 BC.

6) They will totally sell you whatever that thing you are looking at is. No it doesn't matter how big it is. Would you like 5000?

7) Here is some stuff we found in the river some of it is fresh water shrimp, some of it isn't. We fried it. Kinda. You should eat this. Also it comes with a side of chili. Well, really its more chili than river bugs. Also here are some fried cicadas. In Chili. Oh and some eggplant, fried, with chili. Have some whole fried small river fish. With chili. Have some lotus, boiled, then fried, with chili. And also have some chili, fried, with chili. Then at the conference there was a rather interesting Western menu they made all us foreigners eat. With Chili.

8) There are still sufficiently few foreigners in China that children run scared and parents drag them back and make them take a photograph with you. And THAT is in the touristy places in the touristy cities where foreigners hang out. In the smoggy "country side" where tourists never visit strange older men in combat fatigues will stare at you and covertly take your picture with gigantic cameras with lenses longer than their arm. Covertly and silently. Right in your face from two feet away.

[Maxus]

Sounds like you had fun.

[Koumei]

Sounds like you... had fun?

You didn't miss much here. Feel free to not go through the News That Etc. thread.

5) Go visit a Chinese museum, in China. They invented EVERYTHING first. By many hundreds of years. Sometimes while they were waiting for everyone else to invent it they would forget about it then invent it again several hundred years later. Also the Dragon and Tiger thing? At least 5000 BC.

Everything except glass - and that kicked them hard. Because they drank tea, whereas Westerners were/are all alcoholics who like/d looking at their drinks. So Europe developed glass really early, and from there: glasses (improving the working lives of scientists/scholars by ~10 years apiece), telescopes, windows (letting them see how fucking filthy their houses are, and do something about that), lights (see above. Also, it meant not having "a fire inside paper, known for its fire resi- wait what?" for torches), FRIKKIN LASERS, and various other crap.

All thanks to glass (in turn thanks to alcohol). But basically everything else ever? Yes. China. Even "English" football started there.

[Doom]

I'm back now.


8) There are still sufficiently few foreigners in China that children run scared and parents drag them back and make them take a photograph with you. And THAT is in the touristy places in the touristy cities where foreigners hang out. In the smoggy "country side" where tourists never visit strange older men in combat fatigues will stare at you and covertly take your picture with gigantic cameras with lenses longer than their arm. Covertly and silently. Right in your face from two feet away.

This one, big time. In no other country do I feel so much like a 'foreigner', and am I told that I am a foreigner over and over again. The funny part was everyone thinks I'm an athlete, even though by American athletic standards I'm basically nothing.

[PhoneLobster]

In no other country do I feel so much like a 'foreigner'

I look sufficiently different to the local ethnic white wash in my region of Australia that I am KINDA used to being on the receiving end of the occasional double take when just casually walking down the street.

But in Australia there would just be me and that other guy doing the double take walking down the street. In China it is me and like five hundred people doing the double take.

And it IS just a little more pronounced of a double take than the Australian one. And has some odd variations.

1) Do you do a lot of Boxing?
OK so I have a bit of upper body mass. No. I haven't boxed since high school. Yes that was a long time ago. No that wasn't really boxing.

2) Greetings respectable ancestor!
I have a beard. That does not mean I am over 100 years old. I am 32. No really. Yes that guy over there really IS my father. Yes he has a beard too. No he isn't over 200 years old. Also I am not Osama Bin Laden. He had a hat.

3) Yes I am unmarried.
It really isn't that surprising. A lot of guys my age are unmarried. Yes there is a legal age minimum for marriage where I come from. No, sadly I don't have time to travel into the country and spend time with your female relative. I would really like to since she is young, pretty, hot as hell and appears to have about three different degrees and enough English to provide more intelligent conversation than most Aussie girls I know. But I'm seriously on a time table here. Also I'm not entirely sure I can OFFER anything worth the time of a hot young triple degree holding Chinese genius. Also I do not want to have sex with the female cleaning staff in the hotel. Well actually I kinda do because they are all really pretty. But I don't really want to pay and the fact that the notes they left in my room offering their services evidence that they speak no English whatsoever would make the transaction somewhat awkward and might require a third party for translation. The notes made for cool souvenirs though.

[Prak]

It was so awesome that I caught a high fever, a week of diarrhea, a nasty sore throat and a hacky cough.

I hear they're basing the next big tourism campaign on that:
"China! So much fun it's infectious!"

1) The entirety of China is covered in what appears to be a permanent and rather thick smog cloud. Sometimes you can't see past the second city block. Or even the end of the country road.

This would be why some American athletes showed up there for the last Olympics with dust masks on, and why I think it was perfectly reasonable for them to do so. I'm surprised the entirety of China hasn't blown up from someone lighting their cigarette.

2) Take any single road side garden project anywhere in China. It has more new plants and trees than the ENTIRE Australian horticulture industry could possibly provide at all. Let alone in that quality with fairly specific and appropriate selections. Also the entire horticulture industry in Australia would be unable (and unwilling) to maintain any such single road side project. While in China they are maintaining it all really rather nicely keeping most of the plants alive and have the god damn transplanted trees on DRIP FEEDS.

This is honestly even more impressive when you think about it in relation to #1. It sounds like they basically have to keep them on life support though.

4) In China it is totally OK to introduce all important speakers to the stage at a professional/academic conference with a brief cut of Star Wars music.

As it should be.

6) They will totally sell you whatever that thing you are looking at is. No it doesn't matter how big it is. Would you like 5000?

Ah, nothing quite undermines communism like destitution and greedy tourists.

7) Here is some stuff we found in the river some of it is fresh water shrimp, some of it isn't. We fried it. Kinda. You should eat this. Also it comes with a side of chili. Well, really its more chili than river bugs. Also here are some fried cicadas. In Chili. Oh and some eggplant, fried, with chili. Have some whole fried small river fish. With chili. Have some lotus, boiled, then fried, with chili. And also have some chili, fried, with chili. Then at the conference there was a rather interesting Western menu they made all us foreigners eat. With Chili.

I'd be very hesitant to eat anything they said they found in the river after some of the news items I've read about china...

[PhoneLobster]

It sounds like they basically have to keep them on life support though.

Those are optional bonus luxury drip feeds to increase the (already remarkably high) success rate of transplanted trees. All done in VAST numbers.

I seriously expect if I went back to China in 10 years. Maybe even 5. When all those trees they are planting right NOW have really taken off (they have already started to), and which must have had a lead time of at least 5 to 10 years to be planted NOW, and which appear to only be the beginning of even more even larger planting and parks projects. There won't be so much of a smog problem anymore.

Ah, nothing quite undermines communism like destitution and greedy tourists.

No those were the rich guys, members of mysterious lotus associations funded by strange alliances of inscrutable Chinese government and various mysterious Chinese corporations (probably mostly owned by the government). They were the guys driving us around in expensive imported cars to see the various vast projects their Government/Corporate work teams and personal companies were building.

But they totally had time to sell you that giant cool shaped rare river rock over there. I mean they have a whole rock farm where they farm rocks like that. Totally have 5000 in stock. Totally, right there just to the left of the rock you were looking at.

I'd be very hesitant to eat anything they said they found in the river after some of the news items I've read about china...

I suspect it was actually the sea food at that truck stop where ever dish in the large lunch banquette appeared to be deliberately intended to give me food poisoning that did me in.

Did I mention that you don't want to visit too many of your Chinese friends in China. Because every single meal will be a Banquette, with chili, and also a concerted effort to get everyone drunk.

Every single meal. For a week. A banquette (with chili). And also some extra chili.

As for the whole polluted rivers thing. Well... maybe. But again, give it five years. Because they are ALSO doing massive planting projects rehabilitating various waterways ranging from vast national parks in swamplands to a major canal system running through much of the country to various major urban drains and water ways. All of them. Being planted out and turned into parks, gardens,and healthy natural water ways. All of them. At once. Right now.

We got to see these in person in part due to the nature of the trip. So we go see a small government project in an agricultural region out in the isolated countryside. It's former farmland, it's being rehabilitated, into a swamp/park land. It's going to be a public park but it's going to be filtering the water run off from the farm land. It's over 1000 acres. It's just one small part of the massive unified water way rejuvenation project. It's over 1000 acres. It has inconsequential fringe plantings along it's roads that have nothing to do with it's main purpose that are bigger and nicer than almost anything in Australia. And they have barely even started planting it out.

Most of the speakers at the conference were Chinese. They had interesting things to say. Much more so than most. The trails are ongoing but that 1000 acre lotus and reed filter bed/cool public park may also be filtering such exotic and hard to re-mediate chemicals as various widely abused pre-emergent herbicides. That's a big fucking deal. And it's a big fucking deal over 1000 acres in size. Only in China it's a small subsidiary project over 1000 acres in size.

[Draco_Argentum]

I'd say "I was wondering why it was so quiet" but there've been plenty of arguments in your absence. I look forward to different arguments interspersed with China related anecdotes.

[Prak]

(note, pretty much every link in this post is nsfw, for the advertising and post style of site, Sankaku Complex, if not for the actual content of a given link as well.)

Ok, that's really cool that they really do seem to be taking their ecological problems seriously and trying to fix them (I really mean this, however false it rings when taken with the rest of this post). I mean, there's something to be done about the populace's and government's seeming complete willingness to:
(Spoilered for discretion, because I'm aware that some of what I bring up is more than just disgusting or disquieting, but actually disturbing, even just in summary)

make cooking oil from sewage, pillows and punching bags with rubbish, inject ailing puppies with heroin to make them more energetic, make soy sauce from human hair, maim, torture and kill live animals for entertainment, dig 2m moats around, shoot at, or develop busy freeways around reticent homeowners standing in the way of development, pass off black plastic as nori, assualt and strip a woman because they don't know their own cultural history well enough to discern a traditional chinese outfit from a kimono, have a long, long history of copyright infringement and plagiarism, make hair bands out of condoms, make contaminated formula that causes baby girls to develop breasts, have to break up garbage-floes in their large dams, send their children to college dorms that look more akin to abandoned buildings that have seen a century or more of uncaring vagrants and teenagers leaving trash and waste everywhere, soak celery in sewage to increase it's weight for market, use child labor in sweatshops recently enough for xboxes to have been made by said children, make soup from garbage, hang raw meat from power cables, respond to requests for a ban on lead paint in their products by changing to cadmium paint, make bridges of rubbish, utilize flamethrowers to deal with a(n admittedly large) nest of hornets, have villages that manage their trash by dumping it next to an already polluted river, and burning it to drive off the large cloud of flies, before repeating the cycle, sell sanitary pads with maggots in them, strew their famous beaches with trash, oh, and their trains, and courthouses, still hold bloody public executions (and organ harvesting) into the 21st century, transport their, already distressing to westerners (though I, personally, am not going to fault them on eating cats and dogs), food in completely, irrevocably inhumane ways and , force shoplifters to expose themselves, and lash them for being hesitant to do so.
Oh, and of course there's all the censorship. And anti-japanese sentiment that burgeons on nationalistic warmongering fervor and, well, racism isn't entirely accurate, but... yeah.
No wonder they have a quarter of the world's suicides.

I tried to stick to things that, to me, seem are pretty much unique to happening in China, but I'm willing to admit that a lot of these things probably happen in a lot of underprivileged areas. But even sticking to "this is almost certainly unique to china," a lot of reprehensible stuff was left out.

I guess all I'm really saying is that they have a long, long way to go, and probably a lot of adjustment to the thought processes of their people, which must begin with the government. I truly hope it has.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Two issues with that rant:

We use flamethrowers to deal with nests of stinging insects in America (and that's actually the precise reason they're legal in America, they're the only thing that really works against Africanized honeybees), and the Japanese have done their share of fucked-up things to China that I just stay out of that little argument in general.

[Koumei]

I totally support the killing of bees, wasps and hornets with flamethrowers.

The next time a bee stings my fucking foot I will upgrade that to supporting the use of small nuclear weapons on them.

Interesting to note: China is also working on a project to have a first-world medical system with universal health care. As a result of this, with the government being the ones to foot the bill for it to a large extent, they have decided they want to convince everyone to stop smoking (or at least deter new people from starting). Because that works in their favour.

Did I mention this was China, where is it remarkably easy to convince the populace to just go along with your plans? They told the Uni students not to smoke, through an ad campaign, and... apparently it worked.

If they tried that over here, the next day there would be twice as many student-age smokers, STUFFING THEIR MOUTHS FULL OF SEVERAL PACKS AT ONCE.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Did I mention this was China, where is it remarkably easy to convince the populace to just go along with your plans? They told the Uni students not to smoke, through an ad campaign, and... apparently it worked.

If they tried that over here, the next day there would be twice as many student-age smokers, STUFFING THEIR MOUTHS FULL OF SEVERAL PACKS AT ONCE.

I'd totally do that too, heh.

[wotmaniac]

Did I mention this was China, where is it remarkably easy to convince the populace to just go along with your plans? They told the Uni students not to smoke, through an ad campaign, and... apparently it worked.

That might have something to do with the fact that Mao Tso Tung is a living memory. You wanna talk about some social engineering ......

[tzor]

Glad you had fun. I suppose it is a little late to tell you not to drink the water.

I have had co-workers who have been to both India and China (I only got to go to India) and while it is a topic for another thread, the difference between the two is literally night and day. While there are many things to say against the current goverment in China, when they get in their minds that something needs to be done, it is not only done, it is done well.

[Prak]

Did I mention this was China, where is it remarkably easy to convince the populace to just go along with your plans? They told the Uni students not to smoke, through an ad campaign, and... apparently it worked.

If they tried that over here, the next day there would be twice as many student-age smokers, STUFFING THEIR MOUTHS FULL OF SEVERAL PACKS AT ONCE.

I'd totally do that too, heh.

I just fucking decided to quit and I'd probably do it...

Good on China for the ecological and health care things, I really do hope things start looking better, and the incidence of things like I linked to drops down to, well, "oh shit, that was some fucked up hillbilly," or "whoops, here's a couple million, lets not go to court over this rare mistake." levels, y'know, like when shit like that happens in America.

As for the flamethrowers... did not know that. Fair enough, I suppose.

[PhoneLobster]

I suppose it is a little late to tell you not to drink the water.

You see you say that and I knew it and went out of my way to drink bottled water. BUT...

Then you have things like...
1) Truck stop restaurant of sea food poisoning!
2) People kindly putting ice in all your drinks.
3) We have no bottled water in this hotel, but we understand your concern so we will serve you Hot Water! Only maybe it's just kinda luke warm.
4) I am old and you have visited my high security lotus breeding garden. You must now eat my home grown cucumber straight off the vine. Oh don't worry I just rinsed it, in water. Eat it! Now! Right in front of me!

and of course many more...

While there are many things to say against the current goverment in China, when they get in their minds that something needs to be done, it is not only done, it is done well.

Pretty much.

Here in Australia there are major river systems literally running dry because of inefficient and stupid agricultural abuses. Successive governments for more than a decade at both state and federal levels have "got it in their mind" that things need to be done.

Things have still not been done.

And it doesn't look promising.

In China? Things get done ONE THOUSAND ACRES AT A TIME!

[PhoneLobster]

I realized I didn't tell one of the best stories from my trip to China. So I might tell it, and in a bit more detail than the points in the original summary.

So one day in the second most rural city we were in the name of which I cannot spell, pronounce, or most of all clearly remember our host took us on an exciting trip.

Our host was a nice lady somehow involved in or partially in charge of that 1000 acres project. But we had seen that already. Today we were off to see some sort of wild swamp park loosely affiliated with her project as part of the grand waterway reform scheme, and part of some sort of giant internationally recognized protected swamp land or something.

So we all loaded in to the van driven by her driver, who was a young skinny guy who's Aunt she was (I say it that way because she was his Chinese Aunt, which I am pretty sure does not in fact necessarily imply that he was in any way her actual nephew).

Next thing we know we are on a 2 hour van trip into nowhere with Aunty, Probably Not Nephew, The Anti-Guide and the Anti-Guide's personal translator/woman to be misogynistic about. (Yes the Anti-Guide who's job to a large extent involved speaking Chinese required a second translator to translate his Chinese into Chinese actual Chinese people could actually understand. She also lived in his hotel room and kept his clothes clean and in order. And generally pretended not to understand all the horrible things he said about her in English right in front of her when talking to us).

So anyway the Anti-Guide has little or no idea where we were going or why or what was going on in general. He did not feel that as a man tasked largely with planning and organizing that he should need to know these things and as our primary English speaking translator did not feel the need to find out, or if he did was largely incapable of doing so.

So we travel deep deep into the country on a six lane country back road. With some of the worst chaotic traffic mixed antique triwheels, modern cars, electric skooters, mining dump trucks and agricultural vehicles we had encounters. You could tell it was rural by the ludicrous amount of giant potholes we crossed at high speed while weaving in and out of the traffic and honking the horn for no obvious effect.

Also there was the bit where the giant bridge over the river wasn't finished yet so you detoured off road along a narrow crumbling lane at top a cliff of wet slippery mud down to a crude ford. Where they charged a toll.

About 13 near death road incidents later we were at the site. We thought. We got out at the car park next to the impromptu things we found in the swamp food market.

Everyone with a bladder older than 50 years then visited the public toilets outside some sort of science association sponsored museum the nature and inside of which I never got to explore. Meanwhile the Not-Nephew and the van disappear and Aunty had a mild argument with a mysterious pretty young Chinese woman (who probably had at least three degrees and a research project).

Suddenly for reasons the Anti-Guide did not, could not, or just could not be assed knowing we were all doubling back to the car park. A mysterious new sportier BLACK van was waiting for us with an edgy new van driver. We piled into the new more exiting van which took off out of the car park with new more exciting faster speed than ever before.

Now much of the next hour made little sense to me until I eventually realized that it basically was all an elaborate scheme to avoid paying whatever tiny entry fee to the park proper that we would have been charged and which Aunty and park official girl had most likely been arguing about.

So Exciting Van is barrelling at high speed down the road from the car park to the main road. But suddenly ahead of us at the gates (aside from some confusing involving a car and a bus which by now is routine) a girl strongly resembling park official girl springs out of nowhere and tries to shut the steel gates in front of us.

She shuts one gate, the other remains (partially) open. Exciting van can barely stop in time! Well. Theoretically. Because Exciting van is too exciting for brakes and instead puts the peddle to the metal instead. Park official girl who had been going for the remaining half of the gate throws herself out of the way of Exciting Van, which also barely misses a car, a bus, a guy who was just standing in the road in the middle of all this for no reason (happens a lot in China), and of course barely squeezes through both gates, zips around the corner onto the six lane pot hole filled rural high way traffic nearly on two wheels and takes us to our next destination.

About 20 minutes of very exciting travel in a MUCH faster van than the previous one we arrive at some rotting riverside dock where trucks are dumping coal into half sunken barges. We abandon the Exciting Van and it's driver and never ever see them again. We climb down a precarious little muddy cliff face beside the docks to a waiting...

... well I'm not up on my nautical terminology. I guess it was a small rusty old ?Punt? (a flat bottomed rusty little boat pushed along by some rough looking lady with a bamboo pole).

We had after all been promised a boat trip through the lotus. This was not in fact the promised trip.

A quick five minute punt down some unrestored industrial/agricultural canals and the punt is beached on a muddy shore. We all disembark and clamber through some reeds onto a proper park walking trail. It appears we have been delivered to the promised park.

The trail leads across some bridges into some wild reed beds, and a large thatched roof round house full of Tigers.

No really. Fucking Tigers. Also girls in those little sequined magicians assistant suits, and tiger tamers in a big cage, in the thatched round house, which as far as we knew at that point was largely accessible only by rusty punt. Kind of an odd thing to encounter after all that but whatever, fuck it.

From there we walked along a trail to a reconstructed historical village that apparently had some significance as a nationalist stronghold during the Japanese occupation. There were badly chipped fiber glass? rebel fighter dummies, sometimes posed like they were shooting, but not with guns in hand.

Also here in the middle of the swamp in on of the crumbling mud huts was the kitchen that would be serving us lunch. On an outdoor picnic table covered in mud next to the fish tanks full of stuff they kinda found in the swamp. I generally assume that the whole point of having fish tanks in restaurants is so you can pick and kill the fish you like the most in an act which I can only imagine is both slightly cruel and oddly disappointing. If you ever visit though I suggest you DO pick, because you seriously don't want any of the many DEAD FISH in the fish tanks.

Lunch as usual since there is a host is a many course banquet (with Chili in every course, of course). Even though we were at what amounted to a fast food shack in an actual swamp. It was actually a fairly OK banquet compared to some of the others (better than the truck stop banquet). The Black hard boiled eggs were sorta OK and the whole fried baby swamp fish were among the best I had in China.

After lunch everyone with a bladder over the age of 50 crossed the bridge from the rebel village to an island mostly notable for it's public toilet.

I loiter around outside with the Anti-Guide who's elderly bladder is mysteriously holding out. This is unpleasant because I don't like spending time with the Anti-Guide because aside from being an asshole guide he is also an asshole. Generally talking to him entails...
1) Listening to him being a racist dick about the Chinese, mostly complaining about how greedy they are.
...and...
2) Listening to his latest "Screw everyone else only I matter" money making scheme.
... and no he doesn't even begin to become aware of the implications of his two favorite talking points and the way he switches between the two from sentence to sentence.

So of course we wait in silence. Wonderful wonderful silence. Until...

This strikingly pretty Chinese girl walks past. She is strikingly pretty and kinda distinctive due to a mole on her chin. (Which makes her easy to recognize which is important in the next bit).

Being, again, strikingly pretty she strikes me as pretty, and she kinda notices me seeing her and diplomatically breaks eye contact and walks past. Now as she does so she also gives her hair a little sort of self conscious flip with her hand.

Now me, I interpreted the hair flip in any number of ways. A minor nervous quirk, a casual diplomatic misdirection, maybe even a very mild flirt.

The Anti-Guide however being a professional master of not understanding anything ever interprets things his own way. And being tasked in part through his role to be diplomatic and help us not offend locals mutters far too loudly under his breath "Stuck Up Bitch!".

And as I see her very slight pause as she walks away I think (entirely silently to myself) "Yeah, the kinda 'stuck up bitch' who knows a bit of English you asshole".

Better yet the Anti-guide does this in such a way that she may well believe it was ME who said it. Nice.

So anyway then we travel to the boat trip.

Its a two story anachronistic historical wooden boat packed with Chinese tourists. We go up top and immediately become the new biggest tourist attraction. There are pictures taken with children. That spooky older man in the combat fatigues with the giant camera takes furtive pictures of me like I can't see him and his giant camera right there in my face.

And we meet this young woman called Mary (everyone who speaks English has their own "English" name) who is an English teacher in, a screw it, it's too late for me to remember the name, the city the convention will be in. She is a nice girl and I spend much of the trip talking to her. If for no other reason than fuck it, it's talking to someone other than the fucking Anti-Guide.

After the relatively unremarkable boat trip she actually manages to corner me and pretty much try and arrange to hook up in the convention city (these Chinese women are fucking awesome) which unfortunately is somewhat scuppered by the fact that she is only getting back from her holiday the day AFTER the convention ENDS and that I don't have a mobile phone.

The Anti-Guide who has been vulturing around the edges eying her off jumps in and seriously gives her HIS card. And not his business card but what looked suspiciously like a "personal" card. Yeah sure Anti-guide, she's WAY out of your league you sleaze.

I tell you what though, Mary moonlights a bit as a tour guide, next time I go to China I'm hiring her.

Anyway. We immediately have to abandon Mary after the boat ride because while she is largely walking where we are walking everyone in our group with bladders over the age of 50 has side track to visit the next public toilets. Let's take this moment for me to realize just how often everyone other than me was visiting the public toilets now that I'm actually writing this down.

Let's also take this moment to point out how ludicrously horrendous Chinese public toilets are. I don't want to go into the details. But it was pretty bad. At one place the Anti-Guide returned from one such toilet to offer this conversational gem "something something urinals, something something square bucket, something something, unique, something something, wanted to take a picture with my camera but there were like guys shitting with the doors open and I figured they might no like it." That was about the height of being considerate towards other humans (especially Chinese) for him so let's all give him a pat on the back.

Anyway then we trek all the way through the rest of the park. Which takes a lot of trekking, avoids some of the most interesting looking bits, and has us run into the only other Westerner in 100 miles about three or four times.

It's some German backpacker guy. Nice fellow. Along with his local friends. A nice Chinese couple... and a strikingly pretty Chinese girl with a mole on her chin. Who speaks fluent English. (I silently told you so Anti-Guide I silently thinks to my silent self).

She gives me the sort of look that indicates to me that she is being polite because of all the people here but she remembers me calling her a bitch to her back the last time we crossed paths.

The encounter with the German and the girl with the pretty mole is notable for only one other thing. She was putting the moves on him pretty heavily and I'm overhearing it pretty easily (These Chinese girls are really aggressive) and is asking him "Do you always sleep in the nude?" Which between her (pretty good but accented) English and HIS (not quite as good and also differently accented English) is hilariously not getting across to him at all and he doesn't understand "where" she thinks he is sleeping.

We finally loose German and pretty mole girl, walk OUT of the ticket gates we never came in through, and into the car park out the front of the impromptu swamp things market and science association museum where we had ORIGINALLY been dropped off.

Edit: Oh yeah. I just remembered, and everyone except me had so much fun at the public toilets here last time that they visit them again on the way out. In the process the anti-guide forgets about his translator translator (who is also largely the only person keeping us organized) and nearly leaves her behind.

After that the day is largely over (except for a brief adventure for the requisite banquet dinner that evening) and we have another two hour drive in the original not quite so high speed van back along the same pot hole ridden high way. Only while it had been raining and slippery on the way out in the morning in the afternoon it was dry and dusty, so dusty you couldn't see to the front of the dump truck (the first of three in a row no less) that you were over taking into oncoming traffic that also couldn't see you.

Oh yeah and there was one of those bumper car boats with the water pistols on (just one), some funny English, I grabbed some lotus seeds from a path side bog before the Anti-Guide could get them, there were docks full of scuppered boats for some reason. There was one guy so panicked by the westerners that suddenly surrounded him that he froze like a chameleon and pretended he wasn't there then scurried off the moment we looked away. There were fake chicken wire rock cliff faces. And just kilometers of lotus and swamps. There was also a big mildly amusing sculpture but I forget what is was of.

The end.

[Stahlseele]

sounds interesting O.o

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I am not surprised about how aggressive chinese women are. I had a 50-something chinese coworker start rubbing my shoulders out of nowhere. It kind of made me feel odd...

[CatharzGodfoot]

PL, I have heard that people can get in trouble for talking to Westerners. That was ten years ago, but even if it's no longer the case it could explain chameleon man.