My mind is starting to wander... to what do I do post-Australia?
I know that may sound a might premature seeing as if I even go there next is far from certain. Let alone when, and for how long. But first off, and I don't know why, but I've really started missing South America. And wanting to go back there again. Because... well, it's still not finished, is it? I still didn't do everything that I wanted to do there. I didn't leave on my terms if you remember.
And on top of that, I just fucking loved that part of the world.
And I'm in a town like Yangshuo, where encountering English teachers is unavoidable.
Even if you actively try to avoid them, because half of them are such arrogant pricks.
But even if you do successfully manage to avoid engaging in conversation with anyone, keeping alive my veggie burger marathon placed me continually in Western restaurants. And you can't help but overhear them very loudly talking about their English teaching experiences. And...
Well I love living out of my backpack. I don't really need to say that I don't think seeing as I've done it at any time that money permits for years and years now. I love doing this, I really do. But...
Backpacking like this, it only ever really scratches the surface. You know? I don't get the opportunity to really immerse myself into a culture. To get to know local people extensively. To have time to learn the local language really.
I don't really become a part of any community. At best all I ever am, is an outside observer.
And I'm happy with that, I really am. To really feel entrenched anywhere, takes a lot of time. It takes organisation, it takes settling down. And there simply isn't enough time in a lifetime to give such dedication to every place that I want to go in the world. So just seeing places as an "observer," I'm fine with that. Because what else is there I can do?
But... once in a while, some places in the world, I do want to find myself as a bit more than that. I do want to be... a part of things.
Add on my continued frustration with never having the time to master the local language (I did have time in South America, but for reasons, I didn't take advantage of that). To be able to fully communicate with the locals.
I can't remember when it first came up. But you can read about me toying with becoming an English teacher, probably way back to the Retro blog entries. It's been something that's been in the back of my mind for probably as long as I've been travelling for. But... I've just never done it.
You want to know why?
Convenience (or lack thereof), cost, time required. They all play a part. But I've always had a fear of doing it as well. I just... it scares me. The prospect of standing at the front of a class of thirty expectant students, it scares me.
It's not the fact that I have all these eyes on me. That doesn't bother me at all.
I've always been a confident public speaker, and the number of presentations required to achieve my business degree just served to hone such skills.
No, what I'm scared of, is disappointing. The fact that there's money involved, and hence expectation, that's the part that scares me.
Students will be paying considerable sums of money. They have expectations. Their future, their future ability to communicate would rest in my hands. And that prospect of disappointing them, that prospect of failing them, having them feel like they wasted that money and that I was not a good investment, that is the part that scares me.
It's a fear that I'll be a let-down as a teacher. That I could negatively impact someones future by not being very good at what I do.
If a Chinese family with not much money, spends all their savings to send their only son to me, to have him learn English and be able to communicate and conduct business in the English-speaking world, and I fail at my duty... that's a problem to me. I have a conscience. I have to sleep at night. And I don't know if I could live with myself knowing that people invested their money and their hopes in me, and I failed.
That's what scares me.
All eyes on me, I'm fine with that. When I had to make presentations at university, it would be in front of fifty bored students who only showed up at the lecture theatre that day to get an extra point for attendance. The only person I would hurt by being shit, was myself.
And I'm fine with that.
If I could entertain them and educate them at the same time, then great. And in the main I think that I did a pretty good job. But there was never that pressure there. That responsibility to anyone other than myself.
But add in that financial investment that people would be making in me, and my ability, and that makes it a scary proposition to me, it really does. It puts a great weight of expectation on my shoulders.
And yes I'm sure that I'm over-thinking this. Because listening to half of the tards that you hear talking in Yangshuo, they don't have a care in the world for any of their students and seem to have very much a me versus them attitude towards them. But... that's not me. I have a conscience.
And I don't even know why it bothers me. Because I think that being a teacher would actually be something that I'm quite good at. I can generally connect with people pretty well, I can generally engage people pretty well, I'm generally pretty caring, and I think compared to the average tard that would attempt to teach English, I think that I'm pretty intelligent.
It's honestly something that I think that I'd be good at. You may disagree.
But the one thing about travelling alone, about backpacking alone, about living alone, is that I only have responsibility towards myself. If I fuck up, it only affects myself. And that responsibility, that weight of expectation that my actions can adversely affect other people, that part of this whole deal, it just terrifies me.
I don't need weighing on my conscience for the rest of my life, that I... ruined the life of this poor Chinese family by being incompetent.
If you made me CEO of Apple for example, I wouldn't care about that. I wouldn't feel pressure about that.
I don't care about wasting the money of a billion dollar company, and yes my actions would obviously affect the livelihoods of others. But if you're already working for Apple, you're not going to struggle to garner another income.
Teaching English in impoverished countries, to me that's a much more pressure-filled position. Because you have responsibility to people that already have virtually nothing. You could be their only hope.
And that pressure fucking petrifies me.
But you know, I always say that you've got to face your fears. That if there's something in the world that scares you, then the best thing that you can do is face it head on. You overcome it, and you become a better person for it.
Like I continually say in these blogs, hitch-hiking through Canada was one of those for me. So was getting on that plane to Bogota, as stupid as that sounds now.
To a much, much lesser extent, so was coming to China really. I didn't know what to expect from China.
This is just the next thing for me. It's just something that I've got to do.
Like I say, I love backpacking. These past few years have been invaluable to me in shaping the person that you witness writing this blog right now. But I kind of feel that it's time to become more a part of things. It's time to... not to settle down. I'm not ready to settle down. Not even close.
But to find a place. Colombia, Bolivia, China, Thailand, wherever. Maybe somewhere new even. Somewhere that I haven't been yet. It's time to find a place, and become a part of it.
To learn the local language, to become a local person. And I'm sure you can now see why I was mentioning South America at the beginning of this blog.
I would have no problem settling down in China. No problem at all.
Yes I may not have spoken flatteringly about China for every second of my visit. But this is still a fascinating country. This is still a place that I could spend a lot more time.
But to me, South America is probably the place that I've visited in the world, that I love the most. I feel a real bond to that part of the world (apart from Argentina. Which was shit. And I get no end of amusement as they continually rile themselves up about the Falkland Islands. My only regret is that I'm not there right now to see it in person).
And at this stage, no other language would be easier or more useful for me to learn, than Spanish. Which is why I'm just thinking South America.
I mean, it wouldn't be forever.
In my head right now, an ideal scenario would be maybe, Colombia or Bolivia for a year. Then maybe Bangkok for a year. Then maybe China somewhere for a year. I don't know exactly. But... I'm just starting to feel that this is what I want in my future.
How long can I go on being nothing more than an observer? How long? Really?
And I'm not talking about now. I'm not talking about today. My plans for the next eighteen months hardly alter at all, with the exception that I'd need to do some preparation for this.
But... once I'm done in Australia, once my bank balance has been topped up, maybe it'll be the time to become a part of things. To become a part of a community. To take what I do to the next level, I guess is the best way of putting it.
It fucking terrifies me, I'll make no bones about that. And that fear is at least a part of the reason that as yet, I have made zero progress towards teaching anywhere. But the time is coming that I face my fear. That's what I think. The time is coming that I face that fear.
I guess Yangshuo, with all its English teachers, just brought that to the fore of my mind again.
And like I say, half of them are fucking tards anyway. I don't doubt that I have greater intellect, composure and dedication than most of them.
But I also have a conscience.
If I could teach English where there was no money involved; where I didn't get paid to do it, and they didn't pay to be there, then that would be perfect. But I won't be able to support myself that way, you know? So it couldn't exactly be a long-term endeavour.
That's where my mind is now though. It's time to become more than a tourist somewhere other that the English-speaking world. And although there are other opportunities, the most obvious, the most widely-accepted way, the most useful way seeing as I can do it anywhere in the world, is to teach English.
It just ticks all the boxes of what I'm looking for.
I can make money whilst living somewhere foreign. It's a medium-term to long-term commitment. I can learn a language and be a part of a community whilst I'm doing it. I'm scared of it.
All of those things, particularly that last one, make it the logical thing for me to do. So that's what I'm thinking now.
Like I say, it's not in the immediate-future. I'm not talking about now. About today (although I'm sure it could be possible). No, I'm thinking a post-Australia/New Zealand thing. Maybe around my 28th birthday. But that is what I see in my future.
I think that I have done for a while now. But Yangshuo, and all its retards teaching English, just kind of gave me the confidence to think that actually, maybe I can do it.
At least better than half of these mongs.
So I had done a pretty damn good job in Yangshuo, of avoiding anything remotely local, and only sticking to the Western restaurants and the touristy areas.
For four days I saw nothing Chinese.
On the fifth day though, there was a Swiss and an Australian girl in my dorm, going looking for some staircase up a mountain.
The night before we'd all been sat in a Western cafe getting dinner (I had a veggie burger). And there was a guy there, an English teacher, who'd been living in Yangshuo for the past seven months.
And although it doesn't appear in any tourist guides, and although you won't hear about it from any of the locals, what he told us, was that if you go past some market, and down some back alleys, leading up to the top of one the surrounding mountains/hills with a television antenna on top, is a staircase up the mountain.
Although it's kind of a local secret.
I wasn't paying too much attention to the details. But is some spur of the moment desire to do something other than sit in bed on my laptop all day (I'm not too sure what came over me), I told them, if you're going up this mountain... give me a shout.
I don't get much exercise nowadays. I'm fat enough already and living on veggie burgers. Walking up the occasional mountain is about all that I do. So when an opportunity presents itself to me like that, it's kind of hard for me to turn it down.
We weren't paying great attention to the directions though. I mean, they weren't. I wasn't even listening remotely, so I was kind of relying on them to get us there. And the next morning, after they had got back from visiting some caves and I had got out of bed, we all happened to be ready to look for a mountain at the same time, so off we went.
Like I said, up to this point, I had done fuck-all that deferred from the tourist M.O in Yangshuo, and I had been happy doing so. But seeing as we had to look for this staircase, and we didn't even know which of the mountains that it was, we had to do a bit of searching among the back-streets of Yangshuo.
I found it incredible. I found it absolutely incredible that, considering the glitz and panache which had been my (and most tourists) solitary impression of Yangshuo, that venturing a literal thirty yards down a side-road and around a loose corner, you can go from the flashing lights, the tacky beauty and the expense of Yangshuo, into this impoverished Chinese village.
Literally, thirty yards from what the tourist is supposed to see, you find somewhat decrepit, dirty, run-down houses with people living in.
It was just a... I mean, I'm sure I knew that they were there. I didn't think that the local people here all lived in five-star hotels. But being my fifth day in Yangshuo, I'd just got accustomed to this city being Western restaurants, tour companies, modern store fronts, flashing lights.
And then thirty yards away, this wouldn't have been out of place in a Brazilian slum.
Even though I knew it was there, it still kind of took me back.
I'd made an effort to visit local areas in every place that I've been in China. But like I said in a previous blog, Yangshuo could perhaps out-do even Dali as the most touristy place that I've been. This city exists for tourists. If the tourists go away, then I don't know what remains. So you could insinuate that Yangshuo does its best to paper over the cracks of poverty. And it almost surprised me to see it, just thirty yards from where I've walked everyday. Because it does such a great job of giving over the impression that this is a glitzy, glamorous place.
For some reason I just didn't expect to see it to such an extreme.
It was the wrong area anyway. I mean, we'd gone in completely the wrong fucking direction.
Where we actually ended up going, was past the market that I have so diligently been avoiding for the duration of my stay in Yangshuo in the name of ignorance. And we didn't have to go through the market, nothing like that. And from the street, you could not see too well what was contained within.
Enlisting the help of a nearby hostel that we stumbled across though, we found the route through these houses that we had to go to get to the start of this staircase. And it really was either a very well-kept secret, because the first guy we asked that worked in this hostel either wouldn't tell us... or he didn't know. And this hostel was only a three-minute walk away.
A second guy, who maybe didn't know better than to not tell the dirty tourists though, drew us a little map of how to snake through the alleyways. And where that did take us, was around the back of this market.
Very thankfully, the glassless windows at the back had been blocked-off by opaque sacks and other junk. So you couldn't see what was going on inside. This junk didn't stop sound or smell escaping though.
And yes, in the dark depths at the back of this building, from the walls within, you could hear dogs barking. And no, they certainly weren't yelps of happiness.
...
I'll just be thankful that my eyes were spared.
...
We found our way to the staircase though. And it was a pretty big hill or a small mountain that we were climbing. Look at it whichever way you want to. And big enough that the Swiss girl couldn't make it up all the way and had to go back down again.
Myself and the Aussie persevered though.
And we did see a sign, that said something along the lines of 'do not pass, important equipment ahead' (referring to the TV antenna).
Alright. That's fair enough. You don't want people fucking with the equipment. But would it not make more sense to have this sign at the bottom, rather than 30-minutes of climbing a staircase up the mountain?
Of course we continued on anyway. But not too long after this we encountered a locked gate of which we could not pass. So we got, probably seven-eighths of the way up this mountain. And just as the top was in sight... we had to stop. Fucking great.
I still really enjoyed the hike to be honest. And my God I need the exercise. And from this height, the views really weren't too bad, despite the lingering fog.
But how fucking anti-climatic. You know? The whole point of mountains, is to conquer them.
The point of mountains is not to get seven-eighths of the way up, and then go back down again. But whatever China. Protect your dumbass TV antennae if it's that important to you.
So we headed back down through impoverished Yangshuo, past the sounds of dog murder, and onto the sanctity of the Western restaurants.
Got some falafel this time. To make a change from the veggie burgers.
And the sun even came out briefly for the first time since I'd been here. So the ice cream I got probably undid all the good that I'd done by climbing seven-eighths up a mountain in the first place.
Then yesterday morning, ready to go back to my usual routine of staying in bed; afterall, I'd actually earned it this time. I get up, have my shower and shave, and as I come out, there's a Belgian girl in the room.
"What are you doing today?"
"Fuck-all. Staying in bed."
"I'm going to the Moon Hill. Do you want to come?"
Moon Hill. What the fuck is a Moon Hill.
See, I hate that people do this to me. They "be nice."
Ignorance is the theme of Yangshuo. The less that I know that there is to do out here, the less that I have to feel guilty about staying in bed all day and not doing it. But then when someone tells me that there's a Moon Hill (and in my previous five days, I'd never heard of a Moon Hill), then I kind of feel obligated to do it. Because if I know it's there, then I feel like I'm wasting my time here by staying in bed and not seeing it.
"Fine. I'll go to the Moon Hill. But I want my veggie burger breakfast."
This was going to be my second-last Yangshuo veggie burger, and my last one at this, my favourite veggie burger retaurant in the whole town. So I took a picture of it, just as a souvenir.
Isn't that just a good-looking fucking burger.
That, is a normal-sized bun. The burger really is that big.
But then, it's thick as well. And as you eat it, the patty becomes flatter. So it just expands in size. You don't actually feel like you're eating anything, because the more you eat it, the wider it gets.
It's just a good fucking burger.
All for Y18 (including the fries). That's why I've loved this town so fucking much.
The main streets are about as Chinese as me. But the food... is fucking awesome.
Anyway, all this talk is making me hungry. So I'll move on.
After this nutritious breakfast, we head back to the hostel, because we're going to cycle to the Moon Hill. And the hostel has one free-to-use bike.
We'll pick-up that one, and then hire one more.
I thought that the Belgian was being nice by giving me the free bike. Turns out that she'd been out on it the day before and knew how shit it was. So I got stuck on this bike with perhaps the least-comfortable seat, ever. And even if it wasn't, having it so low that it was the perfect size for a three year old, probably didn't help matters.
I was kneeing my torso as I was cycling along these busy Chinese roads. That's how much of a tool I looked. And the seat hurt so fucking much that I had to stand-up on the pedals half the time.
Probably would have been a better idea just to pay the Y10 (about £1) to hire out a normal bike for the day.
And no deposit!
I may say the occasional slightly negative thing about China. About Chinese people.
I'm not sure exactly. I don't always know how my writing comes across.
But how often in the West, can you pay £1 to hire a bike for the day, and not be required to leave any ID or deposit or anything.
You pay a quid, you take the bike. It's that simple.
Is that not a better life? Where you can trust your fellow man?
Chinese people are fucked up in a lot of ways. In a lot of fucking ways.
There are many dog corpses to testify to this.
But it's a good feeling to be able to trust the integrity of your fellow man. You know? There are many, many places in the world that you can't.
So you can say a lot of negatory things about the Chinese. But real integrity and trust, that is something that they have that we (the West) lack. And it's something pretty valuable in my opinion.
Anyway, we continue along this road towards the Moon Hill.
We stop a couple of times en route (in addition to the stops because my fucking ass was hurting) because there are ticket agents to these caves and hot pools that "Isabel" wants to go to.
I've agreed. But on the condition that we don't pay more than Y50.
Today's price is Y120. So we've got a bit of negotiating to do.
We don't get anywhere though. So onto the Moon Hill.
Oh. So that's what a Moon Hill is, is it?
It's a hill with a big moon shape cut out of it.
It could equally be called a sun hill, an earth hill, a football hill, a tennis ball hill, a circle hill, a golf ball hill, a sideways sombrero hill... as it is, they settled on Moon Hill.
Was quite nice though. Although meant a fuck of a load more stairs to walk up just to get there.
Not quite so many as the day before. But enough to make me sweat.
I know that it was technically called the Moon "Hill". But I think that really it was more of a mountain. That way I can say that I walked up two mountains in two days.
Makes me sound less fat.
The fog was pretty thick today though, so we certainly didn't go up there for the views, that's for sure. Mostly just to look at a big hole in the side of a mountain.
It was alright. Pretty nice hole.
I was getting along with Isabel really well though. She was a fun girl, so I was enjoying the day. Although she did have to endure me talking about Lilach for quite a while right now.
Poor girl.
It just comes out sometimes. I can't control it.
Got it out my system though I guess. Although of course, now I'm thinking about her again non-stop.
So anyway, what we decide to do, is cycle back toward these caves/hot-springs/mud baths, and see if maybe we can go to the main entrance to get a discounted ticket.
Everyone else we'd spoken to so far had been agents of some kind.
As we had been doing all day, we're cycling side-by-side, pretty slowly, just talking as we're going.
And anytime we'd stopped today, there had been the inevitable tout on this very touristy road attempting to sell us something.
We were cycling along though. And two people on a scooter; one driving, the other talking, try to sell us tickets to these caves, as we're cycling.
They really do take selling you stuff to a whole new level in China.
You're on a bike? Fine. We'll get on a scooter and sell to you that way.
Partially in motion, and then partially after we're stopped, we are able to negotiate the price down to Y50 though. And you really do have to bargain hard with these people. But going up to a kiosk that had previously told us that there was no way that they could sell us tickets for less than Y80 (so I think they had a bit of egg on their face as we got some for Y50), this woman got us our tickets. We got the price that we were looking for.
Although we were sworn to secrecy, so other tourists didn't find out.
Ok. I guess that we're going into some caves then.
For a day that I was supposed to spend laying in bed, it became awfully active all of a sudden.
Cycling, mountain, caves...
You couldn't really tell in here, how much was natural and how much had been dug-out. And if you were hoping to see some authentic cave pictures, then you will be left disappointed seeing as they had all of these unnatural coloured lights lining the interior.
Which... on the one hand was frustrating because I just wanted to see the caves as caves. But then on the other, it did make it very, very beautiful. So you take the positives.
I'm not sure what would happen if there was a power-cut mind. Because we were going through them for probably twenty minutes or so. Might not have been able to find our way out without light. And at every opportunity, there was a guy standing there with a camera, and they'd encourage us to have a picture together. That we could then pay them for.
Fuck off. I've got my own camera.
You've got your Y50. Now piss off.
At the end, we come to the mud bath. Which was kind of weird. And I wasn't especially enthused about and only went in because I figured that we both would be.
Turns out not to be the case.
And that and the unheated shower down in a cave was... cold.
Felt quite nice I suppose though.
And then onto the hot spring. Which is just kind of like a large bath inside a cave with a load of Chinese people in it.
It was alright. Quite relaxing.
The cave tour and then the mud bath and then the hot spring, I was feeling pretty relaxed by now. Worth the Y50. It had been a lot of fun.
I was all good to go straight back to the hostel by now. I mean, for me, this had been a fucking hectic day.
But then this is what I do for a career. So I tend to take it easier than people who do this kind of thing as a holiday and want to see as much as possible.
We had an alternative, much more scenic route to go home.
Which was alright. Took us through these rural villages outside of Yangshuo. No other tourists around.
But it also took us along these fucking dirt-roads. And this bike seat was just killing me.
£1 for an adult bike would probably not have been such a bad investment at this stage.
But... whatever. This scenery was very nice considering how limited it was by the fog.
One thing that I really loved though, is that I'm stopping as much as possible to take photographs.
Not because I want to take photographs; it's too fucking foggy anyway.
No, I just needed many-a-break from this fucking kids bike. And this was my best excuse.
Anyway, I stop to take one. And up ahead there's this Chinese woman, walking a cow on a bit of rope who sees us.
We carry on cycling, and she obviously gets a few dumb tourists through here because she's learnt a bit of English.
You want photo? Y2. You want photo?
No. I don't need a photo of your cow.
What I loved though, was as we were cycling away, she gets all excited:
"Look. Baby water buffalo. Photo Y2!"
Me and Isabel look at each other.
"That's a baby cow."
It made us laugh though, that she tried to sell us a photo of this calf as a baby water buffallo. I'm sure that she gets enough dumb tourists down here to fall for that if she's trying it on us. But it amused me.
After we've got back to the main road and off this fucking bumpy, dirt-road, I am all for getting the fuck back to the hostel as quick as fucking possible. My ass is killing me.
But there's another bridge. Isabel wants to go and see the other bridge.
The deal that we come to?
We can go to the bridge if we swap bikes.
It's probably a sad state of affairs when being on a bright, pink ladies bike is a step-up for me. But this seat was so comfortable. I actually started enjoying the cycling after this.
I don't care that I'm on a pink bike.
The bridge was shit as well, and just led straight back to the main road, which made this deal even sweeter.
And what I absolutely loved about this bike, which Isabel hadn't noticed in all day of riding it, was the sticker on the handle-bars with an arrow pointing forward with the words "Riding Direction" written.
Because they're worried that people don't know which direction the bike is supposed to go in?
On my pink bike, clearly for retards (or at least female riders), I actually quite enjoyed the cycle. So it was a shame that we'd only come to this deal so late in the day. But it had been a lot of fun.
Me and Isabel had got along really well, I'd seen a load of things that I never would have seen if I'd just stayed in bed, I'd got a decent amount of exercise today.
It had been a lot of fun. A good day. I'm hungry.
Oh. My final Yangshuo veggie burger.
I'm going to miss these things.
This was my fifth in the last 48-hours.
I don't know how many I had over the duration of my stay here. Probably at least ten or twelve. And this was the last one.
It was an emotional moment for all involved.
And through a lack of seating we sat at a table with two girls from our hostel, who I may have previously referred to as being boring for not going out on Chinese New Years eve. But they were actually quite fun to sit with. And more importantly, they were over here (China, not Yangshuo. This was just a holiday) teaching English. So I was able to pick their brains about it.
I've talked to a lot of people about teaching English lately. And it is something that I've got to do.
No one has said anything to take away my apprehension. But then no one has said anything to scare me off either. I just think that it's something where I've got to make that commitment and go for it.
I love being a backpacker. But I just feel like something deeper. I want to be more than a tourist.
This is my key. I'm convinced to it.
After a shit nights sleep because there was a fucking idiot snoring in our dorm; and I couldn't even wear ear-plugs because I had to listen out for my alarm this morning because I had an early bus.
That pisses me off. That's one of my pet-peeves about travelling.
You snore. You're going to be staying in a dorm. Do those two things not ring any kind of alarm bells?
There are things that you can put on your nose, there are things that you can put in your mouth, so that when you sleep, you won't snore.
Why, when people snore, do they not get some of them when they know that they're going to be staying in fucking dorms?
It's not quite as bad. But it's on the same kind of selfishness level as smoking indoors. It's in the same ball-park.
It's just being fucking inconsiderate for people who're sharing the same space as you.
So I didn't really need my alarm to go off at 6:15 this morning. I'd been awake since 3am. But I was still up early with the intention of having the time to get a McDonalds or KFC breakfast before my 8am bus.
What is wrong with this fucking country?
In what kind of parallel universe, is it ok for McDonalds not to be open at 7am? That's fucked up. McDonalds is always open by 7am. The entire world over.
But then KFC was shut too. What the fuck was going on? What is wrong with this country?
I'd got up especially early, and left the hostel with over an hour until my bus, just to get a breakfast. And everywhere is fucking closed.
Fucking China. Just ended up stood outside the bus station in the rain. Hungry.
Not a good start. But the good thing about being up half the night was that I was unconscious for half of the journey to Nanning.
And when we get in, it's such a rare and nice feeling for me to arrive in a familiar place. It really doesn't happen to me often.
Actually, together with Chengdu and Kunming, this is the third time in China that I've returned to a place that I've already been. But it is rare. And it is just such a nice feeling, to get off a bus and know exactly where I need to go.
No fumbling with a map, no looking lost.
I know the local bus that I have to get, I know the stop that I have to get off at.
Just such a nice feeling to have.
It might sound stupid. But clinging onto such meagre familiarities, it's about the closest that I have to belonging anywhere in China. I am just a nomad in this country. And actually being somewhere that I know... it's a nice feeling.
The security guard to the appartment complex even recognises me. Wishes me a happy new year. The people in the hostel remember me.
It might sound stupid. But when you live out of a backpack, those little things, they matter.
However miniscule, it gives you a sense of belonging somewhere, when someone recongnises your face. When you recognise where you are.
And having missed-out on breakfast, I was oh so looking forward to visiting this restaurant that I frequented on my last visit.
Closed. For spring festival.
In fact, I noticed this entire town is closed.
In Yangshuo, you wouldn't have known that it was spring festival. But in Nanning, nine out of ten business have the shutters down. And half of those that don't are banks or KFC. Which is where I had to resort to getting lunch seeing as there was nothing else available.
So good to be back in Nanning. It's all closed for new year. Literally.
Still kind of suffering from Chongqing syndrome as well.
Ah well. If I've got to live on KFC until things open up again, then that's what I've got to do.
I'm fat enough already. A bit more fast food probably won't make much difference. And most people tell me that the food in Vietnam is even better than that of Laos and Thailand. So if they're to be believed, then there's plenty of time for healthy-eating in my future.
For now though...
Five nights from now, I'll be going to sleep in Vietnam.