I'm too big for Asia

I can't count the number of times I have hit my head on a door way that is just a little too short. It hits that very top part of my head like it wants to take a little slice off the top. And its not just short doorways, everything here is just a little too small. When I went shopping for jeans in Kunming, I would start looking and the sales people would walk up and say say "Oh, you big size!" and then they would go about finding the largest pair of jeans in the store, usually returning with a 36 or so (I wear 32). We took a bus to the bottom of the Yellow Mountains and I hardly fit in. It was a sleeper bus which, first of all, is bad news in and of itself. They pack these little buses with three rows of bunk bed sleepers. You lay on a little incline because the person behind you puts their feet in a compartment below your head. Chinese people have a hard time fitting in them. When we walked on the bus I was wearing a small day-pack backpack and because of the line of people pushing me from behind, I got lodged in the aisle. My shoulders were pressed in front of me reaching for each other and I was pushed until I could do nothing to free myself. My backpack prevented me from turning, not to mention I would have to dislocate my shoulder to accomplish that task. I had to slide down onto my knees and crawl along to my bed. When I finally found my bed, people were laughing at the prospect that such a giant as myself would actually squeeze my huge-ness into such a small space. I wedged my feet into the compartment and sat on the bed with my butt about where my face should be, on the incline. Not my favorite sleeping position I admit, but eventually, after a lot of rolling around, I managed to squeeze myself in laying in the fetal position with my butt hanging slightly off the edge. Then the video started. These buses are equipped with several TV screens to keep people occupied instead of thinking about how miserably uncomfortable they are. However, its at the drivers discretion what video should be played. This particular driver enjoyed videos of Chinese circus acts. Loud Chinese circus acts with bad singers and horrible comedians. Video after video of them. And just when you think you're going to give up and break the glass, rolling yourself on to the busy highway, someone starts smoking. In a bus with no windows that open, people smoking. Its amazing, the only way to travel.

So today we're in Hangzhou taking a break. After two days of hiking the Yellow Mountain stairs, we're pretty tired. Two full days of hiking stairs up and down to see some of the most amazing scenery in the world. We'll post pictures soon. Then for my birthday we're heading to Long Shan, the village I used to live in. I'm starting to realize that the trip is coming to a close. I come home in 10 days and and Jeff comes home in about 193.

One of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a play called Slapstick. And because of his recent passing, I have though a lot about it. In the play the Chinese have become so advanced that they find a way to shrink themselves to microscopic proportions and live on other humans. Just something to think about for the day.

Eight Bites of a Mysterious Nature

We are being eaten by something in our beds. I woke with eight bites on my right elbow alone.

When we last left Clay and Jeff they had arrived safely in Kunming, China after a long few days of traveling in miserable circumstances. Fatigued, sick and weary they boarded their train to Guilin at around 8 at night. There was no room for them in the hard sleeper class, which is the preferred means of travel, and so were forced to ride in the 3rd class hard seats. Upon inspection, the 3rd class seemed a fine place to spend 20 hours. The seats were in fact quite hard and offered little support for these two exhausted travelers, but they settled themselves down and prepared for the long journey. At around 2 a.m. just as they were getting so tired that they could sleep anywhere, for this is the only way to actually get sleep in the hard seat class, they pulled into a remote station crowded with passengers. It seems that the difficult reputation of the 3rd class wasn't so much the hard seats themselves, but the fact that this is also where those with standing room tickets were to stand. In a matter of minutes, the already full train car was packed to the excess with commuters. The aisles were full of people standing, sitting and laying. Our little bench was quickly occupied by an opportunist who crowded us over. At times during the course of the remaining 14 hours there were people occupying the bathrooms, the table in front of us and even the standing in the space between our knees. We shared our seat with a few different interesting people, and one woman who was throwing up in a garbage can between her knees.

Sorry, I read Jane Eyre this week and I think it has effected my writing. Once we finally got to Guilin, we still had another hour on a bus to get to Yangshuo, our final destination. We got here and plopped down our bags and were definitely to stay in one place for more than just a few days. This week we had our vacation from our vacation. We sat around our room, ate really great food, went shopping and rode bikes for three days around the most incredible scenery in the world (in my opinion.) We have some pictures uploaded of the week that we've spent lounging and riding.

We stayed in a great hostel and Johnny, the owner, hooked us up with stuff to do. One night we got tickets to a huge outdoor performance. Its the largest natural landscape theatre in the world and closes off a large section of the river (about 2k) each night for the performance. The show was truly amazing, but exemplified the elaborate scale in which much Chinese art is done. I like to call it the "because we can" style. Its staggeringly enormous, its astonishingly spectacular, it takes your breathe away and it means absolutely nothing. There's nary a story or meaning to be pulled from it. 600 cast members participate and the show requires amazing technicals took five years to complete. Basically what happens is they bring something out to amaze you, like 250 woman dressed in costume with hundreds of little lights on them. Then once the shock wears off they do everything they can with the gimmick. They flash the lights on and off, they flash in sequences ect... So its just a collection of awe inspiring visuals. Hundreds of fishermen floating around with lights on their boats and then pulling big sheets of red silk from the water as if they appeared out of no where! A lady sitting on a giant glowing moon and then running back and forth on it! Whole mountains appearing and disappearing before our eyes! I have no idea whats going on! I joke, but it was really worth seeing.

We rented mountain bikes and aside from me almost breaking my knee, twice, it was great. The first day we got lost in the rice fields for a few hours. We finally came upon a little squirrely man and asked him for directions. He was so excited to see us! He was obviously drunk and sung us little songs as he walked us, with our bikes on our shoulders, up and over a mountain pass. He literally was skipping around us the whole way. After a while we came to a river and he walked us through a rice patty to where he kept his bamboo raft, singing and laughing all the way. Once we had loaded ourselves and our boats he became immediately somber and told us we owed him 20 yuan. Thats only about $2, and we were thrilled to have found our way back, so we didn't mind.
Well, two weeks until I come home and next week is my birthday! Think of us and write to us!

Why I Travel

Last night we slept in a bus that was so full of cockroaches that the floor not only moved when you looked down, but it also crawled up onto your face. They ate through part of Jeff's backpack. Eventually you just have to give in and go to sleep because getting creeped out by it really isn't going to fix anything. On top of the cockroaches, there were several chain smokers on board who seemed to see right through the red line on the "no smoking" sign. To them, the sign must have said something like "Please, by all means smoke! Smoke until your teeth fall out!" I wasn't surprised to see this morning that one of them had burned a large hole in his pillow.

I spent the few hours before getting on the bus throwing up. Jeff got a bug a few nights ago and I got it yesterday. It also could have been that we hadn't really had a meal in two days, except for the one bag of mini muffins we bought at the bus station in Laos (which we discovered later were moldy.) Or maybe it was the bus ride with chickens and dogs or the fisherman sitting next to me falling asleep on my shoulder. Or maybe it was that we hadn't been in one place long enough to do laundry and the last place we had do our laundry lost two of my shirts, which brings me down to 'dos shirtos' as our friends say south of the border. Or maybe it was the stress that we had no money and no one, not even the banks, would exchange our cash or help us with the ATM because it 'wasn't their day.' Luckily, out of no where, a Japanese back packer came up to us and asked if we were having trouble getting money. He walked us over to a guy in an engine repair shop who said he would illegally exchange our last U.S. cash at a horrible rate. In thanks, we bought the Japanese guy a bus ticket.

Don't get me wrong, thats why I like to travel. Something inside me loves to get packed into buses, eat moldy muffins and throw up in bathroom stalls I usually wouldn't wish on a prisoner at Alcatraz. So why? Why do it to yourself?

There are a lot of possible explanations, but its been a long three days so I'm just going to get right to the point. It makes me grateful. Maybe it was that its Easter and Jeff and I don't have much other way to celebrate, but I spent the whole day giving all my change to people begging in the street. I'm so glad to have a bed to sleep in and something to eat. You quickly realize how little you need to survive and all the excess you get just for fun. Sure there are a lot cheaper ways to realize how grateful you are for your life, but you sure see a lot less the other ways.

Here are some videos that we haven't had time to upload until now. They might not be up and running right away because youtube.com takes some time to get things rolling. If they're not, check back, because some of them are pretty great and you won't want to miss out.

1. On our way out of the Bokeo Reserve in Laos, this monkey jumped on Jeff and started grooming him. Then he jumped on me and did the same. When I tried to take him off he made angry monkey noises and showed his teeth. I let him finish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7BFbyS9Q18

2. We put this one in one of the blogs, but some people had trouble getting it to work. This was at our cooking class in Chiang Mai. Its really a big surprise to me that more people don't get injured taking these classes. After our Master Chef instructor gave a brief description of what we were supposed to do he had us pull off this technique.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvi6bnW3uXY

3. This is one of the really special meals we ate while traveling through Thailand. Its pretty much self explanatory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95RfvSANtR0

4. So, if you're getting this blog then you know that Jeff and I are kind of nerdy. This is our nerdiness at its peak. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was dehydration, but for some reason while wondering around Angkor Wat we decided to relive some of our favorite Indiana Jones moments. Here is the fruit of our labors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLAzZdNBSxI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHZGSCY-6lo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lc0qhy8xCw

5. Here is Jeff climbing Angkor Wat at full speed. We found out later that this is where two tourists died last year because they fell and rolled all the way down. Yeah, that was a good idea.
(Ok, this one is having a really hard time loading, if you look in youtube in my videos, it should be there soon.)

6. Zipping throught the primary jungle in northern Laos is probably at the top of our Most Amazing things list. This is a little video of us breaking the rules and zipping as a duo across the forest. We have rough take off, but you can get a little idea of what it was like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LWZmWmzHw