Chapter 8. The shocking truth about shopping and other painful experiences.

My Big Fat Guangxi Honeymoon

Chapter 8. The shocking truth about shopping and other painful experiences.

 

Friday morning was a bit of a rush.  We both worked as quickly as possible to lock down our work website for the weekend so that we could pack and get out before the 12 noon checkout deadline.

Much to my amusement, the extra bag we’d purchased was just big enough to hold all the junk precious cultural artifacts that wouldn’t fit into the other luggage. This is proof that my multi-dimensional dragon volume estimating kungfu is much stronger than her angry dog squeezing kungfu!  I told her we should have bought a bigger bag and barely avoided getting kicked in the head severely scolded. (The only thing more fun than a Chinese wife is an annoyed Chinese wife. )

We made it to the front desk with more than 10 minutes to spare.  The remaining issue was that we didn’t leave for Guilin until a little before 6 pm.  Happily, Chinese hotels are very accommodating about storing luggage.

Walking had become a bit of a challenge.  My left knee violently objected to bearing any weight in anything other than an unbent position.  Thus, going up a stairway involved flexing my right knee and stepping up with my right foot, followed by bringing my overly-straight left leg up to land my left foot on the same step as my right foot.  For going down steps, I’d step off and land on my left foot while only bending my right knee.  Level ground was the only area I could move comfortably.  Naturally, there was just enough congestion on and around sidewalks to have me continuously being forced to step up and down from the sidewalk to the street.   

The plan was to have lunch at West Street before going on to yet another tourist trap attraction, then come back, have an early dinner, get on a bus to Guilin, and catch an overnight train home.  Half way to West Street, my darling realized that her phone had been packed up with the luggage and she was expecting a call from our amazingly beautiful daughter  just after lunch.  At this point, there was no way I was turning around, so I slowly limped my way to the front part of West Street while she ran back to the hotel to get her phone.

I figured I had about 25 minutes or so until my lovely bride returned, so I spent the time taking pictures of pretty girls and checking out some shops that had caught my eye earlier.  There was a 2 Yuan shops hidden down a side street.  These aren’t exactly like a Dollar Tree.  Not everything is 2 Yuan, but a lot of items are.  The rest are usually also very inexpensive.

My darling caught up with me and we checked the prices.  One fact that had already become obvious was that many of the special, famous, auspicious locally handcrafted Chinese minority cultural items were pretty much identical to ones we’ve seen in Yunnan and that a couple of dear friends had brought to me from Hunan.  Yes, somewhere there’s a huge factory that produces about 75% of the locally handcrafted tourist stuff found in minority areas.  The second, newly revealed fact was much worse.

My dearest one thought she had done a great job negotiating prices in shops and with street vendors.  Now we found out the real price of some of the items was soooo much less than we’d paid.       At least we know where to pick up most of the tacky tourist stuff treasured souvenirs next time.

To console ourselves, we had a very cheap lunch next to that shop before heading off to catch the bus.  While we were eating, my dear friend, ScooterGirl (aka Cantonese Twin 1), called to tell me that she had just gotten a new job and was moving back to Dongguan. 

Our final local attraction was called Shangri-La (at least in English – for reasons unknown, my bride had a major problem pronouncing the English name).  The bus stopped for about 10 minutes next to someone making some sort of baked rice snack.  I was getting some pictures of it and my darling decided to jump off the bus and grab one.  Happily, she got back on just before the bus took me away by myself into the remote regions outside of Yangshuo.

 

 

The good news was that we got to tour part of Shangri-La by boat.  The bad news is that my knee really didn’t like getting in and out of the boat. 

 

 

Shangri-La has a couple of real villages inside as well as some sort of authentic recreations of various local buildings and customs.  It definitely was a vast improvement over the Ancient Totem Village, but I still give the ethnic villages in Yunnan higher ratings.

 

 

Once we saw everything by boat, we got put ashore in an area that was a cross between a museum and gift shop.  A lot of it was very interesting, but I somehow ended up in an area where they only way out was to climb up to the second floor and then back down to the first floor. 

 

 

I saw a few items I did want to buy.  These fell into three categories.  1.  Too big to jam into the existing luggage.  2.  Too expensive for the existing cash supply.  3.  No one was at the only shop with some small, inexpensive stuff I really wanted to purchase to let me buy those items. 

 

 

Since there was not a lot of spare time in the schedule and we didn’t know when the next bus to town would come by, we cut our time in Shangri-La short and stood out in the street in front.  I was getting a little nervous about being stranded and was contemplating hitchhiking.

 

 

Finally, a bus back to town showed up.  We got back in plenty of time to eat, buy a few things at the 2 Yuan shop (including a decorative, handcrafted wall hanging of a less than fully dressed Chang’e ), and get to the hotel to crush those final items into our luggage.

 

 

This left us with a small question of how to get back to the local bus station with all the luggage.  Without luggage, it’s a 20-25 minute stroll from the hotel.  With luggage plus me moving slowly, it would take far too long and we’d miss our bus and then our train.  All the taxis had conveniently disappeared.   

The people who rented bicycles in front of the hotel tried to get us to take a pair of motorcycle taxis.  My friend ScooterGirl remains the only person I’ve ever trusted to take me and my laptop on a motorbike, and that was just a single laptop with no other luggage, so this wasn’t going to happen.

Time was short, so we started dragging the luggage towards the bus station while keeping an eye out for taxis.  Finally, a 3 wheeled motorcycle cart cruised past and we took that to the bus station.  It cost more than a local taxi, but, since all the taxis had gone into hiding, it was a lot cheaper than having to replace our train tickets.

 

 

We managed to get seats in the back row of the bus where I could stretch out my left leg down the aisle.  The bus ride back to Guilin conveniently lacked anyone throwing up, so was far more pleasant than the ride from Guilin to Yangshuo.   There was a foreign couple sitting in front of us going through their holiday pictures on a laptop.  They didn’t just have pics of Yangshuo, but also had pics from Beijing and a few other places.  It was fun checking out someone else’s vacation.

The bus dumped us somewhere near the train station.  We weren’t 100% sure where it was, but my darling managed to get a general consensus that narrowed down the direction of the station to a 45 degree arc in one direction.  We got lucky and found it without too much problem.  On the way to the soft sleeper waiting room (all train stations should have this – it’s much nicer than being wedged in with several thousand people on a few hundred seats in the main waiting area), we passed the other couple from the bus.

The soft sleeper waiting room had an interesting sign posted on the wall.  I think it’s from one of the Advanced Positions chapters of the Kama Sutra. 

 

 

Ten minutes later, the other couple showed up in the same waiting area we were at.  After some accusations about which couple was stalking the other, we found out that they were on the same train in the next compartment.  They’d been running around China for a few weeks and were taking the train all the way to the station in Shenzhen next to the Hong Kong border.

Another advantage of a soft sleeper waiting area is that we were given the first crack at getting on the train instead of heading out with the rest of the crowd.  This made dragging luggage down the platform while limping a lot easier.

 

 

We settled into our compartment.  Ignoring the fact that every step was hurting my knee, my darling asked if I’d like the upper bunk.  Climbing was out of the question, so I told her I’d settle for the lower one.  The one drawback to traveling in soft sleeper is that you never know who you’ll get in the other bunks (4 bunks to a compartment – the upper limit of luxury on the typical Chinese train).  Happily, it turned out to be 2 girls who didn’t look intent on robbing us while we slept.

The last time I took an overnight train, I woke up every time it started and stopped.  This time, I was tired enough to sleep through most of the stops and was awakened by my wristwatch about an hour before our stop in Guangzhou.  One bus and taxi ride later and we were home in time to go out for lunch on Saturday.

Our final bit of honeymoon was to try out a different foot massage place after lunch.  I’ve long mourned the departure of the dangerously strong #22 from a massage place near us (she’s the ONLY one ever who could reliably crack my back and neck every time).  By some numerical coincidence, I ended up with #222 at the new place.  She managed to partly pop my back and left me with an amazing assortment of bruises from the back of my head all the way down to my feet.  My darling’s massage girl was also pretty strong – too bad my darling wife doesn’t enjoy the harder massages as much as I do.  One of the things I greatly admire about China is that it’s considered to be very normal and socially acceptable to go out with family and friends and pay pretty girls for a beating.

   

 

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