Day 6. Not so distant drums and attack of the Mutant Pizza

Mission: Second Honeymoon

Day 6.  Not so distant drums and attack of the Mutant Pizza

 

The cold and rain continued (and a mutant pizza was waiting for us ).

 

 

Mostly, we slogged around Feng Huang into both known and unexplored areas, pricing odds and ends and bought a few things.

One particular oddity.  There are at least a dozen shops dedicated to selling drums inside the old town.  About 2/3 of them play the same CD over and over again while the clerk drums along to attract business.  Of those, over half just loop one song on the CD.  My lovely wife bought a copy of the CD and kept playing it when we were in the hotel room until I finally begged long enough to get her to stop.  Now I’ve got that song stuck in my head.  I can’t imagine how the people who work in those shops take it.  I’m not going to be surprised if someday I read a news story about a Feng Huang drum store clerk going crazy and beating innocent tourists to death with a drum.

And for some reason, I didn’t see a single shop selling CDs of traditional Miao or Tujia music.  

There was tiny little stall set up in an alley selling the same artwork available all over town.  It had a sign (only in Chinese) saying that to take a photo of anything there would cost 50 RMB.  If it hadn’t been raining so much, I’d have loved to have come back by without my lovely wife and played “idiot foreign tourist” to take a picture – of the sign.  It might have even been fun to pay the 50 RMB, and take the sign with me. 

The rain was adding up.  At least two of the low foot bridges across the river flooded on Wednesday and had the unattached panels (removable so that the boats could get past) get partly or completely free.  Tourist boat rides didn’t resume until Saturday.

After a long, cold, wet day, it was time for dinner.  On our first honeymoon in Yangshou, I spotted a place on West Street offering pizza.  My lovely wife kept convincing me to put off going there until “tomorrow” and almost succeeded in preventing me from getting what turned out to be an excellent pizza.  I’d already spotted a place by the river claiming to have pizza, and managed to convince her that delays would not prevent an inevitable meal there. 

They had one size of pizza (about 7 inches).  It was available in ham and mushroom or beef and mushroom.  This was starting to sound suspicious, so we ordered one ham and mushroom pizza to try it out and see if we wanted a second pizza or not.  While waiting for the pizza, we enjoyed a spectacular view of the river at sunset (or, what would have been sunset if we could have seen the sun through all the clouds ).

 

 

My darling wife liked the view so much (It’s SOOOO romantic.) that she wanted to move to the hotel above the restaurant.  I pointed out some flaws with her plan.

1. We had a very fast wireless connection in our hotel room.  We needed that internet speed to allow us to work quickly so we would have time to enjoy our honeymoon.
2. We’d have to give up a large amount of a day just to pack, move, and unpack.
3. Cars can’t come into the old town.  We were quite some distance from the nearest gate and would have to carry and/or drag everything.
4. The restaurant/hotel we were in was directly across from Bar Street, which starts getting loud a little after sunset and reportedly continues until 2 or 3 in the morning.

 

 

I thought I’d already won that fight (foolish me ) when the waitress came back and asked if we wanted tomato sauce with our pizza.  Considering the amount of time that had passed, I was trying to figure out how a fully assembled and cooked pizza could possibly have tomato sauce be a last-minute yes/no item.     I said that tomato sauce would be very nice and she soon brought the pizza to us.

What we had was a 7 inch mutant pizza (from the time delay, I’ll say cooked in a small toaster oven instead of microwaved).  There was crust, cheese, and toppings.  It was cut into 8 tiny little slices which were then spread out.  In the center was a blob of ketchup tomato sauce.  It was possible to eat, but without great pleasure. 

 

 

My lovely wife wanted to see the hotel rooms (so much for an easy victory in the hotel moving war).  What was truly endearing about the room we checked out was that the wall opposite the river view was a glass panel separating the bathroom from the bedroom.  The whole bathroom was elevated to the same level as the bed, and the squat toilet was set to give a profile view of the user from all of the windows along bar street. 

That and my other arguments finally made me think I’d successfully canceled any plans for changing hotels.  On the way out, I saw the source of the pizzas.  There was a freezer full of little mutant pizza boxes.   

Since we were both still a little hungry, we headed over to a street between 2 of the schools in old town.  We’d been there the day before, but class had just let out, and it was impossible to fight past the large crowd hungry students to try out the local food stalls.  It was late enough to be very quiet, so we had no trouble getting a seat and ordering some noodles.

There were only two tables, and we ended up at the same table with an incredibly lovely girl wearing some sort of tour guide uniform.  Her food arrived first, and she shared a couple of items with me.  I really wanted to take her picture, but wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject – until she asked if she could have her picture taken with me. 

 

 

She didn’t speak any English, but I occasionally got my lovely wife to slow the conversation down enough to translate some questions and answers.  She was a local Miao and worked in one of the museums.  Naturally, I had to ask if she could sing (if you haven’t guessed yet, I ADORE Miao singing , with Tujia coming in a close second).  She said she tried, but her mother said the singing didn’t sound right, so she gave up. 

What’s sort of odd about the whole trip was that most of the Hunan food wasn’t very spicy compared to what I find at Hunan restaurants in Dongguan.  I don’t know if they are afraid of tourists falling to the ground screaming in pain or if it’s the influence from the less spicy cuisine next door in Guizhou province.  Overall, I thought the food at the tiny little shop by the school was better than many of the other restaurants I tried both inside and outside of Feng Huang’s old town.  A little more pepper and it would have been perfect.

So, I was safe from having to change hotels and was sure the temperature should warm up the next day.  Nothing to worry about.  Nothing at all.  Nothing could possibly go wrong . . . go wrong . . . go wrong . . .

 

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