Noticing A Theme Yet?

First, I have to apologize for the toilet theme that keeps repeating in so many posts. I think I've said all there is to be said on the matter and then, WHAM! I'm proven wrong! I keep thinking I should wait to post these things--to gather as much info as possible before writing, and I do! But then I realize that I'd be depriving all of you if I were to hold out for more than a few days. And I can't live with that, so here we are again....

Last week, I detailed how beautiful the countryside of the Yunnan province in Southern China is. But I didn't get into the other side of the trek--the nitty-gritty. We were on a bus for 8 hours, which required several stopovers along the way for potty and food breaks. Our first one came about 2 hours into the trip and we parked along a stream that had a large outhouse building beside it. The building was divided in two: one side for men, the other for women. Though there was only one big room on each side. David had gone ahead of me and taken a peek inside while I was on the bus fumbling in my bag trying to locate my toilet paper and hand sanitizer (two ESSENTIAL items in Asia). He warned me about what to expect when I walked in, but it still wasn't enough to prepare me for what I saw:


Luckily, by the time I got in there the crowds had thinned out a bit and I was only required to share this disgusting space with one other woman. I waited until she left to snap the photo. Probably wouldn't have gone over so well if I had tried to take a picture with others present. This style toilet requires a sure foot and impeccable balance to ensure you don't fall through the cracks and wade through raw sewage. Not a place for bare feet (sorry, Brittney Spears!) or sandals. I couldn't help thinking that I would hate to live downstream from one of these, as the contamination obviously seeps into the creek that is less than 10 yards away. Gives you a new perspective on water quality in China, huh?

The next pit stop we made was for lunch and a bathroom break. David and I opted to skip the prepared cooked meal being served and chose a few tangerines instead. The roadside diner obviously had a deal worked out with our bus driver to stop there every time he came through. As a "thank you" for providing regular business, they gave him a free meal in a private dining area away from the other passengers. Another reason for skipping the food this time was that there were crops being grown in a small field directly downhill from the toilet. I don't want anything I put in my body to be contaminated by something that comes out of it, so I decided there was no amount of money you could pay me to eat those greens.

I'd seen this style of toilet before (at the train station in Chengdu). Essentially, its a trough that you squat over, which is divided into stalls with no door and only about a 3 foot high wall dividing each stall. The trough is continuous under each stall and is flushed every so often by a water source at one end that forces the waste to a drain at the other end. There's never enough water sitting in the bottom of these things and large waste tends to sit, fester and rot. Did I mention the humidity of these bathrooms before? Yeah, it really helps with the smell....


This was the same style of toilet at the hospital in Dali. I've learned the trick in all Eastern-style toilets is to take the toilet paper you intend to use out of your pocket before you walk in and use it to cover your nose until its time to wipe. Then you take one big breath, wipe, pull up your pants and make a run for the door before you have to breathe again. Not exactly foolproof, but its better than gagging!

I'm still not feeling well enough for travel after having my ass kicked by food poisoning (if you can call it that after 3 days of sickness). I'd have to be feeling pretty well to risk having to use toilets like these on the road. These holes don't inspire me to want to wander far from my Western toilet at the hostel...

Illness Is NEVER Part of the Plan

So this is day 5 in Dali, when we had only intended to be here for one night. We've been staying at the Jade Emu International Guest House, which I cannot say enough wonderful things about. As I mentioned in my previous post, David came down with what we thought was food poisoning the morning after we arrived. The hostel staff upgraded us from a shared dorm to a private room for no extra charge, they lent us a DVD player, movies and a heater for free and they've been providing meals directly to our room (and last night they made us food after the kitchen was closed). David attributed his condition to a bad burrito, which initially made sense since I didn't have one. But I came down with the same illness two days ago, which knocked me flat in a hurry. One of the hostel owners thinks it might have been the pizza we shared on our first night in town--apparently there are only two reputable place to get a pie here and we didn't eat at either of them....

Luckily, the onset of my food poisoning came around the time he started to feel a little bit better. Don't get me wrong, he's four days in and not back to 100% yet, but he sucked it up and took care of me when I needed it. My symptoms started at 10:00 pm two nights ago and by 11:30 I was shooting things out of both ends on a predictable half hour schedule. By 1:30am, I'd had enough and asked David to take me to the hospital. He woke up the hostel staff to ask for assistance (one of the owners of the hostel came with us as a translator, despite the fact that she's at least 6 months pregnant and stayed with us at the hospital through the night), helped me to the cab and stayed with me all night in the hospital while I received a shot in my butt to stop the nausea and vomiting (which didn't work immediately and I threw up 7 more times--once on David's sandaled foot as he was helping me to the bathroom), and received two IV drips. He was dehydrated and still suffering but he stayed by my side all night and returned to the hospital with me at 3:00 the next afternoon (as instructed by the doctors) to receive 3 more IV drips. All told, he was in the hospital with me for about 14 hours. I'm really lucky to have him!

For those of you who've ever wondered what hospitals overseas are like, they're everything you'd expect. The place was dirty and nowhere close to sterile. I'm not sure I could venture a guess as to when the sheets on my bed were last changed. I found at least one bug in my bed and saw other (smart!) patients bringing in their own sheets. There are grease stains on the walls behind each bed where people have rested their heads. The paint is chipping and peeling all over the hospital, the floors are dirty (there were cigarette butts on the floor in my room) and disposable items like used Q-tips, Kleenex and needle caps were thrown on the floor. The architecture of the building was not closed and the exterior doors were removed--kind of courtyard style. The room I was in had doors and due to our body heat, the temperature was bearable, but it was by no means a heated room. Also, the only bathroom for the building was an outside W.C., which was about a two minute walk from my room. And when you have diarrhea, that's never a good thing!

Here I am about 30 seconds from throwing up for the 10th time in 5 hours. I jacked a trash can from the hostel as a barf bucket (you never know if they'll have what you need ANYWHERE in China, so its best to go prepared). That's Song, the hostel owner, behind me. She was up all night with us and is a total champ!


I was concerned that I would be given used needles but David (who has had EMT training) assured me that he recognized the needle packaging and watched the nurse prep the tray. I got stuck 3 times on my first hospital visit (1 shot, and twice for my IV). They missed the vein the first time and were pumping fluid into my skin, which swelled up painfully over the course of a few hours and had to be moved to my other hand.

The doctor came in to check on me at 7:30am during my first visit and was concerned when I told him that I wasn't feeling any better than when I had arrived. I was discouraged by this too, since I thought that was the whole point of going to the doctor! We went back to the hostel and rested for a while and a few hours later I was feeling much better. But then I started to backslide by about 1:30pm and was glad I had been instructed to return around 2:00. They hooked me up to another round of IVs, with the same results (no immediate improvement, though I felt great hours later). But this time, things stayed positive. I was able to eat some solid food and I'm feeling almost back to normal now.

David didn't receive the same course of treatment as me, though I tried to get him to go to the hospital when he started feeling awful during that first day. He never felt bad enough to risk the hospital, so we never went and instead, he started a course of antibiotics that my mom had insisted we take with us. Not sure how much they helped over all though. He also ended up with a prescription for some pills to ease his stomach pains from the doctor while I was at the hospital. But he hasn't recovered nearly as quickly as I have.

If nothing else, our respective treatments were very inexpensive. David's pills were $2 and both of my hospital stays were $35 total. The difference in treatment though is that I'm almost symptom-free and David had a bit of a relapse last night. After some early morning texting with my mom, who contacted Dr. Luckmann, we were reassured that we were both on the mend and would expect to make a full recovery shortly. My experience has been very much like previous bouts with food poisoning, though David assures me he's never experienced something so severe or long-lasting.

With any luck, we'll be well enough to travel tomorrow and will be on our way to Vietnam. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! If you're ever in Dali, please stay at the Jade Emu. They really are fantastic!

I Finally Like China!

After leaving Chengdu a few days ago, David and I continued heading south in attempt to make our way to the Vietnam border (I think at this point we've scrapped Laos, since we're killing more time than expected in China). We took an overnight train to Panzihihua and from there caught a bus to Lijiang (we had no idea how long the bus ride was and it turned out to be 8 hours!). Up until this point in the trip, I was under the impression that China was dirty, brown and rather ugly. All the scenery we could see through train windows was rather limited (most of our trains have been overnight trains) and communities beside the railway are less than middle-class. There are always large trash heaps and dilapidated houses nearby and I was starting to think that this was representative of China. And my how I was proven wrong!


Welcome to the Yunnan province in Southern China, where everything is lush and green! We entered the foothills of the Himalayas, where I was rewarded with some of the most amazing views of the trip. Its everything you'd think China would be--tiered fields full of crops, rice paddies, farmers working their fields in straw hats, people hauling things in baskets on their backs or using their mules. It was great to see firsthand that these things really do exist!


We arrived in Lijiang after dark and found a hostel in the Old Town (which we love!!). This section of town is more than 800 years old and is separated by streams and tributaries running from the Jade River. The streams run along side all of the streets and divide the neighborhood into hundreds of smaller streets and alleys. The streams also sometimes create a moat around restaurants and bars, which necessitates the use of planks to cross (not a good place for clumsy, stumbling drinkers...). The streets are paved with the original red breccia, which gives it a really rustic touch.

Everything is lit with red lanterns, which gives it a really cool look. There are vendors set up at all hours of the night hocking their handwoven pashminas, scarves and clothes. Jade and silver jewelry, tea houses and natural health providers are also everywhere. David and I popped into a store along the way and bought some yak meat! Yum!

We had only intended to be in Lijiang for one night before heading to the Tiger Leaping Gorge but plans changed and we stayed two nights instead and skipped the Gorge. When this is the view from your hotel, how can you not stick around??


Lijiang turned out to be an unexpected highlight of the trip! We're currently in Dali (which was said to be as good or better than Lijiang by people who obviously don't know what the hell they're talking about!). We decided immediately that we didn't like it as well as Lijiang and would only stay one night on our way to the Vietnamese border. But things never work out quite the way we plan them and David is nursing a nasty case of food poisoning that he thinks he got from a bum burrito at dinner last night. Note to self: burritos in China are not a wise move! If all goes well, we'll be on the road again tomorrow. Until then!

Fear Factor, China

David and I have been doing our best to branch out and eat new things while in China. We went out to dinner last night with a guy named Tzs (pronounced Chi) from our hostel in Chengdu, who is an Asian from New Zealand. He speaks Cantonese and can get by speaking Mandarin with the locals well enough to ensure we had a great meal at a duck restaurant last night. We started chatting with him about some of the things we'd eaten in the last two weeks, which we didn't think were that strange (often because we had no idea what we were eating), but he was impressed that Westerners would try some of the more random things that we have.

For that reason, I 'll share some of our daily cuisine...

This is a picture of David eating Ox Tail in Beijing. Couldn't get me to touch it (I know what happens at that end of an ox!) but he thought it was pretty good.

A few nights later, we found where all the street cart vendors hang out so we tried some dumplings, noodles, ostrich, seaweed, and our favorite--snake. They had it in two different ways: whole or just the meat. We opted for meat only (white skewer), since the whole snake looks a little suspect.


We had some of our favorite finds in Xian. On our first day in town we found more street vendors and had squid for the first time. Looks a little odd, but tastes amazing! Not too chewy either!

And then last night Tzs ordered a "sampler platter" of various kinds of meat. It included things from beef, pork, beef liver (we'd had a plate of this on its own the night before and LOVED it!), some unidentifiable type of fish part and this:

This clear, spicy strip of goodness is cartilage from a pigs ear. Sounds really gross, but it was really tasty. Soft and a bit crunchy. Tastes just like the spice it was sitting in.

And then there was what was (apparently) described on the menu as beef brisket with pumpkin and bread. But when it arrived, it became quickly apparent that it was actually pork belly (which was essentially all fat) mixed with some pumpkin-type stuffing with pumpkin slices underneath. Definitely the most unique thing I've had on the trip thus far, and once you got used to the taste (and past the fact that it was a plate full of fat), it was pretty good. Kind of sweet.

I'm sure we'll have plenty of other things to share as we continue this journey. We still have over a month left in Asia and are in the process of working our way south on our way to Vietnam. I'll continue to take photos of some of the better/weirder things we eat. And just so you know, neither of us has gotten sick from anything we've eaten yet!

Even More On Eastern Bathrooms!

I've discovered that in China, people don't give the reverence and respect to the Western toilet as do the Japanese. I find this highly disconcerting as I have come across several of the top "Worst Bathrooms of All Time" here in China. People pee on the seat and don't clean it up (which would be hard to do as there is NEVER ANY TOILET PAPER! Word to the wise-- BRING YOUR OWN TP!), they leave their smoldering cigarette on the tank while they do their business, marring the porcelain, or they can't figure out the whole seat thing and they pee on the floor directly in front of the toilet rather than aiming for the hole. This is a very mild form of what I'm talking about....

Another thing that surprised me is that, when it was available in my hotel in Beijing, that toilet paper was so durable and rough that it could have been used as Tyvek wrap to weatherize the exterior of a house before the siding goes on! Its really incredible! They seem to have gotten things backwards because the napkins are as soft and flimsy as Western toilet paper, which does nothing to cut the grease on the food you're shoving into your face.

Train bathrooms are some of the most disgusting places on Earth and I'm loathe to even touch the door to ensure privacy, let alone anything else required to do my business. They're always Eastern-style in China (though that was not the case in Japan). People have no regard for aiming their butts toward the hole at the bottom of the toilet to ensure that the tiny amount of water used in flushing (keep in mind it doesn't only spray INTO the toilet, as would make sense. Your feet are going to get showered too!) would be enough to move things along so that the next person doesn't have to smell your waste while tending to business of their own. Its really a wonder David and I haven't contracted some mutant strain of Staph at this point, but that's why I keep hand sanitizer on me AT ALL TIMES (which they don't sell in China).

The plumbing systems here don't have the containment capabilities that American toilets have. There is no U-bend in the pipes to ensure that you're not smelling the waste directly under your feet. Also, the sanitation department doesn't seem to have a handle on how to process toilet paper so when you can use it, you're not allowed to flush it. Imagine walking into a bathroom where there is piss all over the floor, a big turd sitting in the bottom of a toilet with no water in it and a wastebasket full of poopy and bloody toilet paper. No imagine that its hot and humid in there and you'll start to get a sense of what I'm talking about.


There are lots of public toilets all over the place. I can tell because I walk face first into that distinctive raw sewage smell about every 50 feet or so. Its very distinctive as the diet here consists largely of processed, fried and fishy things. The human body does funny things with these components and its ALWAYS smells disgusting. David's nose doesn't work properly so he can't smell it, and for that he is lucky. But we both agree how bad the toilets are around here and do our best to contain things until we can get back to our hostels, which almost always have Western-style toilets. Next time you spend an extended time in the bathroom and can use toilet paper and then flush it so it doesn't stink, think of us and count your lucky stars that you're not dealing with Eastern plumbing!

Frogger, China-Style!

Never in my life have I experienced anything as nonsensical as the rules of the road in China. Whether you're a pedestrian or a driver, you're always in danger. People here are very comfortable with traffic patterns but to me it feels like one big life-sized version of the Atari game "Frogger." The traditional road rules that Westerners take for granted are willfully disregarded, often times with police sitting in plain sight. Traffic laws either don't exist, or are merely suggestions.

Thus far, I've had experiences as a pedestrian and as a passenger in cars and busses. Here are some of the things I've noticed:

DRIVERS
1) Stop signs/lights mean NOTHING. Even police will run red lights by several seconds.
2) What looks like a 2 lane road is actually a 5-lane road (two lanes, two shoulders, and the middle) when passing is involved.
3) Changing lanes in intersections is highly encouraged.
4) The game "Chicken" played with oncoming traffic is practiced every few miles. You learn to watch for people passing slower vehicles in the oncoming lane and move to the shoulder to allow them room if they don't have time to shoot the gap. No horns necessary, its just a (scary!!) way of life.
5) That "bike lane" is not reserved for just motorcycles and bicycles. Busses will threaten to plow down anything in their path if they're in a hurry.
6) Right on red is a given (and often left on red).
7) EVERYONE honks at everyone else. If your car doesn't have a horn, chances are you will either hit someone or be hit yourself.
8) Cars move slowly and aggressively. Average speed of traffic is like 10-15 mph in town, 15-25 mph on major roads, 40-50 mph on highways.
9) The left lane is not the fast lane--its for cruising. The fastest way through traffic is often weaving.
10) When cars put on their blinker, they're not fooling around. Move over or be run over.

PEDESTRIANS
1) Pedestrians are aggressive about crossing the street. They step into oncoming traffic without a second thought to safety.
2) Just because you have a green "walk" light (animated!) does NOT mean you can expect to cross the street without fear of becoming road kill. It's merely a little less Frogger-style.
3) Just because you have a red "don't walk" light doesn't mean you can't cross the street. Most of the time you can cross halfway and watch for oncoming traffic for the other half.
4) Even if cars have a green light, pedestrians will play Frogger and move step by step across the street, often standing on stripped lines while cars pass. Move slowly and predictably and you won't get hit.
5) Just because there's a sidewalk present does NOT mean its reserved for pedestrians. This is often prime parking real estate. Sometimes its another driving lane for cars and bikes! (Pardon the blurry photo, I was on the move dodging traffic. You'll see traffic moving in the opposite direction and the silver & blue divider for a bike /motorbike lane. This Car is definitely on the sidewalk!)

6) People walk the way they drive--they don't move out of anybody's way. If you don't plan your path beforehand you will run directly into people.
7) Sidewalks and stairs are often granite or marble and are like skating rinks when wet.
8) Sidewalks are also divided by raised yellow rubber indicators (as part of navigation for the blind) and are equally as slick when wet.
9) Puddles may not have a foreseeable bottom and are always full of foulness I won't describe. David stopped wearing sandals in the rain, if this is any indication of how bad it gets....
10) Exposed dirt from sidewalk excavation always becomes a huge trash pile for pedestrians.
11) If there are no public toilets in sight and your 2-year-old has to pee, watch out because he's going to spread it on the street (or in the trash can at a restaurant) and take care of business.

There really is a method to the madness here, its certainly not the Western way of navigation and its taken some getting used to. I understand that the further south we move, the more adventures we're bound to have. Vietnam is supposed to be even more precarious. Stay tuned, more on this topic I'm sure!

I'm Still Here!

I've been having trouble uploading photos to both the Blogger website and to my Facebook account, which is exceedingly frustrating because computer time is often better spent researching the next move, not fighting the system in attempt to upload photos 6 times before they actually go through. This post will have no photos because its such a frustrating endeavor.

I'm not sure I've posted much on China, which is probably a good thing. My overwhelming first impression was not a super-positive one, though the place has grown on me over time. Beijing has a lot of really neat things to see (Olympic grounds, Tian anmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, etc.) but the pollution and the crowds made my time there relatively frustrating. Its also really expensive! David and I were having to pull money out of the ATM every other day and were "going through money like water." I was determined not to have a negative experience and was doing my best to relax and enjoy my time there but it was difficult because I started to feel run-down.

My diet over the course of our 6 days in Beijing consisted largely of chips, Snickers, beer and water. The restaurant scene there charges Western prices and the places we could afford were often kinda scary. We'd venture out in search of food and walk for an hour before we caved and went inside a restaurant we thought we could stomach. We often ate "safe" things like Subway and Pizza Hut. I'm strongly opposed to Western fall-backs like this, but I was starving and tired of living off junk food. My eating habits got so bad that I ended up with a severe headache.

I was really relieved when we left Beijing and arrived in Xian. We came here with the intent to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, but having been here 2 full days, we've yet to take the bus 45 minutes to see them. I got so distracted by the abundance of amazing food here that I all but forgot about anything else. We were recruited by one of those annoying solicitors at the train station to stay in her hostel. We held out for a while, hoping she'd leave us alone while we poured over our books, trying to figure out if we actually wanted to continue on to Shanghai, as was the original plan, or scrap that and start making our way south to Laos to kill time until our Vietnamese visas become valid on the 22nd.

The hostel ended up being around the corner from some amazing local fare and I've eaten handmade buckwheat noodles for 2 days now and am hoping for a 3rd! We've had really good luck with street food too, trying some grilled squid a few nights ago, which was awesome! Only had one bad meal, which we got by walking into a place that had no English-speakers, no one else in the restaurant eating (so we could point and ask for the same thing) and no real photos of anything. We pointed to a picture on the wall and, for what it was worth, should have just closed our eyes and picked something at random on the menu, because what we ended up with was a plate of pig fat and bones with celery. At least the side of rice and the celery were edible....

So I've been happy to spend a few extra days in Xian and take our time figuring out the next step. It seems we're skipping Shanghai entirely in favor of heading south to Chengdu on our way to Laos. There's a big Buddha statue in Chengdu to see and some trekking we may do in the Yunnan province for a few days before crossing the border into Northern Laos. We may have to try to rent some motorcycles for a day or two because the landscape is supposed to be amazing! Nothing is certain except we're on the move again! I'm behind on blogging, I know. When we get situated somewhere again with Internet access, I'll make a point to sit down and blog about several cultural observations and add photos, regardless of how frustrating it could be.

The Olympic Dream Is Dead

Arriving in China was more culture shock than I had expected coming from another Asian country. In such a short time I had gotten used to Japan--how polite and orderly and considerate other people are. Then I arrived in China where people mill about everywhere and make no attempt to move out of the way of oncoming pedestrians or cars, they push and shove, threaten to run you over at any opportunity and yell at you to try their food, take their taxi or buy their merchandise. If Japan is the American South, as cordial and hospitable as you please, then China is Manhattan where people will eat you alive, steal your money and then spit on you. It was a rude awakening.

David arrived here on Thursday night and after taking it easy for a full day, we rented bikes on Saturday and set off into Beijing headed for the Olympic grounds. The ride was long, confusing and I often felt like a bike courrier in DC as we navigated through traffic under threat of life and limb. It took us over an hour to get there with a few minor delays and I was excited to see the Birds Nest rising out of the distance. We made it!!

At first we spent time trying to get inside the track & field stadium grounds but were shooed away from multiple entrances by guards. We could see other people walking around inside and, since we didn't speak any Mandarin, had no idea what they were trying to tell us. We figured out that there was a public entrance around the block and decided that we didn't want to pay to get inside as all the other people were doing. After standing there watching the process, we figured it cost no less than 50 Yuan to get inside and we weren't that interested. Navigating around the track grounds, I got my first taste of the ruin that the Olympic arenas are becoming. Parking lots are fenced in, abandoned and overgrown after only 3 months.

Its an odd mix of abandonment, deconstruction and immaculately kept gardens and common spaces all mixed and jumbled around some of the major landmarks like the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. The major tourist attractions are being maintained and continue to draw revenue through insane entrance fees (we figured it would cost us no less than $60 each to gain admittance inside the Water Cube and upwards of $125 for a VIP pass. No thanks.). Directly across the street from some of the lesser venues like the fencing building (which is directly next to the Water Cube), they're actively dismantling a slew of smaller buildings.

Only 2 months ago, these buildings were actively used by athletes, their friends and families and by spectators. Now they're in shambles less than 500 yards from the big attractions. The multiple subway stations that were installed to shuttle people to and from the widely spaced arenas are now inoperable and closed to the public. I have no idea what these materials are intended for or what they are planning for what will ultimately be an empty parking lot. Better yet, why are they doing this? I thought the slogan of the Olympics this past year was "One World, One Dream." Judging from what I've seen, that dream is dead. Its really disheartening and depressing.