Friday, June 09, 2006
Riding the Iron Road through the heart of China
44 hours on a train can do a lot to a man. In my case it made me tired and very smelly. It would be an understatement to describe the trip as eventful, so I will describe it as being at times eventful, at times boring, at times hot, at times cold, and I haven't even discussed what the bathroom looked and smelled like by the end of the trip.
Being the only foreigners on the train, Alison and I were immediately the CENTRE OF ATTENTION, especially Alison. I could easily walk down the corridor without having every body stare at my chest and ass. Alison didn't have such luxuries. I took particular amusement at the guy across from us wanting to introduce her and get her to speak on the telephone with his son. She struggled to find the mandarin word for engaged in the phrase book. I sat back and watched with amusement as 3 people tried to help her translate. It was very funny and was a happy break from reading China Inc. and playing endless games of Gin and Chinese checkers and sipping green tea. Alison had started off the attempt at international friendship by offering the guy some candy. He responded by offering her some gross looking prepackaged sausage. This would be funny enough except that I haven't mentioned that Alison is a solid vegetarian and until yesterday on the train hadn't knowingly ate any meat for 8 years! I was a good friend and told her that she had to eat it, less we create an international incident, and was holding a bottle of water so that she could wash it down.
The train trip passed through some diverse land. Mostly we passed by rice fields, but parts of the trip passed through various mountain ranges. There is a huge gap in the amount of wealth in the cities and the countryside. The countryside is very poor. It is also very crowded. At times we could see hundreds of people working the fields. There really wasn't any area we passed through where there were no people.
So now we are in Kumming. We visited yet another temple, and cleaned out our system with a vegetarian meal. For the past two days I have sustained myself on Raman Noodles, which is terrible for you. Tomorrow we are going to visit the Stone Forest, a couple of hours outside of Kumming. On Sunday we will go to Dali.
Being the only foreigners on the train, Alison and I were immediately the CENTRE OF ATTENTION, especially Alison. I could easily walk down the corridor without having every body stare at my chest and ass. Alison didn't have such luxuries. I took particular amusement at the guy across from us wanting to introduce her and get her to speak on the telephone with his son. She struggled to find the mandarin word for engaged in the phrase book. I sat back and watched with amusement as 3 people tried to help her translate. It was very funny and was a happy break from reading China Inc. and playing endless games of Gin and Chinese checkers and sipping green tea. Alison had started off the attempt at international friendship by offering the guy some candy. He responded by offering her some gross looking prepackaged sausage. This would be funny enough except that I haven't mentioned that Alison is a solid vegetarian and until yesterday on the train hadn't knowingly ate any meat for 8 years! I was a good friend and told her that she had to eat it, less we create an international incident, and was holding a bottle of water so that she could wash it down.
The train trip passed through some diverse land. Mostly we passed by rice fields, but parts of the trip passed through various mountain ranges. There is a huge gap in the amount of wealth in the cities and the countryside. The countryside is very poor. It is also very crowded. At times we could see hundreds of people working the fields. There really wasn't any area we passed through where there were no people.
So now we are in Kumming. We visited yet another temple, and cleaned out our system with a vegetarian meal. For the past two days I have sustained myself on Raman Noodles, which is terrible for you. Tomorrow we are going to visit the Stone Forest, a couple of hours outside of Kumming. On Sunday we will go to Dali.
