In the West, we have “fall break”; but here, we have “Golden Week”. This year, it is an eight-day holiday beginning on October 1 with National Day and then is followed by the Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s a pretty big deal here because this year is the sixtieth anniversary of the “new” country. For the most part, everyone goes back home to be with their families and eats moon cakes. They are not to be confused with moon pies. These are little pastries filled with all sorts of goodies – dried fruit, nuts, ham. While, they are not as tasty as a warm moon pie and a RC cola, the ham ones are pretty yummy.
I decided a while ago that I wanted to go to Xishuangbanna. This area of the country is a tropical rain forest and has elephants. I don’t remember exactly when I made this list, but at some point in my life, I decided that I wanted to ride an elephant through the jungle – not at the fair. I think it may have to do with when I was in high school and Mrs. Bush told me about her experience riding an elephant through the jungle in Thailand. I was excited about the trip, but I needed to find a traveling companion. Mo said that she had a friend who wanted to go to Pu Er, which is on the way to Xishuangbanna. We decided to travel together. The only problem is that neither of us speak the language.
Because I don’t have class on Wednesdays, we took off a day early. This also had the benefit of missing the crowds since practically everyone in the country is traveling, and believe me, there are a lot of people here! We took to the train to the closest big city and then hopped a sleeper bus to Xishuangbanna. We were told that there were no buses going to Pu Er because it is a major holiday, but we found out that it was going to make a stop there along the way. We decided just to get off when the bus stopped.
The sleeper bus is sort of like the Knight Bus for those of you who read/watch Harry Potter, with the exception of the whole magic thing. For those of you who do not, the sleeper bus looks like a tour bus from the outside. Instead of rows of seats, however, there are beds. The inside of the bus is arranged into three rows of beds – one on the right side, one on the left side, and one down the middle – with top and bottom bunks. Along the back is like a California King sized bed that fits five people. It’s kind of like being a sardine.
We arrived in Pu Er late and found somewhere to stay for less than $10 (US) per night. It was pretty nice considering – two beds, a bathroom, a TV, and respectably clean. The next day we went out and about in town. We found our way to a tea plantation, or park, and looked around. We also rented a rickshaw and had the driver take us to a teahouse. We drank tea for a while and bought some tea. After lunch, we went to another teahouse on the way back from buying our tickets to Xishuangbanna and drank more tea. All along the way, we kept seeing scenes from the National Day celebration on TV. We retired to the hotel and watched the celebrations ourselves.
You may be asking, “What’s with all the tea?” Good question! Pu Er is famous for its tea here. It is a rare kind of fermented tea that has no classification – such as green, white, or black – and comes in two varieties – raw and cooked. The lady that I traveled with wants to sell this Pu Er tea when she returns to Canada, so she wanted to see the tea. I was cool with that. I like tea. She, however, is OBSESSED with tea. That is all that she wanted to do! Go to a tea plantation, see tea bushes, tea trees, drink tea, talk about tea…At the end of the day, I was over it! Tea was all that she wanted to do. Who cares about seeing a 3,000-year-old tea tree when you’ve seen 60 year-old trees? They look the same; just the one is probably bigger and taller. Clearly, we had some divergent interests.
We arrived in Xishuangbanna and things started to get shaky. She got rather snippy and rude with me (where’s Bon Qui Qui when you need her) almost immediately. We found somewhere to stay and hung out in the city visiting an amazing botanical garden. I had planned for us to visit a village the next day and to visit the countryside to see some of the ethnic minority groups. (They also grow tea here) We managed to find our way to the correct bus station (there are 3 here) and made it to the village. However, we couldn’t find the place to rent bicycles and I also realized that it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to go traipsing off into the countryside on two bicycles without being able to speak the language and being uncertain about where we were going or how to get back to where we were. Plus, my sidekick wasn’t feeling all that great. We walked around the village, saw a Buddhist temple (Buddha was getting a bath), visited the market, and ate lunch before returning.
Since she had been in a rather fowl mood since leaving Pu Er, I suggested that we split for the rest of the day and she could go to her tea plantation and I would hang out in the city. That suited me just fine and her also. I hung out in the park, went to the Jade Market, and spent time with the best traveling companion ever. It was a perfect afternoon. I returned to wait for her so we could go to dinner, but when she had not arrived by 6:00, I decided to go on without her. (Yes, I eat with the blue-hairs) I had planned to go to a Sunday market outside of town in a small village where all the people come in their minority costumes on our last day. It came highly recommended by Mo. However, because of the adventure mishap we had the day before, I decided to scrap that plan and stay in the city before departing at 8:00 that night. We again decided to do our own things and I thought much for the better. I returned to the Jade Market to buy some local handicrafts – two “tablecloths”, a hat, and a wall hanging. I also went to the Mekong River. I figured that it was a must since it’s kind of a big deal, people know it. There was a really nice park near the river that was not nearly as crowded as the one I had been to earlier in the center of town and it was playing English music through the rock speakers along the path. I sat down in a shady spot and “had a rest”. It was delightful! Mostly because whenever I went to the other park, local people kept trying to talk to me and whenever I told them that I couldn’t speak the language to them in their language they didn’t believe me. In fact, one man was so persistent in trying to talk to me that he called his son at home and made him speak to me in English. Poor kid, he just wanted to watch TV on his break from school and his dad was making him talk to a complete stranger on the phone! We met back together at the bus station and boarded the “Knight Bus” once again.
I think I got the best sleep of the whole trip on the train back to our town. The reason? Outside of our hotel window in Xishuangbanna was a rooster. Except, I think this rooster was blind because it crowed early in the morning when it was still dark, again in the morning while the sun was coming up, at noon, and again in the evening. I was ready to kill the rooster and make my own version of Chick-fil-a after the first morning.
I learned a lot in the trip. Much like how I learned that it is not always wise to live with people that you don’t know, it is also not always wise to travel with people that you do not know. You can have peace so long as you live life with a clear conscience towards man and your father. If you’re in the family, you have the best traveling companion ever with you. It is absolutely imperative to have a guide who can speak the local language with you, especially if you go into the country.
For those of you who would like to know more about Xishuangbanna, before you go packing your suitcase to visit, let me give you the lowdown on what it was like. Step one, imagine Miami. Step two, take away the ocean – Xishuangbanna is landlocked. Step three, replace the Hispanic population with Asians. Step four, as the piece de resistance, take away the air conditioning. It was not quite the lush, tropical paradise that I was expecting, but I made the best of it, and in the end enjoyed myself. I did, however, miss ALL of you, and please do not let my rousing endorsement of Xishuangbanna deter you from considering a visit. I feel that it would be a much better experience (a) going with friends/family and (b) knowing what I know now, I can plan a better trip.
So, while the trip did not turn out to be quite what I had dreamed of, there were a few highlights. One, the cool things I bought at the Jade Market. Two, the hamburgers that I ate in Xishuangbanna. Three, and the best one of all, I remembered AND USED some of the language that I was studying before I left. I was really quite impressed with myself on that one (wink).
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