Hello internetland.
I'm a bit over half way through my holiday and figured I should
let you all know what I've been up to.
Classes were supposed to be done the first week in January.
I was planning for that and all was going well. Then I found out (in the
last week of December) that the first week of January was going to be a
holiday. The week after that wasn't a normal week but somehow I was supposed to
magically still have all my classes that week. After talking to some
people who have been teaching there longer I decided to just squeeze my testing
into December and be done with it. As a result I technically had 9 weeks
of holiday which is pretty awesome. In reality I didn't actually leave
Dongying for 3 weeks as I needed to be around to submit marks and I had already
booked a flight for a bit later.
For New Year I went to Qingdao with a group of friends and had a
pretty good time. I've written about Qingdao before, it's a pretty frequent
destination with only a 4 hour bus ride and very cheap accommodations.
Dongying was significantly colder this year than it ever was last
year. It snowed a few days and the snow actually stayed and froze making lots
of thing quite slippery as locals don’t salt and aren’t used to such
conditions. I was really looking forward to escaping the cold.
Alright, changing gears now a little. Most of you know that I had
a puppy living at my place for awhile. This
story is a little long. I think it’s amusing/infuriating but if you’re not too
interested just go to the ------ spot where I start talking about my real
holiday.
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| Operation getting-more-ridiculous-by-the-minute |
It was zzf’s dog and the agreement was that it would leave once
the semester was done. Leading up to
this date zzf really had no solid plan for him except that he’d magically get
back to her town. There were a lot of
problems with this plan, the main one being that she was traveling with me so
she couldn’t take him. I did some
research and pretty much realized that dogs can’t go on trains in China without
health checks. I told her that she could check him in storage with those
checks. ZZF, however, was determined
that if he was dressed up like a baby that no one would bother to check him.
Yes, this was actually her plan. Full points for creativity but… she found some
boys who agreed to take him.
It all started at the dongying bus station. She had agreed to meet the boys there and had
Roshak (the dog) all dressed up but they were over an hour late and by then he
was starting to get quite restless. I had brought along a backpack as a backup
plan as I just didn’t believe her plan would actually work. As they were trying
to get on the bus he was way too restless so they just dumped him in the
backpack and boarded. They refused to take any of the baby gear. Getting on a bus with no security with a dog
in a bag is easy. The problem was that this bus just took them to another city
where they would board a train. Trains
have real security to clear. The baby plan was ridiculous but at least had a
small chance of success. Putting him through a scanner had no chance of it so…
Later than night ZZF got a call from the boys saying they had to
leave him with security at that train station.
She was, of course, quite distraught. She wanted to go there right away
but it was late at night. We had been planning on going to another city the
next day and being there 2 days before taking the plane to Xiamen. I managed to
figure out a way to go to where the dog was as it was actually along the way.
So stupidly early the next day we took a bus there and went to the train station.
She was asking around at the station and lots of people were making calls to
other people but not much was happening. Then I heard something and went
looking in a bunch of boxes and found him there. I have no idea why they didn’t
just tell us, surely they knew he was there but maybe he had been left by the
night staff and they really didn’t know. He is pretty quiet afterall.
Alright, so we now have a dog in a city where neither of us no
anyone and we’re leaving on a flight the next day. Now what? We learned that you COULD take a
dog on a train but you had to put him in the storage area and he needed all the
health checks (I vaguely remember someone mentioning that earlier).
Fortunately we were staying at a hotel that was right by the train
station (not an accident of course) and there happened to be a pet store right
by. We went there and she talked for a
long time to the lady. Turns out that
they can only run the checks on weekdays and this was a Saturday. We had to
leave the next day for our flight so that wouldn’t work. After lots of negotiating the lady agreed to
put him on the train on Monday. Problem solved.
You really didn’t think it would be that “easy” did you? Of course
you didn’t, as a longtime reader of my blog you know that things in China just
don’t work that way. In Xiamen she got a call. You’re not allowed to SHIP dogs
on the train, you actually have to be on the train with them. Of course the
lady had no interest in boarding the train. Again, now what?
ZZF called a friend and pleaded with him to take the train there,
pick up the dog and go back. He actually agreed to do it.
Good, so he’s finally got to her town. Story’s done! Well, almost.
Her mom wasn’t really thrilled at the idea of looking after this dog. Then he
decided to bite her brother for some reason. He wasn’t a violent dog so I’m
guessing something scared him. Mom no
longer wants dog so dog gets sent away. Now he’s living with zzf’s friend
somewhere. So after all her work and money to make sure he stayed with her he’s
living at someone else’s. He IS an
adorable dog. Now let us never speak of him again.
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Ok, back to the holiday.
We’ll start from Zibo which is the city where the dog got stuck.
You could get an express bus directly to the airport which was great. We did
this but it was snowing a bit. Well, “a bit”, for Canada, A LOT for Shandong
province. The bus ride was supposed to take 40 minutes. Soon into the ride I
noticed that we were going incredibly slow along very back roads. There were
massive potholes and cars going in every direction. Someone asked him why,
apparently buses aren’t allowed on the highways during a snowstorm. 2.5 hours
later we got to the airport. Fortunately we had left quite early so we weren’t
late. Unfortunately our flight was cancelled and rescheduled for very late the
next day. The airport was, as usual, quite far outside the city. I called the
booking company I always do who found us a hotel but it was miserable getting
there.
Eventually we did get to Xiamen. Getting out of the airport it was
nighttime but still 20C. I practically had my head out the window as we took a
taxi to our hotel. So nice to be somewhere warm.
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| I'm pretty sure this is what my asian brother looks like. Lunny also points out it looks like the soviet leader Lenin. |
Xiamen was a really nice city. If I had no idea where I was and
didn’t see any writing I could have guessed it was in the US or Canada. We went walking the first day and ended up at a cars-only tunnel. Not to be stopped we decided to find a path over the mountain. We were clearly in places we weren't supposed to be but she kept pressing on and, after jumping several walls, we emerged on the other side.
The big
thing in Xiamen is an island called Gulanyu Island.
We hung out there awhile and I got a sketch done of myself. Cost $5 and
took 5 minutes. It may be ruined now as
it’s hard to keep a rolled up paper intact throughout travels.
We also played at the beach awhile as she had never been to one or
seen the ocean. We dug a big hole on an
almost completely empty beach. It was a little too cold to swim and zzf can’t
swim anyway. I wasn’t going to try to teach her in an ocean.
After a few days she headed home and I flew to Guangzhou to meet
up with 4 other guys from Dongying. We then went to Macau which is known as the
Asian Vegas. The casinos there are
massive and gorgeous. Each one has some
sort of awesome show that it does. By the 10th casino you start to
forget just how amazing it is as it has almost become “normal”. At one point we
were just walking past something and I remarked that if it was in Dongying it
would be considered a major attraction and yet we just walked past.
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| The Macau gang |
I had planned to lose about $100 in the 3 days we were there on
gambling. I’m not much of a gambler but it’s the entertainment and I figured
that if I could have fun for that price it would be worth it. By the end I managed to lose about $1.50 so I
was quite happy. It was the 2nd best in our group. Lunny won a lot in poker tournaments but the
other 3 didn’t fair so well.
From there Bryan and I flew to Bangkok. We stayed there a few days then worked our
way to the Cambodian border. The border was the weirdest one I’ve ever seen.
Kids were running back and forth, there were a few official-looking people on
lawn chairs, but that was about it. We already had our E-visas so we showed
them and basically walked through.
We took a tuk tuk to Koh Kong which is a very small coastal town.
Not a lot of tourists here but still enough that there were places to stay and
a few tours to book. We found a room for
$6/night (that was the total price for 2 people in a “hotel” room) and booked
it for 3 days.
The first day we took a very long, slow boat to an island to go
snorkeling along a beach. It was pretty
pathetic snorkeling really but the lunch they provided was amazing. Fresh fish
and pineapple. I have never really liked
pineapple at all. After eating that it
may be the best thing that I’ve ever eaten.
Unbelievably good and sweet.
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| Some massages are free |
The next day we went on a jungle trek to some waterfalls. This is the dry season so there wasn’t a lot
of water but there was still enough to go swimming. It was on this trip that my camera decided to
stop working. I’m hoping I can get it fixed because my phone takes terrible
pictures but I’ll steal Bryan’s if I have to.
We arrived in Sihanoukville 3 days ago and spent a night here
before going to Koh Rong island. We
spent 2 nights on that island. It was
quite secluded with not a lot going on.
Each place had its own generator and only powered outlets for a few
hours each day so we had to plan if we wanted to charge things. Also no fan or
A/C here so we made sure to stay up quite late before trying to sleep.
The day that we were there we decided to go scuba diving. Bryan never had before so he did an intro
course while I did 2 boat dives with experienced people. I had never dived in salt water, or warm water
before. It was nice not to have to wear
such a heavy suit. I saw some cool fish
and coral but the visibility wasn’t awesome.
I missed Brian on this part as he’s always been my diving buddy.
That night we at pizza on a very secluded beach when a cow decided
to join us. I have no idea where it came from, it was just walking along the
beach, stopped to investigate us, then carried on. Travel experiences.
We’re now back in Sihanoukville for 4 nights. We have an AC room
this time… sort of. It only works when the main power is on and that seems to
go down a lot. They have a backup generator but that won’t power the AC so we
along with fans when that happens.
That’s my update to where I am now. I’ll try to write the rest in March, once I’m
home. Was a long one today. For smaller
stories read the captions on my pictures.
Time to go read on a beach and drink $1 milk shakes. Bye all!
Wiseguy1
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