DATELINE: DONGXING (May's Hometown)

Well, another day, another hotel room. May swears this one smells kind of gross though. Hell at this point, everything everywhere smells kind of funny to me actually (nah it ain't bad).

Well, yesterday was a long, long day - a day full of travel, and sitting, and waiting. We got up early to catch a flight from Shanghai to Nanning (airport in Guangxi province) - woke up and hopped in a cab, but we messed up and registered for our flight 5 minutes later than we ought to have (7am). Unfortnuately, the next flight to this province wasn't for EIGHT HOURS, so we had to sit in the airport lobby and gate, and just chill till then. Then a 2.5 hour flight (delayed another half hour, also) and then a 3 hr busride - we got to our hotel at LAST just after 11:30pm. So yeah, my butt is sore from sitting - but then, I have gotten quit egood at that, over the years.

This province, Dongxing, is very interesting. Reminds me of Xi'An in some ways - there's TONS of land development going on here. After we first landed and drove to the bus terminal, we'd pass endless rows of construction machinery, all lined up in front of infinite plazas. The skyline was always dotted with cranes erecting buildings, apartment and business. It looks like there's tons of area to fill and CONSTANT DEVELOPMENT. It's pretty amazing. We rushed to eat some dinner at a local joint and then hustle to the bus terminal, didn't wanna miss another trip! We sat and waited once there, a monitor was playing advisory cartoons trying to inspire people to drive safe. The cartoons were of horrible quality, like if some retarded 6th grader got his hands on 3D Studio Max for the first time 3 months ago and was still trying to learn it. I thought it was humorous how we'd see cartoons of buses running off cliffs and crashing into lakes and etc, before having a dangerous bus trip of our own (it was super-late at night, so not much traffic, fortunately).

This leg of the tour is certainly different, markedly, than the previous parts. It's way more rustic, I guess one would say, out here - also I am pretty much the only white person in town, anywhere! I get stared at a lot. May's brother and his group met us at the bus drop-off last night, we deposited our belongings in the hotel and then walked up the street to a little strip of stores. In front of them on the sidewalk, vendors would setup little roofed-off areas filled with little short plastic chairs and tables, right at the curb they'd set up grills and coolers filled with booze. We sat and ate BBQ pork and chicken and calamari and corn-on-the-cob, and drank a bunch of booze while playing the drinking chinese version of "rock paper scissors." The group was very friendly and it was fun to hang out and finally see people in a non-touristy representation. Wish I took my camera and shot some pics, perhaps we'll do the same thing tonight!

It's just past 9am local time, I rolled out of bed a little while ago, we'll meet a bunch of may's other friends in a couple of hours. NO ONE speaks any English at all over here, except hello or thank you, and I am practicing the local dialect versions of the same. It's pretty difficult for a newb like me to speak chinese, the tones are very delicate.. I am practicing though. Tomorrow will be interesting, I gotta get up super-early to repeat all of yesterday's traveling in reverse and return to shanghai (hopefully, without all the extra 8 hours of waiting!) and make my way through a good deal of it on my own, as the lady and I will part company at that point, for the remainder of the trip. Should be interesting!

RANDOM STUFF - if I haven't mentioned it before, (and I know I have), drivers in china are INSANE. Lanes, street signs, that sort of thing seem to be treated more as a suggustion than anyhting else. Automobiles seem to entrust that they can somehow perturb the laws of physics to fit in between one another. Everybody is constantly honking and beeping at one another, and motorscooters, motorcycles, and bicycles (and pedestrians) are constantly squeezing thru all the moving negative space between the traffic - it is a sight to behold. The typical motorscooter will have a dude on the front and his lady sitting side-saddle behind him with her legs just hanging off to one side as he careens through the traffic. In this current province, I notice a lot of motorcycle setups where three (or FOUR) dudes will squeeze onto a single motorcycle seat. I need to take some pics of this stuff - it is just amazing. I try to imagine any of this stuff in the States, the cops would have a field day!!

Trying my best to maintain my digestive prowess. Can't drink anything with ice in it usually, as it's not purified. That means I drink a lot of booze or warm soda. I can't wait to get home and just chug bottles of water! I am not gonna drink any soft drinks for like 4 months after this trip, I guess..

It's amazing, the clash between old and new that one witnesses out here. Lots of little old/poor people will still be carrying buckets of things supported by a stick held on their back (across their shoulders), justlike you'd have pictured them doing hundreds of years ago. You see this everyday, everywhere, no matter how modern the city. There's a constant juxtaposition of old and new everywhere, even in a super-built-up area like Shanghai. Round a corner of a modern shopping plaza, and you'll find a tight back alley filled with dudes drinking and smoking and hanging laundry on the decrepit-looking facades on their apartment buildings, playing mahjhong in little smoke-filled dens. It's quite bizarre.

The trip has been outrageous, though I do look forward to getting home and settling back into my routine - I feel that there's a tremendous backlog of things waiting for me to deal with! I am psyched to get back to "normal food" as well, hahaha... Just a few more days! Anyway, I have a bunch of pics to post, but that won't happen for some time yet. May put a few up on her myspace page, check them out to tide over in the meantime.