Drowning in Jinghong

Hey hey,

So I'm staying at the Jade Emu here in Dali and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they have VPN here, so here I am updating my blog again.

I have been traveling in Yunnan for around a week now and so much has happened it's hard to believe it's only been a week.

First off, it was quite the frustrating day getting from Hong Kong to Jinghong. Way more types of transportation in one day than I would care to have again. It involved a taxi to the metro, 2 transfers on the metro, going through customs, taxi to airport, flight to kunming, overnight bus to Jinghong.... whew! I had probably the hardest day of my entire trip on this day as all of these means off transportation took way longer than I calculated. When I finally made it through customs in Shenzhen, I only had one hour and 15 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave. A guy asked me if I needed a ride to the airport and I asked if he had a meter (metered cab) and he said yes. However, once we got to the car, it did not have a meter and I already told him I was in a huge rush to catch my flight so he knew I wouldn't have time to find the real cabs and wait in line. He said he could get me to the airport in 40 minutes and would charge me Y200 (which is crazy as a ride that long would really only be around Y50-60. However, I didn't have enough time to find something else so I agreed (after all, Y200 is about $30). But once we were on the road, he said to get me there faster, he needed to take the expressway which had a Y100 toll and handed me some paper in characters with the toll. Again, too late to do anything else so I am now paying Y300. Then I'm put into another cab (so he would not be there when I was getting dropped off) and I notice when we go through the toll, it is only Y50. I get to the airport 30 minutes before my flight but could not find my check in and no one spoke english and when I finally did, they had just closed the check-in for my flight. So not only was I royally ripped off, but I missed my flight and had to pay Y120 to book a new flight.
I was drenched in sweat and so frustrated at this point that I just started crying right in the airport, so a lady who worked there stayed with me until everything was rebooked and made sure it was all taken care of. I had to wait 3 hours for my new flight, but if my flight had been one hour later, I would have totally taken the cheap bus back to the train station, found that guy, made a scene and tried to get my money back. But, unfortunately, I did not have enough time so I begrudgingly had to let it go. and of course, I had the overnight bus to jinghong where I had to sleep next to a little girl with a cold who spent the entire night coughing and sneezing into my neck to top off the day. But I got there in one piece at least. So that is the story of my worst day in China and what a wonderful welcome back to the mainland it was.
However, Jinghong was gorgeous when I got there. It was really hot so I didn't have to wear a bunch of layers and felt a lot like Thailand (or so I'm told). I was there for the Thai New Years, which is also referred to as the water splashing festival. The first day involves dragon boat races on the river and at night, there are fireworks and people buy lanterns that they release in the sky and make a wish. The second day there is a carnival and a food pot luck, delicious! and the third day was water splashing day, which is when people all dump water on each other from 10am to 5pm and there is no escape if you venture out of your house. I had read an article by a western girl saying that if she was ever there for water splashing again, she would definitely bring goggles. If I were to do it again, I would bring goggles, a helmut, possibly an oxygen tank and a wetsuit. As not only a girl, but a western girl, I was drenched the entire day.
The streets were really fun. People would pass each other and spray water guns or trucks would drive by and throw buckets of water. Little kids were running around with tiny squirt guns and water balloons, but unfortunately we decided to head to the main square where all of the water was, and that is when Ayelete and I (my Israeli friend) entered a small version of hell. Circles of people would surround us and throw buckets of water in our faces and try to squirt us directly in the eyes with huge squirt guns. We couldn't breathe and my eyes were burning. We got to the outside of the crowd where we had established a meeting point with our Chinese friends and were still being bombarded. It got so painful that I developed the policy of "you squirt me in the face and I will hit you in the face with my bucket" which helped slow down some of the squirting because it was a dangerous affair. Our chinese friends told us later that even the local girls who were in the middle of the big crowds where in so much pain they started to cry and would try to escape but it's hard because you can't see. I'm telling you, it was intense. My eyes are still in the recovery process. I have a blood blister on my left eyelid, my right eyeball was red for days so I couldn't wear contacts and my eys have been oozy and crusty for a few days now. They say the more you are splashed the more luck you will have in the New Year so if I don't end up with permanent eye damage, I guess that will be my good luck.
We spent one more day in Jinghong so we went to the nature reserve. We paid to go to the elephant valley where you can walk a trail and hope to see some elephants. However, when we were dropped off at the top of the cable car, everything was roped off because the elephants were too close to the path. So apparently, if the elephants are close enough you can see them, it's too dangerous and you can only walk on the path when elephants aren't around. How very China. So we had to take the cable car straight back down. They also had cages with Pythons in them, since pythons are native to the area, and they had just put live chickens in the cages. Fortunately the snakes weren't hungry yet when I was there, but my heart really went out to the chickens. They would wander up to the snake and peck at it with their beaks and lay down next to the body. I was trying to imagine myself in this situation. The chicken probably thought, "well I've been put in this cage with this other creature, hopefully we can be friends and maybe we can work together to get out of here!" He will be bitterly disappointed at the outcome I believe.
After Jinghong, I made my way to Kunming where I hung out with a group of Israeli guys mostly. I saw the dragon's gate, bamboo temple and the Yunnan museum. On my last day, I went to the midget amusement park called Dwarf Kingdom, which was recently written about in the NY times. It was really pretty inappropriate as the majority of people there were kids on a school field trip, however, the employees (who are all little people) say that they not only enjoy having consistent work, but that they are happy they get to work together, so who am I to judge I suppose. They performed a variety show that included costumes, break dancing, etc. So bizzare and again, so China.
I am in Dali now and spent the day biking around to the three pagodas and through old town. It's very relaxing here and it's a nice break from the earlier craziness. Dali is very Tibetan so it feels quite peaceful.
This update has been really unnecassarily long, so I'm done. Perhaps there will be one more update before I leave here?? We'll see.
Miss all of you!