Mom Says I’m Running Away

Day: 285

I am at home now after the last seven weeks wandering about China, Tibet and Mongolia. I was less than impressed with the northern region of China, but as a gateway to the amazing places in Tibet and Mongolia it was a necessary evil.

Here are some of my favorites from the last 7 weeks. Look forward to the next adventure on the John Muir Trail here in California! 225 miles of backpacking through the Sierra Nevadas! Good times and sore feet expected…

I won’t go into vivid details, but leaving her was harder than I ever expected. One of the most astounding people I have ever met. As much as I was ready to be home, I am here now and alone…

Day:284

In a city that throughly depresses me, I was happy to spend the day wandering though the endless catacombs of what Felicia and I dubbed “The Great Mall of China”.

My flight home is early tomorrow and Felicia’s back to Singapore is in the afternoon, a few meals and a few hours at my computer making her CD’s of pictures from the last month and the day ended.

Day: 283

So in a city where you can’t see the sky because of insane amounts of pollution, the greatest athletes are going to converge, next summer, to achieve their worst times and scores of their careers. How anyone expects these stars to give their best when their eyes are bleary from the particles in the air, and lungs are on fire from the constantly grey skies is beyond me. I have difficulty walking out to get a plate of dumplings, much less run a 2000 meter relay. All the while the construction continues; while the city is alive with anticipation for next summer, every corner will sell you a “Beijing 2008″ hat or sweater. Seems obscene in a place where Blogger.com and Wikipedia.com are banned because they are not healthy for the general Chinese welfare.
I know, all I do in Beijing is complain but it is excessively well deserved. London in 2012 will at least have clear skies and a place to get a decent beer, I’ll wait until then to get my fill of the Olympics…

Day: 282

Felicia (who obviously eats some disgusting things) and I arrive at the Beijing train station around two this afternoon, a taxi ride and we had found a room in an underground hostel beneath China’s biggest shopping mall.  After some well deserved wandering from being cramped in a train for two days (which included me buying a copy of War and Peace for the flight home), we found a theatre with an english version of Pirates 3 and enjoyed.

Day:266

I have always said (although this being the first time on “Mom Says…”) that if people are not related or have know each other for at least a decade it is near impossible to travel together for an extended amount of time and not annoy the shit out of each other; with one exception, if they are having sex.  Sex seems to cover and forgive a broad array of sins from each other.  

Obviously from past posts my views on sex are rather casual.  I am not usually “on the prowl” but if a situation presents itself I always am up for a good time.  At the same time I am absolute about being responsible about this lifestyle I have chosen, always protecting myself and those I sleep with by using protection, as well as semi-regular tests.  Anyways a point to this rambling; I normally travel with what I view as a reasonable amount of condoms, unfortunately I didn’t take into account a certain persons appetites, or the length of time we would travel together and ran out yesterday.

No problem right?  Well I am in China, but being in Beijing I should be able to find an American brand that I can trust, right?  After a considerable amount of effort we came across a pharmacy that sold Durex, I bought a couple of dozen and went away with a smile on my face.  Life was good again.

Until that fateful moment of passion that will live in infamy in my mind forever, I go to use one…. 

And of course it doesn’t fit, too small…  Slightly helps build my self esteem, but at the same time relegates me to third base.  Frustration might be the word I am looking for.

My only hope left now is that Ulaan Bataar carries Russian sized birth control.

*No names were used in this article to protect the innocent; speculation optional.

Day: 265

After a late start today was spent taking care of all the business that needed attended to for me to get to Mongolia. Booked a flight for tomorrow morning to Beijing and bought my train ticket from there to Ulaan Bataar for the day after.   A couple days of hard traveling are coming up, but Ill do my best to keep the pictures interesting.

Did have a nice hotpot meal and wandered through the packed food market streets at sunset. I was disappointed that I had already eaten when I saw all the food being cooked.

Day: 254

Last day in this boring city,  I am as exhausted of it as you are.  Tomorrow I am off on the first day of 13, across the Kham region here in China.

Hopefully the nomads don’t have cameras to stalk me there.

Day: 253

When I said yesterday that most likely nothing would take place today, I was right.   I spent most of the morning in some mix of being on the internet, eating, napping or reading (pretty much what I do at home).  Finally 3pm came around and I set out across town to see if I could find Felicia and Shauna, the two girls who put this trip together for the next two weeks.

We took an obligatory “getting to know you” stroll for a few kilometers through Xining and its markets and finally settled down at a hot pot. A couple hours of boiling our food in a bucket of excessively spicy soup mixture in the middle of our table and drinking beer (at least on my part) were the most exciting part of my day.  If I was an older man (like I will be next week) I probably would have had a night of horrible heartburn, as it was my face stayed flushed red until I went to sleeep later at night.

Day: 252

In my rush to get out of Xi’an, attempting to find something new to photograph, it never dawned on me that I’d be put in a place that could end up being excessively dull.  Xining is exactly that, everything it has to offer is as a stop over to the wilds in the lands beyond. With a couple of days remaining before my 13 day, 4×4 trip begins, I will be lounging around the exceptionally comfortable hostel I found this morning. Reading books, playing on the internet and watching movies.  Tomorrow I get to meet the girls who I will be traveling with on the section of my adventure (as Madalyn would call it).

Other exciting events of the day included:

-Finding out I made the right choice in not trying to enter Tibet proper; this occured by way of a distraught Dutch couple who have been here for a week trying to sort out the last parts of their paperwork to visit Tibet.  They have been working on getting the permits for three weeks and now when they finally did yesterday, Their names were spelled wrong and passport numbers were missing digets.  Sorry guys.

-The entire days meals added up to a stunning $1.40.  $0.52 cents for lunch, $0.25 for an ice cream and $0.63 for a dinner, consisting of a huge plate of meat and vegatable dumplings and a flavorless rice and red bean gruel, which had the texture of tapioca and when enough of the suger that was served with it was added, became a tasty meal.

Otherwise my day passed uneventfully, tomorrow will most likely be the same, then… well, who really knows?

Day: 251

Now I pose a question. Would you pay $25 for a 17 hour overnight train ride on a “hard sleeper” crammed in with six people in a cabin or would you splurge for the 1 hour plane ride for $50?

Thats what I thought also. Perhaps it makes me somewhat less of a “hardcore” traveler, but it also leaves me sane; and $25 is barely an hours pay.

It did leave me with one last day to kill in Xi’an before my flight tonight, but that was realitively easy to do.  Some meandering around the markets, looking at the Great Mosque (the biggest in China!), getting my picture taken for being big and white, and eating a few MSG filled meals.

Sophie and Luke were heading off to Chengdu and I am off to Xining, our flights were only 10 minutes apart so we split a cab and headed off to the airport.

I broke one of my cardnial rules about never arriving in a new place in the middle of the night by showing up in downtown Xining at 11:30pm.  I went to the only “budget” place listed in my Lonely Planet -The Post Hotel-, and of course they no longer have dorms, only doubles for 65y.  What a gip.  I ponied up and figured on finding a better place manana.