Despite that it has been recorded in exhausted-laying-on-my-side-in-bed scribble in my journal, now like 20 pages, I choose to not really detail all that has happened in the last few days, in the hopes that I can pull myself out of the greyness of the last few days. Not that they have been bad. My National Geographic Traveller exxxxtreme outlook on travelling allows me to swallow every "adventure," even if it sucky adventure, with a grain of salt. I don't really know how to use that expression. Swallow with a swig of juice, or with a jello shooter. In the swiftness of putting it: I had not money to pay for things, such as lodging and food. Reason was that gritty town of Sanjiang had some problem with being advanced or civilized or nice enough to accept my Bank of Beijing bank card. Stupid town.
I survived by the skin of my witty teeth. In the ensuing adventure not on a bike-- unforntuanetly, as it was dire that I get to big city Guilin for the merest of purpose of using a ATM machine (ha!)-- I: rode a crap bus on the crappiest mud and bumpy rode in civilization, and sat behind several people who vomited out the window, vomited on the floor, live chickens in bags (yes!) and I proudly managed to pee in a bottle on a moving (actually jumping) bus, also at one point I had to sit in a wet seat (probably pee-because of cosmic karma).
Now I am in Guilin, a city that, in its glorius neon punchy uplighting essence, is a Disneyfied version of itself. In the river which runs through the city, there are circulating about 100 little ferries covered with chinese tourists taking pictures with their camera phones. Here is the location on earth of the famed Karst Limestone Pinnacles. If you don't know what any of those three words refer to, they refer to odd shaped (boob-shaped) mountains. I'm spending 2 nights here just so I can sleep-in and because the weather is cold and damp and I can't even really see the boob mountains.
Tomorrow, I thankfully ride 88km south to Yangshuo, the charming Western Enclave. The city exists to cater to all those foriegn 20-something backpacker-types that choose to not make eye-contact with each other while walking around Beijing and presumably other big Chinese cities. I hope I get some eye-contact actually because 2 weeks into it and being alone in the beautiful, yet rough and tumble hinterlands already I am talking to myself, laughing at my own jokes, and speaking in different voices. I haven't named them yet. Oh goodness.
