JAZZY'S TRAVELS

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The Chinese language is insane. After one week I can still only say hello (nihao), thank you (xie xie), and the names of certain cities. Today I bought myself an English-Chinese dictionary, as you can tell the language barrier was starting to get to me. After talking to other travelers I've come to see that I picked one of the hardest countries to travel in because hardly anyone speaks English. I guess that's a good way to start, that means it can only get easier.

Yesterday morning (7:15am to be exact) I caught a train to Chengde. I bought a soft seat ticket without really knowing the difference between soft and hard but it ended up being a good choice. The train car was quite comfortable, clean and quiet, not at all over crowded. The hardseat section (which is in fact softseats as well) is over crowded sometimes with standing room only available. Although that would be "emersing" myself, I figure I've got a whole lot of crowded bus/train/boat/plane rides for the rest of this trip. Why not take the softseat? It was only $8 anyway.

On the train I met a couple of girls from Belgium and have been traveling with them ever since (although I did lose them somehow a couple hours ago, but I'll just see them back at the hotel). It's nice having people to talk to, but at the same time it makes everything more difficult. You never want to make other people angry and you start to adjust your travel style to their own. These two were probably some of the best girls to meet early on because their quite nice and one of them speaks a little Chinese. (pardon the "quite" or any other strange language I start to use, that's what happens when everyone you speak english with is from Europe).

After we got off the train yesterday, we found a hotel (80yuan each, expensive given I was paying 40 in Beijing. 40= a little less then $6) and walked around for a little while. Within 2 hours all of us were able to decide that we don't like Chengde. It's just a smaller Beijing. From the travel books I got the impression it would be more quaint and green, and this worries me. Are all the towns in China going to be so big a dirty? I don't mind the dirt, but they're really just big ugly cities with little personality architectually. I want to be in the little villages with the rolling green hills! If it exists I'm going to find it, and from the sound of it they're all south.

So, as a result of my dislike of Chengde, today I'm being a lazy butt. This morning we went to Puning Temple which has an enormous (about 22m high) statue of Guanyin, the Buddist Goddess of Mercy. Unfortunately, She, like every other amazing religious statue in China, didn't let me take her picture. So, my video camera has nothing to document the moment. After that we roamed around in a bookstore (pointless other then my dictionary) and now I've found myself in an internet cafe wasting time. It's only 2 yuan an hour so I could waste 130 hours in here given my daily budget.


Speaking (or should I say writing) of my daily budget it's about 260 yuan/day. Which works out to about $33. It actually hasn't been that hard to stay within, and that's probably because I eat a lot of street food and walk just about everywhere. Most days I walk in the streets for at least a couple of hours, and if I don't find anything exciting, at least I've provided some entertainment for the locals.

Tomorrow we're (the belgium girls and myself) are going to take a bus back to Beijing since there were no train tickets left (stupid national holiday). I'll probably spend the night in Beijing and then head south yippie!!!! I'll write again when I have something exciting to say...or maybe when I'm bored :P