To Simatei and beyond - or, Nice wall shame about the Tourists
When we woke up the morning after my Shirley Bassey tribute, I was up, as normal half an hour before the other girls and I got my stuff together in the dark, trying (unsuccessfully) to be quiet. So as usual by the time they got up I was almost ready. Once ready, I had thought about going outside for a morning cancer stick. When horror of horrors, the rain was coming down in sheets outside the window. It was so heavy the raindrops were bouncing a foot off the floor, I just groaned with dismay. As I had mentioned in my last e-mail, I was amazed that they had got horses up the wall in bad weather, but this day it would be us, and I could imagine terrain that had been hard in dry weather would be treacherously slippy in wet weather, and I was not the only one. One by one our group came out of their rooms to stand under the covered walkway that skirted the courtyard, to look in dismay at the rain that was coming down like bullets before us, there were cries of ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ and ‘Oh shit’.
We ran across the courtyard to breakfast, which, again, was the usual suspects, so I helped myself to an egg and avoided the spam, today again there was cheese slices and after about five of those and a delicious (no sarcasm) cup or six (they are small cups) of green tea, I was ready to face the wall.
Today however, and luckily for us, we had been told that the section of wall we were to walk was a three hour bus journey away, and I sincerely hoped that it wasn’t raining where we were going. After breakfast the few of us that had finished eating went to wait outside the hotel, and we saw the most amazing sight.
To any Chinese person this wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary, but to us it was great. The Tofu delivery guy had come. This man was dressed in a yellow plastic poncho and had a motorbike helmet with a big visor that was pushed up to reveal a wonderful, smiling, wrinkly face with typically rural Chinese bad teeth and a dodgy tache. He had arrived on a clapped out motorbike pick-up, with a large slab of steaming Tofu in the back, wrapped up in a truly filthy piece of wet muslin. We watched in awe as he took his filthy old knife and started to cut blocks of Tofu off the steaming slab and weigh each block on scales that consisted of an ancient stick with a small tray on one end and a weight on the other. As he cut each block, he picked it up with his hands, that I’m sure he must have been digging the garden with the day before, judging by his nails, and ran it in to the hotel kitchen before coming out and repeating the process again. It was really interesting and before long we were clicking away like the paparazzi, which the Tofu guy was loving - he must have felt like a minor celebrity, unfortunately only one of my pics came out. The one I had taken of his pick up. This picture shows that on the bike handles was sewn a really fetid pair of home made bike muffs. They were so dirty that there is no way any westerner would ever put their hands near them, let alone IN them, but this guy did happily and then proceeded to cut up the Tofu without washing his hands! After saying goodbye to the hotel owner who cut himself a massive slab of Tofu and started scoffing it, still steaming off the back of the truck, the Tofu guy rode off with his hands (unwashed again) warmly in the stinking (probably Tofu filled) muffs. He did, I’m glad to say, take one out, to cheerfully wave to us as he left.
By the time the bus arrived to pick us up, the rain had started to stop a little but we were still glad of the comfortable, warm bus, and I promptly started to snooze off any traces of Shirley Bassey that might have been left.
I awoke just before we got to our destination, to Eddie telling us that we must be careful getting off the bus, because there wasn’t really a good place for it to stop. And so, before long we did. We alighted in the ditch at the side of the road, again I found myself pleased to be on ‘Eddie bus’ not ‘Jordan bus’ because ‘Jordan bus’ decided to stop and let people off whilst going round a busy roundabout. Just stopped dead in the middle, and said ‘everyone off!’ I will assume the tour leaders on that bus weren’t having any of it, (the tour leaders on our bus were certainly gob smacked). Because a couple of minutes after we got off into the ditch, the next bus followed us and dropped the other half of the group there too, I think there must have been words, and thank god, it wasn’t raining here.
To get to the wall today, we had to walk through another small village. This one was a little more modern than the others we had visited, but still pretty basic, we walked past a place that had what looked like charcoal logs stacked up in front of it, and there were more people going about their daily business than there had been in the other villages, as we walked we noticed the local butcher, trading out the back of a scabby old van with no refrigeration, the meat was just heaped up on a piece of old carpet in the back, there were no flys but I can only imagine that stinky old van in summer, ‘mmmm, one maggot or two with your pork’, and what must that carpet have been like, with smelly meaty juices soaking into it and I guarantee it wouldn’t have been changed very often - if ever!
As we walked, the road got steeper and steeper. Over the gardens and what I will assume were smallholdings, loudspeakers on poles played Chinese music to the workers. At the side of the road, grew the most unusual flowers I have ever seen. About two to three feet high with long dark green stalks and two inch long pointed dark green leaves, they were topped with a large flower of the most violent Cerice, so bright it was almost hot pink. The flowers were made up of large fleshy, wavy fins, packed tightly together almost like a coral, and instead of having petals these flowers were furry, the fur being about half a centimetre long, you could stroke them, I have never seen anything like them in my life I was told they were a form of Hosta but I have checked the net and cant find any hosta even remotely like them.
Soon we reached what seemed to be the local community centre, where we all stopped in front to do our excersizes. By this point we had picked up an entourage of small boys, and nosy locals who took delight in our bending and stretching, the boys joined in, and were more than pleased to have their pictures taken, so long as they could see themselves in the screen at the back of our cameras, which they thought was hilarious!
Excercizing done, we carried off up the road with a local guide rather than just Eddie or Jordan and within minutes, I found myself at the back of the pack and realised that I am extremely good at ’flat’ or ’down’ but absolutely rubbish at ’up’. The road got steeper and steeper, a couple of times I walked backwards to see if that helped, but no, I had to accept the fact that ’up’ is not my fort’e. The back section finally caught up with the front section where they were waiting and then the guide turned around to what looked like solid bushes, and started to pick her way up a tiny mountain track, that if you had not known it was there, you would never have seen, we followed her up, and my god it was hard, so steep you had to walk on tippie toes for a good part of it, because it was so steep you literally couldn’t walk flat footed. It was also rocky and crumbly and thank god there hadn’t been any rain to speak of or it would have been game over for some of us.
The bush was thick on either side of the path, and on my frequent rest/breathing/cursing stops I was able to look at some of the plants growing on either side of the track.
Most of the foliage had died, but the autumn colours glowed through the brown dead bits at either side of the track, and there was several trees that had the most peculiar berries hanging from them, Pillar box red berries, with the most vivid yellow cases split to reveal the berry within, the bushes had no leaves on them which made them catch your eye even more. They were really weird but all the more beautiful for it. Unfortunately the most predominant foliage at the side of the track seemed to be made of plastic carrier bags, they festooned so many of the bushes and underneath were the remnants of the plastic coated penis sausage wrappers, I didn’t see any of them growing from the trees, so I will assume that they had harvested them already and that they had been offered to us for our packed lunches! who knew processed meat grew on trees!! couldn’t possibly be litter could it?
After about two hours ascent, I reached the wall where most of the group were having their lunch, and I sat down to my boiled egg, the whole group had gotten so egg bound by this point that there was no chance of any unfortunate accidents (natures own Imodium)
As we were having lunch small groups of tourists kept walking by, all smiling and laughing, we knew that we would be going to more touristy areas but the reality of it cut like a knife. This was our wall and again they weren’t giving it the respect it deserved. Once again, because I had had a small lunch I set off at the front of the pack and was really enjoying it and today I stayed at the front, once on the wall.
This was easy wall, gentle ups and downs, there were quite a few female Chinese tourists walking in heels, so we must have looked quite a sight in full walking regalia with poles and backpacks. I walked past one Chinese lady who was carrying her pet with her (god only knows why) a tiny, pure white, baby rabbit was nestled into her arms, nobody else seemed to see it, but there it was. Quite possibly the most weird sight of the whole trip.
By this time we were swamped with tourists all of whom seemed to be American Uni students on some sort of jolly that was surposed to be a cultural jaunt of some kind.
Now, I have American family, and American friends so I do not wish to tar all Americans with the same brush, but why is it, that Americans in America are lovely, friendly people that can’t do enough for you, polite at all times, and considerate off all. But when you get large groups, outside of America, they seem to turn into AMERICANS, loud, obnoxious, pushy and rude.
There seemed to be a couple of distinct groups that were there, I only got that because of the things that they were yelling off the side of the wall - ‘GO CHEETAHS!’ or whatever their college football team happened to be called. You could hear them yelling for miles, it was so loud and harsh, it completely clashed with the beauty around them. Why couldn’t they just look at it and appreciate it, soak it up for what it was.
Ok I know that Brits abroad have a bad reputation, but the people that give us that rep only go to places like Benidorm, Faliraki, Aiga Napa, and Ibiza, to drink English beer and eat English food. Those people wouldn’t know a cultural experience if it bit them on the arse, and they don’t care. But here, you had beauty and culture served up on silver plates. Did they see it - NO.
Ok rant over.
At the end of that days trek you had the choice of a walk down to the bottom or the toboggan, no guessing what I did. I got in my toboggan and down the mountain I flew, only hampered a few times by some Japanese tourists that weren’t going nearly fast enough (I am a speed demon) I nearly bumper-carred them a few times on the way down.
At the bottom of the hill on the way to the bus park, was set up on either side of the path a market with very aggressive sales people who would try and bodily drag you to their stalls, I found it so oppressive that I didn’t look at anything and soon found it you said ’no money’ they soon left you alone, but it was like running the gauntlet.
At the bottom I met one of the tour leaders, and he showed me his purchase of possibly the tackiest thing I think I have ever seen. So myself and a friend (who, to save his blushes will remain nameless) set back off up the gauntlet in search of said item. I cant tell you what it was until after Christmas, or it will spoil the surprise for my sister and my friend Deryck!
After running the gauntlet back up to the top of the hill we found the item and after paying I stuffed them into my pockets. Just before we set off I had to get something out of my pocket and I managed to drop one of these items on the floor. As I bent to pick it up, the guy from the next stall, quick as you like bent down and picked it up, so I said ‘hang on a minute that was mine’
No is mine, came the answer
No that is mine I just paid this man for it, it is mine
To cut a long story a bit shorter, myself and my friend ended up having a screaming match in the middle of the street with this guy. He started to get threatening, and I could see Eddie, so yelled at the top of my lungs for him to come and explain in Chinese that this guy had made a mistake. The stall holder then started to scream blue murder at Eddie, who yelled back at him in Chinese. By this point there was a huge crowd of maybe sixty or seventy people had crowded around us for a better view, all gawping whilst I am trying to explain madly what had happened, by this stage Eddie has gotten his mobile phone out and is dialling the police. Then I say O.K. I’m going to turn my pockets out in front of these people to prove I haven’t stolen anything, I open my pocket to start taking things out, and there, sitting in my pocket is the item in question (CRINGE) The stall guy was right, the one on the ground had been his. I think all the blood drained from my face and also my friend’s as we had both been arguing vehemently with this guy and had caused this scene. My friend said O.K. lets go NOW, I think Eddie thought that was the best course of action for us both too because he waved us away down the hill, while he and Jordan stayed in the yelling, outraged, throng calming them down. We slunk away pretty fast with our proverbial tails completely, well and truly between our legs, shaming, as much as anyone can shame! (cringe, cringe and cringe again)
Once on the busses we had to wait for Eddie and Jordan to come back down and after about half an hour of yelling, they did. I saw Eddie walking across the car park and immediately went to apologise. He was so great, he said, it wasn’t my fault, but the vendors, for being so aggressive - I know he was lying, but I was grateful for it - I truly believe he should be Saint Eddie!!
Before we could set of from Simatei, however ‘Eddie bus’ broke down, it must have been pretty bad, because there were flames coming from the engine so Eddie - with many complaints from the tour leaders of, ‘in England you cant put so many people on one coach’ retorted with, ‘In china you can,’ and sent us on our way the short distance to the hotel.
Before we arrived at the hotel Eddie said ‘tomorrow morning you will be served with a traditional Chinese breakfast, (which we had been asking for all along) and he followed that up with ‘ if you don’t like it, please don’t complain!’
The hotel rooms were clean and modern and as we were getting ready for dinner Diedre and I could hear the rain starting. While she texted her family, I went down for dinner, by which time the rain was lashing down outside and what we thought was fireworks turned out to be thunder and lightning.
I told you in the last e-mail that I had started to do Chinese food overkill, well it was no more apparent than tonight, I picked at the spread although now it wasn’t the food but the smell of the food that put me off, there was nothing wrong with the spread that was put on but I just couldn’t stomach it any more and I was not the only one.
After dinner, Eddie and Jordan had a long talk to the group about the origins of the Chinese language, and were going to translate our names into Chinese, which we could have made into traditional Chinese jade ink stampers for people to buy if they wanted, with their birth year animal carved onto the top in jade. Apparently in China, when you sign something a signature is not enough, you have a stamp (like an old fashioned seal) which you have to use as well, and we were going to have these made up. Unfortunately I found myself falling asleep, I’m not sure if it was the warmth, or the fact that I had trekked so far, but I was dog tired. So I was left with the decision. Pretend to go to the toilet and don’t come back, or fall asleep at the table. Which would be more polite? I chose the former, and was soon asleep to the sounds of a huge thunder storm, cosy, in a lovely warm bed. I missed having my name translated, but I didn’t mind that too much.
We had noticed all too clearly the night before, that the restaurant was over-run with cats, easily twenty of them had roamed around whilst we were eating, and it was really, really noticeable in the morning as we picked through our breakfast (which was horrid) because one of them was playing with a fairly large dead rat. The kitties were cute though and I picked one up (ginger with big blue eyes - like my mitten had been) for a cuddle, which it didn’t mind
After picking up our packed lunch, we got back onto our busses again. ‘Eddie bus’ had been fixed, and set off for our final days trek. A couple of minutes into the bus journey Eddie told us to look at the mountains, we looked up at the wall we had trekked the day before, to see that over night, it had snowed, and where we had walked yesterday was veiled in a thick blanket of the white stuff and now, would be impossible to trek until the spring.
And that is the end of another chapter. There is more to come!
