Boy. Change is right. But it wasn’t what you or we were
expecting. The first change came as more of a reversion. And a revision. I mean
these in all the ways they could possibly be taken. As in going back, returning
to a previous way, a rewrite, and looking at or seeing things again.
A month of planned, organized, and structured life just
didn’t pan out for us. Something about it all just didn’t sit right with either
of us. So we left the tai qi school the day after we arrived. There’s the
reversion (to our familiar, unplanned ways). We left because of the
aforementioned reasons, but mostly, we left because we CAN. That’s the
revision. A revision of our planned month. But also, in the process, seeing our
travel here in China as what we had originally seen it as. Freedom. Instead of
what it had become. A checklist. Something to try to get some sort of
satisfaction out of completing, as the items themselves weren’t bringing us
infinite joy.
So we returned to Zenzhou, (which we feel to be the
busiest, most polluted city we visited in China. Though this award somehow went
to a previously visited, less dirty city.), where we would impatiently wait for
four days for our last Chinese overnight train to take us away. That’s right. I
said our last Chinese train. We had decided. We’re leaving China. And not to restart
our 90-day stay time on our visa. Nope. We’re just plain old leaving. Our
destination? Yangshuo. Which would prove both wise and foolhardy upon our
arrival.
To say it’s a tourist stop is an understatement. To
optimistically have hoped that the guidebooks were overstating its popularity
with tourists was a mistake. In fact, if anything, its popularity as a
tourist/expat/foreigner hotspot is not fully comprehendible by text alone. But
the scenery is beautiful. And the room we found is pretty great. This all just
adds up to two disenchanted, disheartened travelers only becoming more fully
entrenched in their discontent than was possibly imagined. So what did we
decide to do? Pay for a room, nearly upfront, for an additional two weeks. Just
to pour some salt in the wound.
The food is overpriced, the tourists keep coming in
droves, there’s tons of useless crap for sale by tons of people shouting
“hello, hello!” at every white face that walks past, the nature (though
beautiful) is being sold at top dollar to the hordes of onlookers who have come
to take in the sights, and here we sit, on our fourth floor balcony, trying to
escape from it all and remind ourselves that we’ll be leaving soon. We’ve
become so malnourished the past two months on street-noodle carbohydrate only
diets that the McDonald’s here has come to serve as the only reasonable (in
price and function, not in true belief) source of a hunk of protein. We’ve
sadly eaten there more in the past week than in the past month, and more in the
past two months than in the past few years combined. We’re on a downward spiral…and
it only gets worse from here. Hold on.
We sent our passports off to get visas for Vietnam and
received them back in short order. But still, we wait here. We enjoy what we
can of where we are. We run or workout daily, eat breakfast on the balcony and
talk for hours about any and everything, watch movies, look up information on
where we might be headed next. All this until it happens. Until we leave. Or
until I fall ill. Which happened to come first. This, perhaps is the wise part
of staying here—now we have time and a place for me to be ill. Or perhaps I am
ill because I am here…that is to be discerned at a time other than the present
however.
It would seem that the high degree of love I have for the
Asian countries that I have stayed in longer than a few days or weeks is echoed
back to me in equal proportion by said countries in a final parting gift of
anti-health. From Korea, a head-cold worse than any I’ve ever had in my life.
From China? Well, that’s the thing…we’re not entirely sure what China’s given
me.
I was nearly incapacitated by the collection of issues
dealt me first: a terrible headache like I’ve never had before, an intensely
stiff neck, and all the major joints of my body, including all those of my
spine, aching as if I had the most horrendous bout of the flu imaginable. These
all grossly overshadowed the sore throat, so it is mentioned last. All these
aliments were so intense that it made sleep nearly impossible. But somehow,
when I awoke the next day, the joint aches had subsided, the headache had
dulled, but the sore throat still lingered strong. Fast-forward to day three.
The sore throat remains, but the headache is finally gone. Instead, I now have
tiny, blister-like bumps on my hands, feet, and nose, and I begin to break out
in a rash on 95% of the remaining amount of my body. After a near-anxiety
attack and three Benadryl tablets, two muscle relaxers, and some Tylenol, I finally
sleep.
We assume that the rash was hives, though they weren’t as
incessantly itchy as most report them to be so who knows for sure, but it was
all but gone, with just a faint trace, in the morning of the fourth day of me
being ill. Along with the hives/rash went the sore throat, thankfully, as that
has plagued me for days. So now, after four days of unexplainable illness, I am
left with these tiny, little blister-like bumps all over my hands, feet, and
nose. I literally feel as though I have leprosy, and Steve has joked of leaving
me on a deserted island somewhere. It seems like more and more of a viable
option as the hours creep on. As long as it’s not an island somewhere in Asia,
as I think it would surely kill me at this rate.
So here I sit. Befuddled and totally at a loss. On every
subject that seems relevant right now: what do I have? What happens next? Where
do we go? Do we go? When do we go if we go at all? And the list of questions
goes on. But the list of answers is nearly blank. “I don’t know” seems to be on
repeat.
We’ve spent a lot of time the last two weeks talking and
not doing much, but doing enough to keep us occupied. The last few days, we’ve
done nothing but be sick or care for someone sick, which means we’ve both done a
lot of thinking…and you know where that can lead someone such as ourselves. So
right now, we’re just trying to keep a level head about us and not make any
rash decisions (yes, full pun intended).
Our room is paid up until the morning of the 1st
of November and we have 90-day visas for Vietnam in our passports. How I will
be come Friday is anyone’s guess. And what we decide to do for sure…well, that
too could be more accurately answered by a magic eight ball than me at the
moment.
