Flooding in Wanning

After staying a few days in Haikou (yes, no blog from here as the city was pretty boring and it was just raining the whole time I was there) my Haikou couchsurf host and me went down to Wanning to spend a night there and see what the town was all about. Unfortunately for us a typhoon and cold front were coming in, what resulted was rain like I've never seen before. Rain, winds, and severe flooding. To my knowledge no one was badly injured but damage was definitely done.

Our host for the night somehow found a Russian couple who was stranded in town and couldn't book a hotel. All the hotels were booked up as buses couldn't leave since the floods destroyed the roads in both ways. Pretty awesome, right? So with stranded buses in both directions, the town was full of too many people. I'm pretty positive the 24hr KFC acted as a bedroom for many people. Well with the Russian couple joining the party, the bed situation got slimmer. I was put in the room with Xiumin's (my host) brother. We shared a bed, though different sheets and plenty of room between us. However I had possibly one of the funniest and slightly disturbing talks of my trip that night. Xiumin's brother, whose name I either forgot or never fully got, was around 13, 14 or 15, aka early pubescent teenager. Right before going to bed he asks me, "have you had sex before?" Keep in mind he lives in oppressive China. He lives in a country where certain things that are talked about more freely in other countries are NOT spoken of here. So, here I am having a basic birds and bees convo with a young chinese boy I just met. Here is the part I probably shouldn't share with the world, but honestly, I thought it was sort of hilarious. He starts asking me about my, well, special parts. Turns out her brother is either bisexual or head on gay (I couldn't really understand from the broken english what his orientation was.) Thank god for the separate sheets, right? It was an immensely awkward conversation for me and he kept asking questions or telling me stories about his curiosities, but really in hindsight (pun totally intended) it was all just too funny. Winston on the other hand had to share a room with the Russian couple in the bed next to his. His night was also interesting as the wife just cried the whole night because of being stuck in the town. I'm not sure who had the funnier or more interesting night. I also don't know who slept better. :)

The flooding is starting.

Cars or boats?

Restaurants and shops having lost power resort to candlelights for customers.

pushing the cars through the "puddles"

pushing shown from another angle.

deep water

What I believe was the deepest area of the flood

Me in the center of the flood. Notice how high the water is up to my knees.

Xiumin's mom and I, walking around in the flood.

Winston during the flood.

Since we rescued the Russian couple, the cops drove us home.

a little pose with the cops. The one to the left got into it. he actually took his jacket off so his # could be seen. apparently it is more respectful this way.

Xiumin's mom cooking up some dinner.

eating a late night local snack. a sour noodle soup dish. not bad. and this is Xiumin's brother in the picture.

A rat found in the street after the flood. poor guy never stood a chance.

The day after, and still the flooding remains.

Even though it stopped raining, water was still pouring through. this alley was filled at least a foot high with water rushing through. AWESOME!!

people standing around watching the flood.

floods don't stop the bikers!

I think there was a race or just an around the island bike tour going on. These guys powered through it all. Go champs!

River trip to see the Feilai Temple

While in Guangzhou I took a little day trip to see the Feilai Temple and Feilaixia valley. Ancient temples that to visit you must take a boat up a beautiful river surrounded by lush green mountainsides and rocky peaks. I tried to plan the outing with a bunch of couchsurfers in GZ, but after all was said and done only one other person could make it. Lucky for me she spoke chinese. We ended up missing the tour that was going out so took the regular bus to Qingyuan and from there we had to figure out how to get to the temples. No one in town seemed to know or at least want to help us to find the temples. Eventually we got a motorcycle taxi to drive us to a dock. Zipping down roads on the back of a motorbike with rivers on one side and banana and bamboo fields on the other while the fresh air whips by you is quite the way to travel. When we arrived at the dock all the tour boats had already gone for the day. We were up the creek with no paddle. Somehow we managed to get invited to go up the river with a bunch of people who all worked in town for a life insurance company. No one spoke english, but hell if i'd complain about this. It hands down beat any tour I could have taken. sure I didn't learn as much about the history, but I spent the afternoon absorbing culture from the locals which is much more important to me. and truth be told, I think we had more fun.

Heading onto the boat with the gang. From first look I thought the green boat was ours, but actually you just walk across the front of boats till you get to yours. Our boat is behind this boat and you can see it slightly to the left and back of the green boat.

What else do you do when traveling up a river on a boat... you play mah jong. Sadly without any of the ladies speaking english, I was unable to fully learn this version of the games rules.

A local temple that wasn't on the usual tour routes. The buddhists on the boat got off to pray and make their offerings here. I loved the scenery around the temple.

The local temple, surrounded by mountain forests.

Feilai Temple grounds. We'll go up the river first and then back down to visit.

a fisherman hoping to catch some product

what you see here is 4 tables of mah jong and one table of some card game. a nice way to spend the day.

Coming up on the Feilaixia temple grounds

we stopped at a fishing market to pick up some food for lunch

LUNCH! crsipy tofu with fish, fish in ginger, and small mussels.

more of the lunch plates. my favorite was the far right, a pork fat medley.

racial unity. Chicken heads kissing fish heads. can't we all just get along?

At the end of lunch they piled all the food from every table in front of me, as it's proper chinese etiquette to make sure the guest is full. This is an example of a bad joke gone too far, but they all got a good laugh out of it. And I got a good extra inch or two on my waist from it. :)

I'm not sure fully what this boat was doing. it was bringing water in and then rinsing sand. was it cleaning the sand? not sure.

this kid was pretty cute. I think the ball was tied on his back so that when he falls into the water he'll float.

Huge insence sticks burning in front of the Feilai Temple

A stone snake riding a turtle in the turtle pond behind the temple.

A turtle swimming in the trash infested turtle pond.

waterfall behind the temple. where else better for it?

a cave for monks to pray in.

small buddha in the monks cave.

giant statue of Kwan Yin, buddhist goddess of compassion

The mountains surrounding us. Amazingly beautiful and peaceful.

Written on the train to Haikou

I just found this writing I did while sitting on the train/ferry to Haikou. If you read the train blog posted before this, you'll see how I mention and show a picture of how hot the ride was.  I meant to include it in the blog about the ride itself but forgot all about it.  So here it is in all its glory.

I've never wanted a shower so badly as right now. The only time more than this that I've ever wanted to shave my beard was in an incredibly hot yoga class where I was in headstand and sweat was pouring from my beard into my mouth and nose. Its hot to say the least. Stale air fills the car as we're locked in and only a few small windows can be opened. Outside is windy and wet and as I watch the trees blow in the wind from my seat, I desperately want to break a big window and run outside. I came down with a small fever of sorts yesterday and still had it today. I don't know of a moment when I wasn't sweating on the train. Be it cold or warm, sweat was always protruding from my skin. Lovely thought, isn't it? 

Train to a Boat to a Train

I left Guangzhou to go to Haikou, the capital city of the province of Hainan. Hainan is the island just below mainland China and it's known as "China's Hawaii" (and no, I'm not joking.) Haikou is far from Hawaii living, more of a slightly less developed part of China with more palm trees and tropical weather. Though there are parts of the island that are lush and green, the cities and town that I visited all have the feel of a 2nd world country. But this post isn't about my thoughts of Hainan, rather about the interesting experience of taking a train to an island. How does one take a train over water? Well, by boat silly. :)

China's engineers came up with the idea to load the train from port to boat with a pretty impressive system. It ran pretty smoothly and I'm somewhat surprised more countries don't use systems like this.

The trains already been loaded and now we're cruising on the sea in a train on a boat.

We've landed on the other side, now the worker will unhook the chain that keeps the train cars locked in.

unlocking us.

On the boat we were locked in and no AC. The car got hot, showing it as 31.5C here. I had a slight fever before the ride so I was either cold sweating or regular sweating the whole ride. Fun times!!!

Lining up the dock on land and our boats connecting point.

We've arrived and they're raising up our on boat dock.

almost locked in.

we're golden.

now comes the train cares to pull us off. There are two as our 8 car train was split into 2 rows of 4 for this marvelous task.

They connect in to us and start to pull us off the boat. After this there is some back and forth movement until the back four cars are connected again to the front four.