Distance- 28 slow kilometers.

After seeing the great wall we boxed our bikes and managed to get them to the airport; more challenging than it sounds. 

Relieved to finally be heading off we realised that we were a little early, our plane wouldnt be leaving for another 8 hours.

The time went faster than we thought and soon enough we were lining up in a Chinese queue... An hour or so later and we were asked to pay four thousand US dollars to check in our bikes... Luckily Shanna had printed out an email she had received from the Etihad hierachy that said bicycles were to be included as normal luggage. 

Another hour later and at 2am we were heading off to Turkey. Still too excited to sleep we looked through the in-house movies- an amazıng selectıon...

After a stop off in the United Arab Emirates we landed in Istanbul around 16 hrs later. We made a huge mess in the airport, taking our bikes and assorted gear almost completely dissasembled and putting everything back together again. Two hours later and we were cycling towards Istanbul!!!

Initially cycling into the Turkish capital was a scary affair, traffic flying past us at light speed, and sometimes seeming to only swerve right at the last moment.

But then we found a walking/cycling path that closely followed the bay into Istanbuls old town, the water sparkling with a beautiful turquoise hue, and we stopped many times to admire the crumbling centuries old architecture in the cool evening air.

Whilst looking for somewhere to stay in the narrow picutesque cobblestoned lanes of Istanbuls stunning archaıc former CBD, partly surrounded by a 1500 year old wall, we found a man making kebabs on the side of a little laneway- we stopped to sit on a little pine wicker chair, and ate one of our best meals since...  
 

  

THIS IS A REPOST OF A BLOG THAT WAS DELETED FROM THE SITE LAST NIGHT. WE’VE WRITTEN A LITTLE ABOUT WHY WE THINK THIS HAS HAPPENED, TWICE NOW, IN THE BLOG ENTITLED ‘CHINESE, NEW WORLD POLICE.’

 

Before you read this I should apologise, a pre-warning of sorts, for changing tense several (not sure how many) times in todays blog.

 

This morning we left Beijing at 6am for the Great Wall of China.

 

The past few days have been not only fantastic, but fascinating. Our new Chinese friends Roy and Carol (we couldn’t spell or pronounce there real names, but fortunately they already had some western one’s ready for us), invited us to come for dinner with them in there home town, around one hours drive from Beijing.

 

We accepted of course.

 

Earlier that morning Roy and Carol had kindly driven all the way into the heart of Beijing’s bustling city to help us retrieve our bikes from the Beijing train station. If you’ve ever seen the train station you’ll know what I mean when I say it’s a sprawling mass of a place, designed to overawe even the most weary traveler with it’s monumentally grandiose formation. I would say it looks more… overweight.

 

Apparetly they still hadn’t arrived, but after some arguing, and me trying to go our the back myself and look, they were finally presented to us, albeit a little worse for wear, along with all of our bags.

 

Unfortunately our speedometers had been broken off our bikes. The funny thing was that we had tried to take them off before handing them over at the other end, but were unab,e to as they were permanently locked on.

 

Interestingly they hadn’t bothered to take the computers on the bicycles’ forks that enable the speedo’s to actually work- they would have come straight off. After this we cycled back to the Beijing City Central Youth Hostel, (another fine establishment), and Roy and Carol brought our bags back.

 

Our bikes back safe and we were off with Roy Jones and Carol, two of the best looking Chinese people we’ve ever met.

 

The drive out via the expressway was an interesting one, as I’d heard that earlier that day there’d been a crash, killing over thirty people; and with a decent imagination I’d foreseen my own grisly death in another such crash.

 

Well, it wasn’t to be, and after we’d made a few short detours, picking up Roy’s beautiful but exasperated wife we’d kept waiting on the side of the street for an indeterminable period of time we headed off to dinner.

 

This turned out to be a wonderful affair, all the dumplings, duck, vegetables and unidentifiable other things I didn’t know the name of you could eat, and before long Roy had invited us to crash one of his mates’ weddings.

 

Did we accept, well of course, who’d give up the chance to see a traditionally Chinese Western wedding. True paradox aside, that night we stayed at Roy's, having a fascinating discussion about Confucianism, Taiwan, Tibet, suppression, murder and Chinese autocracy, and just before being warned not to speak to anyone else about such things (apparently if we had of we may have been rotting in a Chinese prison cell right now along with Rio Tinto executives) we slumped into a wonderfully comfortable bed and fell asleep with an uneasy feeling. 

 
The wedding was a wonderful affair, unlike anything else I’d ever seen, and a bite more, and I might have even shed a few tears, but they could have been induced by all the smoke in the room. (You get a free plate of ciggies with you pre-dinner snacks, seriously-they were laid out on a plate!)

Lunch was a sumptuous banquet with so much food on our already over-sized table that plates wre being constantly piled on top of one another. Even if I hadn’t eaten for days I couldn’t possibly have sampled every dish… Although, I couldn’t possibly have wanted to either. In fact this may have been about the time the tears started flowing, but I can’t quite recall. After another delectably eccentric (sounds a little like myself) meal we headed back to Beijing, deliriously tired from all of the weekend’s excitement.

 

And so, much to your exasperation (if you’re still reading that is) the following morning we were finally at the self proclaimed ‘worlds greatest monument’ The Great Wall! (to death and slavery I might add).

 

After being scammed by the operators of the chair lift, taking our tickers and pretending to be the cable car, we finally got to the top just before 9am. The wall was incredible, the view made it even greater, the breeze made it cooler and the lack of crowds made it ‘choicer’ (a new word I just made up).

 

After walking up stairs for around 4 kilometers (felt like ten to my legs) we came to a section that said ‘DANGER, DO NOT ENTER. To me this was like saying WECOME SIR, PLEASE ENTER THE PALACE OF MANY VIRGINS (oops, did I really just thing that…) They would have been better of saying VERY BORING HERE, BUT KEEP WALKING IF YOU CAN BE BOTHERED! Now I was excited, woohoo here’s the good bit I thought as I jumped the barrier.

 

It soon became apparent others had read the same thing I did when we passed an excited Japanese couple that gave us the thumbs up (around four times). When we reached what we thought was the top of the mountain (mountain plateau), some time later, the track went bush, and this was were we found the real Great Wall of China.

 

Unmolested and untouched for must have been millennia, trees grew through the centuries old decaying turrets whilst rocks were strewn about the ruins from years of neglect, and here the path became difficult to follow.

 

It was just at this moment when I was clambering amongst the rocks that I saw it, a giant python, right before I almost stepped on it that was. My mouth clamped shut and you might have heard my heart beating from Beijing. But unlike  me this guy was a cool customer, and he slowly slid off and over the side of the wall whilst I was left standing there, with only a little dampness in my pants to prove the encounter ever happened.

OK, well I am almost 100% convinced now that the Chinese censors deleted a post I wrote and successfully published last night.

 

I realize this probably sounds like a conspiracy theory but give me a minute to explain.

 

After already having published a blog to our page (and almost 40 people having read it) I decided to go online and add a section which mentioned talking to some friends we met, both of whose parents work for the Governement, about Tibet, Taiwan, the Dalai Lama and Chinese autocracy.

 

I successfully published the changes to the website and read it online just to check everything was OK when right before my eyes the post disappeared into thin air. I went back to our internet provider who has a back up copy (weebly.com), it had also disappeared from here.

 

I then looked up a few articles about Chinese internet censorship and found some remarkable stories. After copying some of these into another blog and writing this preamble I published this to the site.

 

Sure enough, around 20 seconds later this post was also deleted. At almost the same time the laptop began blocking the wifi signal. We were still able to access the internet on our mobile phone but no longer able to use the laptop.

 

We have now moved to a different location to access the internet, it is working fine. 

 

The only logical conclusion would seem to be…

 

Maybe not, but have a read of the following article, and if you have any other horror stories then please let us know.

 

In Australia we have freedom of speech, China can do as it pleases to it’s own citizens (who as you will see if you have the time to read the following articles, endorse internet censorship), but we will not be silenced.

 

 

Internet Censorship in China

 

New York Times

Update: March 23, 2010

Internet censorship in China is among the most stringent in the world. The government blocks Web sites that discuss the Dalai Lama, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters, Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement and other Internet sites.

In January 2010, the government's policy put it squarely at odds with one of the world's most high-profile companies, as Google announced that it would cease operations in China unless its search engine results were no longer filtered. The company also cited a series of cyberattacks aimed at breaching the accounts of human rights advocates on its e-mail service, Gmail. China responded that companies doing business in the country must follow the law.

Google closed its Internet search service in March 2010 and began directing users in China to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. While the decision was an attempt by Google to skirt censorship requirements without running afoul of Chinese laws, it appears to have angered officials in China, setting the stage for a possible escalation of the conflict, which may include blocking the Hong Kong search service in mainland China.

Google's decision to scale back operations in China ends a nearly four-year bet that Google's search engine in China, even if censored, would help bring more information to Chinese citizens and loosen the government's controls on the Web. Instead, specialists say, Chinese authorities have tightened their grip on the Internet in recent years.

Web sites in China are required to employ people who monitor and delete objectionable content; tens of thousands of others are paid to "guide" bulletin board Web exchanges in the government's favor.

In 2009, the government pushed -- and ultimately backed off from -- a rule that would have required the installation of a new software program called "Green Dam-Youth Escort''  on all new Chinese-made computers. The software would effectively monitor a user's every move. After strong resistance at home and abroad, however, China indefinitely delayed enforcement of the rule.  

China's online population has always endured censorship, but the oversight increased markedly in December 2008 after Charter 08, a pro-democracy movement led by highly regarded intellectuals, released an online petition calling for an end to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. The group's Web site, bulldog.com, was shut down.

Government censors began a campaign, ostensibly against Internet pornography and other forms of deviance. Soon the government effort had shut down more than 1,900 Web sites and 250 blogs -- not only overtly pornographic sites, but also online discussion forums, instant-message groups and even cellphone text messages in which political and other sensitive issues were broached.

Despite building one of the most technically sophisticated Internet firewalls, China still has a community of Web users that is among the most dynamic in the world. There are more than 70 million bloggers in China, and in January 2009, officials proudly announced that the number of Internet users had approached 300 million, more than in any other country.

In addition to its massive firewall and intrusive software, the government employs thousands of paid commentators who pose as ordinary Web users to counter criticism of the government. Known derisively as "50 Cent Party" members, these shapers of public opinion are often paid 50 Chinese cents a posting.

 

Microsoft Shuts Blog's Site After Complaints by Beijing

 

By DAVID BARBOZA and TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: January 6, 2006 BEIJING, Jan. 5

 

Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

 

New York Times technology reviewer David Pogue is at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, posting blog entries and daily video updates.

 

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America's biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China's booming Internet marketplace.

 

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like "democracy" and "human rights" from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must "comply with global and local laws."

 

"This is a complex and difficult issue," said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. "We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there."

 

The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

 

The blog was removed last week from a Microsoft service called MSN Spaces after the blog discussed the firing of the independent-minded editor of The Beijing News, which prompted 100 journalists at the paper to go on strike Dec. 29. It was an unusual show of solidarity for a Chinese news organization in an industry that has complied with tight restrictions on what can be published.

 

The move by Microsoft comes at a time when the Chinese government is stepping up its own efforts to crack down on press freedom. Several prominent editors and journalists have been jailed in China over the last few years and charged with everything from espionage to revealing state secrets.

 

Another research assistant for The New York Times, Zhao Yan (no relation to Zhao Jing), was indicted last month on charges that he passed state secrets to the newspaper, which published a report in 2004 about the timing of Jiang Zemin's decision to give up the country's top military post.

 

China closely monitors what people here post on the Internet and the government regularly shuts Web sites and deletes postings that are considered antigovernment. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company had blocked "many sites" in China. The MSN Spaces sites are maintained on computer servers in the United States.

 

Ms. Richardson of Microsoft said Mr. Zhou's site was taken down after Chinese authorities made a request through a Shanghai-based affiliate of the company.

The shutdown of Mr. Zhao's site drew attention and condemnation this week elsewhere online. Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, wrote on her blog, referring to Microsoft and other technology companies: "Can we be sure they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an overzealous government agency in our own country?"

 

Robert Scoble, a blogger and official "technology evangelist" for Microsoft, took a public stand against the company's action. "This one is depressing to me," he wrote on Tuesday. "It's one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It's another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger's work."

 

Another American online service operating in China, Yahoo, was widely criticized in the fall after it was revealed that the company had provided Chinese authorities with information that led to the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist who kept a personal e-mail account with Yahoo. Yahoo also defended its action by saying it was forced to comply with local law.

 

Mr. Zhao is so well known as a blogger that he served as China's lone jury member last year in Germany for a world blog competition. A former computer programmer, Mr. Zhao worked as a journalist for a Chinese newspaper and as a research assistant for The Washington Post before joining The New York Times in 2003.

 

Mr. Zhao, in an interview this evening, said he had kept a personal blog for more than a year and was regularly censored in China, even though he has tried to be careful not to write about significant issues related to his work at The Times.

He was apparently one of the first on the Internet to mention that several editors could be fired from The Beijing News. He said he posted something about possible firings on Dec. 28.

 

Two days later, after the top editor there was dismissed, Reuters reported that about a hundred journalists had gone on strike over the dispute and added that several Chinese blogs and Internet chat rooms were discussing the issue. The report said Mr. Zhao had used his blog to urge readers to cancel their subscriptions.

 

Mr. Zhao said in an interview Thursday that Microsoft chose to delete his blog on Dec. 30 with no warning. "I didn't even say I supported the strike," he said. "This action by Microsoft infringed upon my freedom of speech. They even deleted my blog and gave me no chance to back up my files without any warning."

 

David Barboza reported from Beijing for this article and Tom Zeller Jr. from New York.

 

A Brief History of Chinese Internet Censorship

 

By Randy James Wednesday, Mar. 18, 2009

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885961,00.html#ixzz0pDtbYRvQ

 

One of the sharpest challenges yet to China's stifling attempts at Internet censorship comes in the form of a lowly alpaca. Actually, the alpaca-like creature starring in online videos and lining Chinese store toy shelves is a mythical "grass-mud horse" — whose name in Chinese sounds just like a vulgar expression involving a sex act and, well, your mother. Bawdy as it may seem, an Internet children's song about the animal, full of lewd homophones, has emerged as a galvanizing protest against the Communist government's efforts to ban "subversive" material — political dissent, most importantly — from the web. Purportedly a harmless fantasy, the wink-wink, giggle-giggle creation is a virtual thumb in the eye of China's unblinking censors.

 

For as long as there's been an Internet, China has sought to monitor and control how its citizens use it. That's no small task in the world's most populous country, which now has more web-surfers — some 253 million — than America. Technology known as "the Great Firewall" blocks web sites on an array of sensitive topics (democracy, for instance), while tens of thousands of government monitors and citizen volunteers regularly sweep through blogs, chat forums, and even e-mail to ensure nothing challenges the country's self-styled "harmonious society." Together this massive network of Internet nannying is imperiously called "the Golden Shield Project." Thousands of websites (many porn-related) are blocked outright, and destinations such as YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia are heavily restricted. Web users in Internet cafes — where the vast majority of Chinese go online — must supply personal information in order to sign on. (See pictures of the Dalai Lama.)

Ironically, it was U.S. technology firms that created much of the technology supporting the Great Firewall, and companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have taken tough criticism from human rights advocates for tolerating the country's censorship. "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, told tech representatives at a 2006 House hearing.

 

Yahoo has taken the most heat, after it acknowledged giving the government information that led to the imprisonment of at least one Chinese journalist. (The company says it was required to comply with Chinese law.) Google has established a separate web site for China, Google.cn, that it self-censors to satisfy Chinese authorities. The search giant argues that offering a limited set of information in China is better than no information at all.

 

The government's rules for what's permissible online are sweeping and, like much of its rhetoric, vague. News, for instance, should be "healthy" and "in the public interest." Audio or video content must not damage "China's culture or traditions." And nothing must challenge the Communist party. The guidelines leave many media outlets and web surfers baffled. Last December, for example, the New York Times reported that its website had been inexplicably blocked, while earlier in the year the BBC's English language content was just as surprisingly unblocked, with visitors on Chinese computers quickly jumping from about 100 to 16,000.

 

James Fallows of the Atlantic writes that such "selective enforcement" can lead to the most stifling restriction of all — self-censorship: "The idea is that if you're never quite sure when, why and how hard the boom might be lowered on you, you start controlling yourself, rather than being limited strictly by what the government is able to control directly." Not like most Chinese care, though. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 80% of Chinese think the Internet should be managed or controlled, and 85% think the government should be responsible for doing it.

 

Internet controls were loosened in advance of last year's Beijing Olympics, and many western journalists saw scant sign of the Golden Shield, as the Internet was kept largely unfettered during the games. Restrictions have tightened again, however, especially since December, when democracy supporters used the Internet to circulate the "Charter 08" petition challenging the government. That crackdown, in part, has fed the grass-mud horse craze and similar online double entendres designed to flout the government's role as Big Brother. As one Chinese blogger told the Times, even with the most modern technology trying to hold them back, people will find a way to express themselves. "It is like a water flow — if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or overflows."

 

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885961,00.html#ixzz0pDtiexzs

 

 

(Note: As I write this in a Starbucks at Beijing Airport I am distracted by the man next to me who has picked his nose with seven different fingers and wiped at least three boogers on his shirt.)

During our time in Kunming we've discussed our impressions of China, a country which really is so different to the image we'd drawn up in our minds. 

We expected factories upon factories, but found small villages built into the side of beautiful mountains. We anticipated forests and were surprised by many dry dusty plains. And yet in the South we also found dense monsoonal lakes and swamps. 

We found a country with advanced sport stadiums and primitive hospitals; people who went out of their way to help us, some who treated us as family and others who ignored our pleas for help or tried to swindle us.

China is definitely different to what we're used to back home, and our experiences have been an eclectic collection of polar extremes.

One day we’d been waiting on a corner for a taxi for an hour (after being at the hospital on a day when Sam felt particularly bad), and just when we flagged one down a Chinese girl jumped in. When we tried to explain to her that we were there first she just gave us a knowing look and laughed. 

When pedestrian lights go green cars still drive through. On the footpath I was nearly hit by a police car! Silly me for not expecting it. And every time we walked or rode in China we had close encounters with motorcyclists who sped around us, sometimes brushing against us, yet always calm and confident of where they were going (usually talking on a phone at the same time).

We've finally learnt the Chinese system of queuing. Push as hard as everyone else and when someone pushes in front of you, yell at them. Now that we understand this system we wonder why we initially struggled against it.

I admit that sanitation is not what we expected... The standard of public toilets in China has been the worst of our trip, far worse than even remote Indonesia. Often the water has been turned off to the amenities, and the smell and sight of the waste is overpowering. How can they be allowed to disconnect water to public toilets?!

At the hospital, the floor outside the blood-testing room was littered with the cotton buds used to stop the bleeding. And the toilets were a mess of stinking proportions! Yet this was the place where six thousand (I kid you not) people go every day to recover from medical problems?

As a media junky I have been intrigued and entertained by the English news service on TV. All the news stories expound how China is the new world leader and the whole world is watching them. And people accept that. Those quoted on the news always praise the government for a job well done; there is never a critical word. China must look pretty good through the perpetual eyes of rose-coloured glasses.


And when life is not rosy it seems easier for people to turn a blind eye. Severine and Francois one day saw a man handcuffed to a pole being beaten by another man. None of the other passers-by seemed to care, and the only other people watching the scene were a sobbing 9 year old boy (likely the man’s son) and an amused police officer. And this was on a busy street in a big city.

But the spitting is what I remember most about this country. The grating sound of people hocking up phlegm as they spit often leaves me fearing some of it will land on me – like it did for Sam four times through a bus window. At least the footpaths are mopped every morning and the streets are clean again.

But what we've found in China, when we've paused long enough to take off our own rose colored glasses is a country filled with it's own version of beauty. 


You can start with the strong familial ties branching through CHinese communities. Whilst this is the side to China which may not be so apparent to the Westerner it is no less real. And when you do see it, sense it, it will have you wondering if all of your previous ideas were simply misconceptions. 


On my morning runs and in the evening we saw in Kunming and Beijing hundreds of people doing exercises in parks together. A healthy body is very important to many Chinese (excepting the effects of smoking of course). And it was nice to see people playing cards/dominoes in public spaces. People thrive on being together. 

And finally, we want to thank the many Chinese young people (late 20s is young, right?) who have befriended us and chatted to us in their best English. You'll hear more about them in coming posts!

The Kunming Zoo was a blast.

That is of course if you like laughing at animals being kicked over and over. 

Or seeing me throw up.  

Sorry to say friends, but the Chinese do. Well the ones at the Zoo anyway.

I don't know about you but personally I don't find any of these kind of shenanigans too funny.

And when they chained the monkeys and the bears onto bicycles with no seats, the crowd only roared for more.

They needn't have worried, a whole lot more 'party tricks' were in store.

WIth a shove and a push, their speeds increased.

And just when we thought it couldn't get any better (or any stupider) the boys in pink gave the desperate bear a leg shattering kick sending the bear, and the bike he was chained to, sprawling across the concrete pavement.

Another swift kick in the pants and punch in the gut (literal) and our friend the bear was back on his bike, that was of course until, for fits and giggles, he was belted off again.

Next came the monkeys. 

These little guys were jittery, so jittery in fact they looked as though they'd been sniffing the white stuff in the back office. 

By the time the show was over anyone with half a brain could have seen why those amazing iittle guys looked a little on edge... they were scared shitless, and that's understating it.

Imagine for a moment a monkey chained to a bicycle, flying like a rocket around and round a cage, no brakes, pedals to far to reach, then imagine that monkey being randomly belted off the bike. 

It wasn't pretty. 

But the people screamed for more. And so more they'd get.


Without a moments notice the master of disaster reappeared.

Sadly, the desperate pant-less monkeys, and the monkeys in the cage with pants on (pretending to be people), passionately yearned to please the stirring crowd.

Well, despite the masses screaming for more I'd seen enough.

After the performance was over and the animal freak show had been returned to their separate cages, unable to find any solace in each others company, a switch went off in my head.

The animal kickers, heroes one minute, soaking up the applause, didn't see me coming...

A bear is an animal, so is a bird, so is a monkey. 


What are clothes for? 


I figured a swap was in order, monkey for man, freedom for a cage. 

Give the animals a turn to run the show.

Now that'd be fun.

_________

Next. 

I went on a show ride, Shanna wouldn't go alone.

And what was one little ride going to do to me anyway....

It'd be fun, everyone loved it.

All I can say, watch where you walk. 

Especially if you see a funny looking white haired foreigner flying through the air... 

You could get sprayed. 

LOL 

PS- Happy birthday bro. 

We got up the next day, absolutely exhausted but happy to be in what are becoming familiar surroundings.


I spoke to the hostel manager, who speaks a little English about seeing a doctor and he told me the only place I'd find one who spoke any English was at the Kunming Medical College Hospital. Our travel Insurance then advised us that this was the only place they recommended in Kunming, so we headed off to the hospital.


Out the front and we walk into a swarm of people, cuing (pushing each other and trying to get an advantage on the person next to them- believe me, if you've been to China you'll know what I mean...) in all manner of places. 


Where do we go I wondered out loud. We both had no idea what to do so we stood there, dazed, looking around and wondering. Deciding we had to do something we attempted to cue at a counter, but no-one would talk to us and when it came to our turn, others pushed in front. 


But luckily, after some wrangling we managed to find a nurse (I think?) who took us up three flights of stairs through the masses to a big hall were people were swarming to get there blood tested en masse. After some pushing and shoving to hold our place in one of many queues, it was finally my turn, but it seemed there was some sort of problem and the nurse was no-where to be found.


They pointed to the paper's I had given them and yelled something in Chinese, whilst pointing that I go someplace else. Where or why I didn't know. The nurse had already taken us to the payments desk were we had forked out money for the privilege to get jabbed. Everyone was looking at me and after seeing me hesitate decided I was fair game. One person pushed up to the side of me, jabbed his arm out on the desk in front of me in preparation for a little blood letting. In amazement at the audacity of these people I hesitantly got up and left, figuring my only chance was to find the nurse that had abandoned us.


After only a couple of minutes we got lucky, bumping into our nurse lady. Not understanding what had happened she took us back to the blood letters where we were told (in Chinese) to go back down stairs and pay more money. 


Half an hour later my arm was seized and within seconds (so fast I didn't realise they'd done it) a vial full of blood was taken. As the needle was removed I looked down and saw old bloodied, large cotton buds used to mop up excess blood from freshly opened veins scattered all over the floor, and a cockroach looking bug clambering over them.


The blood was analysed almost on the spot, very efficient, then I was told I had to give a stool sample (I know you all wanted to hear that, haha). This was bizarre, walking into the bathroom was like walking into a public train station toilet (ala Ringwood station), it looked, and smelt as though it hadn't been cleaned for days... 


I'll save you any more detail and skip to the part where we were ushered past the masses to see a doctor who spoke a little English (think Chinglish). I was told to come back the next morning for another blood test, and then four days after that for the results.


In the next week we ended up visiting the hospital four times seeing and communicating (with varying degrees of success) with six different doctors, taking four different types of medications- so far none of which have worked. and learning that the hospital treats over 6,000 patients per day! The results showed that there was blood and a high level of white blood cells in the sample (the best word I could think of for poop) and I was told on the last visit that I should go back home to Australia.


So we're headed to Beijing in a couple of days via a 40HR train journey, and then we'll fly straight to Turkey. We have decided that leaving Asia is the best plan, and instead we'll change our route through Europe to cycle through Switzerland and the Alps with our friends Severine and Francois and then ride up to Norway to sail with Rune to Scotland.


We'll chuck up another couple of posts over the next few days about our adventures in and around the city of Kunming, most notably our visit to the Zoo where we saw some major animal rights abuses (particularly of bears and monkeys). And I'll tell you how I had a spac attack at the people responsible.


Cheers. 



 

Distance - 96km (plus an extra bit more...)

Sam was sick again. Well again is the wrong Word，because it never really went away。 it was always there with different levels of severity. But this time it was bad。and so I (Shanna) insisted that we return to Kunming to see the doctor, but this meant we had to leave Francois and Severine. 

The initial plan after the stone forest was to return to Kunming via a two to three day route through the Chinese mountains, camping in the countryside. 

This morning we got up early, still tired but excited to see the famous Stone Forest.


After a breakfast of Fruit juice milk drinks (in a bottle with extra jelly bits) and fresh pineapple we walked over to the entrance to the Stone Forest.


Severine and Francois lined up first for tickets, but soon came back empty handed. What happened, Shanna and I asked. It turned out that tickets cost 180 Yuan. Or about $30. Enough money to stay in a cheap hotel for two nights. 


After a short deliberation we all decided it was too much money, and we wondered that many Chinese must never be able to enter. We considered finding another way into the park, but when we found one we chickened out, deciding it wasn't really worth rotting away in a stinking Chinese jail cell over. 


However, in the process of looking for a secret entry into the park, we discovered that there were some amazing things to see outside the park boundaries. Almost immediately we chanced upon a rough hewn dirt and stone path that wound its way through around and over some incredible rock formations. 


When the path came to a sudden stop we climbed some large boulders, only to be presented with a fantastic view of a beautiful lake surrounded by stone boulders. Whilst we were admiring the view a sudden gust of wind ripped Francois' new hat (that he'd bought that morning and in the meantime become very fond of) from his head, blowing it down the face of the stone we standing upon into the chasm below.


Unperturbed he made after it, climbing down the rock face until we could no longer see or hear him. After some laughter between the three of us at Francois' efforts to retrieve his AU $1.50 hat, we began to wonder if he was ok when suddenly he appeared again.


We found the path and followed it over and around until we came to the lake. Amazingly the water looked clear and clean (the first I've seen like this in Asia, so I quickly removed my shirt, run down to the edge of the water and prepared to jump in. 


But, before I could make the leap my feet began sinking into the mud. Pulling my feet out of the mud I took a few steps back and leapt from a rock into the cool clear water. Surprisingly, it was a beautiful temperature, and when I got out I sat upon a large stone rock by the edge of the water, enjoying the feeling of the cool air blowing the drops of water from my skin, somehow the the sickness from the day before seemed to have past.

Distance: 99km


Around 9 am we all set off for the stone forest, an ancient forest of stone that was apparently unearthed when the waters receded from the last ice age.

Getting out of the city was a challenge, but once we were out ofthe navigating was a snitch.