Chinky

08/11/06

"China Part 6"

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Day 6

I slept for 10 fucking hours this day! 10 hours. I went from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. I feel the best I’ve felt since I left home. It’s about time too because we are supposed to go to a glacier today. "Snow Mountain" is what they call it. I guess it’s the only mountain in the area to have snow on it.

This actually is the most disappointing thing to happen on this trip since I found out we wouldn’t be climbing the mountain with 80,000 steps. This so called "glacier" is just a fucking mountain. There’s not even snow on this so called "Snow Mountain." As far as I can tell it’s basically a long bus ride, then an even longer wait in like to sit on a cable car to take you to a high elevation where the air is so think you have to buy cans of air or you’ll pass out. Actually I’m sort of lying. Small kids with little lungs who don’t require a lot of air might only feel kind of dizzy so long as they don’t exert themselves. Fat bastards like me who only move when there is good reason to because it takes so much effort to lift even a goddamn finger fucking die up there. Luckily I had the can of air. Oh wait, Grandma hogged the can of air the whole time and didn’t even step outside of the lodge at near the top of the mountain.

Honestly I don’t know why she went up there. It’s not like she’s in the best of shape and there are signs written in so many languages about people who shouldn’t go up the mountain. If this had been a survival thing we’d have all died. Everyone of us would have died from lack of air and then no one would be able to get Grandma another can. Stubborn Asian attitude would have killed us all. And you know what? I’m strangely alright with that idea. I had originally thought though that it would be my own stubborn Asian attitude.

I’d talk about the mountain more but honestly there’s not much to say. It’s really high, there’s no air and it hailed the whole time we were up there. Nothing like suffocating with pellets of ice falling towards you from the heavens. We took some pictures next to a rock with the number of elevation you are at standing right there. I’m debating on whether to add this journey to the list of "Stupidly Long Journeys for Retarded Reasons."

We eat lunch after that. We were scheduled to see some show but it was still raining and we as a group voted not to see an outdoor show while it was raining and thundering with old people and small children. While this may seem a good idea I honestly think the children of this group are horribly spoiled. Something or someone needs to fill their heads up with something other than themselves and quite honestly I think some freezing rain might have done that job nicely.

So instead of going to see a show what do we do? Shopping of course. Chinese people go on vacations to eat stuff and buy things. After shopping we go to a place to learn about how to tell the difference between fake "alive jade" and real "alive jade." This is the setting for the next little piece of drama.

I’ve had diarrhea for most of today. I think it’s from drinking the tap water here. In any case I’ve used up all the tp we keep around for potty breaks. We’ve been meaning to restock for two days but hadn’t gotten around to it. Fuck. But we’re in a nice hotel, maybe there’ll be tp in the potty. No such luck. At least there’s a toilet and not just a porcelain hole in the ground. I look in all the stalls, no tp anywhere. No paper towels no nothing. Fucking cheap ass chinky bastards. I exit the bathroom hoping I don’t shit all over myself. I look around and around the corner is a stack of papers with the hotel logo on top. GOOD ENOUGH. I grab a stack and start crumpling and re-crumpling.

Back in elementary and middle school where we were at the peak of boredom we would take pieces of notebook paper, crumple them, straighten it out and crumple it again. We would then see how bad we can get the paper but still have it in one piece. I remember the paper becoming real soft after a lot of crumpling. Those were sad boring days, but I’m glad I had them.

I must have done 4 sheets of paper a dozen times. When I tried them out I found out that a dozen times isn’t nearly enough. Fucking owww.

You know, the day just isn’t going to get much better once you’ve been torn a new asshole. While I am proud that I was able to figure out a solution to a pressing problem I have also become a nazi about tp. I seriously steal every roll of tp from every hotel we’ve been in. My bag’s full of them. They’re like cigarettes in jail. If you time it right a roll of tp might get you a new set of rechargeable batteries for your camera and $20 USD item.