Chinky

08/15/06

"China Part 8"

Click here to start from the beginning.

Day 8

I rode a yak!  Actually it was more like I sat on a yak and pretended that I rode it but there I was, on top of a yak.  The first thing we did this morning was go to a field of sorts.  While you were here there were horses that you could ride around on and places to take pictures and shoot arrows.  I decided that I was too fat to ride the little horsies but the guys that work there (really wanting to make a buck) convinced me that I was not in fact too fat to ride a yak.  The yak probably disagreed in that he buckled a little as I got on and had to lie down after I got off.

Today was another day of driving around mountains and viewing very scenic spots.  We walked around some paths and of course I had to stray away from said path.  I got some decent pictures too but it wasn’t until I was halfway through the journey did I finally notice a sign that said I should not go off the path laid out.  Ooops.

Today was very pretty yes, but that’s not the reason why it was interesting.  In the group there is only one person even close to my age.  She’s about 3 years older and as smart as she is cute.  We struck up a conversation today and it was nice to just talk to someone close to my age.  I have spent this entire trip talking with kids and the elderly.  I talked with the kids because they wouldn’t leave me alone and I spoke to the older adults simply because they were a lot more interesting.  Most people who I didn’t talk to much just assumed I was around the age of 16 or 18 because I spent so much time joking with the kids.  I don’t know if I should be offended by this or not.

When we got back to the hotel I interneted up instead of sleeping.  I had been walking around an interesting path and was pretty pumped.  I updated and surfed waiting for dinner time.  After dinner a group of us, my family and the girl my age with her dad decided to go to the oxygen bar that was part of this hotel.  Now I’ve been to an oxygen bar and to my understanding pure oxygen makes you high.  The oxygen at oxygen bars are just a little higher concentration of oxygen than normal and is flavored with different scents.  This one is trying to pass off as a medicinal oxygen bar.  There’s a doctor type person who went to some place to study this type of thing.

Let me tell you something about China.  We had a cultural revolution some time ago and what that did was eliminate every smart person from any sort of important, influential office.  Very little education was encouraged and people were to be taught in their homes.  It’s not really the brightest of the bunch here in rural places.

So when Ms. Doctor type person here looks at my fingertips and does a pseudo inspection I just wanted to laugh.  I think I did chuckle a bit actually.  Look I just want to get a little light headed from too much oxygen as opposed to not enough like I’ve been having.  I don’t need nor care about what I should do before or after doing this because it doesn’t really matter.  Just gimme scented air already!  She continues to spout out some information about this and that and some precautions and finally, FINALLY hooks me up to the machine.

The air smells like plastic, I assume because of the plastic tubing.  It’s not what I expected but oh well, I’m using assisted breathing.  Yes folks, I am now too lazy to breathe on my own.  I get a little bored just sitting there and I’m not getting light headed so I just start inhaling as much air as I can as quickly as I can.

Eventually I start to feel it.  Not the feeling of high but of a body getting then oxygen it normally uses.  I felt pumped.  It had been so long since I had that non-dizzy, non-light headed feeling that I decided to do some activity.  The hotel had a pool, it had a roof over it and it was mostly indoors but it was not temperature regulated so the water was as cold as the night air, which I might add was surprisingly chilly.  After swimming for 45 min I was both once again out of breath, and the 3^rd coldest I have ever been, right after the one night in winter when I had a car accident, and the time I went polar bearing in my cousin’s lake.

I went back to the room, showered and went to bed.  The "doctor" said that after you go to the oxygen bar you shouldn’t shower and you should go to bed with the windows open to get enough air.  Otherwise you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and feel ill and maybe even throw up.  Well, I just swam in questionably treated if at all Chinese pool water, I’m showering.  I was also too winded and tired to walk the 10 steps to the window and open it so I just slept.  When I woke up during the middle of the night it was 3:30 a.m.

I know it was 3:30 am because I had checked my dad’s watch.  The "doctor" said that I would wake up around 1 or 2 am and feel nauseous.  Well I woke up at half past 3 and didn’t feel nauseous.  So I lied there trying to figure out why I had woken up.  Well it turns out that I just had to pee and after I did so I went back to bed no problem.  What a quack.