Swapping Stories in Daoxian.

After school on Friday, hopped on a bus and headed to Daoxian, not sure whether it's North, East, South, or West of Yongzhou.  When we asked before hand how long it would take to arrive, we were told by 3 different people 3 different lengths of time: 1 hour, 2 hours and 3 hours.  It ended up taking 5 hours there as we had some mishaps along the way.

Mishap No 1:  Well, not really a mishap, it's just that whatever Asian bus you get on, there's always a half hour to and hour where the bus just stops for apparently no reason and you just have to sit there and wait.  What's happening is the bus driver is eating his dinner at his relatives house in the town.  This driver seemed to have lots of people to visit on this particular trip.

Mishap No 2:  Traffic slowed to a crawl and as we drove around the sharp corner on the edge of the mountain cliff, we saw why.  A van had taken the corner to fast and was hanging over the cliff ready to plunge down the rocky slope into the polluted water.  There were two people in the van, not able to move in case the car tipped over the side.  There were a lot of spectators just watching to see what was going to happen, not helping in any way, some where laughing at their predicament.

Mishap No 3:  Once we got to the top of the mountain it turned quite cold and started to rain.  Traffic stopped completely.  After sitting on the bus for 40 minutes listening to Chinese people yell into their mobile phones, suddenly everyone vacated the bus.  Heli, a nice 22 year old college student, told us in his little English to come with him.  We grabbed our luggage and headed down the mountain in the rain, past the back part of a semi trailer that had come off the front part and had lodged itself into trees, still blocking the whole road.  When we got to the bottom we saw another bus taking off.  The bus we were supposed to be getting on.  Heli ran after it and made it stop.  It was crammed with two bus loads worth of people.  We sandwiched ourselves in and spent the last 40 minutes of the trip standing in the aisle like sardines.

Once in Daoxian, we waited at the wrong bus stop for 20 minutes waiting for Claire and Ryan (foreign teachers who come from Melbourne) to come and get us.  Heli refused to leave us alone on the grounds that "There are not nice people here".  When we realised out mistake and hopped in a moto to head to Number 2 Middle School, Heli and his girlfriend hopped in too (there's not a lot of room in motos), to make sure we arrived there ok, and insisted on paying for the fare (so helpful).  We went out to dinner with Claire and Ryan, and Laura and Joanne, 2 girls from Ireland, teaching at Daoxian Number 1 Middle School.  Though we said goodbye to Heli, he turned up at the same restaurant and had dinner at the table next to us, later insisting that he would come with us on the bus back to Yongzhou.  Stayed in the apartment above Claire and Ryan's that had all it's furniture still wrapped in plastic.  We had brought our sleeping bags as we'd been informed that the school staff couldn't find any bed linen, it had gone missing.  We dumped our bags, opened the closet and there was all the bed linen. 

Spent the next couple days in Daoxian eating at restaurants and spending time at Claire and Ryan's apartment, swapping stories about our experiences in China.  Claire and Joanne had both recently been sick with the flu, and the school staff had insisted on them each (in individual circumstances) going to the doctor.  The doctor's had each insisted on them having an unknown injection in the backside.  Unfortunately in Joanne's case, insisted on her having the injection inserted in front of a glass window that looked out into the waiting room, she was too sick to realise.  Her foreign officer made sure Laura realised he looked away, but the rest of the waiting room were not so courteous.  After the injection followed the drip, 3 giant bags of some kind of fluid.  We're guessing the injection was penicillin, not sure what the fluid on the drip was.  This is the normal treatment for any illness in China, you can pass by any doctor's office to see people sitting around with their drips.

We went to the Fortune Hotel for dinner, where the others had been before.  However, the first time they were there without their Foreign Officers (Waibans), the hotel called the schools to check that it was ok that they were there alone.  This resulted in the Waibans calling them afterwards with the well known "It is said... (they have spies everywhere and when they find out something, this is how their conversation starts)... you were seen eating at the Fortune Hotel."  Once I was showing James the silly run that Mugatu does in Zoolander, when were walking to a restaurant for dinner.  The next day my Foreign Officer called and said "It is said you were dancing in the street last night."   Can't get away with anything here.

We decided instead of just ordering the meals we knew in Chinese (very limited, we eat the same things over and over), we would look at all the other tables and see what they had and point them out to the waitress for our order.  Unfortunately we looked at a table where there were lots of drunk men eating, one a Chinese English Teacher.  He tried to help us, but in his drunkenness, forgot a lot of his English, and really made the whole process much worse, as others came to see what was happening.  Soon Laura (6 foreigners there and 2 called Laura) and I were in the middle of a huge crowd, all telling the waitress what we should eat.  It was extremely embarrassing and we narrowly avoided eating a whole pigs head.  We had birthday cake for Joanne, but as we lit the candles, outside (we were sitting next to a big glass window) there was a moped crash.  A lot of spectators suddenly formed a huge crowd as the 2 drivers yelled at each other, then one walked off.  The driver left standing there yelled at the spectators, probably something rude, as they all took off after him as he ran away down the road.  When the commotion had died down, we turned back to the table to find the cake nearly on fire as the candles burned with massive flames.

Next day, had lunch with Claire and Ryan's Waiban (David), Vice Principal (Jane), Principal (can't remember his name) and another lady (Monica), back at the Fortune Hotel.  Since Claire and Ryan are vegetarians and we're carnivores, they ordered twice the normal amount to make sure we all had enough food.  It was huge!  Plates stacked and balancing on other plates.  As normal in Hunan, everything had copious amounts of chilli in it.  We drank beer and peanut milk, and as is the custom, cheersed everyone and was cheersed by everyone.  David was upset to find that Joanne didn't want to skull a bottle of beer with the Principal and insisted on filling up her cup of beer every time she sipped at it.  We said to him "I think it does not matter", (their other favorite phrase, along with the "It is said") but he wouldn't listen.   Drunk Chinese men can be pains.

We headed back on the bus on an uneventful trip back to Yongzhou, it only took 3 hours.  Arrived back in our apartment and 10 minutes later got a call from our Foreign Officer.  "It is said you have arrived home, welcome back."