It took me a few days to find something to write about, after falling asleep Sunday, of what struck me earlier that night as a perfect day, but time barrels on and so did the adventures. Despite the happiness Sunday gave me, I didn't embark on this trip or in life to just search for one day as the pinnacle of being, then throw in the towel (yes, I know exactly where my towel is) and jump off this mortal coil knowing that the job of living was finally done. More has since happened, not to overthrow the perfection of that day, but rather to sneak up beside it to complement it, and just be a little bit different.
Jimmy and I did recognize the fact that Monday morning that it was time to go move on to elsewhere and with little speech reassembled our packs and dropped them off behind the hotel desk after checking out. We managed to catch Lisa (the monitor) and her friend Linda for a leisurely brunch, swapping notes on the festivities last night and making the standard promises to find each other again. They were both coming up on a week break from school and were heading back to their home town of Changsha in the Hunan province, suggesting that I throw it on my near future itinerary. We lingered briefly on the goodbye, and Jimmy and I collected our gear and caught the bus back to Guilin.
The next few days were a blur that a Filipino friend of mine (Douglas) likes to refer to Boy's Kind of Days, after he confessed that he hadn't shown me much of the sites in Cebu, but rather the relaxing massages, the bars, and regional techniques for initiating conversation with the enemy camp (women). We did go for a massage. We did exchange regional techniques. There might have even been a bar or three thrown in for good measure. But after Douglas' confession came to mind at the end of my first time in the Philippines, I was careful to make sure to build in at least a couple of things in the agenda not in the sole province of Boy's Kind of Days.
Jimmy and I began Tuesday with a faint plea that I had to do some work by acquiring an Internet (GPRS) enabled SIM card. This turned out to be a Herculean task of refusing to accept that China Mobile didn't have such a service, as we competed with the long lines of cash bill-payers (most transactions in China are settled by cash-in-person type payments; credit exists, but largely remains in the hands of the few and foreign), to chase down a product that nearly none of the local representatives had heard.
Perseverance proved its worth. It was the third major China mobile store that held the answer, the vaunted 800 megabyte-transfer-per-month GPRS enabled SIM (200 yuan). Finally the dream of being able to hike up the side of a mountain in Yangshou and still be fair game to be yelled at by my boss was a reality, and I could try to earn income while seeing the world in the information age. I'm fairly split on this, remembering the very technologically free neo-luddite travel style of backpacking in Europe as a happy way to go, but it seems like the best bet for now.
The errand out of the way, Jimmy and I set to carousing the endless stalls of the night market, searching for small trinkets of cultural and aesthetic value while trying to avoid the plunge to commercial mania of the endless racks of Beijing, 2008 (Olympics) paraphernalia. One or two things jumped out at me, so I dusted off the bargaining skills to see if they were still sharp.
Jimmy's laughter and the occasional good humored curse but promise to return of a hawker let me know that the skills were still ok, despite dulling a little bit from misuse. While I needed to acquire some presents for the family back home, sometimes I wonder if the only reason that I like shopping in China is the process of actually haggling over the goods, rather than acquiring the goods. And family, you can skip over reading that last bit, of course the treasures that I acquire for loved ones is the sole reason that I go shopping at all.
That night we caught a couple of drinks and decided to change it up a little bit and sing some karaoke. Sooner or later the bed began to call and we passed out at our respective abodes a tad inebriated and more than a little hoarse. Hey, you can't have everything.
Wednesday I awoke to the pounding of Jimmy on my door. I had gone into a deep sleep after stubbornly refusing to rise for the incessant calls of housekeeping, trying desperately and without rest to turn the perfectly nested and comfortable lay of my sheets into a more ordered and tightly made bed; come on, you know how hard it is to get the pillow just right and the cold just perfectly locked away into some kind of cocoon... Let's not be hasty here with imposing the harsh rigidity of order.
Jimmy didn't give up, and soon was sitting in a chair by the window patiently waiting out the difficult process of me coming to rise without the promise of coffee and a bagel. I'll really should pay him for putting up with this crap. Well, you all know I'm not much of a morning person, so I'll let it pass. As consciousness began to form, Jimmy presented some ideas for parks, rivers, and bridges to go see, before running into Mickey at 5 when she got off work.
"Huh," I mumbled inquisitively, a creeping doubt telling me that something was out of place there, but my mind refusing to yield its nature.
"We will go to the park and--"
"Yeah yeah. Something about a friend."
He laughed and straightened with alacrity. "Oh yes, Mickey! Mickey Mouse."
"Like... The Rat?"
"No, he's a mouse, Disney and all--"
"Yeah yeah," my Florida culture overriding euphemism, "The rat. What about Mickey Mouse?"
"Yeah! She's my friend! She's very small, like a mouse, so I call her the Mickey Mouse."
"Minnie is the--"
"No, Mickey."
"Right. We see Mickey Mouse."
"Ok! But not til around 5, she has work. We go to the park find--"
"Right. Let me try the shower, shake off sleep."
Jimmy was half way to the phone when he heard my yell. A few moments later, I stormed out of the bathroom with all vestiges of sleep removed, and a cold look of hatred directed at the world, as I vigorously assembled the guitar and hack.
"You okay Guy? What's wrong?"
"There's.no.hot.water," I mumbled between chattering teeth in a rather flat tone.
Jimmy laughed a moment before deciding that I probably wouldn't immediately see the humor in it, when he quickly cut it off and kindly kept the joke to himself.
We ventured out to get some food (the plates of local pork dumplings are not to be missed) and kill some time before heading over to the large bridge near the famous elephant trunk hill where Mickey worked. The "elephant" is a large rock peninsula rising sharply to form a hill, with a natural spill of rocks falling without motion into the water, giving the surprising effect of an elephant drinking water. After some sightseeing, we headed over the bridge to a nearby park, where a small building to the left of the entrance held a small "pearl museum" and pearl store, where Mickey worked.
Mickey turned out to be quite a little bundle of energy. Clear seeing eyes laced with intelligence looked out from a cute little Chinese girl, flowing black hair echoing her movements with a mercurial demeanor. She had a ready smile and spoke in clear English as she introduced herself, before turning back to Jimmy and explaining away a host of things I couldn't possibly follow in a high pitched Mandarin. This left me to the business of haggling for some pearls, without much intention of making a purchase. The history and dose of shiny were enough to keep me occupied, before we headed outside and hackey-sacked and played guitar for a while.
Mickey soon joined us with her friend Kari, a slightly taller girl with asian style bangs and more than a hint of trouble wafting around the air near her as she walked. Equally friendly, Kari had spent even more time mastering English communication, so naturally we found something or other to talk about while we continued the endless fight between gravity and the hackey sack. Both girls proved themselves as reasonably adept at the game, Jimmy excelling after plenty of practice in the last week or so.
Having the critical mass to make it worth while, we spent some time dipping meat and vegetables in the boiling soup in the center of the table for some spicy hotpot. I knew Sichuan province was around the corner, so it was time to begin boning up on my spicy food intake to be ready for game time. Despite the language barrier, the girls quickly realized I was a joker, and we proceeded to get to know each other in true form, Jimmy obviously happy that the people he'd brought together were hitting it off.
We aren't going to talk about the crazed frenetic packed environment of the LV club later that night. Oddly enough, Jimmy mentioned something to me in the morning ritual of him sitting by the window as I slowly fought away the fog of slumber something that had slipped my memory.
"I didn't realize you were that strong."
Uh oh. "Uh oh," I said on reflection, as I chose to vocalize that thought.
"But then, I suppose Mickey Mouse is pretty light, after all..."
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