We arrived in Tianjin yesterday morning then boarded a bus for a 2-3 hour ride to The Great Wall which was about two hours from Beijing in another direction. The wall was neat to see. The section of the wall we visited was constructed in the 1500s. I'm told that certain portions of the wall date back to 600 AD. Dude, talk about paranoid, this wall is 6000 kilometers (Canadian readers know that is about 3700 miles) long. It took forever to build, so it must have been a union job. We weren't in port long enough to go to Beijing. Bummer.
The voyage to Tianjin was really rocky. I actually put on a sea sickness patch. Seasickness isn't usually a problem for me, but I have worn them at times. The last time I got that nauseated was for the last presidential election as I got horrendously sick and had the patches stuck all over me, The Puppies, Deb, and the UPS guy. Night before last when the sea was so rough, we went to dinner and the entire gang showed up less Chatty Cathy who was seasick. Thanks to her seasickness, we actually got to hear Mumble's voice, and he turned out to be a nice guy. When Mumbles gets home, I'll bet he buys himself a boat to get Chatty Cathy to shut up once in a while. Last night at dinner, Chatty Cathy was back in full force yacking at supersonic speeds. While Deb and I made our way through the dining room on the way to our table, my Spidey Powers were all tingly, so I knew Chatty Cathy was near by and likely would join us for dinner. So I told Deb to take one for the team and sit next to her because the other dinner mates were already there and had left two huge spaces for us adjacent to Chatty Cathy. I kind of snarled at the other table guests as they were likely snickering at us under their breath. Dirty rats.
About an hour from the wall during the bus ride we stopped for lunch. Let me tell you real Chinese food is very different from the US version of Chinese Food. Good Lord these people must be part Thai because they really like hot spices, or maybe they just enjoy cremating round eyes. Our lunch was hotter than Monica Lewinsky near a cigar store. In the center of the table was a huge lazy susan where the waitresses put small, food platters served family style. The restaurant was a little slow in bringing out the dishes, but most of us were having fun and didn't much care. There were eight of us at the table including a 21 year old American girl that whined the entire time during lunch. Whiney Girl would rake a good portion of the food from the platter onto her plate as the dish came by her on the lazy susan and whined about not getting enough. By the time the platter got around to those of us on the other side of the table, the platter was empty. What I should tell you was the platters were small but were multiple. Whiney Girl was served first food by the waitresses. What tickled me was how Whiney Girl got mad and screamed she wanted more food and stated, "I don't like Chinese food". Well you could have fooled my side of the table. My side of the table organized then drew straws to see who would tell the communist party observer that Whiney Girl was actually an American spy. What we didn't know was Whiney Girl was going to do something that made really, really made us laugh.
Lots of places outside of North America don't have flush toilets. I know the American readers are all appalled by this so get over it. In China, public flush toilets are less common than porcelain covered holes or just concrete holes often without running water. Americans might think of Chinese toilets as johnny houses but Chinese public toilets don't have seats just a hole in the ground. I lived in Europe for two years and got indoctrinated into the hole theory a long time ago. Well, it seems there is an art to or rather a trick to using these elongated holes especially for females. I am laughing so hard right now it is hard to type. Anyway, some of the women on our tour received a lesson from the female tour guide in the art of using the hole, but Whiney Girl must have been playing with her Ipod instead of listening to the art of using Ihole. At the restaurant during lunch, Whiney Girl had visited the hole and announced to the persons at the table upon her return that she had not squatted beside the hole instead of over the hole and had peed on her shoes. Really, I am having a hard time typing due to me laughing.
At The Great Wall, Deb and I decided to use The Great Hole and went around behind the gift shop where it was located. The building looked like a little tool shed without but without any halfmoon on the door. A que of two German ladies had formed waiting their turn at peeing on their shoes. Deb and I chit chatted with the German ladies passing the time when suddenly Whiney Girl flung open the tool shed door holding her nose screaming, " ...don't go in there, it is horrible. I think I'm going to be sick. Oh God it is gross". One of the German ladies told her, "...to get over it and shut up". Adding insult to injury the German lady stated, "American children are so spoiled". Deb and I started laughing and almost peed on our shoes. OK, I need to change the subject as I am about to laugh myself into a brain hemorrhage and having had one recently is enough.
On the way back from The Great Wall we stopped at a roadside rest stop/ gas station. This gas station had the look and feel of a US rest stop except the store was filled with stuff with no Roman lettering only Chinese lettering. Some of the stuff in the store we figured out what was inside by the pictures on the package or simply recognized the contents through the packaging. Deb, being Deb, was going into the store to buy something, because Deb can't pass a store without buying something. Anyway, Deb was going in as another lady from our bus was coming out with a package the lady had just bought. The lady walked up the Chinese, English speaking tour guide and asked him what she had just bought. The tour guide looked at the package and told her it was donkey skin. The woman was appalled and asked him to clarify what he said and the guide repeated donkey skin. The woman got more upset and asked him again for clarification and the tour guide put a finger to each side of his head like ears and said, "Hee haw". The woman got even more upset then returned to the bus. When we got back to the ship Deb caught up with the woman and asked her about the donkey skin. Of course the woman had not eaten it but her husband had and said it was fine. I almost lost it when he said that. Then Deb looked at him and said, "Hee haw". Of course Deb made donkey noises all through the terminal while walking back to the ship and by now the lady was laughing as well. Had I bought the donkey skin, I would have opened the package and handed it out to the people on the tour bus, then got them to pose for a picture after eating it but just before I told them what it was. I would have gotten some humor from that mistake regardless.
Oh, one last potty story before I go. While Deb was in the rest stop resthole, another woman had dropped her sunglasses into the hole and wanted to retrieve them. Oh my, I am laughing again. The woman ran up to the Chinese workers and told them and they ignored her. She somehow got the worker's attention and they got out their sewer snakes and poked the tools into the hole. Of course, she didn't retrieve her sunglasses before the bus left.
We are on course now for Vladivostok, Russia. We have three nights at sea until we arrive. I'll update the blog in a day or so after I quit laughing.
See Yall later.
Al
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