Limmony Snickets and a Very Unfortunate Series of Events

I'm surprised I've never heard the phrase 'back-shadowing'. Back-shadowing would be a sweet sister word to forshadowing. It would mean when an event happens and you can trace the origins of that event back to 3 or 4 other obvious events that should have foreshadowed that something big was going to happen, but you didn't pay attention. That was a pretty sloppy description, so let me just get right to the story to explain.


The final product was the following situation:

1. Stranded in a Chinese Airport with a canceled flight due to the protests in Bangkok


2. Stranded by myself with no friends in sight


3. No credit cards or ATM cards


4. Less than $10 on my person (not enough for cab fare to Yangshau, 1.5 hours away)


5. No one that spoke English to help me


6. I didn't have any phone numbers to call someone for help

These are the moments in traveling where you really have to buck up, or at the very least wait it out. I guess you could cry yourself to sleep in a corner and someone would come and help you eventually. Before I get to how I got out of it though, here the the moments of back-shadowing that led up to this.

1. Stranded from protests: We have been discussing at length over the last few months the deteriorating political climate in Thailand. After rioting and coups and re-re-elections, this was bound to happen.


2. Stranded by myself: I came over travelling with 3 friends. They all wanted to go back on the 22nd. That wasn't enough climbing for me, I had to stay 4 more days til the 26th. The 26th happens to be the day that the airports in Bangkok shutdown. My friends got home just fine on the 22nd.



3. No credit cards/ATM cards: So a week before I came to China I had my wallet stolen in Thailand. Right out of the glove compartment of my friends car while we were climbing. They got all my cards, driver's liscense, video rental card, subway punch card, etc.



4. No money: So after my credit cards and ATMs were stolen, I figured I would just travel with cash. Except for the exchange rate between Thai Baht and Chinese Yuan buys and sells at about a 28% loss to me. So I decided to just have my friend that I was traveling with use his ATM and then I would repay him when I got back to Thailand. The $10 I had left when i got to the airport would have been perfect had I not been stranded


5. No way to communicate: I clearly remember standing in a book store in Yangshuo that morning and picking up a Mandarin phrase book and thinking, "I'm not going to need this now, maybe next time."


6. No phone numbers- I should know better by now. Always have atleast 1 business card of a hotel or a business or something. I had all the contact info for the place I was staying on my mobile phone. Unfortunately, that got stolen with my wallet.

So I'm sitting outside of the airport trying to figure out what I'm possible going to do. The airport in Guillin is about the size of the Jackson airport and probably just about as far from town. Then a couple of Chinese people walked past me and for I could understand what they were saying, because it turns out that they were speaking (and were) Thai. Turns out that they were on the same canceled flight. Neither of them spoke English, but they could speak fluent Chinese. So we went back inside, talked to the ticket counter, they pulled up the website for China Climb (my friends in Yangshao), got their phone number, called them, China Climb sent out a taxi, and the rest is history. They helped me with all the money stuff until I could get some money wired from Thailand.

I'm stuck in China now until I can fly back, but there are much worse places to be stuck in the world. I had a feeling I was tempting fate with the Limmony Snickets haircut; it was really only a matter of time.

Visiting Old Friends

Food is often one of the defining factors of a great vacation. I remember 5 years ago I got this mini-sized hamburger in Washington Square Park at the Shake Shack in N.Y.C. It was soooo good, that to this day, that stands as my number one reason to get back to to N.Y.- to eat another one of those burgers. (My good friends Chris and Josh come in at a close second.) I had a similar love affair with some noodles and Seschwan beef last year in Yangshuo, China. So when I found out that one of my compadres at the climbing shop was going to be interning in Yangshao (at chinaclimb), I couldn't think of a better opportunity to reunite with an old friend (the noodles). So I'm here for a few weeks climbing, eating noodles, and blogging. Pui had to stay behind because she is saving her vacation time to come back to the states next summer. However Pui's boss, Josh Morris and girlfriend, Kat and Kat's brother, Dtaw are all here with me. One of my goals for this trip is to get some sweet climbing photos with the hair, so stay posted!

Revisiting My Least Favorite Holiday

I feel like every year I write something new about how much I hate the giant Thai Festival, Loy Gratong. This year was an exercise in facing this holiday head on. Putting all my fears about losing fingers, eyes and sanity to this fireworks infested holiday into a gratong and sailing it down the river. I stood at the banks of the river that drove me to madness last year for up to half an hour. Bottle rockets soared over my head, M-80s exploded everywhere. Police were arresting people left and right for setting off fireworks that were considered big enough to actually kill people. We had one of these go off 30 feet in front of us and you could literally feel a giant shockwave push you back. If you give it about 10 minutes, you actually stop panicing and start relaxing. I mean it's all way too much to worry about. Then I finally saw what maybe I was missing after all these years, all the activity, all the movement, the shouting, the life and excitment going on in every direction as far as the eye could see and no one was worrying about what might happen, they were just living in the now. (**this includes all the people that just lost their pinky finger to an M-80).

Oh... And I also went to the lantern lighting festival that I went to the first year. Here is another fantastic video.

Look at the Cute Little Puppies!

Wait a second? How did a dog crawl into the kitchen cupboard where all of my beloved Cliff Bars are stored, rip them open, and then have a litter of puppies in there? Wait a second! Those aren't puppies! Those are baby rats!! Some fat, slutty, pregnant rat was squatting over my Cliff Bars and pushing out these little pieces of disgustingness. These are the same Cliff Bars that I bring over from the states every year (50 lbs. in a suitcase of their own). The same Cliff Bars that Pui once quoted me as saying that 'I think I might love Cliff Bars more than her'. The only thing that might be worse is if those baby rats were conceived in my Cliff Bar drawer.

Anyways, after puking my guts out at the sight of these things, Pui and I went through and cleaned off every single one. We found 7 of the creatures in total. One of the most satisfying things I have ever witnessed was tossing them into the canal behind my house and watching an enormous fish coming up and eating one of them whole! Let that be a lesson to all would be rat mothers that plan on desecrating my Cliff Bars with their fetid offspring.