Fenghuang

Day 13

We arrived in Fenghuang last night. After a few attempts to find our hotel, which included the driver going through a night market and then backing out of the dead end we hit, we finally arrived at a parking lot, got out of the van, and began dragging our luggage through a maze of market stalls, narrow alleys, and stone paths to get the rest of the way. The town uses a sewage system that I'm sure would not be allowed in any western country and you can really smell it in places.

The hotel's small front garden and lobby merge into each other almost seamlessly. It is beautiful, with ponds and a small waterfall, hanging basket chairs, and a friendly large golden furred dog, that was not too bright. He and Evan were scared of each other and so he tried to hide under a chair, didnt quite fit and got stuck for a minute.

Andrea and the kids were put off by the horrible stench in the stairwell and the insects buzzing around the hallway light. I calmed the kids and got them settled into their room, which was perfectly nice inside when Andrea joined me and declared, "I can't sleep here. I'm going to get bedbug bites." I calmed her too and then struggled to figure it how to turn off the TV. Since I couldn't turn it off with the remote I ended up finding the power switch on the actual TV. By the time we turned in for the night I was so keyed up that it took me a while to fall asleep but I slept well, only waking when Andrea got up around eight.

We packed up and went walking. We ate breakfast from a cross between a street food vendor and a restaurant. I had some rice noodles, fried tofu, little balls stuffed with black sesame, and I even tried some of Li Feng's stinky tofu. It was not as bad as it sounds; tasted like a charcoal briquette.

The city is quaint, lots of old buildings around a river with pretty bridges and boats that you can hire. The place is a tourist trap, with a million opportunities to get your photo taken in native costume or buy a souvenir. I noticed small brass Eifel towers for sale and asked about them. They "are for the people who can not go all the way to Paris."

Parts of the wall that once surrounded the city to defend the indigenous Miao against the Han still stand, though most of it was dismantled during WWII when they determined that walled cities are too hard to evacuate, were too easy to bomb, and were to hard to retake once occupied by the enemy. We passed one establishment that had half a dozen signs saying that Japanese people would not be allowed, in English, Chinese, and Japanese.

We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant: two kinds of greens, spicy cucumber, and a fish hot pot. The fish was pretty full of bones and hard to eat so I tried to stuff myself with vegetables, failed, and supplemented with frozen yogurt, which was fine until my blood sugar plummeted, so now I am starving. I'm sure I'll end up eating far too many of the walnut cakes that we bought. They were made on a small machine. A person puts a few small pieces of walnut in a mold which then moves along, has a squirt of batter sprayed in each half, has a bit of filling squirted in, is flipped closed, cooks for a bit, is moved up a row and heads in the opposite direction, is flipped over to finish cooking, and is finally unloaded by hand by the person who puts in more nuts and the process repeats.

I've tried to limit my pauses for picture taking because Andrea is impatient and complains or more often just forges ahead without me and I'm tired of running to catch up. Now, however, she's complaining that I'm taking pictures of all the same things that she is. She just started a blog to try to be more like me and I'm sure that I'll blog a lot of the same topics that she does. You can check her blog out at bozokiblog.blogspot.com

Li Feng decided that we should take the train back, because last night's van ride was so uncomfortable. Perhaps it is my aching back, the sore throat that is back now that my Naproxin has worn off, or my general tiredness from trying to get Andrea to be less upset about her inability to communicate and to get the boys to stop complaining about everything but comfortable is one of the last words I'd use to describe these seats or this train in general.

We were met at the station by another van because the one with our luggage wasnt there yet. We went to dinner at a Korean BBQ. After dinner we went to the airport where I'm writing this now. Flights are being delayed and canceled because of heavy rain. Our flight is supposed to leave at 1:20AM now but Andrea is betting that it will be canceled. I am trying to ignore my hunger and the sore throat that has morphed into a stuffed nose, sneezes, and burning eyes. Strike that; I gave in and binged on pistachios, walnut cakes, and caramel corn.