China Musings

Last week I was pretty much out of commision due to fever. On the last day in Baokang, I felt a cold coming on. On the train ride back to Guangzhou, the cold turned into a full-blown fever. I spent a fairly miserable 22 hours on that train, alternatively sweating and shivering as my fever ran its course. This was in fact the worst infection I have had in a long time, the last time I felt this bad was in Laos, where I was also traveling and fevering at the same time.

I think I picked up the bug in southern Yunnan, near the Vietnam border. I was traveling with Valerie, my cousin, during our first Spring Festival holiday. While we were waiting for our visas to be processed but the Laotian Consulate in Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, we decided to take a side trip to a town that my guidebook called “the best example of terrace farming in Asia.” This was an out of the way place with crazy weather, and instead of breathtaking views of hillsides covered in terraced rice patties, we ended up spending 2 days in a dense fog. Visibility 50 feet. We were not prepared for the weather, and I was cold. Despite the constant drizzle, wehad a great time in that town, but that is a story for another time.

We returned to Kunming to pick up our visas, then immediately hopped onto a 24 hour bus to take us all the way to the Mengda, the southern tip of Yunnan and the border of Laos. This bus is of the type called a “sleeper bus.” Instead of seats, it is fitted with skinny bunk beds, two levels and three rows, from front to back. We stepped over everyone’s luggage to the back of the bus where there were two adjacent empty spots. As everyone one the bus stared at us (admittedly not too many foreigners travel this way), we stowed our gear in the aisle, and settled in for the long ride.

Yunnan is a beautiful province. The most diverse in both poples and environments. The northwest of Yunnan is the southeast corner of the Tibetan Plateau, covered in snowcapped peaks. The southern part of Yunnan is covered in ful-fledged rain forest along the Burmese-Thai-Lao border. Unfortunately, I saw very little of it. Pretty much from the time I boarded the bus, all I remember was shivering, sweat, and a never-ending rocking motion as the bus lumbered along the windy, hilly roads of central Yunnan. When we stopped for food about 5 hours in, I wasn’t even hungry. Val was pretty worried about me, but there wasn’t much we could do on the bus, so I just hunkered down and tried to sleep it off.

We drove through the night, and the next morning, we arrived at a town that very clearly was not our destination, yet the driver was shaking us awake, telling us to get off the bus. Apparrently we were the only two who had bought tickets all the way through to the border, so the bi bus was going to stop in that town, and we had to board another bus. I was not feeling much better, but we dutifully trudged over to this new, smaller bus, one with seats. This one had strange markings on the side though, I would not find out exactly what that represented until later. What I remember from this bus ride was that I suddenly was feeling better, and that was a very good thing, because that was possibly the bumpiest ride I have ever taken.

Continued in Part 2