Thursday, June 16, 2005
Surfing in a Beijing cybercafe isn't much fun. The stink of sweat-impregnated chairs and unwashed geekdom is overpowering and faintly nauseating, and the mouse and keyboard are uncomfortably greasy. My own sister is busy playing Gunbound with her cousins and too busy to chat, beyond the usual perfunctory LOLs and one-liners. Oh well.
Beijing is big, too big for my Singaporean conditioning to handle. Shopping is cheap so I'm doing a massive gadget splurge. Visited the amusement park yesterday; the rides gave me motion sickness and the taxi journey back, through Beijing traffic jams, didn't improve matters. The park was old and faded but fun, and the motion sickness part was kind of embarrassing because I never had problems with that before.
Visited the Great Wall as well, but we went to a run-down, unrestored and hence pretty dangerous section that tourists normally don't go to, because the paths are steep and the rocks are loose and people have been known to die there. Needless to say, it was quite an experience. The Wall was overgrown with lichens, bushes and small conifers, the path was narrow and portions of it were
really steep, and there was a great deal of climbing involved. It didn't take long to find that I was terrible at descents - slipped and stumbled all the way down - but I survived without a scratch.
China toilets aren't bad in cities, but in more rural areas they are stupendously terrible. The stench of ammonia from the latrine pits delivers an almost physical shock to the nose, and flies buzz around you while you desperately try to finish your business in the shortest time possible. Fascinating stuff wriggle away Down Below, but it's best not to look. Due to the chemical processes involved, the air surrounding a traditional WC is a few degrees warmer than normal temperature, I swear.
words were spilled on Thursday, June 16, 2005
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