Day 9: A Change in Schedule
Thursday morning, 6am call for the bus to the airport. Woo. Hoo.
At least no delays this time. And only a 1 hour flight to Nanchang. Except that then we had to take a 3 hour bus ride to Yichun. This city wasn’t on the original schedule, but we never got the updated one. It was a very pretty ride, when I wasn’t sleeping.
We arrive at our hotel, which is brand new. We are in an area of the city that seems to be a newer suburb that is pretty much under construction everywhere.
We ate lunch, then hung out in the lobby since there was nowhere really to go, and it was raining. We bought a bunch of beer and played a variation on King’s Cup. On a side note, the beer is so ridiculously cheap here. A large bottle costs us 3 yuan, which is roughly 50 cents. So buying a round for the group is very affordable.
(Don’t ask me why Ben chose to make that face. Especially with all that beer in front of him)
We had a fun time, laughed a lot, drank a lot, and ate lots of salty snacks. We found pistachios and something like Pringles at the convenient store. Yay! Actually, I haven’t missed any American food yet. I love eating rice and vegetables and tofu at every meal. Plenty of bread and eggs too :) I guess that’s because Mom raised me on lots of stir fry. Thanks, Mom!
Gambei! (Cheers)
We went back to our room and fell asleep, which caused us to miss dinner. But that’s ok because I was so full still. Then I was woken up by Benny to go with a group to go get massages. We had gotten a safe recommendation from the front desk, and we had Benny and Larry with us (our translators). It was a wonderful massage, done by blind men, and only cost 40 Y, ~$7. Whaaaaat? Definitely different than our massage places back home, though. It was just a very simple place for the purpose of a massage. Four tables in a room, four massages at a time. They put down clean sheets, we keep our clothes on and they put a towel over us and then massage. And that’s it. After all the sitting on busses, airplanes, and sleeping on firmer beds – it was much needed for me.
Phil didn’t go because …
a) he doesn’t really like other people touching him.
I suggested he get just a foot massage but he didn’t do that because …
b) he has a crazy spider bite on his foot that has swelled up his whole foot and ankle.
He’s been taking Benadryl, and the swelling has gone down. We can see the 2 bite marks now, and it’s starting to turn to a greenish/yellow bruise instead of a dark purple. Don’t worry, he’s not going to die ;)