Hi !
It have been busy last week so i have not been able to write about the last few days until now.
Thanks for the feedback, i now it has been long post’s, but i hope you have gotten some enjoyment out of it. So this is how the last few days evolved. Afraid it is a long read once more, but it is the closing chapter
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It is Friday the 21th of May as we leave the hostel in Shangri La and we are driven into the center of the small city to the bus terminal. It is a dusty and cold “corner” of the city, among concrete building from the 60/70 I would guess, not pretty, but functional. We by the bus ticket for the ride back to Lijiang, were we the next day have plane tickets back to Beijing via Kunming. Even though the bus drive to LiJiang is like 4-5 hours I still kind of look forward to it. It do like to see the landscape along the road, sitting next to this charming woman. I start to feel that bittersweet feeling of something great coming to an end. I try to suppress that and enjoy the moment. Not much goes on during the bus trip, we hold hand, look into each other eyes and she ”demand”s the occasional kiss. In the afternoon we get off at one of the bus terminals in LiJiang. We get an taxi to the old city and find our hostel. This is the same hostel we stayed at earlier so we have no problem finding it in the narrow and confusing roads of the old city. As we check in my suspicions are confirmed. As we called the day before and booked room, we were quoted a very good price for the room. I belived that it must be the small room next to where I lay sick for on earlier. This room has no window and has the smell of concrete dust and water damage. I we briefly check other opportunities, but all room are taken and since we are leaving early next morning I except it. We are due to leace around 6 am for the airport next morning. My girlfriend efficient organizes transport and makes plans without telling me everything. I ask her about our options on how to get to the airport tomorrow. She tells me that we shall take a taxi to a hotel were there is a shuttle bus to the airport. The taxi cost something like 30 rmb and the bus cost 5 or 10 pr head to the airport. I ask her about what the cost for a taxi direct to the airport is, she checks with the front desk. It is something like 30 km to the airport so I except it to cost a bit. When she comes back she tells me that the hostel has a driver we can call, it will cost 80 rmb for both of us. Then we can sleep for 30 minutes more, so we quickly agree to use this guy. Only catch is that we have to call the drive ourselves 10 minutes before we shall meet him! Kind of strange…. We are told to meet him at one of the entrances to the old city next morning. After a night of not so good sleep in the loosy room, we get up, the lady calls the driver. He answer straight away tells us to just wait at the hostel and he will meet us there. He shows up and turns out to be very house warm. First he uses the shared toilets facilities there, lot of noises, clearing trough, flushing etc. Then he fills the waterbottle before we walk to the car. As we drive out of the old city there are a couple of women cooking and selling food from a food cart. They are making those pancakes like things, with some spicy chili sauce. We have not had breakfast yet, so my girlfriends stop the driver and the driver say a few things to the woman cooking. There is s short queue of people there, but she decides to server us first. She has one almost reday for a guy waiting, she hands that one to us as she handles the payment she instructs the customer waiting to add chili sauce on the next one which is promptly handed over to us. As we eat our slightly spicy breakfast we drive towards the airport. As so many other times on this trip I can enjoy the sun rising and see the people start their work in the field. LiJiang is a small airport so check in and security is quickly done and we sit at the departure hall and wait. I notice more western people here than I have seen in one place for several weeks.
We got affordable plane tickets to Beijing, only thing was that they included a 9 hurs stop over in Kunming. So our first stop is Kunming.
Kunming is warmer than LiJiang, we are still at at good altitude around 2000 meter above sea level I believe. I do change to t-shirt and some lighter pant’s, then we check our bags and my girlfriend head, yet again, to the information desk. She is not afraid to ask. After discussing the different alternatives for how to spend the day, we decide to go to the area around Dianchi lake. Many of you know Kunming as you know it is known as spring city and are famous for its flowers. That is a well disturbed reputation it was a lot of beautiful flowers and greenery. After a 20 minutes taxi drive we leave the taxi at a nice walkway along a lake. We choose one direction and start to walk hand in hand the sun is shining the weather is nice and yet another of those perfect days. People are fishing along the lake, the most popular place is around a big sign, I get the text translated and off course it states: “No fishing”. I see they catch one fish, it think it was 10 cm. Across the lake there is a big hill/small mountain with walkways and pagodas. I think that it can be a nice walk up there only catch is that we have to take a cablecar to get there. My girlfriend did not like height, but she suggested that we should go up there. So we bought the tickets and tok a seat face to face. Looked in each other eyes and, yet again she squeezed my arm, can’t believe how strong that little woman is. My felt a little bad dragging her up there, but she kind of assured that is was ok and that she wanted to go. Up there we had a nice walk, enjoyed the view quietly together, I started to feel even more that my return to Norway was approaching and this dream was coming to an end. We spent a few hours up there before we tok the cablecar back down. Down there it was time to head to the city center to get something to eat. Since there are no taxis showing up there we find out that we have to take the bus. Again lucky me, girlfriend sort it all out for me, cant belive how this would have been without her. We need to change bus halfway and go off at a certain landmark, and then there will be a restaurant specialized in Yunnan dishes around the corner. Finally the bus get there and we cram us on, it is full of people, eventually we can go off, the next one appear instantly, jump on that one. It’s is a bigger bus, but still crowded, after some time more people go off and some seat become available. I offer her to sit, but she says I shall take the seat. I sit down, it has been a long day the heat is taking it toll. Sometime later I start to doze off, I fell the head is starting to nod, try as good as I can to balance it. At some point I feel that I get I good rest, later at a hard turn I wake up. I discover that my girlfriend is holding her arm around my head and supporting it to her side!
Eventually after quite some time at the bust, I think it must have been like an hour, we go off and find the restaurant. It turns out to be a crowded one and different customers that I have seen other places. All orders are placed at a boot at the entrance, we get a receipt. Since it was a unorganized queue I have no idea what was ordered. My girlfriend had to fight her way to the counter and placed some order without being able to discuss this with me. Im sent upstairs with a receipt and instructions to find a table. When she get up there it is with a big conspiring smile. She is carrying a couple of dishes and more will arrive from the second floor kitchen. She had ended up ordering some specialities. Snail’s, some sea weed I think, stinky tofu, yes that is the name. some sweet soup, and some more. Apparently the snail was popular noticed that many people was having that. They just tasted the spice it was cooked in, so no problem. The stinkin tofu was a different story. It was stinking like h.. I thought someone with bad hygiene had walked by us when it was placed at the table. The other stuff was more convential. After the meal we walked outside and looked at the city. Close by it was a big pedestrian street. We walked down there and I’m sad to say. In my three visits to China, I have never seen more beggars combined. Some was strongly handicapped, like just the torso and head, they had different “trolleys” to drive around in. Apparently this must be some kind of a problem there. Center of this pedestrian street was blocked by some statues with very narrow passages between, it was also a big sign about how you could get help ! It stated something like, if you lived there and there, you could go there, and so on, I even think it stated the authorities could help you contact relatives and by you tickets “back home” or where you wanted to go/could go.
On the other side of this “road-block” it was a big fountain. In the fountain it was lot of goldfish, it was packed. There it was possible to rent fishing rod to fish after them. We had great fun of watching the people there. I particular noticed this cute little girl. Probably 8’ish year old, lovely white summer dress and, she was a killer fisherman. She really got the hang of this, got one after one on the hook, not afraid to touch it either, grabbed it with both hands and placed them in her bucket. After walking in the warm evening sun and watching various street artist we headed back to the airport. Small troubles find the right bus, but in the end we arrived there with plenty of time to reach our plane.
After security check we ran into some tv celebrity, I noticed something was going on. People working in the shop walked outside and people stopped up looking at this woman. I was told the name, but off course I have forgot it. Off course this woman was well dressed and hair well done, but she was so skinny, unhealthy skinny. Probably suffered from anorexia, it was sad to see and also knowing that she probably was a role model for many woman. I discussed this briefly with my girlfriend and told her that no normal straight man find that attractive.
After boarding the plane and well seated, starting to relax after the small evening meal. It was time for me to be scared for the second time on the trip. It was a big plane were the coach is divided in two section by toilets etc. We sat in the front half and suddenly I heard these hard and shouting voices in mandarin. I have heard a few domestic fights during my travel, but this was so hard and hostile and I really woke up. All these hijacking and terror threats we read about these days did not help either. It took like 15 seconds the stewardess’ shouted to. Suddenly to good sized male stewardess came running down between the seats. Shortly after it all came to an end, but I got good scared there for a minute or two. Rest of the trip we held hands and dozed on one another shoulders, and luckily no more incidents happening. Around 2 am we arrived at her apartment and then we had been on our feet for almost 20 hours so we fell quickly asleep.
When we woke up it was midday Sunday and Monday morning I had plane tickets back to Norway. We spent the Sunday around her neighborhood, visited to local mall and had a coffee and something to eat for brunch. We had a good long chat there, usually im not a chatty person, but she makes me talk like no one in many years. She is an architect and her work is to design Shopping mall. So we decided we should go and see one of the malls she has been participated in designing and have dinner there. We head outside and get a taxi to an upscale area and enter into a very nice shopping mall. She tells me about why what shop is placed were it is and so on. At the end we go to the top floor for dinner. We have one of those “steamboats” dinners, were you cook your own dinner. It was a nice restaurant with white table cloth and dimmed lights, we flirted, touched each other hands and shared food. It was a very nice last dinner. We were due up around 6 again next morning for my flight se we slowly walked back towards her apartment and after some time we hailed a taxi and got back. I finished packing and prepared what I wanted to wear the next day. We sat down in her sofa for a few minutes and shared our thoughts about the last couple of weeks. According to her I had changed a lot, to start with I did not smile and did not talk. No I smiled more and talked a lot! I can say she had changed more, expect that she cared more for me!
She had offered to follow me to the airport the next day, since it was Monday I knew she should be at work. I knew that she is very busy at work and that she was expected to be there. So I felt I bit bad for her, because I did not know how that would work out for her. Apparently she was missed because it was a lot of phone calls going on in the taxi towards the airport . She did have time for it, because the same day I left, Monday the 21th of may. Hillary Clinton visited Beijing and the government had decided to close down several roads on central Beijing. The taxi driver was very annoyed and had to drive is to one of the out rings before he could turn towards the airport. I did reach the airport with good margin, checked my bags and we had time for a coffee and a snack before I had to go to my plance.
As I sat there I felt that it was kind of difficult to talk and I had that strange feeling in my throat and my eyes started to water…..It was no doubt this trip/adventure was over. We talked about how lucky we were to find each other and what our opportunities to be together were, when we could see each other next time. At the security gate I kissed her goodbye and as I walked down towards the train to the gate. I turned around several times and she was standing there looking at me. I tried to waive and as I walked down there I felt that I left a part of me there. It also felt so wrong to walk away from her. Needless to say, it was a long flight home and I was thinking a lot about her.
So how have things since I came back you might ask. I has gone tree week since I come back, I still miss her a lot and thin about her every day. We both work a quite a bit, so we communicate through e-mail and sms. I still wonder how we can spend more time together. At the moment I do not know how. I’m the guardian for my nephew he is 17 now and I still need to follow him for a few more years. My father is 85, still with good health, but I also help him with practical things from time to time, and I feel that I cannot leave him either. On the short horizon I hope to be able to go again in October to join her when she is attending close friends wedding.
It all ended great this time, the big question is how to keep the love alive when we not able to be together.