The Character Building Trip

Heloo Blog,

I’m gonna write this time, about the trip I just had with my bunch of friends from uni..

So there were 8 of us travelling ..backpackin’ style (^^”)..Our main reason being for the trip was to go to Shaolin Temple (Apparently it’s the only one in China – the true original Shaolin temple - , yep, first ever!)

29/04 : At 5am we all met up in front of our uni’s west gate and off to Beijing Xi Zhan for ZhengZhou. The trip took about 9 hours ride. But it’s still okay, coz we got the best train, ruan zuo, bu zuo! J Everybody’s mood was : HAPPY. Then in the afternoon we arrived in this city called ZhengZhou..well, not too happy about it coz it’s not as good looking as Beijing, the roads were HORRIBLE, the traffic was EVEN MORE HORRIBLE, out of control!!! And it was bloody hot! 33deg.Celcius. We were greeted by this Chinese friend of ours. We found great difficulties in finding taxis. Finally we got into a hei che and really squeezed ourselves in that car.. was freakin’ hot and dry. Then this Chinese friend took us to his friend’s place. We all waited there for hours and hours till evening (while a friend of ours and this Chinese dude organizing the cars for 2morrow). Anyway, but these all weren’t the highlight of that day. In the evening, it was even worse, we were already all so tired, yet we were introduced to this stupid Chinese ZhengZhou “custom” ..it’s about beer stuffs. They said, if the waitress placed fish head facing person A, that means person A ought to drink 2 glasses of beer, and whoever faced the fish’s tail, he’s on the losing side, so he had to drink 3 glasses of beer. I reckon’ it’s so stupid, but we’re fine with it until things got a little ugly. These Chinese dudes really wanted to make us all drunk..stupid! In total, 7 guys drank a total of 45 bottles of beer. CRAZY. And what’s more? The Chinese dude who were supposed to guide us during this supposed-to-be-a-fun-trip, got drunk pretty bad and vomited. EW! By 2am we found ourselves a hostel and stayed there instead of his place.

30/04: Today, right in the morning, we had a little problem with the cars thingo but Toppo got everything under control. Our breakfast was quite interesting as well..Not delicious at all, and it’s like eating while watching the fuwuyuan (waiters and waitresses) snapping flies..LOLz. Then we drove off to this city called Kai Feng. NOTHING SPECIAL. BORING. And in the evening we were shocked by the addition of another 2 people who happened to be this Chinese dude’s friends who wanted to join us. But we weren’t given any notice beforehand, so we were taken back by this situation. We paid for the cars, and they’re just gonna join in without paying anything?No Way. What more? That night, we had a misunderstanding happening between us all..But thankfully, everything was alright in the end.

01/05: This is the day when we decided not to go along with the Chinese dude and his 2 friends. We hired a hei che to Shaolin Temple. The driver hated Japanese so much so that he dared saying that if one of us was a Japanese, he would asked us all to get out of the car. Bloody Hell man, it’s ages ago! The war is over, man! So none of us said we have Japanese amongst us. Oh then, it was raining continuously on the way , at , and from the Shaolin Temple. There’s not much to see in the Shaolin Temple and not much to play around with. But at least, we got to see this Shaolin Performance. I’d say it’s pretty standard, but it was okay. Then at night, we all went for Satay Nite Out to chill out a bit coz it’s our last night in ZhengZhou.

02/05: We missed our train (T________T). It’s supposed to be 12.25, but we were just a little late and couldn’t get in. We had to change tix to “Wu Zuo” train , meaning, ‘NO SEAT / STANDING TICKET”..OH MY GOODNESS.. It was such an experience!!! We originally had 2 choices.. STANDING TICKET or SLEEPING BUS ..meaning a bus with beds in it, but a little more expensive. Why did we choose the bloody standing tickets???? (T_____________T). Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a vacant seat on the train :D hahahaha.. so damn lucky me!! But I felt bad for my other friends who had to suffer seating on a stool / standing for hours on the train aisle…

03/05: Arrived in Beijing safely around 6am-ish.. Then we had difficulties in getting taxies, so again, hei che in the call! Except my sis, we all went for that day’s classes. I was actually quite amazed on how diligent and determined my friends were. They’re really tired from the trip, 9 hours standing on the train, hadn’t had enough sleep, yet still determined to go to class. SALUTE! By 8am I arrived home safely and hurriedly showered and went to class. Was so funny! My 3 classmates bought 3 cups of coffee to keep them awake..Really couldn’t concentrate that day xD.

Anyway the point of the trip’s story is:

- Don’t always trust a Chinese friend..or perhaps, don’t trust others so easily.

- Agent is helpful.

- Research research researchhhh before you wanna go holiday anywhere anytime!

- Chinese culture is surely complicated and interesting!