I got to FaceTime my dad for a little bit this morning, around midnight for him, but it really just brightened my day that much more to see and talk to him. I miss my family dearly and hate how far and removed I am from them all, yet this place is incredible. I just want the best of both worlds, come visit me family! :) I caught up with my pops and got to give him a quick glimpse of what I've been waking up to this week; he loved it. It's a beautiful place surrounded by cute vendors, shops, and rolling mountains, what's not to love?
The plan for today was to rent vespas and cruise the town on them; there was so much to see still and we figured that vespas would allow us to see more of the town's beauty in less time. Lexi and I got one together and we just tore through the crazy Chinese traffic like we knew what we were doing. There were times I was afraid I was going to kill us, but most people yield more to scooters than they do to cars. Also, our Vespa had a obnoxiously loud horn, so if anyone was in our way, I just honked that little bugger and we were golden; it was truly a life saver.
We decided to ride down the same path we rode our bikes down the other day, but took different turns in the road; there were far less obstacles to dodge here than in the city. The sun was shining and my pasty white skin just soaked up every little bit that it could; it felt like the perfect summer day. We rode for hours and hours on these things and watched as we passed one marvelous thing after the other.
After about five hours of riding, Lexi and I noticed that our battery was running low and we should probably head back. We let Konner and Jenna know and they began to lead us back. Since our scooter was dying, it didn't have nearly as much juice as it had earlier in the day, so Jenna and Konner were traveling at a much faster pace than we. After a short while, we lost sight of them. Now, I've noticed a trend with Lexi and I this past week: when we travel with people and they lead the way, we tend to ignore navigating and checking our surroundings and more so just admire what is around us. This wouldn't be a problem whatsoever if we would stay with those leading the way. However, the other two were two fast and yet again, Lexi and I got lost.
We took a few wrong turns in the middle of these mountains, but everything began to look the same and so familiar that we couldn't tell if we had seen it before or not. Normally, we wouldn't panic after taking a wrong turn or two, but we knew how far out we were from the scooter rental place and how low our battery was. Lexi decided, by herself, that I was older so I was to make all of the decisions, no pressure, right? Anyways, our scooter began to pulse, going in and out of power. I stopped the scooter, pulled over, and decided to try and ask for help.
I left Lexi with the scooter and approached these massive metal doors, it looked as if it could be a hostile, so maybe I would luck out and someone would speak English. I knocked, waited somewhat nervously, and a sweet Chinese man opened the door. I tried explaining that we were lost and had a dead scooter (charade style) but he just kept waving me inside. I didn't really know what he was getting at, but I decided to just go with it and enter his home. He sat me down on his couch and gave me an orange. Then, the cutest little grandma came out and tried speaking to me. At this moment, I was kicking myself for not learning at least a little bit of Chinese prior to coming here.
After a while of nothing coming from this conversation, a younger girl came out of their bathroom and said, "hello, are you lost?" I can't even explain how happy I was to hear English right then, I think I may have freaked them out actually because I instantly had a huge smile on my face and leaped off their couch, which in return made them jump a little bit as well.
As I spoke with this girl, I glanced outside and saw Lexi taking deep breaths, calming herself, by the scooter. I mean, we were lost, with a dead scooter, and had to be back in an hour to return the scooter, and then catch our bus back to Zhongshan. We got hardly any information from the little English she spoke, but we got back on the right track, we thought.
After a short while back on the scooter, we decided to stop again and ask for directions. A bunch of little kids were playing ping pong outside and we figured they were more likely to speak English than adults were; most kids here have at least a little English exposure. We tried speaking to them, they had no English, but came and looked at our scooter. They began laughing when the saw how low our battery was and searched it to find a charging port, we assumed. They found the battery, took a look at it, said "no" and walked back to their ping pong game. We had no idea what just occurred, but we laughed, sort of, and continued on our journey.
We rode the scooter for about three more minutes when it had finally died, there were no more pulses of battery life to help us, so we just pushed it along. As we were pushing, we ran into this couple who was outside and I just hollered and asked if they spoke English. They did! They claimed they spoke very little English, but they were just what we needed. We figured third try is the charm, so maybe they could give us enough direction to get us back. At that moment, I said a quick prayer outside with Lex that we would find our way back and that these people could help us.
They offered for us to follow them to west street, where we needed to be, so Lexi hopped on the man's scooter as I awkwardly pushed our scooter, with my feet, while still sitting on top of it. I can't even begin to tell you how many funny looks and pointed fingers I got, I can only imagine what all these people were mumbling about me in Chinese.
I was obviously going quite a bit slower than Lexi and our helpful friend, so Lexi thought it would be a good idea to try and latch me onto them and have them pull me. Since we didn't have any rope, we decided to try and use my sweatshirt as a rope instead. She held onto one sleeve and I held onto the other; her driver was quite hesitant to this, but he let it slide. This tactic worked for about, hmm, maybe ten seconds, then we were disconnected. The hill I was climbing, however, began to decline so I could just coast down and keep up with them. As I coasted, I saw a very familiar pagoda I had taken a picture of the day before, and noticed that WE WERE BACK!!! I literally began to cry on the scooter, Lexi looked back at me and gave me a thumbs up; we were thrilled. She hopped off the man's scooter and together we pushed it for the last few minutes to the rental store.
As soon as we arrived at the scooter rentals, we found our group waiting for us there and they looked at us as if we were crazy because of how excited we were to see them. At first, Lexi and I couldn't speak, all we could do was laugh and jump around in joy. After a while of this, we finally began to compose ourselves and could explain our adventure.
We grabbed some dinner, got our things from back at the hostile, and headed to the bus station. We were pleasantly surprised when a new looking sleeper bus pulled up to get us. We were first to board, so we were really lucky in general with this bus. As we got on, we noticed how much more spacious it was and most importantly that it was roach free; there couldn't have been a better ending to this crazy day. I quickly fell asleep and slept for what felt like an hour, when we were woken up to get off the bus. We arrived in Zhongshan in seven hours, rather than the 13 it took for us to get there. I was so delirious and confused when I woke up and was told to get off. However, I did what I was told and got off anyways, took a cab with the girls back to our apartments, and went to bed round two.
This trip was so much fun, I wish I could relive it (maybe minus the getting lost part) a hundred times. It was one of the best times of my life and I am so grateful for all of the help I've received to be able to make this dream a reality. I really am so incredibly blessed; I have so much to be grateful for.
Pictures:
1: our sweet little vespa
2: bamboo boats we drove past
3: Lexi's last birthday surprise (this was the 19th of her 19 desserts this trip:))
4: polar express status sleeper bus, it made me sooo happy.
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