Day 8 - October 12th

Worse wake-up ever!!! People slamming doors and cacking outside. The horrid cacking, clearing throat sound that the Chinese all seem to do! I go and have breakfast… disgusting slurp and preserved shit! I eat a few of the plain buns and an egg. That reminded me of my cat Chairman Mao who likes to eat eggs. Strange! I then go to find some place to wash my clothes. Turns out it was going to cost Y100 because they measure it in the pieces of clothing rather than weight and I had a lot of underwear! I walk away… it’s going to be a bad day.

On the way back to my room I bump into an American guy called Owen. I ask him if he knew of anywhere to get clothes washed. He seems in a happy mood as he has just got his done at the same place and thought it a bargain! I decide to get my clothes washed for Y100. To top it off, it was drizzling outside which continued all day!

On my way out, I bump into Owen again and we spend the rest of the day together seeing the sights in Kaifeng. We see a lot that day as we hop from destination to destination via rickshaws. We visit the Temple of the Chief Minister, Shaanshangan Guildhall, Longting Park (old palace) and Tieta Park to see the Iron Pagoda. The pagoda is claimed to be the best (number one) in China! It is pretty cool and we climb to the top to find a group of men stinking of booze and giggling! Why didn’t I think of that? There is also this strange system in Kaifeng where if you tell the people of the ticket offices that the rickshaw people took you there, they get Y2 for food money! Pretty cool system I think! Everyone’s a winner!

Owen turns out to be a pretty sound guy and was working/studying in Hong Kong for the last year and really got into the local music scene there, something which I didn’t manage to do! I guess the Americans who usually leave the country are always the sounder ones!

We then decide to go to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church. Looks like a Catholic style church.. Seeming that we had done two of the worlds major religions we decide why stop now? We walk half a block to see a well which is what remains of the old synagogue (Kaifeng used to have a large Jewish population). It is situated in the boiler room of the number four People’s Hospital. Walking through the hospital was one of the most messed up things I’ve done in a while! We walk past a room where it seems a patient (Owen informed me later that it was a lady) who just looked grim and had a sort of stand and cloth looped around her jaw, keeping her head up. I really don’t know what the hell it was but I walked away as fast as possible! Messed up! Owen decides to go back for a second look! We walk into the boiler and find a well… not much to it!

We then walk to Dongda Mosque via the Muslim quarter. Not as nice as the mosque I saw in Xi'an but had the same hallmarks… looks just like a Chinese temple! So four major religions in a day! Can’t do that in many cities, I tell you!

We then walk past a shop which has a load of kegs in the window. We stop in to have a few bevys! German beer… expensive, but you have to treat yourself sometimes! I also find the nicest smelling portaloo I have ever had the pleasure to use!

Have dinner in the night market. We sit down and order our food and then a lady with a guitar and a mic sits down on the table next to ours. We decide to invite her over and Owen asks her to play a few songs that he has on his iPod. No luck… too contemporary! So we ask her to play her favourite song and then I also play a song. I rock! I then ask her to play ‘The Moon Represents My Heart’ a classic Chinese song which I really like. No one else in the street agrees with me… too cliché maybe!

Owen suggests that I should record and play some Chinese folk songs and package it in a way for western audiences. I tell him my time came and went long ago…

Miles walked: 54.355m
Steps taken: 38,310

Day 4 - October 8th

Decide to sleep in and have a late check out. I needed the sleep to catch up on the last few days. I eat at the hotel, a bowl of rice, some veg and two fried fish. It was a really good meal and only Y25 and I didn’t even finish it because there was sooo much fish! Not bad going I think for a hotel, though I did go in the restaurant and basically asked for the two cheapest dishes on the menu! They must have thought I was such a gypo!

I get to the bus station where I find cleaners putting sand on the floor and mopping it up. How very strange! I think I get over-charged on the bus, as I read in the Lonely Planet that it costs about Y20 whereas I pay Y40. Bus journey was really good though! First notable thing to mention is the Y2 porn DVD shop we drive by - shame that the bus doesn’t stop for you!!! We drive for about an hour out of the city. Big contrast! The first thing I think about is how different it was from the fields down in the south of China. I remember driving past a rice paddy on my way to Guangzhou airport and seeing lots and loads of green. The fields in Henan are pretty much empty. I suppose the harvest has just been collected a few weeks back. It seemed a barren place. Then I notice that what I thought were bags in the middle of fields were actually people with ploughs and such. There were loads of people, just in the field ploughing and digging. Now to me that seems so very, very strange. I mean, I never lived in the countryside or anything, but when ever I see such big expanses of fields, you would see maybe a tractor or two and a combine harvester to collect all the crops. In China, there’s just a bollock load of people with hand ploughs and a ton of elbow grease.

I arrive in Luoyang at 5pm. It seems even colder here and looks miserable. I book into my first hostel (Y40 a night), where at the counter the girls are squabbling. One’s complaining to the other to stop playing solitaire and do some work whilst she retorts back “do your job properly” when the girl serving me makes a mistake. Seems like a barrel of laughs here! I meet a girl called Sam who has been travelling China for the last two weeks and seems to have a very similar route planned as me. Shame she is leaving tomorrow morning and I plan to spend two days here. I walk into the toilets and to my horror… COMMUNAL SHOWERS!!! I’m relieved as I don’t have soap, but have shower gel!!!

I explore the surroundings and find a wet market down some back street. It was like walking back in time! Back with the salt of the earth! I also find a place which sells sunflower seeds. I tell the shop assistant that I want Y5 worth, she turns around and gives me the biggest fuck off bag of seeds. I wish Matt (Early) was here to finish it all! I have dinner in a side of the road restaurant. I order a portion of dumplings and I get a strange look. Turns out there are sixty dumplings in a portion! So I order half a portion for Y6!

I drink my first Luoyang beer and get started on my seeds! I’ve hardly made a dent after 2 hours!

Miles walked: 19.607m
Steps taken: 49,892