Ultimate Tourist

I have been playing my role as Ultimate Tourist particularly well this week. Some people would call it method acting. I would call it method acting too. Whatever. It's impressive. Even I'm impressed. I rented a four person bicycle; something that I didn't know existed until I saw it. They pretty much fuse two bikes together which is fun, I guess. But the problem was that we only had three people and that it was built for Chinese people. FYI, the Chinese are, on average, a solid head and a half shorter than me. This resulted in a number of rather painful encounters between my knees and the handlebars which did not make me the happiest camper in town, but I soldier on. 

 

Probably the all time low of the week was buying tickets for a my Christmas Day train ride (purely functional, despite how much fun it sounds). After not being able to buy the tickets in the first line I stood in, I was prompted to queue in the elderly, baby and disabled line. No shit. I know I have white skin, and I don't understand Chinese, but I'm not disabled.  For better or worse. Then they must have decided that having white skin and being a giant wasn't actually a disability and I was told to go and line up in a third queue. And all this kerfuffle because an O had been written in place of a 0 for my domestic train trip. Oh, China.  

I went to some hot springs too, and had fish nibble at my tootsies. I am exceedingly ticklish and having whitebait sized carnivores nibbling at my poor feet was not something that I warmed to. I had to concentrate really hard on not moving and scaring them away which most of the time sounded like the best idea I'd ever had. A mild form of Fear Factor Fish Edition. 

I don't know if you have any Chinese friends, but the Chinese love karaoke. Like love love karaoke. I think New Zealanders could love karaoke too, if they were totally gone, if you know what I mean. But no, here they love karaoke completely sober. I don't really understand the appeal of sitting through a minimum time slot of one hour listening to your friends sing along terribly and make a complete hash of all your favourite songs, while you will still be able to remember it all perfectly clearly the next day. Some things are made to last, and some things are made to be experienced only once. And sober karaoke is one of those one time things for me. 

But on the topic of being sober and on the topic of music, I also had my first live Chinese punk rock experience. And it was just that, an experience. My buddy on my right blocked his ears and waited for it to be over. My buddy on my left got amongst and bobbed her head up and down to rhythm of the drums. Her only criticism after the show was the show was too low key, she would have liked something more 'hard core.' Not a concept that I understand because I like music with some sort of melody and maybe some words, rather than just inarticulate screams. But I can do anything for two hours. So I put my experience down to just that, experience. 

A very merry Christmas to you. Peace and good fortune.