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My first tour of duty was doomed on forehand. I had just come back to work at my IT-office job, after a 1-year sabbatical leave and after 1 week of hearing all the small talk in my jail called office I was ready to move on again.

It was then that I heard that a tour company needed a tour-leader for a tour in because their own man broke his leg or whatever. On Monday I had a job interview, on Wednesday I picked up all I needed, and on Friday I was on the plane to Beijing to be a tour-leader.

Fun, big fun! First of all I had only been once in Beijing for a 10-day holiday and secondly I have never been a tour-leader nor did I ever make an organized holiday myself. But here I was. The idea was that I would do the half of the 4 weeks tour together with another tour-leader and his group to learn the tour and the job. After that I would pickup my own group and hit the road.

The flight to Beijing was a hell. I think my boss had some free flying miles, so I flew from Amsterdam to Frankfurt by Lufthansa. And after a 1 hour stop-over from Frankfurt to Paris with a French company, where, after another 1 hour stop-over, I flew with Thai Airways to Bangkok. There I had a 4 hours stop-over, enough time to make a lunch appointment with a Dutch guy who lives in Bangkok. And of course with one of the new friends that I made the last time I was in . When my friend saw her he said “Be aware, she has future plans with you”. And he was right; luckily for me she did find a better option. Well from Bangkok it was straight to Beijing and after about 24 hours of traveling I was at the arriving hall at the airport of Beijing. And no idea where to go now!

But luck is with the people who need it and a friendly Chinese hostess of an airline company brought me to a taxi and told him where to bring me. Well of course he did not know where my hotel exactly was so he dropped me off “near” my hotel. From there I took a rickshaw and he brought me to my luxury hotel in the centre of Beijing. It was now about 30 hours after I left home and I was more dead than alive.

So I checked in at the lobby where they told me that my boss did not book a room for me so they did not have a room for me. I told the bastard to call my local boss in Beijing and I took a nap in the lobby. It seemed that my local boss was actually a big man here and the little bastard came back with a thousand excuses and I was given a huge superior deluxe room. That’s where I did fall asleep and somewhere in the middle of the night ordered some awful hotel food. At 10 o’clock in the morning my college tour-leader woke me up with a call to tell me that the group that we would pick up today had 5 hours delay so that we had to pick them up at 14:00 instead of 1 hour ago. Thanks God, Allah or Buddha that would give me at least time to have a shower and breakfast!

Well we picked them up and we made an interesting tour of 2 weeks together. I flew back to Beijing to pick up my own group at the halfway point. Just before I said goodbye to the group one of the guests gave me a toffee. And before I even boarded my own plane I lost an inlay off one of my teeth. Bloody hell! It did not hurt, but eating was not a joy anymore! And having seen the unhygienic state of , I did not trust the hospitals or dentists anymore. Well the first thing I did when I was back in Beijing was checking a expiate hospital and I made an appointment for the next day. It was my first experience with these kind of hospitals. Wow what a service and what a good quality. Ok it did cost a bloody 150us$ but it was worth it! But here at least you have the feeling that they really care about you.

I had one day free to relax and sleep. Well sleeping did not come much that morning. was celebrating their 50^th years of liberation (or actually 50^th years of communism dictatorship?). And they planned to do that the next day, but today they practiced the military exercise of about 60 helicopters and 40 jet-fighters flying in squadron right over my hotel. Holy shit that makes a hell of a noise! And there they came again…. Time to wake-up, have breakfast and check-out the city.

Luckily for me and the group, this time I woke up on time and I was waiting for them at the total chaotic arrival hall of the airport. Of course there is always a smart guy who goes to the bank to change money and have 30 people waiting for him. And of course this is the same guy who will order a cup of coffee just before leaving somewhere. Well with about 32.000us$ of traveler-cheques (I have to pay all the hotels, trains, busses and flights) we started our journey.

So that day we started by going to our hotel and the next days we would make our Beijing city tours like the Forbidden City, Tiaman Square, and we even made a tour to the Great Chinese Wall. Of course I did not mention it, but doesn’t that part of the wall so close to Beijing look remarkably well? Too well and beautiful for my taste.

From Beijing we had to take the train to Xian to see the world famous Terracotta Army. So I chartered a bus to the huge train station and quickly found the platform where our train would be leaving. We are standing on the platform and we have to be in wagon 3 and we were standing near wagon 17. So we walked all the way to the front of the train to be told that wagon 3 is actually behind wagon 23. And arriving at wagon 23 there were no other wagons behind it anymore. So now what? Walk back again? Of course one man of the group starts blaming me for the pain in his knee and shouting like a mad dog. Finally our wagon arrived together with some other wagons like number 31 and 28. We checked in and there the problems started again. By mistake another tour-leader had placed his people in one of our cabins. And of course the poor man with his hurting knee had the luck to be in that cabin. Of course it all worked out fine, but before that the man had been shouting again like a mad dog to the innocent people sitting in our cabin. When I thought we were all fine new problems arise. In one of our cabins are actually 2 people of my group and 2 Chinese. And as the Chinese think we are all dirty and bad smelling people they do not want to stay in one cabin with us. The wagon manager tells use to move and I tell him that he can go to bloody hell with it. If they do not like us, then they can move. And I totally ignore them all. The manager realizes that he is going to have a problem and now tries it the friendly way. That works better when he offers the two people of my group a cabin for themselves and he gives us all a free cup of noodles. The Chinese couple is very happy and I wish for them to die soon and go to hell. Of course they do not understand my English, but my face told enough.

Locations are important. Like our hotel in Xian that was situated behind an alley full of barber shops with young and sometimes even beautiful girls. After a small try-out I could tell my group that if they wish to have their hair done that they should not go to any of the barber shops, because they do not have any experience in doing your hair. In the evening we end up in a disco so modern that I would have never expected it to find in communist China. There was a big laser show and the dance floor was full of lovely Chinese, Mongolian and Russian “students”. And of course an English singing band who did not speak English at all. I figured that out after I tried to invite them to have a drink with us. The next day we did visit the world famous Terracotta Army and again I am surprised. I saw the photo’s of how they “discovered” this Terracotta Army and how they did build the kind of hangar over one of the sites. They were driving with big bulldozers and trucks! How can any of this Terracotta Warriors still be in one piece? Would they be real at all? I leave the group and walk to the parking lot where all the bus drivers from all the tour-busses are waiting. Then suddenly I realize that there are actually a lot of Chinese girls walking there also. And that there is a kind of hotel and some karaoke bars. The oldest profession shows up really everywhere.

From Xian we did fly to Lanzhou where our bus was waiting for us to make a long but very beautiful bus ride to Xiahe (Labreng), which is situated on the high-lands in the mountains from where in the far distance you can see mountain tops with snow on it. The visit here would become my personal highlight. In the high-lands around the small city are still living nomads with their horses. Half of the town is populated by run away Tibetans and the other half are imported Chan Chinese to support the communist government. Chan Chinese can go to school, Tibetans can not. All government jobs are for Chinese not for the Tibetans. The high-light of our visit was the Tibetan monastery (the biggest in ). It’s a huge complex with many red and yellow painted buildings and it took us about 2 hours to walk around it like a pilgrim’s walk. One older Tibetan man did give himself the task to go around the monastery 5 times, and, after every step, to kiss the ground and make prayers for good merit. With our Tibetan guide we walked inside the monastery where I felt myself so misplaced. We walked right through the main chapel where about 500 monks were in meditation; a huge high ceiling, dark with smoke, and some sun-light through one of the few windows. Once outside the many young novices were playing like there is no tomorrow. It is a shame that the entire entrance fee that we paid goes all to the Chinese government, that same government who destroyed 40% of this still huge monastery during their Cultural Revolution.

The small city itself is also very nice. In day-time it is warm and in night-time freezing cold. Our hotel of course had no heating. Or at least it is not working anymore. And no hot water also. As compensation a few lovely Tibetan girls with red cheeks are bringing us hot water every morning and afternoon for a “shower”. There is one thing very weird in this city, there are no toilets, at least not in private houses, restaurants, or even in public. That nice friendly monk sitting along the road and chatting to me is just pissing or shitting. So when we sit in a local café annex restaurant and one of my guests asks me “Where is the toilet?” I politely point to outside, to the side of the road. She walks outside, comes back and says “There is no toilet”. I answer “Oh yes there is, look better on the ground along the road”. Then they all finally understand that the closest toilet is in our hotel.

After a week we took our bus back to Lanzhou to fly to Chengdu. Well of course that one guy had just ordered a cup of coffee and wanted to drink it also. So I just left with the all bus. Just around the corner of the road we stopped and I walked back to see a totally surprised guest in an empty parking lot thinking “Bloody hell they are really gone!” I left him for 5 or 10 minutes with that impression and then shouted to him to move his ass asap. While driving that early morning through the low hanging clouds in the mountains, something was not working in the bus and we could not stop and then drive on again. So no stopping anymore, also not at the gate for the toll-way or at the entrance gate of the air-port. But we made it safe and well. What the bus did I do not know but we traveled to Dali, Kunming, Guilin, Wuzhou, Guangzhou and finally Hong Kong. And every place has its own story to remember.

Like in Kunming. In the afternoon one of a group of 4 elderly people tells me that her husband did not return from a walk near the hotel, and that he has dementia so he could have forgotten where he was staying or who he is. We had a group dinner appointment that evening so I bring the all group there and I return to the hotel with the wife of the missing man. I looked to my watch; he was 3 hours gone now. I would wait another 30-min and then I would inform the police. All kinds of scenarios went through my head in these kinds of moments. Dead guests are a tour-leaders nightmare. And just when I stand up to walk to the reception, there he walks into the lobby. And it happened exactly like his wife told me. He had walked around and could not remember where he was, not even the place or country! Then after a little bit of walking he felt a business card of the hotel in his pocket. He could not remember anything of it but tried to find a taxi. And finally a taxi brought him back and once seeing his wife again all memory came back to him again.

Next to our hotel was a disco and at night the whole parking lot was full with expensive German cars without license plates. I walked inside and the place was full of young and modern Chinese. I take a seat at a bar and have a drink, at my back some idiot is trying to push me off my chair but I chose to ignore it. Later when I am dancing with the cutest Chinese girl I ever have seen I notice that the guy trying to push me off my chair was actually a Chinese army boy in full military dress. Any Chinese would have given him the chair to sit, and if not you would politely be asked to get your ass out of here, but not with a foreigner. So I was a hero in the eyes of my cute Chinese girl. I did not see anything anymore except her and was starting to understand the song by David Bowie “My Little China Girl”. That was until about 1 o’clock a handsome young man introduced himself to me as the older brother who came to pick up his little sister. I walked with them to the parking and there they drove away in a BMW.

It must have been in Guilin I think where we passed a pet-shop with lovely dogs, cats and snakes. The whole group was looking at the so cute animals. That was until I pointed out that this was not a pet-shop but a restaurant. And that what they were looking at was the food. You want to order some food?

Somewhere there was a real Chinese tourist trap, a kind of Million Year Stone Park, full of Chinese tour groups who just overrun you and do not give a shit about it. Not my cup of tea, but it was on the program so let’s go. We start our walk together as a group, and then I made an appointment with the group to all meet 2 hours later back at the bus again, and so we did, at least most of us. Of course it was that 2 young boys who never listened who do not show up. Also not after just 10, 15, 20 minutes waiting. I walk to the entrance again to look if they are stupid enough to wait there for us, but no, no 2 boys. Bloody hell! The park is much too big to go looking for them. Just when I went to inform the park HQ the two boys came walking up to me happy like children “You are in the bus already?”

Although our boat trip to Guangzhou was not in the day-time, so you could not see the impressive mountains around us, it was still a very beautiful trip. This part of the river has become a traveler high-light because of the impressive natural surroundings experienced by all local travelers and later by the many tourists. But as there now is a very good high-way and a railroad most Chinese travelers prefer speed to beauty and the passenger ships are slowly disappearing. Our boat was half cargo and half passengers, but our group, with a few Chinese, were the only passengers this journey. So it was very quiet and easy on the boat, and you could almost feel the slowly disappearing glory on the ship. As the cabin was not really comfortable I decided to sleep on deck. All alone on the huge front deck I was sitting there while the ship slowly moved over the mighty river between the dark mountains. There was a full moon and a clear sky. I was sitting there and feeling myself so tiny on this huge steel ship that again looked so tiny between those mountains. And looking upon the stars in the sky even the mountains and the all world seemed to be so tiny. In a glimpse I thought about my ex-colleague’s that I had left only 6 weeks ago in their tiny office in their tiny world of TV-soaps.

Arriving at Guangzhou our trip was coming almost to an end. After 4 days we took the bus, train, and sub-way to Hong Kong, where we stayed for another 4 days. The guests went their own way and I, with one single guest from the group, took the bus to a beach of Hong Kong. In the middle of the hot boiling and immense fast world we were sitting on a beautiful, but empty, beach. All the people here seem to be too busy with working and making money to buy another gadget.

After 4 days we took the sub-way, train, and bus back to Guangzhou and the next day I brought my group to the airport from where they would fly back to their home-land. I on the other hand could not wait to fly to my next tour of duty in Thailand. A country that in the years gone by has become my home sweet home.

Chang Noi

 

© Chang Noi. All rights reserved by the author.