plus size seatmate

very big 

with a big backpack 

oozing into my center seat 

the foot the elbow the arm and the jacket 

excuse me 

i am asian 

i really do not like 

to be in contact with a male 

who is not my husband 

please

goodbye massage

 

personalized to my sore points

with piped-in muzak

my little cocoon of 30-minute bliss 

bauble

my frivolous totally juvenile final purchase before we fly back tomorrow morning. 

girl's got to have her luggage tags.

lost

HOM leaves his phone in the ride. this leaves us with a cold feeling in the heart.

by God's grace and thanks to the driver's kindness he has it back again.

what i say is, you are not losing a phone you are losing a wallet.

what i also say is, that cold feeling in the heart, it can get quite cold.

brrrr

rainy day out. hotel room a/c fixated on 19 degrees C. nursing a cough.

the best place to camp out in the room is on the heated toilet seat.

GZ!

back in guangzhou! 

cosmopolitan noisy brash in turn sophisticated and rude the city of great food! and modern hotel i.d. with heated toilet seats!

very glad to be back for another quickie weekend before we decamp home.

thoughts about tour guides

necessary to a smooth queue-free research-minimum trip, yes.

nightmare versions this trip:

• the one who didn't get the memo about relaxed and stuffed the day with additional activities
• the one who chain smoked (gah gah gah)
• the one who spoke loudly and you could imagine the spit
• and the one who wouldn't stop talking
• the one who brought you to tea shops and horse riding stops and tried to get you to the tribal dinner 'n' dance
• and the one who asked personal questions in order to build rapport (horrors)

i tell people it is important to not pay money to suffer.

my favorite guide was the second driver. quiet gentle thoughtful and punctual.

goodbye yunnan!

we've had a week-and-a-half of sweeping soul-enhancing vistas mushrooms to overflowing and enough lectures about silver and tribal culture and tibetan buddhism to make us psuedo-experts.

i am ready for bland canto cuisine cleaner bathrooms and all round cosmopolitan amenities now.

next-level toilet

on the way to shangri-la we take a loo break at a heavy vehicle check-in stop. the complex is vast and the loos are right in the back and quite ammoniacal from before you get to them.

i approach the bank of doors and push one open to find a woman crouched over the loo and back away in embarrassment. she is however most kind and tells me, go down this way. you'll find plenty of loos without doors there!

i do love visiting china but i confess i am not intrepid at all. also, i need doors.

meituan ♡

here you go! our third takeout of the night, delivered twenty minutes after placing the order.

coffee and basque cheesecakes from auntea jenny, in case you were wondering.

what did we have earlier today?

chicken and veggie and egg.

and another coffee and basque cheesecakes. as you can tell, we love the basque.

potatso national park

unreservedly sweepingly beautiful with rolling meadows (complete with yak turds) mirror lakes and ranges of mountains beyond mountains. 

yet i find myself quite unable to warm up to the place. the architecture is too ethnic the cuisine is too hearty meaty and the culture is too foreign.

high altitude medicine

i am given many tips to deal with the elevation of shangri-la. take prophylactic whiffs from the oxygen canister! 2 whiffs before sleep! walk slowly! drink more water! do not on any account bathe on your first day!!

some advice is perhaps more evidence-driven than others although it is all intensely generously and unsolicitedly well-meaning. the writers of the yellow book would have apoplexy if they knew what stuff is floating out there.

in full disclosure, i take a cold-ish 3-minute shower. because.

leaping tiger

magnificent and all barely-restrained raw power and totally glad i made the trek thru the mass of humanity to partake of this sight. this trip has shown me more worldly wonders than i think i can internalize.

date nite, lijiang old city

we pop in before the crowd does and have the upstairs bar to ourselves and the lone guitarist singing his heart out.

after dinner on a rainy night a nice tenor and mando-canto-pop. good stuff.

photo opppppp

we visit yulong shan

 which is genuinely effortlessly gorgeous

and appears to be wedding photography central

of bangles 'n stuff

you'll know a woman is spoken for by the jade bangle she wears on her left wrist, the guide says. she will only take it off after in separation. i look at mine and smile at HOM. some of us will not take it off because the hand has grown coarser than the bangle!

goodbye dali!

• gorgeous views. 风花雪月is real. (although we catch only a fraction)
• great food. cos i tend towards vegge-heavy preferences so we match 
• plentiful jadeite silver indigo-cloth souvenirs but little of good quality
• bumpy roads. perhaps also poor vehicle suspension?
• awful (malodorous and unflushed) and sparse public loos
• solid internet connection and continued meituan access

dallying in dali (not)

i wish they would let me dally. dali is pretty and the flowers are a-plenty but the tour guide is most task-focused in getting us to cover as much ground as possible. da-ka has become the word of the day, i notice. nooooo, i want to protest. i don't need to mark my attendance and confirm i have been to any place! what i would like is to sit idly at a nice spot and shoot the breeze, itinerary be damned.

fortunately it is dry and hot today.

dallying in dali

we arrive 3 hours early due to judicious and serendipitous hustling. this next stop has been mercifully dry so far. am i glad to leave behind 3 days of incessant rain and constant damp!

really wet day

we take in the sights of teng chong. that is to say, the guide tries hard to help us appreciate the sights.

the sights are pretty enough but unfortunately much marred by the unceasing rain because no matter how you look at it i am just not a diehard tourist i am a city girl who needs my creature comforts and i like them dry.

if the rain continues tomorrow i might need to park meself in the van.

jingcheng dihai hot spring hotel

 

palatial set-up. breakfast delivered to the room. we lose our way looking for the elevators.

rainforest

we hike. what i say is, i am very grateful for gore-tex. although the waterfall is pretty too.

mangshi hotel (estab. 1956)

very much a grand dame in look and feel. complete with faded carpeting climb-in bathtub soap and shampoo in tiny bottles and heavy wooden furniture that gives me two new bruises within an hour. but also (much appreciated) firm mattress pillow options and bedside charging access. and, as i tell HOM, a to-die-for view from the comfort of my room. bonus: an osmanthus tree planted by zhou enlai.

of night markets, rain, and getting older

the gang plan a street food dinner at the night market. i am sorry to report that i decide to have dinner delivered to the room and catch the gradual glowing up of the pagoda.

comes a time a girl has got to say, it's the rainy season in the tropics, guys. gimme my creature comforts. meituan is wonderful. as is dinner.

my year off - robert mccrum (1998)

memoir of a 42-year-old man who suffers a stroke. the account is thoughtful philosophical and surprisingly upbeat. he writes quite beautifully, which restores my confidence in publishers and makes me want to specially read faber & faber books. 

the main beef i have with him is that he is sometimes medically inaccurate, although of course that gives an insight to his perspective. and he is a little medically quaint too, because he writes from a time when people had strokes and left the hospital with just aspirin.

the one thing i learn from him is how fatiguing it can be. 

red eye travel

bloodshot, more like. two sleepless flights and a car ride later we tumble out into a hotel one can only describe as quaint.

on the other hand, the sleeping facilities at kunming airport are wonderful, with a mattress for every budget. it's a near-camping-hostel-living-like experience but very clean.

also, as we descend into the dehong mangshi airport we have to lower the shades on account of security reasons so it all feels very hush hush and momentous.

off again!

always grateful for the opportunity and ever mindful of the privilege of jiving off again.

watch this space!

i've been waitin'

one icky sweaty muggy day and four cold showers later we finally sight the clouds.

actually, five cold showers later.

make that six.

doxology

40 years almost to the day from when we had the first sunday service at the current location. really? that sounds so long ago! i feel young yet. have 40 years passed?

the new building is where HOM and i meet and where we wed and bring up J1 and J2, at least for part of their fragmented childhood. it is the home to which we return from foreign assignments and, these days, from our travel adventures. it is where we are held to the most account, of all the churches and amongst all the small groups.

my heart and my soul swell as we sing, praise God from whom all blessings flow... praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

doctored - charles piller (2025)

 

heavy-going but interesting. a little bit disjointed and kinda messy. you get upset with the villains but unfortunately there is no satisfactory resolution. i guess that is the problem with accounts of history as it unfolds and the end is not written yet. it is a troubling but enlightening read.

my man the plumber

HOM changes the bathroom tap.

as in, tap leaks and mildew grows. (real) plumber quotes for new tap. HOM decides he can do better and besides it's not rocket science. HOM buys new tap and installs it. voilà!

one could start a second career soon.

unexpectedly pleasant encounter

lovely young man on the helpline trying to get me thru with my face verification function who says ah! in a most reassuringly knowing tone and then cheerfully walks me thru the steps to successfully set it up.

what i appreciate the most, i tell HOM, is that he is so clearly present with me in my agony and is so openly thinking aloud as we work through the steps that i gladly submit to his instructions and forget to don my usual crabby luddite persona for when i am flummoxed by tech. 

thank you sir!

poco vino

the shiraz comes in a dinky bottle and is surprisingly drinkable. it is nice to end the day this way with a great view to boot.

surprised by quality

pretty decent cheesecake and almost certainly the best cake i've had this side of the causeway yet. now to see whether the blood sugar shoots up to decide if it is as good as it tastes.

the arthur truluv books - elizabeth berg

of which there are 3: the story of arthur truluv (2017), night of miracles (2018), and the confession club (2019).

arthur truluv catches me and holds me tight in his gentle otherworldly kindly embrace and i enjoy his story and lucille's (and iris's and monica and tiny's). but the magic peters out after one-and-three-quarter books and i find myself reading from the final chapter forwards for the last book.

she writes better than debbie macomber but not as well as maeve binchy or marian keyes.

a walk in the park

we join the older adults' fellowship group for their quarterly walk this morning, HOM and i. the heavens declare the glory of God, someone shares. the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 

and it's true. in a way i mostly hardly notice and certainly do not pay enough attention to, there are lovely things to look at if only i bother to. 

in other news, those gorgeous heavy-laden almost-violet promising-rain clouds in the background never delivered.

big gah

when you remember to tell them to leave out the pickle but you let them put the onion in because you are thinking of the in-n-out grilled onions but then the carl's jr. burger comes with raw onions and now you cannot get the taste out of your mouth even after a rescue ice cream.