posted by wtanaka at 2/04/2003 08:12:00 AM

 

The bus rides from Mung Nuoy to Mengla in China were fairly uneventful. I met up with a pair from London, James and Mari -- we travelled together from Udomxai to Boten (on the Lao/China border) where we encountered a border guard sitting up in a shack above some stairs. There was an metal pole gate, open, across the road in front of him. He motioned for us to walk up some stairs behind him which appeared to lead into a building. Instead, they led to some stairs down to the other side of the gate.

James says, "amazing display of bureaucratic power."

The immigration official on the Chinese side was the nicest one that I've encountered yet. He also let us know that the spotlight news in the U.S. right now was that the space shuttle columbia had exploded. I found that really hard to believe at first.

The minibus trip to Mengla was pretty uneventful. We waited for a pair of Italians that were having trouble with being admitted into China. The whole time, I was tickled that the few words I knew were comprehensible to the people around me, and with some effort (and some slow, simple words on their part), I was actually able to understand what they were trying to say and interact with them.

Mengla was nice and quiet. The bank exchange desks were closed. We ended up paying the driver in US$, then getting some time consuming cash advances with credit cards. Again, with some help from my phrasebook, I was able to barely communicate what I wanted.

We stayed there overnight in what had to be a brothel. It certainly was cheap. Everyone seems to be thrilled at the little bit of chinese that I know. Or maybe just thrilled that I'm a Japanese-American. Or maybe just thrilled that I'm an american. Or maybe they liked my hairstyle.

We got on a bus from Mengla to Kunming the next morning at 7:50, after some negotiating and figuring out where to go the day before. My "getting around town" and "numbers/time" vocabulary is getting better by the day. It arrived, after stopping at several extremely small villages along the way, in Kunming at 7:10 the next morning.

In the bus station at Kunming, I went to go use the bathroom (I think I got overcharged) to wet my hair down. Right outside the bathroom was a map of kunming, so I stared at that for a while as well. James was near the chairs where we had all put our bags down, so I thought that everything was kosher. When I walked back to my bags a few minutes later, I noticed that my daypack was gone.

We wandered around the station for 20 minutes, but couldn't find it. So I tried asking someone at the desk at the station for help. There were two girls there that spoke a little bit of English, and they suggested that I call "110" to try to get a policeman to come over. I tried calling the number, but couldn't get someone that spoke english. I managed to keep the guy on the phone for a minute before he hung up because I couldn't understand him. So one of the girls came out to the phone to help explain the situation.

The police came to the station, looked around for a bit, and then took us to the station where we filed a report with the help of a police woman who had come in to work from being on vacation for spring festival.

Clearly this was something that has happened a lot. I was certainly frustrated at the whole occurance. My plane tickets were inside, and they are already proving to be a massive hassle to replace. The hard case for my eyeglasses were also inside, as well as some cash that my dad had given me before I left, which I had put in my bag in case my money belt was stolen. And my legoland hat was also there. The only really irreplacable thing was my address book, which had many jot notes of things I've done this trip and things that have happened to me, as well as contact info for people that I've met along the way.

But I feel grateful that they didn't grab my camera, that my palm pilot was in my pocket, and that I had my glasses on my face. And my bag is certainly lighter without my notebook and chinese characters book.

There's not much that I can think of doing at this point, other than check back with the bus station and the police station, which I'll do before I leave Kunming and again if I come back through Kunming later. So I figure that there's no point in stressing out about it. May as well enjoy being in China.