Today, Christmas Day, we will take Jana’s Blessing and a van back to Tengchong and catch a bus for Ruili on the China-Burma border.

While we sit here at 7:00am bleary-eyed waiting for the water to get hot so we can take a shower we are wishing each other and you HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!

It means good luck, Jana said as we listened to the cricket in our room at the Hot Springs…it was prophetic…we were going to have another adventure!

On the ride into Tengchong I wondered how much the automobile companies saved by not installing shocks on the minivans…another Chinese mystery. Then, eating noodles at a sidewalk stall in front of the bus station, we were delighted when a young girl sat down with her bowl…good morning she said eating quickly…she only had 10 minutes before her bus left for Baoshan…on her way to a rock music concert…oh we wish we could go with you we said…she plays the piano, sings and dances she says…so excited to meet foreigners she laughed…then seriously-English is very important!

Waiting for the bus we saw three of the six people we met at the Myanmar Tea House! Then Li Bing from the T.C.C. Cafe came in to see off a friend…wished us Merry Christmas and we wished him a happy Chinese New Year…

As the bus detoured down a pot-holed dirt road through some vegetable fields and across an old stone bridge to get to the next little town I said to Jana…you know…we piss and moan but I wouldn’t travel any other way. I wouldn’t either she said.

But we no more than smiled at each other over this thought when the guy behind blew cigarette smoke…and when Jana opened her window the guy behind with a mean face closed it again….can see him in the driver’s mirror she said…we could get into a big fight with him if we wanted, I said laughing…that’s all I need Jana groaned. Then we talked about how traveling was a metaphor for life…have to go through a lot of drudgery in order to experience the high points…like marriage or backpacking or running a marathan…but then of course you have a story to tell afterward!

On the way south to Ruili we drove through little Chinese villages…trucks full of firewood, full of sacks with contents of unknown origin, full of rocks…vendors on each side of the road with barely space for one lane of traffic wending it’s way…like through a parking lot…careful not to hit the women in ethnic dress sitting behind their little piles of oranges and spinach. Then through a town full of carved cement slabs for burial markers…ladies with cream-colored towel headdresses…then a pick-up full of ethnic ladies with bright pink dresses & and pink towel headdresses…people barely moving out of the way as the bus honks it’s way through…another whole town making nothing but bricks.

There are so many people in the world I say…everyone thinks they are the center of the universe. The “issues” we thought were so important back home have taken on a distinct perspective. We have it very very good and have no idea how lucky we are to be born in America.

Then ancient terraces full of green vegetables together with modern tomatoes covered with plastic and back up and over the mountain range on a dirt road that threatened to shake the bus into it’s parts. Our laps held a picnic of mandarin oranges, boiled eggs, crackers and water. But when a poor old woman, on her way to visit her grandchildren in Riuli ran out of her tolerance for switchbacks and vomited profusely all over the floor our picnic lay uneaten.

Then the bus stopped behind a long line of vehicles waiting for the construction workers to open up a way for us ahead. Everyone piled out of the cars and buses to sit on a grassy area for an hour and a half…waiting…while we listened to the entire Chinese Men’s Chorus…the chorus of hacking and spitting…incessently…one after the other…like dogs marking their territories we thought! It got to us…now we each have a cold. The women talk loudly…like they are angry…but we don’t think they are. Finally, it is a relief to pile into the bus again and at the summit the road suddenly turned from ancient cobblestone to blacktop again.

Further on it is impossible to discern the names of the towns…we think this must be a little like what the migrant workers from Mexico feel when they are brought to Oregon by the coyotes and sold into bondage to the labor contractors…not knowing where in the world they are.