It’s Thursday morning, you’re on vacation and you’re up at 6 am. Why. Why! Because surfer Yann says that the best breaks are in the early morning (it’s true). Ok, vamonos: our gracious host Eugenio senior (Uge) drives us to El Tunco, which according to the Lonely Planet is one of the best places for waves in Central America.

Let me digress briefly: Uge has a very… informal driving style, which will become relevant in a while. Hold on.

Anyway, El Tunco. I’m in awe of the black (volcanic?) sand, the sea spray on a rock perfectly rising in front of the bars, the early morning sun… At this point I realize my camera is out of battery and the charger is still in Houston. Shame…

A bunch of ripped, tanned guys teaches us the basics of surfing: paddle, wait for your turn on the break, point towards beach, push up, stay low on your legs, ride it. How hard can it be? We’re even wearing stretchy tops, for crying out loud. We look like pros (except for the colour).

It is bloody hard. We paddle for what seems eternity from the shore to the break area, then we wait. It’s amazing. The waves rise up, some experts zoom by with incredible ease and speed, then my turn comes and it goes like this.

Ok ok ok paddle woo I’m been lifted up push up! push! What the f push you sonofa! what the ARGH BLUB fuck fuck fuck I’m gonna drown here OW the ocean floor swim UP UP I need air *wheeze*. “Well, if I haven’t died this time, I’m ok for a while, no?”

So I repeat the experience a couple of times, only without the fear of drowning. I discover that if the waves are so nice it’s because there’s a shallow rocky ocean floor, where I cut my feet repeatedly. The guys and I exchange opinions and we’re ready to paddle back. OMG MORE PADDLING NOOO… everyone is limp by the time we’re back there.

I try the animistic approach this time: ok sea, I respect you, but I’m gonna ride you for a minute, ok with you? It works, up to a point. After the third ARGH BLUB SPLUT I am riding – kneeling. All this water pushing me forward, fast, it is an incredible feeling. I have a little surfing stoke, that is. Then I put the weight down in the wrong way and it’s ARGH BLUB time again.

When I’m back on the shore, I feel a sharp, horrible pain on the left of my ribcage. It hurts if I breath or pretty much do anything. I am cheerfully told by Jola “Oh you have a broken rib! There’s nothing you can do.” So I spend the rest of the day short of breath and generally being a pain in the ass for everyone. No laughing, no moving too fast, and please Uge can you drive slower? Every bend in the street – A LOT of them – makes me wince. There will be a lot of driving in the coming days. Ow.

We all head for a beach club, where we will spend the rest of the afternoon: 5 of us and 200 metres of beach, palms and beer. Lots of beer since it takes the edge off the rib thing. Nothing happens and that’s great. Then comes a gorgeous seafood cocktail and we’re ready for the bachelor party.

…but let’s start from the beginning.
Pupusas welcomed my first night in El Salvador. This national dish sounds subtly obscene to my Italian ear. Pupusas with pork, with cheese, with beans… eat them ’til you fall from the chair.

Pictures this: I am chewing on the pupusas, platano and a number of other salvadorean delicatessen (“mostly corn-based” as Eu puts it) at Paulina’ place; Jola, Yann, Eugenio are there, right there. It is happening, the Utrecht reunion 10,000 km or so from Utrecht! I am so happy, but my jet lagged face probably looks sagging anyway. Everyone is tanned, relaxed and I can’t wait to get rid of my clothes. I mean for a shower.

When Eugenio and Chele had picked me up at the airport to cruise home in the warm Salvadorean night, yours truly was super excited and without a suitcase, since Continental had screwed something up in Houston. Never had I had chance to put in practice Commander Z’s “son, always put spare undies in your hand luggage, because you’ll never know if your luggage is going to wind up somewhere else”. I did, o Commander, AND I had beach trunks to boot. Thursday’s beach trip was safe.

In bed, can’t sleep because of jet lag, peacefully not worrying about the possibility of having to bribe an officer or something like that to have my luggage back. I have been fed by airlines, airports, hosts, so I’m good.

The fan blows really hard in the bedroom I share with the other guys.

Rarely have I felt as powerful as when rolling along the cobbled streets of my hometown pulling my trolley, heavy with brand new books and gifts after a day in Padua.
Crowds part, wives are pulled aside, prams half-alarmingly taken out of the way, expensive fur coats fur collars black standard-issue glasses cower in fear.
They first hear the thunder of the cheap-ass wheels, magnified by the cobbles, and then a sugar-high-crazed, pale face fueled by excessive quantities of Christmas cake chocolate sweets high-calory dried fruit. A man with a plan – a straight line in the direction of home and MORE SUGAR, which happens to go RIGHT THROUGH them.
Get out of my way! Dull-coloured jackets, expensive haircuts, out out out! I cover the incommensurable fifteen hundred (!) metres between the station and my house in record time among trolley-walkers. Somewhere in an airport some businessman is tugging his high-flyer’s trolley and thinking “woah man that’s some trolley action” without understanding why. That would be me, the rumbling wheels heard thousands of kilometres away, somehow.
I roll past teenagers who are not smiling smugly anymore and lower their eyes at such displays of trolley prowess, I am to them Strider, a Two-Wheels Wonder, a little Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles – no pavement too high, no cobble too cobbly for the wheels to trample ON.
As I near my destination, I dream of a three-storey cyber trolley I would command from vantage point, the wheels as tall as a house, causing alarm and some degree of shoving around among one-to-three-floor buildings. And why stop there? Here is a humongous ur-trolley, crunching lesser buildings and finally crossing the seas to hump the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, to the delight of engineering university students around the world and the scandal of respectable locals (who however did not like the towers that much anyway and are secretly glee at their humiliation).
Unstoppable even by car traffic, I am at my house’s doorstep. I DEMAND MORE SUGAR. BRING ME THE FINEST PANETTONE and wines to pair.

… 6 o’clock it is. The sunrise defines the shapes of the terraces from our fantastic hotel point of view and reveals foggy pockets of landscape. One of the local mutts strategically lies down on a stone ledge and lets itself appear as if thoughtfully gazing at the horizon. What a camwhore!

6.15 am: poser dog does its staring move. The girls go crazy.

The way down is fast and soon we reach the bus and then the rafting place. How great is that, I join a Chinese tour and I get free rafting. Apparently they’re trialing the place, which will open in October for the national holiday. The toilets look quite aged already, though, but much more civilized than anything I’ve seen so far. They even have doors.

I still haven’t grasped how wet I will get. Rafting is a very wet and exhilarating business. Two hours of rapids, fast slides… I’m soaked, i’ve been sitting in water for hours and i’m sunburnt. It’s fantastic: the Chinese tourists love throwing water at the “laowai” (me), I spray back with gusto. The meal at the end of the morning is also one of the best I’ve had in the country and it pleases my “local friends” that I eat from all courses and I can chew chilies, even though I’m not supposed to eat them at all, dumb foreigner.

This was a great lunch. Always trust the locals, even when you can only say xie xie and smile making funny faces to show appreciation. Haochi!

More sweat awaits as we get to Guilin, I pack my backpack up from the hostel and lumber towards the bus station, fully loaded and looking forward to Yangshuo, Erica and CC. Once more, Moyar saves the day and gets us on the right bus – I would still be there waiting if it wasn’t for her… A Chinese couple from the Jinkeng trip follows as well. We can’t speak to each other, but we’re having a good time.

Off to Yangshuo!

I am the only white person on the bus on the way to the hotel in the Jinkeng rice terraces. I am in fact booked in as ‘the white guy’…
The bus plays a promo video full of happy Yao people singing and dancing, as minorities do when they don’t smile on posters, happily gazing at the bright future. Right.

We lumber through the ugly Guilin suburbs traffic in a strange scenery: right behind the half-finished houses and the damn cables (which prevent all nice pictures), karst peaks peek out of the fog. I’m looking forward to seeing more. And less cables, if possible. The video now playing is a comedy show. The audio booms, untamed. There is no way to get rid of it!

Once we get off the bus and start climbing up towards the hotel, I smile: it was worth all the hassle. As we pass lower villages crowded with buses and walk up the path to Dazhai, the first scenarios offer themselves to the eye: tiny clusters of wooden houses floating in the rice terraces, almost ready for harvesting. And that’s just a taster, as I will discover. Yao women with empty baskets offer to carry the bags up the steep hills (one is actually washing her hair like in the videos).
I am very lucky to meet a friendly Chinese girl, expat in Singapore. We’ll stick together for the rest of the day talking English. She’s a life saver with the food: there are some other white people (DUTCH AGAIN OH NOO), but the menu is very devoid of English words.

Bamboo chicken: you grow up the bird in the tube and one day you chuck it in the fire. I'm kidding.

I discover at this point that the hotel organizes the trip as a full package: we’ll walk around together with a guide and… go on a white water rafting tomorrow. All included in the cheap rent. I am pleased.

But I am holding back my impression of the terraces. As we toil upwards towards the hotel, which is the highest of the whole area, we often stop to take the scenery in. It is amazing. Every corner, every peak of the area is covered in terraces, which snake through the landscape like a dragon’s backbone (hence the name of the area), the odd house here and there breaks the sea of green and gold.

On the way up, villages are cradled in the rice. They've been there for centuries.

I take a ridiculous amount of pictures from the 3 main viewpoints, which boast names like ‘golden Buddha hill’. The sky opens up enough to allow some dramatic shots, where a patch of light travels through the landscape, defining shapes.
It is quite a trek as we end up walking in single file for almost 6 hours on flagstones and clay paths. The last 10 minutes we get rained upon, but it’s ok. I am really on vacation

I could have stared at the view for hours, trying to spot all the shiny details like this one

The evening meal is great, thanks to my friend Moyar’s choices.
Lights go off at 10: tomorrow morning we’ll wake up at 6 to catch the sunrise!

I wonder how this will look tomorrow morning. I'm on top of the world!

Kunming è un aeroporto simpatico, ci sono giovani con vestiti tradizionali che si offrono per trasporto bagagli, numerosi fruttivendoli (dentro l’aeroporto) e la pubblicità delle misteriose pastiglie per la gola che mio padre portava dalla cina per un po’, testimonial kaka’.
È anche pieno di white people e mi ritrovo una comitiva di olandesi in aereo. L’orticaria si scatena velocemente al suono della lingua più brutta d’europa.
La destinazione, Guilin, soffre dello strascico di un tifone che ha colpito la costa: afa insopportabile, peggio che a PD, estate 2003. La ragazza dell’ostello però è contenta, perché non pioveva da un po’ e non deve bagnare i bambù.
L’ostello ha infatti come tema il bambù ed è una piacevole oasi nella parte moderna della città, orribile come tutte le città cinesi in veloce sviluppo.
Cammino in cerca di bancomat e cibo, lungo viali enormi in piena costruzione. Traffico, poca luce, edifici incombenti su questo povero ometto di provincia veneta che, diciamolo, si è perso. Mi sento un po’ come quand’ero arrivato a Memphis, unico bianco nella notte umida di una brutta periferia.
La differenza è che qui, a pensarci, non è per niente ostile. Quasi quasi torno all’ostello senza cena, ma mi faccio coraggio e punto un posticino in una laterale: c’è gente seduta e questo basta, stando alle guide.

Ce l’ho fatta! Mi sto nutrendo! Gli omini davanti a me discutono e mangino una montagna di roba.

Complice l’istinto materno della padrona, il dizionarietto e il fatto che, dopotutto, mica era un posto losco, mi sfamo con un euro, inclusa birra grande, molto apprezzata. Duoshao? shi (dita a croce a indicare 10), xie xie. Avanti così e compro una macchina, o una casa

Basta così per oggi, la mia comfort zone è stata tirata abbastanza. Domani si va alle risaie terrazzate: organizzare la tappa è stato un bel casino, spero ne valesse la pena.

With people day behind us, we start off for trekking & temples day. Dali sits at the base of 3000+ m mountains, so there are chances for challenging walks even though Jolie keeps of course rapping about Tibet, where she has just been.

After the usual crowded minibus ride, we stop in front of Guanyin Tang. This is a rich, complex temple where people worship mainly Avalokiteshvara and the local goddess Guanyin, the one I mentioned earlier, who appeared as an old woman carrying a huge boulder to scare enemies away (boulder size varies per image). There’s a lot of detail to take in here, much more than in Shaxi: the guardians, the Buddhas, several courtyards, all richly decorated and packed with writing. Jolie and I get a bit mystical. It becomes a sort of ‘Buddhism and Christianity 101′.

Guanyin Tang. I’m sure it looks more cheerful on a sunny day.

I particularly like the second courtyard, where the small shrine sits in the middle of a pool full of goldfish and carp, to symbolize the reincarnation cycle. This is also the bit of the temple related to another local legend: a demon was outsmarted by a Buddha (er, it might have been a Bodhisattva…)  and was stuck to live in a cave, on top of which the temple was built. It can only get out if one day nobody comes to the market. Twat demon .

The fish swim and swim around the shrine

We hitch a ride up the hill to reach Gantong Si, another popular temple, this time a Zen one. It used to be much larger, now all is left is a very cosy courtyard filled with trees and flowers, where we wait for lunch to be prepared for the caretaker and the monks.

Zen, man. In big letters

We enjoyed the vegetarian banquet, now it’s sweat time: we hike up a stream for 3-4 hours, getting lost a couple of times in the process. This whole area features 18 scenic streams, of which this is supposedly the best. As we climb higher, the Erhai lake becomes more visible behind us, far away.

Competing brands make peace in this tourist’s outfit, including the silly cowboy hat. Jolie did not grasp the concept of ‘force the flash’

It’s a steep climb, but all that healthy Nike life proves useful and I feel great. We sneak past the ticket booth at the end of the path, right before the scenic area. It was empty anyway.

Here is a giant Go board, set in an amazing location at the foot of a canyon, where the Qing Bi flows to the lake. The canyon itself is decorated by a couple of very buddhist features: the mandatory Avalokiteshvara statue in the middle of a quiet pool and a giant calligraphy sample painted on a naked rock – I forgot what it says.

Ancient words of wisdom and modern words of Chinglish.

I leave Jolie to rest and start off on my own up the canyon, in search of more pools like the first one. I walk and walk craving some picture material: after 30 minutes of canyon, going up and down on the narrow path and a hell of a lot of bamboo, nothing. Not a human within earshot. At this point a get my mini pseudo enlightenment and realize my desire is empty and I’m content with the sensations of energy the walk has given me OMMM. Also, my paranoia side dryly points out that I’m on my own on a narrow path up a mountain in remote China – Shut up, I’m on vacation

I literally run back to the meeting point, covering the distance in 15 minutes, feeling like a million bucks. We treat ourselves on the way back and take the cable car: there is a bird’s eye view over the stream we hiked and we mock the losers who took the cable car on the way up as well. Good job!

Damn, I’m leaving Dali tomorrow.

Hostels. Wonderful places where you can lodge like a king (a small king, but still) and spend 5 EUR per night. And they’re mostly there, on hostelworld, ready for you.

Hostels in Yunnan were great, as they are often old houses with a courtyard and nice balconies overlooking it from the upper floors. The houses fit the local architecture style, so Lijiang hostels were Naxi houses, Dali hostels had Bai features.

Panba guesthouse in Lijiang was the most beautiful. Here is the inner courtyard.

The balcony overlooking the ourtyard in the Panba guesthouse, Lijiang.

The bar within 58 guesthouse in Shaxi. The old village's 'main street' is just out of the window.

The courtyard of Jade Emu in Dali. Brilliant to sit and chill in the evening. Pool available, if you beat the Aussie owner, you get a free night

The Tibetan Lodge is one of the most famous in Dali. (fake?) prayer flags are used as a Tibet-style decoration

The place in Guilin did a good job, considered the ugly neighbourhood. No quaint old house here, but bamboo to liven up a nondescript tile building.

Wada hostel in Guilin was a very friendly environment to come back to in the horribly muggy night. They have breakfast, too.

Finally, Hong Kong. Things are different here… you could probably get a lot of vertical space, but surface, no.

Paris guesthouse. Forget the common patio, windows, walking space... still, great maintenance and friendly staff. Persistent curry smell

Even more than in the rest of the world, hostels in China work as a mini travel agency too and the Jade Emu is no exception. Trips, bikes, telephone cards (wait, i needed one x( )… I book a very convenient express bus to Kunming, 4.5 hours for 85 rmb. Express seem to mean it looks like a bus as we know it and it won’t stop to pick random pedestrians up. It delivers, but…
Somewhere 100 km or so from the goal, we are forced out of the expressway by a roadblock, the purpose of which is unknown. There is a pileup at the exit, but on a side road, so why the fuss? Buses, trucks and the odd car cram themselves in the country road, apparently without logic to my western mind. There is very little honking compared to the usual routine, strangely enough. Must be those policemen.
3 days in spiritual lands must have worked their magic on my tiny hippie side and I’m not freaking out: I need to catch a flight in the late afternoon and I might miss it, but I’m not even looking at my watch (it takes effort, admittedly). Instead I eat a tangerine and sort of contemplate my navel, Buddha-style. I reach some form of enlightenment when my very cute seat neighbour gestures that i can throw the fruit peels out of the window, which she promptly does. Sexy?
The roadblock dissolves as it had started, not without some crazy antics by truck drivers who try to weasel out of the gridlock; now we’re speeding towards Kunming, let’s hope I can make it to the airport on time. Are we tailgating a truck at 120 per hour?

The road to Kunming bus station is uber-Chinese: buses need to double back and cross a construction area to reach the station. Taxis cut our path many times, no signage is visible, but I make it, on time, worrying was useless. Ommm…

I try to catch a cab using Chinese: my first full “sentence” on my own! dao feiji qiang – they laugh at me but I have a taxi. Racist thoughts briefly cross my mind, but only briefly. I’m almost in Guilin now, closer to the rice terraces, Yangshuo and eventually Erica and CC.

While strolling around Shaping, i comment about the huge loads women carry on their backs. Jolie them tells me of a local goddess, who embodies the quintessential Yunnan woman: at the time of the Nanzhao kingdom (let’s say 1000 ago, during the Tang dinasty), she appeared to the invading eastern army as an old lady carrying a huge boulder. That scared the soldiers enough, as if an old lady could be that strong, what of the men?
Yunnan women do carry huge weights, hence the legend. The men’s occupation seems mostly to smoke, drive and squat around waiting. I’m told they bring the bread home, so they must be working at some point.

I can't help wondering what would happen if they got angry...

The market is as expected: women in local Bai minority costumes, mysterious food, tea, chili, skin baked by the mountain sun. I drink some minty jelly with white gizmos floating in it and i immediately receive a star wars-style message from my father “young man, do not eat from street markets, do not have anything with ice…” i dismiss it and give my drink to Jolie just in case. Everything will be fine at the end of the day, despite a day of street market eating. Take that, family paranoia!

Later in the day, we stop in Zoucheng. The market here takes place  under two giant trees, which shield the people from the blazing sun. I’m kind of pushed gently towards the tie-and-dye workshop of a friend of Jolie’s and it’s ok. People making stuff always interest me and the scenery of bright yellow corn drying and indigo blue vats is a great memory and it’s ok to buy two slightly tacky indigo blue pieces of tie-and-dye. It looks better than the crap ones the hippies sold in Berkeley, a long way from here…

As we get back to the bikes, I notice some murals for kids, teaching them about the basic dangers electrical appliances can be.

Jolie also explains that everyone thinks we’re poor since we biked here instead of taking the bus. That is funny on many levels.

Corn drying is a common sight in the courtyard of Yunnan houses, or even on the street of the village.

It’s time to go back to Dali: we try the smaller road, supposedly a nice ride as opposed to the crowded highway. After a while though, we must leave it. It’s continuous roadworks, lots of dust, after one hour of it I truly hate the place. I bike in front of a school and get the usual HALLOO routine from the kids, but i’m such a bad mood I wish them a life of struggle and lack of civil liberties. It’s not cute anymore little f.ers, don’t you have a television?
I stop after the school and for the first time in two hours I realise I am covered in dust, sunglasses included. And I still wear a cowboy hat, mind you. No wonder the kids were laughing… I feel quite silly. The kids were still annoying, though.