La vie décousue

The cur­tain is town

Sep­ar­a­tion has ended

Sal­va­tion is mine.

Died upon a cross

Des­cen­ded into Hades

Rose vic­tori­ous

Death and sin no longer reign

The Father’s plan is fulfilled.

Betrayed with a kiss
Obed­i­ent as a lamb
Alone at the end.

Full moon rising high
Beast emerges from within
Lonely howls echo.

I didn’t have inter­net access over the last few days of my trip, so I’ll give a quick run down here:

Day 5: Didn’t do much. Met up with some friends of my par­ents for lunch and din­ner, and picked up some clothes I had tailored.

Day 6: Began my jour­ney home. I flew from Kun­ming to Guan­zhou and got food pois­on­ing from the air­line food. This led to a most unpleas­ant flight from Guan­zhou to Singapore.

Day 7: Had a 7 hour transit in Singa­pore, which gave me time to get a hotel room where I could throw up, shower, and rest in peace, to recover from the food pois­on­ing, fol­lowed by my flight home to Sydney. Nor­mally I have a really dif­fi­cult time with cus­toms when arriv­ing in Sydney, but this time it was fine. They tar­geted a girl stand­ing behind me, who fit the same demo­graph­ics as myself. So for the first time in many years, I was not led to the “spe­cial” table, but had to line up with every­one else

Yes­ter­day I flew to Kun­ming, the final des­tin­a­tion of this trip. The roads here are big and smooth — I am really impressed! My par­ents took me to eat at a bone res­taur­ant. It’s basic­ally a steam boat, but with lots of big pig bones to munch on.

Today, we went to visit the fam­ous Stone Forest. It was won­der­ful, though full of slip­pery steps without hand rails. Def­in­itely not a place for dis­abled people to visit, unfor­tu­nately. I sup­pose there are parts that a per­son could see without climb­ing up the nar­row pas­sages, but you would miss out on a lot of the sights.

After the Stone Forest, we went to eat “Cross­ing the Bridge noodles”, a spe­cialty of Kun­ming. They were great. (I don’t mean to come across as a glut­ton, but I can’t help but blog about all the yummy food that I get to eat ) I have been tak­ing heaps of pho­tos with my new cam­era, but won’t know how they have turned out until I get home.

I arrived in Guan­zhou today. The last time I was here was nearly 20 years ago, and boy has it changed! Everything is new and mod­ern. The shop­ping area is spa­cious and col­our­ful, and McDonald’s has a new spicy chicken bur­ger which tastes fab­ulous… Is it ter­rible of me to travel around the world and eat at McDonald’s? They do have dif­fer­ent menus in dif­fer­ent places

Any­way, the trip was pretty unevent­ful. As my fam­ily and friends all know, for some reason I am always tar­geted by cus­toms offi­cials when I arrive in a coun­try (any coun­try), and China was no excep­tion Thank­fully my bags weren’t com­pletely taken apart, and it all went rel­at­ively smoothly. No com­plaints from me!

I met up with my par­ents today, and tomor­row we’re fly­ing off again. I guess I’m leav­ing a pretty big car­bon foot­print on this trip.

I have decided to try and blog about my travels. Unfor­tu­nately, the decision has come pretty late in the game I used to travel a fair amount, but this trip may be my last for a while. Oh well. In a way, that alone makes it worth­while to blog about for posterity’s sake!

I flew to Singa­pore today and will be in transit here overnight, before fly­ing to Guan­zhou tomor­row morn­ing. I don’t know whether or not I’ll have inter­net access there, so I may not be able to post any­thing. One (of the many) great things about Singa­pore air­port are the numer­ous free inter­net ter­min­als scattered around the place.

The flight here was great. So great, in fact, that we some­how arrived 1.5 hours earlier than sched­uled. That’s got to be some kind of record.

I had planned on buy­ing a new cam­era for this trip. Before leav­ing Sydney, I searched and searched for the cam­era I wanted at the price I wanted. Unfor­tu­nately, every­where that had it at the price I wanted had sold out, and the places that hadn’t sold out, were too expens­ive. I figured I’d just buy the cam­era in Singa­pore instead. Turns out they only have the really expens­ive new mod­els in stock at the air­port, which isn’t what I wanted. So I thought I’d look at my second choice options, but that brand doesn’t have inter­na­tional war­ranty. Sooo.…. I ended up listen­ing to a sales­man and buy­ing some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. It’s a Sam­sung. I’ve never had a Sam­sung cam­era; never wanted Sam­sung cam­era; never even looked at a Sam­sung cam­era. I feel like I’ve betrayed my com­mon sense, not only buy­ing a dif­fer­ent brand than I am accus­tomed to, but buy­ing a cam­era by just trust­ing a sales­man, and not doing my own research. Hope­fully, it will turn out to be a great buy… Fin­gers crossed!

This is a haiku about my favour­ite stuffed dog called Woof Woof. He’s been with me for over 23 years

Bald patches grow­ing
Ancient seams unrav­el­ling
Etern­ally dear.

Rem­nants of beauty
Deeply hid­den beneath snow
Cruel mir­ror of truth
Des­per­ate striv­ing to reclaim
That which will never return.