Now some may have noticed that we have taken a little longer than normal to write and post our blogs on China. Now we had a fantastic time in China and the landscapes, the culture and the people (apart from the tourism folks) made for a great experience.
But since our departure from China we noticed that unbeknownst to us we had become somewhat subdued in our emotions, we are not sure what it was or why it happened but for sure we had feelings of being subdued.
Whether it was the constant grey skies, the often isolation from the local people due to language barriers, the way of life in China or the impact of communism or maybe a little of everything, something definitely affected us.
The first I noticed a difference was on our first evening in the sleepy town of Luang Namtha, we were in a local café run by two Kiwi’s who were great hosts, first off for dinner I had Chicken, Mushrooms, Pasta and Pesto, one of my favourite dishes and it was amazing which was washed down with a fine rather large bottle of Beer Lao, arguably one of the best beers we have had on our journey!
But I digress, we were sat there catching up on all things that were blocked in China such as Facebook and Twitter etc, all of a sudden I heard a familiar tune from the stereo in the café, it was Superstylin by Groove Armada (amazing tune - if you have never heard it go buy it now!), it sparked off a train of thought that I don’t recall hearing music for a while, then I heard the laughter from a table of travelers outside, I thought I don’t recall hearing laughter for a while, I searched for the BBC website, up it came I could see and read the news again!
It is not that I did not hear music, or laughter or even read the news for the last few weeks, maybe it was the fact that I had not been able to hear and see what I know and am used to in my world and culture! Maybe it was the fact that what I did see and hear I did not understand. To whatever extent we felt China had subdued our emotions, it did not change the fact that we had a great time, and it was by far one of the toughest challenges of our journey so far, but that’s what we signed up for, the adventure!
We will probably mull over the experience for sometime but what is for sure is that we definitely both experienced writers block, we have been struggling for a couple of weeks to write and talk about our experiences, normally we are brimming with enthusiasm and zest for our blogs, as you know I personally find it hard to write any shorts blogs! Haha
But needless to say we are getting back on track and the words are starting to flow again!