A Day of Festivities and Bus Rides

After three uneventful but very relaxing nights at the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces, it was time to make a move. The morning of my departure though saw the village explode with colours and music as the locals got out their best traditional dress and instruments and celebrated something. Who knows what. But it was pretty cool.

After the festivities it was time to make the journey to Chengyang. A short journey on a cramped local bus was followed by a somewhat more comfortable journey on a regular bus for 5 hours. At one point woman sat down beside me with a little kid on her lap. I hate sitting beside people with small children sitting on them because eventually they always let the kids slide from their grip and next thing you know you’ve got half a smelly baby on your lap or its hair is touching your arm or something equally annoying. But then again, I am pretty easily annoyed.

I was staring out the window at the beautiful scenery, listening to some music, and just relaxing when the woman with the kid sort of reached across me with her hand and threw something out the window. Turns out the kid had eaten one grape too many and had puked into grannie’s hand. If that doesn’t kill a chilled out mood, I don’t know what will. Toilet paper was passed around, hands and mouths were wiped, and a plastic bag was positioned in front of the barf baby.

Later on, the bag sort of drifted my way and I caught it before it went out the window and went to give it back to the grannie. She motioned for me to throw it out the window and I was going to be annoying and set an example by putting it the offending trash into my bag to throw away later in a garbage bin. But then I caught a quick glimpse of something purple on the bag that I suspect was baby grape spew. So out the bus window went the bag. Do I feel guilty? Yes. But there is no way I’m carrying around baby puke in my purse. Environment be damned in that case.

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