First Baijiu hangover in a long time
September 29th, 2005 by Greg
I didn’t make it to Fenghuangcheng (凤凰城) – Peacock Town in the end. I’m in Kunming instead nursing my first Baijiu hangover for a few years.
As its the Chinese National Day on the 1st October everyone in China is travelling and its really difficult to get tickets anywhere. I decided that if I went to Peacock Town I’d probably get stuck there (I do plan to go there soon though), and I didn’t want to be stuck in Beijing for the next two weeks. So I flew down to Kunming at great expense as there weren’t any train tickets left. I’ve decided to spend the next week or so chilling out and doing some “research” in Yunnan Province. I had been planning to get a bus to Dali today but I’m so hungover that it’ll have to wait till tomorrow.
I’m staying at a really cool hostel called The Hump – its got a roof terrace and a particularly comfy bar area. Last night I went out for dinner with a guy from Bristol and two Aussies. Then we came back here for more drinking, babyfoot and pool. The evening deteriorated when we started drinking with a group of young Chinese people. One of the girls challenged us to drink Baijiu with them, something that I clearly could not refuse to do. And then it was all downhill from there. Either China has really changed since I was last here or they were particularly rebellious but it never used to be common to see girls getting completely pissed before. It was a fun night but my head is hurting in the unique way that only baijiu can cause.
Incidentally, the flight down to Kunming was on a massive jumbo jet. All the internal flights I’ve been on in the past have been on much smaller aircraft. I suppose as people are getting more prosperous more people are flying rather than training it, although it was a route that would have taken almost 2 days by train.
So, going to find out about going to Dali tomorrow and spend the rest of the day taking it easy as my brain will not allow for much else.
