Travel Photography | 43. Exploring The Ancient Town of Pingle with someone special

So, for now, we were travelling together with Annie. Things were certainly looking up in my life! First of all, she had never been so far away from home, so dropping everything to come travel with me was a HUGE deal. It still is (that's probably one of the reasons I married her, actually). 🙂

I love bamboo and I want YOU to love bamboo too! Grows fast, is durable, edible, easily made to fabrics, great for construction and beautiful!

15-17.11.11

Took a bus from Chengdu to a smaller city and a minibus to Pingle, a small ancient town, over 2000 years old!

We heard it was a really touristy but as luck would have it, it was low season and absolutely no tourists to be seen anywhere! In fact, we were wondering how the people make their living because as sure as hell the locals weren't buying the ridiculous tourist crap on offer.

The side alleys (not like on the picture) were really enticing and by the two days we spent in Pingle, I think we went through all of them. It was a really small place. Hate the fact that much of the place is re-done in the name of promoting tourism which in my opinion should have the opposite effect 😦

The atmosphere was ally calming and almost serene. Maybe also because most of the time it felt like it was just the two of us there 🙂

Took one of these too, following the principle “why not." Later it seemed like quite a stupid idea as it is not convenient at all. Nevertheless, always an experience.

There was no capturing the beauty of the night with my equipment (iPhone 4). Here’s my attempt though.

I tried to muster all my courage to kiss Annie for the first time by this river. But I could just stand there holding her. (Actually it was not the first time I tried but that story is too long to include here. Maybe I will write a separate post about it in case someone is interested?)

To my luck though, we kind of got lost in the night (because it was so dark without street lights). Once we found our way to our hotel, she kissed me as a "thank you." How could I have been so clueless? Turns out she had wanted to kiss me too, since Beijing! (Actually, there is a "reasonable" explanation that involves Chinglish and mixed signals that I'm not going to get into right now.)

Even here in a small town the construction workers are moonlighting. Work is life in China!

Creepyish.

This granny served us with some amazing spicy potatoes and some fresh pomelo, that has now become my new favourite fruit. Yum! Her hands were wrinkly but probably stronger than mine judging by the ease she dismantled that pomelo. I kind of felt like I should have offered to help but two things came to mind:

1. Maybe she takes great pride in her work (as Chinese sometimes do) and may have taken offense if I offered to do her job, insinuating that she might not be up to the task anymore.

2. She might have well upstaged me in the fruit peeling department which might have reflected poorly on Annie's opinion about me.

So I just watched.

I bought those gloves for Annie. Never understood why girls want hello kitty (Go-to-hell Kitty) and fluffy bears though.

What an awesome way to make awful tasting candy!

Sacrifice.

Took a walk away from the tourist centre to find some authentic rural lifestyle.

Not fat enough! Back in the pen!

My idea. It's not funny, I know.

After two days of pretty much doing nothing, it suddenly dawned on me: I only had one more week left on my visa!

Time to start thinking about leaving China 😥

The most feasible route to Hanoi, Vietnam at that place and time was through Nanning, Guanxi.

Luckily Annie decided to accompany me for another 32 hours of great train-riding fun! Even more fun was that the were no sleepers left, so we settled for hard seats, which was not so bad (yup, still crazy about trains after more than 20 000 kilometres).

Also got to read a bulk of my latest book purchase, the Steve Jobs autobiography, downloaded appropriately on my iPad. An awesome and insightful book, you should read it if you haven't had the chance.

Before hitting the road, we still had time to meet up with Summer one last time for some dinner and drinks (for lunch we had KFC, naturally). Thanks Summer!

88 (ba ba) Chengdu!

Stop selling those tickets!

Thanks for reading!

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(First published 17/11/2011 at LiveJournal)

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