I have been slow to wrap up the trip, distracted by a series of events in Shenzhen and around China that have conspired against my efforts to keep a timely log of activity here. Nevertheless, I am pressing onward, picking up the thread of the story from Luang Prabang, where we dropped down on an arduous overnight bus back to Vientiane, then managed to walk over the border into Thailand, spending the day in a small city called Nong Khai, doing our best to kill time at various restaurants. We had our best stints at an old governor’s mansion that for some reason was fully equipped with a sitting room of leather chairs and ceiling fans, as well as operable Western toilets, and we made camp there for a few hours. The last stretch we killed in an unbelievably comfortable Internet cafe. After a week in Laos it was a pleasure to feel cold.

From Nong Khai we bussed overnight (again) to Bangkok, reaching one of the outer bus stations early in the morning and avoiding the taxi touts to get into town for a fair price, staying once more in the Khao San Road area, where I had been before. Thailand (or I guess Bangkok) was more or less the same, and full of tourists. We wandered down Khao San one night watching the mixture of big-spending Thais and hipster Westerners boozing up before putting in early. The weather was nice though, hot but not unbearable, and that made the whole place easier to stomach.

Highlights of the city for me included Wat Arun, a tall stupa on the western bank of the Chao Phraya with a great view of the city and its multipunctuated skyline. Additionally I enjoyed a walk through the National Museum and an iced coffee at one of the ferry piers, sitting upstairs and watching the comings and goings whilst waiting to meet up again with Andrew and Anna. The water taxi, to me, is one of the nicer aspects of Bangkok, and the long, narrow boats ply the waters with regularity, a genuine mixture of the tourist and local. There was also the Skytrain that flies high above the central city and offers nice views, but sadly does not take us to the airport, so we had to pay a pretty sum to get home.

At home, the activity didn’t end. Within a few days, Andrew was not feeling well and was lucky enough to go to a Chinese hospital to be examined. Within a day it was found that he had a faulty appendix and the sucker had to go. I got there just before he went under the knife, and waited outside with our Chinese contact teacher/translator until they brought out a large chili pepper-looking organ in a tin cup. Apparently that is how they inform you that the operation is a success. After a few days in the hospital recovering, Andrew is back and running, helping me split up my painful 13 hour work week and feels healthy once more.

The other major news, which I’m sure you know, is we had the earthquake in Sichuan. No, I did not feel it, and Shenzhen and the rest of Guangdong was untouched by the monster. Sichuan is however a mess, and its fascinating and heartening to see the mobilization and recovery efforts that the Chinese are putting forth, particularly in contrast with the situation in Burma after the cyclone hit. Today we had a moment of silence (the first of three days of mourning) for three minutes. This came in the midst of an afternoon lesson, at the time the quake hit, and it was a little perturbing to imagine the situation happening then, particularly as the emergency sirens wailed the entire 3 minutes. The schools here are stacked high, and in Sichuan a lot of casualties came from the collapse of these buildings, so imagining what they was like was a bit frightening.

Sichuan aside, China never seems to stand still. Last Sunday we got corralled into the painting performance (read: murals) at the school, where we painted American and Chinese flags next to each other and later realized how useful it was for staging cheesy diplomatic poses. The Olympic Torch spent a day in Shenzhen as well, shutting the city down and flooding the TV with images of a person running and waving for 30 seconds then handing off the flame with a weak high five to another, and the process repeating. If it sounds boring, it was. But damned if the Chinese weren’t all along the route cheering like madmen (Zhongguo Jiayou! Go China!). It’s an eventful time to be here.