Eating in a country where you can’t read the menu or speak the language is fantastic. We’ve become comfortable with finding the best smelling thing, pointing at it, and saying “zhe ge” or “na ge” (this or that), and finishing the transaction with smiles, nodding, and gestures. Unfortunately, this means I can’t tell you what I’m eating.

This one is a glutinous dough, cooked on a griddle, maybe with cheese, onion, garlic, and chili, eaten on a stick.

We should really eat more things on sticks in the US.

Today was tough. Shenzhen is louder, more confusing, and more difficult to navigate than Hong Kong, and my feet hurt as badly as I can ever remember them hurting, ever.

But I believe in finding things to be grateful for, always. So, here goes:

1. I am grateful that we are in a place that is more different than anywhere I can ever remember being, and that we can enjoy this amazing privilege of traveling and visiting Asia for the first time.

2. I am grateful that this hotel room is the same price as the one in HK but 6-7 times larger, and the nicest place I’ve ever paid for with my own money.

3. I’m grateful for translation apps, which helped us pay for our room and identify food today, the steripen, which allows us to drink clean water, and the VPN, which is giving me free range access to the internet.

4. I am grateful for fried pork (OMG GOOD), Hawthorne fruit gummies, “bean skin”? (Like an omelette with rice, mushroom, meat and beans?), and real passion fruit juice. I am grateful that the food here is fantastic, and I’m grateful that so much of it is not fish.

5. I’m grateful for my adventure partner, who makes even the long, hard travel days a lot funner.

On every bus and train stop, the announcements or signs remind you to “take care of the old and children”. I really like that.

Even the way that bus drivers drive very carefully when next to mopeds and scooters demonstrates how much this culture values human life and takes care of the vulnerable.

Sometimes, the vulnerable are silly white people who can’t read any signs and need help figuring out where to get hot water or queue for the bus and, in these situations, we’re taken care of, too.

I feel as safe here as I’ve felt anywhere.

(Photo: XingPing water wheel on the Li River, Guangxi Province.)

Journal entry from 9/8/18:

Typhoon Mangkhut shut down the train between Yangshuo and the coast and cut off the path to our flight out of HK. This forced us to rebook and extend our trip by 6 days.

The weather isn’t great, but we’re safe, and we’re going to make the best of this opportunity by traveling a bit further inland before heading home.

I’m happy to report that we’re really starting to figure out this bus-train-metro thing and it’s actually not so difficult once you get the hang of it. Here’s Josh, riding the bus to the Yangshuo metro station while booking two bullet trains to Guilin and Changsha. It’s great to be able to do these things on the fly and keep a flexible schedule so that we can adapt to the weather and travel conditions as we go.