Go Big or Go Home

Our family enjoys experiencing different cultures. We believe that when you're in another culture you should "go big or go home", meaning... eat native as much as possible, take the public transportation, and live life alongside the locals. So that's exactly what we set out to do on our day off.

Steve studying what we would discover are inaccurate bus routes

We headed out mid-morning to catch the bus to the smaller mall, do a little shopping, eat lunch and catch the bus back home. Steve checked the bus route online to the best of our ability, grabbed our phones with Google translate, snapped a quick picture of the front of our hotel (in case we needed the name in an emergency).

Best picture I took ALL day. Read on to discover why!

Then we walked to the road and watched for the bus. We are in such a rural area there's only ONE bus so no confusion there. There's no real bus stops out here either so you just flag down the driver.

Here comes the bus!

We flagged one down and boarded to the shocked stares of the locals. We may just be the first foreigners on their bus.

Yes we even took a selfie on the bus because we have no shame.

Once we reached the town area we had to switch buses. We switched onto what we thought was the bus line that would take us to the mall. We rode and rode and finally the bus stopped. We were the only two people left on the bus. The driver looked at us and started asking questions...in Chinese. Google translate to the rescue! We were NOT on the correct bus but he told us the number of the bus that would take us where we needed to be. Yay! So we sat on the bus while he took his 10min break and rode with him to the correct stop for the other bus.

All alone on the bus. Whoops!

Smooth sailing to the mall. At the mall we walked around some and checked out the grocery section. We had quite a few stares and some of the younger people tried out their English on us. We bought a few snacks and some drinks.

Entrance to the mall

Chip flavors that we didn't choose

Soy sauce selection

Then we ate lunch in the mall. Again the translate app was a great tool and we quickly ordered everything we wanted and a bowl of soup that we didn't know we ordered but was quite tasty so no big deal.

Then we went out to find the bus back to the hotel. We got on the first bus and looked for the stop to change to the rural bus back to our new home. We exited where we thought it should be, crossed the street and walked to the bus stop. Nope, not our bus. So we had to decide which direction on the street to go for the next stop and hopefully our rural bus. We chose the direction of the hotel and started walking.

And we walked.

And we walked.

Then we walked through a construction area and a farmers market where no white man had ever set foot before (at least that's what it felt like based on the stares).

Then we walked to the yet another bus stop that still wasn't our bus. But we were heading toward the hotel so we reasoned that eventually the bus would come back to this road.

Then the sidewalk ended and we walked along the main road.

Yes, we were basically walking along a highway

And then we walked some more.

And then Steve spotted a place called The Villas. There is a hotel there and we reasoned that we could find someone to just call us a cab.

So with The Villas looking like a mirage in the distance we walked on.

Once at The Villas we found some people and with the help (yet again) of Google translate we thought we called a cab. Turned out the man that was calling was really just calling his military buddy. He showed up in his car and we all piled in. I showed them the picture of the hotel I had thankfully snapped on our way out. Off we went with much laughing as we talked back and forth through the phone app.

They drove us straight to our front door. We definitely overpaid by Chinese standards but it was well worth the $17 to us!

Back in our room Steve pulled up a map and figured out we walked 4.2 miles from that last bus stop to The Villas. We had almost 5 miles to go! Then he began to figure out what we did wrong and what we'll do different next time. Because that's how we roll.

So at the end of the day we certainly went big and thankfully we went home too!