Saturday, June 2nd- Travels in Hohhot

• Walked maybe a little too much today
• From 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM I did nothing but walk with one break for lunch
• It wouldn’t be bad if they had public drinking water in China but because they don’t and I’m too cheap to pay about 20 cents for a bottle of water, I ended up with a dehydrated headache which wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be
• Plus with the whole budgeting 30 dollars a day for food, I really want my trip to be under budget and so far I’ve spent about $10 on food and museum fees where I budgeted about $50
• People in Hohhot don’t like the French
• So to mess with people (because everyone thinks I speak English) after they say “Hello” to me, I say “Bonjour”
• Well I got some pretty nasty looks but that may be due to the fact that they probably think I’m swearing at them in English because chances are they don’t know French
• Either way, it’s fun to do that to the kids
• They’re so excited to try out what little English they know on you and when you just dash their hopes with a French phrase they have this look on their face like you dropped their favorite cookie in the dirt
• People are skinny in China because they jog in jeans
• I wondered how people could be skinny here given that the meals I get at a restaurant are usually pretty good sized and I figured it out, it’s because people jog in jeans here
• That combined with the smog surely makes a good workout
• Lamasaries in China are awesome

• And here are some really cool pictures of the pagodas/lamasaries

• I think an old guy tried to convert me to Buddhism
• So I was at the lamasery and this really old Chinese guy who could barely walk just started talking to me in Chinese for no reason
• I told him I didn’t understand but he would just not stop talking (I think he was lonely)

• • So in the Lamasary they have these huge idols of buddhism and this guy took his finger and put it in the water, then touched my forehead without even asking me
  • I’m not a convert but for some reason I think that he felt that I was a full-on Buddhist now
• A girl saved me from the old guy
• This girl (who for some reason like most girls in China tell me they’re 4 years younger than they actually are-she told me she was 22 but when I added her on QQ she was 18) saved me from the old guy because the old guy told us that he would buy lunch and she told the girl in Chinese that he knew a place that definitely had hot pot
• Well the place didn’t have hot pot so she said that this guy is probably trying to hoodwink us by running up the tab and then saying we’re responsible so we ditched him
• It's kind of like the scam they have with pretty girls in Beijing who invite you to dinner and order really expensive wine, but in this case the pretty woman was just a bent-over old man so it definitely wasn't worth it