China World Rainbow Gathering

We got a lift up to the turn-off from the main road near the rainbow - a 40 minute hike up a steep cow trail. Well, 40-minutes for a fit person without a lot of luggage. For us with our big bags, and Littletree, in pouring rain and mud, it took more than double that.

At some point on the trail, I fell off the path, 2 metres down into a hole, where I ended up hanging literally by my fingernails onto brittle bushes, over a five metre drop to rocks in the river below! It was a scary moment, and I couldn't get out with my backpack on, but Purple managed to pull me out.

We made it in the end, with Littletree managing to walk all the way by herself. It was so wonderful to arrive to Welcome Centre to be greeted by caring family and a hot cup of chai :) A couple of days in Welcome Centre - still in seed camp really, and then the family decided it was a sunny day and time to move to the main kitchen and main circle, which was about 500 metres up the trail.

The site was so beautiful - faeries everywhere, swarms of butterflies by day and fireflies by night. Beautiful lush green jungle full of edible plants and mushrooms of many kinds, fruit trees, 2 rivers, 3 spectacular waterfalls...

Main Circle: Swimming Pool

Waterfall:We had beautiful circles every day, and wonderful food; a small but strong international family from all over the world. I celebrated my 29th Birthday, which was wonderful to be in rainbow for. I got some nice presents and a good massage too :D

It rained a lot, so we spent a lot of time under the big tarps in the kitchen / chai shop, but we also had a lot of sunThe children made a little rainbow gardening in the Kid's Kitchen (aka Main Kitchen/ Chai Shop) Family communed with nature...

And finally we had a consensus in Vision Council for there to be a Black Current Regional Rainbow Gathering in Taiwan in January 2009 (The black current is an ocean current in East Asia, starting in the Philippines and flowing north along the coast of China to the north of Japan).

Consensus for an African Regional Rainbow Gathering to be held in Morocco, in September 2009 and The Next World Rainbow Gathering to be in New Zealand in December 2009 -  January 2010!

Okay, I have about 100 photos from the gathering, so I can't post them all here, but you can see them here if you want.

Travelling To China

The flight to Shenzhen, which is near Hong Kong, was pretty crappy. Of course, we took a really cheap Internet airline; the kind where they don't serve food or drinks, and the only way to get drinking water is buying a bottle of spring water - $1US for a half litre!

This wouldn't be a big problem, except that thanks to all the bullshit "anti-terror" security, one can't take any liquids onto the aeroplane. So we can't bring our own drinking water, and in Bangkok, there's no where to fill our bottles with potable water after the security check, like there is in most places. Crap.

We survived anyway, and were again sailed through customs and Chinese immigration in a wheelchair, thanks to my trusty sprained ankle.

We landed just after midnight, and Purple set about finding us the best way to get to Hainan Island. We thought we'd take a shuttle bus into town and then find a place to sleep, and then take the train, but Purple found out (amazingly, since no one spoke English) that there was a flight direct to Haikou, the capital of Hainan, leaving in 1/2 hour and if we ran, we could still catch it.

So, we ran.

Well, Purple ran, I limped, and Littletree whined and grumbled, all the way from International arrivals in terminal B to domestic departures in terminal A, with a worker from the airline hurrying us along all the way.

We made it! 2am saw us arriving in Haikou and on a shuttle bus into town. Thankfully a friendly guy on the bus spoke a little English, so we asked him if he knew where we could get a cheap hotel. He took us to the hotel he was staying at - a 'cheap' place; marble floors in the expansive lobby, complete with fountain and fish pond, brass fittings, and a suite with AC, TV, hot shower, western bathroom, breakfast included. Amazingly enough, all this cost 128 Yuan - about $17US. Much more than we are used to paying in Thailand, but a good deal.

After sleeping for a long time, we took a taxi to the Rainbow House in Sanya, which turned out to be a kind of guest house on the beach. They had dorm rooms, kitchen, mountain bikes, kayaks, climbing wall, internet, even a little aeroplane!

We just missed a crew going up to the gathering, and ended up relaxing for three days in the Rainbow House, playing on the beach and exploring.

Here's the Welcome Home Aeroplane:

The sea was really beautiful; clear water full of coral and tropical fish. Heres a massive Jellyfish in the sea - it was about 1.5 Metre circumference!

 Sunset over Sanya bay:

A Storm coming in: In the end, we got a ride up the mountain to the gathering with some other rainbow crew. I'll post about the gathering tomorrow...

 

 

Engrish

One really fun thing about China is the baffling over-use of automatic translators. For some reason, the Chinese seem to think that you can translate anything in Chinese, word-for-word into English, and it will still make sense. The upside of this is that it makes for some freakin hilarious signs! Here's a few beauties:

For Weak Only; sign on a toilet

Let the wealth's arithmetic figure become the vital property; billboard

The extravagance is just monotonous adjective; billboard

All taste completely except the east wind(you)!; packet of seasoned peanuts

Please count on the spot the money thing; sign at a supermarket checkout

Sandy Beach Shoe; sign in a shoe store. I've no idea what they're trying to say here.

Best for last:

Are you readly? 2008 China biejing; t-shirt. Honestly, the Olympic translators have been working overtime!

It's Been A Long Time

We're back in Thailand! China was great and the rainbow gathering was fantastic, but it feels good to be 'home' in Bangkok.

Sorry that I didn't post for so long, but I did warn you all that I'd be mostly incommunicado while in China - no Internet at the rainbow gathering; we were in the jungle on top of a mountain, and in any case, Blogger is blocked in China (annoyingly, half of the Internet is blocked) so I couldn't post.

I did see all the comments everyone left, expressing concern about us with my extended silence, especially with the earthquake in Sichuan and all; I feel so touched, thank you. And I did try to send a quick post from my email... but clearly that didn't work. Oh well.

Anyway, I just finished downloading, cropping, rotating and renaming all our photos - over 200 of them, and I shall write a nice long post or maybe two about our adventures in the next day.

Meanwhile; enjoy this lovely snap of Littletree in Bangkok, eating worms wrapped in seaweed, the night we left for China...

We're fine!!! (old post)

Haha!
while we were in China, I couldn't access Blogger, so I tried to send a post in by email because I got all these comments from people worrying about us, only it didn't work and I only now found the post had been saved into the drafts section, rather than published, oddly enough. Well, it's pretty belated now, I think it was from the 1st of June. but here it is:


I don't know if this is working - blogger.com is blocked from China, so I can't really access my site :(

Anyway, we are out of the Rainbow Gathering, it was fantastic! The next World Rainbow Gathering will be in New Zealand, December 2009, as well as an African gathering in september 09 and a gathering in Taiwan in jan 09.

My ankle is better (though Purple injured his knee, so it balances), and we weren't in the area of the earthquake. But thanks for all the concern. I feel loved!

I had a wonderful birthday with the Rainbow Family, and we enjoyed our weeks in a paradise tropical jungle with spectacular waterfalls and abundant mushrooms.

More details later - we fly back to Thailand tonight so I'll upload photos and write a nice long post!

:)

Sometimes A Sprained Ankle is a Good Thing

I sprained my ankle in the desert, which seemed like maybe it could spoil our travel plans, or at least make things difficult.

Well. It did make things difficult, but in some ways, it was a good thing. I spent the last day in Israel sitting with my foot up, which was good, since I got a lot of work done, and I was able to take a wheelchair when we went through Amman Airport in Jordan, where we had an overnight stopover, and when we arrived to Bangkok Airport.

The flight from Tel Aviv to Amman is so short, they don't even have time to turn off the seatbelt light or serve a snack. We don't even get up to cruising altitude. But then we had a long wait until our onward flight. Luckily, Royal Jordanian Airlines are a bit old-fashioned, and they put extended transit passengers up in the airport hotel with complementary buffet.

The hotel is pretty shabby - it probably was very nice and of high-standard when it was built, back in 1985. But it clearly hasn't been renovated or had any repairs since then. Still, we got a nice room with 3 beds, basic cable TV and a bath, which is infinitely better than the usual sitting in an airport "transit lounge" (an oxymoron if ever there was one).

Arriving to Bangkok, we asked again for a wheelchair, and a man came along with one. It was great. He pushed me all the way thorough the mile of corridors to immigration, and even jumped the queue for us and took care of the passports. Actually, he went so fast, Purple and Littletree could barely keep up!

Then he got my bags off the luggage carousel, and led us through customs and even got me a taxi! I think it was barely 20 minutes from getting off the plane to speeding away in the cab - a world record, surely :)

Anyway, now we're in Bangkok, it's hot. My ankle is starting to feel better, and tomorrow we fly to China. So it could be a whiles before I post again, Here's a cute pic of Littletree, just to tide you over...

An Elephant Ate My Daughter

One of the weirdest things in Tel Aviv (note it's definitely not the weirdest), is at the playground in a huge shopping mall called Dizengoff Centre.

They have this larger-than-life flibreglass elephant with stairs leading up into its mouth. Children climb excitedly up the stairs into the dark, red belly of the beast...

And slide down through a chute that comes out its butt!

The children emerge, barely digested, to gleefully run around and go again.

And no one seems to think it's strange.

Littletree and I followed this adventure up by getting into a fight with a random passer-by: I was standing on a busy street-corner, talking on my phone to arrange a meeting with my friend. Littletree was sitting at my feet, waiting patiently. It was a loud and hectic place to stand, and I was already feeling a little stressed and overwhelmed...

Anyway, someone walked up with a dog, and the dog proceeded to sniff Littletree in the face. Littletree whined and backed away. The dog followed and started licking her. She whined more, and tried to fend it off, but not very convincingly. I said in a good dog-commanding voice (in Hebrew) "Hey! dog! Go! Shoo!" The dog continued to harass Littletree, and she continued to be disturbed by it.

Then I saw that the dog had an owner standing right next to us, so I said to her (in Hebrew) "hey, get your dog away from here". The woman replied that the dog wasn't disturbing my daughter. I raised my voice (clearly not so cool, but hey), "Yes! The Dog IS Disturbing Her! She's Frightened, Now Get Your Dog Away From Us!!"

Without moving her dog, the woman said "whoa, you're so aggressive!"

So then I lost it.

Shouted in her face (in English) "OF COURSE I'M @#$%ING AGGRESSIVE! YOUR DOG IS ANNOYING MY DAUGHTER AND I ASKED YOU TO TAKE IT AWAY! NOW GET YOUR @#$%ING DOG AWAY FROM US YOU STUPID B!TCH!!!"

Clearly not my best moment,

But clearly, IMO, you can't just let your dog go around getting in people's faces, especially when they ask you not to. Littletree could have been allergic to dogs, or phobic, or anything. She didn't know. Clearly I could have dealt with this waaaaay better. But somehow, being in Israel has me acting like that much more than I'd like.

Thank goodness for Rescue Remedy. Then i took Littletree to the park to meet Butterfly and climb on stuff.

New Article

Another of my articles was published on Essence of Life
It's about a woman called Wangari Maathai, an African woman working on changing the world.
Check it out
and as usual, go make a comment in the forum :)

I'm pretty busy at the moment, since we're packing to leave Israel and fly back to Bangkok - we'll only be there for 3 days before we fly to China, to the rainbow gathering, so most likely I'll be offline for a whiles.