Goodbye Mama Naxi

It's pronounced Na-Shee.

The first thing Mama Naxi said to us when we arrived in Lijiang was "Mama take care of you...I give you free banana juice"

We stayed at Mama Naxi's Guesthouse while in Lijiang. At the time of writing in our trusty Lonely Planet (published May 2009), Mama Naxi was in the process of building a second guesthouse. By the time we arrived (November), Mama Naxi had completed three guesthouses and is on her way to her fourth guesthouse. If I were still in the Business School, I would love to do a marketing case study on her hostel empire. Old Lijiang is a small place, and for Mama Naxi to have four guesthouses within the city walls implies her control of the youth hostel market share. She seems to know what people like- cute dogs, kisses on the cheek, small gifts and very reasonable prices. Why can't I be like her? Mama Naxi needs to teach at the Foster School of Business.

Since there were no direct routes to Beijing, we had to go back to Kunming (the biggest city in Yunnan) in order to fly out. This involved an 8+ hour bus ride on a large bus (like a Greyhound) on a two lane road that drivers saw as a four lane road. All types of vehicles were on the road- construction trucks, dump trucks, big buses, minibuses, cars, three wheeled cars, trucks with exposed engines that looked like toy cars, bicycles, motorcycles... really everything you can imagine, with every type trying to overtake the other. We feared for our lives- if we weren't going to drive into an oncoming car because we were trying to pass a slower vehicle then we were likely to fall off an unguarded edge off a cliff.

I was on the verge of throwing up the entire time.

We were in transit for nearly 18 hours (we left Lijiang at 830 and arrived in Beijing at one), we had difficulty trying to find our hostel. I found it ironic that the one place that Liz and I are familiar with, it took us a very (very) long time to find our hostel. Our cab driver was a little whiny and scolded us for not knowing the proper address of the hostel so after 20 minutes or so of aimless driving, we decided to just walk around. We walked to the notorious Sanlitun bar street in hopes that someone would know the name of the hostel we were staying at. We were solicited by a ten year old boy saying that he knew where the place was and that he would show us. We were a little skeptical but got over ourselves when we realized that the people who worked at the bar were making fun of us for being scared of a little boy. I was afraid that this boy was going to lead us into a dark alleyway where a gang of his peers would beat us up and take our money. The scene was very likely- this boy was walking very fast through random alleyways that were either really dark or had sketchy bars and clubs that were away from the main street. He finally led us to a shifty looking hostel that actually wasn't the hostel we were planning on staying at and was probably one of "those" kinds of hotels that could be rented by the hour. While this wasn't the place, I still paid my dues to the kid (thankful that he didn't try to beat us up) and gave him 20 kuai (about $3).

Luckily for us, the man at the front desk was very nice and pointed us in the right direction. Kind of. We finally made it to our hostel after an hour and a half of wandering the vicinity. I was going to demand that we not pay for a whole day since we arrived after midnight but I felt shy. I've decided that I'm all talk when it comes to getting things my way.

Anyway, its cold in Beijing (really cold). How are you?