HI! How are you?
This past weekend was Dragon Boat festival. I don't know what they celebrate... I didn't see any dragons. But I saw a few boats. BECAUSE... I was camping on the beach. Yes. Beach.
So here's the sitch.... Tony, Seth, Marie and myself planned a little jaunt to Zhoushan. Which is East and South of Shaoxing. But, you're thinking to yourself, isn't Shaoxing on the east coast of China? Well, yes... but not actually on the ocean. I'm getting ahead of myself... Let me start again.
(insert thoughtful moment)
Okay, Tony, Seth, Marie and I left for Zhoushan on Saturday. It was a three hour bus ride from Shaoxing. We stopped in town, and grabbed a taxi to the beach. It was overcast, and misting on and off, but not awful. The air was still pretty warm, but the wind picked up quite a bit as we hit the shore. After a moments debate, we set off down the beach toward a spot for our tents. In a jiffy we had our small little tents pitched, and were searching the beach for fire wood. I've camped a ton in my short life. I've even 'roughed it' a few times... but this was different. We built a fire, and had a cozy little time the first night. It rained as we slept, and Sunday was quite wet. We headed into town to see what we could see, and in search of coffee. We wanted to find a coffee shop to sit down in and spend a few hours because the beach had an entrance fee until 5pm... And we weren't gonna pay. However, our search of the very small town proved futile. Finally, we noticed some chairs and a table in the lobby of a hotel. We entered and explored a little, and our wanderings led us to a multipurpose room that was basically abandoned with a few desks and four chairs. Luckily, that was the number of people we had... so we decided to camp out for a bit until the rain quit or we could go back to our tents. We played cards for an hour or two and then were getting antsy.... Until we noticed a ping pong table behind a pillar. YES! We set it up (it was in two pieces) and discovered that there was only one paddle. HUGE LET DOWN!! But, wait, what was that odd shaped thing next to the table?? A ping pong ball shooter?? AND WE'RE BACK UP!!! So, we poured the bucket of ping pong balls into the machine and lined it up and began to play one at a time. But as happens with mid twenty year olds.... it soon turned into a war of 'person with paddle' vs 'everyone else'. The shooter would shoot a ball, and the paddle person would try to hit one of us with the ball, as we would dodge, and then throw back..... Needless to say, there were around 100 ping pong balls laying around the room at the end of each session... Which we promptly picked up and began the whole thing over again. =D! It was a lot of fun.
After the hotel got old, we left and headed back to the beach. The rain had quit for the time being, and we were curious if our tents had suffered from it. Upon our return we discovered everything intact except for Maries sleeping bag had gotten really wet. Like wringing wet. Which was unfortunate, but luckily my sleeping bag unzipped completely and we could share it. We wanted a fire on Sunday night too, but wood was wet, and conditions weren't exactly favorable. There was intense wind.... We had picked up a large stack of newspapers from the hotel, and had some toilet paper to help us get things started. After nearly two hours of barely lit newspaper, almost lit twigs, and building a rock retaining wall to block the wind, we got it! And had a nice little fire going for a few hours before the rain set in again, and we called it a night.
Miraculously, Monday morning dawned clear, sunny, and warm! We woke, and decided the ocean needed to be tested. So around 7am we hit the waves. And they hit back! The water was cold, and the waves were sizable. Surfing could have happened, but we settled for body surfing. Which is not as easy as one would think... I definitely went ass over tea kettle a couple times, and eventually was able to ride a wave or two. It was a ton of fun!
We packed our 'dong-she' (stuff) and headed out around 10am to catch the bus back to town and our bus to Ningbo, and then our train to Shaoxing. It was a short weekend, but so much fun. Despite the rain, we had some laughs, some good conversation, and some awesome camping. I had forgotten how much I love camping. After we returned to town, we set up the tents to brush any extra sand out of them and laid out damp sleeping bags. As we finished repacking the tents, Tony and I decided that camping over Dragon Boat festival is gonna be an annual thing. Next year, same time, different place.
Until next time.
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