Mental Accommodations of What Is Unusual and the best/worst show my band has ever played

It's amazing what the human body and mind are capable of.  I have realized that things in China that I used to think were extraordinary are now, simply, normal.  Yesterday I saw a bicycle pulling a cart piled high with flattened boxes and trash bags full of unknown items and a man sitting on top of the heap riding down the street.  What fazed me was that I was completely unfazed by this sight.

Moving forward.

I have mentioned in previous posts that a) I am in a band here and b) Chinese people stare relentlessly at foreigners.  Put the two together and my all-foreigner band has become quite popular in Shenzhen.  Saturday night may have been the pinnacle of all of this.

We were asked to play a show.  OK.  The day of the show we find out that the show is outside, in the farthest regions of the city, it will be broadcast on television and they will provide no sound equipment.  Great.  We arrive at the "staging area" which was surrounded by approximately 300 Chinese people.  I have witnessed a Chinese man staring at another Chinese man who was staring at a few Chinese people digging a hole so I'm not sure if these people actually knew we were coming or were just curious as to why there was a roped off section of the area.  Their faces were completely expressionless as we unloaded and set up our equipment.  The television cameraman turned on his camera and suddenly we could see ourselves on a huge LCD screen across the square.  We were having issues with the power supply because we could only find ungrounded electricity sources.  I actually stopped playing guitar early on in the set because I was being shocked constantly.  I couldn't hear myself sing.  It started to rain, but the people were smiling and taking pictures and dancing so we kept on playing.  While this was the worst sounding and conditions of a performance I have ever experienced, it was also the most fun I've ever had playing a show.

The short video below slightly captures the essence of the evening.

Everyone should have a 5 week holiday in January

I decided that the best way to sift through a month of traveling was to do a top 10.

In some particular order:

10.  Monks n Wats and that amazing incense smell in Thailand

9.  Fun transportation

13 hour train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.  This was actually not that fun, but comparatively more fun than the 17 hour bus from Bangkok to Khao Lak.

Befuddled by the bamboo raft headed to Malapascua Island, Philippines

Tuk Tuks in Bangkok

Florescent pink cabs in Thailand

Inside a tricycle ( a motorbike with a hooded cab attached) in Bohol, Philippines

8.  The beer

Chang Beer in Thailand

San Miguel in the Philippines

7.  The beaches.  Good lord, the beaches were gorgeous.  All the photos below are from Malapascua Island, Philippines.

6.  Thai food

5.  Creatures

Moth-eating gecko in Khao Lak, Thailand

Random alligator in Bangkok

One of the four puppies who lived under our bungalow on Malapascua Island, Philippines

Dog vs. crab in Bohol, Philippines

Butterflies in Bohol

Me and a passed out kitty at the bar on Malapascua Island, Philippines.  I'm refraining from posting any of the other 50 cat pictures I took.  

4.  This creature gets a number of its own:  the Tarsiers in Bohol, Philippines.  Some Tarsier facts:  they are suicidal.  If they are unhappy, they'll bang their head against a tree until they die.  They have sex for about 3-8 seconds.  You can only find them in Bohol and Indonesia.  They've been around for over 40 million years.  They are crazy looking.

3.  Snorkeling at Malapascua Island, Philippines.   I don't have pictures to prove it, but there's like a whole other universe down there.

2.  The Thai markets

Night Market in Chiang Mai

There is literally an entire market dedicated to amulets

1.  The people I met along the way

Back to the grind . . .