I Grew My Boobs in China (10 page)

I thought hard about her suggestion. Splotches of sweat were soaking through my shirt from the long walk to the bus station. Still holding the cold bottle in my hot hand, I gave in to her devious wiles. Creeping around the nearest corner, we passed the drink back and forth like junkies in a doorway, savouring each sip while also keeping a sharp eye out for Ammon. After indulging in our guilty pleasure, Mom and I found the toilets and quickly ran back to collect Bree.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s a squatty!” I lamented once we’d entered the building, “but we’ve looked everywhere, and didn’t see anything else.” During our first few days, we had ingeniously managed to avoid using them by taking refuge in the occasional McDonalds. They were the only places we knew that had western toilets. There hadn’t been anything more shocking in my first week than the length of the line-up for the squatty toilet in the women’s bathroom while the western-style facilities right next to it stood empty, even though there was no “out of order” sign attached.
Why and how could ANYONE in their right mind – how could they – let alone want to use it – ever?!
But then, maybe it was just me. After months of dreading this, I finally had to face my worst nightmare. There was no escape, no way out. It was now or it would be later, all over myself in a crowded bus. As tempting as a burst bladder sounded, which seemed to be my only alternative at the time, I opted to overcome my fear.

Mom and Bree each took a step and disappeared into two of the three stalls. Looking around wildly for an escape and seeing none, I finally stepped into mine. I knew what I had to do, but how!?!

“Wow, you went that fast?” Mom asked with a hint of congratulations and surprise as we all stepped out at the same time. But it wasn’t going to be that simple. I hadn’t even unbuckled my pants, and my silence was answer enough.

“Savannah! Get back in there right now!”

“I can’t! I simply cannot do that,” I insisted, but they pushed me back in.

“Yes, you can. Now just go! There’s nobody here. Just do it, you dingbat.”

Okay, so I admit my fear of the squatties was irrational. Like most such phobias, this one started when I was about six years old. A lengthy camping trip across the United States brought us to the Florida everglades. Uninterested in swamps or crocs, I was desperately tapping my feet on the bottom of a wooden canoe, urgently wiggling and holding it in. Finally allowed to climb from the boat onto a high bank, I found my spot in the tall grass.

I was a typical kid, the kind who pulls their pants right down to their ankles, jumps on the toilet, and swings their feet around as they go. Well, it must’ve been the first time I’d had to negotiate the more natural style, because I didn’t factor in the part where the facilities were a bit lacking. Toilet was toilet to my way of thinking, so away I went, pulling my pants down as I always had. Soon, a yellow stream completely soaked the pile of underwear and pants neatly pooled around my feet! I was absolutely horrified. I had just reached the age of awareness and embarrassment. Thankfully, the memory blurs after that point, to what I can only imagine was a long day spent in soggy pants trying to pretend that nothing happened.

So there I was. My unconquered fear had finally caught up with me. Or had I caught up with it? I did a double take upon seeing the flat, rectangular porcelain bowl embedded in the tile floor with a spot on either side to put my feet. I still didn’t know what to make of it.
Well, for starters, I guess I’ll put my feet on these weird looking footprints. Good. Now what? Pull my pants down to my knees? That seems about right.
I stood completely baffled for a good few minutes before whining aloud to anyone who cared, “How the heck do you do this?!” Crouched down and teetering on my tippy toes, I let out one last cry for help. “I’m going to pee on my pants if I don’t fall over first.”

The only response I got was Mom insisting, “Just do it! It’s really not that bad.”

“You guys!! I can’t!! Breeee!” I called for support.

“Oh, let me in then!” The bang on the door almost knocked me backwards onto my bare butt.

“Bree, come back here! She needs to figure this out for herself,” Mom said, stopping her from entering.

“It’s not that easy, ya know,” I shouted back, regaining my balance.

“But it is just that easy, Savannah. We both did it!” Mom continued.

I kept grumbling as I gathered my courage and concentrated.
Okay, now for the hard part. Squat and aim. Aim for what? That doesn’t matter, you idiot. All I want is to get it in this toilet instead of in my shoes!!!
I was sure I would miss the bowl as I shuffled back a little and then forward again.
Okay, here goes.
Keeping one eye closed to focus, I finally released, knowing that if I did it wrong, there would be no way to hide my mistake.
I’m quite getting the hang of this!
I thought
triumphantly. Opening my closed eye, I watched my fears wash away. My face was beaming as a smile grew to laughter and I stepped out of that bathroom having accomplished a good deal more than just flushing.

Chapter 10

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Forty-five minutes passed much too quickly, and we proceeded to where our bus was boarding. It was a big coach with long mirrors hanging down over the front windshield like the antennae of an adorable insect. I was thrilled to part with the burden of our big backpacks when we finally loaded them into the under-carriage of the shiny bus, knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about the damn thing for the next twelve hours. As we climbed aboard, the plump driver stood up from his seat and stopped us in our tracks, shaking a handful of plastic bags at us. I was intimidated by his incoherent sputters and took a step backwards, understanding absolutely nothing. Ahead of me, Mom cautiously took a bag from him. Observing the white, sterile interior of the bus and reacting to the man’s insistent, downward hand gestures, she eventually put the puzzle pieces together. Balancing in the stairwell, she removed each of her shoes and placed them in the bag. Noting no further frantic demonstrations from the driver, she proceeded to the back of the empty bus. We all followed, shoe bags in hand.

“Have you ever seen something like this, Ammon? On any of your travels?” Mom asked.

“No, this is definitely a first for me,” he said before dropping onto one of the bottom bunks in the back which was raised a few inches off the ground. There were three rows of bunk beds separated by two narrow aisles that were just wide enough for skinny Ammon to squeeze by.

“This is like a hospital on wheels,” I exclaimed, looking down the aisle of bunk beds that reminded me of military barracks with their crisp, tightly folded, white linen.

“Holy! This is awesome!” Bree said, creeping in to pass us. “Sleeper bus. You can say that again. Hah, Hah, this is SO awesome.”

“See, it’s not that bad,” Mom said, “I thought we’d be sitting up all night.”

“Well, it’s way better than a reclining chair,” Ammon said, wiggling his feet which were awkwardly hanging over the end of his bed rail, “even if they are a bit short.”

“I call top,” Bree shouted, leaping onto her claimed bunk. “I could sleep all night on one of these things.”

“Good. I’d say take advantage of it, because we’re going to be up all day tomorrow exploring. No slacking,” Ammon reminded us.

“Can’t we just take tomorrow off? We’ve been going without a break for days, and walking so much,” I said, climbing up onto the bed above Ammon so I was head to head with Bree, my black daypack over one shoulder. “I’ve already got blisters!”

I tried a different tactic as I awkwardly fastened the bulging daypack around my ankle. “I want to know when we get to ride the horses.”

“Not for a while. The horse riding is in Songpan, a town in the mountains,” Ammon explained.

It felt a bit worrying and a bit scary to be heading further inland and thus further from civilization. In fact, as soon as we left Hong Kong, there was no English whatsoever to be heard – none. The man at the hotel the night before barely even understood when we’d asked for Internet, one of the few universal terms we’d thought we could count on. But no matter what came our way, we’d have to sort the problem; apparently, quitting wasn’t an option.

“Yah, but how long until we’re there,” I pressed, visualizing the wind in my hair as I galloped across an open valley. In his bed below me, Ammon picked the guidebook out of his small green daypack and stood up.

Opening up the map on my lap, he pointed and said, “Okay, here. This is the map and it’s right about here!”

“And we’re here now? But how long ’til we’re there?” I repeated.

“Hmmm,” he said, just slowly enough to leave me in suspense, “first we are staying in Yangshuo,” pointing to it on the map, “for about four days, then we take a train which is just about---”

I cut him off briefly. “A train!? I’ve never been on a train before!”

“Yah, most of the world uses trains, Savannah. You’re just used to the North American way, where everyone has a car. Can you imagine the chaos if everyone here had one? It would be ridiculous. That’s why public transport is usually a lot better in other parts of the world. But anyway, let’s not get side-tracked,” he said. “The first train should be roughly twenty-two hours.”

“Oh, ONLY twenty-two hours?” I said sarcastically, more to myself than anyone else, ’cause by now, they had all mostly tuned out my complaints.

Looking up briefly from his book to glare at me, he continued, “Then we do the Tiger Leaping Gorge, after Mom’s birthday in Dali, then yadda, yadda, yadda. It should take about two weeks before we’re in Songpan,” and he abruptly shut the book on my nose.

“Two weeks?!Seriously? Man, and it has barely been a week. That means double what we’ve already done!” I collapsed flat on my back.

The tall, blond man Ammon had met earlier was coming down the aisle to join us, saying, “The name’s Kent. Sorry, I never properly introduced myself.” He was an English teacher who’d lived in China for a few years. After falling in love and marrying a Chinese girl, he’d decided to stay. His words were like a soothing lullaby to my ears, like childhood songs. I leaned back on my bed and thought about home as Chinese locals of all ages filed in and began to settle, their own shoe bags in hand. It was night-time, and the station was brightly lit under its concrete cover. The bus engine roared up and blared its horn in final warning and we started to roll as the chubby driver dressed in a bright, striped shirt nestled into his chair and released the brakes. The lights from the station disappeared behind us and night took over. The streets were unlit and dark.

“It’s like a
mental
hospital with these seatbelts,” Bree joked, grabbing her belt and holding it up. “Strap her down before she escapes,” she quoted from some movie or another. There was an ancient Jackie Chan film playing on a TV suspended from the roof in the centre of the bus. The flashing blues and whites of the TV were enough to light our faces dimly. I was surprised Bree wasn’t glued to it until I realized it was all in Chinese.

“They make you wear seatbelts on a bus? Why would they have seatbelts?” I was confused until I realized that Mom, lying in her bunk just across the aisle, had the horizontal window slid open half the length of her body. “You could fall right out that window! You’d better be wearing that seatbelt,” I warned as we went around the first harsh bend in the rapidly deteriorating paved road. The ride became progressively wilder, and I quickly learned that the coach’s beautiful appearance didn’t extend to the condition of the roads around here.

“And I wouldn’t even know what hit me,” she joked, laughing at how different it all was. Seemingly unbothered and unafraid, she nonetheless buckled herself in and closed the window to ease my mind.

Our driver turned into a wild man with a lead foot, as if he were playing some kind of Dodge-the-cow video game. We were thrown around like cargo as the driver constantly slammed on the brakes, honking non-stop to avoid who knows what on the road. We couldn’t see what the commotion was about, so all I could do was try to sleep and just ignore the chaos. We’d either make it or we wouldn’t. I’d just have to wait to find out our fate, but I did think it would be a shame to come this far only to die on this stupid bus.

Roughly four hours later the erratic rocking and bouncing came to a halt as the driver made the first potty stop. It was dark out, except for a few dimly lit stalls in the gravelly bus pit stop. Some wooden stands with canvas covers had single light bulbs suspended by thin electrical wires over piles of fruits and vegetables. Mom, Bree, and I rushed past them to follow the crowd to the toilet.

I quickly became aware that the phrase “it can only get better” could very quickly turn into “it could always be worse,” because it was. Now that I had achieved a bit of perspective, I grew ever more appreciative of what I’d had back home (which is, after all, one of the major benefits of travel). I had thought myself quite the conquering hero and that with my newly acquired skill of squatting that I could pee in any situation I encountered but my imagination couldn’t possibly foresee what was coming. There was no preparation or crash course for what I was about to experience. Yup, I thought I was invincible until I walked in to that bathroom.

Forget locks. Forget doors. There were only two-foot-high, concrete separators. Forget worrying that it wouldn’t flush. There was only a bucket of water and a tiny scoop sitting next to the brown, stained porcelain for that. A scoop I did not intend to use, as it appeared no one else had. The place looked as though nothing had been cleaned in just under a million years. Looking around wildly for nonexistent tissue holders, I realized that toilet paper was another luxury not provided.

“They don’t even give you toilet paper? How crazy is that?”

“But we know they use it,” Mom said, eyeing the garbage can full of brown papers next to the toilet. “I guess we can’t flush paper here.”