We have had multiple firang (fuh-rung, Hindi word for foreigner, see http://en.wikipedia.org/Firang — thanks Ninad!) crossings with a few different people on our journey. What we mean by this is that we met a fellow journey person (or peoples) on one leg of our trip, only to have our seemingly unrelated paths cross again further along in a later city. This is the way of the firang. We are all seeing the same sites in a similar order.
1. Not so much astonishing as we were still in Beijing, but we saw Josh’s classmate when we began our holiday.
2. A couple we met in Datong on our tour of the Hanging Temple and Yungang Caves were on our flight to Guilin (and Josh also had seen the man while we were in Xi’an but we didn’t stop).
3. A couple of Japanese girls who were on the Datong tours with us, were on the morning bus we ended up on (after the wrong ticket train experience) to Taiyuan. And then after that we also ended up on the same bus to Pingyao.
4. We saw a German couple we first met on our black market ticket bus from Pingyao at the Terracotta Army Pit 2, and then again back in Xi’an city center.
5. This also may not count quite as much, but the family at our lunch table on our Li river cruise was on our flight to Guilin, but we didn’t interact on the flight.
6. Our last day in Yangshuo we ran into the two french girls who had been a part of our black market bus experience from Pingyao. Both of whom sat seatless in the aisle at various times with Josh.
7. We rode the Star Ferry between Kowloon and Hong Kong Central with a family who had been on our Li River cruise (they were memorable due to the daughter’s headgear and reluctance to be a part of her father’s constant picture taking while wearing it).
This is the way of the firang …
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