Harbin Hot Springs, Yay!
Thursday November 24, 2005
We arrived and found a place to set up the tent within a short walk of the flush toilets, yay! It turned out to be Harbin Hot Springs. I was very glad as Faol had been talking about taking me there for some time. We set up camp pretty quickly and headed off to the pools. There was a large dressing room with cubby holes to put our clothes in. Everyone gets ready together. We started with the warm pool and Faol supported my body so I could float then moved me about in a manner something like Watsu, water massage. I had my head back and it was very relaxing. I noticed though that my shoulders and neck hurt as if I were supporting them myself but I wasn’t. I must have been carrying a lot of tension in them, maybe from the 7-8 hour ride. Anyway we eventually made it to the hot pool. Wow! Was that hot! We went from the hot pool to the cold pool and back again. I tried to get into the cold pool but just couldn't make it past my thighs/hips. As soon as the water crept up to touch my belly it was just too cold for me. Faol wanted me to jump in and go under right away rather than the creeping method I used but I was a bit worried that it would trigger a tachycardia episode, which would tend to spoil our fun. Maybe it wouldn't but I didn't want to take the chance and I didn't like the cold. When I pointed that out to him though he told me not to go in the cold at all if it was a problem but doing the limited way I was doing it worked for me so back and forth we went.
We finally got out and went for dinner. Due to the holidays the menu was
a bit more festive and was way too expensive so we went to the health food
store on the premises. We bought a sandwich to split and Raweo
raw food cookies. They were pretty good though nothing like cookies to
me. Eventually we went back to the tent and made love then went to sleep.
After sleeping for several hours Faol woke up and wanted to go back to the
pools but I was too sleepy. I told him to go himself that I was fine, so he
did. He came back after several hours and we talked. It turned out it had
only been 9:30 when he got to the pools again though it had felt to us like
it was 2-3 in the morning when he left. He did some soul searching and was
a bit funky. We slept again.
Copyright © 2005 Kyril Oakwind