You ever have one of those roads where you get the same exact kind of pretty scenery for so long that you get sick and tired of it?

This may be the fault of my increasingly peevish attitude regarding my forced inability to give up and go home¹ combined with my totally being close enough that if any of my many friends with cars were allowed to leave the island² they could come see me over a weekend break and then I'd probably be fine. Or, it could just be that there's a limited amount of time in which you can have your senses assaulted by green cathedrals of bamboo interspersed with paddies either full of nearly ready to harvest rice or blooming lotus.

Probably a month ago at this point, I was having a conversation with a guy that I'm in a complicated non-relationship³ with about what makes a landscape interesting. 

Iconic landmark structures are interesting. Modern housing complexes are not. A single street of 1930s buildings is interesting. The seventeenth 18th century village in one week is not. A town with a wild mix of buildings from different eras in ways that demonstrate how the region's economic development over the past century has unfolded is interesting.  A town where everything has been refurbed by the local Beautiful Countryside Committee is not.

Something can be ugly and interesting, or beautiful and boring.

Even before you take into account the total lack of aesthetic sensibility that makes up a substantial part of the local micro-culture (recognizably 80s, 90s, 00s, and modern structures, all equally unpretty), today is just kind of boring. Doesn't matter if I'm on the main road or one of the side roads, it's all the same river, the same kind of buildings, the same fluffy white clouds in the same blue sky, the same green furred hills, and the same groves of bamboo.

Stunning for the first 10km.

But, then nothing really changed scenery-wise; I'm not in the best of headspaces right now, this aggressively flat road isn't even giving me the challenge of being difficult, and the vast majority of the drivers are sufficiently decent and polite that I don't even have righteous rage to fuel me.

The hotel that I've picked for the night on account of being the only one pre-bookable online has had foreigners before. They're a bit out of practice with checking non-Chinese in, haven't done it since before the pandemic started, but other than a peculiar warning about "keeping the room clean" which I take as a subtle hint to go get the shower I'd already planned on taking, it's all good.

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¹ I'm not actually prevented from returning. I just wouldn't be able to go anywhere or do anything if I did.

² The process of applying to leave requires a three day long monitored quarantine and a closed loop point to point transfer from the quarantine facility (called a Health Management Station) to the port.

³ He's the only one of my friends who isn't in the "Marian On The Road" WeChat group to get daily updates on what I'm up to. In his case, curated for what he might find interesting. As a result, I've probably had more back and forth with him (and for a longer, more consistent period of time) than when we were still swapping spit with each other. But, it's still not a relationship.