Chengdu Check-in fiasco

Fiasco might be a bit of an overstatement.

I left Xian on Saturday around 1pm. I didn't do anything that day really. Those girls had booked the same train as I did. They were in the same compartment. It was nice to have someone to talk to for the 16 hour train ride. Nothing much of interest happened on the train. Saw some countryside and little villages from the train but that's about it. I managed to finish 2 books which really isn't that fair to say since I only read about 250 pages total. I didn't sleep very well on the train.

I've been thinking that maybe I should go back to college since I feel like I didn't learn anything. Really, I think it's more about me feeling like I missed out on the college experience since I intensely disliked most things about my school. It's probably not worth spending a semester in university but I thought about it anyways.

So the fiasco began once we got to Chengdu. I had no reservations but the 2 girls did and the hostel was supposed to pick them up. We waited and looked around and decided to take a taxi there. The driver let us out on a poorly lit street and pointed down a dark alley. We read in Lonely Planet, which is apparently given to you when you get the Chinese visa since every single tourist has one, that the hostel was down an alley so we trusted the guy and off he went. The alley was pretty frightening for 530am with no sunlight. Most of the alley was a giant pit and we had to walk down it for a few hundred metres hoping the hostel would magically appear. I was pretty surprised that it was actually there.

The bad thing about reaching the hostel though was that nobody was there. There were some people that we had met at the train station who told us that the guy from the hostel eventually showed up and that they had all taken a cab back. The guy, however, was in a different cab that took some turn somewhere and never showed up at the hostel. I still don't know what happened to him. So anyways, there was no one at the hostel except all these people who had just arrived from Xian and some old American man with crazy beliefs prone to ranting (different from rambling) and his Australian wife who were waiting to go on a tour. I don't know why they showed up 2 hours early for the tour. So anyways we had to sit there for 3 hours in a chilly courtyard waiting for the check-in to open. It was not fun. Eventually they opened though and I was able to get a room.

The rest of the day I didn't really do anything. Walked around with these 2 girls from San Francisco who had met each other in a bar in Guatemala. No romantic potential though, in case you were wondering. They are paranoid about getting avian bird flu and Japanese encephalitis. One girl was going to get a shot for the latter that morning. We went for a western breakfast at a place called Grandma's kitchen and I had 'fluffy pancakes.' You had to be there really. I didn't find it all that funny. Erica requested hers not to be fluffed. My mind didn't go there.

Then I bought some tickets for Tibet that I should go pick up soon.

I met a guy who is also going to Tibet so we could be traveling together for a bit. Actually, we are kind of going to the same places but I might be going through at a faster pace. I've kind of decided on a basic route to take but I'm going to keep it secret for now. I'm going to have to take a couple flights I think.

That night a group of us went out for pizza. I'm such an adventurous eater don't you think. Tonight I might be actually. The pizza was pretty good. I even had a Carlsberg. I don't know why it's so prevalent in China. Then we ended up at some bar that was some odd combination of western paraphenalia. There was a Victorian waltz mural, a santa claus, a giant windmill outside, with banners of European football teams, and fancy porcelain figurine lamps playing boyz II men music. We went back to the hostel instead and drank beer there. I also ran into a guy who had been in my hostel in Xian the night before last thereby not knowing about the light incident.