Sunday 17th October 1999
The train arrived in Chengdu at 7:15AM and we shared a taxi to the Traffick Hotel. Understandably spaced out after about 3 minutes sleep with 540 other passengers on the train. When I went to my three bed dorm there was another couple asleep and there bags all over my bed. However when I awoke at 12pm the beds were not only empty but made-up and no bags anywhere. Had I been hallucinating from lack of sleep? Went out for a late breakfast at Paul’s Oasis which is a very chilled and it served a very comfortable English fry up in all. Chatting to an Israeli couple for half an hour and then, “hold on, weren’t you in my room at 7am this morning?” So I wasn’t tripping after all. Wasted the rest of the day at the Oasis and still feeling quite knackered by 7pm but there’s a party going on at the Oasis … of course I went to it with Jenny and Vaughan to celebrate his birthday. It was also another guys birthday and later Sophie turned up too. It was quite a chilled atmosphere in Oasis and I ate a pukka ratatouille with mash potatoes – awesome – followed by birthday apple fritters – cool birthday cake! We took some taxi’s to this weird club which started off as une spectaculaire with break-dancing and fire-eating. We were shown around the whole club by the staff, first sit down here at the front, then upstairs at the back, then ok, here in the middle of the room … purely so they could show every other person in the place that foreigners come to their rocking club too! Half the taxi’s didn’t turn up (they must’ve ended up at another club) but I had a pretty full on chat with Vaughan and understood about half of it. I’m not sure if he was pissed or just massively interested in the subject [9 years later vaguely recollect it was about politics] but he was cool enough. We were having a bit of a dance (in our unfashionable travellers cloths) and then noticed that everyone was copying our every (unfashionable) move so we got a bit silly doing some line dancing type stuff and then made a sharp exit before the fashion police turned up. Another British guy made the other club sound much better so we all piled into taxis to find it, but the twat didn’t even know where it was and as no-one could speak Chinese to converse with the taxi driver we ended up just going home. I would’ve happily stayed longer in the first place but then realised it was already 2:30AM so wasn’t so pissed off. Just pissed.
