Monday 18th October 1999

Woke up at 9:30AM when the Danish couple came back from extending their visa. Had breakfast and realised what a miserable place Chengdu can be.  It was rain, horrible drizzle type rain so did nothing of note until noon. I’m becoming obsessed with my accounts.  I first did them at the end of week one at they balanced, now I’m doing them nearly every bloody day but even then they don’t add up! Chill out man.  I went to town and found a bank to make a credit card withdrawal (see, I truly am becoming obsessed about money!) there was no ATM machine so did an over the counter transaction with 4% commission (stop it!). Wandered the streets and bought a belt at last so now when I wander the streets I don’t look totally like a tramp. Renmin Park was quite relaxing and spent a while over tea reading the Memoirs of a Geisha book. I get so involved in the book that I begin to think I’m back in Japan, especially with Asian people all around me and sat here drinking green tea.  Just can’t find any geisha! I had dinner in a shit and overpriced western cafe with Sophie which altogether was very boring.  But luckily a Danish family with three pretty young children were eating on another table and brought some stimulation and excitement to the place.  Chinese absolutely adore young children, especially when they have white skin and blond hair.  Dropped by Oasis at the end of the day and hired the mountain bike off Paul, sorted. At least organised something today.

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.

Saturday 16th October 1999

So we’re all travelling together to Chengdu and we have seats next to each other, but that surely is irrelevant as we’ll upgrade to a hard sleeper, no?  No. Why are they impossible to get?  So Jenny, Vaughan (whose birthday it is), Sophie and I had 17+ hours on the ancient hard seat hell.  This is nothing like anything I’ve experienced in China so far. It’s a very old train, dirty, spittoon all over the floor, smoky, and with depressing noisy passengers squeezed into every available seat and crevice. What a way to spend your birthday! At least Jenny had a spare book and an interesting one at that – ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ for to me read and while away the hours. It would have been truly intolerable otherwise. I can’t believe how packed this train was, you couldn’t even see the floor for people, they were literally everywhere.

Friday 15th October, 1999

Up early to go to the train station with Sophie and bought a hard seat ticket to Chengdu without problem, hopefully I’ll be able to get a sleeper upgrade when on the train. I then spent the rest of the day seeing the main sites like a typical tourist. City Wall, History Museum, Big Goose Pagoda. All okay but none thrilling. [Unimaginable at the time that 9 years later I'll be making itineraries for these very same places for others!]. Amazingly bought, wrote and sent postcards all in one day! Sat in the gardens of the Big Goose Pagoda writing to the family back home. Then I went back to the Muslim Quarter to see the Mosque and eat some of their lovely food again, arr, lamb kebab yangrouchou’r – all in a very recommendable area. Took a packed bus #9 back to the hotel and stopped off at ‘Dad’s’ for a beer or four. Some useful travel talk if only I would remember it in the morning! British Paul had some useful ideas for where I’m heading.  Night.

Tried to catch up on some sleep and I was so tired no-one woke me up when they moved around. Did some washing and went to Dads for breakfast (what did I say last night?!) for a very average pancake. Travellers must be very homesick to enjoy this place, or have no food appreciation, or hate to try Chinese street cooking (or just too scared judging by some of the naïve kids that I met here last night.) It was raining and so the perfect day to sit on a bus and see the Terracotta Warriors, after buying a very British looking umbrella in the market outside the train / bus station. The first pit was very impressive but lacked any info. The newer (dug) pits were better but I still had many unanswered questions. Why would someone build such a vast and impressive project and then hide it? Then I saw the circle 360 cinema which gives some propositions to the questions. Basically it was a Mausoleum Fort to guard the Emperor in his Underworld afterlife but it was destroyed during revolts after 3 years of its completion. Then the CD-ROM left me somewhat disappointed. Apparently during the revolts all the soldiers were smashed. What you see now are rebuilt sections of the original ‘china’. And I thought it had all been found underground still intact. I fell asleep on the bus back to Xi’an. Tried to buy a sleeper train ticket to ChengDu but again had trouble. Gave up. Instead wandered around the lively Muslim night market and ate lovely noodle broth. Then a relatively early night.

The train journey was ok, and at least I had a seat this time. The people around me were quite friendly – talkative would be the wrong word, if only for the language barrier. I arrived in Xi’an without a lot of sleep and the Lonely Planet’s directions to the Hostel were way off. I got off the bus (about half way too early) and walked the rest of the way to the Renmin Flats. There was an Aussie couple who had spent two years in the UK and a French girl called Sophie in the shabby dorm. Tired of the travelling so didn’t do anything special in the afternoon. Found a very slow email café in town and if it wasn’t for Phil’s email he had sent the same day, I would have felt very lonely! Realised that it was Wednesday 13th and not the Tuesday as it was in my head – I had got lost by travelling through the night and have no real necessity for the time or day anyway. Went to Dad’s café for a snack but thought it was very over-rated – both in the LP and in their comment book – not such a cool hangout and the food very mediocre. The place has LP syndrome. They don’t have to try because people will go there merely because it is the LP and they know people are only around for a day or two anyway. Make your own decisions.