Posted from Xianyang, Shaanxi, China.

We left early in the morning on the 4th day to get a bus to Guilin as we had to head north, and to search for a train to Chengdu near Mt Emai which we decided would be our next deitination. We knew there was bugger all chance of getting a train since it was still summer holidays and this proved correct… but we looked at the train station anyway. No trains for 10 days. We booked a sleeper bus, were promised one with a toilet and long beds(we got one with short beds, broken locked toilet, and Orlando got a 3 foot mattress on the floor…. It was pretty funny). The bus driver was stopping people taking their food onto the back of the bus. Not sure why. Problems with space? Didn’t want a mess? I don’t know. He grabbed one old guy and argued with him for 5 minutes. The old guy got through with his bag. I gave the bus man my best ”don’t fuck with me, I am the bad arse whingy westerner and he let me through with my large bag of food.”
Ayesha needed to pee only 40 minutes after getting on the bus so I made them do an unscheduled stop. They would not till I mimed if they did not stop, I would have her piss on the floor. They stopped. Then I noticed the bus driver had a bucket of yellow water under his seat… Gross! An hour later and Ayesha needed to go again. A cranky bus driver and his assistant again stopped the bus for the stupid white guy and his daughter and we did our business. He was yelling at us and motioning for us to hurry up… I yelled back and motioned at his broken toilet and my wallet and he nodded smiled and shut up. Nici has decided when Chinese people yell at you,which seems to happen a lot it’s important to yell back. Whether it’s a taxi driver, cleaning lady, tout, hotel person…. Chinese people seem to think yelling intimidates foreigners and if you yell at them they will do what you want. But what they don’t know is that yelling at Nici is like a red rag to a bull. Big mistake. Anyway, I have taken a leaf from her book and realized yelling when yelled at is usually effective.

We had to kill 3 hours in Guilin which was a bit painful as its pretty shitty, damn hot and humid and almost nowhere has air conditioning. We bought some essential items of clothing(undies seem to disappear like magic from our packs) and food for the bus trip. We visited an underground shopping tunnel that went for miles… no shopping for us there as we were using it as a shortcut and were running late… but it seemed cheap if a little(lot?) stinky and smoky.
PS. Chinese men smoke. Everywhere. All the time. Chinese women, don’t. Ever. OK, in 3 weeks in China there were some exceptions to this rule, but it can be broadly applied. So…. If women on average live 7 years longer than men, and smoking on average takes 10 years off your life? China must be a land of single elderly women so if you are male, over 65 and looking for love then China is the place for you.
The bus only went to Xion Ping, there we had to find another bus to Chengdu. More touts on arrival trying to scam us… but also really nice Chinese people wanting to help. In our time in China we were definitely taken advantage of… but I am happy to say, on far more occasions people helped us out of the kindness of their hearts.
The “2 hour” bus ride to Chengdu was in fact a 5 hour ride, this on top of our 13 hour trip to Xiong Ping being a 18 ½ hour one…. With 3 hours in between…. It was a LOOONG trip. We arrived in Chengdu with another couple we had befriendet in Guilin and we all resolved to try and find our way to Sims Garden Hostel.
At the main bustop, we were obviously looking puzzled and lost when this lady with her husband and small child in tow took us under her wing, sorted out what two buses we needed to catch and took us to the first bus stop. She even told us how many stops we needed to go before changing and what stop to exit at. Everything would have been just dandy were it not for 2008 Lonely Planet, a fire and two sets of directions.
You see… Sims burned down and moved. My lonely planet had the old address. I got some very clear instructions to it… which we messed up anyway… and then when we finally stumbled into a mcdonalds to get the free internet and looked it up… we realized what had happened. 2 hours burnt though, after 36 hours of travel. Grrr. We love our kids that they put up with our insane travel plans all th time. So in the end we said Bugger it, we got separate cabs(in China ALWAYS make sure you have the address in Chinese) and managed to instruct our respective drivers where to go… only to arrive and find there were no rooms! Luckily, the hostel was so popular other cheap hotels had sprung up around it and we got a cheaper room next door, whilst making use of the cool bar, restaurant and free wireless of Sims. We booked about 5500 chinese yuan worth tours and train tickets through their booking office so we did not feel too naughty.
I turned 42, so decided for such an important birthday there should be a day of celebration for each day over 39. No point in life beginning at 40, and not really living it up eh? So for day one of my birthday I booked us into the Chinese Opera which was a lot of fun. Some music, some theatre, some amazing mask and costume changing…. But it was the puppetry and shadow puppetry that were the winners in our eyes. I’d never seen anything so amazing in the world of puppetry, it was incredible.
Day 2 the Giant Panda research centre. The pandas are amazing….. amazing that they still exist. They are fossils, dating back over 8 million years… most species don’t last anywhere near that long. They are not great parents, have shrinking habitat, are not overly fertile(the men have short penises the girls have long vaginas) and they are a carnivores that have chosen to instead eat bamboo without having the necessary digestive system to get much nutrients from it. So they need to eat a heap more than a proper herbivore would, and use less energy… so they are basically eating machines for 16 hours a day, and sleep the rest. When they eat, they laze around, barely moving anything but their mouths.The cubs were funny and playful with their keeps and their mothers…. but far less so than your average puppy. So… amazing creatures… but in reality the amazing part is that they actually exist, not the actually watching them part. But we were in China, and we went and saw Pandas.
After the Panda morning, we took a bus ride to Mount Emei for some mountain forests, temples and cable car rides.We had planned to stay for 2 nights. We left our large packs behind and took day packs only. Luckily, this was only a short bus ride(2.5 hours) so no more shitty sleeper buses. We arrived at the bus stop, were offered an overpriced private ride to our hostel but got in cab for 2/3rds the price which was fine. The hostel was ok, not too flash compared with Sims… but Andy our host was the bomb. He helped us choose what bus to take, what time to go, what things to do on the mountain considering our time frame and kids in tow… awesome… We never would have mapped his itinerary and would have either tried to do too much and failed, or missed out on heaps of good stuff.
SO!The next day we took the 8am bus to the highest bust stop on the mountain, pretty steep hike of about 750 metres to the cable car, then a hot but wonderful ride to near the top. Ayesha an I were witness to an amorous couple in the cable car ahead of us. I think she must have dropped something on the floor of the cable car and was down on her hands and knees looking for it for about 10 minutes – I could not see exactly what she was doing…. He seemed very happy at the end of the cable car ride that she had found it….
We reached the top hopeful to see the sea of clouds which apparently is marvelous but rare as the sun needs to be just right and the clouds just right… instead we saw… a white out. No view, not able to see more than 50 metres off the mountain and no sea of clouds. Oh well. Orlando and Ayesha were mobbed by Chinese tourists starved of their chosen photographic target(the sea of clouds) and spent 15 minutes getting their photo taken with different groups. Finally, I bustled them away… none too soon for Orlando. Nici took lots of photos but was disappointed we had no real view to speak of. We’d packed warm clothes as we’d expected it to be much colder but as we’d changed our itinery we never got near the cold weather so we had to lug our heavier than necessary packs for the day.
We decided instead of taking the cable car to walk down. Hmmn. Seemed liked a good idea at the time and it still did a few days later but after 6 klms of steps, with everyone in similar degrees of pain, the adults each with a pair or swollen knees… there were times we thought we were crazy. The kids thought we were plain mean. But we made it down to the busstop. Many of the Chinese tourists were happy to try out their English on us and we were happy oblige them. There were many massively calved men offering rides down the mountain in a contraption you’d expect to see a Pharoah in. We declined their offers… though the kids were very keen for the experience even if only for a few metres. I was concerned once in, they would not get out.. The food on the mountain was pretty ordinary and expensive but we ate it all the same.
Bus ride to the bottom was… pretty disgusting. We were clever enough to be near the middle/front where the bus sways the least. The people up the back? Not so smart. Vomiting started about halfway down, which set a few other off and soon it was like a 18th birthday party up the back. Add to that, this old lady right a the front decided she needed to hawk up the contents of her muck filled lungs every couple of minutes and spit it on the floor. I was disgusted… but not prepared to show it.. nici on the other hand was very vocal and making it clear how disgusted she was and a gentleman two rows back passed a plastic bag down for the lady to spit into. Slightly better, but not a whole lot more. Then after about 30 minutes of looking down hawking into her bag old lady muck started vomiting into her bag if vile, and then on one particularly large heave, let out a huge fart. A mere 2 rows from us, we were hit by the dual smells of her vomit mixed with toxic spit, and the rottenness that could only be an elderly person’s fart of death. My stomach is cast iron but for a moment I tasted metal in my mouth as my stomach tried to exit me through that same entrance.
I walked into a shop to buy icecreams as a reward and made the fatal mistake of opening one before asking the price. Icecream open we were at their mercy and a $3 icecream had become $7. One lady had said $3 when another yelled at her$7 and then insisted I pay it. Beware the chinese shop with no prices! I paid up for two more whilst Nici blew up at the shop lady at the price. The shop lady just laughed and then followed us up the street for 500 metres trying to sell us accommodation. In the end she got the message that having ripped us off with icecreams, she’d blow her chances of getting us into her accommodation.
We cable carred us to another part of the mountain and we commenced the walk down to where we hoped to find accommodation.Our knees where killing us. The walk through the forrest really contrasted the walk at the top of the mountain. Apparently cicadas, many birds and monkeys don’t like the altitude so all the action and noise was down low. The forest was very different to look at as well. We were starting to not feel too much of the magic though, because of the less than magical feeling in our legs. When this little lady offered us a bed in a monastery we jumped at it. She took us a short cut way.. which was shorter… sure…. But about 3 time as steep as the normal path. Nice…. Our knees groaned. At least the short cut way had no monkeys.
The monastery turned out to be a shabby hostel so we declined, so she took us via another track to another hotel. We argued we wanted to stay in a monastery but by now were too tired… so we instead bargained the price down by 25% and stopped for the night. We were all drenched in sweat, exhausted and the shower never felt better. The room was pretty crappy, but we were tired and it served its purpose. Dinner was funny. No English menu, non English speaking staff, we made a phone call to a translation service, gave our order who translated it for us. Worked fine, we got what we ordered.
Down to our last 70 yuan luckily breakfast was pretty cheap. I had thought the walk out to the bustop at the bottom would take us 3 hours, but it took us only 55 minutes. Really amazing walk, a damn dug straight into the mountain, beautiful temples and scenery. Stunning. No monkeys which was great. Orlando hates monkeys. The trip back to Chengdu was uneventful, other than a taxi driver who seemed happy to take us around in a few circles. He did not understand English until I started motioning he was taking us around in circles and frowning at him saying Police, Police. All of a sudden, the hostel where our large bags were waiting appeared. We’d probably been within a klm of it for 15 minutes. We picked up our bags, sorted some internet time and booked a hostel in Beijing.
We jumped in cab, made our way to the station where again, nothing in English. To our rescue came some helpful locals who guided us to the correct area. Getting on a bullet train is like getting on an airplane unbeknownst to me, and I lost my spray can deodorant. Bummer, should have stuck it deeper in my bag. Not sure why it was they are considered a problem – we got one with a pretty serious knife and 4 other cans stuffed deeper in our luggage…
Bullet train in China, just a few days after a bullet train had smashed into a slower train disabled by lightening. Oh well, we weren’t scared, everyone knows lightning never strikes the same place twice… only problem was we were travelling in a different spot to where the lightening hit before… Bah… it will be fine.. far more dangerous driving around asia. Some guy had taken possession of our beds but after some explaining we convinced him he was in the wrong spot and 10 mintues later we were in and on our way.