Travel China Planner

Its hard to believe we have only been here 1 month. It’s feeling like home every day and we have done so much without even leaving Wuhan during that period.

In 2 weeks, we will be heading back to Xian for our summer traveling adventure. We leave here next week, stay overnight in Chengdu,and then fly on to Xian. We leave Chengdu at about 5:30 pm and arrive in Xian at 8:30 am the same day.

Wuhan Skyline

We plan to get to Yan’an by bus on Monday, May 26.

It is lights out at 10pm for the residences but they have told me many times that they work in the washrooms after that, where the lights stay on all night!!

Last night we returned to the a Sichuan restaurant for hotpot. The taxi driver had a good chuckle as we ended up taking a long way back home after missing one turn. However, we know the city well enough now that we were able to tell him how to get us back despite our mistake.

Chinese Panda in Chengdu

Tonight we are off to our weekly party…hmmm…what’s the excuse this week, let me think. Oh yeah, Wendy turns 25 this weekend.

Well, that’s it for now. Words and pictures will pick up again once we begin our summer trip, I’m sure.

29th February

We woke to find a new man in our room, a few stops during the night meant that people moved in and out much to my oblivion! This man was a bit panicked to trying to get out of the cabin, i think he needed to go to the loo but it appeared we were locked in! After a while of going at it with a clothes hanger and jacinta helping him, he resorted to banging on the doors and calling for help (well i presume thats what he was shouting!). Eventually a train attendant opened the door with no problem! A girl from the hostel picked us up from the train and brought us to the hostel which we are not impressed with! its cold and there is no lounge/bar area or kitchen! We didn’t arrive til nearly 4pm so by the time we settled in we only had time for a wander around the place, went to the supermarket and got some food in a beef steak place (the typical food here is hotpot which is like fire !)

1st March

Today we went to see the pandas!  It was worth the risk though we arrived at 8am in the Panda reserve for feeding time (the time they’re most active, other times they mostly sleep) and spent hours in complete fascination with them, they are just the most cutest things ive ever seen, especially the babies when they were playing with each other, i just fell in love with them, we were all there standing with googley eyes at each enclosure for ages!! Wait til ye see the bazillion photos i took!! We went to a nice western place for lunch and went back to the hostel via the Mao statue and the travel agency (where we booked our train tickets to Guilin for tomorrow). Wreaked after the long day (7.20am is very early when ur unemployed u know!) we rewared ourselves with some beer with a few we rounded up in the hostel and then we went across the road to a street cafe for some typical sichuan food which was so hot! i was eating the chow fan (fried rice) mainly to stop the fire in my mouth!! We got a taxi into “town” then, all 5 of us squished into 1 and pretended to be 4, the bar we found was quite nice and full with chinese people singing, not a KTV (kareoke) bar. A few beers there and it was back to the hostel for more but i left them to it for the last hour, sleepy from the long day and the beer, and conscious of the early start the next day…..

2nd March

The alarm got us all up and running for the taxi to the airport, we decided on a taxi all way to the airport since crankiness didn’t really allow for a short taxi ride followed by a bus journey. This worked out reasonable enough and we arrived in the airport in plenty of time. Onto a really nice plane then where we got served 2 drinks and a lunch in record time and off to Guilin.