Chengdu

Back in Chengdu, we hailed a taxi cab (not as easy here as it had been in the irrigation town). I was a bit uneasy because I don't like getting in taxis as I feel they could take you anywhere and the guy had thrown our bags in the trunk. There really wasn't much we could do except get in but Emily told me later she was uneasy about this taxi driver too and made a point of following along on the map where we were. This was the only time in China that I felt my haunches go up. In the backseat, I tried to make small talk with Emily that indicated I knew where we were but I had idea. He did overshoot our hotel by a ways but we were eventually dropped off at Sam's Guesthouse safely. The nice receptionist told us that we were right on time. This was welcome news to our ears. I had emailed requesting a room and saying that we would arrive around 8PM (It was 7:45) but we had not known if there would be a room available. Even better she said she only had a double but she would charge us the price of a triple. Then we were greeted by a cute Tibetan who in a gesture of chivalry lifted my monstrous pack off the ground and was going to carry it to our room. Even though I was soooo sick of that huge pack, I couldn't let him carry my really ridiculously heavy pack so I told him that I would carry it and it was even more embarrassing he tried to help me get it on, but trying to put on a huge backpack does not really work out that smoothly when you have not lifted the pack yourself from the ground and my hands were full of other stuff since I wasn't prepared to put the pack back on yet. Well finally we were shown to our room. Emily and I were totally delighted with our room.

The next day we took a bus to the tea market. It was amazing, lots and lots of tea and everything related to tea. I went a little wild and spent a lot of Yuan (although not really many US dollars) on tea. I think eventually Emily had to pull me out of the tea market. If I had known Chinese and been able to know what I was buying I would probably have never left. I may have just told her I would see her back at the hotel. We took the bus back to our hotel and here's when yet another funny thing happened with a hotel.

We went to our room and then went to the lobby where we spent about 45 minutes in the lobby chatting with three guys that had just arrived from Seattle, checking our email, and asking our receptionist questions on recommendations on places to eat. Since the bathrooms are not all that great in China, we decided to go to our room and use the bathroom before we headed back out on the streets for the afternoon. In our short 45 minute absence, one of our beds had disappeared and now we only had two beds. There was no evidence that the bed had been moved but it was gone. Emily correctly deduced that it was just the two of us for the night and we didn't have to worry about getting a roommate that smoked. I thought it was hilarious, because an event that would probably have taken me the whole day to orchestrate, they had done in less than a mere 45 minutes. Just in case the bed was not supposed to be missing, we went to the desk and told them that we now only had two beds. They of course gave us a, "Of course you've only got two beds, you idiots!" look.

We left for more souvenir shopping. We (actually I) got sucked in by the first tea shop offering us free tea. They sit you down on a table that is low to the ground and then go through an elaborate process of rinsing your tiny glasses with the tea they are offering you, thereby freeing your glass of any traces of residue from the previous tea. The water goes in a slop bucket. Then they brew up another pot and pour it into yet another pot so that all the tea is the same strength. Then you are served up tea and they use wooden tweezers to pick up the glasses. There are a variety of tools for the process and the tools, tea pot, cups and slop bucket sit on top of a wooden slotted tea tray. Emily and I drank some jasmine tea and I think we both bought more tea. Here we also got tea treats (sugared plums, dried mini tomatoes and almond crackers) that were neatly wrapped up in lots of packaging (the US packaging is nothing compared to China, everything is wrapped at least twice). The treats were very refined, what I had envisioned one might be able to eat in a Tea house (not true, only sunflowers). We were both hungry so we gobbled down all the snacks they offered us. The only problem with drinking lots of free tea at the tea shops is that there do not seem to be many public bathrooms and if you do find one, all of them cost you small change that you never have, and none of them are very nice (squatters at best, gutters being the worst). We left the tea shop for more souvenir shopping and eventually called it a day. Not before we had gone out to eat for dinner.

The girls at the hotel had told us that a place 100 meters from our hotel offered very good typical Sichuan food. That seemed appropriate for our last night in Sichaun Provence. We were very hungry and were delighted when they produced an English menu. Unfortunately we ordered so much food that we had more food on the table than the table of 8 next to us! We ordered eggs and tomatoes, mushrooms, beef and vegetables, egg drop soup (different than ours), kale, chicken with spicy peanuts and vegetables and rice. OK so we ordered a lot to eat even if it hadn't all come family size. We didn't know that everything came family size. I ordered a beer too. I don't even like beer but in China it comes in a 1.5 liter size and tasted like PBR or Old Milwaukee. I like weak cheap beer and it also helped with the spice.

The next day we had a flight from Chengdu to Shenzen. In Shenzen we had to find a bus to the train station, cross the border (the lines were very long) and then get on the train to Hong Kong and find a hotel room. Luckily since Shenzen has especially good public transportation, none of this was as difficult as I anticipated with all of our stuff. Did I mention that we each had enough stuff at this point to really fill two backpacks fully? I mean really fully, absolutely bulging. The worst part was that even though the trains leave continuously we had to be pushy to get a seat for our 1 hour train ride. Something that neither of us seemed good at. Emily and I had been scheming though and we let everyone get on the first train, then we walked to purtner the furthest car and waited for the next train. Even then though, we had to be aggressive to get a seat. It all worked out OK.