Cccrrrrgggakkrhhhpppptttt – Chengdu by foot

Friday 24th November 2006

Our last day together we had dumped the guide (maybe she got run ver by a pedicab) and experienced the real Chengdu by foot which I found really fascinating. So let me tell you a little about Chengdu. I am currently reading “Running a hotel on the roof of the world” by Alec Le Sueur – 50p from Wandsworth library over a month or so ago. As quoted from the book (page 13) Chengdu is the smellist city of the region of Sichuan where the sun never shines and it lived up to these expectations as it was like a miserable day in Manchester. Chengdu is also the capital of “cccrrrrgggakkrhhhpppptttt” – involoving snorthing from the back of your throat and throwing it all up in public. Lovely. There are ample supplies of cyclists in the city just like Beijing, cyclists have right of way over Pedestrians as well so beware when on a crossing and a cyclist just passes by and runs you over – a bit like London really. The only difference is the pedicab or two million that also do not give way to pedestrians. We left each other at midday to go our seperate ways, I was going 10 minutes up the road to a hostel and my friend back to Australia. Mix Hostel is where I have hit base for a few days, it seems quite nice, small, friendly and very clean but very very cold. A lot of people seem to have caught the flu here so they provided us with electric blankets only today so I was very lucky to have arrived today. I had a domestic day today posting parcels back to the UK (they would not allow me to post the DVD’s I had bought), washing (apparently it takes days to dry here – dammit I have run out of clothes) and catching up on afew emails and things. I had food at the hostel, which was all of about 70p for a big plate of rice and a local mug of tea. Most people are waiting for their permits to go to Tibet for a couple of days, I reckon I will give that a miss and just relax and gather my thoughts together. Later…