Trip to Chengdu

So caught the 8:30 bus to Jijiang ... it was full and cramped, though thats cool as I only have to be on the bus for 10hrs.
There are two types of bus in China, the national bus company and then privately owned express buses.. the express buses are generally a lot more comfortable, the bus belonged to the national bus company.

The scenary though on the journey was stunning.. stupidly I didnt take any pictures.. sorry. We drove from Lijiang east over the mountain range. The bus was driving along roads with 1000m plus drops down one side... the worrying thing was that the bus had to be stopped on regular occasions to cool the brakes down! Apparently this is normal......

Anyway after dropping people off a few times I started to panic thinking that I had missed my stop. Asking the women behind me if this was my stop (by pointing to my ticket) she nodded and I got off the bus... immediately taxi touts tried to get my bags and put them in their taxi. I nearly went with one and the bus driver just shouted at me.. "Lets go!" and I got back on the bus and we continued on. After reading my Rough Guide again, it said the bus actually stopped outside the station.... and it did.

I got to the train station and into the ticket office, got a hard sleeper train ticket for Chengdu. There are a number of classes for the train, soft sleeper and hard sleeper ... I wanted soft but couldnt get any money out of the ATMs.

Wandering around the town I bought some food and then got a few supplies for the journey.

There is something about the staff at train stations, they are power crazy. Whilst minding my own business awaiting the train, this women came over checked my ticket and told me to start walking right. I guess this was to get me at the right place for the carriage.. anyway I continued to walk looked back and she motioned to keep walking. I did... the train arrived and lo and behold the carriage stopped exactly where I had been standing... I swore at her and carried all my stuff back to where I had originally been.

Whilst in the line she had the ordasity to shout at me with her megaphone to get in line... I being the stubborn sod took a step further out of line and she left it .. one to me!

The carriages are quite different to anything I had experienced before with each booth having 6 beds (3 on each side). Because I was being the English gentleman I let everyone through and helped people with their bags... I ended getting the top bunk.

The beds were pretty comfy and finished my book that I started on the bus. (John Irvine - Widow for a Year - which is excellent and definately worth reading! I could rant about this book but wont. I hadnt really heard of John Irving but a certain someone has been going on about him for a while so I thought I best check some of his work out.. needless to say that certain someone was right and he is a great author.).

14hrs later... we arrived in Chengdu... I think I have already mentioned before how its really bad to get to a new town without knowing where the hostel your staying is.. well I didnt know.

After about 3 hrs of hunting for an Internet cafe, I found one and then realised that Sims Cosy Guesthouse was about 2km from where I was... bugger. I walked back and followed my badly drawn map... after about 20mins of wandering around I passed a load of chinese street restaurants and there was Sims.