Chengdu…10/22/2011-10/27/2011

China’s big…

We arrived at 5am after taking a 15-hour train ride from Xian to Chengdu in the hard sleepers. It was fine. I suggest getting the bottom. If that option is not available get the middle, and then the top after that. They gradually get smaller and smaller as you go up. I think I mostly enjoyed it, especially the view, but some rude person kept smoking their strange cigarettes and killing me. I did not sleep all that well.  The hilarious part of this story is that is took me awhile to figure out that it was cigarettes. There was a point when I was lying in bed and my head perked up in anger, nostrils flaring, and growling out, I smell poo! It was smoke, but just around the corner I did spot a small slit wearing child.

We hit some rain, and I got sick! We did see Pandas!! Insert pictures.

Then I went back to being sick. Chengdu is a thriving metropolis. You will not BELIEVE  where Curtis took me for a date!!! The dinner was amazing, and the walk was refreshing! IKEA!!!  Chengdu also had a Walmart. It was the first place we found to have hand sanitizer. We really stocked up.  I wanted to buy a facial cream, but all creams and lotions her have skin whitener in it…, and I really don’t need to head in that direction anymore than I already am.

This city has super duper cheap shopping, at least at the outdoor store next to the IKEA. New packing tip. If you start your trip in China bring a bag of toiletries, and NOTHING else. Buy it in China, and if you can in Chengdu. Most of China is fairly inexpensive, but for a price comparison, a bag that is $250 in the US is $70 in China. I bought snuggly pj’s there that are fast drying and spent around 15 dollars for a pair of pants and a shirt. I’m so happy!

Chengdu was helpful, and we stocked up on food, and mostly slept. It was funny because I have not seen Curtis so stir crazy to leave a city before, but Chengdu was not doing it for him. He is itching for sunlight and fresh air, and I believe something different to eat besides ramen.  Oddly, the same luck that took us to Xian did NOT follow us here. There were no tickets out of Chengdu for a while. We met a lot of travelers who are out for the same time as us or longer, and we are finding we all travel the same way. You plan some things, and sooo many things you take as you go. It is so freeing and so easy and the glitches are few if any, and it's cost effective. Curtis’s devotion to the cause of leaving Chengdu was great though and he finagled tickets to the middle of nowhere Wuhan where we could take another train to Guilin from there to keep us on our intended schedule. Not only that but he got us soft sleepers!!

The hostels are all so friendly and nice. It’s nice to come home to a hostel. It feels much the same everywhere you go. Everyone is sOOoo friendly, the other travelers are fun to get to know and pick their brains during the day, and the information the hostels give out about the cities and future cities you're traveling to are priceless.

We packed everything up, and headed out. The hostel gave us a quicker way to get to the station. We walked straight onto the train as they were already boarding and had our train cabin to ourselves. WE ended up with them to ourselves the whole night, and besides the workers unlocking our door and checking to see if anyone snuck in every now and then it was pretty much just us. The views were beautiful, and Curtis and I just talked and hung out.

We ate ramen for lunch, and when we were sick to our stomachs with hunger we ate the second for dinner.

On the train to Wuhan...10/27/2011

There are so many different emotions that you go through doing this the way we are doing it all.

I'm so tired. I've been sick recently and finding that one night of good sleep has been difficult. Honestly, it's hard to remember when I felt really rested.. I have dark circles under my eyes and wrinkles and I see the ugly that no sleep has left me.  

I know I have only been away a month, and while many keep telling us this will be the hardest
stretch I keep believing it is only the beginning of this journey. It's 2:50 in the morning and to be true I couldn't sleep because our train car keeps crashing into the other train cars, I am having dreams of cockroaches and rats and lice, the soft sleeper smells like fresh smoke and toilet coming through the vent and I was starving.... Until I got up and ate some peanuts.

These are moments I find myself pinching myself to wake up. It's amazing to me that I am not at war, or in a prison camp, or in the movie Hidalgo starving in the desert... Or in the prison in Four
Feathers....... Because that's who I find myself relating to sometimes. 

I'm sure if anything this is all beginning to scare you and make you wonder where we are and you are imagining places far worse than we are in. When or if  this happens revert to the pictures and understand I'm a baby. 

I have not been feeling hungry, but feel malnourished and I am starting to wonder if it is jet lag anymore or a serious loss of appetite. It's been a month and I am still having to remind myself to eat and not just anything but unhealthy foreign tasting food that sometimes is not so tasty. It's difficult when moving so frequently to find familiar things in each place you go, but as far as marts go I have done considerably well. 

It doesn't help that I have been sick recently. I remember being picky in America during colds and flus, but here you can lose a lot of weight. I don't believe I've reaped those benefits of starving but just been desperate for food. Every now and then I find myself eating and noticing I enjoy the flavor and the overall content of what I'm eating. Noticeably I find myself eating it slowly to savor it and that I'm desperate for every bite. I see glimpses of Heath Ledger in Four Feathers when Abu brings him bread in the prison. 

 I would feel like a baby, but I like the food in China and still I'm hungry. I would feel like a baby until I was sitting in the lobby of our hostel eves dropping on fellow travelers describing how
hungry they are and that THEIR countries must have spoiled them. One girl started going on about cheese. "It's hard to find good cheese in China and it's important. I searched for this cheese." The guy behind me..., "But how will that keep." "I bought enough for today and tomorrow", she said. "I had some for lunch and now for dinner and there will be some for tomorrow even." I was jealous of her cheese. 

I thought about talking with my sister explaining travel was possible with her kiddies. I did say don't do China, but I said it was possible. I started wondering why I blathered onto her like I knew anything when I remembered how the convo went and what I said would make it possible.

Cooking...

I started dreaming about carrying fifteen extra pounds of pan and battery coils to cook on. They felt light and easy. I would have impulsively bought one had they been in plain sight in any store we visited.

It's a cycle. I know I got sick because my immune system has been lagging in a country that's dirty and that's because and why I'm not eating what I should. I'm not drinking what I should because it's hard to carry enough clean water and I guess until I am truly thirsty the UV pen is not convincing my psyche of anything nor are their hot water dispensers. 

Everything seems to manifest during times of being desperate. In the night I am starving and earlier today I did not eat the soup we bought until I was sick to my stomach I was so hungry. I thought I was sick, but I realized it must be hunger pains because the thought to eat does not come to me without the alarms I set on the phone.

Many of you may be laughing at me, but judge me all you want because I have kept us eating, and am willing to eat most things. Meat that has been rotting and collecting bacteria, or dumplings being prepared in a bowl in the back of a restaurant on the streets where kids are pooing, by a man I just saw blow what Curtis told me is a snot rocket and then not wash but wipe his hands
on his pants leads me to go without for a while. 

Even while I write this all I'm not sure I will post it because now that the rant is over, I'm tired enough to sleep and remember all the good in the world and despite not always getting what I want or need... I have been eating quite well in comparison to so many here. 

Mostly, Curtis and I are so close. I remember believing that this trip truly could make or break us and it was really hard at first and suddenly in the worst of it Curtis really stepped up to the plate and we are besties for life. If anything I will cherish China every day because I have Curtis and I feel so close to him in ways I didn't before.

I really feel that even though I thought we were friends before this trip and that I loved him back then... It feels nothing like today and how much I feel for him now and am grateful that it's him with me rather than any other soul I've met! Sorry for the corniness..but the good feelings rushed in all at once after the rant and left the mush. :-)

A couple hours of watching the strobe-ing windows passing city lights.... and a ten minute dream of almond sized ninjas attacking me...we are now in Wuhan. Wuhoo!