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Published: July 11th 2011
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Now it wasn’t until I got into China that I actually picked up the Lonely Planet and started flicking through its 1049 pages and started to have a bit of a plan, other than to just keep heading south and lets just see what gets in the way. Now since I have started on the traveling trail the Sichuin province has become a bit of a holy grail for me, the more I read about it the more there seems to do there and I have still yet to see the China I had imagined and this area may well be it.
The first of the places I had ear marked was a National Park called Jiuzhaigou, now to get there I needed to get to a town called Guangyuan on the overnight train then on a 9 hour bus journey to get there, that’s fine after all I wanted to travel. This bus that I needed to get runs once a day, it leaves dodge at 6am, my train pulled in at 7am this morning. Ooops!
Guangyuan is apparently the site of China’s largest nuclear-weapons-grade plutonium productions facility and I am here for 24 hours. They obviously do
not get many, if hardly any westerners at all here for as soon as I stepped off the train this morning it has been like parting of the waves as I walk down the street, I really am the only westerner in town. Thankfully someone spoke English at the bus station and helped me with the bus ticket and with phrase book in hand when I started to ask about hotels there was a dozen or so people circled around me all doing their best to direct me somewhere. I ended up just waving my arms around and thanked them in my best Mandarin and walked off to try my luck. After a couple of no room at the inn from a couple salubrious hotels I was directed to what I believe could well be the hotel in town for a grand sum of £9.00 with breakfast (I have blown the budget on this accommodation) I thought sod it I don’t have limitless options here. So I for 3* rooms double bed TV and roof top terrace I have camped out for the day as I won’t be doing any sightseeing. I did venture out to get myself some tea, consisting of pot noodles a beer and some peanuts for the grand sum of £1.20. I think word has gotten out around town as there was a bit of a crowd outside the hotel.
Here is the up-date, I made it, again the bus station was another little adventure as even the numbers were in Mandarine, so there I was wandering around desperately clasping my bus ticket trying to find someone who worked at the bus station. At 5.30 there was no-one but then I got lucky a driver jumped out of his bus and led me to the bus.
My, the bus trip! Due to my very early purchase of the bus ticket I had seat number one, so there was no way they were going to forget me, so for the whole 9 hours, I had the bus driver infront of me hoicking out of the window, his helper doing the same on the other side of the bus and the young girl next to me was also at it when they weren’t hoicking clams the girl behind me was throwing up into the plastic bags supplied by our very kind bus driving assistant. Whilst all this was going on I was watching the rain slide down the window as we winded our way around the mountains passing dams, electric plants, quarries, mines and even the odd rice field.
So for now take care and will blog next about the National Park, which I hear from fellow backpackers is well worth the visit.
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