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Published: August 7th 2007
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Our bus to Songpan turned out to actually be a bus to Jiuzhaigou (a famous national park) and we were the only 2 people on it not going all the way through to the end. This may have been why the driver decided not to stop at Songpan bus station, which we only realised when a kind soul pointed out we'd gone through Songpan and out the other side. The subsequent burst of Mandarin from the driver carried the implication that we should have told him to stop, however that seemed a little unreasonable as this was our first time in Songpan hence we had no clue where the bus station was - not to mention the fact that a more common criticism of Chinese buses is that they stop at too many places rather than too few.
A couple of kilometres of trudging later and we were in Songpan. It's a small town known for its horse-trekking, though we hadn't heard good things about the trekking companies here so were waiting until further north in Langmusi for that. There seemed to be more foreigners here than we'd been used to, mainly in tour groups, and there were Israeli options
on all the English language menus, which was a first for us in China.
Internet access was also different. Mysteriously, Wikipedia was now accessible though no pictures on Flickr would display. LA Woman subsequently discovered this new problem was due to a clampdown by the government, who had noticed that pictures of an environmental protest in Xiamen had made their way onto Flickr. As usual, there's a Firefox plug-in available to get round the ban.
We had originally decided not to go to the national park at Jiuzhaigou because almost all reviews of it mentioned that, yes, it was beautiful but it was very expensive and the experience could easily be spoiled by the vast numbers of tour groups clogging up the most scenic spots and making an unholy racket. The passengers on the bus to Songpan had assured us that the main crowds were in July and August so now would be a perfect time to go. The fact that that bus had been full of tourists heading there, plus the umpteen coaches roaring through Songpan with Jiuzhaigou as their destination, gave the lie to this but we were still convinced to give it a try (blogged
separately).
Unfortunately we had to return to Songpan from Jiuzhaigou in order to catch transport going further north, and our trip back involved a 3.5 hour traffic jam because an accident had blocked the road. Several hundred vehicles, the vast majority coaches, were held up in both directions and I was left wondering why such a heavily-used road was only one lane in each direction.
Dull but possibly useful info Getting there: Take a bus from Chengdu to Songpan (just 2 during the day, I think - we took the 8AM and the other is in the afternoon), costing 94 yuan and taking about 10 and a half hours.
Stayed at: Old House Hotel. Cost 60 yuan for a double. Would stay here again.
Ate at: Song on the Mountain. This was vastly superior to Emma's Kitchen, which for some reason seems to be the backpackers' favourite.
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