Saturday 11th July 2009 Hong Kong

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Saturday 11th July 2009 Hong Kong
The time finally came for us to vacate our glorious hotel suite and the ease of Hong Kong to journey back into deepest foreign China. 1 tram, 3 trains and a bus later we were back in China and in Shenzhen airport. The whole journey was hassle free actually, crossing the border without a second look or question and the Swine flu quarantine, which is nice to know we haven’t been infected yet. The flight was an hour late taking off but 2 hours later we were landing in Chengdu, money well spent considering how we would be feeling on our 30 hour train, that is if we had even negotiated our way onto it. The flight was non eventful except for the little song and dance routine all the airhostesses do. I would love to have gotten a translation of the words of the song they were dancing away too with all the hand movements, looked like a catchy tune though. It’s all these little things that make everything so different.

We got the shuttle bus into town and walked a few blocks to our hostel. Chengdu is apparently ranked as Chinas second most livable city, but first impressions are a bit of a charm less concrete jungle dissected by 6 lane roads. The hostel/hotel we are staying in, Traffic inn is another strange place. It looks from the outside and even the lobby like a hotel but then each floor seems to be run by a different little agency. Our room is ok, bit stuffy but that seems to be a standard and back to 40 TV channels with only one in English. I think the commies aren’t too keen on letting the locals see CNN or BBC news; they have in fact in the last few days blocked facebook and youtube because of the problems in Xinjang. We looked at our maps, books and the net for places to head out for food and a drink and an Irish bar called Shamrock kept popping up, and we finally managed to pull over a taxi and went there. Didn’t seem too great shakes though but we weren’t moving so had a few Long Sword beers

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