Yangshou

Sweating my vagina off as I type this on yet another train to Chengdu. This train also doesn't have air con but atleast the fan works. This journey is 24.5 hours. After all these trains the 4 hour coach to Liverpool will be a piece of piss.

We enjoyed Yangshou, apart from the lack of sleep. We were in an 8 bed dorm. Me and Lee shared a bunk, I was on the top one and him on the bottom. There was a Chinese lad staying on the top bunk across from me. He was only there for 2 nights but by the end of it I could have strung him up by his stupid pony tail. He came to bed around 5am each night, obviously staying up to watch the Euro's. But what he'd done is set an alarm for 2.45am on one of his phones to wake him up for the games, not that he ever went to bed beforehand anyway, he was always downstairs from 10pm onwards. He then left this phone in his locker. So 2.45am comes and we get woken up to the sound of some shit Chinese RnB song which lasted about 30 seconds. At first we just thought it was a call so we tried to go back to sleep, but it kept going off every minute for about 15 minutes. We were on the 5th floor so going down to get him wasn't an option. After a while Lee had enough and went over to the lads locker and ragged it open and gave me the phone. I couldn't get the battery off so I had to just switch it off. I saw another alarm was set for 7.20am but because everything was in Chinese I didn't know how to switch that alarm off. Needless to say we were woken up again at 7.20am. This was after him coming in at 5am waking us all up again. I leaned over and shook his bed to wake him up and he went down to turn off the alarm and went back to bed.

I was visibly angry so you'd have thought he'd turn his alarms off, but the next day the exact same thing happened. I was so angry. I shook his bed so hard and shouted at him. He shit himself he didn't know what was goin' on getting woken up by some crazy white girl swinging off his bed going nuts.

We hired a couple of mountain bikes and went for a cycle round the river. It was really nice. Haven't been on a bike in years, I was kinda scared when we set off thinking in my head that it was an absolute given that I'd return with bloody knees and no teeth. The last time I was on a bike I put my head straight through a parked car so as you can guess I'm not the most competent of cyclists. After a while I found my feet and got my confidence back and I was grand.

On our ride we saw loads of water buffalos and hens with their chicks, and we took a bamboo raft across the river with our bikes. At one point we stopped and had a dip in the river. It was so nice, but when we got out we were covered in what looked like tiny leeches and some other bugs. We stood there for about 10 minutes whacking these bugs off, they were everywhere!
The ride took about 5 hours so we treated ourselves to a fat burger and chips afterwards mmmmm...

We met a few lads there who we went on a night out with. There was an Englishman, a Dutchman and an American. Sounds like the beginning to a bad joke. They had all taught there at some point. We went to a hostel bar called Monkey Jane's as that was the only place open showing the football. It was a place especially for foreigners, so when Jane started saying she hates foreigners infront of the whole place it really pissed me off. So I shouted at her, "how are you gona say you hate foreigners when every single person in here is foreign?!! We pay your fucking wages you silly lady! Absolute idiot!". She had pissed us off before that too. Lee ordered noodles and they cost 4 and Lee gave her a 5 note then quickly realised he had the right change and swapped it and she said, "fucking rich people wasting my fucking time". WHAAAAT I didn't hear this at the time but when Lee told me I was fuming. Why would you make your business for foreigners if you clearly hate them? She was a tosser though. When people stopped paying attention to her to watch the football she went over and turned it off. She seemed like a bitter middle aged woman having a midlife crisis. You know the type.

What annoyed me the most though was that the people we were with were making excuses for her, saying "don't take offense, it's just the way they are". No. No it isn't. That was just rude to a different extent. It annoys me how everyone keeps making excuses for these people. What would it take before they say enough is enough? Argh!!!

So I'm finishing this entry in Chengdu now. Our hostel is boss but it's a bit creepy and they're playing creepy music which doesn't help. We met a Chinese girl on the train who, shock horror, was really very nice! To make sure we got to where we were going she took us to our hostel (which was two buses from the train station) and even up to our room bless her. We like Chengdu already. Can't wait to see the Panda's, woohoo!!!!