We woke a bit late today and had to be at the airport for a flight to western China. We trundled with our backpacks through the humidity and got to the train station that would bring us to the airport. This train is special however! It’s a magnetic levitation train. MagLev for short.
As the train pulled into the platform everyone had their cameras out taking pictures. The oooohh’s started to change to eughhhhhh’s as the train got closer. You see, the front of the train was entirely covered in blood and feathers from all the birds it hits on it’s high speed journey.
We boarded the train and it took off as we watched the speedometer ahead of us. We topped at a speed of 431km/hr. We were flying it! We were passing cars on the motorway as if they were at a standstill. 8 minutes later we were at the airport.
Our flight took us to a town called Chengdu. On the map Chengdu looks like a town, but in fact it has 4.3 million people squashed into the place. Here is where China really began. Toilets have become a mere hole in the ground. It’s dirty, full of smog and the poverty is more evident. We are now the only westerners in a 200 mile radius and Chinese is the only language.
We got the number 16 bus to the city and it dropped us in the middle of nowhere. No taxi’s would pick us up and no one could understand us at all. It was beginning to get dark with no sign of accommodation. Eventually a taxi stopped and brought us to a guesthouse. It was rotten. At this stage we did not care. The city is eerily quiet at night and doesn’t seem too safe….at all.
We called it an early night.
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