23 August: Back to Chengdu

Up early this morning, we got on the rickety bus back to Chengdu. An 8 hour, fun filled trip. The bus driver started playing, by what can only be described as musical chairs. Whatever was being shouted was because of us ‘Westies’. We had no clue what was going on. We just stayed put and ignored the chaos and gave dirty looks to the people trying to throw us off the bus. We were leaving on this bus no matter what. When calm was restored and the bus started on it’s way Rich ended up sitting next to an American girl who literally talked non-stop at him for the entire 8 hours. At one stage he had fallen asleep and she still talked while looking out the window. Dead serious!

We all went through various stages of naps while keeping our Bibles close. If they went missing, we would be “@%$ed! On my left a whole family had squeezed into two seats and the smallest daughter puked for at least 7 hours and 59 mins. Did it smell? Did it what.
When we arrived back in Chengdu we went straight to the train station to get tickets for tomorrow but they were sold out. We nearly cried, as we would have to spend another day in HELL(Chengdu).

Back at the hostel, we managed to book really cheap plane tickets for tomorrow night out of this place. It felt like we had been told we were released from prison! Although, we would have to spend the next day passing the time away.