Chengdu: Day 4 & 5 (11/14/19 - 11/15/19)
(11/14)
I wasn’t feeling up to exploring more of Chengdu today. My anxiety was running high and with the weather turning grey and drippy I made excuses to stay inside all day. I took an hour-long shower to help me calm down and center myself which did me a lot of good. I rallied enough to get a decent amount done on my essays, and wrote the last week of my journal entries I had been neglecting. Ate my incredibly spicy leftovers from last night for lunch, which I didn’t have any rice for so it kicked my butt. But mostly I surfed BiliBili which is kind of like Chinese Youtube and killed time.
I know in the front of my brain that its ok to take time off from travel to decompress, but that didn’t stop me from getting all up in my own head about wasting my time in China and that I need to be out and about. As is I need to do anything. I did force myself to at least walk around the block once, half out of guilt and half out of a need for snack food. I located a small convenience store and picked up some snacks as well as instant noodle bowls for my overnight train ride tomorrow. Apparently that’s a super common food, but I don’t really understand how I’m supposed to cook it when I can’t boil water. I figure they’ll have like a station or something but who knows.
(11/15)
My train to Zhangjiajie was scheduled to leave at 6pm today so I had most of the afternoon to kill before needing to check out and make my way to the station across town. I was still feeling down and the thought of going out for a few hours seemed unapproachable so I killed the morning on BiliBili watching cooking videos and the afternoon solidifying plans for the rest of my time in China and buying my plane ticket home from Xi’an in a little over a week. It felt good to lay down definite plans after the last few months of pretty much winging it, but as with any closure or ending there was a sense of loss. I think that’s good though, I didn’t enjoy yesterday and I think having a looming end date for my trip will spur me back into motion.
I arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare and put my bag through security. I passed fine, but my backpack got a large beep. They sifted through my waist pouches where I keep my coins, maps, and knife, and you can guess which one they didn’t like. I don’t know the rules about knife size in China, if they’re allowed at all on public transportation, but I was surprised and heartbroken to see them take it. It’d been with me since Day 1 after all. Goodbye my friend, you’ve been there for me through thick and thin, pasta and sausage, cheese and cracker, bread and vegetable, and I’ll never forget you.
The train was running late so I ended up being bored out of my mind for like 3 hours in the waiting room. I did a little work, played a point-and-click game mystery game on my computer, and people watched until it felt like my head was going to explode. At one point a younger guy sat down next to me and I was glad to have a text-based conversation partner. He was a high-school student on break and very excited to be traveling on his own for the first time. We were just getting into story telling when we were called for boarding and went to our separate cars.
Now is the time to mention how long to train ride from Chengdu to Zhangjiajie is. See, its nearly 12 hours. So this wasn’t an ordinary train ... it was a SLEEPER TRAIN! So there were no seats, only tightly packed bunk beds in sets of 6. I was actually quite excited to be on my first dedicated sleeper train so I didn’t mind the cheap mattress or constant noise of conversation. My bunk mates would have drove a younger me nuts though . It was a mom and her two young kids plus a baby. The kids were really loud and had a toy that made loud beeping sounds, which they used until the battery ran out. The baby also drooled a lot and several times it dripped onto my shoes or bag under the bunk. I just kinda chose to not let it bother me, keeping in mind that the mom was probably having the worst time out of everyone there.
I watched the scenery pass by and chewed through a large piece of my remaining Netflix downloads, which were a precious commodity since I can’t get any more while in China. After sundown I noticed several people producing instant noodle bowls they had brought along. I did the same and followed them to a small faucet next to the bathroom, which actually produced boiling water. Mystery solved! That’s why the internet recommend bringing ramen! I enjoyed my large bowl of spicy chicken noodles, used the bathroom (a literal hole in the floor you could see the tracks racing below), and tucked in. I had seen that an attendant would come to tell folks when they’re stop was coming up so I wasn’t overly concerned about missing my stop.
