Farewell Chengdu
What a crazy city Chengdu is. The only thing I knew about Chengdu was it’s Panda’s, I had no idea what I was in for. One of the things I love about China is how different each province can be from one another. This city will always be remembered for the night of my gig and the wonderful people I met. Thank you Braedon, Wu, Steve, and everyone else I’ve met. Truly a memorable city.
Independent Travel?
Yes I did leave the United States by myself but really I’m never traveling by myself. All the people I’ve met at the hostels have been incredible for the most part. Paul and DeDe in Beijing, wonderful people!! After Beijing, I had left for Xi’an. The hostel picked me up from the Xi’an train station. That’s when I met Chris from the UK cause he was getting picked up as well to the same hostel. Since then Chris and I have been traveling together since were going in the same direction anyway. Real funny and chill guy. From Xi’an, we went to Chengdu and that’s when we met Clare and Jemma from the UK. Nearly everyone we spoke to has said the Yunnan province of China is the absolute best part of China between it’s culture and scenery. Clare and Jemma had already planned out that they were going to go from Chengdu to Kunming then to Lijang in Yunnan province. Chris and I hadn’t really planned much but we knew we wanted to go to Yunnan province and Lijang is the best place to go to in Yunnan. Clare and Jemma were kind enough to let us tag along with them. 18 hour train ride to Kunming and then a 10 hour bus ride to Lijang. So now it’s Chris, Clare, Jemma, and I just living life as it should be lived. Someone up there is looking after me cause I couldn’t have been any luckier to have met so many wonderful people.
Random Chinese
My Chinese is getting slightly better. I really believe this language is going to be extremely important to learn in the future. It’s the leading language of the world in a fasting growing developing country of the world. I’d love to learn as many languages as possible so it will be my life long mission to learn as many as possible.
The 18 hour train ride to Kunming was just madness. We may have been the only four white folks in the entire train and many of the Chinese taking the train may never have seen a foreigner before cause most of them come from rural and farm areas. We were basically celebrities and had quite a crowd going wanting to take pictures with us and just messing around and laughing. It was very humorous and amusing since none of us could understand each other. We did make some conversations with them which usually consisted of hand gestures. It’s amazing what body language can do. Very kind people that offered us everything they had.
After a 18 hour train ride, I‘m now on a 10 hour bus ride to Lijang with the new group. The view has been spectacular though. Little villages on the side of a mountain,, tons of farms, tons of mountains all over, lakes, rivers, and just an amazing view for hours on end. This is real China.
