View from a Bridge. Toilet not shown.
Got up freakin' early again!
Today was our epic nine-hour bus journey; public bus indeed so we'd be sharing with the locals. No chickens though!
There was actually a bit of confusion with regards to seating on the bus; apparently our tickets all had seat numbers on them but Jane pointed out that everyone generally ignored the seat numbers and sat wherever they liked. This in fact turned out not to be the case on this specific bus! We all managed to get a seat in the end approximating where we should have done, but not after a rather bizarre game of musical chairs being played by our group, a handful of rather put-out Chinese, and two Irish backpackers. I ended up with an aisle seat halfway down the bus, next to a rapidly-degenerating Daniel.
The journey passed through the wilds of central Sichuan. There wasn't a lot to see except some lovely mountain scenery; it reminded me somewhat of the train journey between Ancona and Rome, in Italy. After about four hours, we stopped for lunch at a small village in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, by a nice bend in the Min River. I didn't eat anything there, I just wandered around and avoided the ... thing ... that passed itself off as a public toilet!.
Going through this countryside it certainly did feel like we were going to nowhere - villages were few and far between, and only some wild antics by other road users reminded us that yes, there would be some kind of civilisation at the end of it!
We arrived in the town of Songpan at around 5pm, surprisingly better than we'd expected to be. The journey hadn't been as bad as we had imagined. The hotel room was pretty good, if a little cold. I was a bit concerned though at the sound of scampering rats or mice in the air vent ducts ... !
Having dumped my electric razor in Chengdu as I found in tests it was only working 20% of the time, I now realised that wasn't the only thing I'd left there. It suddenly occurred to me upon departure on the bus that I'd left my coat in the wardrobe in the hotel room!! Oh well, no loss, no-one liked my 'flasher mac' much anyway and the only thing I'd left in it of any note were three empty plastic bags and what remained from my plane ticket from Guilin to Chengdu! So there is now some Chinese bloke wandering round the streets of Chengdu wearing a grubby mac that reaches down to his feet!
Songpan is essentially one main street with a couple of interesting side-streets. The main street being full of shops and stuff selling Tibetan wares, sweets, etc. While having a wander round, I bumped into the Swiss contingent and went around shopping with them (for some snacks for tomorrow, amongst other things). And, with Kathrin's help and advice, I bought a Tibetan-style yak's wool coat for 73 Yuan to replace my mac. It's not quite big enough but heck it's warm! Not sure how long it'll last though!