Chunks of sick anyone?

23/08/09 - Chengdu To Emei

We woke up at 7.30am and after atleast seven presses of the snooze button on our alarm clock we got out of bed around 9. Needless to say we were shattered but Laura in particular was feeling extra rough and the thought of having to pack up the entire room, squeeze things back into our bags and then catch buses for the next few hours didn't help either. What did help was our usual breakfast that always did the trick but for one of us things weren't going to get much better later in the day...

We checked out of our best hostel yet (only the second but hey!) and caught the bus to the bus station to get another bus for Emei. Well that was the plan anyway as we ended up on the wrong side of town. This was more annoying as halfway through the journey there must have been an accident because we came to a stand still on the bus for what seemed like half an hour in the blazing muggy heat. Luckily we had ended up right by the train station which would be much quicker, safer and comfortable, again or so we thought. More of that later.

Before jumping straight on the train we had to get a ticket which took quite a long time to find and once we'd found it there were tons of different queues. After looking lost and confused for five minutes a nice young Chinese man came to the rescue and made sure we were ok and stayed with us in the queue and ordered the tickets too. Thank you that man! However, the minute we got to almost paying Laura's roughness took a turn for the worst. Politely excussing herself from our helpful friend she dashed across the station outside to the nearest place to vomit. Thsi happened to be the worst place imaginable for Laura...KFC! Not only did she have to hold her sick but she had to do it whilst smelling dead greasy chicken. Things then got even worse when there was a que even bigger than the one at the train station. After holding on damn welll she couldn't stop the inevitable and ran out of the queue to the nearest sink and spewed chunks infront of around 15 Chinese ladies. This wasn't shaping up to be her day really!

After a good clean up she returned to the station and I popped off to get her some ice cold water to cool her down and wash a certain smell in the air from her mouth. If being sick wasn't enough, when I returned with fluids a few minutes later the second I had left a tramp had sat down right infront of her while she had her head buried in her hands and begged for money. Security had come over and asked him to move in which he didn't and they just left her and rolled their eyes. Laura gave the man a bottle of water and he threw it to the ground in disgust and raged something in Chinese. When I arrived back to her a second begger came along and wouldn't leave. We gave her 10p and she looked rather pleased and moved on so we got ourselves into the station finally. After about an hour we got onto the train, all seats had been booked so we had to take standing for two hours. This would be bearable but the second the train was about to leave, Laura took another turn for the worse and shuffled herself towards the door in order to puke on the tracks if necessary. The train security were right by the door and seeing a British person sweating and being sick isn't the best situation to be in with how serious the Chinese are dealing with Swine Flu. Luckily after being bent over resting on her rucksack for a few minutes nothing came of it. The next two hours were going to be rather interesting and incredibly uncomfortable.

We'd booked standing tickets and were cram-packed into the section of the carriage in between the seating areas right infront of the train doors with our massive homes on our backs and also stood in the only part of the train where you can smoke! Eventually the space widened by a few people and we managed to put our bags down and sit on them which was quite a balancing task in itself.

We thought we would be in Emei for around 2.30pm and it was looking like mor on 6pm. This was a pretty tough day but whilst sat squeezed in it actually became quite a thrill to be apart of. Staff attempted to push trolleys of food and water through to the different carriages and people were trampling on everyone elses feet and trying to dodge it. We made a few journey friends even if we hardly spoke to them. One man who had been huddled in a ball next to Laura offered me one of his cigarettes on three different occassions, I know I was sat in the smoking area but he didn't seem to get the message until he asked Laura if she wanted one and she had just learnt how to say no in Chinese ("Bu") which is to actually say "not". Another friend was a little boy who was obsessed at looking at me and looked even more in detail when I got out my not so swanky orange coloured mobile phone out. I'm not sure if he thought it was really cool because he's never seen that make before or amused it was so crap. Probably the latter as even the poor looking people on the tarin had the latest touch screen phones!

After a long journey we finally arrived at Emei. The hostel we'd booked (The Teddy Bear Hostel- yes there really is teddy bears everywhere!) had warned us that we'd prbably be aproached by toats insisting they have come to pick us up. Sure enough we were met by a woman spoating out different hostel names hoping she'd get the right one. When she saw we had the Teddy Bear leaflet in our hands she produced a fake card and told ud to get in her taxi. After alot of no, no, no thanks, no, we got ourselves a taxi. Who knows where we would have been taken or what we would have to had bought but we'll never know!

So here we are now, with a rather expensive looking room (although it has tacky orange bear faces on the bedsheets and pillow!) and I've just devoured some beef and potato and Laura had a big bowl of egg fried rice. We're so ready for bed and we need it for tomorrow we spend the day climbing Mount Emei and will do it over the next two days sleeping in two different monastrys. Once we've climbed back down again we'll come back to this hostel for another night.