May Golden Week

Golden week is a seven day holiday starting from the first of May.

My vacation plan for golden week was to visit my grandmother's house in Sichuan province. She lived in the cities of Chengdu and Nanchong. I also saw my greataunt and greatuncle.

I hope I don't forget anything.

Day One, Two:
Proved to be a very long train ride. The train took off at around 11am on the first of May. My aunt was so worried. Don't talk to strangers. Always have your wallet with you. Thank god I brought water. I hardly ate anything except for the fruits that were brought with me. The train ride was bout 30 hours. That's right 30 hours. Didn't talk to anyone at all. To let you know the setup. There are about 6 beds. Each bed is about 180cm. Just about my height. The bed is about 2 feet wide and 2 feed in height. Comfortable enough to sleep when you're really tired. Second day was really boring. I arrived at 6pm and saw my cousin.

The hotel was okay but the service was good. Another cousin picked us up to go to temple area for dinner. We had a vegetarian dinner. Not very good. Imitation meat was not very good. But the temple area was pretty cool. Lots of chinese architecture unlike Beijing.

Day Three:
Went to Qingcheng Shan. A taoist temple mountain. Our tourbus was an hour late. The tourguide wasn't very good. The other tourists complain a lot. Damn never again will I travel during a government holiday in China. It's so bad that we waited for the lift for about 2 hours. We only saw the top of the mountain for about 30 minutes and had to rush back. Had hotpot for dinner. Spicy food again.

Day Four:
Saw my grandaunt and had some Chengdu snacks. Some of them were really good. A lot of them were spicy. Left for Nanchong and saw some other cousins. Finally some non-spicy food.

Day Five:
Saw where my grandmother's house was. Shopped a little. Went to hotpot again. My stomach isn't handling it well.

Day Six:
Crazy day. I was suppose to go back to Beijing today but there were no trains to Beijing. After a lot of pondering, my cousin decided to fly me home instead. This part is really interesting. We were in the rush all the time. He was trying to transfer money from Beijing. But we were so late for the flight already that I just paid for it first. The taxi driver was driving like a mad man. We almost ran over a local grandmother and a kid. It was crazy driving so fast through residential streets.

Had to transfer at Chengdu. There were no economy seats so they had to bump me up to first class. Not so much different. Stewardesses are more attentive. That's it. First class lounge is really nothing.. Maybe international first class than domestic first class. hehe...

Day Seven:
Day of rest... yay!!