Hey Dad,
Well we got woken up this morning by the tannoy playing ‘Amazing Grace’ with pan pipes. Not going to lie, it is perhaps the strangest way I have been woken up. I could have coped with it, but it continued for over an hour; on repeat. What’s worse is our tannoy was turned off, but everyone surrounding had it on, so we could hear it clearly.
We wanted to have a nice leisurely breakfast to say our goodbyes to all the people we met, only to be told as we sat down our tour guide was down stairs and we needed to leave. Immediately. Unimpressed I of course dug my heels in and refused to move until I had eaten breakfast and said goodbye. The tour guide said 8am at the latest, I got there about 8:15……
We arrived at the train station at 9:15 for a 10:30 train. Safe to say we could have had breakfast at our pace and still had time to sit in a train station the size of an airport for over an hour. Oh well.
We arrived in Chengdu, and followed the crowd off the train. Every other time we were instantly greeted at the door by our guide. This time no guide! We stood around for a while, still go guide. We decided to leave mum standing with all the bags while I walked around. I quickly discovered this huge train station had 4 exits, so leaving the station would be suicide. We found an information desk. Using our best Chinese we tried to explain the situation. Eventually we showed them the number of a tour company contact. After waiting around for what seemed like hours our tour guide eventually found us. Not sure what happened, but it was not the smoothest transition.
We arrived at the hotel and were exhausted. It was another late night in the bar with the cocktails flowing, that and with the early morning wake up call, sleep the night before had been in short supply.
We crashed out in the hotel room all afternoon! The bathroom wall is glass, weird!
Grabbed a bite to eat in the hotel. £12.50 for what turned out to be a pretty good steak! We then people watched from the window. Highlight has to be the dog wearing shoes! Who does that?!
Good nights sleep tonight ready for the pandas tomorrow!
Night dad x
Dear Dad 