August 10, 2009 – Day 228 – Chengdu, China

After a horrible night that made us want to die, we got up at 5AM to an orchestra of more spitting, snot rocketing, smoking, and shouting. It was still very dark and still raining outside but after 15 minutes, we could take no more. We were near delirious from having exhausted our bodies to the max yesterday, neither eaten nor slept since the day before we climbed the mountain, and on top of it, we were freezing.

Good Morning!

So we rented some big stupid coats from the big stupid hotel and went out into the big stupid rainy, dark morning to wait for the big stupid sunrise that never happened because of the stupid rain and stupid clouds.

Ahhh the sunrise

Feeling near a massive mental meltdown, we took the cablecar down to the bus parking lot and got the first one we could find back to town. Unfortunately for us, it was the most disgusting compilation of people that probably exist in the entire universe. There was the usual hocking and spitting, the occasional snot rocket but most of all, there was the non-stop vomiting from several parties for the entire duration of the hour and a half bus ride round and round down the moutain. I would greatly like to spare you the details as just rewriting them makes me want to vomit.

Fantastic statue in the temple

By the time we got to the bottom of the mountain we could do no less than leap from the still moving bus and throw ourselves beneath the tires hoping there was enough momentum left to put us out of our misery.

Well, not quite like that I suppose, but the leaping from the bus and running away with our hands raised high above our heads and screaming wildly, that was more accurate. Anyway, we booked the first bus out of that mess back to Chengdu and had an hour to kill in the bus station. Finally after a quick semi-conscious 3 hour ride we got back to Sim’s and luckily we had made a reservation before we left a few days ago. We sauntered up to our room, showered, ate a huge meal for probably 4 people, and then fell asleep watching movies in our air conditioned room with a real bed.