I woke up at 9:30am and officially got out of bed at 11:00am. It was so nice to sleep in. I slowly worked my way for a meal at the courtyard. Each day when I think I’ve had everything I wanted to try out in the Sichuan cuisine, I would discover more things I hadn’t and so I would extend an extra day at Chengdu just to eat, but also to wait for my laundry to dry, and also to rest to catch up on down time.
After my meal I came back to the hostel to sit under the sun for a bit. I met a man from Japan named Kenji who has been traveling since September and went from DunHuang to XinJiang, westward all the way to Pakistan. I'd like to do that someday. He's from Tokyo and quit his job as a computer programmer. He like Chen from Zhong Dian I met who is from Taipei, same field, same thing, tired, burnt out, terrible long hours. Kenji politely asked for my permission to smoke next to me as we chatted. I have to say, he was the first to do so and that was nice.
After my conversation with Kenji I ended up falling asleep in my bed till 4pm. I guess I was tired. When I woke I felt very well rested. Two new girls joined my room one of the girls was from Tokyo, named Hitomi who works in the computer graphics industry for a big company who does TV and billboard ads. She just arrived from Tibet and did Kilash, I told her I was jealous and only did Everest. She said she went around Mt. Kilash and slept with the rats on Mt. Kilash, lovely. I think like Everest, Kilash is one of those things worthly of doing it at least once in a lifetime.
The other girl was Tang Jyn from GuangDong. She majored in English and has been working for Travel Industry and also quit her job and is traveling for a month. She and I shared fruits and dinner tonight. I showed her around in the snack eatery at WenShuYuan. I introduced her to the rolls, we both had fresh pressed soba noodles tonight and they were good. We also share a tray of mixed vegetable BBQ and porridge. She's headed for SiGuNiang Shan tomorrow. I had checked out the photos for the place and decided then that I would skip it, it looks a bit Californian for me.
I also met Australians who had trouble withdrawing money from ATMs, I told her to try agian and that happens sometimes with machines out of work hours even if it says it is 24 hours and sometimes it is out of cash, and sometimes it is just over worked etc....
Had a very chilled relaxed day and slowing down the pace a bit here. It helps to have good food as incentive. Since my stomach is only so big, I can only eat so much food each meal, I'd better pace myself each day. I've been averaging a meal a day in China and on good days like in ChengDu I have been averaging two meals a day. Usually each meal is a bowl of something, usually noodle something because it usually comes with more vegetables. I learned from Tang that there is a monastery in WenShuYuan and serves lunch for 3 yuan, you eat till you are full, I would like to check it out at some point.
