May Holiday

Last week was our may holiday and we had 9 days off from teaching. Piers and I flew into Chengdu (the capital of the neighbouring province Sichwan and the biggest city in west China). The weather in Chengdu was very hot and humid. We met up with the Yuxi girls, the Kunming guys, 4 people from east China and Blake (who's placement is one hour out of Chengdu). So that makes 11 gappers! We were all staying in the same hostel called 'The Loft'. In front of the hostel was a cafe called 'Cafe Copenhagen' which was run by a Danish guy called Lars and his Chinese wife, Fei.

While we were in Chengdu we saw all the famous sights of Sichwan, such as the biggest Buddah statue in the world and the panda breeding centre. I have pictures of both which I will add in a bit.

The first saturday we were there was my 19th birthday. We bought a cake and all drunk a lot of beer and terrible chinese spirits in the loft of the loft hostel. The loft (as in the space in the roof) is a really awsome area with free internet computers and heaps of lounges and tv, dvd, cd player, record player and heaps of electric fans. We also found a crazy chinese club called 'Kakadu', though it had no connection to the place in Australia. We went to some other clubs as well, such as 'Bambi' and 'Mix'. They were all pretty crazy and loud. The best thing about Chinese clubs is that the Chinese (in big cities) practically idolise Westerners so we were treated really well and people would give us free drinks and stuff. One of the nights I was there I met an American journalist (now teaching and freelance photographing), we stayed up all night talking. It was crazy, we had such an interesting conversation we just suddenly realised it was like 6:30am! While we wre there we made really good friends with the staff, who spoke very good english.

On tuesday Blake, Mike (the scotish guy from Kunming) and I went back to Blake's placement. We all got drunk, did I mention that we got drunk a lot?, and went on paddle boats with fireworks on this river just out of town. It was hilarious fun. China is so funny, practically everything is legal and if it isn't just go somewhere rural and you'll find it anyway (e.g. prostitution).

We spent about 3 days in Blake's placement. I can't remember the name of the town, but it's much bigger than Eshan so there was a lot to do and see. I got my hair dyed red because I bored. On the friday we came back to Chengdu and met up with most of the others (some of the east coast people had gone to other provinces). I learnt some new Chinese, such as 'Ne mayo tung kootsz' (you are not wearing pants) and 'Can can! Ta shir da poozsa' (look! he is big buddah) and 'Wor shir bin mao' (i am a stupid cat). I tried to get a sleeping ticket on a train back to Kunming on the Sunday, but I could only get sitting. Considering it is an 18 hour journey, I decided to catch a plane.

When I got back to Eshan, Gemini told me the school didn't allow teachers to have dyed hair (or at least not red haha) so I went and got it dyed black.

I'll check out what pictures I've got now and post some.

Tom