I arrived in Chengdu tired but in high spirits: my adventure was progressing quickly, and I was in Sichuan, the land of spicy food, which holds a special place in my heart. I had two missions in Chengdu: 1) find a place to shower and 2) catch a bus south to Kunming. The quest for a shower took me down a dirty side street lined with hotels, where I stopped at several to ask about prices. I had to be careful, however, as I don’t think asking “how much for three hours?” would have been particularly successful. I finally found a room for about $20 a night, which I thought was fairly expensive at the time.

A shower, a movie, and a nap later, I was ready to continue with mission two. Unfortunately, there weren’t any trains or buses available for the entire day. The only solution was to take a hard-seat train (see previous posts). After several hours of sitting in filth with sunflower seeds flying into my face, I finally had enough. I jumped off a few hours short of Kunming in a city called Zhaotong. Upon leaving the train station, I met a woman who offered me her spare room for the night. The price was acceptable, so I crawled into bed and fell asleep. Early the next morning, I said goodbye and took a rickety bus into the main part of the city.

Still needing to finish my mission, I checked the bus schedule. A pattern was beginning to emerge: no more buses were available. As luck would have it, however, I found a driver filling a private car with passengers bound for Kunming. Negotiation is always a little tricky, but I settled on a price similar to the bus fare, 48 RMB (about $9-10), and departed for the south.

What I didn’t know at the time was that, although the map showed a highway between the cities, it had not yet been fully constructed. For the next few hours, we moved between sections of highway, country roads, and village dirt tracks. The view for most of the ride was simply amazing: the kind of scenery you see on a postcard or television. Around one bend, we stopped at a local restaurant and ate food that the others had ordered during the drive. Although the fried rice was decent, I had to drink several bottles of water to stay hydrated. The MSG wasn’t just noticeable; it was overwhelming, as though the top had fallen off the bottle and its entire contents had landed in the rice. Nobody else seemed to notice, but I certainly did. Perhaps I was simply more sensitive to it.

I finally reached Kunming and asked for a bed at the hostel whose name I had written on a piece of paper. The hostel itself looked very nice - people were playing pool and enjoying a few beers - but it was fully booked. The staff mentioned another hostel some distance away, so I decided to try it. Since I had been sitting almost nonstop for the previous three days, I chose to walk. Travelling with a small backpack is a bit of a catch-22: it gives you great mobility, but it also encourages you to walk when you should really take a taxi. For instance, when crossing the border into Cambodia.

After more than an hour of walking, I somehow found the other hostel, drenched by an evening storm. I showered (again?) and went to bed.