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.

Our friends from Hong Kong, who had departed earlier, were sightseeing in Xining. After leaving the train, we ate at a small Muslim-owned restaurant, attracted plenty of attention, and called my parents. Because we knew little about Xining and did not have much time, we wandered through a local shopping centre and eventually found a huge bookstore. After several hours there, I bought a volume of English classics at a bargain price, and we left to walk through a market.

Early in the morning, at 6:00am, we arrived in Guangzhou. Can you guess what we did? We ate rice balls, of course. Perhaps I should explain: although Taiwan prepares rice balls differently, those in Guangzhou usually come in a dark sesame paste or soup and are filled with peanut butter. Yum.

I awoke at 8:00 and went to breakfast. At 10:00 I rented a bike (a tandem!) and started biking to Moon Hill. The traffic was pretty dense, so I needed to be careful, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. Halfway up the road I paused for a break, and an older woman approached me to ask if I wanted to buy postcards. Since they were cheaper than in town (about 70 US cents), I bought a pack. The hunt was on, and all the other vendors surrounded me. Yelling “go away, go away” had no effect, if they understood it at all. I cycled across the bridge and took my rest.

Our boat to Yangshuo left at 09:00, so we needed to wake reasonably early. We ate some local Guilin noodles and met a French couple who were also travelling up the river. By 09:30, we were on our way along the Li River. The boat ride was beautiful. Although some rubbish floating downstream revealed the river’s pollution, the surrounding hills were remarkable. The same landscape appears on the back of the 20-yuan note, and I now have a photograph of it too. By 12:30, we had arrived in Yangshuo, a town popular with tourists and nestled among the hills. We had only a few things planned, so we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day. We sat beside the river chatting for some time, then collected our …

The bus arrived at about 4:00am, a little too early for me. I slept terribly; the road was in poor condition, and the bus driver drove rather recklessly. In fact, whenever I woke up, I kept saying, “I love you, I love you,” because I didn’t know whether each time I fell asleep would be my last. But I made it, somehow, and had to find my hostel. I walked out of the train station and headed in the general direction of my hostel. I asked a member of the cleaning staff, who simply replied, “That way.” A couple gave me more detailed directions, and I finally found it. By 5:30, I was knocking on the front door, and a man drinking beer let me in. I checked into my dorm and fell asleep.

I decided to sleep in and woke at nearly 11:00. I ate breakfast at a nearby bao shop and checked out at 13:00. My first stop was the bus station, where I tried to decide where to go next. Ultimately, I chose Guilin, about a day’s journey northwest of Guangzhou. After buying some rice balls, I took the MRT to another bus station and bought my ticket. The bus didn’t leave until 20:00, so I ate fried rice and sat in a small “reading bar” for a few hours, mostly reading and playing cards. I checked my email one last time in perhaps the most run-down internet cafe I had ever visited, then went to the bus. Guilin, here I come!

The day was quite bittersweet. I was dropped off at the border so I could catch my return flight, and with my head hanging low I took the subway back to the hostel. For the next few days I would be trying to conserve money while I waited for my passport.

Back in Guangzhou, things did not seem too bad. My companion woke me again because she wanted to brush her teeth. She kindly let me sleep after that, although I could not. At some point, I stopped pretending to sleep and played some rummy. While in Guangzhou, I had two options: buy a fast-train ticket for 70 kuai and leave in under an hour, or buy a slow-train ticket for 45 kuai and leave in five hours. Changing my airline ticket would cost US$175, actually more than I had paid for the round trip, so I was in turbo-cheap mode. Normally I am just plain old cheap, but now I was really cheap. I took the later train.

Oh no. I thought my train from Shanghai left at about 4:30pm, so I had planned to leave Hangzhou between 11:00 and 1:00. The journey takes about two hours. I woke at around 9:00am, packed, and checked the ticket. “Oh, @!#$%!” “What?” “I am in serious trouble. The train leaves Shanghai at 11:24!” For anyone not doing the arithmetic, it was already 9:30 and I was at least two hours from Shanghai, before even accounting for the trip to the station. There was little chance I would catch the train, but because I had to, I was not giving up. I checked out of the hostel and jumped into a taxi to the station.