Today has been a long day of travel. I'm writing this from the airport in Chengdu during our layover on our way to Xi'an. I probably won't be posting this until we get in late tonight to our hotel. We left our hotel in Lijiang this morning at 7am after staying up way too late. Seems like we've become night owls since we've gotten to China. Our first leg departed Lijiang at 9am and we arrived here at Chengdu at 10:45am. Our flight to Xi'an is not until 7:45pm. That's right. We had quite the layover. It was a toss-up on taking this flight or taking the train, but we opted for flying since the train would've taken even longer.

We had a good stay in Lijiang with the several ups and downs. One of the downers we experienced was not being able to extend our visas while there. We purposely lengthened our stay there since you needed seven days for the visa process to run its course. We were told we would not be able to submit our extension request until day 20 of our 30-day visa. A couple of days ago after much hemming and hawing we decided to forego extending our visa and cap our stay in China at 30 days. The bureaucracy, cost and lost time pushed us in this direction. This was a difficult decision for a couple of reasons.

First, this means we are now cutting out Shanghai and Hangzhou, the "Paris of China." While in Shanghai, I was excited about visiting with a friend from high school who now lives in there with his wife and child. We had been talking about getting together for sometime, but I guess we'll have to save it for another day. The other reason this was a tough choice is we have good friends from Castle Rock preparing to come meet us in Beijing based on us getting the visa extension. We're hoping that they can still meet us in Tokyo.

The airport experience here in Chengdu has been quite interesting. After getting off our plane we walked into the terminal that looked completely polluted and smoky. Outside it looked hazy as well. Even now as we sit here, many hours later, it's dark and cloudy looking inside (and out). The airport itself is quite nice. Like so many things here in China, it barely appears to be in full-use. Flying in China is still a novel practice so you have these beautiful structures with their high-end stores with only handfuls of people flying. Perhaps in 5 years it will be teeming with people.

A real treat while we wait in the airport is the action movie that's playing on all the screens throughout the terminal. The movie has some real exotic torture scenes that you wouldn't expect to be showing in a public place. This is of course coupled with some of the greatest over-acting ever since Shatner and Montalban in "Wrath of Khan."

To kill some time Amy and I watched episode 1 of Breaking Bad. This is one of my favorite shows and was excited that Amy could finally pull herself away from her Pearl S. Buck book. Having seen the show once before it was even more interesting to glance at Amy leaning over on the edge of her seat as she got introduced to the life of Walter White. She's claiming a stress headache from watching, but money is on it being a combination of the air in here and all the bad food we've eaten while waiting.

We're excited about our 5 days in Xi'an and going to see the terracotta warriors as a highlight. Xi'an made my father-in-laws bucket list of places to visit. Sadly he's not meeting us here as no longer with us, but we're certainly envisioning him here even though he might find it tough going without a trace of Folgers coffee or donut in site.

I think I can make out our plane coming to the gate through the pollution.

AG

PS - We arrived at our hotel at around 11:30pm. The soot and grime on the cars is incredible. We checked the pollution index and it is at an astounding 1273. The highest I've seen it at is 270 with clean air being in the 30's and below. This puts Xi'an at number two with a bullet in the pollution index in China. We're assuming number one is covering a garbage truck tailpipe with your mouth. I'm not sure masks will do the job. One of the items we had on our to do list was to bike the city wall. Prudent? Keep your fingers crossed the pollution index decreases 99% while we sleep.