Saturday : rain

The movies were good, but the sleep was not. We dragged ourselves out of bed, got ready for checking out and tried to make ourselves respectable for breakfast.

The hostel wouldnt let us order a chinese noodle dish for breakfast, we had to order a "Western" breakfast. Seemed a bit strange, what do the chinese people staying at the hostel have for breakfast, if they couldn't have noodles? I didn't mind we just felt like noodles thats all, seeing how there was no weetbix on the menu. Lucky this hostel has good coffee we had a couple cups each. Then checked out and put our bags into storage.

Then we went for a wander in the rain, weren't going anywhere in particular. We started heading for a shop that's like priceline to get some deodorant. Even though we are in China we don't need to smell like China and the local chinese deodorant is terrible and doesn't work at all. We found the good stuff and picked up some more sunscreen too.

The airport shuttle bus stop was across the road so we went over to see what time the last bus was. 21:30, no worries. We'll be back at 5pm.

The rain started to get heavier, and there was a shopping centre nearby. So in we went and we almost slapped ourselves in the face to see if we were dreaming and still in China. The prices were very high, we were just looking around for some polo's or tshirts. Pretty steep for when the items are made here. We moved over to another centre, this centre was like a 7 story Myer. All open plan, all the different brands have their own shop, still the same price as OZ or if not more expensive.

We didn't buy anything in the few hour walk through. We went back out into the rain and tried not to loose an eye by dodging all the umbrellas.

We only had two more hours till we had to leave so we spent them back at the hostel using there wifi to make a hotel reservation for our next stop. Then we had some beers with our lunch.

Soon enough it was time to throw on our packs and make the walk to the bus stop.

Easy ride to the station, easy checkin too. We did get told that our plane has been delayed by 45min.

We made it through security with no hiccups, and then tried to find a cafe that didn't charge over $10! for a cup of coffee. We just had some microwaved burgers and coke instead while we waited. I accidentally deleted some diary entries so it was a good time to catch up.

Kim and I had been a bit sniffly the last few days, I think it's because we aren't getting enough fruit, its also been a lot cooler too. It was getting close to our boarding time, we left the cafe and past a chemist. Kim picked up some cold and flu tablets just before our gate. There were a lot of Chinese people getting all flustered and annoyed. They were looking at a white board with our flight on it. We had to wait around for 30min before they finished writing the details of our flight. We now had to board at a different gate. We went down to the new gate and had to wait some more. By the time we caught a bus to the plane, watched people push their way to the front of the staircase, (what idiots planes have allocated seating don't they know) waited in another queue of planes and then finally take off. It was 30mins after our original arrival time in Chengdu. It seemed liked Xian had far too many flights arriving and departing with only one runway. It was if the airport was trying to copy the roads in Xian. I wasn't overly impressed with Xian, apart from the Warriors there wasn't a whole lot to do, even the warriors weren't in Xian. For an old capital city of China It seemed to only have a city wall, a drum and bell tower, and a heap of over priced shops next to some takeaway joints.

I wouldn't be surprised if any non Chinese people missed that plane. There was no English announcement in the airport. No problems with the flight itself, it only went for an hour. We felt pretty groggy once off the aircraft those tablets knocked us around.

We picked up our bags and headed outside. We spotted shuttle bus and it was going our way.

Once off the bus we did some more taxi dodging, and walked to our hotel. Stopping off at a 7/11 for some water and 12:30am snickers.

Found the hotel easily, we checked in and they're nice rooms too we even have a balcony. Pity it over looks a bus carpark, hope that the buses aren't too noisy in the morning. Ah well they can be our alarm to get up and get our included breakfast.