Where In The World Is Evan?

One of the nicest things about my trip to Xinjiang was the discovery of Qingdao brand whisky, for 5 yuan a bottle. After tasting what turned out to be a quality whisky (far superior to Jonnie Red) we decided that a bargain this cheap couldn’t be missed and bought twelve bottles to take back to Chengdu.

As J and I sat around in our hotel drinking whiskey and coke with the Australian couple we’d met earlier that day J suggested a tried and true British drinking game. Being experienced at the game, however, J mercilessly exploited his advantage to force me to drink a bottle and a half of whisky!

After passing out on my bed, J and Chris decided that obviously I still wanted to go out… the only problem being that I couldn’t walk. Not letting this get in their way they half carried, half dragged my unconscious corpse into a taxi and took me to a bar across town–Weekend at Bernie’s style!
(Read more …)

The train network in China is an amazing engineering and managerial feat. The fact that it covers almost all of the country makes travel in China efficient in a way that I’ve only seen in Europe before. With that said, however, finding a Chinese person who can actually read a timetable is pretty tough. After being told that my train to Urumqi would take 28 hours I was alarmed to find a Chinese person pulling me out of bed by my left arm at 2 am while yelling about me needing to get off. Thanks China International Travel Service (CITS ) for telling me I arrive at 9 am and then booking me on a train that arrives at 2:20 am!

Staggering out of the station I find the bus into town only to be told that I doesn’t depart until 3:30 am. Considering that I had nowhere else to be I settled down in a seat and went back to sleep. Bus departure times in China, however, are a complete farce. Instead of departing at a fixed time most wait until they are full. In this case that took till 6:30 am!
(Read more …)

Once again I’ve allowed the frenetic pace of events to carry me away without recourse to update my blog. I’ve not yet reached the stage of O and J who seem resigned to the temporary abandonment of their blogs, but I must admit that it’s getting increasingly hard to keep writing this drivel. Anyway, I guess I’ll rally my memory with the intention to record, for posterity if nothing else, the events that have taken place since my last post.

From the very moment of my arrival in Chengdu I was overwhelmed by a growing sense of returning home. As my bus pulled away from the airport and entered familiar streets my mood, which had been sullied by the delay of my flight, lightened to the point that I was positively beaming by the time I arrived back at my old hostel. After checking in I headed straight down to Dave’s Oasis, one of my former local hang-outs. After taking a slight detour to add credit to my mobile phone I ran into J, of all people, wandering down the street. I’m not sure who was more surprised to see whom, as neither of us were supposed to be in Chengdu.
(Read more …)