Where In The World Is Evan?

Waking up just in time to grab some take-away breakfast at a local café, we legged it back to the station and jumped on our bus. Luckily the incredibly cramped Chinese seats I had dreaded sitting on turned out better than I expected. Thankfully someone had ripped the seat in front on me out of the floor, so I was able to stretch my legs out for the journey. Nothing quite as memorable as our trip to Songpan happened on our way back, mostly because Jon was feeling quite healthy. Olen, however, spied a small plastic bottle of baijiu at the first rest stop and everything started to go downhill. A 60% alcohol, hard liquor served in a convenient sport’s bottle with a hands free pop-up lid! The Chinese truly are an inventive people. This made the hours pass a little quicker at first, and then a whole lot slower, when the driver didn’t stop for a toilet break for over four hours.

My girlfriend, Lisa (see What a day! ), had been traveling in Thailand for the past two weeks, and had just arrived back in Chengdu the day before me. Along with her, and a foreign couple we had met on the bus, we all went out for a big dinner of Chongqing hot pot—the restaurant being a particular favorite of Olen’s. When Lisa arrived at the Australian pub across the road from the restaurant, I put aside my VB and embraced her, only to be greeted with a yelp of pain. Unbeknownst to me that while in Thailand Lisa got a tattoo on the back of her left shoulder—the Chinese characters spelling out “sexy tiger.”

Sitting down to dinner I was soon overcome with nausea and a complete lack of appetite. Remaining in the restaurant for the duration of the meal I sipped soymilk and tried to suppress my urge to vomit into the big hot pot cauldron bubbling in front of me. After dinner Lisa and I excused ourselves from the group as the rest headed down to a local disco to dance the night away. Lisa and I, however, had catching up to do after two long weeks spent apart…

Check out the Songpan photo gallery.