Sichuan - oil, oil and more oil

In the morning, I ran down to Starbucks, grabbed a coffee and cabbed it over to see Mao. Much like Rodrigo, I sort of fell into line with a tour group and ended up in the mausoleum compound. I was the only visible foreigner and felt mightily out of place. Most people were very excited and rushing to purchase flowers to place in the entrance hall. No one is allowed to stop moving while in Mao’s presence, and when you first enter the room; his face appears to be glowing. It was quite the experience.
And then we rushed to the airport. The last I heard from Frederik, he got on a flight back to Hong Kong. I later heard that he missed his connection to the Philippines but made it the next day. Should see him tonight and get the full report! My bag was way too big for carry-on but I did it anyways. In the end, the flight attendant had to kind of shove it under the seat closest to the washroom. I was so worried the whole time…. When I arrived in Chengdu (the boys had convinced me to join the Yangzi river pilgrimage), my phone was out of money, I was all alone and couldn’t find the boys and I was grumpy as heck. I ended up spending an hour trying to figure out the phone in my room to call the guys and figure out a plan. Poor Dennis – I sure wasn’t very nice. In fact, I had to call back and apologize. It was so weird. I don’t think I’ve been that culture shocked since I left for Japan in 2003. I just kind of lost it for an hour or so. Got on the email, and then went out on the town by myself for a while and felt a lot better. Chengdu is famous for snacks, but I didn’t make it to any snack shops. I did, however manage to find a hot pot place with zero English speaking staff. I let them choose what to serve me - it ended up being a good variety of meat and veggies and only cost 10 yuen. There are a ton of bike cabs in Chengdu and I was happily being chauffeured around town when the realization struck that my little bike man was pretty old, pretty small and was probably hating every minute of hauling me around town. I got out and walked. Went to use the internet in the hotel – the front desk staff told me there was an internet café… turned out to be a big white room, completely empty except for one computer. Interesting. By the time the boys got back, I was worn out from being grumpy and decided to get a good sleep before a big day in the wild West.