The last days ,luck, or actually, the Chinese government, has not exactly been on our side. Tuesday, after seeing a disapointingly small terracotta army, we headed for Lanzhou with plans of getting further to Xiahe, which is the town where the largest Tibetan monestary outside of Lasha is located . But after 9 hours on a train and probably a couple more running around the city trying to find the correct bus station (of course there is several. 'Cause Lanzhou is just a mid-size Chinese city of 8 mill.), we were refused to buy bus tickets since they dont allow for forigners into the city.

So, after the intitial anger with propaganda and mock-communism (and an awful fried burger at Dico's) we changed our route completly. Thus, we bough tickets for Chengdu, where we are now, and is today heading for the train station to buy tickets for Kunming in the Yunnan province and then head further on to Lijiang.

The tickets we bough were extremly cheap and we soon understood why. The trainride was awfully long. We though it would take 16 hours, but it did not. It took 28. The heat was extreme and only got worse when the train stopped for two whole hours in the middle of nowhere since the driver needed a luch break. Of course.

The worst was actually to pass trough the first class cart(soft sleeper), where the were blessed with air con, on our way to eat. And when actually getting there, to the eating cart, having to wait for food for 1.5 hours only then to be mocked by the waitress in front of the thirty people sitting there and being told that they actually did not have more rice left. An then being given a cabbage. Donc. C'est ca. On the train we:

Listened to music.
Ate vitamin bears.
Tried to order food on Chinese.
Read about universal travellers or evolutional biology.
Or of course: slept.

And one more thing. Finally David revealed to me why he is so funny: It is because he swallowed a clown when he was little.