Bus Ride Back to Chengdu

Tom, Marissa and I woke up at 5 a.m., left our hostel at 5:30 a.m., and walked to the bus station. Some random guy came up to us and tried to tell us to go the other way to the bus station, but we ignored him. The bus left at 6 a.m. and I fell asleep for about half an hour until Marissa woke me up to show me the beautiful scenery outside my window.

Driving through the mountains still covered with fog.










The road we drove on






Animal tracks


Unbelievably beautiful scenery







Bathrooms



Red Chinese characters on the side of the mountain




Horses!



The entrance to Huanglong-a natural park that many tourists visit. I believe it's on the World Heritage list, along with Jiuzhaigou, not too far from Huanglong and Songpan. Both Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou have breathtakingly beautiful mountains and lakes, respectively.







Again, we had several bathroom and lunch breaks and I slept and worked on my journal (or tried to). It was difficult because the the road was extremely bumpy and our driver was driving ridiculously fast around all the bends and curves in the road. At one point, I had to go to the bathroom really badly and the bumpy ride wasn't helping me at all. After about 40 minutes of waiting, I went to the front of the bus to tell the driver and he told me that we would be stopping soon. We did stop shortly thereafter and I ran to the front and got off the bus only to find out that this wasn't the bathroom stop. I disappointedly got back on the bus and was so glad when we stopped a few feet later to use the bathroom. I could barely hold it anymore!

Back on the bus





We arrived at the bus station around 4 p.m. and the three of us took a taxi to Tom's hostel. From there, we walked to Trust Mart to buy the cheap pizza that Marissa was really craving. Marissa and I then took a taxi back to the school to drop Marissa off and then to the apartment to drop me off. Once I got home, I talked to Marit for a little while and then got ready for bed.