Bus Ride to Songpan

Marissa and I woke up around 4:30 a.m. after a poor night's sleep. We left her dorm around 5 a.m., grabbed a taxi, and arrived at the bus station at 5:30 a.m., which was an hour early. We got on the bus and sat down. However, we realized that Marissa's seat didn't lean back, so we moved to a different seat. This time the armrest was broken, so we moved yet again. We realized when other people began to board the bus that our seats were assigned. We looked at our tickets and found out we were sitting in our assigned seats! We left the bus station around 6:45 a.m. and made our way to Songpan.

Marissa and I in the wee morning hours, obviously still half asleep

We both slept for an hour, ate breakfast, had a couple of bathroom breaks, took pictures, talked, and had our lunch break around noon. The two of us only bought some snacks because we didn't know how long we had to eat and we figured we would have a fairly large dinner.

On the bus



More awake than before :)










Where we stopped for lunch




Back on the bus





About 7 hours later of driving, the bus was stopped by the police. They requested for the foreigners to get off the bus and see their passports. They easily picked out myself and a British teenage boy from the passengers, but didn't realize that Marissa was the other foreigner. I could understand them talking in Chinese, saying that they thought there was a third foreigner on the bus. I didn't tell them that she was sitting right next to me. I was too amused by the fact that they didn't realize that I had been talking to Marissa in English the whole time and that I had even boarded the bus with her. They finally realized it was her and the three of us got off the bus. As the police were checking our passports, I noticed that a lot of the other passengers were hanging out their windows to see what was going on. The police asked us what we were planning on doing there and what we were doing in China. I told them that Marissa and I are students and we only wanted to go to Songpan to travel. The reason they had stopped us in the first place is because Songpan is inhabited by a lot of Tibetans and the area was closed because of the protests last year, so they were taking precautions for it not to happen again this year. They almost didn't let us through, but finally allowed us to get back on the bus.

Drive through the mountains, which was breathtakingly beautiful
























We arrived in Songpan around 5:30 p.m., bought our bus tickets back to Chengdu for Monday morning, and walked down the street to find our hostel. Marissa asked Tom, the British teenager who was on our bus, if he wanted to stay with us in our room. He said yes, so the three of us got a room for RMB 25 a night.

The hostel


A guy came over to ask us if we wanted to book a horseback tour. We told him yes and payed him for the tour then. We went to eat dinner at a restaurant nearby (Songpan itself is not very big. It only has one main street, which is not very long).

The restaurant

Marissa, Tom and I

Horses passing by the restaurant


After dinner we walked around town for a little while.

Songpan









Look at the mannequin


Tibetan women

A shop with too much stuff


He's wearing sunglasses as his eye protection


The city square



I was asked to join the exercise group and so I did.



After walking around, we returned to our room, talked for a little while, and went to sleep around 10 p.m.

Our room