Rodent
I was woken in the middle of the night, not by the altitude sickness, but this time by a rat in the room. It was crawling or chewing on plastic bags. Probably the ones that we wrap our clothing in.
We woke at 0600. There was not hot water in the bathroom and cold water was down to a little more than a trickle. Kim had the beginnings of a cold and was very grumpy.
I mentioned at check-out that we had a rat problem last night. The receptionist turned to a colleague and said “Oh, they are getting more and more”.
Departing Lhasa
We were picked up at 0700 and arrived at Gonggar Airport around 0820. The drive began in darkness but the sunlight soon illuminated the golden leaves of autumn. It was a truly beautiful drive and farewell to Tibet.
Our Airbus A340-300 took fifty seconds to get off the runway. Kim sometimes times the take-off run. Being crew, he knows that anything more than about 45s on a widebody spells trouble.
Back in Chengdu
The flight took less than 2h and we arrived to a remote gate. It felt so good to have oxygen again!
We said goodbye to Denise and took the airport bus into the city. Back at the Bin Jiang Hotel, Kim asked to view a couple of rooms to ensure some natural light.
To explore Chengdu, we took a rickshaw to Tian Fu square. After some bad meals in Tibet we were ready for some snacks McDonald’s. We went to some malls and saw a huge cellphone shop with many domestic brands which are normally asoociated with household items, eg. Konka and Haier. They weren’t cheap though. Some nice flip phones were retailing for about NZD700.
Treating ourselves
Back at the hotel we dropped off our laundry to a shop at the hotel gate. I treated myself to a massage while Kim had reflexology. I had the stepping massage followed by cupping treatment which left red circular patches on my back. May not look good when I swimming in Thailand. While the treatment was very competent, one has to question why all the workers were female and pretty.
We had pizza for dinner at High Fly Café halfway between the massage shop and the hotel. After such bad Chinese and Tibetan food in Tibet, we wanted something “nice”. I do think it is sacrilege that we’re eating pizza when we’re in the home of Hot & Sour Soup, Mapo Tofu and Gong Bao Chicken! But then we ate Chinese in Italy because the pizzas were so bad (or bad value for money).
The pizzeria was nicely decorated with photos of Tibet which were also for sale. We had a ½ ½ pizza which meant we could mix and match two options. We went for seafood and meatlovers. It was absolutely delicious.
Staff here were eager to learnt and speak English. Quite unusual sometimes for China. We have to speak in simple language using words and phrases they know. For example, they don’t understand “give us a minute” but understand “one moment please”.
My back after cupping felt awesome. Each cup sucked up about the size of half a peach of flesh.