Well, today didn’t go quite as well as I hoped.
I had a bus ticket for 10.30am, the earliest of three buses going from Chengdu to Jiangyou. I already knew it would be a van rather than an actual bus, and had been told it was a two-hour trip so arrival would be around 12.30pm. That would give me plenty of time once there to sort out another bus, shared-taxi, regular expensive taxi, or combination thereof for the rest of the way to the Wanglang Nature Reserve.
I arrived at the station at 10am. Unlike flights there is no need to arrive too early for buses because they generally don’t even let people board until about five minutes before departure. The bay for my van was still empty so I sat down to wait. At about 10.15am the van arrived and the driver walked off. I went up to the counter and asked if that was the van to Jiangyou, but was told not yet. I sat back down.
A few minutes later the lady came over and told me (via my phone translator) that the ride was “delayed” for another 40 minutes. I checked that would be 11.10am and she said yes. I continued to wait. At 10.30am the driver of the van which I knew was the Jiangyou van came back, got in and started to back out of the bay. I went back to the counter and was again told no, I had to still wait.
I had a suspicion that I had been the only person booked so they “delayed” my ride for the next bus so that the van wouldn’t have to go all the way with only one passenger. Certainly there was no-one else waiting for the “delayed” vehicle.
At 11.10am there was still no sign of anything happening. Then a car arrived and parked in the bay. I was told this was my ride. Once I was in the car the driver said we leave at 11.35am. I waited some more. We did actually leave at that time surprisingly.
At 12.00, without even having left the city, the driver pulled into a petrol station because he “needed to refuel”. We were here for ten minutes, then after just five more minutes driving he pulls over outside one of the city’s other bus stations. “Every bus station has different departure times” he tells me (via my phone app), “so we have to wait here until 1pm”. So what time do we get to Jiangyou, I enquire. The answer is 3.30pm.
We have lunch, because clearly I’m not getting anywhere in any hurry today. Looking at the map on my phone we are now in the north of the city, near Chengdu Zoo in fact. At least we are heading in the right direction, because Jiangyou is north of Chengdu.
At 12.45pm we set off again and I’m now thinking I am underway, not least because the driver says into my phone “are you ready to go to Jiangyou? I will take you there direct now”. At 1.20pm we stop to pick up two passengers. I look at my map - we are now in the south of the city. Actually we’re only a couple of kilometres from the hotel I started the day in.
At 1.45pm the driver pulls over to have an argument on his phone with someone from the station. Then we continue driving. At 2pm we stop to pick up a third new passenger. I look at my map. We’re back where we originally started. I mean, where else would we be? I’d been in the car for 2.5 hours now, and hadn’t even left Chengdu yet. I kind of felt like just getting out of the car and trying again tomorrow.
At 2.45pm we were in Jinyu Town, which my map told me was just outside Chengdu, picking up a couple of poly-bins. I noticed on the map that Jiangyou has a train station - I should have just caught a train there.
I finally got to Jiangyou at 5pm.
I asked the driver if there was a cheap hotel near the bus station and as a price he suggested “around 200 RMB”. When I replied that was too expensive and I wanted something under 100, he looked genuinely shocked and said that there aren’t hotels for that much in China any more. I think it must be regional - as I’ve said, in Yunnan all my hotels were 70 to 80 Yuan, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in Sichuan.
He took me around the corner to the Jinxin Yazhi Hotel where there was a room for 166 Yuan, twice what I wanted to pay (it’s about NZ$40). It is, however, a very nice room. The toilet flushes by itself, the lid raises and lowers by itself, and it has a heated seat, albeit one set to 37 degrees Celsius (that’s 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for @birdsandbats). The curtains also close and open automatically which is weird and annoying. I only just learned to use a phone a couple of months ago, I don’t want bottom-burning toilet seats and self-aware curtains! I’ve seen Terminator too many times to feel safe around such machinery. At least the toilet doesn’t talk to you. More my sort of thing is that the room also includes breakfast, although I’m not sure I’ll have time to enjoy that.
Check-in took half-an-hour due to internet-connectivity issues in the lobby (WePay and AliPay struggled to complete the transactions, and it took a lot of attempts before success), but once that was accomplished I made a visit to the bus station. There was a tourist info desk there but it was already closed for the day. I asked at the ticket counter about buses to Pingwu, and there are several per day (as I’d hoped there would be!), so I bought a ticket for the first one at 8.30am which cost 42 Yuan. I don’t think the tourist desk will be open that early, so I’ll probably find out later that they have direct buses to Wanglang and can organise the accommodation and everything, but I thought it better to make as early a start as I could.
I am, at least, halfway there now.
