stupid fly by your seat travelling

so i've kinda painted myself into a corner over here. my plan was this--take a bus to chongqing, take a boat to wuhan, take a hard sleeper to guilin, take another hard sleeper to kunming, and then a bus back to chengdu. nevermind it's chinese new year, the equivalent of thanksgiving and christmas combined in terms of chinese traveling. needless to say, i was unable to get a hard sleeper. i instead got a hard seat...and not even that. each ticket can either have seat number on it, or not. my did not since i bought it the day of. i did a lot of standing during my second-hand-smoke-filled 14 hours.

this put me at guilin at 5:30 this morning. as i waited for my hostel to open at seven, i planned my next move. opening up my tour book, i quickly learned that not only is kunming 22 hours away by train, but i had isolated myself from chengdu by about 40 hours of trains.

now, i'm gonna refer you to the quote in the upper-right hand corner of this blog--and boy am i having an adventure.

i'm gonna see what happens, but i think i may fall back onto a plane ticket...hopefully they're pretty cheap.

but i'm valuing the experience, and i'm sure my outlook will brighten with a bit more sleep and a great chinese new year celebration. it better.