Lynne Kennedy

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

Chengdu - 12 OCT 2004

I am not in a good frame of mind today. I returned to my dormitory at 12.30 last night to find it stinking like a brewery with two very, very drunk Chinese men flat on their backs in bed, one fully clothed, the other in, what looked in the dim light, to be a pair of speedos They were snoring their heads off at a volume and speed that I never thought possible. I went to bed and tried to drown out the noise and drift off with some music but that didn't really work so two hours later and still wide awake, I got out of bed in search of a cup of tea in the courtyard. Alas, the old lady keeper-of-the-hot-water-flasks had emptied them all. I wrote for a while to try and induce sleep and retired for the second time, hoping that ear plugs and a pillow over my head would do the trick. Sadly not. At 3.30 am I was back outside on the balcony, texting my friend Sue to tell her that I now fully understood what had driven her to almost suffocate me with a pillow back on Hogmanay 2002 after a particularly good party.

TWO DRUNK MEN IN ROOM. SNORING, BURPING AND FARTING LIKE A COUPLE OF WARTHOGS. NOW I UNDERSTAND HOW YOU FELT THAT NIGHT! PS ONE SEEMS TO HAVE AN ITCH IN HIS PANTS.

The reply was swift. LYNNIE, DO NOT STRADDLE HIM, GRAB BY LAPELS AND SHAKE UP AND DOWN. HE MAY NOT SEE FUNNY SIDE. AND KEEP AWAY FROM PILLOWS. PS HA HA HA!

At 4.30 am, two other people left the room. One went into a tent in the courtyard, the other onto a bench downstairs. I continued to lie there on the balcony under my duvet, freezing, while Pinky and Perky continued with the Opera di Snorto. At 5.30 am they got up and started getting their things together. I grabbed the opportunity to try and get to sleep quickly and jumped back into bed but they had other ideas. Lights on full blast. Carrier bags rustling loudly, teethbrushing and other ablutions done with no regard for whether they were waking up the whole of the hostel, never mind just the dorm. I had a rant. They laughed and carried on. I ranted more. They left. I slammed the door shut and bolted it before they could try and get back in - thankfully they didn't and I managed to get two hours sleep.

All this might have been easier to cope with if it hadn't been for the fact that two days earlier I'd had my bag stolen at Chengdu station while trying to leave for western China. After an hour in the makeshift police station inside the station, being asked the same questions 45 times and filling in numerous forms, it began to dawn on me that I was potentially in a very sticky situation. No passport. No money. No access to money because no credit cards. No embassy in Chengdu. No money to get to an embassy in another city. No train to catch because it had left and to cap it all, no address for the hostel so I could go back there and figure out what to do. I'm ashamed to say that it all became to much and I blubbed. (Clearly, I am not yet as intrepid as I thought!)

I then remembered I had my mobile (my phone and I are never parted, not even in bed) and the number of very nice chap from London - Michael - who had been staying at the hostel the previous week and who I'd gone on a trip with the day before to a sacred Taoist mountain. He gave me the hostel address and offered to lend me some money to tide me over which was very kind and much appreciated.

An hour later they found my bag in the toilets, minus the 100 quid cash and the digital camera but amazingly, my passport, credit cards and iPod were still in it, along with some personal stuff. I blubbed again.

So, the past couple of days has involved numerous expensive calls to my bank with the upshot being it's safer to cancel my cards in case the rascal took the numbers down and uses them on the internet, and then frantic emails to my brother who is saving my bacon and wiring me some money til my new cards arrive in Nepal courtesy of Mini Rover Mark II.

All in all, a bit of a stressful time but at least I can now move on which is what I'm doing tomorrow. I am hoping that that is my lot for now and things will be fairly plain sailing for a while. Perhaps it was my come-uppance for watching the ritual sacrifice of a snake at Full Moon Festival in Yangshou, where the custom is to then drink its blood with a shot of baijo. Or perhaps it's just one of those character building things that happens from time to time to test your metal. Either way, all snakes are sacred from now on!