9th April - Xian - WudangShan

So my booking of tickets hadn't gone QUITE as well as i thought and it turns out instead of a nice normal train seat for 8 hours we were crammed in with the locals, in a smoking area, near the toilets on HARD seats. Yes they are padded but nly just. I can tell you my arse did suffer that day and no i did NOT use the toilet for 8 hours. Also think all the smoke possibly shaved a good year off my life. But wasn't totally unbearable once i accepted this and we had our noodles and snacks and played some last card. And arrived 8 hours later! Will be finding out the chinese characters for soft seat next time!!!
Nothing booked for wudangshan but all seems pretty close to the train station so we start looking for our place we had decided on...complete with backpacks, of coruse looking every much the western tourist. We apparently caught the eye of 3 american blokes who were training for kung fu which this area is famous for and possibly the birth place of, tho not being interested in ourselves we didn't really have much idea (tho we did have some good hongkong fuey jokes to ourselves) . So although we made it clear we were not on a spiritual journey to becoming a kung fu master they heplpfully took us to a hotel (all in chinese so we had not idea it was accommodation) and in chinese negotiated a price for us...which was pretty cool! They then went for a foot massge.
So the accomdation is v cheap and clean but very concerned about the shower which is basically OVER the squat toilet..i guess they tried to save on drainage but still...that and the cold water means i will be having very quick showers. (in my jandels). Headed out for tea and met our kung fu friends in place so had a nice chat to them about china and america etc. one of them has married a chinese girl training to be a nurse, they can't go back to america until they have been married 2 years, pretty harsh.

So found this chinese movie, old and weird but with english subtitles, which was odd but good! So quote of the day: “Step off my intestines, bitch”.
a lot of the words had us in a good fits of laughter. Found anoher channel playing pirated dvds! So watched the golden compass in english until we could;t stay awake...