Day 4 - October 8th

Decide to sleep in and have a late check out. I needed the sleep to catch up on the last few days. I eat at the hotel, a bowl of rice, some veg and two fried fish. It was a really good meal and only Y25 and I didn’t even finish it because there was sooo much fish! Not bad going I think for a hotel, though I did go in the restaurant and basically asked for the two cheapest dishes on the menu! They must have thought I was such a gypo!

I get to the bus station where I find cleaners putting sand on the floor and mopping it up. How very strange! I think I get over-charged on the bus, as I read in the Lonely Planet that it costs about Y20 whereas I pay Y40. Bus journey was really good though! First notable thing to mention is the Y2 porn DVD shop we drive by - shame that the bus doesn’t stop for you!!! We drive for about an hour out of the city. Big contrast! The first thing I think about is how different it was from the fields down in the south of China. I remember driving past a rice paddy on my way to Guangzhou airport and seeing lots and loads of green. The fields in Henan are pretty much empty. I suppose the harvest has just been collected a few weeks back. It seemed a barren place. Then I notice that what I thought were bags in the middle of fields were actually people with ploughs and such. There were loads of people, just in the field ploughing and digging. Now to me that seems so very, very strange. I mean, I never lived in the countryside or anything, but when ever I see such big expanses of fields, you would see maybe a tractor or two and a combine harvester to collect all the crops. In China, there’s just a bollock load of people with hand ploughs and a ton of elbow grease.

I arrive in Luoyang at 5pm. It seems even colder here and looks miserable. I book into my first hostel (Y40 a night), where at the counter the girls are squabbling. One’s complaining to the other to stop playing solitaire and do some work whilst she retorts back “do your job properly” when the girl serving me makes a mistake. Seems like a barrel of laughs here! I meet a girl called Sam who has been travelling China for the last two weeks and seems to have a very similar route planned as me. Shame she is leaving tomorrow morning and I plan to spend two days here. I walk into the toilets and to my horror… COMMUNAL SHOWERS!!! I’m relieved as I don’t have soap, but have shower gel!!!

I explore the surroundings and find a wet market down some back street. It was like walking back in time! Back with the salt of the earth! I also find a place which sells sunflower seeds. I tell the shop assistant that I want Y5 worth, she turns around and gives me the biggest fuck off bag of seeds. I wish Matt (Early) was here to finish it all! I have dinner in a side of the road restaurant. I order a portion of dumplings and I get a strange look. Turns out there are sixty dumplings in a portion! So I order half a portion for Y6!

I drink my first Luoyang beer and get started on my seeds! I’ve hardly made a dent after 2 hours!

Miles walked: 19.607m
Steps taken: 49,892