Day 65: Traffic jams, bees and five star living.

Location : Xi’an to Guang Yan.

High Point: After doing a monster day in the truck today driving over 450km we decided to splash out and book ourselves a nice hotel. Sorry stage 1 & 2, China is a cheap place and one has to take advantage of the finer things that life sometimes offers you.

Low Point: Sitting in a traffic jam for two and a half hours stuck behind hundreds of trucks in 35 degrees heat is misery at the best of times, throw in a couple swarms of bees and it compounds the agony ten fold. Seeing lorries carrying beehives is a first for me, getting stuck behind one for over an hour is not much fun. Windows were closed, the sweating began and then I decided to turn on the fan. This only ended in disaster when half dead angry bees started to come out of the vents. Only in China and only on FTFE!

Author’s Comments: After a really long hot day on the road we arrived at Guang Yan, a small city in Chinese terms, with well over a million people! Tired and hungry we were so thankful to book into a nice hotel, the next stop was food as we were all starving after not stopping for roughly 12 hours. Sun Ji our guide has taken it upon himself just to order all our food for us, that way we can try some of the local dishes and play the ‘what are we eating’ game. This has worked very successfully for over a week now, however stage 3, has a bit of a liking for spicy food and Sun Ji has picked up on this. With each meal sitting the food is getting hotter and hotter. Tonight surpassed all expectations, whilst I adore a good hot curry the dishes spice content went from the sublime to the ridiculous. I have a feeling there could be a few red faces tomorrow morning, thank goodness the hotel has western style toilets, gutted I am sharing my room with Paul!

After nine weeks on the road our backs are beginning to play up, so Steve, myself and James decided to get a proper Chinese massage to ease the pain. The comedy value was high as we were all shown into the same room and three tiny Chinese girls attempted to ease our aching limbs. I really don’t think they had ever encountered three guys with an average weight and height probably in excess of 100% of each one. Whilst mine did an excellent job on my shoulders, back and neck when it came to lifting me up and stretching my back no matter how hard she tried it just wasn’t going to happen. Looking over at James and Steve I think their girls were struggling too, I just wish we knew a bit Chinese as the girls found it hilarious and every two minutes they called in all the other girls from the parlour to take a look. Much laughing and pointing took place and unfortunately I don’t think it was our celebrity FTFE status that drew them in this time!

Ross

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