the morning before we headed off to the orphanage, my v. cool roommate and i slipped out of our hotel room and headed off into the streets of chengsha to take some pictures and observe the city.

chatting and giggling, we headed into the lobby of the "guest house hotel" and stopped short…for the hotel receptionist was asleep behind the desk! i don’t mean head in hand dozing, i mean she had pulled three chairs from the nearby restaurant behind the reception desk, and a duvet from a vacant room, and had turned out all the lights! she was getting her eight hours!

the streets were relatively quiet, the city (estimated population 7 million) was waking up. we saw parents brushing their teeth on the streets, street vendors creating interesting things. some smelt great, some smelt a little heavy for the early morning.

after a 20 minute walk, joan and i decided to get breakfast. the choices were dumplings or noodles. i decided that dumplings suited me best. there were pork dumplings, plain dumplings or spring onion dumplings, and i decided to try the pork dumplings. they were 3 for 1yuan, approximately 12 cents canadian, or 4 cents each. they were pretty greasy, so i gave two away, then tried the noodles. i skipped everthing except the peppers and broth, and again, that was pretty oily, so i let that go. but it was tasty. my tummy was dodgy already, otherwise that broth would have been a good friend.

there was a wet market, and so joan (roommate extraordinaire…she didn’t even freak when she woke up at 1am and there was no power in the room.) and i went exploring….i will try to post pictures of what i saw soon. but it was a really rich viewing and look at the culture, people were so friendly.

the next day, breakfast was…not so hot, baby. i skipped the dumplings because they were potato noodles and that was a bit too heavy and my stomach was still pretty dodgy and my thigh muscles aren’t so good in those squatting toilets for extended periods of time. so i went for what was promised to be "beef noodles" and it was actually octopus and urchin. urchin made my stomach lurchin.

interestingly, coffee bars are popping up in changsha (also known as chengsha)…you will be interested to note that joan and i bought three bowls of noodles for 20yuan, and then i accompanied her down the road to a coffee bar where she paid 30 yuan for a small cappuchino. supply and demand!

we were very lucky wtih our hotel room the first night…most of our fellow travellers had cockroach stories, or bathroom windows (the shower spigot was in the bathroom, there wasn’t a private shower area) that people in nearby buildings could see into, but joan and i lucked out.

the second night, lightening didn’t strike twice. our room smelt of something very nasty. we didn’t know quite what it was (probably best) but we did know that it wasn’t a synthetic smell. and the second day it seemed to be coming from the bathroom. fortunately, our guide, an aussie went and bought us a glade fresh gel (lemon scented) which we cracked open and i punctured it and wiped gel around our room, around our bedstands in particular.

and did i mention that you can get an amazing 80 minute massage for 50yuan?