After a good night sleep in the train we woke up around 7:30 by the baby who was awake. Breakfast was made on the fly with toast bread and marmalade, as well as some apple slices. Always good to find out that one does not need that much :o)

After we arrived at the station shortly before noon we decided to book the next batch of train tickets ourselves (online booking through an agency would have cost 10$ per ticket, so much more than the price of the tickets we booked.  We had written all the trains, dates and times with the prices down and Manu went into the long queue as Martijn and Charlotte waited outside. After what seemed age she came back, not amused, as we’ve forgotten the passports which you need for each booking. So while she managed the queue, had all the right trains marked in the system and was ready to pay the lady asked for the IDs, and then all was for nothing.

So again, passports out of the bag, and one more time in the queue. This time it went a bit faster and in altogether one hour we booked our 3 trains (Chengdu-Leshan, Lijiang-Dali and Dali-Kunming) and saved with 90$ about the price for our next 3 nights of hostel.

So we headed to the taxi queue, got one right away and went to the Hello Chengdu Hostel, one that was mentioned as very good in both booking.com, tripadvisor and lonelyplanet. If that doesn’t make you full of expectations. Arrived there we checked in and were shown the tripple room. Unfortunately it was small, damp, smelled of fungus and was on the ground floor directly across the small pond, so full of mosquitos. No way we’re gonna stay here.

As Martijn already looked for a more upper class place Manu talked to the staff and we were offered to have a look at a  family room on the 3rd floor. This was definitely better, and we decided to stay here and see how it gets.

Alltogether the room is now ok, but it is very clear that this hostel once was an absolute pearl. Probably when the original owners, Sim and Maki were still there, but in our opinion it lost much of its atmosphere as it seems that no maintenance is done since a new owner took over (late 2010). Even some of the menus and postings still contain the old name, 5 years later.

In the evening we had just a short stroll through the neighborhood and our diner was more of a snack with the local fried chicken/sweet potato/squid booth. For Charlotte we tried the Hamburger&Fries option in the hostel, which was ok.

Then it was time to go to bed early, as for the next day the Panda tour was planned.