a little r&r

I enjoy traveling alone for all the normal reasons - I like to arrange my own itinerary, it's always easier with one, etc. Then there's a whole pastiche of personal reasons, which can largely be summed up as I'm anal-retentive. I think most folks prefer a little leisure and extravagance when on holiday. I'm agreeable, to an extent, in company, but when I have my own way, I go into what my laptop calls Better Energy Savings mode. I'll live in the same clothes for days, and take on one meal per day. I can function relatively well on relatively little sleep, and I'll put this advantage into overdrive when I'm on the road. Frugality is as much as habit in life as it is an obsession while traveling.

To top it all off, I'm impatient as hell. Timeliness and speed are important to me. I hate waiting on others. I'm judgmental of people who can't keep up physically. I'm cheap. When avoidable, I don't eat or sleep. So, I suppose the bigger reason I enjoy traveling alone is that I'm terrible to travel with. Of course company can be nice - it was good, for instance, to bounce would-you-rathers off Candace, Joyce and David during the (infinitely) long hike up Huang Shan; Stephanie's welcome presence enlivened Nanjing considerably; I wouldn't have gotten so down and dirty in Shanghai nightlife had it not been for Phil & co. But, generally speaking, there it is.

Having time to kill, however, before taking off to Tibet and reminding myself that relaxation is the catchword of the Sichuanese, I wandered down to the southern end of Chengdu, and, as if by magic, stumbled upon a gem of an English bookstore, The Bookworm.

The bar / cafe / library / bookstore, with branches in Beijing and Souzhou, lent me one of its leather couches for the afternoon. I went a little wild; I ordered chocolate cake and port, and spent several hours curled up with a few different volumes, plucked from high mahogany shelves that seemed to go on forever. It was entirely excellent.