Chengdu - China's New Spot To Go

My Chengdu vacation has been a blast.  I travelled alone by train, which was about a 12 hour ride.  Most

people really like to take the plane because yes sometimes its cheaper and it's a lot quicker, but I like the train.  I love the experience that a train ride provides, plus I can take lots of pictures and lie down.  For my train ride I like to travel in style, I buy the soft sleeper ticket, which is 4 beds to a room (quite like bunk beds) and it has a TV, your own lights, aircon, plugs, music (optional) and a door which you can lock.  It's quite nice and overall not too expensive, especially if you don't travel during the busy holiday seasons here.  Bathrooms aren't great and smoking rules aren't always followed, but besides that I would recommend the train for a real Chinese experience (usually the people you room with are quite considerate and nice).

I had 7 days to spend doing whatever I liked in Chengdu and I have to say I got to do the majority of what I wanted to get done (at quite and affordable price which is a bonus for me).  I arrived in the morning, sadly it took me 2 hours to find my hostel (thanks to ignorant Chinese people and their lack of understanding Pinying).  

Once I arrived at my hostel (The Mix Hostel) I checked in for my 6 nights in my personal room (you can room with other people, but I wanted a private room).  The hostel has shared bathrooms, but they are quite clean and shared showering area (used by both men and women but the doors lock and they have nice shower heads).  They also have fish and a cat named Shoa Mi (which I think translates to Panda kitten). The hostel is full of travelers from around the world, so it makes it a great place to meet all types of people.  I prefer meeting Chinese because I find that most times the Chinese are nicer to foreigners than foreigners are to other foreigners.  When I checked in I signed up for a lot of trips because you don't go on vacation just to sleep, you go to actually do something.  

First thing I did was go to Mt. Emei where the Giant Buddha is located.  It was a good day to go because it

wasn't too hot, but of course it was really humid.  The Buddha mountain prepared me for the amount of stairs I would face later in the week.  I hate stairs, especially when you throw in Texas humidity.  Going to the Buddha was about a 2 hour drive where I learned my patience for China has passed all my expectations. Our driver decided he was hungry so on the way he stopped for a quick bite to eat, the other foreigners (from France I believe or somewhere over there) complained like no tomorrow.  I got out with the guy and got a pork bun.  As I was watching the others, I was chuckling inside remembering I probably would've been the same way 9 months ago, but with experience comes patience.  The mountain was beautiful and I had a blast seeing the Buddha I had seen in a previous blog that I read previously when I was still looking at coming to China.  It's nice, those moments when you realize everything you had planned a year before had come true (yay me!).  I got done with the mountain and ate some lunch and then played with a puppy and a street cat (yes everywhere I go cats are... I have been called the cat lady).  When coming back the driver made another pit stop at a restaurant, which I was like, "Damn, I already ate."  The driver disappeared into the back and the other people on the tour refused to go inside, so this time I stayed with them (I mean they brought us to a place where the menu was all in Chinese and no pictures, so that was his bad).  Again, patience is needed when you are in a foreign country where things are done quite differently.

How many panda's do you see?

Day 3 was the Giant Panda's!!! I decided to be responsible and not hold the panda because it was about 2,000RMB to do it, which was a little out of my price range.  Our tour guide was very energetic and funny, he made sure we saw the panda's while they were still eating and awake (after 10am they pretty much sleep all day).  I took a lot of pictures of the panda's, especially the babies.  I also got to see the Red Panda's, which was surprising because these little guys actually get to walk around with people.  When I first saw one go through the hole in the fence, I froze, I didn't even take a photo.  Then I was super excited and I took lots of pictures of the red raccoon looking things.  They would make great pets I believe.  I was determined to get some souvenirs, so I bought a panda key chain and two panda shirts.

"Hey what's up?"

Day 4 was a very long day.  I woke up at 5am to be ready by 5:45am, which got changed to 6:30am

(bastards!) to get on a tour bus to Qingcheng Mt., which the bus was full of Chinese (not even one foreigner), but luckily I made some friends.  Tian, was a 16 year old senior in high school who helped me all day long.  Let's just say we became quick friends. I wanted to go to the mountain but in reality, I went to three places that day.  The first place we went  was the Irrigation site, which was pretty cool because I got to cross a lot of bridges and get to know my group a little better.  I was definitely like the adopted child of the group.  Before anyone moved on they made sure of where the foreigner was (me).  Only 3 of them spoke decent English, but they discovered my listening skills were pretty good and that I could answer in basic words, so they applauded me for that skill.  Many of them thought Tian was my classmate, student or her my tour guide (we had some laughs about that).  I got to see a cool performance of how the Chengdu Irrigation system was first created.





Then we went to lunch, which was the first time I had lunch with all Chinese people, where they all stared at me.  They made sure I got enough food and watched me use my chopsticks, which they also said I was

good at.  The lunch was classic Sichuan food, luckily not as spicy as I had been warned about.






After lunch we went to the mountain, let me just first say, "SO MANY STAIRS!"  I took the cable care up

the mountain but just to get there you have to walk A LOT and then take a boat across a small lake.  The tour guide couldn't go up with us, but she left me in the care of the small group who took the cable car with me.  They looked at me like I was a piece of glass going to break.  I thought the cable car would take us up to the main attraction, but NO! more freaking STAIRS... If you are handicapped don't come to China.  They're people who will carry you up the rest of the way, but how embarrassing would that be? No, thanks! I made it to the damn top and got some pictures while I was nearly dying.  

It was getting late, so a few of us decided to head back down and that is where I met my two adopted Chinese Uncles; Purple Shirt and Blue Shirt.  They made sure I made it back down in one piece, although I did trip on stairs a lot.  They got me to where the bus was meeting us.

The next place we went was the Ancient Town, this place was my least favorite because by this time my camera was dying and my legs were near death.  I got to see some ancient golf, bowling, play ground and archery.  After our tour we were all dropped off near the People's Park, which is a really nice street with a lot of expensive restaurants. 

I was invited to dinner by this young Chinese couple with Tian.  They took us to a HotPot restaurant, where they ordered a lot of good food and a tomato hotpot soup for me (I was the only one who didn't want spicy, I kind of felt bad).  I learned they live in Shanghai and the man's English name is Michael, he is a pilot and his girlfriend she is a flight attendant (yes like a movie romance) her name is Yuka.  He is 32 and she is 21, but he looks quite young.  They paid for the entire dinner, which was quite expensive.  I love meeting new people and now I have a connection in Shanghai.

So this post is getting long, so I will write the rest in another post.