Our journey from Xi’an to Chengdu went with no hick up’s. The toilets in Xi’an airport were a little interesting (shared squat toilets – nice! – I would rather wee in my own jeans than have to experience that!) The plane food was also interesting – a packet of (c. 20) cookies and a bottle of water – nutritious!; other than that, all was good. We arrived at Sims Hostel early evening, so got settled and had an early night, ready for the pandas the next morning.
The Panda tour was an early start and this proved to be the case not only for us but for the pandas too! The first panda enclosure we went to had 2 adult pandas both of which were still asleep on their raised bamboo bed – hmmm hope this isn’t going to be a theme?! Moving on we went to another two enclosures where thankfully the Panda’s were awake and happily sat eating bamboo leaves! OMG they are so cute.
250 pictures later we moved on to see the red panda’s (look more like raccoons than pandas, however they were still kind of cute) and the baby pandas – the youngest only 8 weeks old (born on Day 1 of our trip!). When the pandas are born they are taken by the keepers and looked after by them until they are ready to go into the enclosures. Apparently there are only 1,000 wild pandas in the world, so at the place we went to, they artificially inseminate the pandas; a) to encourage numbers but also, b) to make sure they don’t degenerate by interbreeding within the same family. You could get your picture sat next to a Panda, which in hindsight I wish I had done, I just thought 40 quid was a little much especially as it was the equivalent to our 3 nights hostel in Chengdu!
After the Panda’s we decided to hire some bikes from the hostel and went for a ride around town – what fun. It took me a few minutes (Dan says hours!) to remember how to ride a bike however after a few blocks of zigzagging, I got into the swing of things and nearly(!) blended in as a local. We generally get looked at walking around (we are foreigners after all) but foreigners on bikes, buzzing around town – now that was a sight! One guy drove past, looking, as if to say ‘what is this’, I just laughed, he didn’t know what to do so he kind of smiled / laughed back! There isn’t much order to Chinese way of life, its’ all for one and one for all, so Dan and me were ringing our bells and shouting at people to get out of the way, if you can’t beat them, join them – it was great.
That evening on recommendation by Nicole and Matt, we went for a Sichuan Hot Pot. Sichuan food is known for being spicy, this is an understatement. With help from the waitress (who spoke good English) we chose the level of spicy-ness for the hotpot (clearly the lowest level), some beef, lamb, and vegetables. A few minutes later our hot pot of simply liquid chilli’s arrived and placed in the middle of our table. Now I don’t mind mild spicy food, Dan can cope with fairly spicy food, however this was on a different level. By the end of the meal Dan was sweating from head to foot. It was an experience and enjoyable nevertheless, although I did see a Chinese guy hack on the restaurant floor – nice.
Yesterday we went for a day trip to see the world’s largest Buddha (we must have seen the “worlds’ largest Buddha” three times now) with Matt and Nicole who we met on the Panda tour. Realising we had come a long way to possibly only see Pandas we thought we should really do something else whilst in Chengdu; so decided we would follow the Lonely Planet book and visit the Leshan Grand Buddha by public transport and do it ourselves. The day can only be best described as a challenge. We were dropped off outside an entrance gate, where the fee was 120 Yuan (each) to get in, now the book hadn’t mentioned anything about entrance fees, so we were a little suspect. Our suspicion grew as more and more Chinese people swarmed around us trying to pull us in. After a little interlude of Dan having to head back into town (see “Lost and Found” post), we stuck to our guns and walked around to find another entrance, where we did have to pay but not as much.
After seeing the Grand Buddha, which was certainly grand (and worth the challenging day trip), we went back to where we got dropped off to get the bus back to Chengdu. When we bought our tickets we asked if they were return, to which the lady behind the counter promptly replied ‘yes’ – great, bargain! Clearly she had no idea what ‘return’ meant, as such we ended up arguing with the guy on the bus back as we thought we had return tickets which in the end turned out to be singles. Regardless we got back safe and sound with all belongings in tow. Although the Chinese are fairly rude and ruthless, generally the majority are doing the right thing – the language barrier just means words get lost in translation.
