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Published: January 25th 2008
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A particularly active panda
It's hard work eating bamboo all day... On Friday 26th October we flew from Bangkok to Kunming (in Yunnan, south west China) on the emptiest plane I've been on - including the crew there were only about twenty people on board - before spending a day trying to track down someone who could get us into Tibet - after already waiting five days for a China visa in Thailand, the next step was to procure a Tibet Travel Permit (TTP), which generally only comes in a package with a plane or train ticket...
Having had no luck, at least not at prices our budget could stretch to, the following day we boarded a 20hr train destined for Chengdu, the other main gateway city for foreigners wishing to gain entry to Tibet. It was the most uncomfortable train journey yet, as we had bought tickets for "top hard sleepers"; a hard sleeper is the type of bed (the other more expensive option is the soft sleeper), which in itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the top (3rd) bunk is about 10ft off the ground with no room to fully sit up in, and quite a difficult climb after the lights were unexpectedly turned off at 10pm! The
Michelle with our dinner
It took her ages to catch this one, but she's getting quite good now bed itself was very uncomfortable as, being designed for the average Chinese person, it was too short for me to fully extend my legs, as well as being very hard!
Arriving in Chengdu (in Sichuan Province, north of Yunnan) the following day feeling tired and with sore necks, we emerged from the station into the dim light of early morning to be accosted from every direction by taxi touts who spoke no English and whom, after consulting my Mandarin phrasebook, we established were trying to rip us off - surprise surprise! We eventually managed to get a metered taxi to the Traffic Hotel, where we took refuge in the cafe and relaxed for a little while. The resident travel agents, recommended by our sorry excuse for a guidebook, were rubbish and could offer no satisfactory solution for us, so we spent the day walking around Chengdu talking to other travel agents, who again couldn't really answer our key questions, such as what would happen if we got on the train to Lhasa without a permit, as many people do - you
have to have a TTP to board a plane, whereas for getting on a train you only need
A local hocking up into the river in Chengdu
Not really, it's just Michelle performing a simulation! to have a train ticket (theoretically a foreigner needs a TTP to buy a train ticket to Lhasa, but there is nothing to stop a Chinese person from buying a train ticket for you...). Apparently lots of people go in this way without any trouble at all, but we decided not to risk it.
Anyway, by now it was the 28th so eventually we decided that it was turning into too much hassle and booked a flight ticket & TTP package, as thanks to legendary Chinese bureaucracy we would already have used up 6 days of our 30 day visa by the time we got to Lhasa, and it would have been more like double that if we'd got the train (through official channels). In the three days it took for our TTP applications to be "processed" we spent our time exploring the "delightful" Chengdu.
Our first day spent wandering around Chengdu, our third day in China and a Sunday, allowed us to make a few observations:
* Everywhere we went there was the ubiquitous sound of hocking, followed by the sound of a mouthful of fresh phlegm impacting on the uneven pavement - you really
have to watch your feet on a busy street! The government are trying to discourage the habit because of the forthcoming Olympics, presumably because they are concerned about the health risks it poses to their citizens rather than the bad impression it will give to the numerous tourists who'll descend on China in the summer. They'll have a tough job on their hands though, as everyone does it, young and old - it's particularly disconcerting when a pretty young girl walks by and misses your feet by mere inches with a lump of steaming mucus!;
* Driving licenses appear to have been given away with packs of Cornflakes;
* They could do with some roundabouts - traffic lights don't cut it, as it just turns into a free-for-all and the hundreds of bicycles and scooters don't pay any attention to the lights;
* There must be a lot of accidents involving pedestrians as they just walk out in front of the traffic to a cacophony of car horns and seemingly hope for the best;
* Chinese parents are happy to let their children wee on the floor in the middle of a busy MacDonald's (hopefully they
washed their hands before eating);
* Staring is not rude - it doesn't matter at all, even if your subject is sitting at the adjacent table in a restaurant; although saying this, the following day, a Monday, wasn't quite so bad. In hindsight this problem appears to be much worse at weekends when both the elderly and young are out in force - without fail, always the worst offenders!
* China is the only country in the world (according to the one, propaganda spewing, English language tv channel - a news channel called, somewhat ironically, CCTV9);
* Everyone should worship Chairman Mao (the propaganda is working on me);
* Even in China everyone supports Liverpool (I watched the Liverpool vs Arsenal match in a bar near our hotel with a Commie Scouser-wannabe).
The only things of note that we did in Chengdu after this were buying a pair of trousers from an overenthusiastic young shop attendant and visiting the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center, of which the latter was the more enjoyable and made for a nice morning's entertainment. It was a big place and we saw lots of pandas, including three young
And some more
I'm really panda-ing to fans of cute bears now... babies in a cot being attended to by a nurse and looking very cute (the pandas, not the nurse, although...), some very playful cubs who spent the whole time that we were watching them wrestling each other up and down a slide in their play area, and lots of somewhat less energetic adults who seemed to spend most of their time munching on bamboo or sleeping, and occasionally moving between the locations where these activities took place. We also saw some playful and much more active red pandas, which are a lot smaller and look more like raccoons. It is a real shame that the giant panda is critically endangered, but the breeding program here appears to be very successful, with seven or eight births this year so far and twins being born just two days before our visit.
On Wednesday 31st October we arose early for our 8am flight to Lhasa. After being delivered to the airport under cover of night (well, it was still dark outside) we waited for the guy with our TTPs to arrive. After a slightly anxious wait he turned up and took us straight to the check in desk, and as soon as
we were done there he ushered us along to Passport Control, where he queued up with us and flashed our permit to the security guy there, before bidding us farewell and melting back into the crowd. That was the only time we glimpsed our TTP, and the whole thing had seemed like a very clandestine operation, almost as if we were going somewhere we really shouldn't have been...
Once aboard the plane, we were forced to make ourselves comfortable as the scheduled 2hr flight turned into an 8hr one. And I didn't even have my Dad's anti-DVT socks with me! The first delay was before we took off, as an elderly couple had to leave the plane (they forgot their anti-DVT socks too). Then, after 2hrs in the air we couldn't land at Lhasa - we later found out it was probably due to a dust storm - so had to return to Chengdu, refuel, wait for a take off slot, then go again. After a couple of spectacular flights alongside the Himalayas with their peaks poking through the clouds, we eventually touched down in Lhasa at 4pm.
After what had seemed like no end of red tape
to plough through - they really don't make it easy to get here - we had finally reached the Land of the Snows!
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