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Published: January 19th 2008
Xi'an train station was awful, as usual all baggage had to go through the x-ray baggage scanner but the Chinese here were worse than other places, almost pushing us over (with big rucksacks on our backs) to get their stuff on the machine before us. Waiting for the train was funny, Neil sensing Donna was in donkey kicking mood, he wisely decided not to brave the waiting room and found us a corner with plenty of room so we could wait until the train boarded. Literally within minutes were were surrounded by a family squat sitting eating their tea...of all the places! Oh well we were getting used to it by now.
Boarding the train we had to shout at a few people for pushing against the back and side of our rucksacks as we were walking upstairs, seriously we nearly fell down the stairs...but after Neil shouted at some guys for pushing him around, the crazy foreigners were given a wide berth! Next we had the puzzling task of finding our train carriage...normally a very easy thing to do. It turns out that our carriage was one of the two crappy carriages the train company had shoved on the
end of the train and didn't even have a proper carriage number, which is where we got confused. It had sticky lino on the floor, the windows weren't sealed so every time a train went past the curtains whooshed up towards the top bunk and the beds were just a bit of MDF wood! The toilets were really bad (honestly the toilets on the trains have been clean up until now) and the conductors didn't clean them so you had to squat whilst urine, excrement and used sanitary towels sloshed around your feet. On the plus side we got our bottom bunks. At least we weren't the only ones that had trouble finding the carriage, 5 minutes before we left a Chinese woman came huffing and puffing, making lots of noise, flopping down into one of the seats in the aisle. We think she was a bit of a drama queen as she was still complaining 3 hours into the journey and all the other passengers were rolling their eyes at her! We expected to arrive into Chengdu at 10am...11:30am we were still on the train and judging by the other passengers they expected the journey to take this long.
Bob's hadn't told us they had booked us onto the slowest of slow train which stopped at every station or whenever the driver felt like it so he could have a fag. We were so annoyed, we huffed and puffed like the drama queen at the beginning of the journey!
We finally arrived into Chengdu at midday and were relieved to find the hostel we had booked remembered to pick us up. We were put into a taxi and whisked away to one of the best hostels we have stayed at. We had booked a double room ensuite at Mix hostel, but as it turns out these rooms are not part of the hostel but in a hotel across the road. We were taken over to the hotel...it was so posh we thought there had been a mistake (see the pics) for 140 Yuan (£9) we had a 3 star hotel with the hostel facilities and the room rates advertised on the hotel reception were minimum 300 Yuan (£20). We got internet in the room (like most places in China) included but we were becoming increasingly frustrated with the number of sites the Chinese government were blocking. For some
reason the government blocks certain sites like BBC News and Wikipedia (and strangely a guest house in Kuala Lumpur's website) as it believes that these websites undermine the perception of a unified China and they promote Taiwan being independent, it even blocks google images! The lottery of web surfing gets very frustrating after a while although porn sites aren't blocked (of course we tested it out to see the limits of the government!) and we would say it really hampered our internet researching. Other travellers reported that their blog sites were blocked...luckily travelblog escaped the block!
The first thing we did after having a 1 hour shower each to wash the grime of the train away was to book our tour to see the pandas the next day. Donna was so excited, Neil had difficulty keeping her calm! Food in Chengdu was a little more difficult to come by, we managed ok and found a couple of good restaurants to keep us happy. We came to notice that many Chinese cities are very spread out and there is no real central area to them, Chengdu was another one of those cities. On our first night we walked about 4kms
around the city trying to find a central area...we did find a main square with a huge statue of Mao, fountains which did a little water show and massage alley where all the massage places looked like brothels (yes, Neil was directing again!). Walking around Chengdu we had a lot of stares and laowai (Mandarin word for foreigner) comments, we were beginning to feel like pandas ourselves.
The day finally dawned bright and cold...the day was Panda day! To be honest there were two minibuses going to the pandas from our hostel and we were the only ones who were excited...all the other backpackers were so grumpy, they were on their way to seeing the cutest endangered species in the world and they were acting as if they didn't want to be there! We have found that sometimes backpackers 'do' sights just to say they have seen them or to get the picture, we think if you aren't interested in something then don't do it! As our drivers escorted us to the pandas the excitement level raised a little, but this was mostly Donna asking Neil if she could have a panda for Christmas! The pandas were so cute...very
lazy but cute! We couldn't help marvelling that all they do is eat and sleep they don't even have the energy to have sex the poor things! We watched a video at one point in the tour and it showed the panda mating rituals (when they can be bothered) which involved rubbing their bums up against walls (?) and how the staff at the research base have to artificially inseminate the females...although in the video there was something like an electrical stimulating machine being used to collect semen from the male Panda's although we didn't really understand how that one could work. What a job hey imagine at a party...'oh yes I collect panda sperm for a living'! We even heard that they tried Panda viagra but we dont know how true this is but imagine how big that blue pill was! We also saw some red pandas which weren't as cute and looked more like raccoons. We could pay to have a photo taken with a panda but it worked out at a whopping £150...we passed on that photo opportunity.
Walking around the panda research base was weird, it was basically a glorified zoo and there were signs
everywhere saying corny things about protecting nature and the environment, but at the risk of sounding sceptical we both thought that the Chinese really wouldn't care so much about the pandas if they couldn't make so much money from them and if the world hadn't told them to save the pandas. It sounds harsh but it's true and we weren't the only other people thinking this in Chengdu.
After seeing the cute and cuddly pandas disaster struck our other plans...well not disaster so much but Donna came down with the flu and a nasty case of sickness, diarrhoea and evil eggy burps. Unfortunately she couldn't move more than 10 feet away from the toilet for 2 days and so we couldn't see anything else on our to do list for Chengdu...we told you the train toilets (the main suspect) were dodgy! So that's why there are only pictures of pandas and a couple of Chengdu city instead of the biggest Buddha in the world, some great face changing Cheng Du opera (which Neil was pissed off because he wanted to see it) and some great monasteries! Faced with the prospect of another 18 hour train journey and then a
9 hour bus journey we weren't sure if Donna could make it so we looked into the possibility of flying to our next destination of Lijiang. It turned out that the flight was only £15 more than the train, only took an hour and a half and included a free pick up. That'll ding dang do for us we thought and went ahead and booked the tickets through the hostel and amazingly they didn't charge commission, we were shocked!
We had decided to spend a few days in Lijiang to rest and to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge with a French couple, Nathalie and Frederic, we had met on our golf buggy ride in Pingyao. We hoped that Lijiang would be nice, we had heard mixed reports about it so we had our fingers crossed that it would be worth a few days visit and also that our Sichuan air flight didn't crash on the way!
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Fiona
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So that's what a red panda looks like ....
There are allegedly two red pandas at the MAC kiddy zoo park in B'ham. However, they hide right up the top of the trees so all I could see was a dark shape and was therefore somewhat dubious as to their panda authenticity, they could have been very large squirrels having a laugh for all I knew! Ace blog, though the details of the skanky toliet has made me feel rather ill ...