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Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel, Chengdu, China
One of the best hostels I've ever stayed in! After returning to Kathmandu on June 2, I hurriedly arranged my Chinese visa. On Wednesday, Tika arranged for another company to get my visa in a day. Amazingly, they were able to get me a 60 day visa in a day. Pretty cool. Good thing, because my flight out was the next day.
I went to the Kathmandu airport around 9 am on June 4. The airport seemed rather chaotic, but I actually got through security and checked in pretty quickly. The flight to Lhasa was uneventful with some good views of the Himalaya on the way. After arriving in Lhasa, we sat on the airplane for 1/2 hour while government officials took every passenger's temperature as a way to screen for swine flu. After that, we were let off the plane and processed through immigration. That went quickly, but then there was an inspection of our carry on luggage. Tellingly, the officials inspecting my bags only seemed interested in what books I was bringing into the country. I had heard before leaving Nepal that the Chinese officials were confiscating Tibet and China guidebooks at the border, so I buried mine in my checked baggage. I'm not sure what the
point is because hostels in China have copies of the Lonely Planet China and Tibet guidebooks.
The flight from Lhasa to Chengdu went quickly, and I soon found myself in the Chengdu airport. I had written down the address of the Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel that I intended to stay at and showed it to the taxi driver, but he did not know English and could not read the address. At this point, several Chinese crowded around trying to figure out where I was going. Finally, the driver called the hostel on his cell phone and got directions. I think I got over charged a bit, but I was in no position to argue the price and was just happy to make it to the hostel. I quickly realized that traveling in China was going to be a very different experience from Nepal.
I checked into Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel in Chengdu around 6 and discovered that I was in the nicest hostel I had ever seen. This place had everything: wireless internet, an internet café, a bar, a restaurant, ping pong, pool, nice single rooms with DVD players and TVs, fresh fruit every 3rd morning, a travel agency, tours to the Sichuan opera, really good brownies, and many other thoughtful touches. The managers were a married couple and had done a lot of backpacking and travelling before opening their own hostel, and you could tell. Sim was from Singapore and Maki from Japan. Unfortunately, being foreigners running a business in China had a lot of headaches and the hostel, which had moved to a new location in the last couple of years, was struggling financially. I hope the hostel survives. It is wonderful.
Being dinner time, I left the hostel and struck out to find a restaurant serving the famous Sichuan hotpot. After wandering around a bit, I stumbled onto a restaurant that looked promising and went inside. I saw a western looking fellow sitting at a table with a Chinese woman. I asked him if the food was good, and he said yes. Then he asked if I would like to join them. I accepted as I was eager for company and the menu was completely in Chinese.
The hotpot was arranged as follows. A burner in the middle of the table heated a 6 inch diameter pot containing a red colored broth that boiled vigorously. Surrounding the pot of red broth was another pot containing a hot, but not boiling, whitish broth in which floated a whole fish. The red broth was spiced with hot chili peppers and the Sichuan pepper corn. The whitish broth was only mildly spiced. Bruno, a frenchman from Lyon, informed me a Sichuan native would usually only have the red pot. Nancy, his female friend from Guizhou, said that not being from Sichuan, she had a hard time with the spicy broth and they had already removed 2/3 of the chillis and pepper corns that were in the red broth.
Bruno and Nancy had ordered dishes of thinly sliced raw beef, mushrooms, raw noodles, and raw vegetables. The meat, mushrooms, and some raw vegetables were cooked in the red, spicy broth, while the noodles and potato slices were cooked in the mild, whitish broth. Food cooked in the red broth was very spicy indeed. The chillis added the same heat that you would get from spicy Mexican or Indian food, but the Sichuan pepper corn was something completely different. It had a slightly sour taste and made your lips and tongue tingle. Some people describe the sensation as numbing, but I found it too painful to be equated to numbing. The food was very good, but I don't think I could eat the hotpot more than a couple of times a week.
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