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Published: October 2nd 2009
I am liking Chengdu so far. the bus ride in from Songpan was a different story though.
The morning of the 1st, we woke up at 5:20 so that we could get to the 6 am bus from songpan to chengdu. We got our bags together and got down to the front door of the hostel, but it was locked, no way out. After 5 minutes of increasingly panicked knocking, then yelling, the manager sleepily let us out and took our key, and we made it to the bus with time to spare
The bus, like most in china, was designed for chinese people. This means that my knees were forcifully pressed into the seat in front of me. The poor guy kept trying to lean back but it was not gonna happen. We were in the back row, so our seats didn't lean back either.
I think it was because of the horse ride, cause I was instantly tired of sitting as soon as the bus started. I figured out a strategy of sitting on my neck pillow, then slowly pulling it out from under myself over 10 minutes or so, then repeating. somehow boosted the comfort level a couple notches.
The road was CRAZY. in many places it was less than 1 lane wide, with rocks piled on both sides. the road followed a valley with a river, that was sometimes a pretty sheer cliff to our right. Our bus driver was a champ though, and took it on like we were in a humvee. at points there would be a blind curve with 1 lane, and he'd just lay on the horn and go around it at full speed. there were three times on the trip where traffic was totally gridlocked, usually at a point where there was a 1 laned blind curve, and people forced their way up to the front so nobody could move. the chinese driving style is very much every man for himself, which in those types of situations fails miserably. The worst one took over 30 minutes to sort out (everybody out of their cars yelling, then finally some people conceding and backing up a few feet)
The bus took 10 1/2 hours. During this time, steph started to realize she was coming down with a cold, and by the time we got to chengdu she was full on sick. Using a tiny map that was printed on the flyer for our hostel we booked, we managed to take a city bus from the main bus station to a spot close to our hostel. Our plan was to catch a cab the rest of the way, but all the cabs were full due to it being National Day (more on that in a sec), so we ended up walking maybe two miles with all our stuff. Being the gentleman that i am (no laughing please) I carried steph's day pack to lighten her load slightly. I learned my lesson though, because I stepped off a curb wrong, rolled my ankle and scraped my knee.
so we FINALLY made it to our room, and after that things have definitely improved.
National day is october 1st every year, and it celebrates the day that china was governed by the People's Republic of China. This particular national day was the 60th anniversary, so it was a big deal. I wouldn't be surprised if they covered it in the US news, because the performances in beijing FAR outweighed what china did for the olympics. The fireworks displays alone broke world records, and the parade broke several records as well. We watched some of it on tv in our room, and I also caught some of chengdu's fireworks from the roof of our 7 story hotel. i'm glad we made it to a big city for the 1st.
Since steph is sick and my ankle is sore, we decided we'll hang out in chengdu for a while until we're better. we like our hostel (the traffic inn): it's cheap, new, friendly staff, and it has a western toilet! (i am sure steph has or will blog about the horrors of squat toilets). The one touristy thing we are doing here is going to see the pandas, at the world's largest panda breeding center (apparantly in springtime, love is in the air...) but we've already pushed that back until the 4th so we'll be here at least until then.
I gave my ankle the tough treatment by walking several miles on it today, as we explored a little bit and did some errands. it is actually feeling pretty good now, no harm done. we managed to find a foreign (english) book store to buy some more books, eat at a pizza hut (the nicest one either of us has been to), get steph some medicine for her cold, and get some groceries and supplies. the shopping area in chengdu was just PACKED with people, never really seen anything like it.
steph is asleep now, and I am wired (hence the long blog) so I did a bit of exploring in the opposite direction from where we walked today. I found an arcade that looks pretty fun, and two massage parlors next door to each other, with a 25 yuan (less than 4 dollars) for a 1 hour full body massage! i think we'll hit that up tomorrow for sure. Oh, and I found this internet cafe.
Tomorrow steph is going to lay low, and I'll probably rent a bike and hit up some of the city's attractions on my own. Right now china is trying to boost tourism in chengdu, so we bought these things called "panda cards" pretty cheap, which get you in to a lot of the local attractions (including the pandas) for free. I'm looking forward to it. hopefully steph has a good day in bed watching ping pong on channel 5, and english-spoken news about how great china is on channel 9. We'll also probably get massages, and do some research on where we are going next. I think we're leaning towards Lijiang, so we can hit tiger leaping gorge and some of the other cool stuff in Yunnan.
Gabe, signing out.
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National Day
The local paper had an article on page 3. Here are a few interesting snippets: "China's leaders marked their nation's 60th anniversary of communist rule yesterday with a precision display of military bravado that included, improbably, a female militia unit toting submachine guns and attired in red skirts and white jackboots, and a fleet of floats with representations of a giant fish and Mount Everest." "The celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China was immense, powerful and flawless, down to the cystalline skies which, just a day earlier, had been laden with smog." Obviously, the story is strictly about Beijing. No report from Chengdu. I guess they left that to you.