Warriors, Pandas and Celebrities - China Part Two

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So...picking up where we left off in the land of the Great Wall...

We left you in the funny city of Wuwei which had nothing much to offer apart from the 'bronze flying horse' and more delicious hot pots! Wuwei was part of the long trek through the western/central part of China where it takes you days of driving to actually get anywhere. After leaving Wuwei we stopped in Lanzhou for a total of about 12 hours, a highly eventful 12 hours where we found our first 'real' supermarket. Yep, about four of us running around a 'real' supermarket, squealing at the sight of milk, bread and face products (no we are not victims to consumerism).

After the highlight of the supermarket we were positively blown away when we drove into the huge city of Xian the next day. Now Xian may be famous for being the home of the terracotta warrior army but I'm sad to say we were just as excited to see McDonalds, KFC and real coffee. It's funny when you do this travelling lark, suddenly things that weren't important at home become the bees knees. Take McDonalds - now we never go there apart from a few Bigmacs on the walk home from a big night out we never go, but after seeing it for the first time in two and a half months suddenly we turned into kids lusting after happy meals! But having said that I'm pleased to say we had one Mcmeal and one trip to KFC and now we feel
suitably done with that and we soom turned our attentions to the fabulous city of Xian.

The terracotta warriors were fabulous, how they manage to put all of them back together after being destroyed by looting enemies still baffles us. Apparently it can take between six months and a year to put one back together - and as the name says - there is an army of them! I would've lost patience ages ago. Xian also is home to a huge city wall which has been lovingly restored and which we tandem biked around the top of. Yep, tandem bike, and we didn't fall off once! Xian was our first taste of a real city with high streets, high rises and a high volume of traffic. With McDonalds comes rush hour and we got stuck for two hours in said traffic!

Xian however was only an introduction for our next big city of Chengdu. Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan province and felt like a mega city compared to what we have been used to, but like all Chinese cities it had its charms including the Panda Research Facility, plenty of amazing places to eat and
restored old parts of the town and beautiful parks. We spent four days in Chengdu as we gorged on Sichuan cooking and attempted to walk it off amongst the tai chi practicing locals in the many green parks.

It was also in Chengdu we were interviewed twice by locals papers who wanted to write stories about this funny collection of foreigners doing a six month trip. I still think they don't actually believe what we are doing, but they did laugh when I was asked if we had had any 'dangerous' encounters, to which I
replied "only Chinese driving has been dangerous!" This interview actually sums up the Chinese people we met on the trip, they are lovely, kind and thoroughly intrigued by us. Countless times we were stopped by people on the street just to say hello, and in most cases have their photo taken with us.
At one we point we dubbed ourselves the new Spice Girls as a group of 30 people lined up to have a shot taken with us, but they all smile and say thank you and to be honest - we are quick enough to take a snap or two of them! Besides I think we all got used to the attention and were quite dissapointed when we started seeing other 'foreigners' in the larger cities like Xian and Chengdu - how dare they take away our limelight!

Leaving Chengdu we returned to a couple of days of transit towns to get to the our next destinations of LIjiang and Dali, which are famed for their restored old towns. So it was more of the travelling for 10 hours and staying in a hotel for 10 hours before moving on, but I can tell you that XiChang and Panzihua make excellent transit towns complete with huge Walmarts and friendly drunk local girls who want your phone number so they can show you around (for more stories on this see us at the end of the trip!) We also managed to make a flying visit to Leshan to see the second highest buddha in the world at 71 metres and to spend the night at a place called Mt Emie where we started to get our first real taste of Buddhaism.

Lijiang and its restored town was lovely, definately the Brugges or Venice of the Orient with its small cobble stoned streets and running canals. The guidebook even said it has the highest number of visitors of any tourist town in the world (I won't say that's completely true) but it was very cute and did get very busy. Chinese tourism is definately a booming industry and I mean with Chinese internal tourists not foreigners. Driving along the motorways you are constantly passed by huge sleeper buses full
of locals making their way to a new town to a) take a photo of absolutely everything and b) buy taking trinkets and hats of the place they are visiting.

Our next port of call Dali, was similar to Lijiang in that it had beautiful old streets full of cute restaurants, cafes and overhanging balconies, small canals with trickling streams and of course friendly locals. There was one difference however, it started to feel like backpackerville. As was explained to me when we arrived in the town full of hippies and backpackers, the trail travels up from south east asia and reaches into China as far as Dali. The good thing about this was the vibe that Dali gave - it was chilled
out, quiet and happy! We spent our three days there wandering through the streets and enjoying, as always, delicious foods. Oh yeh, it's also the place where I offered to make an honest woman out of Susan - she said yes, so Dali will now forever be special to us.

Unfortunately our happy time in Dali also spelt the beginning of the end of our time in China as we wound our way closer to the border with Laos. On the way down we started to get our first real glimpse of tropical jungles and of course began to feel the change in temperature as the heat and humidity began to rise. Our last two stops in the cities of Kunming and Jinghong were boring and we can honestly say Kunming had the appeal of flat rat, but you have to visit the worst to enjoy the best besides the egg custards were pretty great there.

As we drove into Jinghong were we finally began to see signs written in Chinese and Laotian we knew we were at the end. Ah China, what a place you have been. It has been full of lovely people, fantastic food, mental driving, days and days of driving on end and chillis hotter than hell. In fact there has been so much that we loved about you, maybe we need to make a list...

Best places in China:
Zoe - Dali, Kashgar, Jiayuguan and Xian
Susan - Dali, Xian and Kashgar

Best food in China:
Zoe - THAT chicken in Kashgar, hot pots and our own sweet and sour pork made in Chengdu during a cooking class
Susan - Yep, THAT chicken in Kashgar, steamed dumplings for breakfast and sweet and sour pork in Dunhuang

Strangest things in China:
Miles and miles of tunnels and bridges which are hundreds of metres up in the air, in fact you could probably by pass the whole of China with the roads they are building.
The younger children don't wear nappies, there are bare bums everywhere and we didn't see one have an 'accident'.
The cost of some of the tourist attractions was worth three days budget of food and accommodation.
The drive safe posters which included real dead bodies!
Chinese whiskey - stinky feet juice in a bottle. A big no no.

Highlights:
Most things really!
Snow beer.
George our local guide who was the best thing since sliced bread.

Ah China, I still don't know where to begin and end with you and I feel like I have only touched upon our time there. I will share you during drunken stories told to other travellers when I've had to many beers, I will reminise over you when I see a poster of one of your many sights, and I will always love the way you gave us Dali and I will always encourage people to come and see you.

Ah China, I will fondly wave goodbye to you at the border with Laos and try not to shed a little tear when we say goodbye to George (I failed).

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Comments

[Mumbo]

Warriors etc.
Please, please next time you go to China can I come too?xx

[Annette Mitchell]

China
Love it love it love it! Thanks again girls for a simply delightful recount of this amazing country. Definitely on my bucket list! Take care Annette xx