Chengdu - Saturday night

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I fly to Chengdu on Saturday lunchtime from Xian which was easy and straightforward. Chengdu is another huge city in the Sichuan province and is a good base to see many of the surrounding attractions and also visit Tibet which I’d love to do on another trip after having heard stories from other travellers. It is also home of the famous Panda Research Breeding Base which I was really looking forward to visiting. I stayed in the Nova Travellers Lodge which was really good value, big with lots of facilities and spacious with a sociable common area. In the evening I got a taxi to the Shamrock pub and watched the Tri-Nations final and England play Ireland then went to the Kuan Xiengzi Alley area which was really nice and authentic. On the Sunday I walked to the people’s park and experienced how the locals enjoy their Sunday’s. This included relaxing in the tea houses, doing random karaoke on corners in the park, dancing and martial arts. It was really busy with not many places where you could relax with no one around. As in Beijing you get a lot of people staring at you and others would come up and chat to practice their English. On the Monday I went to a temple and Junlin Street which is an authentic street selling antiques and food. In the evening a few of us from the hostel went to a Sichuan Culture show parts of which were incredible including the “changing faces” section (see video). I saved the best until last and volunteered at the Panda base on Tuesday. This was great fun we got to feed them bamboo, apples and special cake and also clean out their cages (very smelly!!!). I really enjoyed Chengdu as a city and its one that I’d definitely like to go back to and explore more. For the next three days the hostel had helped me plan a trip to Emei Shan which is a holy mountain packed with hiking trails, forests, temples where you can stay overnight and also monkeys!!!! That’s for the next blog…….

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Comments

[Jake]

hi from Jake
hope your trip is going well. Me and dad keep thinking we are going to see you on Sky 1 hd Idiot Abroad - but no such luck! All the best from Jake