Blogs from Chengdu, Sichuan, China, Asia - page 6

Of course you cannot come to Chengdu and not visit their iconic panda sanctuary. Those big lazy fur balls are super cute!! Nice early start to the day not quite as early as id planned but couldn't get myself out of bed. 2 trains and bus later i was arriving at the city sanctuary along with a few hundred other people. As i made my way around the park i started off by seeing the recognisable giant panda and they really are huge bear size which i think is easy to forget when you look at cute little pictures or teddy bears of them. They strut their stuff around their large enclosures shaking their bottoms as they go like a girl trying to get a guys attention quite amusing really. For the majority though they just ... read more

Left Xiahe in snow - the truck was covered in icicles but fortunately it wasn't cold enough to freeze the diesel. We had a slow trip through some mountain passes and camped by some prayer flags at 3378 metres. Next morning the tents were covered in a blanket of snow. Hoping this is the end of the cold weather as we have now descended to Chengdu. The road wound down through a river gorge with amazing scenery, and what I would describe as typical Chinese towns and villages. There were a number of very long tunnels (Futang Tunnel 5347 metres long). Now settled into a hotel in Chengdu in the heart of the tourist area, and near the Chinese Opera. And now for the tourist activities: First the Pandas at the Giant Panda Breeding Centre - ... read more

THREE WEEKS GONE, TWO TO GO! The first day of the moon cake festival was a long day, full with eating and funny stories!! My home stay family and I visited Yashoda’s home stay apartment for a delicious lunch. We ate sweet potato covered with sticky caramel, roasted beans and cashews with rice and noodles. After, we visited one of the Chinese teachers who greeted us with black tea, chocolate snacks and fruit! My belly was a mountain afterwards and I went to the toilet about five times in two hours. Because of his kind soul he gave me expensive black tea as a gift because I complimented on how good it was! We left in the late afternoon and went to a festival inside a temple, hosted by Buddhist. They were celebrating the Moon Cake ... read more

A few days ago, we went to a famous irrigation scheme called 'Dujiangyan irrigation scheme'. A famous man, named Li Bing, made the irrigation scheme. The river scheme is over 2000 years old and is world heritage. When we arrived, I thought we were just visiting mountains and walking around them. The first place was a whole bunch of markets, which is where we had lunch. Then we climbed quite a few steps to get to the walking path in the mountains. Everyone wanted to go ahead but the teachers wanted us to stay and listen to the story of the irrigations scheme. As we were walking along, we got to the first big lookout. The view was spectacular. That is when i realised we were at the irrigation scheme. We walked further up the path ... read more

On the 3/9/16 we got to go around the city of Chengdu and we had 12 stops to visit for an amazing race. Our team was Jonah, Ayla, Brad, Jasmine, Heray and Lisa. We had 100 RNB for all of us to get to each stop. We went on subways and buses and Jasmine got us to run everywhere! We all ran from stop to stop. At one point our team split when three of us got on the subway and the doors closed so that the other three did not. But we met back up and all was good. We ended up getting 8 stops at the end. When all the teams met up at a big shopping centre called the Global Centre. From there, we walked to the Chinese Sichuan Opera. We had some ... read more