Chengdu

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14/11

So, we finally made it to Chengdu after our 16 hour train journey! We hopped straight in a taxi at Chengdu station and headed to our hotel. The traffic was pretty bad near the station so it took a little while to get there, and cost a whopping ¥40! (£4) We got to our Holiday Inn express in Wuhou, Chengdu (woohoooo!!) Managed to check in around an hour early and headed to our room. An extremely comfy bed, it was very tempting to lie down and have a snooze but we decided to go down to the hotel restaurant for some lunch. Had some tasty pork with peppers, noodles and rice. After lunch we had a much needed scrub down and then headed out to explore our local area. There wasn't much about- It was clear we were not in exactly a central area! We found a couple of little shops but didn't come across any restaurants- clearly eating around here was going to be a challenge! We bought some snacks to keep in the room and crossed some extremely dicey roads. On further exploration we found a big Carrefour supermarket. Had already bought lots of snacks so didn't go in but remembered it for next time! Headed back to the hotel, back across the dangerous road crossing and chilled out and had an early night to catch up on sleep!

15/11

We managed to sleep until around 10am, despite the rather noisy road works going on all night outside- a major road is being built there. Most of Chengdu seems to be being built bigger and better- a big influx of money to improve the city. Sky scrapers were popping up everywhere and it will look like a very different place in a few years. We decided to head out to a local site- DuFu's thatched cottage. We got a taxi from the hotel, (we were too far out to walk anywhere) and got to the grounds of the cottage. It cost us ¥60 each to get in, which seems a little pricey compared to temple prices elsewhere. The grounds were kept well, and it was a very peaceful place to be. We went up the Pagoda of Buddahs, which had only been excavated in 2004 and the replica built. It had lots of stairs but a nice view from the top. We walked around the grounds and came to DuFu's thatched cottage. DuFu was a very famous Chinese poet and he built his thatched cottage in the 1600s to escape war. It looked like the walls were made from wattle and daub, but there was no writing in English so I'm not 100% sure! It was a pretty building, and very different to anything we'd seen so far in China. Have attached some photos on here so you can see! After we'd seen everything there was to see inside the grounds we headed to a street that had been recommended to us- Qintaie Street. It was a lovely street with a mix of traditional style with modern buildings. We stopped for lunch in a traditional hotpot restaurant called Longsen Garden. It was a great place and our waitress was fantastic. We had no idea what we had to do in a hotpot restaurant so she talked us through what the menu was etc. We had to order a broth as a base for the hotpot, so we chose the plain one, which they brought over and placed on the ceramic hob, set in the middle of our table. The broth then boiled and we cooked our chosen dishes in the hotpot. The waitress brought us a bowl of sesame oil each to which we added various things- salt, spring onion, vinegar, and we were offered MSG, which we declined! This was for dipping our dishes in once they had been cooked in the broth (which incidentally had 2 full fish floating around in it- heads and all, plus some other bits for flavour- tomato, ginger etc). The dishes we chose were beef meatballs, pork and pear dumplings, broccoli and potato. This was a really tasty lunch, and really novel for us, we really enjoyed it and came out smiling at our experience, which was definitely made better by the fab waitress, who refused to take a tip- not their custom over here! We didn't do much else for the rest of the day- just relaxed in the hotel with a few snacks when we got hungry!!

16/11

Today was panda day! Yay!! We'd been waiting for this day! We got up at 6 and got our pre-booked (rip-off) taxi from the hotel to the panda base at 7. We paid an extortionate ¥120- we didn't realise how much of a rip-off this was until later though! Terrible taxi driver who smoked and didn't even know the way to the most famous place in Chengdu- brilliant! We finally made it, and got there just before the ticket booth opened and waited behind the other white tourist who was already there!! We got into the park around 8, even though it isn't supposed to open until 8.30. It was lovely to get in early as it was so quiet! The pandas hadn't been let out yet as it was so early, so we got a glimpse of some inside, and then headed to the nursery where there was a tiny baby in a crib. It was gorgeous and sleeping peacefully. It was only a couple of months old and the fur that will be black was still only light grey in colour. We stared at the lovely baby for a good 10 minutes and then headed out to the cub enclosure. The pandas in here were still quite young and were being very playful as it was so early in the morning still- just about 8.30, so they were all outside. There was one adult and 4 cubs, 2 of which were playfighting and kept rolling down the grass bank. It was great fun to watch and still pretty quiet in the park. We had lots of fun watching these cubs for about 15 mins until it got a little busier. We walked back to the pandas we'd seen inside earlier- the sub-adult pandas, like panda teenagers! It was getting busier now and harder to get a good view. The sub adult pandas were still a little playful but nothing like the cubs! We bought a couple of souvenirs and then headed to the lovely red pandas! Luckily it was feeding time so we got a great view of these beautiful creatures. We then looked around the adult enclosures but the later in the day it got, the more sleepy the pandas were! We were very pleased we had got there so early. It took quite a while to look around the whole park and we looked around some of the enclosures twice (the nurseries and cubs mainly- there were 3 tiny babies when we went back to the first nursery and we found another nursery which also had 3 tiddlers in!) We had really wanted to hold a baby panda, as we had read about people doing it, but when we enquired we were told it was not available and that it was finished. We aren't really sure what the reason was but were extremely disappointed that we couldn't do it. But we still had a brilliant day looking around the conservation centre. It was a great place with brilliant enclosures and keepers who obviously care about the animals' welfare. We got a car back to the hotel- not an official taxi but we agreed on ¥70 before we got in the car and he was pretty friendly. We realised how much we had been ripped off in the morning seeing as this wasn't a metered taxi and it was still almost half price! We had dinner in the hotel again- menu was very limited so was pretty much the same as what we'd had last time!

17/11

We had a very lazy start to the day, watching the discovery channel and eating snacks in our room! We didn't leave the hotel until around 3pm, and headed to Galleria shopping mall that we'd read about that had a proper Italian restaurant in it!! It was the first of many European shopping malls to hit Chengdu. We had a look around some shops and found an apple franchise store, which we went and had a look in. We bought a gadget to convert the LAN network in hotel rooms into wireless- a mini router. Very helpful seeing as the wifi was pretty dodgy! We found the Italian restaurant called Grappas. We were lucky to get in as they had a big party that evening- we sat at the bar and assured we would be quick! We spoke with the head chef- a French Italian guy who asked about our travels, and we told him that we'd found his restaurant highly recommended online which he was very pleased to hear about! We had a glass of prosecco which tasted like heaven! And got some free bread with oil and balsamic whilst waiting for our amazing lasagne. We shared a cheesecake for dessert. It was such an amazing meal, real food and real cheese! Yum! Headed back to the hotel in a taxi with a Starbucks in hand (even tho stuffed- rude not to really!)

18/11

We got up early today to try the free breakfast in the hotel! It wasn't bad- a selection of Chinese and some western food. Still don't understand noodles and rice for breakfast! We headed out in search of a post office, I had found an address online from china post website. We got a taxi there and it soon became apparent the address was totally wrong!! The taxi just left us and luckily a kind lady walked past and offered to help us. After a few phonecalls with her niece who is an English teacher, she took us to the address we had, not realising it wasn't actually the post office that we were after..! It was actually a jade jewellery shop! Luckily the man whose shop it was spoke decent English and was extremely helpful. He made us sit in his shop whilst he found the correct address on his laptop and then closed his shop and walked us to the post office using the maps on his phone! Very kind Chinese man! He stayed with us whilst we ordered what we needed and made sure we got a receipt and then got us a taxi to get to the mall! Very helpful and not sure what we would have done without him! Thanks! 😊 We headed back to the mall from yesterday as we couldn't get our router gadget to work with Chantelle's phone. He tried lots of different things and we couldn't really work out what the problem was...oh well. Had a look at the mac book airs which were quite tempting as they were a good £200 cheaper than home...managed to resist! (he told us they'd probably be cheaper in HK!!) Quick lunch in subway and then we found IKEA! Yess! Obviously we went in for a look! Pretty much bog standard Swedish ikea with all the usual- except the Chinese cannot follow the arrows (no surprise!) The food market was a let down but we did find a few Christmas bits to put in our room in Thailand for Christmas plus a pear cider 😊 Back to the hotel to do some washing and pack ready to move on to Shanghai!

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Comments

[anonymous]

All sounds good, so pleased the Chinese man kept u girlies safe! Missin u xoxo