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Published: August 7th 2007
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Giant Panda Breeding Centre
One of the pandas at the centre. All they do is eat and sleep!! Hello Everyone
Well, what a nightmare!! All our previous blogs have disappeared - TravelBlog has had a melt down!! We had uploaded about 60 photos from our time in Chengdu to Tibet ready for the text imput for this blog. All has gone, so we have to start from scratch again. Bear with us.
Chewing out in Chengdu Food and drink are very cheap in China. 500-675ml bottles of beer costs 2.9-5rmb (0.50c) and its good beer! We have taken a liking to the local Budweiser brew, made in Wuhan 4.8rmb - one of the 7 furnaces of China, that's why they make good beer there! The food is cheap (not seafood as we are inland) 12-28rmb a meal ($2-4.5). We are not starving. We have found several local dishes we like - Sichuan Beef in chilli oil, beef in black bean sauce, chilli chicken (in chilli oil! Sichuan food is very, very oily), various dumplings, wonton (or something close to it) in a strange white soup, and of course duck - even tried the head! But still eating in the Korean restaurant as a back up.
We decided we needed some serious hair maintenance so we
Comfort in Chengdu!
Our hotel style room at the Mix Hostel braved the language barrier ad had haircuts at the local hairdresser Rob - 20rmb ($3) for two shampoos, cut, blowdry and neck massage. Donna had the works, colour, foils, cut, blowdry ($30) for several hours and got a good result.
After picking up our visa renewals we moved to the next phase - permits to travel to Lhasa, Tibet. Provided photocopies of our new visas, signed various documents, paid 600rmb each (for permit, airport pick and 1 nights accommodation - its actually called a 'tour'. You aren't allowed into Tibet unless you are part of a 'tour'. The fact that you don't see the person who met you at the airport ('tour guide') ever again doesn't seem to matter. We also had to pay an additional 100rmb each as a security against another application for a FIT (Foreign Independent Traveller) permit to travel to areas outside Lhasa (refundable if we don't). If you travel outside Lhasa without a FIT permit you can be arrested and deported.
Yes we are flying to Lhasa now. Couldn't get on the train (2 day trip) because students are on holidays and it is booked out! We are now flying with Sichuan Airlines
Wholesale Market, Chengdu
Bargains galore here - signage pollution. and returning from Lhasa to Chongqing to get the Yangtze Cruise, which we have booked for half the price we saw on the net!!
Our main purpose for going to Chengdu was to visit the giant Panda breeding centre. We weren't disappointed. We joined a tour organised by our hostel and had an early morning start. The pandas are a bit like koalas in that they are their most active early in the morning and tend to sleep for the rest of the day. We did get some nice shots of the pandas and some beaut video footage as well. The centre is well set up and they are doing a great job there. We also saw some red pandas too! To us they looked more like foxes, but they are pandas.
We were in Chengdu for a total of 10 days because of vias and permits, but found this regional city of 11.3 million a very nice city. We went to the IT section of town (basically several blocks of highrise computer supermarkets - like Pantip Plaza in Bangkok only 20 times larger). Purchases included an optical Skype mouse that has a phone built in which should
Peking Duck Restaurant - Chengdu
The duck's head is one of the most popular bits with the locals. Yuk - suck a duck!! come in handy during our travels.
The Phone Card Saga Donna bought a China Mobile sim card when we arrived in China. In Chengdu she tried to ring IDD to Australia - the start of another bureaucratic nightmare!
Basically all the mobile providers in China are independent operators that charge for interconnection calls. An automated message tells you that you have to register to ring IDD. After one hour in China Mobile office we find out you can only do it where you purchase the sim card! They suggest we get a friend to do it in Xiamen! You can also only top up prepaid credit where you bought the card! They suggested we get a friend to buy top up card and post it to us! We gave up here. We'll just have to stick to texting.
At the Roof of the World - Lhasa, Tibet The Sichuan Airlines flight was terrific - on an Airbus 319 (great little plane) we flew2 1/2 hours with Mt Everest in the distance, past Mt Kailash (sacred peak) then descended between the mountains to land at Lhasa airport. The cabin crew opened the door and then it
View from our room, Chengdu!
The big hotel in the background was closed! hit us - the altitude! Lhasa is 3,700 metres above sea level! We slowly walked across the tarmac to the terminal, gasping for air.
Altitude sickness is insidious - it doesn't seem to effect most of the younger people, but if yu are older and have a cold it can be severe. Just to walk up a set of stairs puts you out of breath and panting. It took 3 days for the main symptoms to reduce - headaches, strange sleeping patterns - and as you walk around the city its like walking on the moon in slow motion.
Lhasa is actually two towns - the ancient Tibetan town with temples, market streets, Barkhor Square and of course te Potala Palace. Then there is the newer Chinese town with shopping centres and busy streets. The two somehow fit together in a rather strange way - you can dine in a restaurant in a 700 year old building and then go shopping in a modern shopping centre (quite bizzare!).
We did all the touristy things in Lhasa - 16ht Century Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Remoche Temple but skipped the monastries on the edge of town. Prostrating pilgrims lined
Chengdu
Just one of the many computer centres. the temple entrances, prayer wheels spun and monks chanted all along the pilgrims circuit.
Yes, the shopping was good in Lhasa so we sent back our 6th and heaviest box of goodies (17.6kg). We found that the specials bins of the expensive brand name stores contained large sized and expensive sports clothing for ridiculously low prices.
Having adjusted to the altitude, we decided to take a day bus tour to Namtso Lake - the highest lake in the world! On the way we stopped a couple of times to get photographs of the sacred Mr Kailash.
It took 4 hours to drive to the entrance of the national park where the lake is located. Once inside the national park we drove to a lookout 5,019 metres - that's 10m short of Everest Base Camp!! From here we could look across to the lake and get the obligatory pics before driving down to the lake at 4,700m.
The lake is full of holy Budhist sites and was quite a bizarre experience. Altitude sickness kicked in again. We spent several hours at the lake before the 4 hour trip back to Lhasa - Rob can barely remember the
In shopping mall, Chengdu
Shop name - a jewellery shop. trip - and slept for 13 hours when we got back to Lhasa.
Armed with packets of Panadol and Tylenol we did our best to fight the dreaded sickness -and was enough to allow us to sample several Lhasa restaurants - the Dunya at the Yak Hotel (Dunya apparently means universe, but we found that it is closer to the literal translation - very overated and more expensive than any other Lhasa restaurant). The Shangri La - good indian thalis.
By far the best restaurant was the Lhasa Namaste Restaurant which served Tibetan, Nepalese, Indian, Chinese and Western food. The range and quality of the food was outstanding, as was the service. Most of the staff speak resonable english and Jampa Ivladher, the owner, runs a great restaurant, with a terrific view of the mountains. The best thing about the Namaste is you can have two curry thali plates, a couple of excellent Lhasa beers and their home baked apple pie and ice cream dessert for around 70-80 rmb ($11-$13 for 2 people).
In Lhasa we stayed at the Phunstok Khasang Hostel (140y for a double room) - its in the new part of town and is
Wenshu Temple, Chengdu
Wenshu Temple, near our hotel. OK, but not great. It gets very busy with Chinese students at holiday time.
We flew out of Lhasa on to Chongqing to start the next phase of our journey - the boat trip down the Yangtze River and the 3 gorges dam project.
Next blog coming soon.
Bye for now
Rob & Donna
ps
Bill and Denise - Hope you are enjoying your holiday in Bali.
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