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Published: August 19th 2007
Arriving in Chengdu, we had no idea where exactly in the city we were, and owing to a lack of recognisable landmarks, realised we must be somewhere outside the scope of the 'lonely planet map'. We left the station, walking around to see if we could find a taxi to the centre... soon we found ourselves at the centre of a large throng of local people, all attempting to help/give advice, though language barriers made matters slightly complex. As it turns out, there were mass road works going on, and terrible traffic conditions, so no cabbies were interested in giving us a lift to town. We did manage to find the main train station and book a night in a hotel across the way though.
The next day our attempts to reach the centre were more successful, and we made a bee line for the 'dragon town youth hostel'- by far the most characterful hostel i think i've ever stayed at. An architectural throw back from imperial times, dragon town was located in a small area of historic Chinese buildings... much of which seemed to be under restoration. We spent the day pricing up options to get ourselves into Tibet,
and exploring the city. There are many parks in the city, and each park seems to be equipped with an array of tea houses. The centre of the city is a massive public square dominated by a statue of mao. He seems to crop up everywhere. Distances were significant, i think our feet did their share of mileage.
The following day we'd booked to take a tour of the nearby 'giant panda breeding centre'. We saw a good number of the creatures, including a 1 month old baby in an incubator. It's good to see steps being taken to preserve the endangered species... though ideally it woudn't be endangered i suppose. When we returned to the city, we made for 'wenshu temple', an active temple that seemed a little less touristy to the one we'd visited the day before. There was a vegetarian restaurant on site, which came highly recommended... it was quite surprising to find that the menu seemed to contain more meat than anything else. Later we learned these were all 'meat substitued' dishes!
We'd booked a flight to Lhasa in Tibet, and needed to wait for our foreigner permits to come though, so had one
more day in the city. This was spent exploring other parts of the city, parks/sights etc... That evening we went to the local 'opera' with a local called 'mike', who arranges these things. I think 'variety show' would be a better description, but some of the acts were really impressive. Myself and Fred were called up to star in a 'magic act', fortunately it didn't prove to be dangerous!
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