Pandas and more

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Monday October 2, 2006 - After getting myself on the bus to Chengdu at 11:30am, I had to sit there for over half an hour waiting for the bus to go. In this time I developed a headache from all the smoking onboard. It was great. We finally took off a little after noon and stopped shortly thereafter for lunch! I just sat on the bus for a while, then asked about a toilet. There was one in the park nearby - unpleasant but got the job done. Then I bought a melted ice cream and a bag of chips for later and we left. The ride was a nightmare in pretty much all ways. The driver was a psycho, as are most drivers I have seen all over the world. But this was my first long distance bus journey in China and it took driving like a maniac to a new level. Having the seat right behind the driver was also a treat - I could see really really well. The driver constantly had his hand on the loudest horn I've ever heard, took crazy chances passing people around corners, and smoked constantly. At least he had a window that opened, unlike the rest of the bus. This helped sometimes. There was also crazy music playing loudly most of the time. It was interesting. I sat next to a younger guy and his girlfriend sat across the aisle from us. I would have offered to switch but she was sitting next to someone who actually had a bed in that bus and it w as too weird to think about. The young guy kept reading over my shoulder as I wrote in my journal - not sure if he can read English, but there is no such thing in China as privacy, so it didn't really matter to me. At least he wasn't spitting - several people spent a good portion of the ride spitting in the bus. Even the woman sitting next to the driver. Lovely.

A good thing about the bus ride was that the scenery was beautiful. It eventually became green with rolling hills and gorges and a lot of beautiful lakes. China really is beautiful in a lot of places. I enjoyed that, but it was a shame I was on the wrong side of the bus for pictures.

A particular highlight of the trip included two bathroom stops. The bathrooms were just pits that, inste ad of just dropping waste down very far, emptied it into a lovely cesspool just outside this brick building with no doors. At the first, I waited outside until the end, as there was room for only one person in this "building" but there were always at least two women squatting there together. Finally it was my turn and just as I got in there, another woman came in, squatted in front of me with no hole in front of her, and peed. If I wasn't in China I would have been mortified - as it was I was extremely uncomfortable. Really. There is no such thing as privacy here. Got back on the bus and pretended it hadn't happened.

At 9pm, we stopped for dinner. This was a huge clue that we wouldn't be arriving at my destination at 10pm like I had been told. At this point I just wanted out of the bus. A woman actually dragged me to the toilet, which was another similar but more uncomfortable experience. Then we ate. I sat at a table with a bunch of Chinese men who laughed at my chopstick technique. They just gave me a bowl of rice and kept bringing out dishes to share. It was rather good in the end and then we got back on the bus.

I got extremely worried at 1am when the drivers changed. I began to think the woman had told me we would arrive at 10am, not 10pm, and I was nowhere near getting off this ride. Lucky for me we drove until only 2am, only four hours behind schedule! I was about to tear my hair out and kill the driver at this point. I was one of the few getting off here, and I got my bag from under the bus. They had stored it near a hot pipe, and my luggage was still hot when I got to the hostel. I think that means it cooked all my film, but I will try to be optimistic about it. I got a taxi to the hostel and once I arrived she said there were no six dorm bed rooms available - which I had already booked and paid a deposit on. I told her to get me any room and I was not paying anymore - I just wanted to sleep. So she put me in a two bed room, with the understanding that I would move to a different room the following day. There was a guy sleeping in the other bed and I woke him up and terrifified him all at the same time. I had walked in with my headlamp on so that I didn't need to turn the overhead light on. Apparently this was a great deal scarier than just coming into the room unexpected. But he was cool and went back to sleep soon thereafter. The room smelled a bit like mold but I slept fine after the bus ride.

Tuesday - Today was a lazy day. I got up around 10am and came downstairs to see what was going on. I had lunch and met a few nice people, from Denmark and England. I also had to switch rooms as they had another room with more beds open up. Finally made my way out the door around 4pm. My plan was to find out about a permit for Tibet - you have to have a Chinese visa plus a special foreigner's permit to visit. They make it hard. I would also like to take the new train there from Chengdu - the line goes all the way from Beijing and just opened in July. On my way towards the government travel center, I asked around in a few places, but didn't get any good answers. But I did find a convenience store and bought some fun stuff, namely face wash. It is hard to find a face wash here that does not contain a face whitening ingredient. Or claim to one anyway. And I don't really want to bleach my face. Finally made my way down to the office and found a couple from England in there, Brian and Maria, asking the same questions I had. Turns out the office was closed for the holiday week for things like permits to Tibet, and they were more costly there, rather than less, so we talked about some other options together. Maria is leaving Thursday for Enlgand, but Brian was hoping to go to Lhasa sooner than later. So we went to a hotel that I had asked for information and agreed to use them to get our train tickets and permits, for Saturday or Thursday as a fall back option. I had to go back to my hostel to get enough money to pay for the tickets, so we said good-bye, planning to meet again to discuss it another time.

At this point I walked the 30 minutes back tot he hostel, got the money and took a bus back to the hotel. Then another bus back to my hostel. At the hostel I ordered dinner and sat down to eat. Here I met Sandrine, from France, but living in California. We were then joined by Jessica and Rembo, another couple from Cali who are living in China for the next 10 months. Then two grad students from Illinois, John and Shankar, came in to add to the party. More Americans together than I have seen in a long time. Chatted until 11pm and then it was time for bed. Three of them were heading to see the pandas at the breeding facility nearby the next day and I decided to sign up for their tour as well. Got to my room, wrote in my journal, and then drifted off to sleep.

Wednesday - Woke up a little before 7am and got ready for the day. Came to find out it was raining and this worried me - how would the panda viewing go in the rain? Debated for about half an hour with Sandrine, and she decided to go back to bed and I decided to take my chances with the pandas. It was a good decision. We were driven there in a minivan by a particularly phlemy driver who kept hocking it up and spitting out the window. My minivan was full of native Spanish speakers, so I got to practice my language skills a bit on the way. When we arrived at the breeding facility, the rain had basically ended which was great. The first panda we saw was asleep, directly in front of a sign that said "Shhh! I'm sleeping". Perfect. Then we saw one happily eating bamboo, one after another. There were lots of pandas to see, including red pandas. Red pandas are smaller, more like a raccoon, with long tails and reddish coloration. They are also more arboreal. Fun to watch. The highlight though, was the nursery. There were six panda cubs in there, all born in August in seemed. Apparently they are all looked at in the morning, when they are put in individual incubators. They were all sleeping pretty much, but one was splayed out on its back with all four legs open. It was great! No photos were allowed of the cubs, but they were great to see. There was also a pandacam that looked in on other cubs with their moms. It was a lot of fun. I spent the day walking around with Jessica and Rembo, and it was a great time. And the rain help off the whole 2.5 hours.

Once back at the hostel, I called about my train tickets and permit to Lhasa. The guy was out but I spoke to his wife. She told me yes, they had tickets for Saturday and needed to get the permit now. Check back tomorrow. Her English was a little broken but I'm hoping it all works out. I had some lunch, where I ran into John and Shankar again. I used Shankar's laptop for a bit (they have wireless here) and then we headed off to XXX temple. First we had to find the bus and then it was about 30 minutes around town. I was able to use my student ID there, which is rare in China. We walked around the gardens first and then around the temples and buildings. We finished it off with a huge line of shops that await you as you leave. We ate meat on sticks, as well as animals on sticks made of toffee. Then we looked for dinner and got really spicy noodle soup and some dumplings. Really nice - and cheap. I paid about 50 cents. Then we caught the double decker bus back and got seats right at the front window, which made it more interesting. After an email check up I sat with Sandrine, who had moved into my room earlier in the day. She had spaghetti for dinner and we just sat there cha tting with Shanker for a while. She had traveled everywhere it seems, and has been to Nepal as well. She has done some trekking there and said if she can do it, so can I. Yay! Hopefully that is true. We went upstairs around 10:30pm where we met Jamie and Andrew, yet another American couple teacing in China for a year. Chatted with them for a while and then it was time for bed, as the three of them were all seeing the pandas the next day.

Thursday - Today I slept in until 8:30am or so and then spent the morning on the internet. It is free in this hostel but there are only two computers and they are usually busy. So I took the opportunity to get some work done. Called about my train tickets to Lhasa and it seems it has all worked out for Saturday and I can pick the tickets up tomorrow evening. Here's to hoping. I booked another two nights in the hostel and then sat down to watch Shrek on DVD, but thought I had left mypen at the computer. So I walked back and looked and it wasn't there, but the guy using the computer was Alan, the guy I had woken up in the middle of the night the first day I arrived. We sat down and chatted for a while, and eventually John and Shankar came back from their panda tour. We all had some food and then left for the Wenshu Temple. We spent a few hours there, including drinking really bitter tea at one of the teahouses there, which Chengdu is famous for. We even got bunches of free incense when we arrived, so we lit it and put them with all the other incense sticks, minus the Buddhist prayers that usually accompany this action. After the temple we walked down a pedestrian street where you could get lots of different kinds of snacks. I got some kind of sweet fried rice ball on a stick and the boys got sticks with meat or corn. We gto our photos taken by Asian tourists just for being Western.

Next stop was the People's Park, where we ran into a family who talked to us in English for a great deal of time. It was a gray cloudy rainy day and we walked around the park for a bit before getting lost onour way to catch thebus back. We met some Chinese high school girls who helped us get back to the right place while practicing their English skills on the boys, possibly looking for husbands?

Once at the hostel I put in a DVD - The Incredibles - to watch while we waited to go to dinner. Alan got some new friends together and we made it to a hot pot restaurant. Hot pot is famous in some regions in China, including here. I've heard it called a poor man's fondue - there is a pot of boiling liquid that you dump lots of things into to cook them and then eat them. The liquid in this case was partitioned so there were two choices - really spicy hot and a non spice fish broth, complete with whole floating fish. Then all the meat and veggies, most of which were unidentifiable, were on skewers and we just chose what we wanted and cooked them. John and I shared a little plate for our skewers and that made it more fun too. "Do you want meat or a mushroom?" It was like teamwork. The skewers were cheap - about 1 cent each, but they were also tiny and we had to eat tons to get full. In the end it still only cost me $1! After dinner I spurged on a Dove chocolate bar for dessert - this cost me more than the entire dinner at about $1.15. Came back and showered and then found myself playing poker with the boys. It was for chips and chips only, and I played ok, but it was still a sad sad sight. When the game ended I wrote in my journal and then got to sleep around 1 am - super late for me.

Friday - Someone checked out of my room around 5am this morning for an early flight. I didn't even hear her leave. What I did hear was the woman who came to clean up her bed and make it for the next person - at 6:30am! It was so wrong. But then someone did actually check in around 7am and come in, so I guess it was needed. Got some more spotty sleep and then came downstairs to make a phone call to Shankar and John. They had left me a message last night - they were now staying with a friend in town - and I needed to call back to see if we had plans for the day. We decided to see the opera tonight and maybe get together earlier, but play it by ear. I thought about going to Leshan for the day to see the biggest Buddha statue in the world, but it is especiialy crowded at this time of year with the holiday and it is rainy, so I decided not to go.

Instead Alan and I decided to spent the day walking around downtown. So after a quick meal at the hostel, and paying for the opera tickets, I got ready and we took off. We just took out time getting around and ended up eventually at the hotel where I would need to pick up my ticket to Lhasa. It wasn't in yet so we kept going and ended up at a crazy high tech mall area with every electronic piece of equipment you could even want or not want. I don't even know what most of it was. Alan got a headset with mic and we walked a long way back to the hotel to get my train ticket. This time it was there - what a relief. I left the other ticket there for Brian to pick up so there would be no confusion, and then we hopped on the bus back to the hostel. Here we jus sat around chatting and eating dinner until it was time to get ready for the opera.

Shankar and John showed up just about 7pm, but Shankar had a terrible headache and couldn't go. I put him to bed in my room and the rest of us left for the show. We got there a bit early and had some tea and moon cakes before we were escorted inside. The show was wonderful. It was nothing like an opera that you would picture. Instead, it was more of a variety show. There was dancing and singing and a bit of a play reinacting history. There were hand puppets and puppets on sticks. There was an acrobot who did strange thinigs with pots and a couple who were a comedy act. a lot of physical comedy, and a man playing a cool instrument. Overall, it was fantastic and I really enjoyed it. John left separately to meet his hosts and then meet us back at the hostel. When we came back, Shankar was feeling much better. We chatted for a bit and then John came and it was time for them to go.

Saturday - Today I got everything together and checked out of my room. I had breakfast with Alan and then it was time to say good bye as he was leaving earlier in the day than I was - he was heading out to a panda reserve. He has a bit of an obsession. 😊 Then I worked a bit on the internet while I waited for a call from John and Shankar. John called at 1pm and invited me out with them for the day. I told them I needed to be back around 4pm and they said ok. So I got on the bus and this took about 1 hour. Then we had lunch with their hosts and drove over to a beautiful classic street to check that out. Before we left they realized that their back window was shattered, so they told the security guards about it. I felt bad - it looked terrible. But we had a nice time and then I got back on the bus to the hostel. Got some food for my train journey and collected my belongings. Got on the bus to the train station and waited in the waiting room for about 30 minutes. This was a funny time - I was the only westerner and everyone was looking and pointing. Then I made a child cry by smiling and waving repeatedly. Then it was time to board the new train to Tibet...

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Comments

[Phil]

Train tickets from Chengdu to Lhasa
Can one get train tickets or reservations for the new train from Golmud or Chengdu to Lhasa online? If not, where can one get them in Chengdu? How much does the cheapest one-way ticket cost? Please reply to my email address: [e-mail] Thanks!