I figured I would actually keep this blog relatively up to date now that I’m actually all caught up! What an interesting weekend I had. Like I said before, I want to make the most of my time here, right? I’ve got 28 days left and I’m trying to squeeze in everything that time allows! So this past weekend we took a trip to Chengdu, a city in the Sichuan province which neighbors Chongqing. Desiree has a huuuuuge obsession with pandas and Chengdu is famous for them since there is a huge national park type thing just for pandas there. That’s where the idea to visit Chengdu started. Plus, who doesn’t love pandas? We were talking about it one day and Lotus told us her hometown is in that area and she is familiar with it so she offered to show us the way! God bless Lotus. On Saturday morning we all met up at 6:30 in the morning, took the subway 1.5 hours to a train station, a train for 2 hours to Chengdu, and then took another subway for about an hour to a youth hostel that Lotus found for us. We’ll go into more detail on that part later. Dr. Cheng was with us up until the second subway ride, at that point he went his own way to visit his family and see a giant Buddha statue somewhere in the area. But we all had tickets for the same train back to Chongqing on Sunday evening so we’d have to find him again eventually!
I’ve decided that I am fascinated with high speed bullet trains now. First off, the crew reminded me of the girls in Harry Potter from Beauxbaton’s Academy of Magic except Chinese. Hopefully somebody understands that reference…..it was awesome.
Second, it’s soooo efficient! Going 195 kilometers per hour straight through the mountains is a whole lot faster than any other form of transportation we had available. Not to mention the number of people it can transport. It was 200 Yuan for the tickets both ways. So I paid $33 total. Not a bad deal at all!
Third, the inside looked just like an airplane except you were given 5 times the leg room. SO SPACIOUS. Also, you could totally eat corn on the cob without getting weird looks. That's always a good thing.
Bullet train selfie. Dr. Cheng killin it in the back.
So we arrive in Chengdu, get off of the subway and walk around this cool shopping mall area. It kind of reminded me of a Michigan Avenue in Chicago type thing. I knowwwww we are standing in front of something that means something but I was running on like an hour of sleep from the night before so I was a little out of it by then. I don’t even know what to google to even try and find what it is. I know it is very relevant to all of your lives and you care oh so very very much about why this spot is important so I do apologize.
There are even giant fake pandas climbing up the sides of buildings. They reeeeeeeally like pandas here.
The Chinese version of the Liberty Tax advertisers. It is quite obvious that I was dysfunctional at this point in the day. We've seen tonsss of girls take pictures with peace signs like this. I just wanted to fit in I guess.
After walking around we got back on the subway to head to the youth hostel. When I found out that we were staying there, I might have been a liiiiiiittle apprehensive. I didn’t even tell my parents, I thought they would freak out and not let me go……if they could even do that from 7,632 miles away. Sorry mom and dad, I’m alive though!!!
We were in a room with 6 beds. Bunk bed style, as expected. I loved that. I took a top bunk obviously! The toilets were the usual holes in the ground but they had a place we could shower! It literally cost less than $10 to stay there for the night which was awesome, but looking back I would have absolutely been willing to pay for a hotel room for all 4 of us. It was all fine and dandy until a frightening dude from Australia named Saltan who was about 25 knocked on our door to tell us he was in our room for the night. Then he sat his stuff down on the bed below mine. Regrets on taking that top bunk after all. I can handle myself pretty well in most situations but I absolutely hated that I was sleeping above a total stranger in a place I’d never been before and would be completely lost in without some serious guidance. He was traveling all alone through China and didn’t speak a single word of Chinese. WHO DOES THAT?!?! Serial killers maybe? Okay, that was an exaggeration but I was still scared. Sleeping next to a stranger in a hostel in Chengdu is not the same thing as sleeping next to a stranger at summer camp, folks. Alright, so he didn’t stab me and I was definitely being a bit dramatic about the poor man, I'm sure he's a nice guy. So let’s move on.
After we checked into the hostel we went to explore a place called Zhaixiangzi Alley. It’s a famous little area that had a lot of shops, restaurants, and art galleries. I'm not sure why we bought cups shaped like a girl in a bikini and then took a picture with them, but we did. It was a really neat place to explore.
So in Chengdu they have this saying, pa er duo, which technically means, “soft ear” but they use it to describe husbands there. Like the husbands have soft ears because the wives are always twisting it in order to get him to do things. The way it was described to us made it seem like all of the wives in Chengdu rule everything basically. I thought it was pretty funny. It all goes back to how there are so many more men than women in China. If you manage to find a wife, you have to keep her happy I guess. So this is me with my husband and his ear is soft. I was still being dysfunctional.
After Zhaixiangzi Alley we caught the subway to meet Lotus’s cousin and her husband. They took us out to dinner and it was awesome! They were so cute. Their English wasn’t too advanced so we didn’t talk much but they were adorable! After dinner we went to Jinli Ancient Street, another touristy area that is a part of the old city of Chengdu. It had more shops, bars, antiques, and local snacks. You can always tell how tourist friendly a place is by how often English or other languages appear on signs and stuff. Chengdu is muuuuuch easier for international people to navigate than Chongqing. It was super nice to actually be able to find a bathroom on my own for once.
So we took pictures in front of this temple (At least I think it was a temple. Wow, I’m really slacking on the facts this week.) There was a normal picture…..
......and then a not so normal picture. Oh yeah sure lady, I’ll totally hold your kid for a second so you can take snap a few pics. That’s cool. I feel like little girl should have been crying since she was just shoved into the arms of a weird looking stranger, but she was just happy as a lark. Okay then.
These paper puppet things are famous here and people were putting on a show with them. You could buy them at several shops in the area and they were super detailed and impressive.
Lotus’s cousin’s husband had a car and drove us home after we finished up at Jinli. They were SO NICE. I swear, world’s cutest couple. Even if I couldn’t understand anything they said to each other. It was a great day, we saw so much. When we got back to the hostile we all had one of those things where it seemed like the events that happened in the morning were a week ago. That was poorly explained, but I hope it’s understandable. Basically it was just a long, enlightening, and exciting day and we were all exhausted. Good thing I was totally able to get a solid night’s sleep at the hostel (this is sarcasm).
The next morning was panda time!!!!! It was easy to get out of bed for that. We took the subway and then a bus and then another bus. In between buses we had to walk a little bit and we saw this panda dude on the sidewalk. Once Desiree and I took pictures with him, he whipped off his panda head, pulled out a piece of paper and kept pointing to it. He was very persistent with the pointing. It was all in Chinese but Lotus read it and told us he was deaf and wanted us to pay him for the pictures. A Chinese con artist. Nice. So we did what any normal person would do and ran away. I did feel a little guilty but not guilty enough to go back and give him money. I found the whole thing to be comical actually. If you saw the struggle, the pointing, the confusion, the fear, and then the sprinting, you would’ve been laughing too.
So we arrived at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding and were eager to see some pandas. Alright, the stupid solo pictures in front of things have to stop. It’s time for me to not be a tourist anymore.
SO MANY PANDAS!!!! Baby pandas, toddler pandas, red pandas, giant pandas. FABULOUS.
There was also this huge lake with thousands of koi fish in it. I’m not exaggerating when I say thousands either. I’ve never seen so many fish at once. And there were some pretty adventurous birds too. You were able to hold out seeds and they would come and eat them straight out of your hand. The lake itself was super pretty too. I liked this part of the Research Base.
After we saw the pandas it was time to go home. So we left and walked down the street to a little shop selling panda souvenirs that were way cheaper than buying them inside. I was carrying my backpack and a plastic bag that my wallet and a mug I had bought were in. We get there and I go to grab my wallet but my plastic bag was gone. My train ticket, credit cards, license, all my money, and my passport were in that bag. I start to panic and frantically search my backpack and everywhere it could possibly be. It wasn’t there. I was scared. Like, voice shaking, palms sweating, tears forming, sick to my stomach scared. If I didn’t have my passport I would be in some serious trouble. I had copies of it back in Chongqing but I couldn’t get onto the train without a passport anyways. I sat down on a bench inside the Research Base for a minute while we were waiting for Brandon so I had to of left it there, right? Lotus and I speed walk back and they let us in without question, I’m at a dead sprint up the stairs to the bench I sat on when I hear Lotus yell my name. She had bought a mug at the same place I did and so she had the same bag I did. I asked her if it was my bag in her hands when I was looking for my wallet at first but she said it was hers. Turns out, she actually put her bag inside her backpack already and I had asked her to hold mine but forgot. SHE WAS HOLDING MY BAG THE ENTIRE TIME. I’m such an idiot. BUT THANK THE LORD. I could’ve cried I was so happy. My excuse for being so stupid and forgetting that I gave her my bag is that I was tired. A terrible excuse, but it makes me feel a little better about being so forgetful.
So after that fun experience took a bus for forever and then the subway to get to the train station for our train that left to Chongqing at 5:17. We reunited with Dr. Cheng and exchanged stories and showed pictures from our weekends. We were looking through his pictures and all of the sudden a selfie of him with some ancient thing in the background popped up and we were dying. I could not stop laughing. It was even more hilarious when he said, “Oh yeah, that’s a selfie.” We’re never short on laughs. So after the 2 hour train ride we had to take the subway for another hour and a half. I’m grateful for public transportation and all but after this weekend, I don’t think I can get on a bus or subway for at least a week. There’s no way I’d survive if I actually live in a big city. I miss my car.
So, another weekend has come and gone. I really enjoyed the crazy adventure we had, it was definitely unforgettable, and I'm so glad we were able to spend the weekend hanging out with Lotus! Now I'm almost in the home stretch!
Peace.
So after that fun experience took a bus for forever and then the subway to get to the train station for our train that left to Chongqing at 5:17. We reunited with Dr. Cheng and exchanged stories and showed pictures from our weekends. We were looking through his pictures and all of the sudden a selfie of him with some ancient thing in the background popped up and we were dying. I could not stop laughing. It was even more hilarious when he said, “Oh yeah, that’s a selfie.” We’re never short on laughs. So after the 2 hour train ride we had to take the subway for another hour and a half. I’m grateful for public transportation and all but after this weekend, I don’t think I can get on a bus or subway for at least a week. There’s no way I’d survive if I actually live in a big city. I miss my car.
So, another weekend has come and gone. I really enjoyed the crazy adventure we had, it was definitely unforgettable, and I'm so glad we were able to spend the weekend hanging out with Lotus! Now I'm almost in the home stretch!
Peace.