Oh, you know, just hung out with 15 of my closest panda buddies! Yup, that's right, today we headed out to one of the panda reserves in Chengdu to experience one of the compulsory activities in this province. I can safely say that it was probably the highlight of the trip to date! They are so cute I want to be a panda keeper when I grow up. I wish we could put up some shots, but they're so cute I don't think any of you could handle it.
So, Chengdu. Damn it's hot. I mean, it's really unbelievably hot. And humid. There is a guy on the phone near me talking to a friend and he's going on about the heat. It's like this all consuming heaviness, making it near impossible to want to do anything! Our small outings have been planned around various buildings we can go to that have air conditioning. In my mind, Chengdu was going to be this magical paradise, full of great food, greenery, cool streets...basically a chinese utopia. Not all is what we had hoped for though, which seems to be a continuing theme in this country. We were joking the other day that if you got too negative you could really view this country as an unfortunate series of disappointments! It holds so much promise yet delivers on so little!
Not all is lost though. Chengdu just remains another city along our journey. It's as smoggy as the best of them, just as chaotic, but it does have a laid back feel to it that we had read about and been told about. The pollution in this country is just so disappointing, it could be so beautiful but it's as though it's doing it's damned best to destroy itself. You really can't appreciate places when they are covered in a layer of pollution, and the haze is so bad you can't make out the buildings at the end of the road. Living here has been compared to the equivalent of smoking a packet of cigarettes a day, and I can see why!
We got talking to a French couple today who live in Harbin, which is waaaay up north. We are so interested in seeing Harbin but it's funny when you speak to people who live here, they just confirm everything you experience. From what we can now gather, Harbin is just the same as the others! Possibly with even less to draw you to it! That doesn't mean we wont still see it, but as we travel along, we are certainly arriving in each destination with more and more realism and less optimism!
The hostel we are staying in is fantastic, barring a slightly out of the way location (they moved recently, we didn't know!) The initial room we were given was just uninhabitable, so we asked to move, which i've never done, but they happily let us switch rooms after viewing a couple of options. Things have been much more comfortable since, we have a cosy room overlooking the garden, rather than this dirty, run down room overlooking a 6 lane road! But seriously, the hostel is great. They have fantastic service, were able to assist us with our next train tickets and the restaurant/bar area is brilliant for a hostel. So much room and seating, there are little nooks everywhere, both inside and out. We've made quite a bit of use of the food served here, mostly as Marcus has been a bit under the weather the last day or two.
Saturday we hit the streets in our normal style. The weather was so hot, yet before we knew it we had somehow been out for 3 hours...hence our exhaustion! The breaking of our umbrella signalled the end of our exploring so it was back to the hostel. Within a couple of hours Marcus started feeling really unwell, so a night in was decided. I ended up going to the bar for a little while to eat and read a magazine to fill in some time. We think Marcus might have had a bit of heat exhaustion as he was a bit out of it and appeared dehydrated. Whilst he was feeling better come Sunday it was decided he should have a quiet day otherwise he would end up in the same state if not worse. I'm not kidding when I say it is HOT. We realised that on Saturday we had probably under a litre of water each all day, which I think probably contributed the most to why Marcus felt so unwell.
So the prospect of hanging around the hostel all day on Sunday didn't overly appeal to me. I figured Marcus was ok, so I would head out for a bit to a market. All seemed to be going well, me out and about in a new city, told the taxi driver where I wanted to go, amazingly he appeared to understand my Chinese! Wonders never cease. Until of course we got to the destination, and on looking out the window I realised I had no idea where I was, what street I was on, nothing. (note to my mother - nothing to worry about, I was in the middle of the city!) Chengdu is renowned for its poor street naming and numbering, when you couple that with my absolute inability to follow directions or know where I am at any given point, it's a recipe for disastor! Streets change names constantly, so it becomes easier to try and trace your way via landmarks. I was in search of a market that supposedly sold seafood, animals, plants, birds etc. I wanted to see something other than the same old "antiques" and souveniers. Well turns out I was actually at the right spot (go me and my poor Chinese abilities!) but of course, as my luck with markets go, it was just the same old crap you can see anywhere! Funnily though, on one of the streets I walked, there was shop after shop selling turtles in tanks. As I walked I spotted one of the shop keepers sitting on a low stool with her feet dangling in one of the tanks, I assume to cool them off! Made me laugh.
By Sunday night Marcus was on the mend so we headed out for some authentic Sichuan food. The province of Sichuan is known for its spicy food, mostly two dishes - hotpot and mapo dofu. We really want to eat hotpot whilst we are here, but the weather isn't really conducive at the moment! So we headed out to one of the "touristy" restaurants that we have read about to try their famous Mapo dofu dish. Touristy my foot! The restaurant we went to was as local as any that we eat at in Wuxi, making us the centre of attention..but hey, that's nothing we aren't used to! We did get the dish though, which is basically tofu in chilli oil with spring onions and minced pork/chilli/ginger type paste on top. My god it was good! Pretty damned hot but delicious. So delicious in fact that when the young waiter served us he said with a cheeky tone "It is so delicious!" Which made us laugh out loud as it reminded us of our students - they all LOVE saying the word "delicious". (Seemingly my kids also enjoy saying the word "naked" and will try and work it into any class.)
Up next on our food hit list is....drum roll....Mexican! It's been a long time since we have had Mexican food (well, really any nationalities food other than Chinese is a rare event) and we are both uber excited. There is a tex mex restaurant somewhere within the city and we are off soon to find it! It's going to be margaritas and fajitas all round!
Tomorrow we are going to head out to Le Shan, which is an area about 2 hours bus ride from here. There is the world's largest buddha, Da Fo, which was carved into a cliff face. Yet again I am expecting tranquility and a clear view...but in reality I know there will be a million people there and we'll be lucky if we even catch a glimpse! It's supposed to be pretty spectacular though, he stands over 70 metres tall, and from what I hear you could picnic on his big toe ;-) Can't beat that.
I hear tequila calling!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment