To Chengdu

To ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />ChengDu

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Boarding the train to Chengdu presented no hassles. We had even worked out, in advance, who got what bunk. The bottom bunk is often the most desirable because it has enough headroom to sit up on. This is a great advantage over longer trips. However, there is a surcharge for the bottom bunk; and, because it is the least desirable, the top bunk is the least expensive. It is not uncommon for others to sit on the bottom bunk during the day.

It turned out that the train was very slow and spent quite a bit of the time on sidings. This resulted in a later tan expected arrival time in Chengdu. The total time one the train was about twenty hours.

It surprised us that in the berth next to us were another pair of westerners. They were both Americans. Steph and Deloris were both from Missouri. Sheph was teaching here in China and her grandmother, Deloris, saw this as an ideal opportunity to both spend time with her granddaughter and see China at the same time.

Although we were under the impression that they were staying at the same hostel as we were, it turned out that they were staying at Sams while we were staying at Sims. The representative that met us that the train station discovered this and spoke to a cab driver in order to make sure that they got to Sams without any problems. We were then taken, by cab, to Sims. As it turned out, Sim, the owner of Sims, was on the same train. So, we rode back with him.

Chengdu is definitely a warmer city; we are gradually working our way south. This is good because Sims is a place that is best in the comfortable months. The facility is interesting, to say the least, the bathrooms and showers were a bit of a walk from the room we were in. The place was quite large and while it was apparent that there were quite a few people there we never felt that it was crowded. The entire place had a relaxed feel that seemed out of place, in the middle of a large city, and out of time. It felt like the king of place that one of Joseph Conrad's characters would have stayed in. The entire time that we were there Michelle and I had no roommates so we were able to relax a bit in privacy. This hostel added to Chengdu being one of the best places on the trip.

The next morning we met with Steph and Deloris and went to the Giant Panda Breeding Center. This institute, as the name implies, focuses on the Giant Pandas. Not only were there Giant Pandas, there were also baby Pandas. There were also a number of raccoon looking Pandas that are called Red Pandas. This place is a must visit while in Chengdu.

That afternoon, after returning, we went for a walk. The purpose was both to find a China Construction Bank, which we had no trouble doing, and to find the foreign book store. Somewhere in our wandering we had also visited a large temple and garden that is attached to a monastery. The map we had was, to say the best, not to scale and it lacked a number of streets. So, I ended up asking for directions frequently. That is one good thing that you can say about China, there are a lot of officious looking people with, pretty much, nothing to do and they are generally very willing to help provide directions; of course, the directions are generally wrong.

We did, eventually, find the bookstore. However, it did not have any travel guides. On the way back we splurged and ate at McDonalds ("Mackers," in Australian) and returned by cab.

The return was fine except that the cab driver did not know where to take us and was not willing to admit it. He ended up dropping us near where we needed to go but was unsure about the final kilometer. We ended up in a very happening market section that was preparing for the New Year; think of a block party that extends for about six blocks in all directions. I, again, asked some cops for directions and they tried to help. We still ended up walking for about an hour just looking for our hostel. We found it because we remembered a particular sound stage that was near to the hostel. For all this activity, the hostel was remarkably quiet; I attribute it to the thick parameter walls on the facility.

The next day we, again met up with Steph and Deloris, and another couple, and went to the Giant Buddha. This is a huge, 71m, statue of a seated Buddha and the large grounds that surround it with the many Km's of gardens and walking trails. After we were finished we met with the others we had traveled to the site with and had lunch before our return.

On our return we had a hard decision to make. The decision was that we had to decide if we wanted to continue on to Tibet. Going against this general idea was that we had sent back our winter gear when we were in Xian. Michelle was also not sure if she was going to be meeting a student for a week. After a lot of discussion we decided that this was not the time for this trip. I may make that very trip next year with Zeneta. I was also contemplating a side trip to Vietnam and was still working on the details for that. I was also working against my expected meeting with Debra for a trip to Kaifeng.

The next day was another travel day. Most of the morning was just spent just wandering around and getting some snacks for the upcoming trip. We tried lunch but did not get what we wanted. It was funny, to me, at one of the places that we had gone for lunch while in Chengdu. The waitress came out of the back, saw us, and her expression turned to a form of "oh God, no." she turned and walked back into he kitchen hoping that we had not seen her. A few moments later the person in charge came out and took our order.

We then returned, collected our packs, and walked to the bus stop. The bus eventually got to the train station. However, due to the crown on the bus, we did not see that we were at the station and the bus went several more Kilometers before arriving at the next stop. At that point we ran to the stop on the other side of the road, and down the block, to catch the same number bus and go back to the station. By the time we got back to the station, the train we need was not only at the platform; but most people had already boarded.

The ride itself was rather uneventful. The terrain is the steep rock hills that one often sees in the part of California that I am from. One thing that I did notice was the vegetation was clearly changing. As I moved south it was easy to see the transformation to warm weather, broad leaf plants.