Trip to Chengdu!

Hey friends! Chengdu is awesome!

The boys came over Friday evening and we all got a taxi to the Guiyang train station. That place is crazy busy! I was a little worried about navigating the train station but it all went surprisingly smoothly! We found the ticket office, got our tickets with no problems and were able to find our boarding platform. Our train didn't leave until 8:11 so we had a couple hours to wait. We took a T train with hard sleepers. There were 6 beds per compartment, bunked 3 high. It was really nice because we pretty much just slept for the whole ride which was about 10 hours long. 

Just Lindsay posing in her train bed

Chris got the unfortunate top bunk... both times

We arrived in Chengdu around 7:30 in the morning and took the metro to our hostel. We had to walk about 20 min, but we found it! I loved our hostel!! The staff all spoke English which was definitely a plus! It was decorated really cute and hipster-y and they had a little cafe. Most of the people staying there were young, college-age travelers. A lot of backpackers. It was just such a cool and chill atmosphere! And I also thought it was pretty clean. Not bad for $11 a night! The boys got checked in but the people in mine and Lindsay's room hadn't checked out yet so they let us keep our stuff up by the front desk while we were out. 

The Loft Hostel

Front desk

Sweet art in the cafe

We were planning on going to an archaeological site museum so the boys decided they wanted to walk the 40 minutes there but me and Lindsay opted for the metro. We thought we got off at the right stop but unfortunately, we couldn't find the museum! My phone was dead so we couldn't get in contact with the boys so we decided to just do our own thing. We were going to set time aside for shopping on Monday, but we decided to do that instead of the museum. We took the metro to the city square and geez there was a lot of shopping! Chengdu also just seems so much cleaner than Guiyang and Beijing and so many people spoke English! There is a pretty big expat community there as well; I just think it is a more westernized part of China. There was a McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner. Seriously. Anyway, we walked a lot, shopped a lot, ate a lot and had a good time! Oh and we found a whole store just selling lucky cats... It was awesome!! 

Can you spy the giant panda bum?

Giant ice cream puff!

Yum yum!

I think the statue is bowing but it looks like he's leaning in for a kiss..

Tianfu square

Mao is everywhere..

We headed back towards the hostel around 4 or 5 to check-in and because it looked like there were some cool shopping streets nearby that we wanted to check out. First, we ate at the hostel's cafe because they had American food! I had a burger and Lindsay had a chicken sandwich. Then we walked around the coolest little alley's just full of vendors selling cool stuff and food. We ran into Chris and Evan and had to explain that we couldn't find the museum .. oops. Oh, and I ran into one of my students!! Small world right? She seemed pretty surprised to see me too, she got all shy when I tried to talk to her. We were pretty tired so Lindsay and I headed back to the hostel, showered and headed to bed! There were four beds per room and we met one of our roommates named Matilda. She is from Sweden and is traveling all over China giving tours in different cities as well as working on her thesis for her Masters in ecology and sociology by studying feng shui gardens. She is also fluent in Mandarin. Her last tour was an 18 day (I think) biking tour. Anyway, yeah she's so cool!

Nom Nom!

Caramel/sugar art!

It's awesome!

Our beds

Our room

The next day (Sunday) we got up early to go to the Panda Research Center. We actually booked this tour thing through the hostel that included a breakfast sandwich, transportation and entry into the Panda Center as well as transportation/entry to the Sichuan opera that evening. So we took a van to the Panda Research Center and spent about 3-4 hours there. It was awesome! Crowded... but awesome! The pandas were super cute and we got to see quite a few of them. They also had red pandas which look like a mix of panda, fox and lemur. They were really cute as well! 

These panda pics are for you Hannah Dalton! :)

Entrance

Just chowing down on some bamboo

The camera focused on me instead of the panda.. awkward... 

He's really just loving life right now

It's a feast!

Climbing trees

Baby pandas!!!!

Aaaand nap time.

Such an interesting looking animal!

Look at that tail!

Someone's coming to feed them

Cute face :3

After we got back to the hostel, we began walking towards a nearby park called People's Park and got lunch on the way. The park was pretty! There were a lot of people sitting around, drinking tea and getting there ears cleaned. I guess that is a thing here! You pay someone to clean out your ears! None of us wanted to try that though. One of the English teachers at our school also told us that eating rabbit head was a local delicacy in Chengdu. Gross. We saw people selling them all over and they looked so nasty! Supposedly the brain is the best part.. bleh. None of us tried that either... haha.

We also walked to a nearby temple and walked around there for a bit. It was waaay crowded but there was a lot more cool shopping to do. Then we made the mistake of sitting to rest in front of a little pond full of lilypads because apparently it made the perfect background for all the people who wanted to take photos with us. We decided we should start charging $$ for photos! ;) 

Cool masks, like the ones they use in the opera!

Giant vegetable and fruit market

The lilypad backdrop to many random photos..

After the temple we decided to find a place to try hot pot because we heard Chengdu has some pretty amazing hot pot. We found a nice place and the staff was sooo nice and patient but it seriously took like 30+ minutes just to order! One of the staff members knew a little English but he had this translate app on his phone so it was a whole lot of back and forth, translating and trying to figure out what food we were getting! It was worth it though because it ended up being really good! We got a pot of broth that included spicy and not spicy and to put inside we got beef, broccoli, and some other veggies. The broccoli was my favorite! You just put it in the boiling broth for a bit then take it out and it was just so yummy! The restaurant also gave us a free dessert which was so sweet! I think it was some sort of flan? Not sure, but it was good!

After dinner, we headed back to the hostel to get on the van for the opera show. The opera was great! None of us quite caught on to the story even though they had some of it translated in English. But it was still very entertaining! My favorite were these guys all dressed up in these traditional masks and they would like wave a fan in front of their face and their mask would change, just like that! It was pretty sweet.

Outside the opera house

The cool masked performers!

Monday! We got up and checked out of our room because we weren't going to be back by 1 for checkout. Luckily they let us leave our stuff my the front desk again so we didn't have to carry it around all day! The boys got up early to go hike a mountain that was a bit far away. Lindsay and I ate breakfast at the hostel cafe then headed out to find this darn archaeology museum! We asked the front desk the best way to get there and she suggested the bus. She told us what stop to get off on and said it'd be close by. Well, we took the bus, got off at the stop, and still couldn't find it! We didn't want to waste all day looking for it so we just got a taxi and they drove us like 2 minutes to the museum. Hallelujah! 

Mmm... bread with BUTTER. Eating breakfast and writing some postcards ;)

Jinsha Site Museum was actually really cool! We got in for half-price with out student IDs. It is built around a site where archaeologists have dug up artifacts from about 3,000 years ago during the late Shang Dynasty. I didn't take a ton of pics but we had a good time walking through it.

The boys had told us about a cool art museum not far from here that has free admission. I'm always up for an art museum so we took a taxi there next (we didn't want to risk getting lost again). It was awesome! I loved it!! I didn't take any pics here but take my word for it, it was super cool! At least to art lovers like me.. :)

After that, we headed back to the hostel to get our stuff and then out to meet Chris and Evan at the square. We grabbed some dinner at a place similar to KFC then grabbed some food for the train ride home. Then we waited for a water fountain show that we heard they do every night in the square after sunset. It ended up being kinda lame. And they were playing instrumental Christmas music for some reason? Silent Night, Dreaming of a White Christmas... it was strange. Then we got back on the metro and headed for the train station. This time we got a little bit confused trying to find where to get our tickets but then we got them with no problem. The train didn't leave until 9:40 pm and this time it was a K train which is slower and makes more stops. 20 hours this time. We slept all night and spent most of the rest of the time dozing. We got back to Guiyang around 5:30 pm. It took awhile to get a taxi but we did eventually and headed home!

You can see Chris and Evan playing with the toy airplane Evan got.. they kept accidently hitting people with it...

Lame fountain show..

 

Well, classes went pretty well today! They schedule is so confusing though.. We taught Wednesday classes again even though we taught those last Sunday. And then we teach tomorrow's classes (Thursday) like normal but then teach those same classes on Friday and then we have to teach Friday's classes on Saturday.. what. Oh well! Oh and today my last class of the day was cancelled because they did some assembly about the Beijing opera? I'm not really sure why.. but some of the students did a little performance and they had some guests that I assume are associated with the opera come and speak. Not really sure what that was all about but hey, it was one less class to teach!

Wow, that was a long post! But it was an awesome trip and it makes me want to travel to other provinces and see other cities! Hopefully we can fit in another small trip sometime!