Kanding & Chengdu - Sep 17, 2004 - Chengdu, Sichuan, China

As per usual to catch the buses in this area, we were up at 5.30am for another hard days graft at the office ... ahem ;-) The trip to work took us thru scenery of rolling green hills with dramatic grey cliff faces with snow-capped peaks and bright blue sky, that I can only describe as being the same colour as that at the start of 'The Simpsons'. It was still damned cold up there and whenever we got the bus to stop for photo's or calls of nature the brakes were steaming from the use they get at these 4000m altitude roads winding the way thru the mountains.

Not sure if I mentioned this before but these buses are all Chinese made (as are virtually all of the cars, motorbikes, trucks etc) and aren't really up to the job of these demanding roads (and drivers who think they should understeer into sheer drop corners as a way of slowing the bus! ... or oversteer when the road is wet or muddy so as not to lose precious seconds off their record times!). The buses are constantly overheating and water from the radiator just flows out the bottom of the bus all the time from the first and second gear roads taken at the highest possible speed. Every so often there are people who live by the side of the roads in shacks and they have setup a water pipe from the nearest mountain stream and the buses stop regularly to have the brakes cooled by these water pipes ... and have the radiator re-filled. Inside the bus, the radiator has an additional storage tank right behind the driver and the pipe is shoved thru the window and into the tank ... or in the case of when my bag was left on top of the tank, all over my bag which soaked the whole bleedin thing ... grrrrrrrrrrr ... luckily the plastic bag inside my daysack prevented my CD/ camera and food from being a soggy mess ... all a learning experience so guess where I never put my bag now! ;-) The Dong Feng (manufacturer) trucks along these roads also use these facilities to cool em down as buses and trucks swerve at the last second to miss each other along these winding roads as the gumball rally continues daily. All along the way to Kanding we got closer to the huge 7600m Gongga Shan and get some great pics (note: Everest is 8848m).

Our evening meal was fun as we now have some favourite Chinese dishes and after entering a small food place and trying to communicate using the standard form of attempting to speak the words, acting like a loon and trying to demonstrate what you mean is an aubergine (eggplant for everyone else in the world) .. which gets some strange looks I can tell ya! .... the people said they didn't have anything we asked for! As we'd spent so long getting it across what we wanted, it was easier to tell them to go and buy it than try somewhere else ... so they did!! How's that for service, they just go and get what you want and cook it how you want ... all for less than a quid each including beer :-)

Next morning 4 of us (Richard, Carol, Heather & moi) were served brekky by the Chinese version of the '2 Fat Ladies' from the BBC cooking programme ... smiley, friendly and even understood my attempts at Chinese ensured that they got our business the following day also ... they also liked the fact that when the fruit guy outside was trying to rip us off for fruit we told him to shove it .. so he dropped the price while the 2 Fat Ladies stood at the door of their place with big grins giving us the thumbs up.

Myself, Richard and Heather headed into the hills overlooking Kunming for the day ... Carol used some excuse about a bad foot so she could go shopping ;-) Anyway, with Heather leading the way as we had no map and of course myself and Richard were no match for a strong minded woman, so we just plodded along behind doing as we were told. We went thru bushes, climbed fences and eventually found the track ... just as Heather had planned. We almost got to the top before the clag came down and it started raining ... at this point I adopted an old tactic myself and Chaz used many years ago in the Lakes District and took the steepest most dangerous route to get down ... ie, the route the water takes but after 10 mins, there was a mutiny and Richard and Heather decided back to the top and back the way we came would be safer ... no sense of adventure these Yorkshiremen or Ozzies.

Back at the guest house that night, Daniella and Yoav whom we met in Daocheng and Litang caught up with us ... so we decided to finish off the spectacularly orange moonshine that Johav had been given by a Chinese guy on a train. Now this was a special brew if there ever was one ... if for no other reason that it was made from celery of all things and tasted like ... errrr, celery and petrol mixed together. To be honest it was drinkable (what isn't?) and myself and Yoav made our way thru it, only being interrupted by an annoying Ozzie bloke who had 'interesting' views on many subjects ... so we offered him some, he drank, went outside gagged ... then went to bed ... shame ;-)

Another early start as we headed for Chengdu (after visiting the 2 Fat Ladies) ... and to our amazement the bus we had paid the extra 70p for was ther best bus I've ever been on in my life!! Now this might not mean much to many people but after tyres worn to canvas, blow-outs, bursting radiators, overcrowding, smoking, spitting, crazy-horse drivers and some of the most undescribable smells ever ..... we were pleased with our luxury coach! It was clean, rubber on all tyres, flat screen TV, seats that even slid sideways to give you more room, reclining mechanism that worked when you wanted it to and not just cos you leaned on it, legroom so even I could strecth my legs out ... and a toilet!!!! The roads were still hairy, but we were in delirium about the coach so who cares.

Arriving in Chengdu after weeks out in small towns and villages with the Tibetan people I could sense myself not wanting to be there as the streets were 6 lanes wide filled with every type of vehicle, shops were everywhere and it seemed a mad place ... but what the heck it was civilisation after the past 3 weeks in the mountains. Things were made better tho when we got to the hostel to find a nice clean place with hot water and our Danish friends Carsten and Barry. They had even processed the pictures of the Litang festival where Carsten had been doing his David Bailey impersonation and took about 8 roles of film in 2 days! But the pictures are fantastic and he gave a copy of the best ones to us ... they're like postcard pics of the people and the day ... maybe I can get em scanned in somewhere?

It was Saturday night and after a few beers for 14p each, myself Barry and Carsten headed for a club they'd been to previously ... Richard wanted to come but then Carol told him he didn't and he agreed ;-)

Once in there there were 3 rooms ... one of which was a karaoke room where drunken Chinese got up to display their talents ... but we just passed thru here surprisngly into the clubbing room. It was here that we realised that instead of paying 14p as were were outside, it was about 1.30GBP!!! This was a great shock ... until we realised there was much easier ways to access alcohol as the Chinese seem to buy beer the same way they order food at a restaurant and buy loads, unsure if they will drink the lot. What's even better is that they leave the tops on the beer ... so we sat with 2 girls that had about 15 bottles of beers and straight away they offered us some ... and proceeded to open them using their teeth then down em in one at the call of Gangbei ... classy chicks, but with free beer we unsurprisngly stayed a while.

To summarise the night, the free beer flowed all night and as the club was closing people were even bringing us their undrank beers ... we obviously looked like charity cases. Finally, a group of Chinese got us into a drinking game which we had no idea what the rules were but we got drunker until they took us to another club where things are very blurry but I vaguely remember displaying the dancing prowess of Travolta until about 6am ... then as we left we realised we had no idea where we were so decided food would be a good idea ... thing is, most things here are spicy and Barry ain't a spicy eating dude, so it was with great hilarity I watched his face turn purple as he ran round various shops trying to buy a cold drink ... and cursing me in the process as I sat there tucking in looking bemused.

After a lie in next day I was offski to the Temple with the others where there is a Buddhist restaurant ... oh joy, more veggie food. 3 weeks of veggie food and I'm now quite an expert on the various Chinese dishes available and the varieties of tofu ... I have to admit to even liking it all ... gawd, what's happening to me!

I decided I'd extend my visa here so set off for the local PSB where I was thrust a form to complete ... which I did and returned to the counter ... but not being in a fit state I'd forgotten to bring a photo ... so back out to the nearest photo shop and 20Y later I had 4 photo's of a very rough looking fella who hadn't shaved for 7 weeks and hungover ... back to the PSB and sheepishly handed over the photo as the woman stared at it, then at me ... I then had to prove I had the funds to stay in China for another month so I showed her my credit card ... which she sent me to photocopy then I went back ... and she asked me where I was staying so I gave her the mini map and address of the hostel, but that also needed photcopying as it had to go in their files and no small bits of paper allowed ... so off I went, photocopied it and went back again ... she checked the form and sent me away to complete the 3 small boxes I'd missed (it is in Chinese remember) ... finally, an hour later I was there with all my bits of paper present and correct .... when she told me I couldn't extend my visa yet as it was too soon before the expiry date!!! I smiled politely and wandered off.

I had a map of Chengdu from the hostel and my watch with a compass so I set off to explore the place. Problem is, not one name on the bluddy map corresponded to the street names ... and I also worked out that the map had been printed with the aim of making it look aesthetically pleasing and not really to display which direction the roads went in ... so 3.5 hours later I made it back to the hostel, knackered, beer sweating out of me and no further forward as I didn't find owt to interest me. Luckily for me I had opted out of the 'face-changing' opera with the others so chilled, drank beer (just cos its cheaper than water, not cos I wanted one) and did the traveller thing of swapping tales with others.

Next day another early one to get to the Panda's as they wake up and are being fed. As we were the first there (before the place even opened, my dad would have been proud) we saw the adult pandas sleeping at first then waking up and getting stuck into a hearty breakfast of bamboo ... not quite as much as Carol thought (20 tonnes per panda per day just seemed a bit much) but they made a good start on their 20 kilo's per day. All the while posing for the cameras ... very amusing as people were clicking away, you could almost hear someone saying "work it baby yeah, mmm good, just one more" as they gave profile shots and changed position ... albeit very slowly.

The baby panda's about a year old were just daft, falling into rings of tyres upside down, sitting on each other and being very childlike. There was an option to hold one and have your piccie taken with one of the babies .. but at about 25 quid it wasn't in my budget ... unlike the red panda's which were like big fluffy racoons and were only 3 quid for the same experience of holding one and feeding it ... which I did, and I don't care what anyone says cos it was cool and Richard got a couple of great pics of me ... ahhhhh.

By now, Carsten and Barry had left for Tibet (even though Barry being from the Danish navy coastguard as a diver was meant to be back at work a week ago, he spun them some story about the Maoists in Nepal holding him up! ... and they believed him!!), Carol and Richard had changed plans 6 times per day about where they were off to (but after 15 years of marriage and travelling together I'm sure they got it sussed in the end), so myself and Heather booked our tickets for Songpan, back into the hills and small Tibetan town and prepared for another 5.30am start for the bus the next day.