Life in Cambodia

Lijiang to Chengdu (Sichuan Province)

So getting out of Lijiang was logistically easy, but painfully sickening for a lot of people on the bus ride. It was something like a 7 hour ride over extremely winding mountain roads and about 5 or 6 folks vomited up their breakfasts and many others were felled with ashen faces. I, luckily, took a bit of motion sickness medicine, so I got through; meanwhile, Maggie is reading away, looking out the window, oblivious to any mere sickness. We ran into a few accidents along the way, both of them forcing a delay. The second accident was a four car pile up than caused us nearly a two hour delay. Eventually, we made it to a sorry little town called Panzhihua where we hoped on a night train to Chengdu. We rode in a hard sleeper, which is basically a train car lined with triple bunk beds. We boarded the train halfway through its route (at midnight), so we didn't get the pick of the litter in terms of bedding, but we went right to sleep and after an uneventful 6 hours awake in the morning, we rolled into Chengdu around noon. So far, in our Sichuan experience, we've checked off two of the "must-dos". First, we ate a "Hot-Pot" which is basically a huge boiling vat of oil that you cook kebabs in. Meat, fish, veggie kebabs, basically anything you want. Each table has its individual burners and the waiters come by and set the vat in the middle; you go pick out all your kebabs and then go to town. The oil vat is a deep, dark red and filled with spicy chilis, a food additive that Sichuan is famous for. It wasn't the healthiest meal around for sure. After your kebab is fried in the chili-oil, you pull it out and soak it in peanut oil to cool off and then - chomp away. Afterward, Maggie and I both felt a bit sluggish after ingesting so much oil and in the end, weren't terribly impressed with the hot-pot, but you can't say we didn't try. The second must-do is to go see the Panda Bears at the research and breeding center north of town. We kinda got trapped in a little tour, which we weren't planning for, but the important part is that we got to see the bears. The research center is actually really well done. The bears seem to have huge tracts of land to cruise about on, and while I am sure its a bit more liberating living in the wild, their life didn't look too bad. Apparently, about 50 percent of a panda bears day is spent sleeping and when awake they are usually eating, which sounded eerily similar to my four years in college, though unfortunately no one brought me my food, unless of course you count the pizza man. Anyway, we wandered around the center and saw probably 20 bears, many sleeping, but quite a few were up and about. Despite the signs to speak quietly and not make noise, more than a handful of tourists were yelling at the pandas and waving things, just to get the panda to look their way for that perfect photo shot. We even got to go into the Panda nursery and saw a wee little fella, still pink and tiny, squirming away. We found ourselves in the Panda Museum, which was more interesting than you might think. I was most interested in the War Panda painting. Apparently, if the painting is to be believed, these cute cuddly bears were once trained as war machines. The picture beside it showed pandas fleeing a horde of woolly mammoths, which seemed a bit of a juxtaposition, but who knows. The rest of the day was spent creeping about town and hanging out in a Taoist temple, though truthfully I am a bit templed-out if you ask me (which you didn't). I also want to mention that I was impressed with the fact that nearly every motorcycle in Chengdu (and there are alot of them!) are electric/battery and not gasoline. Its nice that you can see a who gang of motos glide by and you can't even hear them (though it makes crossing the road a bit dangerous because you can't hear them sneaking up on you!) Maybe the Chinese government is trying to clean up their image a bit; especially since supposedly 7 out of the 10 most polluted cities in the world is in China (unverified fact!)

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 7:31 PM