I'm Walkin', Walkin'
Chengdu, Sichuan, China
May 25, 2009
It was 5:45 when the alarm went off. Man that comes early when you go to bed after midnight!
I had the last of my cereal from Phenom Penh with some soy milk and some fruit for breakfast.
At 6:30 we were ready for the cab. The hotel had someone meet us and will take us to the airport 45 minutes away for 100 yuan.
Bill bought one of the flat breads for breakfast. I was filled up, so I just had one bite. It was not as good as our regular spot, it did not have egg on it.
We made good time to the airport and we only had to wait for a couple of people to check in ahead of us. We breezed through security and sat down in the waiting room. I am reading another Patricia Cornwell and Bill is still working on the same book since Chaing Mai - about Churchill.
Bill told me that it was time to board and we followed the crowd. When I showed the tickets to the agent he said, "No!" and then, "Kunming". Ok, wrong plane, we want to go to Chengdu! That Bill!
We were called to board our flight 10 minutes later and we got on the right plane (UE Air, not Asia Eastern)!
Many people were trying to take photos of their friends/family on the tarmac by the plane and were getting shoed away. What a gong show! Have these people never flown before??
The flight was good. They served bottles of water, but no nice towelettes or food.
We landed and headed for the baggage claim area which was the furthest one away. We were jostled and manhandled by people who were frantically trying to get luggage or trying to leave the airport. Ugh! We got to our baggage area before most and were able to wait out of the way while some people ran to the baggage trolley! LOL!
At the tourist information spot the lady did not have an English map, but was able to show us where our hotel was (city center area) and where the tour agency is.
We waited in the cab line and again, the driver did not understand English. A lady who was waiting for a cab ahead of us came back and explained to the driver where we wanted to go as did one of the men who worked at the airport. That was very nice of them to help us!
The cab driver miraculously took us directly to our hotel. We checked in and the room is really nice. It has carpet (have not seen that since North America), a hair dryer, a glass shower (the door doubles for the shower and the bathroom, good idea), a love seat and coffee table, CNN, HBO and ESPN (we don't have to watch CCTV for 3 days!), face, hand and bath towels, a floor mat, and a safe. The only thing we are missing is a fridge.
I had a nap while Bill watched Copperhead (what a bad western "horror"). At 2:00 we went for a walk. After some discussion we stopped at the Five Star General for lunch. I had a peanut smoothie that would have been good with peanut butter, not as good with peanuts. Bill had Snow Beers and a steak. The steak came on a sizzling cow with corn on the cob, broccoli, carrots, fried egg and macaroni with hot sauce. How odd! The steak was OK. It also came with warm, sweet soup, a bun that was sticky and sweet on the bottom and a salad drenched with something that looked like thousand island dressing. I had some pork ribs that arrived much after Bill was done his meal (I helped him because I thought my order was not going to ever come). The ribs were good, but were incredibly fatty. I ate around the fat and nibbled on my side dish which was some cinnamon and spicy corn bran like things. Weird!
We had to flag down a taxi, one had been scooped by another couple. Where are the hundreds of taxi, tuk tuk and cyclo drivers? We actually had to work at getting a cab. AND - we were taking directly to where we were going. How weird. The driver was uber aggressive though. I think they are trained in New York. It did cost us less than $3 and would have been a really long walk.
Our driver pointed to where the tour office should be. We walked into the building and Bill chose the 3rd floor. We got off and determined that was not right. We were standing around looking dumb and a lady asked where we were going. We showed her our Chinese instructions and motioned for us to follow her. She took us to the fourth floor and we went all the way to the opposite side of the building. It would have taken us forever to find it on our own! We were saved again!
We finally met Katherine. She and Bill have been emailing since February. She was surprised and excited to see us (or just Bill?). She was not expecting us until tomorrow, but had a gift for us - something (we are not sure what yet) for altitude sickness. We gave her a Canadian pin, she was thrilled. We paid her for our Lhasa tour and she gave us our permit. We are good to go now!!
We then decided to try and find a temple to go to and started to walk, and walk, and walk. We have not been impressed by Chengdu so far. We walked along a canal and it smelled so polluted, reminded me of Phnom Penh! Bill was commenting on all of the workers too. There are storefronts that are workshops. They are welding on the street without proper safety equipment and others are using machines that are on the floor. It is unsafe and counterproductive in a lot of cases. Maybe he should be getting a job here!
Two hours later we had not found the temple. We overshot it a bit because I was heading to the wrong site and because our maps are crap. We had to back track a bit and ended up in a park where we though the temple may be. Bill saw a sign for a tour office in the park, but we could not even find that! We left the park and looked up, there was the temple, finally! It was now 5:30 and it closes at 6:00. We can not dilly dally.
It is a Taoist temple, Qing Yang Palace, and I do not remember anything about Taoism from my Religious Studies days... I guess that was a couple of years ago now! It is aka Green Ram Temple. It is said to be the best Taoist temple in the Sichuan province. This is the Holy Land where Laozi once preached the Way.
The complex was quite large and we popped in and out of many temples. Qing Yang is also known as the place of the Two Immortals - Erxian Lu Dongbin (one of the Eight Immortals and the patron saint of barbers) and his pupil Han Xiangzy (became immortal when he fell onto a supernatural peach tree, patron saint of musicians) who decended here. It has been a place of worship since the Zhou Dynasty (1045 - 256 BC).
Men and women at the temple have their hair in a bun on the top of their heads. Not like our shaved monks that we have seen at Buddhist temples.
We tried to hail a cab after our walk around the temple. Along the way we stopped at a bulk store and bought some pistachios and almonds (they have an odd seasoning on them). We walked for a long time before we were able to find an empty cab.
I had some of our fruit when we got back to our room. We watched another boring movie in our room, Intersections. There are millions of movies to choose from. I am not sure why HBO Asia has chosen the absolute worst ones??
At 9:00 we headed to get something to eat. We stopped at Starbucks. Green tea latte was on the list, I asked for a Chai latte, but she did not know what I meant. I ordered a black tea latte instead. It was a misto with an English breakfast tea bag... It was good, but not quite what I was expecting. Why is everything so familiar, yet so different?? I also bought a croissant (not bad, but not great) and a Chengdu and a China mug.
Bill wanted fries, so we went to McDonald's. He thinks it was the first time he has had fries from McDonald's this year. I don't think I have had McDonald's fries since we went camping in Alberta with Danny (like 5 years ago). Bill had a coke with his fries.
We walked back to the hotel and used the internet for an hour.
We watched two Soprano's episodes on HBO and then went to sleep around midnight.