Giant Budda

We have been out and about Chengdu for the last few days. Took the bus to Le Shan to see the giant Budda, it is 70 mtrs high and very old and looked like it needed some maintenance! Pretty awesome but any Chinese attraction
(And on a Saturday) has horrendous crowds. 2 hours of queues at one place, photo of some of  the queue. I was over it by then... We visited Pingle, an ancient village yesterday, quiet and arty. Lots of students painting pictures of old buildings and bridges. Photos of sculptures (of musicians) just for u Stephen & Simon, you would have loved it! Relaxing place. Tea houses and people playing mah jong . Country side on the way mainly agriculture with women in the fields wearing the traditional style bamboo hats.
Taxis are really cheap around Chengdu. After the first couple of days walking everywhere in the heat and getting lost, we figured taxis were the way. 25 minutes is only $5 nz and most trips less than $2. The maps are of course mostly in Chinese and the font is about a 6!! Trevor was struggling to read the small print and seriously doubts my map reading ability - I admit it is not my strength... So I dragged him into this shop that sold glasses, it was hilarious, we were surrounded immediately by 4 young guys in lovely crisp purple shirts, handed cups of water to drink and there was no way we were leaving without a purchase. So now Trevor is the proud owner of some Chinese reading glasses (slightly more upmarket than warehouse ones) and can peruse the maps to his hearts content. One photo of Trevor making dumplings at the hostel we stayed in and the other of a food place where you cooked your own on a small bbq. All u could eat and everything from whole fish, squid, prawns, all kinds of odd looking stuff. We kept the staff entertained with our choices and chop stick use, very busy in the evenings a 2-3 hour experience. Good fun. Every available park and local square is filled in the evenings with people dancing and doing tai chi. But all side by side so all the different music clashes. People are very relaxed. No aggro to be seen, we feel really safe, apart from crossing the street! Flying south to Lijiang tonight. Changed our plans about going west. Talked to some people who had just come from there and roads bad &  washed out and trouble between some minority groups. Not letting foreigners through. So glad we found out before taking the first 8 hr bus trip.

Eating, drinking and being hot

Lots more street eating in Xi'an, ( photo of Bell tower in the centre of the city) & enjoying all the fountains in the heat, one day was 39 degrees,  then managed to get a flight to Chengdu. Trains were all booked out due to student holidays unless we wanted standing only... But it was 16 hours so we flagged that. Flight was delayed, arrived at our hotel at 2.30 am!! Hung out at the people's park yesterday, drinking tea, you get a whole flask of water so you can make a lot of tea. Avoided getting our ears cleaned out!! Photo of Trevor saying no to one guy who is holding his ear cleaning instruments. Something this city is renowned for. I thought they were offering accupuncture to begin with... But Lots of Chinese people getting it done as well as neck & head massage. An interesting place to sit and watch the goings on.  It is a country of contrast. Both cities we have been in are very modern, some very upmarket expensive shops and everything you could possibly need you can find, (we found the pupu caterpillars that were found in Nepal, a whole shop selling them, small boxes for around $3000 nz ) There are lots of lights on all the big buildings and fountains everywhere, nice parks and gardens.  The young people are dressed really well the most amazing high heel shoes  on all the girls. Then the back streets with people sitting outside washing clothes, selling food, playing cards, drinking tea and bicycle rubbish collectors with brooms and shovels, fruit & vege vendors. They work all hours of the day & night. All grotty apartment living with their little business downstairs, mainly food, very basic. I think everyone eats out. Quite a few beggars. Xi'an had thousands of high rise apartment blocks and thousands more being built. 8 million people in Xi'an. We haven't seen a stand alone house, noone can buy land here. They just lease places for 70 years or so or rent.   So far the people have been pretty nice to us but courtesy and service don't appear to be part of the culture.  We have to keep our wits about us crossing the street. It is chaos at intersections. Safety in numbers seems to work cause you just have to walk slowly across amongst the traffic and hope nothing hits you... It is hard to describe it. Nothing actually stops, everything just weaves in & out of everything else, buses, cars, bikes, pedestrians all going different ways. We visited the pandas this morning, they are so cute!! You can't possibly come to Chengdu and miss that. The hotel we r staying in is called Mr Panda!

Finally made it to the big 50

Finally made it to the big 50, gosh it's been a long time coming!! We took the 7am bus to Hua Shan about 2 hours from Xi'an. Up at 5.45am, didn't want to miss a moment of my big day...but with 2.5 hrs difference from Kathmandu it still felt like the middle of the night. Found our hotel and dropped off our bags, wandered up the street and were practically ushered into an eating place, after a bit of miming and laughing with this Chinese lady we received a  pot of tea and then 2 big bowls of a noodle soup with vege and egg, very good too.  To get up the sacred mountain you need a park entry then a bus ticket which takes you a few km up to the base. We decided to get the gondola from there, so queued for about 40 minutes. Once at the top there r five peaks that u can climb to so we did them all, up and down stairs for 5+ hours. Busy at times but the further we walked the less people. Really enjoyed it, some very steep ascents as you can see from the photos. Impressive mountain. Not exactly tranquil with 1000's of Chinese there as well but memorable. Queued to come down the gondola and finally got out to dinner at 8.30, the beer tasted great... Today we walked up the soldiers route, the most difficult, instead of taking the gondola. Just over two hours of steps, had a rest and lunch and then came down a different route, 6 km to the town,  steps & more steps. My legs can feel it.  Amazing amount of work in all the trails and access routes. Chains on all the steep bits. People buy padlocks to attach to the chains (we r not sure why, noone has explained that yet. ) There are hundreds of thousands of them all over the mountain. The statue of a resting man at the bottom of the road is huge (photo) and I think symbolises how everyone feels when they get down, tired! Over 35 degrees today, and still 25 at 10 pm. Not a swimming pool to be seen. Now back in Xi'an and trying to figure out how to get to the next place. We may be here a while... Thanks so much for all the birthday wishes and emails, they made my day. You are receiving this blog via South Korea, Enjoy!