HSS International
hey hey everyone
long time no write i am afraid, i swear i have a good excuse this time, i was on the verge of writing an email when we made the decision to pop up to Chengdu (capital of Sichuan) for a week or so for a holiday and to try and organise a trip to Tibet (Chengdu is the "gateway" to Tibet). But on the morning we were to leave we found out (through a long story to do with changing chrissie's visa) that we could head off for a month solid instead of making multiple trips. A few hours of frantic packing and an afternoon of me administering and marking an exam (with help from the missus) we rocked up at the train station to head off on our grand adventure.
It was an overnight train trip to Chengdu so the sights were limited but what you could see was pretty amazing as we had to pass through a mountain range to get there. We arrived in the mid afternoon to what was the shittiest weather i have been in for a while. Me being used to Kunming where it is usually between 20-28 and no humidity, it was deadset over 35 degrees and humid as buggery. We proceeded to then find the bus station and i had my first encounter with the old sichuan accent (thank god he pointed aswell), i dont claim to be the worlds best speaker of the chinese but blimey i was in a world of hurt trying to understand what people were saying. We thought we had struck a buit of luck when the bus we had to catch to the hotel was airconditioned (double the price at 2 RMB (bout 30 cents) but well worth it) only to see the bus struggle to do a kilometer then break down and kick everyone off.
enter struggle street chinese part 2. Ever tried to hire a pedicab from a dude speaking sichuan hua to a street you dont know the name of in blistering heat with not much sleep backing you up? Lucky the place we were going to had a massive statue of Mao Zedong near it so after a while i just kept saying "Mao Zedong, hen da" (hen da = very big) and gesturing like a lunatic (much props to the C for not losing faith that i could get us there and that i hadnt cracked it, yet). we jumped in feeling sorry for the poor bugger that he had to carry about 180 kegs worth of foreigner and bag a fair way down the city. Bout 20 mins later he dropped us near a construction site we hoped had Mao inside getting a facelift and then whipped out the little lonely planet map to trudge our way to our new base of operations for a week and a half. Unfortunately when we got there half an hour later a little frazzled and tired our "base of operations" was full. Sigh. But not to dispair, his si
ster also had a youth hostel down the road, hello another pedicab. At this stage we would have settled for anyhting but were lucky enough to get an awesome room, AND clean public amenities, praise the lord!!!
hearing that there was a rooftop cafe with "cold beer" resulted in us dropping the bags, grabbing some cards and the lonely planet and heading upstairs. I have said it before, and ill say it again, when you are dehydrated nothing beats a cold beer, the woman who ran the cafe "Shi" even knew enough about foreigners to chuck them in the freezer for an hour or so before they were drunk, god i love that woman (no fear to the missus tho as Shi already had a husband and a few kids, dont ask me how that works with the "one child" policy, coulda been the relos kids)
The Great Train Tickets Saga
From the wonderful and ever resourceful Holly of Hollies Hostel (no i am not being sarcastic, aside from the tickets she was great) we learned that if you want to catch the train to Lhasa you give her a deposit photocopies yadda yadda and ten days later you have the tickets. we thought that was a good plan as it allowed us to explore around chengdu for over a week as we awaited tickets. To save giving chronological updates as we came back form each prospective trip, what eventually conspired was that because the railway was so recently opened there was a massive demand and all the agents had to go into a lottery to see who got the tickets, we were offered two tickets in two different cabins, in two different carriages (how romantic) but had to turn them down. But at least we know for next time and will hopefully be heading up there with Mum and Vanessa (fingers crossed) for xmas/new years.
But, it was still worth the wait to check out around chengdu, the first stop was the pandas, which i must say were rather cute, but smaller than i expected. Chrissie managed to take a video of one poor bugger of a panda that had distinct trouble getting out of his sleeping tree (only 18M long, let me know if you want me to email it :)). The other trips we did were out of Chengdu and all involved a mountain of some description. The first was the Taoist Qingcheng Shan (my fav) where we spent the night at a Taoist temple with this amazing 1800 year old ginko tree outside our window. it was supposedly planted by one big hoohaa priest back in the day, so i think it is pretty cool that you can trace the exact person (allegedly) who planted such an old tree. The monastary was about half way up the mountain so we dumped out bags there on the first day and spent the rest of the day climbing to the top, stairs most of the way and the view was pretty good with lots of rainforest an
d animals n stuff. Spent the night on the rather hard beds then made the shaky kneeed climb back down to the bus and chengdu once again. Also took in the sights of Dujiangyan on the way (big irrigation system on the Minhe river started two thousand years ago).
next little excursion was to the south west and Le Shan and Emei Shan. Le Shan being home of both the giant sitting buddha and lying one. Turned out to be a scorcher of a day and the buddha park of a thousand steps. Definately struggled a bit but it was very beautiful, with a helluva lot of buddhas carved out of the red stone of the mountain. When we got to the top of the mount found there was quite a queue to go down the staircase beside the sitting buddha and disvovered the delights of descending a narrow staircase in stinky heat being pushed from behind by very eager Chinese tourists. It makes you a bit cranky but the view was pretty cool. We were going to stay the night in the town but ended up catching a bus to Emei instead so we could have a little rest before hititng the slopes of the 3000 metre mountain.
Stayed the night in the Teddy Bear hostel, deadset, the owners head looked like a koala's, ears nose and everything. Chrissie was feeling under the weather so we spoiled ourselves with a nice room with a private bathroom and much to chrissies delight a massive stuffed teddy bear. with Emei shan you have the choice of a three/two/one day hike or bus and two hour hike, we took the last option becuse i think we were tired of seeing stairs going up, not to mention it was pissing down rain. It was pretty good once we got to the top, though you couldnt see much as the top was shrouded in cloud and mist, but it added to the atmosphere. But compared to Qingcheng it was kind of a downer as alot of the buildings were new and had not beeen finished with all that much care with heaps of overspray, but still nice nonetheless, we stayed in a hotel that had a beautiful vista of the mountain rainforest though and met a pair of nice french girls who we had dinner with. The way back down
we caught the cable car hoping for a nice view but we just ended up descending through fog and mist for half an hour with the occasional spooky forest, but it was cool in its own way.
this email is starting to get a wee bit long so i will stop it here and continue with our adventure into far western Sichuan.
oh btw, for the month before all the travelling was just doing uni and exams (passed all) and the arrival of Chrissie from Oz. its been great having her here and she will be staying until Jan next year and doing a bit of chinese study herself (will probably eclipse my own as she is a pretty studious little rabbit)
love to all
mark (and chrissie)
p.s. had my first pang of missing friends and fam the other day, but i am almost 6 months down, six to go
p.p.s. as i was attatching the photos i found it is really hard to squeeze 2 weeks into ten photos or less so i will porb post a few online sometime soon, sorry for the number but it was hard enough to get to that few a number anyways
p.p.p.s. if you dont know already i got given a turtle for my bday, named him des, short for desperate as he was determined to escape his small tank, he now has new one ans is very happy, even does weird turtle yoga (maybe taichi) every day, go figure
long time no write i am afraid, i swear i have a good excuse this time, i was on the verge of writing an email when we made the decision to pop up to Chengdu (capital of Sichuan) for a week or so for a holiday and to try and organise a trip to Tibet (Chengdu is the "gateway" to Tibet). But on the morning we were to leave we found out (through a long story to do with changing chrissie's visa) that we could head off for a month solid instead of making multiple trips. A few hours of frantic packing and an afternoon of me administering and marking an exam (with help from the missus) we rocked up at the train station to head off on our grand adventure.
It was an overnight train trip to Chengdu so the sights were limited but what you could see was pretty amazing as we had to pass through a mountain range to get there. We arrived in the mid afternoon to what was the shittiest weather i have been in for a while. Me being used to Kunming where it is usually between 20-28 and no humidity, it was deadset over 35 degrees and humid as buggery. We proceeded to then find the bus station and i had my first encounter with the old sichuan accent (thank god he pointed aswell), i dont claim to be the worlds best speaker of the chinese but blimey i was in a world of hurt trying to understand what people were saying. We thought we had struck a buit of luck when the bus we had to catch to the hotel was airconditioned (double the price at 2 RMB (bout 30 cents) but well worth it) only to see the bus struggle to do a kilometer then break down and kick everyone off.
enter struggle street chinese part 2. Ever tried to hire a pedicab from a dude speaking sichuan hua to a street you dont know the name of in blistering heat with not much sleep backing you up? Lucky the place we were going to had a massive statue of Mao Zedong near it so after a while i just kept saying "Mao Zedong, hen da" (hen da = very big) and gesturing like a lunatic (much props to the C for not losing faith that i could get us there and that i hadnt cracked it, yet). we jumped in feeling sorry for the poor bugger that he had to carry about 180 kegs worth of foreigner and bag a fair way down the city. Bout 20 mins later he dropped us near a construction site we hoped had Mao inside getting a facelift and then whipped out the little lonely planet map to trudge our way to our new base of operations for a week and a half. Unfortunately when we got there half an hour later a little frazzled and tired our "base of operations" was full. Sigh. But not to dispair, his si
ster also had a youth hostel down the road, hello another pedicab. At this stage we would have settled for anyhting but were lucky enough to get an awesome room, AND clean public amenities, praise the lord!!!
hearing that there was a rooftop cafe with "cold beer" resulted in us dropping the bags, grabbing some cards and the lonely planet and heading upstairs. I have said it before, and ill say it again, when you are dehydrated nothing beats a cold beer, the woman who ran the cafe "Shi" even knew enough about foreigners to chuck them in the freezer for an hour or so before they were drunk, god i love that woman (no fear to the missus tho as Shi already had a husband and a few kids, dont ask me how that works with the "one child" policy, coulda been the relos kids)
The Great Train Tickets Saga
From the wonderful and ever resourceful Holly of Hollies Hostel (no i am not being sarcastic, aside from the tickets she was great) we learned that if you want to catch the train to Lhasa you give her a deposit photocopies yadda yadda and ten days later you have the tickets. we thought that was a good plan as it allowed us to explore around chengdu for over a week as we awaited tickets. To save giving chronological updates as we came back form each prospective trip, what eventually conspired was that because the railway was so recently opened there was a massive demand and all the agents had to go into a lottery to see who got the tickets, we were offered two tickets in two different cabins, in two different carriages (how romantic) but had to turn them down. But at least we know for next time and will hopefully be heading up there with Mum and Vanessa (fingers crossed) for xmas/new years.
But, it was still worth the wait to check out around chengdu, the first stop was the pandas, which i must say were rather cute, but smaller than i expected. Chrissie managed to take a video of one poor bugger of a panda that had distinct trouble getting out of his sleeping tree (only 18M long, let me know if you want me to email it :)). The other trips we did were out of Chengdu and all involved a mountain of some description. The first was the Taoist Qingcheng Shan (my fav) where we spent the night at a Taoist temple with this amazing 1800 year old ginko tree outside our window. it was supposedly planted by one big hoohaa priest back in the day, so i think it is pretty cool that you can trace the exact person (allegedly) who planted such an old tree. The monastary was about half way up the mountain so we dumped out bags there on the first day and spent the rest of the day climbing to the top, stairs most of the way and the view was pretty good with lots of rainforest an
d animals n stuff. Spent the night on the rather hard beds then made the shaky kneeed climb back down to the bus and chengdu once again. Also took in the sights of Dujiangyan on the way (big irrigation system on the Minhe river started two thousand years ago).
next little excursion was to the south west and Le Shan and Emei Shan. Le Shan being home of both the giant sitting buddha and lying one. Turned out to be a scorcher of a day and the buddha park of a thousand steps. Definately struggled a bit but it was very beautiful, with a helluva lot of buddhas carved out of the red stone of the mountain. When we got to the top of the mount found there was quite a queue to go down the staircase beside the sitting buddha and disvovered the delights of descending a narrow staircase in stinky heat being pushed from behind by very eager Chinese tourists. It makes you a bit cranky but the view was pretty cool. We were going to stay the night in the town but ended up catching a bus to Emei instead so we could have a little rest before hititng the slopes of the 3000 metre mountain.
Stayed the night in the Teddy Bear hostel, deadset, the owners head looked like a koala's, ears nose and everything. Chrissie was feeling under the weather so we spoiled ourselves with a nice room with a private bathroom and much to chrissies delight a massive stuffed teddy bear. with Emei shan you have the choice of a three/two/one day hike or bus and two hour hike, we took the last option becuse i think we were tired of seeing stairs going up, not to mention it was pissing down rain. It was pretty good once we got to the top, though you couldnt see much as the top was shrouded in cloud and mist, but it added to the atmosphere. But compared to Qingcheng it was kind of a downer as alot of the buildings were new and had not beeen finished with all that much care with heaps of overspray, but still nice nonetheless, we stayed in a hotel that had a beautiful vista of the mountain rainforest though and met a pair of nice french girls who we had dinner with. The way back down
we caught the cable car hoping for a nice view but we just ended up descending through fog and mist for half an hour with the occasional spooky forest, but it was cool in its own way.
this email is starting to get a wee bit long so i will stop it here and continue with our adventure into far western Sichuan.
oh btw, for the month before all the travelling was just doing uni and exams (passed all) and the arrival of Chrissie from Oz. its been great having her here and she will be staying until Jan next year and doing a bit of chinese study herself (will probably eclipse my own as she is a pretty studious little rabbit)
love to all
mark (and chrissie)
p.s. had my first pang of missing friends and fam the other day, but i am almost 6 months down, six to go
p.p.s. as i was attatching the photos i found it is really hard to squeeze 2 weeks into ten photos or less so i will porb post a few online sometime soon, sorry for the number but it was hard enough to get to that few a number anyways
p.p.p.s. if you dont know already i got given a turtle for my bday, named him des, short for desperate as he was determined to escape his small tank, he now has new one ans is very happy, even does weird turtle yoga (maybe taichi) every day, go figure
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