Xi'an

Today was our first of two days in Xi'an. We had originally planned to take the bus for a few hours to Luoyang to see the Longman Caves, but we decided last night not to. So, we slept in a little today (and watched Snakes on a Plane on HBO) and then started our day.

First up, we took a taxi to the Xi'an Train Station, where we caught a minibus to the Terra Cotta Warriors about an hour away. The trip was less than pleasant - the scenery was boring and grey, and the road was super bumpy. But, it was only 7 Yuan (1 USD), and compared to the prearranged tours which cost upward of 500 Yuan per person, the ruggedness was worth it.


Once there, we bought our tickets and headed in. The site itself is really large and consists of a museum, gift shop (of course), lots of grounds/gardens, and the three excavated sites. The 2nd site was still be excavated, so we couldn't see it, and the 3rd site was pretty small. But, the 1st site was huge and pretty impressive. There were hundreds (probably thousands) of carefully detailed warriors all lined up and ready for battle.

After we finished up there, we caught a minibus and headed back to the city. From there, we took a taxi to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is Xi'an's biggest highlight. It was pretty cool, and there were some nice views and architectual elements. You could also climb up to the top of the pagoda for an extra 20Y, but neither of us really had any desire to walk up and down all those stairs, so we decided to have dinner instead. Interestingly, despite it's name, we didn't see a single goose there, real or statue - not sure what's up with that. haha

We ate at a pretty touristy restaurant on the pagoda grounds, but we were so cold and hungry that we didn't really care. My food was pretty good. I had a curry chicken set with rice, steamed greens, vegetables, steamed egg custard, and a really horrible smelling/looking soup that I didn't even try. I also had some picked cucumber dish, a few types of dim sum, and 2 plates of egg tarts. I was a very happy man. :) They also had some really delicous jasmine tea, which I couldn't get enough of. Not only was it delicious, but it was also not too hot. I love tea, but I hate when they serve it at such a high temperature at some restaurants that you can barely even hold the glass. This one was just right!

All in all, I am pretty unimpressed with Xi'an. Honestly, I wasn't super excited to come to Xi'an in the first place, and perhaps if I had come here first, I would have liked it more. But there just doesn't seem to be anything special or extra charming about it. It's just a small city. It reminds me sort of of Reno - it's a big tourist destination, and in it's hay day, it used to be super cool, but Vegas is so much better. haha

At any rate, since we didn't go to Luoyang today and there isn't much else to do here in Xi'an that is of interest to us, I think we are just going to relax during the day tomorrow before our flight back to Beijing. It's a little dissapointing, since I would have liked to have ended our trip on a strong note, but relaxation isn't a bad thing. We are also trying to book a room in the Ritz Carlton in Beijing for our last night in China tomorrow since we liked it so much the first time - I hope it works out!!

Karaoke on the Mini Bus

This is the silly music video that the people on the mini bus from Jiajiang to Emei Shan sang along to yesterday!!!

Farewell to Chengdu

Today was our last day in Chengdu, which was unfortunate because Katie and I both woke up with pretty low energy to start the day. All that hiking yesterday at the Thousand Buddha Cliffs really tired us out I guess.

Anyway, we eventually got up, checked out of our hotel, and took a taxi to the Wenshu Temple in Chengdu. The outskirts of the temple are lined with so many alleys and side streets that are full of shops, tea houses, and food stands. It was a really nice walk.

Since today is a national holiday, the temple itself was super crowded with worshipers. Despite that, we managed to walk around the grounds a lot and take some good pictures. Although the temple was really beautiful, it felt a little strange to be walking around as tourists when so many people were there to worship. And to be perfectly honest, we have seen so many temples since we've been here, that we are pretty temple-d out at this point. So, rather than going to see some of the other temples in the area after that, we decided to take a taxi to the People's Park.

Lonely Planet said good things about the park, and it turned out to be quite a nice place. Though, like the temple, it was super crowded. There were some koi fish lakes, some cool buildings, and a garden made entirely out of potted bonzai trees. The definate high point though was the animatronic haunted house that was there. It was like a primitive version of "It's a Small World" at Disney World and was soooo cheesy that it was actually funny. (Katie was scared though haha)

After that, we headed back to the hotel area to have lunch and decided to just go to KFC since we didn't have much time. This was a big mistake though - it was soooo crowded, the lines took forever, and we couldn't even find a table to eat at despite looking and walking around in circles for about 10 minutes! It was really frustrating.

But, food is food, and food makes me happy :) Once we finished eating, we got our bags and headed to the airport for our flight to Xi'an. The flight was really nice, and really short, and with the exception of the super long taxi ride to our hotel, Xi'an seems like a nice place so far. Our hotel is really nice/luxurious, and we just had a nice dinner at a restaurant nearby.

As nice as Xi'an is, Chengdu left a really strong impression with me and I miss it already. Tomorrow, we are headed to Luoyuang to see the Longman Caves. We are planning on taking the bus there, and based on our bus experience yesterday, we are a little nervous. Hopefully it'll be okay!

The Blog That Almost Wasn't

Today was an adventure!!!

We got up medium early and had a huge breakfast at the hotel. After that, we took a taxi to the long distance bus station here in Chengdu. Buying tickets and getting on the bus was a mini adventure by itself, but the bus ride itself was really smooth and enjoyable and it only took us 2 hours to get to Leshan.

As we got off the bus in Leshan, a woman approached us offering to take us to see the Giant Buddha in her pedicab for only 15 Yuan. This seemed fair enough and we had mostly recovered from our pedicab adventure the night before, so we agreed and hopped in. This ride was much better than the one last night, but when we got there, the woman totally scammed us and said she wanted 50 Yuan, not 15. What a rip off - but whatever.

From there, we took a (barely floating and definately unsafe) boat on the river to see the Giant Buddha, and well...it was giant. It's the world's largest Buddha, and it was quite impressive. I'm a bit of a Buddha connosieur and have seen a ton of Buddha statues in my time, so it takes a lot to impress me. This one was definately worth the trip! After that, we had the option to go across the river and climb the hundreds of steps to the top of the Buddha, but that seemed like a lot of work and neither of us really felt like it, so we decided to take another long distance bus from Leshan to Jianjiang.


Getting on the bus to Jianjiang was much less confusing since we had already done it once, and the bus ride was only about 45 minutes. When we got there, we took a pedicab operated by an older man to the 1,000 Buddha Cliffs. According to my guide book, there are well over 1,000 Buddhas carved into the cliffs in this area. However, it's not a very well known tourist destination.

It was kind of a long trip to the cliffs, and at several points, I wasn't sure if our driver was going to be able to make it the whole trip. But, he eventually got us there and even offered to wait for us to take us back to the bus station when we were finished. This was a huge relief, since the place was kind of in the middle of nowhere and there were no taxis (or cars) in sight. In fact, Jianjiang is super small and there were hardly any cars period.

At any rate, we had to walk along this really narrow street to the entrance which was lined with small shops, dogs, and chickens casually walking around. It was pretty surreal. Once we got there, we saw 5 Buddha carvings but then took a turn onto a path near a sign that said "entrance." We assumed this was the way to see the other 995 Buddhas, but it turned out to be just a path up to the top of a really steep mountain. And when I say steep, I mean STEEP. I was so tired by the time I got to the top, but the views were amazing and I even got to see a cute little bunny.

Once we got down to the bottom, we got back on the main path and eventually found all the other Buddhas, which were pretty breathtaking. There were just sooooo many!!!


According to my guide book, the last bus left Jianjiang for Leshan at 5:30, but this turned out to be totally wrong!!! When we got to the bus station at about 5:05 to buy our tickets, the woman said we couldn't. She (and everyone else there) didn't speak English, and she was quite rude. Despite the language barrier, I could understand that she was telling us that we couldn't take the last bus to Leshan or to Chengdu!!!

I was totally confused and a little worried because this place is super small and I doubt there were any hotels we could have stayed at. In fact, I suspect that most of the houses didn't even have electricity! Luckily, I went up to the counter again hoping the answer would be different this time, and a woman helped us out. She spoke a lot of Chinese, made a few phone calls, and took us to the street where she put us on a minibus to who knows where!

I wasn't sure where we were going or why, but I was about 35% certain that she the minibus was heading for a place called Emei Shan about an hour away, and that we could take the last bus to Chengdu from there. At least, this was what I hoped.

The bus was a surreal experience. For starters, I am pretty sure that none of the people on the bus had ever seen a westerner before and they were all quite fascinated with us. They were so excited to see the American money I had in my wallet when I went to pay for the ticket and ended up passing it around and talking about it for a good 5 minutes. It was like show and tell haha. Add to this that nearly the entire trip was on unpaved back roads, and there was a tv in the front of the bus with a karaoke machine!!! It was just one of those things you had to see to believe!

When we got to Emei Shan bus station, we ran inside and bought tickets for the last bus (7pm) back to Chengdu. We made it with only 13 minutes to spare!! Just a little more traffic and we would have been stuck there over night!

Needless to say, today was quite an adventure. However, it was one of my favorite days so far of the entire trip. I got to climb on rocks (again!), see some really cool stuff, see great countryside scenery, and go on several bus/minibus adventures - what could be better!

Tonight is going to be pretty chill since we are both so tired, even though it is New Year's Eve. We had dinner at a fast food place called Dico's, which was so so (mainly because my chicken was so raw that it was pink). Tomorrow is a public holiday here, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will still be open so that we can see a few more sights in Chengdu before we fly to Xi'an tomorrow afternoon.

Chengdu: Home of the Panda!

Today was our first full day in Chengdu, and it was a great one!!

We got a slow start to the day since we were both really tired from our late flight the night before. But, eventually we made our plans and headed out.

Our first stop via taxi was the Chengdu Giant Panda Research and Breeding Center, which was soooo amazing. We got to see so many pandas and red pandas, and they were all so cute. The red pandas were definately my favorite and I totally would keep one as a pet if I could haha. We had read that there is a place where you can hold the pandas while getting your picture taken, but after looking around for some time, we couldn't find it and gave up. Oh well.

After that, we took a taxi back to our hotel and decided to go to Wuhou Temple. It's really hard to get a taxi around dinner time here for some reason, so I eventually convinced Katie to take a bicycle operated rickshaw with me. I flagged one down and hopped in, assuming we were in for a peaceful stroll through Chengdu. Boy was I wrong though! It was the most stressful and scary thing of our trip so far. I literally thought we were going to be hit by cars, buses, and motorcyles at least 5 times every minute!

Eventually we made it there, but it had already closed. However, there is this cool restored shopping district which was decorated in so many beautiful red lanterns called Jinli Lu. We walked around there, and it was super cool. We also had our first try at eating food from the street vendors! I had some rice cooked in a pineapple, which was delicious, and some spicy fried vegetables, which were so so.

After that, we walked down the street and ate at a hot pot restuarant. Chengdu is famous for its super spicy food, particularly the hot pot, so I was very anxious to try it. The menu was entirely in Chinese, so we basically had to order exclusively by pointing at food at other people's tables, and using our fingers to show how many we wanted. We said we wanted it only medium spicy, but it was by far the spiciest thing I have ever tasted!!! I could only even eat a little bit of it, though it was delicious. The best part is that the whole meal, including 3 huges bottles of beer, was only 84 Yuan or about 11 USD for both of us!!!

Chengdu is such a beautiful city, and there is such a good mix of old and new here. Shanghai is someplace that I could totally live in, but after only one day, Chengdu is someplace that I absolutely want to live in. There's just something really special about it that's impossible to put into words. I just really love it here.

Tonight is going to be an early night for us since we have a busy and early day tomorrow, with short trips to several temples and parks, and a long distance bus ride to Leshan to see the largest Buddha statue in the entire world! I hope it will be another great day!!

"Good Tea Makes Good Friends"

Today was a very interesting day to say the least. We checked out of our hotel around noon and each went around to explore some more of Shanghai before our evening flight to Chengdu. My plan was to walk along Nanjing Street, take the underwater sightseeing tunnel across the river, visit the Chinese Sex and Culture Museum, Pearl Tower, and Shanghai Museum. Ambitious, but I knew my way around pretty well, so I didn't think there would be any problems...

Nanjing Street was nice, and very different during the day than at night, and I even bought a new coat (mainly just because I had packed my coat in my suitcase thinking it would be warm, only to find out that it was a good bit colder than yesterday.) After that, I made it the underwater sightseeing tunnel without any problems, and headed across the river. The tunnel takes you under the river in little tram cars and the whole tunnel is illuminated to look like several different environments. While I'm sure they built it with the greatest of intentions, it mostly just seemed like a really slow and low tech version of Disney's Space Mountain haha.

Once on the other side, I searched with map in hand for nearly an hour trying to find the Chinese Sex and Culture Museum. Eventually I found it, or at least where it used to be - it appears that they demolished the building and are building a new high-rise at the site. Oh well...

After that, I walked around and took some pictures of the Pearl Tower and then took the tunnel back to the other side to go to the Shanghai Museum. This turned out to be quite a hike, but there was plenty of nice scenery, so I didn't mind. Finally, after about 45 minutes of walking, I reached the entrance to the museum and got my camera out to take a picture of it. However, as I did that, four Chinese people came up to me and asked me to take their photo, which I happily did. After taking their photo, we chatted for a bit, and it turns out that they are from Chengdu and one of them is an English teacher there. They were all very nice and they suggested that I probably wouldn't like the museum very much and offered to let me go with them to a Chinese tea house for a traditional tea ceremony.

This seemed like an excellent opportunity, so I happily accepted. The tea ceremony was quite cool and I was really impressed by all the tradition that is associated with it. We got to try six different teas and the man (Peter) interpretted the whole thing for me. We laughed and exchanged stories and had an overall great time. I liked the tea so much that I bought some (in a really fancy box). Actually, we all did. However, it turned out to be insanely expensive, so I spent way more of my travel budget than I was hoping to today. Oh well...

Once we finished the tea ceremony, we exchanged contact information and I headed to the hotel to meet Katie and then to the airport for my flight to Chengdu. I'm really excited to be here in Chengdu, since I've heard so much about it from my students. We have a pretty fluid itinerary here, but two definate highlights include a trip to see the baby giant pandas and a trip to see the world's tallest Buddha statue in Leshan. I'm so excited!!

I LOVE Shanghai!!

Today was our first full day in Shanghai, and after a day of exploring, all I can say is that I love this city!!!

I started the day a little late since we didn't get settled into our hotel until about 1:15am last night. After taking a shower and planning out my day, I headed out. My first stop was the Jade Buddha Temple, which was totally awesome. Well, the Buddha statue itself was only so-so (I've seen so many amazing Buddha statues in Thailand that it takes a lot for a statue to impress me at this point), but the grounds of the temple were amazing. There were tons of bonzai shaped trees and wandering alleyways, and the whole place was decorated with red lanterns and ribbons for the upcoming new year.

It was a little crowded, but nowhere near as bad as it would be if we went during the real tourist season. Most of the crowd was actually Chinese people going to worship there - there were very few tourists, so it still had a relaxing feel. I just love going to temples of all kind. It's just such a spiritual feeling for me.

There were of course the usual pushy sales people there, but it didn't seem to be quite as bad as at the places we went in Beijing.

After I finished there, I walked around for a while in that area and saw something that I haven't seen at all since I've arrived in China: blue skys!! It is also much warmer here than in Beijing so it was much more enjoyable to explore here. I probably didn't even need a jacket - just a sweater would have been fine.

The area was full of little shops and restaurants, and I ended up eating at a noodle place that had pretty good food. I ate soo much!! (it's hard to tell what things I'm ordering are side dishes and what are main dishes, so I am constantly ordering way too much) After that, I found a grocery store and bought some cool snacks and food items, and then took a cab to the Yuyuan park/shopping area.

This place was just awesome! It's part shopping mall and part park. But the shopping area was just amazing to walk around in, as it was all constructed to appear like a Chinese temple. The park was even more breathtaking and was pretty free from tourists which made it quite relaxing. I took a ton of pictures!!

After that, I walked around some more. I won't say I got lost, since you can't get lost if you don't have a destination in mind. But I definately had no idea where I was haha. After a while though, I was able to get a general idea of where I was and decided to walk down to this area called the Bund near the river for dinner and sight seeing.

Somehow however, I ended up at the docks. And since I was there, I decided to take a cruise of the river. It was so awesome! The sun had already set, so all of the buildings in the bund and the skyscrapers were lit up, including the famous Pearl TV Tower. It was pretty breathtaking, and I felt really lucky to have accidentally stumbled upon this opportunity. Once again, I took a ton of pictures! (302 to be exact haha)

After the cruise was over, I realized that the boat dropped us off at a totally different spot than where I had got on it. I really had no idea of where I was and tried unsucessfully to get a taxi. So, I got out my map and realized that I wasn't really that far from my hotel, so I decided to walk and grab something to eat on the way back.

Well, not only did I find the hotel, but I also found this Las Vegas Strip-esque street just a block away that is essentially a huge neon light-filled open air shopping market. There were so many neon sights that I thought I was in Tokyo haha. I walked around there, grabbed something to eat, and then came back to the hotel to have a swim and a steam. I am so relaxed now!

Today was probably my favorite day of the trip so far. Not only did I see some pretty amazing things, but I also travelled by myself all day, so I got to do exactly what I wanted to do and at my own pace - I am totally a solo traveller! Shanghai is so different than Beijing (or at the least the parts that I saw of it). Parts are wildly modern, but other parts right next door seem centuries old and full of tradition and history. Things seem more orderly here, the driving is less insane, and there is definately less polution. I like this place a lot!

What a great day!

(Tomorrow, I will explore some more in Shanghai and then fly to Chengdu in the evening. I only hope that tomorrow is half as good as today was!)