The land of happy Pandas and big Buddhas

After Lijiang I flew to Chengdu (still not ready to travel by night train…) where I spent a night alone in a hostel until my friend arrived the next day! This time I choose to book a room on my one in the hostel… I had been sleeping in 6 and 8 bed rooms the last days and felt the urge to have my own room, shower and western toilet for one tiny night! (U guys can’t imagine how I enjoyed that night!!! I showered over and over again and probably used all of their hot water reserves…but who cares...)

Chengdu is lies in the Sichuan Province which is famous for its spicy food (Hot Pot -> spicy Chinese fondue… Sichuan Dish -> A big bowl full of Chillies and below, very hidden, some pieces of meet or fish… depending on what you order…)

When it comes to Sightseeing, Chengdu or the Sichuan Province in general, don’t let you get bored easily! There is the Panda Breeding Research Base (Pandas are the national icon of China), the big mountain Emei Shan and Leshan (the Big Buddha can be found there..) and a lot more!!

Panda Breeding Research Base:

Bamboo is very low in nutrients, so pandas need to spend around 16 hours a day munching trough almost 40kg of the stuff in order to stay healthy. 

Well that seems pretty hard to believe for me… I wasn’t able to finish my little bamboo sprout..

Another attempt of me to be a Panda...

So we went veeeeeery early in the morning (I had to get up at 7!!!!! Can you believe that??)  to that panda place! This because the life of a panda consists of eating and sleeping… that’s pretty much it… So guess what they did after the 9 o’clock munch… yeeaahhh… zzzZZZZzzZZZ

The Pandas were really cute… look at the pictures!! (btw. There was the possibility to hold (more like touch) a panda baby for about 2-4 minutes… for the fair price of  CHF 150.- ;) which a lot of my american friends did… I didn’t!!!)

 Adult Panda doing what he does best...

 sweet little baby pandas :)

 another kind of panda.. called the "pink-fluffly-hair" panda... or something like that...

Also we went to Leshan (happy Mountain) and walked around for a day. This is where we probably saw about 1000 different Buddhas… but the most important was the Big Buddha (1200 years old) which is supposed to be the biggest Buddha in China. He is 71 meters tall, his ears stretch for 7 meters and each of his big toes is 8.5 meters long..

The last evening before taking off to the train station (yes, we planned to take the night train to Xi’an) we wanted to eat seafood! So we went to a seafood street market and entered a restaurant and asked them for the price of each animal which can be found in the sea.... after comparing some prices we asked him if we also could bring him some raw seafood and if he would cook it for us, as his portions seemed very small and overpriced… As his “cooking-fee” was only CHF 2.- per dish, we finally just went into the fish street market across the street, bought some small lobsters and squids and brought them to the restaurant, where they prepared our delicious dinner :)

Yunnan – The Adventure begins

So as written in my last post i finished all my school duties… And so the adventure could finally start!!

Thursday morning (1.12.11) I went to the Airport and everything worked perfectly. I am travelling with one suitcase, one backpack and a handbag… I need to admit that I was a little bit worried about the size of my backpacker, because I wanted to check it in as hand luggage… which obviously wasn’t a problem, when I saw what Chinese people are carrying around as hand luggage… 3 big bags minimum….

After having bought a “Vanilla-Latte-Non-Fat-Milk” at Starbucks I entered the Plane and found myself sitting in between a group of Chinese woman from a retirement home (Ok, they weren’t actually from a retirement home, but it looked and definitely sounded like that…).. Ufaaahh I didn’t get one minute of sleep (and it was still soooo early in the morning!!)

Arrived in Kunming I took the Bus to the Cloudland Youth Hostel (nice, relatively overbooked hostel… slept in a 6 bed dorm... showers and toilets outside – one night CHF 6.-)! Yes I took the Bus! I decided to take the public transportation for everything during my journeys… no more Cab rides!!

Kunming didn’t impress me that much! That’s why I went outside of town on a 6 hours hike tour alone and saw a lot of beautiful places!! Also I went to some Temples (China has a looooot of Temples and I’ve just started my Temple-Collection…)

Some of you might ask yourself if I was scared of getting mugged while walking in the wilderness like a ranger… ;) Well I would be lying if I’d say I haven’t thought about it but it didn’t really scare me… I only remember one moment when I was scared to death… There was this homeless dog baring one’s teeth (Ok, he wasn’t… But otherwise it just doesn’t sound dramatic enough..)… so I saw this biiiiiig dog… and the only thing I could think of was my missing anti-rabies vaccination!! That was far the most fearing moment in my entire China-Life… (As much as I can remember right now… ;))

Anyway, check out the pictures!

 one of the temples

 my little snack... :)

another Temple

Dragon Gate on West Hill

The third night I travelled to Dali by bus. A five hours trip only with Chinese people... It was a good journey disregarding to the girl, sitting behind me, playing Fruit Ninja with sound during at least one hour… (Everyone who knows Fruit Ninja, will be able to understand what I had to undergo…) However I survived and arrived sound and safe in Dali!

In Dali I was staying at the 5 Elements Hostel (6 bed dorm, showers and toilets outside, one night CHF 3.-). Dali is a perfectly lovely city with nice buildings and friendly people! Today I rented a bike and went to see the 3 Pagodas, a small fisher village and then I just drove around for about 4 hours! It’s pretty cold out here, but I enjoy the colours of the trees and the nice lake! 

West Gate to the town of Dali

 my dear friend the Loney Planet and the authentic seaweed-taro soup... yammiiii

 Fisher Village Shuang Luang at the Erhai Lake

 One of the three Pagodas in Dali

 Market

Me enjoying the day ;)

Next stop was Lijiang (very quiet at the end of a small street.. CHF5.- per night… very modern, but two days without electricity during the day…) No comment about Lijiang, just check out the pictures….

  Lijiang Old Town

 Above the Old Town of Lijiang

Lijiang Old Town by night 

 Black Dragon Pool with snowy mountain

Right now I am in Chengdu (Sichuan Province) which is famous for the Big Buddha, the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base and more…

 

Cheers

V

Guess what... I am starting my Travel!!!

I haven’t been posting a lot lately… I think it was because I had so much to do for school. All my classes just ended this week (yeah u got it… ALL classes). And I still feel very tired and dizzy from learning so much… ;) The school here really forced me to work hard… I mean they are one of the 10 best Universities in China…. (and I somehow also know how they got there..)

So how does Exam-preparation work here:

E-Commerce class: The teachers’ assistant showed us the questions of the exam and because we were all there, she just showed us the  solutions to it too… Obviously we weren’t permitted to receive the PPT slides will all the information by email, but we were allowed to take pictures of it (exam number one DONE!!!) Funny thing: this teacher used to say the following sentence in each class: “International Students, you don’t have to worry, you will ALL pass!!! Chinese Students, you have to study hard, because some of you will fail!!!” – that didn’t really make the Chinese students to like us….)

International Business Management class: After some “talks” to our Professor she agreed on giving us the exam so we could do it at home… (number two DONE!!!)

Ecotourism class: Teachers words: mhhh I think I don’t want to do an exam anymore…. Let’s have a debate about some subject… (Alright I am fine with that…)

And it goes on and on like that.. But who cares??? I finished my classes and now I am ready to start my 3 months of Travel!!! Yeah u heard me! 3 Months!

For those who are interested… my plan looks like that:

1. -21.12.11     -> (China -> Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Chengdu, Xian, Yichang (5 Star Cruise) to
                             Chongqing, Guiling, back to Guangzhou)

22.-23.12.11    -> Macao

26.12.11-01.01.12 -> Taiwan

02.-15.01.12    -> Indonesia (Bali, taking 2 weeks of Surfing lessons)

16.-24.01.12    ->Philippines

25.01.-04.02.12 -> Vietnam (maybe also Laos)

05.02.-23.02.12 -> Thailand -> Looking forward to travel with you Meeeeel!!!!!!!!

24.02.12            -> Flying back to Switzerland!!!!

PS: Miss u all!!!

I will keep you updated on my travel and hope to be able to post more pictures and stuff as soon as the access to this site gets easier.

xoxo

V