Chengdu and Jiuzhaigou: April 2015

Pandas. Jackie hiding

I’m not quite sure what there is to do in Chengdu other than see the pandas, but I feel like I could have stayed there for quite a while. Our destination in this part of the country was Jiuzhaigou, but Chengdu was the closest major city. The plan was to stay only for one night and take the bus in the morning to Jiuzhaigou. Because of this, we opted to stay close to the bus terminal, which meant we were far from downtown. As it turned out, this was a great choice on many levels. First, we were literally a 5 minute walk to the bus station. Second, we were only a 20 minute taxi ride to the Panda reserve (as opposed to an hour had we stayed downtown), and third, it may have been the nicest hotel we have stayed. When we arrived, we dropped off our stuff and admired our room. It was so nice and comfortable, I didn’t want to leave, but we had a schedule to keep. We wanted information on how to get to the bus station and the panda reserve. No one spoke a word of english. So, thanks to google translate, maps, and a whole lot of charades, we were able to get directions to the bus terminal and a price for the pandas.

Chengdu. Bus terminal

First, we went to the bus terminal. We successfully purchased tickets for the following morning by pointing at dates on a calendar, and the computer screen. Our saving grace in China is that they use our number system, so even though we can’t read or understand anything, if they need to show us a price, or a time even, they pull out a calculator and punch it in. Once the tickets were purchased we walked back to our hotel and the receptionists walked us outside to help us flag a taxi. They explained to the driver where we wanted to go, and we grabbed a hotel business card for the return trip. 

Red panda

The panda reserve was beautiful. The grounds are clean and vast, with a series of walkways and bamboo forest all around. However, when we arrived at our first enclosure, we were instantly sad. There was a single panda in a concrete room that looked like a small jail cell with bamboo on the floor. Half of the walls of the jail cell are concrete, and the others glass, or glass-like to let everyone look in at the sad panda. We walked to the next cell…same thing. We saw about 5 pandas- all in solitary confinement. It was really quite depressing. We moved on to the red pandas, who were in an open area and able to run and climb. They looked like they were having fun, and their enclosure was definitely much more suitable.

Peacock

We walked for a while and observed peacocks roaming around, black geese with red bills, and watched a video on the work that they do at the reserve. We finally arrived at a group of teenage pandas. They were in a large area complete with trees to climb, and large platform with all of their food, and plenty of space to run and play. These guys were active. There were 7 of them in total, and one troublemaker. If one of the pandas was eating, or just sitting and relaxing, he would come up and start biting them, or more often than not, tackle them. The victim would get irritated and a wrestling match would ensue- usually attracting others to join.

Happy young pandas.

The pandas would fall off platforms and out of trees during these wrestling matches. It was quite funny and we stood there and watched them for close to 45 minutes. There was another panda who would continually sit up and then fall backwards with his paws in the air. They were so fun to watch, and it definitely lifted our spirits from the captivated pandas we saw earlier. 

At some point in our visit, the headache I had been ignoring became more than just a headache. It was starting to feel like a migraine. We decided to end our day, and enjoyed the rest of the park as we made our way to the exit.

By the time we left and were in the taxi, my head was throbbing, and I was feeling nauseous. We gave the driver the hotel card, but he didn’t look to confident. Sure enough, he had no idea where he was going, at one point, Javier told him to turn off the meter, which he did. He asked the people on the street for directions, and by the time we arrived at the hotel, I couldn’t move without my head feeling like it was going to explode. Once in our room, I took some medicine and laid down.

hello

Javier was busy online for a bit, but then needed dinner. I still couldn’t move. I asked him to bring me some soup. He was very hesitant. The flavors are so different in China, that it really is difficult to order anything, especially for someone who already isn’t feeling good. I understood his hesitation, but there was no way I was getting out of bed at that moment. I also knew that Javier was nervous about going to a restaurant by himself. At this point, much of our communication was because of the translate app on my phone. So, I did a majority of the communication. He should have just taken my phone with him, but neither of us thought about it at that moment, and off he went, by himself, in search for soup. The first place he went was the hotel restaurant. He said communication was non-existent and the woman at the restaurant was rude, so he didn’t waste much of his time there. He walked around a bit and found himself at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It was run by a young muslim family, which Javier had not seen since entering China. The young men were very nice, and even though they couldn’t communicate, there was a feeling of friendliness, and happiness. Javier pointed to a picture of the soup he wanted. He decided that he would try the soup first, and if it was good, he would bring one for me. He watched the family prepare his soup. They cut up fresh meat and vegetables, and fried some hand-made flat bread that they served with the soup. When Javier started eating, one of the guys came over and gestured to him to put the bread in the soup. They both laughed. He somehow communicated that he wanted another soup to-go, and brought it back piping-hot. By then I had started to feel better, so I took a shower, and by the time Javier arrived, I was famished. The soup was absolutely delicious, and definitely one of my favorite meals in China.

Panda are so funny.

The next morning was a mess, thanks to me. While in Tibet, I had purchased a necklace. The night before, I had taken it off to take a shower. The night was kind of a blur, and the morning was rushed. We try to both do a sweep of the room before leaving just to make sure we have everything, but sometimes, we get rushed. We made it to the bus station and on the bus without much fuss. As we are getting ready to leave, I reach up to my neck, and there’s no necklace. I panicked. I searched my memory, and could not remember picking it up that morning. I remember where I took it off, and remembered grabbing other items off the counter to throw in my bag as we rushed out, but I knew I hadn’t picked up the necklace. The bus was literally about to pull out when I told Javier. Without hesitation, he said let’s get off and go back to the hotel. I quickly opened up my backpack, but it was stuffed with food and water, and there was no time. If it weren’t for Javier saying let’s go, I probably would have just sat there on the bus. We grabbed our stuff and walked off. Javier was gesturing to the driver to open the luggage compartment. The woman in charge of checking tickets asked what was wrong. I pulled out my phone and typed that I had forgotten something at the hotel. We retrieved our stuff, and the woman told us that we would need to purchase another ticket for 0900- it was now 0800. We decided that the best option for us was for me to run back by myself while Javier stayed with all the luggage. I ran to the hotel and told the receptionist that I had left a necklace and needed to get to the room. She called housekeeping, gave me access to the elevator and when I arrived to the floor, the housekeeper let me into the room. Someone had already been in to sweep the room, but we both started looking. We looked everywhere. No necklace. When I went back down, I asked the receptionist if anyone had found it, and she said no. She went back up with me and called the woman who swept the room as soon as we left. The woman said she hadn’t seen anything, and the receptionist and I both looked some more. It definitely wasn’t there. I felt sick. I had told Javier just the day before, how I was nervous about the necklace since I usually don’t take jewelry off once it’s on, so, like my first pair of earrings, I was afraid I would leave it somewhere. Well, whaddayaknow. I told the receptionist that I was hoping it somehow fell into my bag, or maybe I grabbed it while grabbing other things. I was just hoping for anything. By now, it was 0845, so I ran back to the station. Apparently, some of the attendants had been harassing Javier to get on the bus, and he tried to tell them he was waiting for me. He said at one point, he was making the silouhette of a woman with his hands. 🙂 When I finally came running around the corner hot and sweating, they understood and said, “Ah!” We grabbed our stuff, the same ticket lady told us gave us our new seats, Javier had to kick some young kids out of our seats, and we were on our way. I told him I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find the necklace. He told me that they didn’t charge him for the new tickets, and that alone made me happy. I told him I was hoping it would magically appear in my backpack, and he told me to pray because my prayers seem to work. Hahaha. He also said, just don’t look right now, because then you’ll be really sad if it’s not there. 🙂

Our ride to Jiuzhaigou was 9 hours and very entertaining. It felt like we stopped every hour, and whenever we did, the bus driver was the first one off, cigarette in mouth, and lighter to his lips. Everyone would get out and start buying whatever they could. There was a small group of older women sitting close to us who always came back with whatever food was being sold, and once returned wearing large hats with really big bows. 

Jiuzhaigou reserve entrance.

Somehow, Javier looked up the wrong hotel for directions. I can’t say I blame him. The names are so similar, it’s an easy mistake. So, when we arrived to the hotel, the receptionist looked confused, and found another associate to help. Once we showed them the confirmation, they pointed at the name of the hotel and then pointed down the street. We backtracked a bit and arrived at our hotel, which I have to admit was much nicer than the first, so that was a plus. Our first mission was to buy tickets for the following day. There was a self-service ticket counter close by, so we tried it out. There was no english option. There was a price chart on the wall, and we were able to figure out which was an adult ticket and the shuttle-bus ticket. We then went to the machine and matched the characters to purchase what we wanted. The prices added up, so we figured it was good enough. When we tried to pay however, we were unsuccessful. We tried again, still no luck. About this time, a young Chinese couple walked in. We asked if they spoke english, and they said, “A little.” We told them what we wanted, they navigated for us, and it turned out to be exactly what we had done earlier. Just for kicks, when we arrived at the payment part, we tried again, and still no luck. We chalked it up to our foreign card, and decided to walk to the entrance and try to buy. As we were walking, I suggested that maybe the couple could buy our tickets and we could pay them cash. When we turned around to go back, they were walking toward us. We gave our proposal, and they said they too were unsuccessful and were on their way to the park entrance. When we arrived at the ticket office, the doors were open, and there was a woman sitting behind the desk, but ticketing hours were over. She said she didn’t speak any english, so we typed out our questions, to which she very rudely said, “NO!” to each one. Dang, lady! I guess she knows a little bit of english after all. The area was really beautiful, so we walked around a bit, and slowly walked back to the hotel with the plan to stop somewhere for dinner. As we walked by the river, we noticed that at one point, there are two rivers that merge into one. The river that comes from inside the park was clear and turquoise. The river that comes from the city is light brown and opaque. For a while the merged river is half clear, half muddy, until it finally blends further down. It was really interesting to see and quite unique for us. 

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The town of Jiuzhaigou is located in a valley with the river running through. On one side, it is only mountain. At the bottom of the mountain is the road, then all of the hotels, shops and restaurants, behind this is the river, and then the other mountains. So, you can really only walk on one side of the street, and they have built small pedestrian-only roads throughout the town. One of these roads is located behind the hotels. Along this walkway is a long row of restaurants. They all serve the same things, more or less, and offer outdoor seating next to the river. We stopped at a restaurant solely for the woman standing outside offering us the menu. All of these places have people outside trying to lure you in, but there was something about her we really liked, and as it turned out, the food was pretty decent.

When we arrived back at the hotel, it was the moment of truth. I started taking everything out of my backpack. When I pulled out my sunglasses case, there tangled up in the strings of my little sunglass bag, was my necklace. Javier had stopped at the front desk to ask a question, and when he walked into the room, I showed him the necklace, and we did our happy dance. Needless to say, I was a very, very happy girl. 

Shuttle

We arrived early the next morning at the ticket office, and thankfully didn’t have to deal with the mean lady from the day before. Once inside, we hopped on the scenic bus and took it as far as it would go. From there, we started walking. There were many, many tourists when we first left the bus, but as we started walking, most of the tourists (who were all part of large Chinese tour groups) opted to take the buses all the way down instead of walking, so we found ourselves alone to enjoy the park in silence. We were a little disappointed in the walkways. We thought since it is a national park, there would be options to do a little hiking, or at least walk on trails. Instead, the government has built staircases and wooden walkways throughout and there are instructions to not leave the path. A bit of a bummer for us, but I guess it’s better for everyone.

Beautiful

We walked from lake to lake, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. The water was so incredibly clear, and varied from every shade of blue to green to yellow. It was a bit chilly that day, but when the air was still, the lakes were perfect mirrors for the sky, mountains and trees. We started at the Bamboo-Arrow lake, and made our way to the Panda lake, which gets its name from both the bottom looking like the spot on a panda, and the claim that pandas used to come and drink from the lake.

Colorful lake

My favorite was the colorful lake, which true to its name, was very colorful. Here we merged back with the masses. We walked by the Pearl Shoal and waterfall, and found ourselves at the Mirror lake which had a tree growing out of a tree. We decided to walk back to the entrance and then hop on the bus again to the other side of the “Y” to check out the rest of the park. However, with about 5km left to go, we were hungry and it was raining. There is a small Tibetan village in the park, so instead of going to the only restaurant  on the park map, we decided to try our luck in the village.

Village

We found a guy, or I guess he found us. He asked if we needed help and we told him we were hungry. He didn’t really understand so we gestured that we wanted to eat. He led us to his place, which just so happened to be a tiny restaurant. He had a small menu in Chinese, so Javier went back into the kitchen and pointed at the food we wanted to eat. Together, they discovered a communication system, and were able to settle on two dishes. In the end, we had two veg dishes, some rice, and water. The food was good, we were full, and the price was right. What more could we ask for? We decided to take the bus back up from there. As we passed by a few of the lakes, they were all dried up. I guess that’s why they are called, “Seasonal lakes.” I was beginning to think this last part was a waste of time, and Javier was nodding off to sleep when we arrived at Long Lake.

Long Lake

This was the highest point on the shuttle route. There, the mountains still had snow on them and people were dressing up in traditional Tibetan clothes. We took pictures and enjoyed the splendid views. At this point, we were tired. We had probably walked around 10 miles and were ready to go home. We found a bus, actually we had to transfer a few times to different buses, and made our way to the exit. I needed a pick-me-up, so we stopped and each had a boba milk tea. 

On our way home we stopped to find bus information. Our plan was to fly to Xi’an the following day, but didn’t have a mode of transportation to the airport. Actually, we didn’t even have a plane ticket yet! Ha! We stopped outside of what was supposed to be the bus station. There were no signs, and the only reason we thought we were possibly in the right place was because all of the people loitering about. We asked this woman where to buy bus tickets to the airport. She didn’t understand. She was there with her sister and we tried again, neither of them understood. So, I pulled out my phone and started typing. This exchange took us about half an hour, with one woman calling her friend who spoke english.

Friendly people. Communication skills.

In the end, we learned that this woman’s husband is a driver, and they were offering to drive us to the airport. The drive to the airport is around 1.5 hours, they would pick us up at our hotel, and the price was actually very reasonable. We told her (through typed conversation, of course) that we still needed to buy the ticket and asked if we could come back in 30 minutes to confirm. We walked to the hotel, booked the flight, went back to the lady, confirmed with her, met her husband, and agreed to meet him at noon at our hotel. We figured, if for some reason they don’t show, we could always hire a taxi. We went back to our friend’s place for dinner, bought some snacks for the next-day journey, and finally ended our long day. 

Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve.

After waking up and packing, we decided to grab an early lunch before the driver arrived. We found some young guy smoking outside his tiny restaurant and told him we wanted to eat. We pointed to a picture of soup, and he started cooking. Smoking one minute, cooking our food the next…wonderful. But we were able to watch him make everything, and it was absolutely delicious. So much so, that Javier took a picture of the soup and its name so that we could order it in the future. We made it back in time to grab our stuff and as we were dong our last sweep (yes, the necklace was on my neck) we received a phone call in Chinese which we figured meant our driver was there. Sure enough, there he was!

Jackie wanted the pandas.

There’s really not much else to say other than, the airport we flew out of is in the top 10 highest airports in the world! Oh, and I almost bought a stuffed animal that was a panda dressed up like a red panda. I don’t know why, but we both really got a kick out of it…I should have bought it… 🙂

To see more pictures of Chengdu and Jiuzhaigou, click HERE.