China - outskirts escapade ep 2

Continued on from Guilin, we had somewhat recovered after 3 days; the landlady managed to get us a car transfer at 5.00 am to go down to the foot of the mountain. Turns out there was a rough muddy road that is just wide enough to fit a jeep about 5 minutes’ walk from her B&B. The journey down was bumpy and took about half an hour for ¥150. We took the 1.5 hours flight to Chengdu; located in the Sichuan province, it is the native region of the adorable pandas.

Chengdu

Have you ever heard of Sichuan peppers? They are these eye watering spicy peppers that numbs your tongue. First couple of bites you wouldn’t taste its potency. Eat several of them and your ass would be on fire. Literally EVERYTHING in Chengdu is RED coloured and truly spicy. Probably not the kind of food one looks for after being sick for 4 days, but we were up for the challenge!

Not very helpful to our already slightly upset tummies

We stayed in this panda theme studio. It's a very spacious, clean, comfortable studio located near the People's Park. When we went for a wander to the park, the 'marriage market' was on! Parents came here to find a suitable partner for their child with their information and what they're after written on a piece of paper. They walked around chatting to other parents to gauge whether their children will be a good match.

It was very entertaining, somehow felt like tinder meets farmers' market, with the parents being the farmers

Typical 'Profile Pictures' from the dating market - surprisingly not too many photos attached to the profiles

Tony, our landlord was extremely helpful. He booked our bus tickets to see the pandas and our onwards tickets to Jiuzhaigou. He also recommended the Sichuan face changing opera and booked the tickets for us, all in Chinese for local prices.

The actors could change to different masks in nano seconds!

He also pointed out all the attractions and the main highlight of Sichuan, its hotpot.

These type of hotpot restaurants are EVERYWHERE.  That red soup was crazy spicy

Jinli Fair

We went to a smaller version of Shanghai's Old Town with a market full of traditional Chinese houses selling trinkets, some food stalls and numerous stores selling all sort of chili (dried, fresh, in oil, cooked, etc etc)!

Would you like some meat with your chilies? 

Bifengxia

Breeding ground for the endangered pandas, Bifengxia was a real trek from Chengdu. First we had to catch a 2 hour bus ride to Ya'an city, then another half an hour bus to Bifengxia - I am not quite sure it was worth the trip since you can see pandas everywhere in the zoo in China, though this place has a lot more. We saw approximately 10 pandas, and they were so cute!!

Mama panda

Panda cubs - they're adorable!!

We caught the 10 minutes shuttle bus inside the park to see the pandas, then we saw a sign saying that we could walk down to the exit. When we saw the map, it didn't look that far - there was no notification of how long or far the walk would be instead of catching the bus back up. After walking for about 2 hours, I started getting worried. Where the hell is the exit?!?! We sped up our leisurely walk upon realising the map was NOT TO SCALE and at last after 3.5 hours we reached the entrance 😑

At least the scenery were beautiful along the 15 km walk!

More beautiful scenery to come in Jiuzhaigou!