Sept 13 22:57pm Chengdu Holiday Inn Express
Took the 11:20am flight from Hangzhou to Chengdu. I slept almost the entire flight – Gao really admire the fact that I could sleep so well on the plane. I have trained my body to feel sleepy every time I get on the plane so that I can get enough rest on the way. Air China has better and better service now: the flight attendants came to say hello to me especially because of my Gold member status and took me to the VIP van to the terminal:)
Its cool and gloomy – typical Chengdu weather. There is not much sunshine in this city year around, which is why most girls have really nice skin. Chengdu local culture is extremely strong: I noticed that most people – taxi drivers, sales people in stores and restaurants, even hotel staff, dont speak mandarin but only the local dialect. Luckily I could adapt really fast and trying to speak with them in the local dialect. Although not very standard, we could communicate quite well:)
Traffic is absolutely terrible, although its Sunday. It took us almost 45 min to get to the hotel so we knew that we couldnt get the car maintenance done today. Jie booked the hotel for us, honestly this Holiday Inn Express is a little too fancy for me for now. I am longing for the local hostel where I can meet a lot of interesting people, both local and travelers.
At around 1900, finally three travel partners got together, for the first time!!!
Chengdu is a nice leisure city, a little bit like Hangzhou, but even more relaxed. However, the only thing is that its quite dirty. I started to miss the clean streets in Hangzhou… I guess its going to take some time…
Dinner was at a tiny little local restaurant – honestly speaking it cannot be called as restaurant – Chuan Chuan Shao very typical local street food. (pictures to come…)Vegetables and meat on a small bamboo stick and you pick the sticks, cook them in hot oil, then dip them into the sauce. It was GOOD!! We had 612 sticks total, goodness!!! Really had fun, from the food and also the conversation with the ladies at the restaurant – I tried to chat with them in local dialect and they really liked it:)
First day has been great and tomorrow early morning, we will start driving towards Kangding. Stay tuned…