Haoge Business Hotel Chengdu

... us from Yichang to Guilin. We end up having to wait and hope we can get a ticket on arrival in Yichang.
The rest of the day was spent wondering around Wuhou temple and the Tibetan quarter and ended in a lovely turkish restaurant which took us 2 hours to find!

THURSDAY 10TH SEPT.

An amazing day to Leshan - the largest budda in the world carved 1,000 years ago out of a cliff at the confluence of two rivers. We grabbed our 2 hour public ...

... by trying Satomi’s SIM card in my phone that the reason my SIM card wasn’t working was because I needed a new SIM card. So yeah, I managed to ask the clerk for a SIM card, with help from Nicole and Payton, and then picked out a number from the list. The lady called the company to get it, but the number was already taken – I don’t really understand how that works – and so told them to just bring over a few cards so I could choose ...

... kept trying to talk to me, though I mostly couldn’t understand. That definitely made me feel too tall – I barely fit on the bed. We only had half an hour while Anne had an hour, so after we were done we wandered through the nearby market for a while. It’s probably about three or four blocks from the school.

Once Anne was done, we went to a place that was called something along the lines of “Home Style Food” and ordered tea fried ...

... I would learn that Jon and James decided to g out again and drink more, come back, and break the hair drier in the communal bathroom (at least, Jon did). Bang went out 100yuan deposit for breakages and damages. But, to be fair to Jon, he gave me back every penny...jiao...whatever! Our second day was more eventful. We ended up in the Tibetan quarters of the city and it looked amazing. Until we learned that photocopies of our visas weren't acceptable there ...

... instant camera and the HD camcorder. Lisa was beaming from the experience and it was well worth the 50 RMB cost. It is good to know that this money went to breeding these endangered species, rather than enriching a private commercial enterprise. There were many more buildings at the Panda Breeding Center, but it was the hottest day so far in Chengdu and we had already seen more than we had hoped to. The tour groups would've spent half their day at these ...

... or understand the TV here (and we want to spend as little time as possible in front of computers). Before we came to China we naively underestimated the size of many of the towns; Chengdu is huge, so when we hear that it may get flooded we can only assume the media have generalised and actually it's only some parts of the city. There's not much to say about pandas other than "cute, cute, cute" but I'll try and say something that'll convey just how fun our visit was ...

... e à dormir et se goinfrer de bambous (ils ont d'ailleurs une technique assez impressionnante pour enlever la peau). Ils adoptent même des postures de beauf devant leur télé avec leur pack de bierre et leur pizza. Cela dit, ils sont vraiment très migmons. On a pu aussi voir leur petit frêre : le panda rouge, qui ressemble un peu à un raton laveur, mais n'est pas beaucoup plus actif que son ainé.

... highway. Although the drizzle came on, the bus coasted along nicely. China, due to its mega fast development, is a hub to all sorts of businesses from furniture to tires. The numerous bland billboards were ample testimony of its rush towards modernity. The other side to the coin were the farmers tilling the flat arable land; spacious acreage that needs to be preserved at all costs ...