Went to the Panda research centre yesterday, pandas were adorable though seeing them splayed out from heat exhaustion in their cages was really disturbing. They do have an outside enclosure to play around in but the weather was just too hot for them. The pictures of them in their cages look rather awful, especially as they are just lying there, with no energy to move. The museum was interesting though, they showed a video going through the panda stages of dating, mating and breeding. These poor pandas have very little going for them in their love lives, not only are they too picky but they also only have the energy to have sex once a year. The likelihood of them naturally conceiving is so slim that they face extinction. This is where the scientists come in with these huge machines to conduct paternal DNA testing and artificial insemination...poor pandas. Interesting day yesterday though.
Have met a few backpackers that have been good to hang out with. Met this American guy yesterday who went on the same minibus to the panda research centre, we all ended up having Sichuan hotpot for dinner after roaming Chengdu city for an hour looking for a local restaurant. Finally found a great one after asking a few locals, all you can eat for 29yuan! The hot pot was so spicy I had tears in my eyes and sweat running down my face. It was sooo good!
Went on a day trip to Leshan to visit the Big Buddha today. For those Muni JETs out there, the only reason we went to see the buddha was because of the text in the ni-nen-sei text book about visiting Leshan. We thought, what the heck, we've been teaching the passage, we should see what the big deal was about. Took 1.5 hours on the bus to get there and we paid 70 yuan to basically look at other tourists. There were sooo many chinese tour groups there, do these ppl not work on a tuesday?! I decided to climb this look-out area that had a sign that said, "don't climb', found the gate unlocked so I persuaded Fiona to check it out. We got spooked since the stairwells up to the top of the turret were so dark. Sneaked back out the gate and met these 2 british backpackers outside, so all 4 of us went all the way to the top of the turret, ended up being nothing there. However we inadvertently started a trend bc as we came down, all these other chinese tourists were climbing up the narrow stairs to see what we were checking out. That was pretty funny. Nothing else was all that interesting, the Big Buddha was ... big. We
checked it out from all angles, at the head, from the river on a speedboat, from the riverside. It was an interesting day, not particularly exciting.
Oh we have booked our flights into Tibet for Saturday! So off to Tibet. We will probably end up back in Japan earlier than planned given we have cut out so much of our China trip. Tomorrow we are going hiking at one of the mountains an hour away. Will be there for 2 days, staying overnight in a monastery. Looking forward to being alone with nature, it should be awesome.
Aug 10, 10.26pm - Chengdu city.
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