Chendu and szechuan province – more than pandas.

Our 16 hour train journey turned into a 34ish hour journey thanks to heavy rain and flood. It’s difficult to gather the extent of the flooding (worst since 1998) but we were reassured by the TV reports that “Everything is fine, thanks to the police and military. Nothing to worry about, everything is fine”. I can say it took out 5 seperate sections of track, the road, and caused at least 100 deaths in the neigbouring prvince.

Hot pot to Hot bot in no time! (-Greg 2010)
Up to this point our group was still adventurous with our food and at the question “you like spicy food?!” was followed with a resounding “Yes” by most of our group. I myself had enjoyed a spicy dish with seeds that numbed your lips to the point of quivering just hours before. Sesuan famous for it’s spicy food (and spicy women) lived up to it’s name when after a delicious hot pot – a kind of fondue style oil & chilly bath into which you dunk vegetables – we all were worried about the bus trip and no one wanted an encore of Johnny cash’s porcelain hits (It burns burns burns...)

Panda Sanctuary

Chengdu, Sichuan is also the resting place of the pandas. The panda reserve/breeding center here is world famous for it’s black and white attractions. They are also very keen on sex, panda porn, and methods of artificial breeding. Maybe this is why 'pandaring' is one of the legally correct names for pimping. It’s almost impossible not to turn into a Japanese tourist at the mere sight of the giant panda - cameras materialise and you need to take at leas 300 pictures of each panda, even afterward you feel guilty for each panda picture you want to delete... so i now have hundreds of panda photos.

Mt. Emai – Monkey Temple of Doom!
Staying at a Buddhist monastery and climbing mountains. The bus ride was like a rollercoaster ride full of uhhh’s and ahhhh’s as our crazy (but skilled) bus driver overtook everything on scary downhill slalom course. Like everything made in china the temple and monuments as well as concrete wall carvings were constructed about 6 years ago giving it a bit of a movie set feel. However, the clouds rolling in over, around, and under us made for a dramatic backdrop. All the time we were warned about the vicious man devouring monkeys – so, armed with sticks, but told not to hit the moneys even if they charge, for fear of being overwhelmed by the monkey hordes – we waded into the monkey retreat. I think they were having a day off, or had eaten enough tourists, as they just sat around looking cute and nibbling seeds. China is a very big place and i have no doubt there are untouched wilds, but there are also a lot of tourist attractions built predominately for the Chinese tourists.