Chengdu with Pandas and food that tastes like meat but isnt meat.

Chengdu is famous for its Giant Panda Breeding Centre (you have all heard of it - haven't you?) and also for its food.

I wandered around Chengdu, trying to find a book store with no success. Chengdu is like an western city, BMW drivers trying to run you down, everyone shopping... I did forget for a bit that I was in China. (Well not really as there were loads of Chinese who kept staring at me but hopefully you get what I mean.)

I tried the Chinese rival to Starbucks, called Goodwood Cafe - blew Starbucks out of the water, amazing service and great coffee!

Kate and Joe both arrived at Sims in the evening. Joe had flown from London -> Shanghai -> Chengdu.. was pretty tired but we persuaded him that it was his best interest to not go to bed and come and get some food. Now some of you will know Kate and others wont, but Kate is a really good cook and loves her food. (Not in that way that people say someone is fat..). So we went for the Chengdu local speciality (which name escapes my mind - something like Ma Po Fo). Its basically tofu in a chilli sauce, I didnt rate it to be honest and preferred the other dishes including twice cooked pork with veg.

We went back to Sims and K/J got an early night as Joe was knackered.

Chengdu is also one of the points to fly to Lhasa, Tibet from and we needed to get our trip sorted out. Depending on who you talked to you could either get a permit or you couldnt.. after a bit of scouting out by Kate. We found that we could get a permit from Mix's Guesthouse for 2000 yuan (about 160 pounds, afterwards we found that if you went to Sams Guesthouse you could get one for 1900 yuan.).

The permit would take 2 days to sort out and we were going to fly in the morning (7:30) which meant a 5:30 start.. ouch!

After getting the permits sorted out we wandered to the park and drank tea for the afternoon.
On our way back we had heard about this Buddist Restaurant in the Wuzhou Temple. We ordered a load of food and when it arrived I realised that Roast Duck wasnt really Roast Duck but tofu with natural flavours... it was amazing all the food tasted really good and looked good (see the pics).

The next day we had an early start to go and see the Pandas, basically you have to get there early as they are fed at about 9:30. They are lazy gits and by the time they have eaten their food they go to sleep!
We got a bus out there and paid the 30 yuan entrance fee.. the pandas were, well they were pretty big and not that energetic. It was good to see but we didnt spend too much time there. We walked around all the areas, including the much more lively Red Pandas and went back to Chengdu.

That night we went out for Hotpot with friends who I had met the night before. I have to say everyone rants about hot pot.. but it was a pain in the arse. Basically you get given a hot pot divided into two sections one with a chilli sauce and another with fish heads and spices. You buy bits of meat, veg etc.. and then cook them yourself in the boiling sauces. The chilli sauce was too hot and I kept over cooking everything...

I ended staying up late and watching this really funny B movie called Spiders.. it was bad but good and although I was getting up at 5:00 to go to Tibet, I had to watch it through. Basically the american military are experimenting with deadly mutanted spiders in space, needless to say one of them escapes and its left for a journalist and her two sidekicks to save the day.... brillant!

Woke up a bit tired but excited about the trip to Tibet, we picked up Jonhan from another hostel and caught the plane to Lhasa.....