Over 60 Beds in a Car

Day Twenty Three (Oct. 2nd Fri.): Today we went to the train station to go on a overnight train ride to Xi’an. The train left at 9:20 p.m. and got there the next day at 12:00 p.m. The train had triple bunk beds (three on top on each other), which looked like they could collapse at any moment. We both got middle bunks, which I think are the best, because people aren’t sitting on your bed. On the top bunks, I think you could smell the people smoking in-between the cars more than if you were in the middle or bottom bunks.

Biggest Buddha in the World, National Day, and Fireworks!

Day Twenty Two (Thurs Oct.1st ): Today is National Day, the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, and I forgot to type that all of China has been getting ready for this before we even got here and that it’s going to be celebrated for a whole week! Today we woke up early to go to the Grand Buddha in Leshan. There were six people including mom and me. There was a Japanese man who was tall and spoke good English, a middle-aged couple (a lightly chubby, bald man with a middle-aged woman with brown hair), and a middle-aged man from Turkey, bald at the top with a rim of brown hair. A small van picked us up at 9:00 a.m. and took us on a 2 hour ride to the “Grand Buddha.” The driver told all of us to meet back there at 3:00 p.m. After the ride, we walked to the entrance and bought two tickets and walked to the top of a cliff. Along the way, there were smaller buddhas and other things carved out of the stone. After we climbed to the top, we had to wait in line because it is apparently a popular tourist site. The “Grand Buddha” is about 71 meters high, and his big toe is about 8.5 meters long! It was started by a monk in 713 AD and took 90 years to build! When we got past the line, we started to descend down to his feet. After a bit, I started to feel sick in my stomach, so we did a quick walkthrough, which was pretty hard considering on the stairs down we were smashed because of all the people trying to get to the bottom. On the way up, we stopped for something to drink and to go to the bathroom. After that I felt a lot better. Then after we exited the “Grand Buddha,” mom wanted to go to the boat tour that went by the “Buddha,” so we walked along a street where people were trying to get us to let them taxi you on one of those three-wheeled bicycles with the seats on the back. Mom asked where the boat tour was, but, of course, the guy spoke Chinese, but appeared to know what we were trying to say. So mom let him take us for a ways but after he could not figure out where is was and started to ask people where it was, mom got tired of it and seeing as we had a time limit, we got off, paid him, and left. We tried to talk to some college-looking kids. A fruit seller said that it was 500 meters down in the opposite direction. After we got on the boat ride for the “Grand Buddha,” the boat sat in front of it for 40 minutes. Then we walked back to the van… Fireworks! After it got dark, the National Day Fireworks started. Uh, darn, tall buildings are blocking most of the view… oh well, from what I can see, the 4th of July fireworks in NYC are better…

Sick

Day Sixteen through Day Twenty One: During these days, mom and I were sick. Thankfully, we were at a hostel with a tv and dvd player, and you could rent dvd’s to play (mostly in English).

Panda Tour *-.-* <- sleeping panda

Day Fifteen: Today is the PANDAS!!! Today we got up at 7:30ish to go on a panda tour at the breeding center.Many people crammed into three small vans, and our driver took us on a wild ride (of course, it’s always a wild ride in China’s cities). When we got there, the tour guide obviously didn’t speak English, and all he did was take us to each of the sites. First we saw the adult pandas, then we saw the red pandas, then we saw the baby pandas, and then guess what!?!?!?!?!? I held a year-old panda for a few minutes (and boy, was it heavy)!!!!!!!!!And they took some pictures and a video! After all that, the tour guide took us to a 15-minute movie about what the people at the breeding center do, a mini museum of the pandas, and a gift store at the end (where mom bought me a panda t-shirt). After that we piled back into the van and the driver drove us back to the hostel. Our hostel this time had its own restaurant built into it and two garden yards which look a lot like a forest with little trails going through it (and at one point in time, we saw the owner’s cat on the roof).

To Chengdu

Day Fourteen: Flew to Chengdu.

The Brown River

Day Thirteen: Today we slept in and went to the bookstore, and mom bought some books for herself. After that we walked to a river browner than the Hudson and searched high and low for a tour boat. We had to follow signs, and crossed a stream of water by walking carefully along a very narrow gangway, having to use our hands to keep our balance, and figure out which building it was… After the long time spent looking for the boat tour, we finally bought two tickets for a 40 minute ride up and down the brown river. To me, it was just one-half really fancy skyscrapers and one-half normal buildings. After the boat tour, we started to walk back to the hostel. Along the way we window shopped and ate dinner + ice cream.

The Chinese Tour + The Water Town

Day Twelve: We had to get up early to go to a tour, but only when we got in the van did mom say that she now thought it was a Chinese tour, so here we were being moved into the bus to take a Chinese tour to the water town (the Chinese Venice). So were stuck on the bus. I read “Eldest” with a Chinese tour guide talking in my ears till HONK went the bus and it drove off the road into a gas station. Then the bus driver and the tour guide got out of the bus to see the truck we hit, although I couldn’t see anything wrong. We all had to switch buses and get on with another tour group (Chinese too), and it’s back to reading. After we got there and were given something to clip on your shirt, they took our picture for some odd reason. Time to start. After walking through some streets to a palace (back in-the-day) and taking pictures, we were getting pretty bored. Apparently the Chinese people thought the tour guide was boring too, for several of them were chatting on cell phones and with each other. After a while, they took us and showed us some famous pork (so said a young college man) who we discovered in our tour. After awhile they took us to a restaurant (where we ordered some of that pork) and were free to shop. At 3:15 p.m., we met back at the bus, and I read all the way back. When we got back it was 6:30ish, so we ate dinner and retired for the day. I also discovered I couldn’t get on webkinz on this little netbook because the screen is so small it will not load the whole page, so I loaded a little more than ½ of the page and that’s it.

Church and Pies

Day Eleven: Today is Sunday so we got up earlyish to go to church. After figuring out how to use the subway, we got to the stop we wanted. We emerged from the subway station and looked around for “a tall blue building” so mom said. After walking around for awhile, mom pointed out the only skyscraper that looked to be close to us from a mile around. We walked about 15 minutes to it, and mom said, “We’re looking for two escalators going into it.” After getting closer, we peered in the door, and I saw a tank with alligators. I wrinkled my nose as we walked on. We kept walking and two escalators came out of the side of the building and what looked like a car dealership on the other side of the escalators. We went up the escalator and found our church. After church we were invited to “dinner” (although it was going to be at 3:00 p.m.).Mom said no, because it was noon, and mom said she was hungry and wanted to eat something soon (although I wanted to go). When we went to McDonalds we discovered that they fry their pies and don’t have apple pies but chocolate and apple pies, taro root pies, mango pies (which taste like warm mango sorbet), and pineapple pies.

Finding the Bookstore

Day Ten: I woke up to a blinding light shining in my eyes by the Chinese attendant asking for the headphones to the little tv at the end of each bed. Plus it was over an hour before getting to Shanghai. After we finally got there, we rolled our luggage out and found a cab. I found myself holding my breath as our cab driver started a cigarette. When we got to the street the hostel was on, we saw that the whole street had lights and decorations although I never knew what they were for… Our room ended up better than our last one. It was like a Holiday Inn with a rooftop, but not as great a room. Then we walked out in search of a “Bird Market” which ended in something that looked more like a “Cricket, Turtle, and Fish Market.” After that we walked back to the hostel, and mom looked up a foreign bookstore. We started off in search of the bookstore. We walked and we walked and tried to talk to people until we came to a foreign woman who spoke English and told us that we had walked the opposite direction and into the “Antique Market.” So, off we went. We had planned this for later, but, oh well, let’s shop! Then we went back to the hostel. Mom booked a tour or two, and then we went to find the bookstore again. Yay! We found the bookstore. Mom bought herself a new book, and I got “Brisingr” (because they had a small paperback). Then we came back to the hostel and slept.

poor little babies...

Our street

A Train Ride

Day Nine: Sleepy day. We ate dumplings for lunch and started to pack for an overnight train ride to Shanghai. After saying good-bye to the cat that never ran away when I came close to her, plus the black bird that tried to bite your fingers off, the brown and gold bird that did back flips and all the little fish, we were off to the train station to catch a train. We waited for an hour or so to board and then got on. The room we were in had four beds, two were the seats and two were bunk beds over the seat-beds. Mom took the bottom bed, I got the top bed, and two business-looking men came in and took the other two beds. One of them spoke a little English, and the
other was not as friendly. They turned out the lights an hour later. Sorry, no pictures.

Birds Nest and The Water Cube

Day Eight: Sleepy Day! Today is short and simple. We went out to lunch and then left the hostel at 7:30 P.M. for the Olympic sites. When we got out of the subway, we saw the Bird’s Nest on the right side, and the Water cube on the left side, but yuck! “What is all this foggy yicky pollution stuff, making it hard to take pictures? What are all these fairly young trees doing growing around the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest to block parts of them from our sight, and why did they plant them there in the first place?” Those were my first thoughts coming out of the subway station. Some people were running around selling fake Olympic medals, small kites with other little kites attached to them, and such. When we walked up close and the foggy stuff thinned out a bit, and we got past the trees, it was a rather nice site. After awhile, we discovered that the Water Cube is actually made of water! Looking up close, you could see that the bubbles were baggy and wrinkled, and odd. Looking closely at the Bird’s Nest, you could see stairs in all the iron beams. Then the people selling stuff started flying long strings of kites in the night air.

The Great Wall Hike(Jinshanling to Simatai)

Day Seven: The Great Wall Hike. Today we got up at 7:00 a.m. and went to the Great Wall of China! The hike we went on was an average of 10 km. long. It took a bus ride, a taxi ride, a subway ride, and a cable car ride, just to get there! The cable car took forever. It was so slooooooooowwwwwwwwwww, I munched on some bread on the cable car. After we finally got to the “Great Wall” we started to walk and climb, up and down. A bunch of Chinese women told us they were farmers with no work. Two of them joined us through the hardest parts and tried to sell us souvenirs at the half way point. Mom gave them each 50 yuan for the help. The Great Wall is really gorgeous, but the only wildlife I saw were some bugs. The Great Wall is like most of the pictures I’ve seen to be honest, and really tough to climb at some places. As we walked, a tour group came from behind and passed us. Then a river split the Great Wall with a little swaying bridge connecting the ends. After crossing the bridge, we climbed a little bit more up the Great Wall, then we got to do a zipline over the river and had some ice cream. The zipline was interesting. They clipped us together and sent us down over the river. Down, down we went trying to hold all of our things together. Then because we crossed the river, we had to take a quick boat ride back over to the other side (with part of the tour group). After that it was back to a bus ride, a taxi ride, and a subway ride back to our hostel. And that was mostly what we did that day. Who, after all that walking, would want to do more?

The name of a dead man...

lots of these little bugs.

Do you see what I see? A Grasshopper, eating in the sun.....

back the way we came.

the taxi driver.