so i landed about 2am today from an eight-day family vacation to Chengdu. it's the first trip out with some extended family and also one on a full-guided tour. my family generally prefers relying on guidebooks and doing everything on our own; backpacking, hostel-stays and tight schedules. also my first plane trip with my nephews and nieces. so quite a few 'firsts'.
unofficially, i'm (was and well, generally am anyway) the official babysitter of my sister's kids. majority of my nights i shared the room with two under-10 boys so you can imagine! haha but don't get me wrong, while i get sooooo irritated by their bad habits, idiosyncrasies (and kids being kids), i love them to bits :) well, my parents sometimes think i mother them too much :(
SO ANYWAY.
majority of the days out were basically using Chengdu as a central point to travel out (which was by bus and seriously felt like forever e.g. six hours travelling to and fro) including to see giant pandas, some bamboo art, climb up some mountain(s), see a huge carved buddha, revisited skiing and dinosaur fossils. the last few days saw my family detach ourselves from the group to actually stay in Chengdu; to sight see other bits of the city and to taste the local street food.
so visually, here's some little highlights! (Only some, cos other places, i just didn't see the greater benefit of fumbling with the camera at single digit temperatures)
China's giant pandas; eats and sleeps.
Leshan Giant Buddha, apparently the largest stone Buddha sculpture in the world. Required a boatride out to see the massive thing.
halfway through the walk up Emeishan, apparently one of the four Buddhist mountains
Timothy's scribbings on the rapidly condensing windows of the bus up Emeishan. Long journey to the base of the mountain before we started like one-hour trek up?
Mountain range seen from about 3200m above sea-level, seen after a climb and cable car ride from the base of Xiling Ski Resort
Yup they have it there too, even translated in Chinese. This one was found in a Clark Quayish-like revamped courtyards, Wide and Narrow Alleys.
Similar to the concept of Wide and Narrow Alleys, Jinli Ancient Street also had courtyards and refurbished shophouses. However we felt that it was better conserved and made less commercial. These were the door handles on the main gate.
Along some walkway, apparently many people have hung up wishes for the year.
Cute elderly couple seen strolling in Jinli Ancient Street.
Okay the first few days, the meals were catered for by cooks of restaurants and all that, like ten-course style. No pictures were taken. From here would be just some tastes we had when we left the tour group to explore Chengdu on our own.
That's a quail in wu xiang wei (Five Spices flavour), which really is like a tough chicken. About S$1.
Some noodle dishes and yummy wantons in a small local chan chan ting. About S$6.
Heh. We
had to try this, no matter how terrible it sounded. fei zhang fen (literally, Fat Intestines Noodles) which really looked like drain water soup and grey noodles from a greasy grimy local food store. It DEFINITELY tasted better than it looks. About S$6.
There close up, that's one bit of a fei zhang.
Felt like we missed eating beef, so we ate at a beef soup restaurant. Vegetables, beef chunks, beef internals soup, preserved beef slices, beef stomach soup, beef intestine bits and beef ball soup. About S$14.
Yes we eat quite a bit of meat and heh, we like to try. One thing we didn't really dive into was their delicacy of Rabbit Head. I didn't take a picture.
Okay that's it, I really have a lot of work to do now: Christmas presents for tomorrow, the meals and also the seriously piling packed CCA things to settle. And omg, to check my results. Wish me alot of luck please.
Merry Christmas all! :)
Labels: pictures, travel
China's giant pandas; eats and sleeps.
Leshan Giant Buddha, apparently the largest stone Buddha sculpture in the world. Required a boatride out to see the massive thing.
halfway through the walk up Emeishan, apparently one of the four Buddhist mountains
Timothy's scribbings on the rapidly condensing windows of the bus up Emeishan. Long journey to the base of the mountain before we started like one-hour trek up?
Mountain range seen from about 3200m above sea-level, seen after a climb and cable car ride from the base of Xiling Ski Resort
Yup they have it there too, even translated in Chinese. This one was found in a Clark Quayish-like revamped courtyards, Wide and Narrow Alleys.
Similar to the concept of Wide and Narrow Alleys, Jinli Ancient Street also had courtyards and refurbished shophouses. However we felt that it was better conserved and made less commercial. These were the door handles on the main gate.
Along some walkway, apparently many people have hung up wishes for the year.
Cute elderly couple seen strolling in Jinli Ancient Street.
That's a quail in wu xiang wei (Five Spices flavour), which really is like a tough chicken. About S$1.
Some noodle dishes and yummy wantons in a small local chan chan ting. About S$6.
Heh. We had to try this, no matter how terrible it sounded. fei zhang fen (literally, Fat Intestines Noodles) which really looked like drain water soup and grey noodles from a greasy grimy local food store. It DEFINITELY tasted better than it looks. About S$6.
There close up, that's one bit of a fei zhang.
Felt like we missed eating beef, so we ate at a beef soup restaurant. Vegetables, beef chunks, beef internals soup, preserved beef slices, beef stomach soup, beef intestine bits and beef ball soup. About S$14.