Hello everyone! It has been a while since I last posted. While my passion is travel, I do not always have time to travel, and sometimes I am too tired to write about it after.
This summer, I was asked not to leave my country of residence, as getting back in can be difficult. So I decided to make the most of it and travel around China. Since moving here, I am sad to say I usually spend my free time out of the country. With Covid…. Well, things are complicated.
I spent many hours planning my trip. I have a travel book of China, used Lonely Planet, Instagram posts, and other blogs to help plan my trip. During that planning process, I discovered a friend of mine, Fernanda, also wanted to see many of the same places. We teamed up for these travels. Since I moved to another city this summer, we had to do a lot of planning virtually. We reserved most of the hotels and trains for the trip and decided we would discuss everything when we were on the trains. We had also signed up for a tour of Gansu Province, which is part of the Silk Road, due to many of the places being more spread out, and finding transport can be difficult.
The first place we trained was Chongqing. It was only a 7ish hour train ride and our longest. What we did not know when going there is that the food is spicier than in Sichuan province. We had only ever heard about Sichuan food being spicy. So when we walked into a HotPot restaurant and started choking on the spice in the air…. We knew we were in trouble. We tried and failed to eat the spicy hot pot. While in Chongqing, we spent a day at the Dazu Rock Carvings. We took the metro line xxx to the end of the line then took a Didi (Chinese Uber) to the rock carvings. It was about an hour’s drive from the metro. We spent about an hour at the lower half of the park. The carvings were AMAZING! So impressive. That portion had a fabulous vegetarian restaurant attached to the Museum. So good. If you make it there, I highly recommend it. There was supposed to be a bus that takes you to the upper half of the park, but we had no luck finding it, nor did we see any buses. We Didi’d to the upper park. This was far less crowded, and some of the carvings are older, dating back to about 500 AD, maybe even earlier. I was so in awe by the carvings I forgot to look at how old they were. As we were leaving, a vendor selling souvenirs yelled “Guacamole!!” to try and get us to buy things from him. We had a chuckle at that since we were both not sure that was precisely what he said.
We also visited the Ancient City in Chongqing, which was neat. It was bustling. I do not believe it was a typical tourist day, so I recommend going on a weekday. If you go, once you leave the metro, I think it is exit B. You walk out and use the underground walking pass and walk up the hill toward the city. It was free to get in. We went on a hot day, so I recommend getting a small hand fan, either manual or electric. I wouldn’t spend too much time here as it can be confusing to get around lots of stairs and crowded.
We left Chongqing by train to go to Wulong to see the Fair Mountains. We reserved a beautiful hotel in the national park. On the train, they were very concerned about us being on the train. I think they were worried that we were on the wrong train. They checked my passport many times and even asked if I completed my quarantine when entering the country (which, of course, I did). They must not see a lot of foreigners there. It is a little challenging to get there. We arrived very late at night and stayed at a lovely hotel. I would stay there again. My one complaint is there is another hotel with a similar name further down the mountain, and we made the mistake of calling a didi to that one, not the one we had a reservation for. The morning breakfast was delicious. We took a shuttle down to the visitor center, where we stored our backpacks in lockers and took a bus to the 3 Archers. Had we know at the top the elevators down were one way, we would have stood in line for the elevator. Instead, we climbed down. We walked back and forth about three times because we wanted to see everything. A portion of a Transformers movie was filmed there, so there is a transformer sculpture in the valley. I highly recommend bringing snacks with you and water. There isn’t really a place for that in the valley. After you leave, there is a shuttle, you have to pay, but I can’t remember how much, to where the bus back to the visitor center picks up. There is food by the bus stop.
As we were leaving Wulong, we stopped at one of the restaurants across from the train station to have some noodles. They were some of the best noodles I have ever had!!! Oh, how I dream about those noodles. We then took the train to Chongqing and then transferred to a train for Chengdu.
We arrived at about 1 am and checked into our hostel. It was the hardest bed the entire trip! We had individual rooms, and we were over a bar. The people that ran the hostel were really nice and very helpful. The morning after we arrived, we had a rest day and did laundry. My room had wet clothes hanging everywhere. It reminded me of when I went to Europe for the first time. My mom, sister, and I had clothes hanging everywhere to dry when we did laundry. After the laundry was hung, we went to the TaiKoo Li shopping center and had a lovely lunch, and bought a few things that we needed. While there, we visited the Daci Temple. After finishing at the temple, we took the metro to the Wuhuo Shrine and walked around. It was also crowded for a Thursday. When we walked around the Shrine, we went to a massage place and had a very relaxing and cheap traditional massage. Typically with Chinese massages, they are kind of painful for people who are not used to them. This one was great.
The next day, at like 6 am, we went to the train station to Leshan. When we arrived, we found out the train was canceled and had to Didi to a different train station to get to Leshan. At Leshan, we Didi’d to the park. What we didn’t realize until we got there is that there are two parts to the park. We went to the Big Buddha; you know the famous one. Then climbed down to the base and took pictures of the top. Now what I didn’t tell you is I have been having knee issues. I fell in the US and injured it, then re-injured it about three months after returning to China. That morning I fell when leaving the hostel, so my knee was not pleased with all of the stairs. After we climbed back up to the top of the mountain, we looked for the park’s second part. It was about 90-150 RMB to enter the second part. While trying to find the entrance, I slipped on some moss and fell AGAIN! So I sat that part out, but I know I missed out on a lot. While waiting for my friend to return, I ran out of data on my phone. When you run out of data, nothing on your phone works. So I had to ask some kind soul to hotspot me to tell my friend that I ran out of data and out wait for them to return and then sent them my location. I don’t know why I didn’t think to top up my data while on the hot spot, but I didn’t top it up until my friend returned.
I was able to walk through part of the sculptures in the second part as the exit was through it. DO NOT MISS THIS PART OF THE PARK. It had so many buddhas! I wish my knee weren’t hurting so I could have done it. We took a didi back to the train station back to Chengdu to do a Lost Plate food tour. Highly recommend the company for a food tour if you ever make it to China. On our last day in Chengdu, we went to the Pandas. I recommend getting there early, and bring food. There aren’t a lot of vegetarian options in the Research Base. I will leave off here. I will finish our travels in part 2. Also please check out my Instagram to see some pictures from the trip.