Hello again! Ready for part 2?? Cool, so am I!
So we left off at the Research Base in Chengdu, where we saw the pandas. Fernanda and I were training there to stay at an apartment-style hotel. However, Booking.com did not state that it was for Chinese Nationals only, so the hotel canceled our reservation. We ended up staying at a Holiday Inn near the Xi’an city wall. After our accommodations were settled, we took our train to Xi’an. When we arrived, we took the metro to our hotel.
The next day we took it easy, did some laundry, and ate at the 3 Sisters Dumpling restaurant. These dumplings are some of the BEST dumplings I have ever had. They have vegetarian ones as well. They were so good. We ate there a few times. That evening we walked to the Muslim district of Xi’an and walked around one of the mosques. Be both some scarfs and walked around the food market next to the mosque. We walked down some alleys and eventually found a BBQ restaurant Fernanda was looking for. She had some meat skewers, and then we went to another restaurant for Mexican-style food, which was not the best food I’ve had.
In the morning, I went to see the Terracotta Warriors. Fernanda had been on a previous visit, so she decided to sleep in and see other sites in the city. I took the metro out there. It was about 2 hours by metro and then a short (15 min) Didi ride. I recommend reserving your ticket online. You just need your passport to enter the compound. It is about a 10-minute walk where you enter through a second gate when you enter. The first building you see is the hall with the most famous warriors. There are 2 other buildings with other warriors and views. It was crowded. I recommend going on a non-holiday and a weekday. I went on a Monday, and it was still very busy. Lots of people will need to be patient when you try to get a good picture. When you leave this section, there is a second part of the park that you can go to, and I recommend going because it shows you how large this place is. You follow the exit signs, and near the entrance, you will find a bus stop. That bus will take you to the second section, which is part of your ticket. Pay 15 RMB for the shuttle at the next site. There are 4 different places to see things. In this area, you will see bronze sculptures.
After I finished at the Terracotta Warriors, I took a Didi to the metro and then the metro into the city. I met Fernanda to see the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. However, as I was on the metro in a deluge happened. My shoes were soaked, my clothes were soaked. It was raining so hard that my umbrella (which I was on my 3rd umbrella I kept losing/breaking them) was dripping inside. We ended up meeting for lunch in a nearby mall, waiting for the rain to subside. After it lifted, we walked around the pagoda, and the temple then went to our hotel. We had planned to see the Longmen Grottoes, but there was a lot of flooding. So the following day, we went to the Daming Palace National Heritage Park. This was on massive grounds. We rented a bike cart and road it around the grounds for about 30 minutes. The Palace was not what I was expecting. It was being excavated, and they had a miniature of what the city would look like. To be honest, you had to pay for this area, and I do not think it was worth it. The free area was the best part of the park. After we were done walking around the park, we went to a local Biang-Biang Noodle restaurant, and they are some of my favorite style of noodles. We then walked around part of the Xi’an city wall and packed to get ready to leave for Lanzhou.
In Lanzhou, the train station was dark and just eerie. It reminded me of a scene from a zombie movie. It was challenging to get a Didi. It took about 30 minutes to get one finally. We had a lazy day where we went to get a covid test and a massage. We had the hotel help us arrange a drive to see the Bing-Ling Si Temple. It was about an hour-long drive to a reservoir, where we then took a speed boat to the temple. This boat ride was about another hour. It was well worth it, though. Bing-Ling Temple is not as touristy as it is difficult to get to. It takes about an hour to see everything. You can pay extra to see the carvings above the Buddha’s head, but when we were there, it was closed, so we didn’t get to see them. Another friend of mine had gone the summer before, and she was able to go in and said it was terrific. It was about 100 RMB to get into that area. Then we returned to our hotel. We did laundry and just rested. We had been traveling for about a month, and we needed the rest. We then left and trained to Xining in Qinghai province to meet up with our tour.
On our first day of the tour, we went to a monastery called Ta’er. It was where Yellow Buddhism was founded. Yellow Buddhism is the same type of Buddhism the Dali Lama practices. I could not take many pictures as it was an active monastery. So we were able to see monks in training. This monastery also has famous yak butter carvings. They are stunning. The next day, we saw Qinghai lake, which is a slightly salty lake. It took several hours to get there via bus. It was a very Chinese tourist destination. By that I mean, there are many props to take pictures with that don’t necessarily belong there, like a yellow VW bus. We had lunch at a local restaurant. This was my first experience with a communal squat toilet where there is no barrier between the squat toilets. The western ladies in my tour group were waiting for me to finish in the one toilet when an older local woman walked right on in flung to curtain door open for everyone to see me pee. It was awkward, but this would happen the first of 2 times.
After we arrived in Ulan for the night, near Chaka Lake, a very salty lake, they estimated that this lake could produce enough salt for all of China and its territories for 100 years before it will start to see a reduction of salt. We rented these red silicone boots to walk around in the lake. You had to be careful as there were holes in the salt that you could fall in. They had salt carvings and salted yak ice cream. Which, while good, is something I would only have once. Other people on the tour loved it! After the lake, we drove 6 hours back to Xining to take the train to Zhangye, in Gansu province. On our way to the train station, I had my second experience with communal toilets. This was worse than the first. Think outhouse with squat toilets with little walls no higher than your knee. It was also just a slap of cement. No toilet paper. No place to wash your hands. After I used the toilet, I discovered that there was a proper sit toilet in a gas station about 200 meters away.
In Zhangye, we visited Matti’s grotto. There are 2 parts, the new and older part. The older grottoes have 7 floors and are very narrow. I could only make it to floor 3 as there was a backlog of people. You had to take turns going up and down, and the passageways were only wide enough for 1 person. There were parts where I had to crawl up the stairs. After that, we went to China’s Grand Canyon. I had difficulties breaking, and my knee still hurt from falling, so I did not hike to the bottom. But I walked along the rim of the canyon. It was hot and dry—lots of mules and goats everywhere. I even saw a few wild camels! The next day we went to rainbow mountain and took pictures. It was not quite what I was expecting, still beautiful and hot! We then drove to Jiayuguan for the evening.
In Jiayuguan, we saw the westernmost gate of the Great Wall, and we even left what used to be China through the gate. After that, we got covid tests as we needed negative covid results before checking into our hotel in Dunhuang. Because of this, we could not go to the Snow Mountains like we were supposed to. During all of this, my home province announced that if you are out traveling, to come back. We decided to finish our tour and return to the province.
In Dunhuang, on our first day there, we went to the famous Mango Caves, a UNESCO world heritage site. You have to go on a tour and take you to different caves to avoid disturbing the humidity in the caves, which can cause the paint to deteriorate. We spent the day at the sand dunes and did other fun activities. We rode camels, ATVs, and sleds down the dunes. We even watched the sunset. We smelled like a camel. If you ever get the chance to ride a camel, I highly recommend washing your clothes BEFORE you put them in with the rest of your clothes, including your dirty clothes. We spent an extra day in Dunhuang taking covid tests for our return flight. It was challenging to find the testing location as it had moved from the day prior. Some of our group had flights earlier than ours. When we arrived in Guangzhou, we took a covid test at the airport then returned home.