Pandas in Chengdu

In Chengdu I stayed at FlipFlop Hostel, which is part of two other hostels and has just opened it’s doors three month ago. I arrived on Saturday afternoon and got invited to play Mahjong. As I already knew how to play it, they said I should teach the others to get a discount on my following nights. So in the evening we gathered a few people to play Mahjong. However I had to find out that the rules vary in each province. It was played slightly different, nevertheless it was fun. Even the Chinese didn’t always know how to play and some rules seemed to change each round. This randomness is part of most Chinese games – probably because we don’t fully understand them.

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After a good game of Mahjong we were hungry. We went for some very spicy Sichuan noodles with lots of chilis. Chengdu is in the Sichuan province, which is famous for it’s spicy food. The Sichuan pepper is also known in the West. Chengdu is also famous for having the most beautiful girls. The Chinese have even guidebooks describing the different types of girls and where best to meet them – kind of wired and funny at the same time. Of course we had to see if all the Chinese and the guidebook were right.

A French and Spanish guy, who work near Chengdu showed us the clubs and bars. First we went to the far away Truecolors club. It is a fancy club, had lots of people but no one was dancing. Instead there were Westerners performing some dances to Titanic Songs and others. It was unusual, at least for us. We left to Jellyfish and Miami club, which were much better and spent the rest of the night there.

In Chengdu it is a must to see the pandas. I joined a Belgium couple to see the pandas in the nearby Zoo. Unfortunately the panda have the opposite behaviour of me and get up very early in the morning. 5:30am we got up and took the local bus to go to the Zoo. We arrived around 8am just in time to watch the pandas eat bamboo and play. Learning about the pandas was difficult because the light was switched off in the Museum so we had to walk through with our flash lights. Clearly they didn’t want us to see this part.

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The city itself is just like any other city in China, there is a People’s Park, some Monastries, construction work underway and many citizens.

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On one of the free walking tours we went to the fish market were they sell snakes, turtles, frogs, fish,…

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People dancing in the street..

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One comment on “Pandas in Chengdu
  1. elisabeth says:

    so cute! Bring one home!