I arrive into Chengdu Airport and am pleasantly surprised by how modern and efficient it is. A couple of tips before you land into China for the 1st time:
make sure you have Alipay & WeChat setup before you arrive - it’ll remove a lot of hassles and stress. Baidu Maps is useful but it’s only in Chinese so I didn’t bother.
there’s a couple of forms you’ll need to fill at the airport. Use a kiosk for this as I found getting on airport wifi tricky; again, mostly in Chinese.
As I’m driving from the airport to my accommodation, the scale of China dawns on me. Countless high-rise residential buildings as far as the eye can see. Think Sydney + Melbourne skyline, combined, x50. And Chengdu is a Tier 2 city – smaller than Beijing & Shanghai. The scale is… mind-boggling.
Day 1 was walking around downtown, a little shopping, and seeing the city. They’re clearly not used to seeing someone of Sri Lankan descent – lots of staring and I have been asked for a couple of selfies – fun.
The people here have been very friendly and have tried hard to overcome the language barrier – translation apps are your friend with lots of laughs along the way. Getting my hair cut started a little scary due to the language barrier but turned into a lot of laughs and fun - see photo of me & the posse from Star Barbers. (image 10)
Day 2 was a visit to the Panda resort/conservation area. I met a nice Korean tourist at my accommodation so we decided to do a little sightseeing together and I am grateful for Sohee’s company. We were fortunate to see lots of pandas despite the big crowds on a Monday and the bears are as silly and cute as I had imagined. There’s a beautiful traditional area in Chengdu where the Wenshu Monastery is with a market in the afternoon and plenty of cafes and stores selling artefacts. The evening was a trip to Jiuyan Bridge; a beautiful traditional looking bridge. Afterwards we happened upon an excellent restaurant with amazing ‘street food’ followed by a jazz bar where a local had a pet bird - he allowed it to sit on my shoulder – we made friends. (image 11)
Unfortunately, smoking is allowed indoors in China, so many bars and restaurants have this which make it difficult for those of us not accustomed to it anymore.
Day 3 is about finding a dumpling house so, I’m looking forward to that. Unfortunately, the fog is bad which makes it hard for me to take photos of the skyline.
Side Notes:
Baidu maps tells you how long until the colour light changes
There’s separate bicycle/scooter lanes so they don’t interfere with cars
