Travel to Chengdu (Sichuan)
- Arrival in Chengdu (Sichuan) : there are frequent busses leaving from the airport that will for 10 Yuan take you to the centre of Chengdu. - Budget hotels in Chengdu : hotel Traffic in the centre of Chengdu is the most complete budget hotel that I have ever seen :
* the hotel has a shop, 10 travel agents specialized in tours and travel to Tibet, hairdresser, massage clinic, washing machine, bicycle rental (15 Yuan for renting a bike for 1 day), internet cafe (12 Yuan for 1 hour of internet connection), restaurant, ...
* for 30 Yuan you get a bed in an overprized, small, not really clean, dark, double room without air conditioning.
* for 40 Yuan you get a bed in a spacious, spotlessly clean and new triple room with silent new air con and television; super luxurious. The decision is easy !
* don't forget that breakfast is included in the price . The hotel reception will probably forget to let you know...
* I met travelers who apparently stayed in the Sam Backpackers hotel, the price there should apparently also be 40 Yuan, but with a lot less included in the price.
- Seeing Pandas in Chengdu : Chengdu is a centre for knowledge of the Panda. you can see a couple of badly kept pandas in the zoo, but it's a lot more rewarding to go to the Giant Panda reserve. By bicycle it's a bout 2 hours riding. You must make sure that you get there quite early since the pandas here have a day cycle of eating, sleeping and playing. The playing takes place outside in the Panda park and must be great to watch. The problem is that the playing makes up for a very small part of the day, about 30 minutes. The rest of the day the pandas are locked up inside a dark cage where they eat and sleep. According to the museum of the Panda park the pandas play between 10:30 and 11, but if you read in the tourist information brochures it's supposed to happen at 8:30. It is not so easy to find your way around in the Giant Panda reserve park, don't forget to go to the nursery where the baby pandas are kept (for 100 Yuan your photo will be taken together with a baby panda). - Internet cafes in Chengdu : since the internet cafe in the Traffic hotel is quite expensive (12 Yuan for 1 hour of surfing on the internet) you are better off going to the student neighbourhood situated behind the West China Medical University where there are 5 internet cafes right next to each other charging only 2 Yuan for 1 hour of surfing on the internet. These internet cafes are open 24 hours a day.
- Sichuan Hot Pot : a little warning of this probably the spiciest dish that you will come across in the whole of China. The Sichuan province is known for it's spicy food and the Hot Pot is the spiciest of the spicy. After having enjoyed a big portion of it; vegetables and meat on sticks bathing in the oil of red hot chili peppers I had a serious pain in my liver that lasted for four days! My horse trek in Songpan became extremely painful since every bump made me bend double from the pain in my liver.
- Travel from Chengdu to Tibet : just about all travel agencies (about 10) that organize tours and travel to Tibet are situated on the domain of the traffic Hotel, and they all have the same price. The cheapest option costs 1750 Yuan for transport by taxi to the Chengdu airport, a flight ticket from Chengdu to Lhasa and an entry permit to Tibet. Rumours said that a bus to Tibet would cost as much as 2000 Yuan ! Probably an attempt from the Chinese government to stop overland traveling to Tibet. In the other direction though from Tibet you can apparently catch a bus from Lhasa to Chengdu for 700 Yuan.
- Travel with public transport from Chengdu to Songpan : According to the travel guidebooks the bus leaving at 7:00 from Ximen situated in north Chengdu is the only way of getting to Songpan. I found that this is not true, in fact there is one bus leaving at 8:00 and another one at 14:30 from the bus station right next to the Traffic Hotel that stop in Songpan as a part of the daily route... The tickets for the bus costs 75 Yuan. The road between Chengdu and Songpan is very busy, curvy and narrow and surely not recommendable by bicycle. It takes about 10 hours to get from Chengdu to Songpan, so you are best off taking the morning bus.
- Travel by public transport from Chengdu to Chongqing : luxury busses are continuously departing from Chengdu East bus station (catch bus 49 that stops outside the Traffic Hotel to get there) to Chongqing for 111 Yuan. Thanks to the modern motorway the bus from Chengdu to Chonggqing is three times as fast as the train.
