Chengdu smog: a shock after the clear mountains!While travelling we discovered from other travellers that the visa we had got for China at the (Boten)Laos-China (Mohan) border was not extendible and that we had to return to the border we had entered. Thinking about it now, we were asked how long we wanted and where we would exit China from, maybe we should have made different choices. We really thought it was like all the other visas that are offered. The visa was unusual as it was on two sheets of paper and was in both our names so we have no China stamps in our passport at all!
We wanted to do a circular route around Yunnan but would have run out of time so John went online and booked a flight from Lijiang to Chengdu.
In Chengdu we stayed at a hostel that was advertised in the Lijiang hostel we had stayed at. It was an interesting place to stay to catch up with the travel news to Tibet. We had thought about going there too but rumour has it that some Americans burnt the Tibetan flag in protest that the Chinese want to build a highway up the Himalayas to carry the Olympic torch. The result of this is that travellers cannot travel overland into Tibet from China and must take an expensive flight! We could look at going there at a later date.
Chengdu has a Panda Breeding Centre and on a drizzly smoggy day we set off to see the Giant Panda and the Red Panda. There are 1000 panda worldwide!
We spent 3 nights in Chengdu and visited the Wenshu Temple and ate at the vegetarian restaurant there.
Lil is in a teahouse drinking green tea. It's like a bottomless cup as it gets refilled from a thermos of hot water. The locals meet at the tea houses-drink tea, play mah jong, eat snacks and catch up on the gossip. A nice place to relax!
