By this Author: nzhamsta

Tuesday 25 July
A travel day from Yangshuo to Emei Shan.

Firstly train number D1762 from what is called "Yangshuo Station", even though it is about 25 km from the city. This was a very scenic ride with an uncountable number of bridges, viaducts and tunnels. It appears that when they decided the route, they simply got out a map and drew a straight line with a ruler and said "Build this."

Five and half hours later we arrived in Leshan and changed to the C6312 for the short hop to Emei. A bit of an issue as we had to buy an extension to our tickets and their system did not like my passport. Got it sorted eventually.

Our train D1762 from Yangshuo.

The Holiday Inn was comfortable and right opposite the main entrance to the mountain.

Wednesday 26 July
After an early start we caught a bus up the mountain.
It rained hard all day and was not much fun, hence why there are not many pictures.

We drove for about 90 minutes up and around until we got to the cable car. From the top station, we joined the crowds on the very wet trudge up the stairs, past many shops selling plastic ponchos, overshoes and umbrellas.

The summit, called The Golden Summit, has a very large golden termple on the top. I was led to believe there would be superb views, although given we were in the clouds, we couldn't see a thing. It was so wet even the monkeys had not bothered to come out and steal food. We dd not see a single one in the entire time we were on the mountain.

In all, the day was a disappointment. Can't do much about the weather though. I can imagine on a fine day it would have heaving with tourists.

We were down the mountain and back to the hotel by 2pm. Couldn't do much there as the rain had not let up.

Village on the way up the mountain.

The Golden Summit.

The Golden Summit.

The Golden Summit.

The Golden Summit.

The view from the hotel.

Thursday 27 July
The train from Emei Shan to Chengdu was on time.

A random river and city.

The hotel was modern but it was built in an old style. From there we had a large lunch.

The gate at the end of the street.

Our hotel in Chengdu.

The local area.

Lunch.

After the large lunch we went for a walk along towards Tianfu Square. This has a large statue of Chairman Mao and was crawling with security. I found out later it was being set up for a large sporting event being held in Chengdu.

Tianfu square in Chengdu.

Coffee and a wander round a large modern shopping mall. Not much fun so I went back to the hotel, leaving Hung and her niece and grand niece to finish the shopping.

Friday 28 July
Yet another early start to get out to the panda breeding place. It was very busy at 7:45 am, and hot and sweaty as well.

Whilst we were in the queue, we saw a sign in English concerning tickets. You are supposed to buy them on line and link them to your passport / ID card so that the Chinese Government knows you visted the panda place on a certain day.

Given we had not done that, we asked where we could buy tickets.
1. The security guard removed us from the queue and sent us to a desk.
2. The desk sent us to the ticket scanning booth.
3. The supervisor at the ticket scanning booth took us inside the park and into the admininstration office. Here we presented the only two forms of ID we had, a NZ driver's licence and a Hong Kong ID card. These caused no end of confusion and they could not work out how to link the tickets to them. Eventually they gave up and waved us inside without a ticket.

The place was heaving and they had to have barriers up on the pathway so that they could manage the number of people all wanting to take the perfect picture for the socials (probably not Instagram). A group would be let in, given five, ten minutes to take their pictures, and then chased out along the path.

We saw a few panda over the heads of the crowds.
The one bright spot was a cool, peaceful cafe around the corner by the red panda enclosure.

Panda

Panda.

The hoards trying to take the perfect picture.

At the panda place.

The rest of the day was spent holed up at the hotel as it was so hot. I went for a walk to the shop for an ice cream and it was unbearable.

Dinner at the hotel. It was ok but a bit overpriced for what it was.

Saturday 29 July

Another early start to get to the airport. This is the new Chengdu airport, called Tianfu International (TFU). As usual we were too early but allowed time for breakfast and coffee.

Hung flew back to Shanghai and I flew to Hong Kong, connecting to my flight back to Auckland. The HKG flight left two hours late due to traffic issues, but arrived only one hour late, a bit odd.