Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou to Songpan

Let me start by taking back a little of what I said on the last post. Since leaving Beijing, we have run into some very nice people. In the "smaller" city of Chendu (9.1 million) we had a man intoduce himself in the middle of the road as an English speaker (we obviously looked lost). He proceeded to read the piece of paper that we had printed on in Kanji "Please take us to the massage center" (Only 15 Yuan/hour - It was no Scheiman but then again it was less than $2.00 to have someone touch my body for an hour:) for the taxi driver. The taxi driver didn't know of any in the area but the guy took us by the hand and brought us to one within walking distance. After he set us up there, he gave us his business card and told us to call us if we needed any more help. Most everyone outside of Beijing has been friendly so I liken it to a tourist perhaps going to New Yory City. Not to say that New Yorkers aren't nice, it's just that everyone seems to move a little faster in the big cities. I think that Tokyo is one of those rare exceptions.

Since leaving Xian (18 hour overnight sleeper train),

we went to Chengdu and visited the Panda Research Center.

and quickly headed north again to Jiuzhaigou (12 hour overnight bus) which is China's version of Yosemite. The scenery was beautiful (crystal clear blue lakes and waterfalls) and we caught it as the leaves were changing.

From there, we headed south (3 hours by bus) to Songpan where we did a 2 day horse trekking trip. We saw it all as far as weather was concerned (light snow on day 1 and clear blue skies on day 2). The scenery was great there and back but Erin and I agree that the time in between could have been better spent (it was freezing - our water bottles were frozen solid when we woke up the next morning).


We head to another national park tomorrow and will have some pictures up of that next time. Here are some pictures of the Great Wall and Xian that we didn't get up last time and some odds and ends.

FMP