Day 10 - Flying to Chengdu

Chengdu was the third city we visited on this trip. It is the 5th largest city in China with population in excess of 10 million. It's one of the gateway cities in and out of Lhasa. Our stay here was short with a singular purpose - to see some PANDA!

After some more shopping at Barkhor Street in Lhasa in the morning, we flied into Chengdu in the late afternoon. The flight was delayed for a couple of hours which happened to almost all the flight for that day going out of Lhasa. We waited at the small cafe by the gate in Lhasa airport. The cafe only served instant noodle and bottled drinks, as no knife was allowed inside beyond the security.

Sitting next to us was a young man who served in Chinese Army stationed in Tibet. He offered me an interesting view of the Tibet and suggested to visit Shigatse(日喀則) and Lingzhi(灵芝) which are at lower altitude. The scenery is of forests whereas the area around Lhasa was all meadow.



As a local of Chengdu, he suggested to have the famous Sichuan spicy hot pot at ShiZiLo(狮子楼) on Chin-Tai Road (秦台). We took his advise and it did not disappoint! The spicy soup base (I think you could tell which side is the spicy one) was flavorful and S-P-I-C-Y, much better than the spicy hot pot restaurants here in San Francisco. The other soup base was mushroom, which was upgrade over the standard broth. We ordered fish, ham, and vegetable. Fish was quite pricy at 100RMB+ per order, ham was about 30RMB, and vegetable was about 10-15RMB. The total bill came out to be about 500RMB for the four of us. This place has several branches, but appears to be quite famous. Our taxi driver had no problem finding this one.

We stayed in Chengdu for a night only at Sichuan Hotel(四川宾馆). The hotel was located at city center next to many big department stores. I could see a Louis Vuitton store across the hotel. The taxi ride was about 45 minutes from the airport to the hotel, costing about 60RMB. The taxi drivers here drives like the popular video game Crazy Taxi a few years back - no rule on the road, and signals were for reference only.

We booked the hotel from elong.com at the rate of 400RMB per room, breakfast included. The breakfast was alright, saved us trouble from looking for one. The interior of the room was slightly dated and we were assigned a smoking room. But overall it was a decent deal consider the location.

Chengdu is a lot more modern than I thought it would be. It is a metropolitan with all the buildings and stores one would expect to find in other major Asian cities like Shanghai. There were branded stores and international department stores where we stayed. Yes, there was a Starbucks in Seibu Department store next to our hotel, and the barista spoke English.