Day 24 - October 8

Hi to all. I hope this message finds you well. We are still in Chengdu. We had planned to leave yesterday and then today but haven't left yet. Yesterday we both decided we were too tired to go to the mountains. Today we got up and were ready to go when Tom's insides decided that we should stay another day. He says he feels OK....just his body isn't sure it should move very far. He is resting in the hotel now and hopefully will feel better. We don't know what it was that might have upset his stomach...I guess we just need to be more careful. I will get him some crackers and bananas after I am done here. Hopefully that will make him feel better.

So as I mentioned in my last message, we had a great flight here. Chengdu is a modern city - many people were here to shop over the National Holiday (it ended yesterday). The streets were crowded with people and the shops were full. We have enjoyed exploring different areas of the city. We first went to a Buddhist temple in the northern part of the city. We had lunch there at their restaurant - it was all vegetarian but there were many "meat" dishes on the menu - it was very good and not very expensive. We have also visited a couple of the parks and a Taoist monestary as well. The monestary is still very active - one of the largest in the area and is undergoing some renovation at this time - we were able to see the principle areas of the temple though. The monks were very different from the Buddhist monks - clothed in blue jacket and pant outfits rather than the orangish toga-like robes worn by the Buddhists. We have managed to master some of the bus routes in town which has saved us some money. We used public transport to go out to the Panda research station the day before yesterday. The research station was interesting - they have had a lot of success breading Giant Pandas in captivity here but still only 50% of the young survive to be adults. We arrived at feeding time so we were able to see many of the pandas munching on bamboo. They also have quite a few Red Pandas at the stations - they were more active and entertaining. We had a good visit here - the only thing that surprised us was their willingness to have people pay to have photos taken with either the Giant or Red Pandas......while I understand that they can use the money, it seemed strange that a research facility would want to expose the animals to so many people, especially given the survival rate of their animals.

Since Jesse Liu has left us, our meals have not been as elaborate...but she left us with a good list of things to order at restaurants and we have been trying some of the local specialties. Waiters and waitresses seem conscious of ensuring we do not order things that are too spicy for us. We have enjoyed hot pots and Husang Chicken. I even have Tom eating eggplant and tofu on occasion. They use a pepper here called a flower pepper which isn't that spicy necessarily but it makes your mouth a bit numb.....I guess that helps if you are eating a lot of peppers!

Of other impressions - generally people have been pretty nice - trying to help out when they can. We wish we could speak the language as I am sure we could learn so much more...just watching Jesse talk to the cab drivers as we traveled around with her made us wish we could understand more as she was able to learn a lot about the driver and where he was from and some of the interesting points about the area we were in - she would translate these things for us....now we are back to just trying to have people understand where we are trying to go. Oh well. We have somethings down and from time to time we find some folks that speak some English.

As we have mostly traveled in cities thus far - people seem to be pretty sophisticated and fairly happy. There are always signs of poverty around but the young people seem to be better off and very focused on spending money. No wonder China is growing so fast. There is a great disparity though from these city scenes and some of the rides we have had in the country side where the farmers life is still very hard and minimal.

The interesting thing in this city is the plethora of electric scooters...we should have these in Bermuda. They are completely quiet and run on a battery mounted on the back of the bike. They are everywhere - zipping in and out of traffic. I gather there is a Chinese company that makes these in the area....someone in Bermuda should find them and get the export license fast!

With all the traffic running by you still have signs of the old meeting the new everywhere - the fruit monger on his bicycle yelling out what he is selling going down the street next to the huge department store with a grocery store built into it. Small shops selling just noodles or just dumplings next to huge flashy new all purpose restaurants. Occassionally mule carts trundle along next to huge trucks and cars.

American brands are here - McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut are the franchises that I have seen and interestingly Buick cars seem to be the only American brand available in the areas we have been. One of the women we met worked for AIG - they seem to have a strong foothold here although it seems that competition is heating up in the insurance market.

So......we will see where things take us next. I hope that Tom will feel better and we can move on tomorrow or the next day. We have been fairly stationary in cities due to the national holiday over the last 10 days or so. It would be good to get into the country. We plan to go to the north into the mountains and maybe do a short horse trek but if that doesn't work then perhaps we will try the Gorges and the Hong Kong area along with Guilin. We have to go to Hong Kong by October 24 as our first Mainland visa will expire then. We will be able to return after that to explore Yunan province before heading to Vietnam.

I still have not found a place to put photos up on the web. I may try the hotel business center later today. If not I should be able to put some up while in Hong Kong. I would love to share them with you.

Keep in touch - I seem to be able to access both Earthlink and Yahoo fairly well now so we can be reached at either pbnolan1@yahoo.com or gilandpam@earthlink.net.

Cheers from Chengdu.

Pam