Country Bumpkins arrive in the big city

When we land around 12am in Chengdu, we head for the Sheraton and proceed to get clowned by the desk clerk due to our Guilin-esque questions. Do you have a night market? Do you rent bikes? He was basically like, due our advancement beyond being savages, we have been able to build structures called malls. I believe when we asked for bikes, he was like, oh motorbikes? And we were like, no. Just a bicycle please, har har. (adjust rice hat and pull on suspenders). He was like, no. No we don't not rent bicycles. And I think that you will find our prices are very expensive. (no - he did not go that far) When we checked out the next day, he left us his cell phone in case we wanted more info. How nice!

The night we landed, there was also a thick fog and stench in the air. Apparently, every year Chengdu burns rice because there is too much. We happened to come when they started it. It was like being trapped in a chimney with the top closed.



We went to the tech mall, which is 6 floors of privately-owned electronic counters put side by side. You haggle with several different ones until you get the price you want, although they also seem to be in some sort of cohoots. We only made it to 3 floors, with the 3rd floor only being for bathroom sakes. We left with headaches from the flourescent lights, bartering and using Simon as human collateral. Here's a video to give you an idea of what it's like. Try to find the human baby on the floor near the end of the video:



We went to the Panda conservatory. We had to go before 10am because they feed them in the morning and sleep for the rest of the day. Our bus was coming at 7:30am. We all woke up between 7:20 - 7:27am. I got a call from a sweet lady telling us that the bus was here. Woody, however, got a call from the driver yelling at him to get our a**es down there. Woody came into my room to light a fire under my butt, but his POV is of me slowly putting in my contacts to the tune of "Sunday Morning" by Velvet Underground. We missed the 7:30am bus, but the driver came back for us. Here's another teaser to the ultra-cute montage:



We also went to this tourist trap temple mall. It's built to look like an old temple, but it's only a couple years old. It's filled with several shops and local artisans. Woody and I became obsessed with these two magnets that make a cricket's-mating-call noise when you throw them into the air correctly. Throughout the day, Woody was developing new sounds that it could make. By the end of the night, Simon was about to have an aneurism.



More on Chengdu Temple and the city to come...