We do not bode well in nature

For part two of the Chengdu Temple, we bumped into an adorable magician who gave us a free show and taught Simon 2 new magic tricks that he bought. None of the tricks are particularly Chinese, but the Chinese people were wowed!



That evening, I rented a bike and went around the surrounding area while they napped. Chengdu has a population of 10 million people and is definitely more spread out than Hong Kong, NY and of course Guilin. The subways haven't been working, and being country bumpkins, it felt like we hadn't gone further than a 1 mile radius of our hotel. When I went out, it was around quitting time for workers. People young and old were at the park exercising. There is a industrial version of the eliptical that is popular at all the parks.



Also, I found it odd that there will be shanty towns put up next to a swank hotel.



We have spent the past 2 days up in the mountains. We hadn't had much nature exploration before two days ago and have been used to taking taxis in Chengdu since the subways are down. Needless to say, Le Shan Mountain kicked our butts. The elderly were smiling and passing by us as we are literally weezing, sitting down for breaks, and rummaging through our bags for any sort of sustenance. Once again, bread has been my savior. To make matters worse, I bought a useless map to lead us to the giant buddha. It was basically a cartoon map that could be found on an episode Dora the Explorer. I think the biggest morale killer was when we went up a steep set of stairs to sight see and came down them only to find that we had to go back up them in order to get to the buddha. This is us at the end of it all going down said steps.



When we came down from the mountain, we went over to Emei mountain to eat and spend the night. Our waiter literally poached us as we were walking through the park. We were walking towards his restaurant, and he appeared out of nowhere. We gave him an American name - Lloyd - because that is what his Chinese name sounded like. Lloyd became our tour guide/accomdations booker/hot springs escort/questionable potential pimp. While we were eating, he had a girl in a traditional Chinese red dress play from a pipa.



(please note: this is not the actual girl)

He later asked Simon if he thought she was pretty....suspect. However, he told us about the hot springs, which was amazing. Floating on your back, looking at the stars in a hot water lazy river. It also spilled down into about 7 different pools and there were private pools tucked away amongst greenery. Amazing! There were also signs for a massage where fish nibble at you for half an hour. Wah?! Pics to come.

Now we are off to Beijing!