Chongqing

We had one night in Chongqing, so we spent an action packed day exploring this enormous city right on the Yangtze. It seemed like a pretty cool city with lots going on. Although it was, to quote Willis McDonnell, "hotter than hell!"

There was a fun cable car ride across the river with excellent views of the city. We quickly found an air conditioned beer bar, with Goose Island IPA on tap! They also had dice, so we got into our favourite dice game Greedy. We stayed at a slightly weird hostel, which seemed more like an AirBNB in a small flat in a high rise tower, but it was interesting to see how young urban Chinese people live.

Bamboo Sea

Deep in Southwest Sichuan, there is a national park specialising in bamboo. There is a veritable 120 km2 sea of it. Apparently in the spring it grows so quickly (up to a metre in 24 hours) you can hear popping noises.

We stayed inside the park, and spent a day exploring. A 20 minute cable car took us up to a high point, where there was an eight story tower that took us higher. The views were pretty epic, the many shades of green bamboo do look like a sea.

We strolled through the forest to another cable car that took us across a canyon to the far side of the park. There we found an hour long walkway on the side of the cliff with temples, and bas relief carvings of ancient battles and a stunning view if the countryside. In any other country, this would be a top attraction in itself. In China, it doesn't even get a mention as one if the top attractions in the park!

Lizhuang

We made our way from Chengdu to Yibin, our first sight of the mighty Yangtze, then got another bus downriver to Lizhuang. Finding the town, then our accommodation was a challenge due to communication and technological difficulties. One if the hotels wouldn't take us although obviously empty, they walked us to a better hotel on the river that was half the price. We were suspicious of the price due to fancy decor and stunning views. This ended up being one of our best hotels in China costing only 160 Yuan, or $32.

Lizhuang is a heritage town, they have tastefully kept buildings as they were 100 years ago while allowing shops and restaurants to continue. This town was where many of China's cultural artifacts were stored during Japanese invasion in WWII.

We spent a morning strolling around the ancient alleyways and courtyards. We visited the Zhang family hall where many artifacts were stored and there is now a museum.

The town itself has a very relaxed vibe. The locals dance on the waterfront each night, and the food is delicious. We had a meal of bairou, thin sliced pork with spicy dip (a local specialty). We ordered other stuff by just pointing at the menu, ending up with fried peanuts and chillis, and a whole fish.

Leshan and Emei Shan

We visited two very popular, and therefore very crowded, Chinese attractions.

The grand Buddha of Leshan is 71 metres high, and was carved out of a cliffside 1200 years ago. It is huge and a sight to behold, especially if you have time and energy to fight the crowds to the base (which we didn't). On the site are various other temples and caves. One temple we visited had 1000 lifelike arhat statues (buddhist angels).

Emei shan is an hour from Leshan, and is a 3099m high mountain, and another very holy site for Chinese buddhists. It took 5 hours of buses, cable cars, and shuffling along in queues to reach the top (plus $150). It was worth it though for the views and to stand in front of the massive 10 faced golden statue at the top.

Huanglong

Huanglong is another epic national park in the Sichuan region, which we visited on a long day trip from Jiuzhaigou. This part of the region has a strong Tibetan influence. Their temples, yaks, yurts and prayer flags dot the countryside.

The national park is accessed by cable car, which takes you up to 3500m, and you walk back down to the entrance. Enough altitude to give you a light head and laboured breathing. There are even oxygen bars where you can buy canisters of oxygen to suck on.

The park is home to a large range of plants and animals, including apparently wild pandas. There are also Tibetan buddhist/taoist temples dating back to the Ming Dynasty.

The park also has a collection of thousands of cascading multi-coloured pools and waterfalls. It is quite a sight... possibly the most incredible place we have visited on our travels. Though our Western-ness was quite a spectacle here too, there weren't as many cameras in our faces and much smaller crowds.

Jiuzhaigou

From Chengdu we caught a 12 hour bus up to the north of Sichuan (China is massive). The drive was stunning. We travelled through massive gorges and countless tunnels, some over 5km long. We saw lots of Tibetan villages (including prayer flags and gorgeous white yaks), and stopped in the ancient walled city of Songpan.

We made it to Juizhaigou in the evening. It is a tourist town spread kilometres along a road with countless hotels and restaurants. We found ours after a 45 min hike up and down the strip with our backpacks on. We went out for dinner at a bbq skewer joint and had delicious seasoned sticks of meat and veges al fresco.

We spent a day at the Juizhaigou national park, a stunning place despite the hoardes of Chinese tourists. The park is famous for its huge peaks, massive waterfalls, and clear blue lakes. We walked down the western arm of the park, after catching buses to the top at 3000m. The peaks towered above and must be 6000m+.

The morning was testing, as the sheer number of people made it difficult to move along paths. Plus Chinese families like setting up picnics in the middle of stairways for some reason. We saw only a couple other westerners, and we seemed to be as big a spectacle as anything in the park. People were taking photos of us any chance they could. We still managed to find a few quiet corners of the park. The evening was much better as people started leaving.

We finished the day exhausted, having hiked over 15km at altitude. We hit up the skewer joint again as it was so good the night before.

We found out that the day after we left, a 7 magnitude earthquake struck this town on 8 August, killing 20 and injuring hundreds. Lucky for us we had already left, but our thoughts go out to those affected by the quake.

Chengdu

We flew from Hanoi up to Chengdu in the Sichuan province of China, arriving after 2am due to China's notoriously delayed flight network.

Chengdu is a city of over 14 million people. It doesn't feel that busy, and the CBD is clean and orderly. All motorcycles are electric, many people ride bikes, and there is a very good subway system.

We spent a day wandering, quickly discovering that no one speaks any English. Google translate is invaluable, and we can use it to communicate pretty easily- there is also a function that translates Chinese text using the camera. Luckily we downloaded the offline version, as all Google apps and websites are blocked in China, along with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.

We managed to order a delicious lunch through good luck and by pointing at things. Sichuan food is some of the best in China. Lots of spices, including Sichuan chillies that numb the mouth (in a good way).

We visited a giant panda breeding and research centre, and saw 30-odd pandas, including red pandas. There was a range from large adults, to cubs, to newborns. They are pretty cute creatures. They seemed pretty happy munching on bamboo, taking baths, and sleeping in ridiculous positions. We also had our first taste of enormous Chinese crowds- something we would become very familiar with.

Finally, we did a cooking class making local specialties kung pao chicken and twice cooked pork, which were delicious and fun to make.