My first night was pretty eventful, from a nice lady in the airport bus that seems so worry and tried her best to make sure I got off the right bus stop, a sanlunche (pedicab) driver that kept talking as she didn’t notice my stupid face expression, a taxi driver that didn’t rip me off (the only taxi I took and thanks Mao he’s nice and honest), the gate watcher that didn’t let me got into the building where my couch was, a bunch of local girls that came into the rescue by making phone call to my host, and of course my super host that greeted me by her door when it’s almost midnight. The first days in Chengdu with my host-Lynn, were free of language barrier since I had my private translator :p to most of places I went to. I can easily say I met only nice people during my 4 days in Chengdu, not only friendly but some warm hearted ones.
My first encounter with Sichuan cuisine was around Wenshu Temple, old streets with cobbled stone that full of restaurants and souvenir shops. Pretty much everything there has peppercorn or sesame, or both. As a truly Indonesian, I can’t survive without spicy foods, but Sichuan’s peppercorn gives another gauge of spiciness, IT NUMBS the whole mouth, for hours! Hahaha…I’m kinda exaggerate it, but it does give numbness for a long time, and I don’t really like it. But luckily it’s my first days and my stomach still friendly to any kind of new foods.
Welcome to the world of peppercorn and sesame
The lil monsters
The one to cool it all down
On a breezy Sunday, I had a day trip out of Chengdu to Pingle Ancient Town with Lynn and another CS friend-Peter. After strolling around the ancient town, we headed to Jinji Valley, based on recommendation from a friend of Lynn’s friend that originally from Pingle. The problem is none of us wanted to pay 30 Yuan admission fee, so we had to sneak into the park. It’s bamboo forest at most part of the park, make it a very nice walk around till we need to pass a long suspension bridge. There’s another ticket check point at the bridge, and of course we couldn’t pass even though we tried to lie that we had thrown away our tickets cos we thought we wouldn’t need it again. Then a trash collector lady gave us the park brochures and told us to show the guard that we did purchased the tickets, that’s why we have the brochures that usually come along with the tickets, but it’s written ‘Please keep your ticket, another check point at the bridge’ Sh*t! At the end, all our lies didn’t work cos we took the wrong way after all. If we paid the tickets and followed the real track, we were supposed to cross the bridge from the other side of the valley, so everyone came from our side of valley must be illegal visitors, but guess what? We were not the only one that sneaked in, not long after came a group of people that made us burst in laugh cos we know they must have no tickets too.
Lips smacking noodle soup for 5Yuan only #bestvaluemeal
Peter & Lynn
On our way back to Pingle, we took a sanlunche that including a mini tour to the driver’s house. It was pretty big house with several rooms with its own door not connecting to each other, look more like hostel rooms and there’s a big Mao poster in the centre of one room. We were there for the toilet actually, but then the driver not only gave us an apple each, but also waved us goodbye after dropped us to the bus terminal. He didn’t talk much, but I can feel his sincere gesture, like a dad dropping his children that going out of town and I noticed he waited for quite a long time outside terminal’s main entrance to make sure we got our bus tickets. I smiled and nodded to thanks and let him know that we’re going to be just alright, he nodded and smiled back. I got teary eyes. Sometimes even the most simple kindness can warm your heart :’)
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