Tibet. A country of extremes. Extreme altitude, extreme devotion, extreme political situations. On Friday, April 27th we left our little city of Kushiro and headed off on a grand adventure to the high plateau that makes up the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet. We spent our first night in Chengdu, the capitol city of the Sichuan province of China. We were required to stay one evening in China in order to pick up our Tibet travel permits. After 5 hours on the plane from Tokyo to Chengdu, we disembarked at 11 pm, intent on finding a taxi to our hotel. We were not expecting the mass of yelling, proffering taxi drivers trying to convince us to take their car. My only goal was to make sure we got into a registered vehicle, and that stipulation meant we ended up spending far too much on our transport. 200RMB for a 30 minute trip is steep, especially for China. After a fun filled taxi ride (they only got better) we arrived at our hotel and checked in with the little problem, even though no one spoke a word of English and we had quickly exhausted our knowledge of Chinese (nehow and shey shey can only go so far). We crashed into our rock hard mattress and awoke slightly refreshed but ready to face the day, pick up our Tibetan permit and hopefully have a chance to see the world's largest panda reserve and research center before our flight to Lhasa at 1:00 pm. We ventured downstairs, found a tasty breakfast of spicy Sichuan cuisine and attempted to explain our need to pick up our permit using pictures and a translation site. After a harried call to our tour organizer when they still couldn't find our paperwork, we had it in hand, buried in a stack of papers at the front desk. The stress of getting our permit out of the way, we were able to secure a taxi ride to the panda reserve and back to the airport for just 300RMB (further cementing the fact that we'd been ripped off the night before). We loaded up our bags and bid a heartfelt shey shey to the front desk of our hotel.
The Chengdu Panda Base was a nice addition to our trip and our early morning timing allowed us to see the pandas happily enjoying their breakfast of bamboo. We also saw many red pandas and a few peacocks. The base is mainly a research facility but provided nice, clean enclosures and there were more foreigners there than we'd seen since JET's Mid Year Conference in Sapporo. I never thought I'd be so freaked out hearing a large number of people speaking English. It gave me a good glimpse into the reverse culture shock I'm going to experience upon returning to the States.
The return trip from the panda base was straight out of an action movie. Our driver didn't just drive insane, he drove awesome. Red lights? I don't think so! Passing in the lanes of on coming traffic? Why not!? Pedestrian crossing? They'll move if he honks his horn loud enough and plays a little chicken. He was no stranger to the high speed chase and was determined to let us know. Despite almost dying every couple of kilometers and a foray onto the sidewalk he got us back to the airport with just minutes to spare. After our wild ride we were ready to hop on the plane to Lhasa!
*you can see pictures of this part of our trip here.
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