The 7-hour bus ride from Songpan to Chengdu passed rather quickly and we checked back into Traffic Inn Hostel (www.trafficinnhostel.com).
Wasting little time, we walked to Tianfu square with the large statue of Mao Zedong waving at the crowds.
Just a short distance from there is People's Park, the tranquil heartbeat of Chengdu. Numerous people dance, practice tai chi or paddle-boat in the central pond.
Josh and I grabbed a tea while admiring the scenery around us, while continually refusing the many offers to have our ears cleaned (a bizarre service offered at most tea houses).
That evening we went to one of Sichuan's famous hot pot restaurants, where you choose all of your meat and vegetable skewers and then you cook them in a very spicy broth boiling in the center of the table. It was simply delicious but since it was self-serve, we grabbed way too much and I felt like I was going to explode.
The next day we made our way to Leshan, home of the world's largest Buddha.
We started our visit at the Oriental Buddhist Theme Park, which is essentially Chinese artists' copies of famous Buddhas from around Asia. Beautifully done I must say. From there, we followed the signs to the Grand Buddha.
Building started in 713 A.D. and was the idea of the Buddhist monk Haitong. It was built to calm the Dadu and Min rivers converging at his feet. His 90 year construction did calm the waters but most likely due to the amount of sandstone thrown into the rivers during the carving process.
The Grand Buddha of Leshan is a seated Buddha who measures 71m in height, 28m in shoulder width and whose ears are even 7m long!
When standing at the base of this immense statue, humans don't even go up to his toenails!
Leshan's Buddha hasn't had the title of world's largest for long, he only recently acquired it after Afghanistan's gigantic buddhas were blown up by assholes in the Taliban.
After waiting in theme park-like lines, visiting all aspects of this towering statue, and slapping an overly pushy Chinese man in the chest (he deserved it!), we caught a bus back to Chengdu.
That evening we visited Chengdu's Lan Kwai Fong, a bar and club district modeled after the LKF in Hong Kong but boasting an area 18 times bigger than the semi-autonomous region's. They had already started their Halloween festivities and there were sexy zombie-nurses, vampires on stilts, awkward looking werewolves and some other fun costumes.
Although Halloween is traditionally a western occasion, the Chinese seemed to have really embraced it and were having a blast.
Speaking of masked Asians, the next day we went to visit China's most famous creature. No, not Mao Zedong, but those lovable, cuddly pandas!
The Giant Panda Breeding Research Base is 18km north of Chengdu but worth the public transport routes needed to get there. The base is home to more than 50 giant and red pandas and has recreated ideal environments for these endangered animals.
We spent several hours visiting the various enclosures, watching the pandas be all cute and lazy: most of the time they don't even get up to eat!
We even saw one panda lying in a pile of bamboo so he or she wouldn't even have to move to get more. An animal after Josh's own heart!
It was fun watching these animals eating, sleeping in awkward positions and just goofing around.
The raccoon-like red pandas were far more energetic than their giant counterparts and seemed to play to the crowds that gathered to watch them.
There were even a few newborns who you could visit in the nursery but they were too young and weak to do much else other then sleep like cute little balls of fur.
I was really surprised to see how close we could get to the pandas and how active they were considering their lethargic reputation.
With less than 1000 left in the wild and only a handful in captivity, I hope I am not one of the last generations to see these beautiful animals.
After admiring Sichuan's most famous face, we headed back to our hostel and then out for our last fantastic Sichuan meal, before calling it a night.
After so much traveling around, our next destination seemed pretty sweet. Guangxi province is known for its beautiful karst mountain scenery, relaxing bike rides and scenic rice terraces dotted by tiny, quaint villages. Nothing like a little R&R in the south of China.
Pretty sweet indeed.
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