Sichuan - China - Chengdu - Chongqing - March 2013 - Page 4

Bus vs motorcycle. Bus Wins!
The number of accidents is still high in Chongqing even though scooters are banned. However for every accident I see, I never see anyone get properly hurt. They all pick themselves up and keep going.

Dog heads. Enlarge for detail! Now looking a bit past their use by date.

The steps up to the path were lined with buddah. I am never sure if its buddah or buddha, the bald fat guy.

The wrong end of the park seems to be for homeless old people. They seem to be enjoying their rent free lifestyle.

Chickens everywhere. Chicken vs tiny dog, Chicken wins.

Sea of pollution.

You can climb up to see more of the sea, I did.

Theres a sign declaring this pagoda built in 1984 as being awarded one of the top 7 new structures in central Chongqing in 1993. I am not making that up. The sign also talks about how you will feel so close to the twinking stars you can reach out and touch them. Perhaps I could swim up to them?

Last fog picture for today.

My hotel room has all kinds of great features, including this LG washer / dryer with laundry detergent provided.
I stood and watched it for 10 minutes to show my appreciation, now I can wear my various camo shorts a second time on this holiday.

Lunch. A Chongqing take on Japanese curry, with very little curry, lots of sichuan pepper, more vegetables than Japan would give you, paper thin egg on rice, and just as I suspected, ice cold mash potato.
Still it was quite nice!

Staring directly into the moon, no wait its the sun. Its hard to tell. With all the smog the sun is no brighter than the moon.
If you looked into the sun like this in Adelaide you would go blind. Here it doesnt even bother the auto exposure thing on my camera.

Did you know that kebabs are one of the world famous three gourmet? Well now you do. Can you name the other 2? Bubble tea and duck necks I suspect.

The above mentioned starlight plaza. About 10 floors with the Vanguard supermarket on the bottom, imax theatre at the top, everything else in between, about 40 proper restaurants. I think the developer might be Japanese because it has large multistorey tenancies for Muji and Uniqlo.

Ok, no more boring pics...that arent food.

Monday night and a newly opened shopping mall means places had seats. The only full restaurants with lines were 2 pizza places and one steakhouse. I wasnt interested in those.
The place I selected advertised itself as being especially healthy, which means lots of things were inedible parts of animals in clear broth. Presumably just to flavour the broth.
I selected cucumber and a beef dish, this time with green chillies. It was fantastic.

The Chongqing high speed rail terminal is antiquated, and surely due to be replaced. You first line up outside, then x-ray, then frisked, then passport or ID check, then ticket check, then you wait in a shed. This is the shed.

Some 40 minutes before your train, you get loudspeakered into the next waiting area, after a subsequent passport and ticket check.
About 15 minutes before your train departs, you get loudspeakered (by that I mean men in red hats charge around yelling at you with a loudspeaker), into a carefully organised line.
Once the door opens, the line immediately ceases to exist, and theres a mad crush to get through the door. The loudspeaker guys go into overdrive and smack a couple of troublemakers with their loudspeakers.

My hotel room, the bed and work area with some of the crap they have littered about the place in view.

Looking back into the bathroom from the strange sunroom area. It would make more sense if you could enjoy the view from the bath, but you cant, theres no chair or anything in the sun room, just enough space to have a small party.

Above mentioned sunroom. I guess you could set up a telescope and look across at people in other buildings.

Huge shower with enough water pressure to remove chrome from metal plated objects.

Huge walk in wardrobe.

Better shot of work area, if you think you can put all that stuff in drawers, think again, they are full of stationery and shoe shine stuff.

Alcohol free mini bar.

On my walk to dinner I went through a muslim area. Here they are making delicious looking bread in the street. I really wanted to try it but I cant just eat plain bread for dinner. I rarely eat bread! Perhaps another day when I dont feel like a proper meal.

Apparently this MGM building is a giant disco. Unfortunately I am there too early.

A new winner for fire trap waiting to happen award. I could not find a way out of here for at least 10 minutes. No exit signs, no escape routes, crap everywhere. The problem with just heading in one direction until you find a wall is you hit a t-junction that is there to confuse you into staying in the facility. A bit like casinos and their confusing layout.

Tonight mall is an indoor / outdoor variety with a perspective trick. The floors slope down, the steps slope up (as they are steps) and it gets a lot narrower at one end.

Some distance underneath this mall is the alternative hipster boutique underground area. Lots of girls with tiny shops selling stuff they designed themselves.
This is highlighted by the sign, all for arbitrary.

For dinner, I had barbecue. Not Chinese barbecue where you get delicious cubes of fatty pork, but korean barbecue where you select from a list and cook it yourself.
I was proud that I succesfully filled out the list of things I wanted despite it having no pictures and being in Chinese. I did have a separate picture menu to compare some items to, and price, but also I could recognise a lot of the characters.
I may have over ordered....but I did eat it all. Probably the healthiest meal option you can get around here.

My favourite way of eating, pile it all on a lettuce leaf and wrap it up, delicious.

I dont really get tai chi. The people in the white pyjamas are moving in slow motion. The guy in the middle in black is going crazy doing his drunken master style in fast forward. Yet somehow the others are following his teachings.

The milky river. Strangely it smells very clean, like somethings been added to it to make it smell nice.

These condom vending machines are literally everywhere. On every city block. I am not aware of any creationists blowing up black presidents over it yet though. Next they will take our guns.

On my travels I passed this buiding with a rocket out the front. The sign on it had a rocket too, so presumably its something to do with rockets.
So I am taking a photo, and 2 guys with green suits and white gloves and helmets come charging over and tell me to get lost. If its a secret, why put a rocket out front?

Many streets in Chengdu are themed. One nearby my hotel has at least 50 stores behind garage doors that make signs and badges of all kinds. Giant acrylic ones, neon ones etc. The street I went up this morning sells only microscopes and those things people use on tripods when surveying. So if you ever need a Chinese electron microscope, I know where to send you.

The above mentioned Wanda Plaza. Quite new but full. Has an amazing vanguard supermarket in the bottom. I didnt go in as I wasnt hungry or going back to my hotel yet. I am saving a return visit as a special treat!

From a nearby shop I bought some pick and mix chocolates, then I found a giant games arcade. So I was in my shorts, in a games arcade, carrying a bag of chocolates. If only I had a van parked in the basement.
This is the best drumming game I ever played, its a real Roland v-drum kit, and the default song was Master of Puppets.

I headed down to the basement to look for the candy van. Note the red and green lights, just like Burnside Village in Adelaide, a place we consider to be a luxurious marvel.

Next up, headed outside and ate my chocolates in the smog. Even had 2 easter eggs.

The museum looks impressive enough from the outside, a massive building.

A cat stands guard, hes rarely disturbed by visitors....

We started off good, a Chinese Mig-21 copy. This is the only place I saw any other people. A school group was just leaving as I arrived.

Various cheap models covered in a thick layer of dust.

The robot band, not working. There were lots of robot exhibits. Most of them were not working. The one that did was nothing more than a Sichuan opera tape loop with a dancing robot that just kind of vibrated a bit.

This actually kind of worked, some of the time. Chinese state of the art pneumatic sequencer.

I made fun of the museum, but some of the mathematics stuff was interesting, however much of it was broken, and those things that needed power were switched off.
It did make for a fun activity to wander around and marvel at how dated it was, on your own, in a giant building. There was plenty of opportunities to take photos of myself glaring at the camera such as this.

Walking back and I came across this giant map, with lots of people interested in it. What could it be, bus routes? Convenience store locations? No, its real estate listings. All these blue things on the map are apartments for lease or sale (sale I think), complete with the cost per square foot mentioned.

I found a great place for lunch near my hotel. An alleyway with upmarket small proper restaurants. By upmarket I mean they have proper tables and chairs, and a menu at the table.
I decided on this place for no particular reason, then decided to have vegetarian. The picture showed green celery, what came was white, with delicious tree fungus and a ginger flavour.

My other dish was eggplant and beans, with lots of garlic.

Theres about 6 other nice looking places to try along this alley. I have no excuse to go without dinner as its literally over the road from my hotel.

I exited at the metro station past the south railway station and was greeted by this. A giant construction site. Could it be that this area really is now a no go zone with nothing but building sites..

My hopes were fading fast, this array of guys on scooters and metal coffin tricycles waiting to take people from the station exit suggested there was nowhere nearby to get to on foot.

But then I went under a bridge and crossed a road, through a tunnel that appeared to be mainly a drain, and arrived in giant mall land.

It was a strange place, so many giant shopping centres, spread out, neatly cultivated trees and lawns etc.

Most of the shops were furniture stores, home appliances, and even kitchen design places. A bit like a Home maker centre in Australia, but indoors and multi level, with restaurants and a cinema on the top floor of each in case you need hot pot and transformers 3 whilst you are picking out a new couch.

Eventually I got to one of the places I read about, this was apparently the first modern mall in Chengdu, with foreign brands, and as such at one stage had a few restaurants set up by westerners. There is still a tex mex grill and pizza shop run by real italians.
Which meant I saw a few white people, who had trolleys full of peanut butter and western cleaning products.

Oh...OK

This area really is kind of like a different city, I havent seen the free bike setup anywhere else.

The menu in Ikea is not quite like it is in Australia (or England for that matter). Yes you can still get swedish meatballs which recently were outed as being made from horse, but theres also some Chinese influenced dishes.
I noted later that the hotdogs were 40 cents on the way out and they have no Daim chocolates.
The restaurant also had hot soy milk, free refills, and a section featuring things on sticks.

I gave in, I thought it was too amusing to not eat at Ikea in China. The meal was actually decent, especially the fruit salad. I didnt eat the rice!

The actual store part is largely identical to Australia, prices are similar too. I wonder who would buy stuff from here cause surely theres Chinese equivalents that are cheaper and already made for you that gets delivered to your door by a tricycle.

Back in another mall now, and this one had a hipster store that featured weird watches you cant tell the time on, backpacks made from recycled paper, t-shirts with Che Guavera, and of course a Porsche Panamera model. See my text from earlier today.

Last picture for the day is just because my camera is awesome. Theres basically no light here on this building site, and its a hand held frame stacked shot of darkness to reveal the cool structures under construction.