CHINA | Chilling in Chengdu

We had difficult time settling on a place to travel this September because we wanted a city that's suitable for short trips and ideally somewhere that's new to us. After much deliberation, we have decided to to pick Chengdu because the flight times were good, shouldn't have issues communicating, relatively cheap and it's a place that's new to me as I've not been to China.

tl;dr

• We booked Thai Airways (with transfer in Bangkok) because the timing were much better compared to direct flights
• Stayed in Airbnb in ChunXi road (similar to our orchard road)  for around $24 / night
• Portable Wifi from Changi Recommends with VPN service to access blocked apps such as google maps, whatsapp, facebook, instagram.
• Mobile payment has alot of promo and discount, apply if you can. We couldn't do it as it requires a Chinese bank account at that time
• We used DiDi (like their local Grab) most of time travelling within Chengdu

Just a stone throw from our place lies this lovely shop that sells boba, grass jelly and mango pomelo! We bought their original flavour milk tea just to see how it taste. I would say the tea flavour is there but the ice dilutes it quite a bit. Would go for a no ice instead. As we headed down their street, it turns out this store is a chain and we could literally see this everywhere we go. Their signature mango pomelo is very very good and i think it ranks the top out of the 3.

You will also see a lot of people riding bike as alternate form of transport because there are quite a few players here.

The shopping square is nothing special, akin to our very orchard road with shops both local and international brands. Expect to see brands like  LI NING, ERKE, ANTE for sports and also adidas, nike and a couple more. There's also ISETAN departmental store. Also, there's alot of foodstalls selling snacks, street food and ma la hotpot.

It appears that there is a culture of bookstores and cafe in Chengdu apart from sipping tea and wu zao bookstore is one of the places to visit if you're into that kinda thing. We decided to walk our way there to experience their neighbourhood. The store was quite hip and most of the books were in Mandarin (not sure why I was expecting otherwise). We hopped right into their cafe and had dinner their. The spread was okay but it was a tad pricey perhaps due to their ambience and non-chinese dishes. We ordered a Japanese curry beef and Korean kimchi fried rice in a Chinese cafe (hmm) and for beverage we bought some fancy tea and fruit soda.

We saw this place online which has great reviews so we decided to give it a shot. The signature dishes were the spicy beancurd and spicy beef slices with coriander (my favourite dish of all but its a little salty). We also order the beancurd noodles with minced pork. I didn't quite like their traditional bean curd as I find the gravy a a little thick (starchy) texture. 

The price was very affordable, it costs us 36¥ in total.

Du Fu Thatched Cottage is a park which is built to honor Du Fu who is a poet during Tang Dynasty (establised as national heritage site in 1961). The place is pretty huge and you'll get to see a couple of cottages and huts designed in ancient, classical styles. You can expect to spend at 90 minutes to explore the entire garden as there are quite a few interesting sights to discover.

The 4-storey Wanfo Pagoda is quite unique and you can hear the aged wooden flooring and stairs creak as you proceed up the levels. There is also a KOI pond where you can walk across using the stepping stones paved at the side. I actually quite enjoyed the quiet walk

This is actually one of favourite place to shop as it stretches across 3 alleys namely Wide Alley, Narrow Alley and Well Alley. There are a quite a number of unique shops selling souvenirs and eateries (ranging from hotpot to european cafe and street food). There are also a couple of ear wax cleaning services along the street which seems to be pretty popular locally. (I cringed at the sight of it as you could imagine but those customers seemed to enjoy every second of it)

The crowd was pretty okay and getting there is easy since we just used Didi practically everywhere we go.

This is also another popular shopping street filled with bars, inns, souvenirs stores and restaurants and it features a traditional theme with red lanterns and wooden finish

We went to Tao Lin Resturant for dinner as recommended by Dianpin. The food was great, I guess the cons of travelling as a pair kinda limits you when it comes to ordering food. We actually wanted to order a lot more for the variety but figured we should stop at 4!

Note to self: Always bring an extra set of tupperware to pack takeaways as not all restaurants provide utensils and boxes if you cannot finish them!  

We took a day trip out to Le Shan to visit the famed Buddha. Although the train times are frequent, there's actually a risk of overbooking if you intend to purchase the ticket at the train station so I would recommend to get it in advance if you can. Lucky for us, we managed to get reservations with seats from Chengdu but only normal tickets on the way back. There's an alternate way to get to Le Shan via Bus but that would take much longer compared to the high speed rail.

Since we also had some spare time left before our train journey back, we decided to drop by at the shopping mall ( 王府井购物中心 if I recalled correctly). The sweet and sour beef potato noodles (酸辣粉) is tasty af. Its located at the top floor tucked nicely at the end next to Panda bubble tea and costs 30 RMB. Being a sucker for bubble, we each bought a cup from opposite stalls to try. The panda bubble tea is quite special having both white and black pearls but I think the tea flavour is a little bland. The black sugar caramel was much better.

Today is cafe hopping day and we decided to check out this street (小通巷口) apparently known for its hipster cafe and popup stores. We start the day with some junk food for breakfast. I also bought luckin coffee to see if its worth the hype but I guess I'ld still prefer Starbucks.

We went to check this hipster cafe (of course that meant hipster prices too) and tried their fancy mango pancakes and 'artisan' coffee and I must say it is really really sedap. (this is not sunk cost fallacy at play). I'll let the pictures speak for itself!

Also came across a stretch of painted walls next to a school

We went back to 宽窄巷子 to dine at the popular hotpot restaurant 小龙翻大江 also known as 'The way of the dragon'. You immediately would recognise this as the entrance is always flooded with people who are trying to take a picture with the iconic dragon statue with dramatic smoke effects.

The restaurant is on the second floor with red wooden chairs and tables, kind of gives the feeling of dining at a really old inn. I also learnt something new that is they actually add a slab of butter into the soup perhaps to enhance the taste.

We settled for dinner at 豪虾传麻辣小龙虾 as we heard that sichuan spicy crayfish is a must try! We had a hard time locating this restaurant because the map doesn't show the elevation and the signboard is actually being overwhelmed by whole lot of other flashy one.

It's actually right next to  小龙坎老火锅 and you actually need to walk up the stairs and past them to reach the entrance. The prices were actually pretty cheap. We order 1 kg of crayfish, herbal eggs, 2 drinks, spicy lotus roots, garlic scallops and rice for around XRMB.

We went back to Chunxi Shopping district for some last minute shopping and we landed at 361 sports as they were having some clearance sale for their sneakers. I was actually quite skeptical about the quality of the shoes but it actually turned out pretty comfortable (costs around 30 SGD each). I later found out this brand is actually being marketed quite aggressively and is one of rising Chinese sports brand. As for lunch, we decided to try out 串串香 so we went to one of the popular places by the name of 牛签签来成都必吃的串串香. (even says in its name that it is a must-eat so I guess why not?)

We took the subway on our way back to the Airport as we configured that might be the most reliable mode of transport since the traffic can get quite bad. We managed to get into the Airport considerably early and had ample time to grab some bites before heading to the departure hall.