China 04/18 – Chongqing + Chengdu
Day 10 – Chongqing
Woke up here to find it raining somewhat. There goes that day then. I do resent how easily everything takes a turn for the worse again.
Spent a bit of time dwelling on the catastrophe and it looked like it was going to rain the next day as well. In order to stand any chance of salvaging the last few days of trip, I decided to reschedule the following day as well to allow the chance to come back to this city later in the week, at an additional cost of course.
The weather had cleared by the afternoon, so took a chance on a smaller park to try and get something done.
Shenming Unoversal City
Struggled to get into this place as they were in the middle of setting up huge marquees for an upcoming food festival. As is usual on a day that once contained rain, many stares of ‘what the hell are you doing outdoors?’ were shot in our direction by everyone we encountered.
The park has no entrance as such, you just wander into a rides area in between some buildings and it’s a wristband or token system. There were lots of staff milling around, cleaning things, running some kiddy flats for a laugh, but absolutely no guests.
Interrupted a bloke chatting up the token girl to ask if the creds were gonna happen.
“It’s not safe, the track is wet.”
Example of wetness.
Thought so.
Day 11 – Chengdu
Arrived first thing in the morning, the sun was shining. Let’s get something done this time.
Happy Valley Chengdu?
Took a bus to the park. It did a Fantawild Zhengzhou, but worse, dumping guests on the wrong side of 12 lanes of fast moving traffic with no way to cross. There wasn’t even an enterprise of tuk-tuks to come to the rescue. Ended up complaining a lot, getting back on another of the same buses until somewhere much further down the road where there was a bridge to cross, then getting another bus in the opposite direction to end up on the right side of the death trap. How is this a thing?
I later worked out that there’s 4 bus stops for ‘the resort’ on the corner of Chinese spaghetti junction and it depends on which route the various buses that serve it are headed (east-west/north-south) as to whether you can actually get into the place without dying in a traffic accident or not.
Highlight of this experience? Chicken on a bus.
Well that took longer than expected. Let’s actually ride some rollercoasters today then.
Got to the ticket window, read the dreaded ‘things that are closed’ sign. All 3 major creds (Megalite, GCI, B&M) closed for today. Sweet. Another park that can’t be bothered to run more than 50% of what it has.
Asked the staff for a bit more info, stating that we could reasonably come back in the next couple of days to actually ride something worthwhile, if that concept meant anything to them at all. The response was some obviously made up crap about annual maintenance for the 2 new coasters (not even a year old yet) and the “red one” (Megalite) “might be back tomorrow. It’s best if you buy a ticket, go inside and ask them yourselves.”
Laughed in their face and went to see some pandas instead.
Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
Most likely the best place in the world to see pandas of all shapes and sizes.
Unfortunately many of the shapes and sizes weren’t accessible at the time.
But I’ve never seen so many in one go, so still impressive stuff.
Always been a bigger fan of red pandas to be honest.
Happened to catch the feeding time.
Some small birds came in to steal a portion, but they’ve emplyed a peacock security guard.
Awww.
Hmmm.
Quite enjoyed the place. It is what it is really. There’s a few buildings with information, stories and interactive stuff around (panda porn included) and they’re doing some good work in trying to stop the fussy fellows from making themselves extinct.
A two day drought of rides on a trip like this is just unacceptable. Let’s see if we can get back on track tomorrow.
Day 12