Get Lost, Find Food and Have a Merry Day!

One of the trips that were very memorable for me was in January, 2009. I was living in Xi’an China at that time and my friends was English Teachers for an English Course Company. It was Chinese New Year holiday, and the 10 of us decided to go on a 4 day 3 nights trip to Cheng Du, a capital city in the neighboring province.

We started on a sunny winter day hopping on a sleeper train, as the journey would take more than 12 hours. We choose the hard sleeper, consist of six bunk beds facing each other, that cost us about 200 yuan (USD 32).
Imagine a group of westerners all blonde and brown haired with one tiny little Asian girl, riding a sleeper train in China. Our group was a constant attraction during the trip.

This became very apparent when visiting the Tian Fu Square in Cheng Du. We were taking a group picture in front of Chairman Mao’s statue, we asked a passerby to take the picture. We were just posing, when other people suddenly took picture of us. They even give their babies and kids to us to get a picture together. At that point we were amazed and took picture of the gathering crowd who were taking picture of us.

In Cheng Du, we travel to the giant Buddha Le Shan, see the Giant Panda *SO CUTE* and the Red Panda *Even Amazingly CUTER*, went to the Wen Shu Monstery and ate so many gooddd fooddd!!! If you know me, you know how I like my food. Since Cheng Du is in Sichuan, we tried their famous hot pot, which was damn good although spicy for most of my westerner friends. Some local food was fine, but the best food I tasted there was when we visited the monastery.

The Wen Shu Monastery was a Buddhist temple build in the Tang dynasty, attached to the monastery is a Vegan restaurant and their tea house. In that vegan restaurant I have found a slice of food heaven. Mashed potato with sweet and sour sauce, grilled mushroom, and all kinds of tofu and various sautéed vegetables, we ordered about 10 dishes in all, along with more than 10 bowls of rice and drinks. In the end we only paid 30 yuan (USD 5) each for the feast. Oh, since I’m an Indonesian Moslem that was the first time I tried a dish with pork in their name, since the pork itself was made from tofu.

The journey was fun, we got lost, we taste good food and in the end we had a fantastic trip.