chengdu- jinli street (23/11)

this blogger has been hibernating for a while that she thought she would have to put it to sleep come end of 2014. luckily an eight-day trip to chengdu end of november managed to salvage the survival rate of the blog.

i joined a tour with some ex-colleagues and all 17 of us in the group knew each other, hence it was a very co-operative group with not much trouble.

the flight that we took was air asia......and it was about 4 hours from kl...so not a long flight at all.

in a wink, we were already in chengdu by 10a.m. and the weather was really mild.
in fact, all the 8 days we were there, it hardly rained or snow up at the mountain. however, one destination was cancelled due to sleet on the road- huang long. it is really high above sea level, about 4000m and sleet made it dangerous to go up. i think the tourist destination was closed due to the weather. in the end, we went to du jiang instead.

we arrived at chengdu around one in the afternoon and the local guide was already waiting for us at the airport.

the first destination we were brought to was the ancient street of jin li. it was for us to walk around and to get some snacks as one of the streets here has many stalls which sell local snacks. true enough, there were many people queueing to buy their snacks. 

an opera stage in the middle of a fork road.

the snack i ended up buying grilled squid and lamb covered with lots of chilli powder. it was yummy and mouth-watering.
i wasn't interested in the other food that i saw. blame it on the lack of appetite and fear of stuffing myself with the wrong food on the first day.

a pond with a bridge.

lucky charms hung around a tree.

ginkgo trees were abundant everywhere and here in chengdu, we could still see autumn colours on the leaves.

cafes on another side street.

local delicacy which no one dared to try. guess what they are??
rabbit heads yo. only 8 yuan for one. they are cooked in rich chilli oil, a famous way of cooking in china.

and this was my pathetic looking chicken rice meal onboard air asia flight. it was totally unappetising and i just finished the chicken pieces and had a few spoonfuls of rice. eeew......the food had never tasted so bad. even those who had nasi lemak complained.

well, glad i managed to finish my day one in chengdu post. as usual, lunch and dinner were all at restaurants and it was the standard 10-dish meal. burp! food included in our tour package was satisfying and there was no bad meal. the guide who followed us from malaysia even prepared ipoh white coffee and milo to us every morning. i would wait for his appearance every morning to get my coffee fix. not that i am addicted to coffee, but a warm cup of fragrant coffee to start the day was very much welcoming when one was away from home.