Ciao for now Chengdu

Tonight is our last night in Chengdu, tomorrow we fly to Hanoi! You guessed it, we are at The Bookworm as we speak. The last two days we managed to do quite a bit of sightseeing here. We even fit in a quick visit to Ikea to see if they are different here (and yes, grab some cheap mashed potatoes and meatballs). To our dismay, except for some luggage, Ikea was pretty much the same.

Yesterday we ventured up to the main square for some pics of a giant Mao statue and the shopping street. Travey snuck away from us at the square...can you see him. Two really cool things happened while we were there. One, a Chinese family here on vacation asked if Jarret would take a picture with their little girl. When we asked for a picture with their girl and boy, the parents were thrilled. It was really cool. Second, walking through the People's Park, we stumbled onto the biggest line dancing group we have ever seen! Seriously, there were at least 100 people doing it. Some were AWFUL! Even better, there were others doing outdoor aerobics next to them, and then outdoor karaoke right next to them! It really did feel like a people's park!

Today we managed to fit in a hot pot lunch at what is apparently the most prestigious hot pot resto in the city. Thankfully, the waitress spoke good english and helped us out. As promised, it was really spicy. We did half pot hot and spicy and half tomato broth. Both were good, but the tomato won out for us. After committing probably dozens of faux pas (yes, I (jarret) even put a yam back in after biting it and finding out it was not done!), we headed back for a nap (jarret) and grant writing (leigh) full , pleased that we managed to find the resto. On another note, can I even have two bracketed comments in one sentence??

Chengdu was fun. You prob don't need as much time here as we spent, but as we get ready for a whirlwind final few weeks to fit in as much as possible, it was nice to slow our pace a bit.

Best of worst of China will follow shortly. Talk soon from Vietnam!