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Again the hard seat on the overnighter paid off and I managed to get a fair chunk of sleep in. For the English guy opposite, Johno, it was a different story. Boombox must've kept him up... Johno and I went and met the others who were in their sleepers and made plans to meet later for a hotpot. For my first day in Chengdu, the only thing really on the agenda was pandas. They've got a big breeding and research centre nearby and I ended up spending the whole day there! On my way back I grabbed a bite. After having my spicy tofu delivered to my table, three 60ish year old guys insisted I join their table. They couldn't speak any English or understand my version of Mandarin, so we spoke in actions and they topped up my 1/3 pint glass with Tsingtao and shouted Gam Bei! The waitress acted as translator initially but after a while gave in and went backstage for a bit - I reckon these guys do this on a nightly basis!
Got up early the next day to catch a 9 hour bus to Jiuzhaigou. I went around the national park with these two Chinese guys I'd met in the hostel the night before. Once again the language barrier was too thick so we just used this translator app the whole day. The place is incredible though!
After getting back to Chengdu, I caught another bus out to Mount E'mei. I was in my hostel sorting out plans for the climb up the mountain when Johno walked in. So I did the climb with him the following day. We set off around 10am and were told about wild monkey zones up the mountain, and that the first zone was about 8km into the walk. We'd done about 2k when the first one popped out a bush, followed by its family. Johno asked what we should do, and I just said to keep walking (as if they'd forget us). About 3 steps in, what looked like the daddy monk grabbed my leg and climbed up on my back and pulled the strap of my bag off my shoulder! After flaring his teeth I handed the bag over. All it really contained was food, earphones, journal, jeans and a jacket, as we were sleeping in a temple that night near the peak. After figuring the mechanism of a string bag, they took all the food, the journal and my jeans. We went a bit further up the mountain and took a tactical break to figure out what we'd do when we saw the next monkey fam. At first we'd wondered why everyone had walking sticks, and turns out they're used to intimidate the monkeys rather than help the climb! As we were devising a plan, three Chinese people came up waving a journal shouting 'look what the monkeys gave us'. After telling them it was mine they said they'd given the monkeys cookies and in exchange it chucked the journal over. Kept the Levi's though, so somewhere around Chengdu there's a stylish monkey knocking about!
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