Ron Mertens’ blog

Here’s a short list of Chengdu’s top attractions (according to us, anyway):

The Pandas, of course
There are several nice renovated streets in Chengdu. We loved Jin Li, Qin-Tai and the 3 alleys near our home.
Parks – there are several great parks in Chengdu. Huan-Hua-Xi (near DuFu), the parks near Qin-Tai, Yongling, Tazishan (with the beautiful birds-cage)
The [...]

Everybody who traveled in Asia (and other places, of course) have seen those funny mistakes these guys make in English. It appears everywhere:  official places (we saw a “polace” sign in a police station), parks, places of business and on products (Michal bought a small notebook, which proudly stated “We only do well”). Here’s some [...]

Tags: chinese, chinglish, english, funny

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Clouds and mists
Chang-Fu Xin Xan
Starbucks
Xian-Nan-Lu
Sichaun pepper (yuck!)
Our ‘home’ restaurant, the yellow/sterile one, the green one, the one across the street
Dodo’s cafe
The Metro
The secrets of Free Mori
Tandoor
Endless amount of high rise buildings
The Bookworm
Kabalth-Shabbath at Meirav’s
Abigail starting to walk in the museum
Tai-Chi
Spitting
Blue Massage
Bao-Tze
Shi-Er-Qiao Lu
The butcher-shop dogs
Table tennis at the gym
Road hierarchy: Bus, Taxi, [...]

Tags: chengdu, china, thoughts

As you may know, China has a ‘one-child-policy’. It basically means that you can only have one child (and if you have more, it costs a lot of money). I never realized what this law really means.
It’s not just that you don’t have brothers. Your parents do not have brothers, too. So you don’t [...]

Today we went to an Indian restaurant here in Chengdu, called Tandoor. It was really great – they were very friendly (the managers come from Delhi), and impressed with our fluent Hindi. And the food? the best we had so far in Chengdu – great Indian food! Dal Makhani, Palak Paneer, Samosas…
It got me [...]

I can’t believe it’s almost 2 months since we left Israel already. It seems like we’re in China for a longer period, although it’s very difficult to get used to this place. Everything is different.
Today I had 3 tasks to do after lunch – Pay our gas bill, get a hair-cut, and recharge the Chinese [...]

I used to like taking photos during my travels… mostly landscape – beautiful scenes, you know what I’m talking about. I meant, pictures of Michal and friends we met on the way is nice, but it wasn’t really exciting for me.
But now I’m mostly taking photos of Abigail. Suddenly a nice lake or building just [...]

It’s been more than two weeks here in Chengdu, and today we have the first sunny day. And I mean really sunny- blue skies and a hot ball of flames in the sky.
The weather in Chengdu is usually simply a mist – part humidity, part pollution, 100% gray and depressing. I’ve taken a lot of [...]

We landed in Beijing 3 days ago, and are on the flight to Chengdu now. The flight to Beijing was actually rather good – much better than we thought. Abigail was great. She’s actually behaving great in China. Everybody here is charmed by her – and wants to play with her, talk to her and [...]

We’re slowly starting to get ready for the China trip. Studying chinese, waiting for our student visa and buying plane tickets.
Abigail is also getting excited, and has started to read Mao’s little red book:

Tags: abigail, chengdu, china, Mao