Everything is big in Sichuan

Every year, I tell myself I'll travel outside the country for the Spring Festival holiday to avoid the crowds. But because airline tickets are always so expensive during the holiday, I usually end up staying in China.

This year, I visited Chengdu in Sichuan province, a place I'd always wanted to see mostly so I could eat my way through the province's well-known cuisine. The local restaurants didn't disappoint. I ate as much spicy food as I could, until my stomach through up a white flag after a fiery-hot meal of Sichuan hotpot.

I wanted to travel to the Sichuan-Tibet border to get a closer look at the mountainous countryside, but the trip would have taken half a day by bus and eaten up too much of my short holiday.