Our next stop was going to be Chengdu but there was just a small matter of a 25.5 hour train journey to survive first. In China you have the high speed trains and then you have the slower than a snail trains. On the slow trains there are 4 classes, a soft sleeper where you're in a private cabin with 4 bunks, a hard sleeper where you're in a cubby hole with 6 bunks but no door so it's all open plan, a hard seat where there are 3 chairs, a table and then 3 chairs facing you and standing tickets which basically means people sit/stand in the aisles.

Most foreigners go for the bunks, we'd gone for the budget hard seats and there wasn't another westerner in sight. We ended up right at the front of a carriage with 2 seats, a table then 3 seats opposite and pretty much all afternoon and evening until the following morning we had them to ourselves so we took turns sleeping across the 3.

Casson had been moaning about the journey for days before we were due to go but if you ask him now he'll tell you it was the best train journey he's ever been on. As usual we were like local celebrities, people would come and sit with us for 10 minutes just to stare and anyone who could speak English wanted to chat. One guy showed us his entire photo collection on his phone.

This wasn't why he loved it though. The attendants were full on salesmen and kept doing really loud sales pitches for the most random things, toothbrushes, toothpaste, bags, belts, battery packs, manicure sets, face cloths, jingle bell tat. He was like a giddy kipper up and down the aisles taking their photo's and having his photo taken with as many items as possible. The strangest thing was when one got out a board and kept doing sums on it like a presentation, he was selling maths books! We can't put into words how completely mad it was. There was a huge row over seats between 2 women, the whole carriage was on their feet watching (including Casson)

One guy couldn't speak English but had a good translator on his phone so he was chatting to Casson, the next thing they're exchanging bracelets like they were big buddies, his was from a shaolin master, Casson's from a kid in Cambodia, he loves stuff like that.

Our next train we have a sleeper and now he's moaning about that as he doesn't think it will be as much fun.

We chilled out for a couple of days in Chengdu, we were in a really good hostel and it was nice not to do anything. On our last day we went to the Giant Panda research base and it was amazing! We were concerned that it would be like a theme park with neon lights and dancing/Kung fu pandas but it was actually really well done.

The pandas were so cute, munching away on bamboo whilst lazing about. We were lucky enough to see some cubs and some that had just been born which were in incubators, you wouldn't believe the size of them, they were as small as newborn kittens.

Next stop Xian .......

General points
1) In some parts of China men take the woman's family name after marriage, this is because they're seen as stronger/superior ..... Sean Groves does have a nice ring to it

2) We ate in a restaurant the other day that had fried dog meat on the menu. This is distressing to say the least. Casson's going to take a picture next time we see it and keeps winding me up that he's going to try it.