Hello everyone, the picture on this postcard should be a giant panda but because these parts of china only seem to have windows 98 i'm finding it really hard to upload my photos onto the site, so untill i do just sqint your eyes and believe that's a panda not an orangutan. after leaving macau i got on a 44 hour train to chengdu. on the way here there was some amazing scenery, beautiful mountains, rice paddies and rivers and as you will see when i finaly do manage to upload my photos i managed to shut my thumb in the window of the train after taking a few snaps. this happened about 2 hours into the train ride so i spent the best part of 2 days with a black, throbbing thumb! i didn't really do a lot in chengdu other than drink myself stupid! the first night there i sat at the bar chatting to dan (the guy i met in hong kong who works at the guest house bar) and after a while i got involoved in an austrian drinking game which had cards and lots and lots of beer. i started drinking at about 4-5 pm with dan and i left the stupid austrian drinking game at 3 am. i have no idea how i got back to my bed and i woke up in the morning wondering where in god's name i was. the morning, well afternoon, after the drinking game i felt bloody awful. and seeing i spent all morning sleeping i couldn't really do much in the afternoon but feel sorry for myself. when i did finally pull myself out of my pit i went to see wenshu temple. the temple was under heavy restoration so everywhere you looked there was work going on. feeling so hungover i just wanted to find a quiet spot and sit down, drink lots of water and read my book. after about an hour i was heading back to the guest house. that night was quiet compared to the night before, i left the bar at 1 am. the following morning i went to see the pandas with this austrian guy called lorenz (he's the guy with the drinking game) and his girlfriend ash who was from canada. the giant pandas are the laziest animal i have ever seen, but you can't help but watch them for ages. they just sit there eating bamboo and when they had enough they roll over and go to sleep. there like the homer simpson of the animal world! the most entertaining were the panda cubs. they spent there day hitting each other, pushing each other off the swing and running around there base. we spent about an hour just stood round watching them and laughing when they do something clumsy. that night a load of us went out to the local bars in chengdu. we started to play drinking games as soon as we entered a bar, the chinese drinking game with the dice, and in all my wisdom i suggested to use the bi joe (white alcohol) as the drink if you lost. i was durnk after an hour. apparently we went to 2 bars, i only remember the first one. but what i do remember is looking to see if the mc donalds was open at 5 in the morning, it wasn't, we were all upset! so we had dumplings insted from a 24 hour returtant. i was woken up for the basket ball game by lorenz after 3 hours sleep. the pistons beat the heat to tie the series at 3 a piece. after the game i went straight back to bed. again, it was afternoon when i woke up. i did pretty much nothing all day other than book my bus ticket out of chengdu to the nature reserve in jiuzhaigou. i spent the rest of the day chatting to dan and just chilling out in the guest house. i love this place, the guest house is such a nice place just to sit, relax and meet people, i could have quite easily stayed here longer but i had to move on. that night was a quiet one aswell, i left the bar after saying goodbye to everyone at 1:30 am. waking up at 6:30 to go the bus station was not nice!! next stop jiuzhaigou, speak to you all soon, christopher.