We got up early to return to the familiar routine of packing our rucksacks up and checking out. After bidding to farewell to Alan and wishing him luck for his 17 hour train back to Guangdong we went round the corner to have the first meal as just a twosome in 4 days. We looked at the handy, though slightly blurred pictures on the menu and ordered what we thought looked like a beef dish and some duck breasts. The waitress happily took our order and toddled off to the kitchen. Some time later our order arrived, a whole river fish and a plateful of fish heads. It truly was back to the old routine! The fish turned out to be tasty, though very difficult to pick off the carcass with chopsticks. However the fish heads were a complete mystery to us. They were hollowed out and halved which left very little meat to get at whatsoever (We've since discovered that, like many other Chinese dishes that contain no obviously edible features, fish heads are a delicacy). After picking at the gawping half faces for ten minutes and ripping off the odd cheek and lip we decided to try and save face (badum tish!) and pegged it before the rice even arrived. Never fear parents, we had paid in advance, I haven't become an international criminal...yet!

We headed out to Shanghai's ultra modern airport on the ultra modern 430 km/h Maglev train (which prompted the brilliant question from Dave 'how fast does an intercity 125 go then?' '125 miles an hour Dave, hence the name') and waited in trepidation to find out which bucket of rust would be taking us on our budget flight across to Chengdu. After checking in without waiting more than 5 minutes and arriving at the gate to find a modern, large plane outside we realised that this was no cowboy outfit. We got on the plane to be given a moist towelette (you never realise how much you need one of those until it's handed to you!) and found there would be both free food and drink during the flight. We headed off on time without any issues and the whole experience was extremely pleasant. Mr Stelios and whoever owns Ryanair, please take note!

3 hours later we arrived in Chengdu and decided to just head to a hostel in the Lonely Planet. We'd heard everyone was missing out Sichuan due to false worries about the aftermath of the earthquake (Chengdu was barely affected by it) so didn't anticipate problems. Unfortunately, after asking one place where the hostel was and being directed directly across the road to the huge white sign with 'Hostel' written on it, we arrived to find them fully booked. Thankfully, though, their sister hostel a couple of blocks down had vacancies and we moved into a clean, if a little spartan, room in 'The Loft'. The hostel spoke excellent English and we booked a morning trip to the famous Panda Reserve before heading to the 'International Food Festival' we'd seen signs for on our way. We gorged ourselves on taster-sized skewers of spicy meat and extremely spicy potatoes and washed them down with a couple of beers before heading to bed to be ready for our early appointment with vegetarian bears.