After having conquered the hard sleeper, 16hr train journey, we arrived in Chengdu completely exhausted and so took a taxi to our hostel. This hostel had been recommended to us by the friends we made in Beijing and they had told us to look out for "Jackson" a Tiawanese long term guest, who would more than likely show us around. We bumped into Jackson that first night and introduced ourselves as friend of friends. Jackson was absolutely delighted that we knew his friends and immediately sat us down to tell us his life story :-) He then invited us for dinner for the following night, promising to take us for some local Chinese cuisine.

The following day was a bit of a non-starter. First off we had booked onto the Panda tour at the local breeding centre, but managed to sleep through the alarm and missed the pick up. Of all the days to over-sleep, how could we not get up for the Pandas!! The beds at this hostel were amazingly comfortable. Anyway we crawled out of bed and managed to move our tour booking to another day and decided we would go to a nearby mountain instead. We got to the train station and.....no tickets left to the mountain. The day was not going well.

After trying and failing on 2 outings we just decided to head for the centre of Chengdu and the "peoples park". The park was very pretty and I enjoyed a jasmine tea in a traditional chinese teahouse....ben opted for coke. On returning from the park and randomly roaming the streets we happened to pass a hairdressers....4hrs later I had red hair and a fringe....definately the best way to make a boring day a bit more interesting!! Although a little risky as none of the staff spoke english....it took a while to communicate what it was I wanted.

As promised, that evening Jackson took us and a couple of others from our hostel, out for chinese food. For only a fiver we had a local Chinese banquet with everything from fish and cashew chicken to spicy rabbit and whole fried chillies. Fantastic experience, although a little on the spicy side!!

Over the next two days we managed to fit in both the mountain and the pandas! Mount Qingcheng proved a little difficult to find...we always get lost, but it was well worth the trip. The pandas were amazing, we walked around the different enclosures watching the younger ones playing and the older ones eating bamboo-constantly. AND THEN......I got to hold a baby one! I say baby, for her 9 months she was pretty big. Very cute and by far one of the best things I have ever done. Ben was told he was couldn't come into the room, but just as id sat down and the panda had been placed on my lap, I looked up and could see Ben at the back of the room. Afterwards he'd said he'd sat watching me on the monitor looking all sad and lonely and the girl had sneaked him in. :-)

Next place on our list was Guilin.....a 26hr train ride!!! I'm sure most of you will understand our decision not to do that and to opt for the 1hr20minute flight instead. Plus there was complimentary plane food!! :-)