Following a soft sleeper train from beijing due to the hard sleeper beds being sold out we arrived at our hostel in Xi'an at 9.30am. At 9.50am we were on tour to the teracotta army with crazy tour guide! On route each person had to introduce themselves including their country to which the guide then told some fact about that country even producing clogs from her bag for Holland! For Scotland a long silence and blank looks before someone said whiskey! The warriors were ok but we were more excited by lunch as hadn't eaten in a long time! Headed out at night with our room mates and this time experienced a proper Chinese night club complete with airport style security checks and bouncers with hard hats and bullet proof vests (again photos to follow!). Despite having not had many beers we still felt the need for highland dancing!

Following another overnight train (this time 16 hours) we arrived in Chengdu (apparently Kung Fu panda's home) at 5.30am. Unfortunately arrived in the pouring rain and no hostel pick up dude to be seen. Learning curve - write down hostel address, telephone number or some sort of information! Finally made it after a few texts home, the power of google and handing a phone to a random chinese person and asking him to write the hostel address in chinese for us! Chinese taxi drivers do not speak english - see shanghai entry!

Pandas were very cute altho not so sure about the red pandas (aka foxes)! Lindsay however had a soft spot for these wee dudes! Wandered around Chengdu for the rest of the day before booking our 3 gorges "cruise"! Early night was called for due to our 6.30am start.............................

The "cruise" - bundled into minibus to find a lovely chinese couple. From there we boarded our 4 hour bus to Chonquing where we discovered we were actually on a Chinese saga holiday tour!! No-one spoke any English therefore linz devoured a whole packet of oreos to relieve her mounting anxiety when we were dropped off at a random "hotel"! Altho there was one dude from Tawain who told us that he could speak English and would translate for us! Reassuring until all he could translate was that we were going on a "shiitty tour!". However this was inacurate as the city tour was only for the chinese, we were pointed in the direction of KFC!

Somehow we boarded our "cruise" ship at approximately 9pm. Cue lots more elderly Chinese people, two of whom who were lucky enough to be sharing our 6 bedded dorm! However, no sooner had they arrived than they had locked us out while they went to make alteranative sleeping arrangements! Cue a 15 min "discussion" with "reception" to gain a key so we could access our pot noodles and oreos! Once in room awaiting departure we were warned by the "boat police man" to keep all valuables with us at all times! Linz was surprised to be awoken from her nap by the police man escorting Emma back to the room complete with bags as she had too many things outwith the cabin!

The general theme of the trip involved chilling in the dorm listening to endless Chinese anouncements/music on the very loud speakers and wondering what was going to happen next! This we discovered when our tour guide would knock on our door handing us random tickets for the attractions we stopped at - which included 2 temples, the little 3 gorges and the dam! Temples were fine as temples go. Little 3 Gorges were pretty and spotted a couple of "wild" monkeys altho not convinced that the singers "living" in their tree huts hadn't released them on cue! Trip highlight, however, had to be the Three Gorges Dam - the biggest in the world don't you know! Unfortunatley. due to East Coast style harr, you could see about 4feet of it! This did not deter the Chinese tourists from getting wildly over excited by large rocks and diggers - again pictures to follow!

We were more than relieved to arrive in Wuhan last night after 10 buses, 3 boats and 1 taxi to our first meal in 3 days. Our total food intake consisted of 3 bags of crisps, oeros, cream buns, apple, peach, snickers, M&Ms and a pot noodle each. However Emma's personal favourite were the crackers from the boat shop which she described as tasting like "McDonalds but not the good bit" aka gherkins! Lindsay rediscovered her love of bananas after 20 years when faced with whole sparrow (including feet, wings, beak and eyes), pig foot or more pot noodle for Sunday dinner! The fish did look palatable however she was unsure as to how to kill eat, fillet it and cook it therefore banana it was!

We leave Wuhan in a couple of hours for Yangshou via another overnight train xxx