Morning all

So what's been happening since we last blogged? Back to our second day in Chengdu, Estee had come down with my cold, so she was feeling rotten. As if that wasn't enough, we had booked a super early trip to the Panda sanctuary (8.30.. Madness!) so at about 7.45 that morning things looked bleak. But we somehow made it (in the nick of time too) to the minibus and on to Pandatown. The tour left at such an ungodly hour in order to catch the Pandas whilst they are awake to feed... Apparently after feeding they sensibly head back to bed. We were invited to part with something over £100 to hold a baby Panda, but somehow managed to resist! Instead Estee picked up a slightly less expensive stuffed panda and named him PoPo.

The Panda tour was done by 11.30, so we tried to spend the afternoon looking around Chengdu, but Estee was feeling horrible so after a wander round the WuHou Temple we decided to get early food, then head back to the hostel and get ready for our flight to Guilin.

To cut a longish story short, we wandered around for a while failing to find somewhere to eat, and ended up at a traditional Sichuan Hotpot restaurant. This was a bizarre affair, where they place a big boiling bowl of Sichuan chilli oil sauce in front of you, and give you a few saucers of raw meat to cook in it. It's hot, spicy, smoky, steamy, messy, and completely mouth numbing! It was an experience we'll never forget, though whether we enjoyed the food or not is another question... Put it this way.. We got some more food at the hostel before our flight!

Guilin-4 day retreat!

The flight itself was straightforward enough, but getting to Dragon River Retreat was always going to be a challenge. Perhaps if I'd written the address down it would have been less challenging?! So apologies from me to those of you who got frantic phone calls.. We arrived in the hotel sometime after midnight, after a rather circular TukTuk ride around the countryside.. Thanks Hannah!

Estee was still I'll so we just chilled the next day, and admired the ridiculously beautiful view from our balcony.. Over the next couple of days as Estee recovered, we did some bike riding along river tracks, bamboo rafting on the dragon river, hill climbing and scenery snapping.. It's a very beautiful place to spend a few days relaxing. There was one bad day when I came down with some sort of food disagreement which meant we had to cut our trip to the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces short (let's just say I should never have gotten on the bus..), but other than that we had a great time there. We'll show you the pics!

We left Guilin yesterday morning for the last leg of our trip.. Hong Kong! We'll fill you in on that later tonight...

C&E