So five days later I'm now back in Chengdu for a night and a day before heading off to xi'an tomorrow night.
Despite warnings that I would find china very un backpackerish I have met sooo many lovely people! After a short day trip to see the leshan big buddah, which in all honesty is simply a very big buddah, an probably not worth the 90 RMB, where I rapidly melted in the heat And so made my way speedily to mount emei Shan. I have to admit that travelling in china is so hard relative to Vietnam etc. I dont think i would have made it around as easily if the lady in my hostel had not written everything I needed ever down in Chinese for me so all I had to do was point and smile.
In emei Shan I meet a Danish guy Thomas and his dad along with about 6. Israelis, 3 Americans and 2 british! Who said there are no backpackers in china!!
While walking on the mountain I was forceably befriended by an 11 year old Chinese boy who was cute for the first hour but after half an hour or trying to explain to him that I couldn't go to his house to play with him he got rather annoying! Fortunatley after much hand waving and saying no I managed to return him to his parents who insisted in taking photos of me with all of his aunts and uncles!
Yesterday I went to pingle with a girl Eva who I met in the hostel. It's a very old Chinese town on a river and is very pretty. Fortunately she spoke some Chinese although when the locals heard her speak they couldn't understand how a white person could speak Chinese and so they got very confused and motioned unhelpfully in directions, which most of the time were wrong! At one point we were approached by around 20 teenage chinese tourists who asked for photos. Being the kind and helpful soul that I am, I ran inside a shop and hid behind a maniquin leaving Eva to fight them off. Back in Chengdu that evening I then met two more English boys a Dutch girl and two Israeli guys. So many names!!!!

Georgie x