OK, so I'm well behind. No point trying to hide it. Still, I'm back in the UK now (4 countries behind!) so have the combination of time to write and lack of interesting new things happening to me, so I'll pick up the narrative where I left off. Pandas. Again. After the panda prison in Kunming, I needed some quality time with these noble animals. Everyone makes fun of them for being lazy and too dumb to have sex to save their own species, but really the tale of t...

Aaahhh... this is never going to stop unless I break a leg or something and have to spend weeks in just one place. When I left off, I'd just completed the main bulk of my journey from Thailand to China. That was a car to Vientiene (Laos, 5 hours), bus to Luang Prabang (12 hours), bus to Luang Nam Tha (6-8 hours, can't remember now), bus to Mengla (China, 7-8 hrs), and now finally a sleeper bus to Kunming (12 hours). I've just been reading Bill Bryson's 'Neithe...

This is the first of the four backdates I'd planned on for China, although it now means I'm falling behind on Thailand. I really should be able to handle a 20 minute weekly blog. However, it has had the desired effect - I've been doing a lot of academic writing and I think a lot of it is coming out better than my MA work, although it's taking a lot longer too. I had Claire to bounce ideas off before, so without being able to really talk through things it's slow...

Whenever you talk to somebody here, you will be asked why you came to Chengdu and if you like it. Any negative comments will be met with incredulity as they assume that you have misunderstood the question. Or, you will give a token “Yeah, it’s great”. If they hear you over the sound of beeping horns and people hocking up to spit at your feet, then the logic begins to show. Sichuan people are proud of two things, beautiful women and delicious food. I don’t...

Du Fu lived from 712-770 and is, apparently, a key poet in the history of China. He moved to Chengdu as a political exile, where he spent 5 years living in a thatched cottage and writing about how happy he was, despite being destitute. Coming to China to see a thatched cottage seemed a little odd considering where Claire lives in the UK is full of them (in fact we had our goodbye to England meal in a thatched pub), it would be like going all the way to Beijing ...