After spending 5 nights in Chengdu I thought I would jot down some of the highlights and lowlights of this huge city in China's middle.

Highlights: Chengdu is renowned for its laidback tea house culture which simply means people of all ages sit in tea houses sipping tea and watch the world go by. This, in turn, makes them much friendlier then the Chinese we have met previously.People smile at you on the street and try to help you if you are standing looking at a map.People are also much more social and several times we have seen people slow dancing in the park, playing mah jong and cards, children feeding koi carp, singing in public choirs and so on.One of my favourite things about China is their family structure is totally different (i.e. only one child per family so families are relatively small) therefore everyone claims to have hundreds of cousins and it seems as if they all play together - old and young!We have also met some very cool people in Chengdu and so we feel that we have had a chance to be social too.

We sampled the local culture by attending a Sichuan opera which includes instant mask changing, fire breathers, acrobatics, shadow puppets, and of course music. We also had a Sichuan cooking class and made sweet and sour pork, gongbao chicken, eggplant in a fish style (really good), vegetable salad with and extremely spicy sauce and pork dumplings.We ate each dish when it was ready (which is the Chinese way) and were absolutely stuffed to the gills with some of the best food we have had so far!

We also decided to venture out of Chengdu and travel to Leshan to see the biggest carved Buddha in the world (and it is BIG - 71m) as well as hike around a holy mountain called Mt Emei. Both were really good fun but we are still sore from our 20 km/3000 ft hike up the mountain.However the clean air, amazing scenery, peace and quiet, and the monkeys made it really worth the effort.

Lowlights: There aren't many but they are doozies!The air quality in the city is appalling.I know why the Chinese spit all the time, it's because they are trying to clear their lungs of all of the pollution!

Also, the hotel we stayed at in Leshan was shocking - we agreed that it was the worst we have ever stayed in. We actually stayed in two rooms; the first was okay but water poured from the ceiling in both the bedroom and the bathroom and I we feared the ceiling was going come down.The second room was worse; it was dirty and smelly and I was afraid to touch the floor with my bare feet.Late into the night a man kept pounding on the doors yelling which made for a wonderful night with a baby crying and car alarms going off.We were even called at 1am and asked if we wanted a wake-up call (or at least that's what we think they were saying)!

But perhaps the lowest lowlight, and also the strangest, was being felt-up by a monk!At one of the summits of Mt Emei, Antony wandered off to find monkeys and I was sitting down reading when a monk came up to me. After a short conversation, he asked me if I wanted to see his room. No, I said.Then he asked me why I wasn't walking and I said I was tired.He then jumped on top of me giving me a FULL body massage but focusing on my groin and chest!I said I felt much better and ran after Antony!To see a photo of this dirty bad monk check out the Chengdu album.Hey, at least he got a thrill - I suppose he has been on the mountain in solitude for the past 10 years…

Lots of love, R & A