4/11/2009Day 30 - Chengdu: Ancient Town and Leshan Giant BuddhaToday we headed out of Chengdu on an hour drive to an ancient village. Part of the village had been recently refurbished in the traditional style, while much of the original village was still there. Many of the villagers still live here, making and selling their handicrafts. There are even traditional local supermarkets and restaurants. Running through the main street (which is only for walking) is a ...

3/11/2009Day 29 - Chengdu: Panda Reserve and MuseumToday was the day that I had been looking forward to the most! Visiting the Giant Pandas at the Panda Reserve. The gardens were beautiful, we got to see the older grown up pandas and some teenagers. We got to look into the nursery and see a 2 week old baby (which had no fur and was pink) along with the twins who were 2 months old, they were asleep in a cot. The most active pandas were the 1 year old pandas, they ...

1/11/2009 - 2/11/2009Day 27 & 28 - Xi'an to Chengdu overnight trainToday we caught our 2nd overnight train from Xi'an to Chengdu, it was not as nice as our first train. The stupid train kept stopping at first with train stations and then it seemed for no reason. We would travel only for about 20mins before stopping. It took about 18hrs to get there. When we arrived we were taken to our hotel which was really nice. We went and had pizza for lunch and took it e...

31/10/2009Day 26 - Xi'an: Relaxing DayToday we had a lazy day as Mum wasn't feeling well.

30/10/2009Day 25 - Xi'an: City Wall, Big Wild Goose PagodaToday we went to look at the Xi'an City wall, which was built to protect the city. Xi'an was once the capital of China as the city was strategically well placed, 2 sides of the city are lined with mountains and another is protected by the Yellow river. The wall is 14km long and watch towers were placed every 120m as the distance for an arrow was 60m, this also helped to protect the city from invaders. On t...