Ok Chengdu for Christmas. We arrived on the 21st after our epic 30 hour train journey (although we've got longer ones to come so we best get used to it). We have an amazing hostel and we are staying in a pivate double which is fabulous.

We saw lots in Chengdu and ate lots of food.

I will for now just mention the key moments. We found the best streetfood especially from the Muslim stallholders. Spicy and yummy. We had a really good meal called dapajan (I think I spelt that right in Pinyan) which included a huge plate of chicken, potatoes and various vegetables. It was delicious!

On Christmas Day we went to see pandas, which was amazing. We went in the morning when they were more active as they were just geting fed. The first thing we saw were Red Pandas which look like chunky racoons. They were way more active then the one at Bristol Zoo which Im sure may well be stuffed and just nailed to the tree. We then moved to a group of 2 year old giant pandas. They were so cute! They just laid on their backs havin bamboo thrown at them and reaching around them for the food. One got stuck up a tree and was not happy when the bamboo was thrown in. We headed to the nursery where we saw four month old babies, which looked just like stuffed animals and kept falling out of their cot. Then we saw solitary adults; they were absolutely huge and just slept and ate.

For our lunch we headed to the old quarter and had a street food lunch consisting of meat sticks, christmas tea, sweet pastry balls and bread. In the afternoon we wanted to do something Christmassy so we watched a kids movie at the hostel. For our Christmas dinner we went to Jujubee, a vegetarian restaurant. We had so much food! We had a hotpot which was so spicy but absolutely yummy. We also has 'pork' ribs, fried rice, and pancakes. When back at the hostel we drank, chatted and thought about our crazy journey.

Boxing Day saw us heading for Xian.