I've been in Chengdu less than 24 hours and have already accidentally eaten chicken testicles. =|

I will come back to that later.

First off middle bunk on the hard sleeper train was a fab idea. More space, I fell asleep as soon as I got on the train (after my McDonald's that is) and then read my book (which is awesome) until I ate my noodles. Train life was all good and dandy and I got ready for the 10pm light switch off ready for bed. Not long after, the man on the opposite side of me and one up was snoring. He got louder and louder and louder and LOUDERRR and I couldn't get to sleep!! Slightly annoyed I put my fingers in my ears and tried to sleep. His ogre screams were getting through and I couldn't sleep!! I briefly drifted off only to be woken by him again. Long story short he kept me up basically all night and even carried on his racket when the lights came back on at 4am. I considered all sorts of inhumanly things to do this guy to make him shut up. I obviously did nothing.

Getting to the Chengdu Flip Flop hostel was simple I got a taxi and then came in around 5:30am. They were so nice they let me go to sleep on the lounge sofas. When I woke up I had breakfast and booked a tour for the next day. The staff were so helpful and ended up checking me in a 10am. Such lovely people.

I met and Israeli guy and we went to a park and to the Wenshu Monastery. Before we went in we had 60p lunch from a busy restaurant. It was cold noodles with veg and seasonings and was pretty nice. Until some lady gobbed on the floor. Go me for trying new things. The monastery was beautiful! Monks walking a round with everyday people who were praying and worshiping different statues. We got to listen to a group of people singing in ancient Chinese chants while the monks sat and listened and after made friends with a monk, JuiJing I think was his name. I really loved the place it was so peaceful and calm and welcoming.

Back to the evening. We ended up having dinner in a restaurant across the road. We invited two Irish girls with us and wanted to try hot pot. For future reference, hot pot is worth trying but a weird experience. We looked at the options of meat which were all odd like pig intestines, duck blood etc and saw chicken cashew and was happy they had something normal. It came out looking not like chicken and not even meat. Chicken cashew turns out to be chicken testicles . Really disgusting.

Im falling asleep so that's it for today. I wonder what weird things await me tomorrow!