We all met in the lobby at 8.15am and then took a private bus to Xi'an airport to catch our flight to Chengdu. After hearing bad things about internal flights in China I was a little bit worried but all
turned out fine - better than easyjet, and even included a hotdog and carton of iced tea... Result!

We got a private bus from Chengdu airport to our hotel and are a group lunch in the hotel restaurant. Spicy food is a particular speciality in Chengdu so it was all quite tasty! We then headed out for an orientation walk - was great to be somewhere cool enough to wear jeans.

Leah took us to Jinli Street, which essentially felt like Chinese disneyland - everything was a little too clean and a little too well designed, and of course the authentic Chinese Starbucks really topped it off. May as well have been Main Street, USA. We wandered around for a bit and some of us bought postcards, then headed for a hot chocolate in Starbucks.

In the evening we went for an authentic Sichuan Hot Pot. We sat around a table with a gas stove in the centre, which is covered by two bowls, the inner one containing a spicy chilli stock and outer one containing a fish based vegetable stock (complete with floating fish heads). We waited until the stocks began to boil, then dipped or threw in pieces of raw meat (and vegetables) and waited until they were cooked. Once no longer pink you then coated the meat in a marinade that you could make up to suit your own tastes out of oil, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce and parsley. The whole meal was served with very thin garlic bread, similar to an Indian paratha. I actually really enjoyed it, especially having a break from rice.