Wow! What can I say about Chengdu it is my favourite town that I've visited in China. Even though it was still more built up than I had imagined it had so much charecter and I really enjoyed walking down the quaint streets witht the market and the tea houses. We didn't in the end go into on of the tea houses for a ceremony as it worked out as quite a bit of money and as we were lucky enough to have one for free at the terrecotta warriors we decided against it (I know I've just realised that I forgot to put that piece of information in the last blog).

After wandering for a few hours we weren't left with much time to freshen up before we went for a trational Tibetan dinner (we were staying in the Tibetan part of town) and then we went off for a Sichuan Cultural show in a tea house. I thouroughly enjoyed this evening as it gave me a flavour of the heritage that China has. Not all of the individual acts I liked but the ones that were fantastic really shone out. These were especially the hand shadows (I know it sounds lame), it was incredible and so clever how they did it. And the final act was jaw droppeing. None of us could work out hjow they managed to change masks in a split second. I know that it must be a slight of hand thing but it was so seamless and it disn't explain the complete costume change in fromt of your eyes. It was a real treat and I liked the free tea that was also provided as it was in a traditonal tea house that added top the whole performance.

My second day and unfortunately my last started off by going to the Panda conservation place. This was also incredible and a definate highlight of China! They were all so cute. I can't believe that I got to see them. I was also so impressed that they were kept in such natural enviroments. I got to see them eat and play. The highlight was seeing the baby pandas. There were twins that were 3months old and one that was 1 1/2 month. As they were so young we couldn't take photos but it was just so amazing to see them. There were also a few people that paid to hold them. I was quite jealous but as you only got a couple of minutes and it cost 100 ppunds I decided this was a cost that wasn't justified. During our visit we aslo got to see red pandas which are just as indangered as the giant panda. The red panda is more like a raccoon and was very cute, just not as cute as the giant pandas that just look like living teddy bears. I'm glad that we got to spent quite a while here and the local guide that we had was absoutely amazing.

In the afternoon we got the bus to drop us off in the old part of town as we'd heard about this amazing vegetarian restaurant and as we were all craving vegetables we decided to go here especially as it was inside a Buddhist monnastary. The monnastary itself was beautiful and the gardens wer so peacefull. I enjoyed our quick wander round untill our stomachs got the better of us and we made our way to the restaurant.

When we got to the resaturant however we found out that it wasn't completely a vegetarian restaurant as it offered loads of meat dishes. We found this a ittle odd but ordered our food regardless and really enjoyed it, it was defintaely one of the best dinners I've had and it was so cheap! It wasn't untill the evening when we bumped into our guide that we discovered we had completely been fooled and if we had been bothered to read the introduction to the menu we would have found out that all we were eating was tofu. I still can't believe that we were tricked so well. The rest of my time in Chengdu was just spent chilling out and enjoying this fantastic town before we had to depart.