we're finally leaving xi'an today. we ended up staying here 4 nights and doing lots of stuff within shaanxi province from here as we had a nice cheap hotel room -less than 8 quid for a double ensuite with lovely air con!! and the hotel was a very comfortable place to be for a few nights too. plus a good restaurant with westernised chinese food went down well and an english menu cant hurt right?! xi'an has been so much less intimidating and crazy than beijing too, we've had a lovely time. seen quite a lot of the city, visited terracotta warriors of course which was as expected breathtaking, ventured out into rural china on a mission of a journey to see a grand buddha temple which was very cool but definitely a lesson to be learned in independent travel, the merits of not travelling by local bus in china- imagine the busiest longest bus journey in england then add some pikey farmers with the worst teeth uve ever seen, then add everyone smoking (even children!), plus really bad death defying driving with constant horn beeping, bad road surfaces and on top of all of that, everyone staring at you- as they are prone to in china, for 4 hrs!! yesterday was fortunately a much luckier day. we organised a tour to see the pandas in a nearby sanctuary. 6 of us went, driven there in a nicely cooled mini bus, able to chill out and enjoy ourselves! we saw the pandas being fed from behind glass mostly unfortunately, also a cute 3 month old baby!! i thought that would be it but then the driver suggested we go and visit yiyian, a young male born 2 yrs ago at the sanctuary who was sponsored by a company nearby and had a huge enclosure. he was snoozing- pandas are lazy - but we woke him with an apple, his fave food. imagine going to london zoo and feeding a tiger, opening its cage and stroking it thru the bars. that was pretty much what we did here! it was amazing. totally unsupervised, we were playing with a 2 yr old giant panda, one of the rarest animals in the world, taking pictures with it and stroking its paws and head- very tentatively- those claws are sharp! unforgettable!!! the tour also took us to a restaurant, such a relief to have a private room to eat in without stares, and to have somebody order for us rather than pointing and getting confused! then we got back to xian yday evening and thought it mite be fun to visit big goose pagoda nearby. clearly was our lucky day because as we were there the park filled with people, waiting for something... what could it be... but a huge incredible fountain display to music. fantastic to see the chinese actually enjoying themselves for once, larking about and having fun in ways which are usually discouraged. so today we're getting a train to the nearby mountain of hua shan, finding somewhere cheap to stay in th village i hope and if we can find some torches, we'l be climbing it in the dark and watching the sunrise. fingers crossed! not sure when ill find an internet place next but i love u all, miss u and think about u plenty. thanks for the messages everyone- even emma who is lame-oh but finally msged me!