Today we went on the Chengdu metro. Last time I was in China, they had only started building it. Now it is huge with the most incredibly impressive stations. The station at Tianfu square really is quite remarkable! We spent the day on a tea hunt. Chengdu doesn't even have proper Chinese tea!! Isaac was thrilled to find a dinosaur book in Chinese and his daddy even let him have an ice cream at Jingli street! University students were practising a sword dance ro...

No trip to Chengdu in complete without a trip to the Panda Research Base. This place just gets bigger and better each time we visit! This time, they had built a whole new enclosure with wobbly bridges and incredibly cute baby pandas. Love it!Back in Chengdu, we managed to find some Digding chaomian. However, Lewis seemed completely oblivious to the sacred nature of such an occasion and I spent the majority of the meal up to my arms in baby poo! Somewhat takes awa...

We ate delicious noodles for breakfast, were stalked by Bill's Auntie, played bubbles and rolly pollys with toddlers in the square then went to Hongya Middle School (where Bill had studied) to meet up with his younger cousin. We had a lovely meal, where Bill actually deliberately over ordered, next to a conveniently placed naicha stall. Then we went and caused complete chaos in the school! Students were hanging out of classroom windows in order to get a glimp...

After some local purchases and scrumptious jiaozi in the tow, we waved goodbye to Yeye and headed back to slight civilisation in Hongya, staying in the hotel that we had stayed in three years previously. Bill had arranged to meet up with his cousin and some school friends but failed to actually organise anything to do with them so the poor people just followed us on our trek back to the hotel to change stinky nappies!! The main square is the centre of all social...

Still stunningly beautiful. Still incredibly infuriating!The overcrowded, non air-conditioned bus to Hongya seemed to take forever! Not much fun when you have 2 seats between 4, one of them being an incredibly wriggly toddler! I was not in the mood to undertake bus journey number two to Gaomiao on the same day but Bill was desperate to get home and after a tea stop in Hongya's main square and a chance to stretch Isaac's legs, we picked up the yellow bus t...