Chengdu

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Now before I start this blog I must add a little poem that I am particularly proud of. I had a moment (or rather 12 hours) of inspiration on the way over from London and thought I'd share it with you. I've called it (rather cleverly I thought) 'The trip to Honkers......I'm going bonkers'. I'm sure you can imagine the quality of my work already.....?!

And so starts the trip
Off I go
Canada a distant memery
Traipsing through the snow

The trip of a lifetime
It's been such a long wait
At Heathrow I depart
52 is my gate

Flying into Hong Kong
My first port of call
So much to see and do
I'll have a right ball

I'll keep everyone updated, with my travelblog on line
Happy and sad and sometimes I'll whine
I'll meet lots of people and see many places
but at the end will i put the names to the faces??

The people around me are pi**ing me off
but hopefully it will be reciprocated with my constant cough
Snoring, farting, babies crying - the lot
Vaguely amused I most certainly am not!

Four hours gone of a 12 hour slog
In the middle of the row, I can't even go to the bog
My god I'm bored, what else can I do
My mind keeps wandering to that trip to the loo!!

And now onto this blog......

So here we are in Chengdu, in the Sichuan province of China. We opted for the 16 hour overnight train from Xian which was an experience in itself! The hard sleeper is basically 6 bunk beds per cabin all opening out onto the corridor of the train. There aren't many westeners so we got a few stares from people passing and we shared the sleeper with 4 Chinese people that spoke no English so conversation was a little limited to say the least.

Chengdu is known throughout China for their teahouses and there hot pots, so whilst in Rome and all that. The guidebook suggested a place to get the best hot pot, which incidentally is nothing like good old Lancashire 'ot pot. It's a pan over a burner that is split into two, one side a lightly spicy soup and the other an arse numbingly hot chilli broth! We got to the restaurant and were greated by the giggles we now expect in non touristy areas. Again we found that noone spoke a word of English and they gave us the menu where we had to check off what we wanted - however this was also only in Chinese script that still looks like barbed wire to us ignoramaces (not sure on that spelling!). So out came the guide books again and I just pointed to anything that I thought they may have on the menu. By this time we had a good few waitresses trying to help and what seemed like the entire restaurant looking at 'the strange English people!' The food arrived and it turned out to be pretty good actually - I opted out of the arse numbing option and stuck with the milder soup! The whole meal came to 64RMB which is just over 4 quid - all the food, the entertainment factor and a take away fruit basket - a bargain!

Today we went to the Panda Reserve which was the reason for us coming to Chengdu. I felt the need to see a Panda whilst in China. The reserve was OK but EXTREMELY touristy, but the Pandas were lovely. One of the guidebook says Pandas 'loveable and charmingly naive' (a little like myself really!!!). Took loads of photos of them and learnt a little more about the animals themselves and the programme that they have to conserve the pandas here.

So tomorrow we are off to Kunming which is our last stop in China before going into Vietnam.

Hope you are all OK and keep the messages coming - it's good to here what everyone is up to!

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