Chengdu... Pandaland

After a 29 hour train ride arrived in Chengdu. We'd heard a lot about this place from travellers and Chinese. It's a city famous for its tea house culture, and getting the balance between work and relaxation just right. It's also famous for having the biggest giant panda reserve in the world, and for being near the wide-scale and devastating earthquakes that hit Sichuan province in 2008.

Went to the reserve on the first day and it was awesome. I wasn't a particular fan of pandas before, I liked them and thought they were cute and everything but didn't really get what the big deal was. Now I'm a big fan – they're so cute and good natured. We went at feeding time, which is only time they're active. All they do is eat and sleep. Literally. I love the way they eat though – lying on their back with legs in the air, carefully holding and nibbling their bamboo shoots. Helen and Karen tried to get their pictures taken with a giant panda for 500 yuan. They were debating the expense for ages, but when we tried their decision was made for them as the pandas were sleeping… COS THAT'S ALL THEY DO. Bless them.

The best thing we did in Sichuan though was our trip to Leshan Buddha on the next day. It's a 1200 year old giant seated Buddha carved out of a cliff face, looking out over a river. At 71m this thing is immense and the best thing is you get to really appreciate the scale of it cos you're able to zigzag down a cliff path right next to it. Visited this place with some friends we'd made in the hostel, who'd we'd also seen the pandas with, and we were all blown away. Definitely worth a visit.

The last night in Chengdu was pretty memorable. The hostel (Mix Hostel is a must for anyone planning to visit Chengdu) put on a dumpling party where anyone who wanted could join in and make dumplings and get to know each other a bit. Stayed up really late with the other backpackers we'd gotten to know quite well. We had to catch a plane to Xian at 5.20 the next morning, but at some point someone decided it wasn't worth going to bed and made more sense to stay up drinking and head straight over to the airport in a merry mood. This didn't work out obviously – fell asleep at 2, got less that 2 hours sleep, got a bus to the airport and felt horrible. But we made the flight and are ready for those terracotta warriors!