Well, we’re still in Chengdu. The bus ride here from Guilin went fairly smoothly although the driver stopped every hour or so to pick up ‘extra passengers’. It’s pretty funny because everytime our bus approached a police checkpoint the driver would stop about 200m away, let the illegal passengers off and, once the police had done their search, wait for the same passengers to get back on.

Although the bus was pretty spacious, it was still pretty tough to sleep as our driver liked to satisfy his dance music mania by playing all the latest Chinese club anthems at full blast - every now and then he’d really crank up the volume for a personal favorite.

To be fair, although he did get lost at one point and round up on a non-complete highway, our driver drove fairly well. Although I feel ’safe’ is perahaps the wrong word, we didn’t feel in danger - except maybe when we realised that the driver was watching television (no joke).

When we arrived in Chengdu we were, as normal, mobbed by the hordes of touts that inhabit bus station forecourts. Things weren’t made easier by the fact we weren’t certain that we were in Chengdu at all. Luckily, after joining forces with two other British guys, we hopped in a taxi and headed off towards the hostel.

Chengdu itself is a pretty standard Chinese city - polluted, busy and confusing. It is, however, home to pandas (ahhh) and the worlds largest Buddha (oooh). Being tough, we decided to tackle both attractions in the same day.

The pandas were nice to look at and their semi-natural enviroment was a far cry from what you’d imagine a Chinese zoo to look like. The Buddha, carved over a period of 90 years into a cliff face, was very impressive - although the intense crowds made it a somewhat tiring day.

The next day we tried to buy our tickets to Kunming - no luck! Apparently this year Kunming is the place to be and getting a ticket can take up to two weeks. As such, we’re going to head to Panzhihua (spelling?) (half-way between Chengdu and Kunming) and slowly work our way down to to Kunming stopping at a few other places on the way. Our train leaves on the 19th July.

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