12th April – Chengdu

The morning of our train journey is pretty uneventful, tho i enjoy the “just-add-boiling-water” hot chocolate we have discovered. nice breakfast. we get picked up in Chengdu train station but not before we have had a chance to witness a screaming match between civilian woman and shop owner. By the looks of the other few locals we were not the only bemused onlookers. She looked quite normal but den had seen her hitting her own head 5 minutes previously...
So nice pick up and they pay the taxi ride to the hostel! pretty cool! End up SOOO pleased with our room and discover to my TOTAL delight the shower is good pressure with hot hot hot water. HEAVEN and i go all pruny :P they even give us a fruit basket! awesome. we head out on a mish to find some western food...sorry but sometimes you really need some. anyways find a DICOS which seems to be a chinese version of KFC, its packed and with lots of kids so seems to be a good bet. and its also spotless...i can see i like chengdu for all the wrong western reasons! gt a chicken burger and almost choke to death in my haste to eat it, but damn ITS GOOD. happy to provide good entertainment for the locals too. Spend the rest of the day wandering round the clothes shops which range from ridiculous to plain awful but its good fun to look at and i got a sweater for £1! woohoo. Our hostel is so fab we can rent DVDs for free and when i book our panda trip for the next morning, we get a free mini breaky of biscuits and waters! how nice is that! Watch a DVD and head out for Sichuan hotpot which is the local food. We end up getting the tourist version which is a pot of soup surrounded by the hotpot...good choice cos the chillies in the oil the hotpot uses are SO incredibly hot and have a funny aftertaste. Its good fun cooking our meat and veg and you dip it in a peanut oil/garlic/corriander mix afterwards. Its good but i find all the oil a bit much. den is loving the heavy tastes after food that he describes as too bland!