Exit Chengdu and enter Lijiang in Yunnan province, a couple of hundred miles north of Kunming for you geography buffs. In Chinese folklore, Yunnan was where all the naughty little boys and girls were sent to and we thought we were destined for it!We decided to fly after getting annoyed with the ridiculously long train journeys and were rewarded with an arbitrary upgrade to first class courtesy of pushing to the front of the VIP queue and using the ignorant foreig...

After spending 5 nights in Chengdu I thought I would jot down some of the highlights and lowlights of this huge city in China's middle. Highlights: Chengdu is renowned for its laidback tea house culture which simply means people of all ages sit in tea houses sipping tea and watch the world go by. This, in turn, makes them much friendlier then the Chinese we have met previously.People smile at you on the street and try to help you if you are standing looking at...

The morning after the hotpot and we could still taste chillies and allspice as we walked up the road to a different hostel as our place was overbooked (the new place has a bar/lounge area and a free pool table so we weren't too bothered). We had slightly miscalculated the time we had available mainly due to the beers the night before so rushed down to meet our Chinese friend Kay at1 to see the Pandas. The journey to the breeding centre was fun by itself with K...

We left a soggy Xi'an behind and boarded an overnight train to Chengdu which is in the Sichuan province, famed for spicy food and pandas. The travel day and the subsequent first day in Chengdu represented the highs and lows of travel in China. The train journey was less than desirable, firstly because Antony and I were in separate cabins so both of us were alone in out cabins with three (or more) Chinese people.It was loud, smelly, confusing and not conducive to ...

Xi'an has been a bit strange.It is cold and rainy, as Antony said before, and we are both a bit disappointed with the weather. We were looking forward to emailing everyone back home about how hot and lovely the weather is but truthfully, I've looked at the forecast and Newcastle weather is better than here!But as they say, it is still better than Jarrow…On the night train to Xi'an, we met a young Chinese guy who was keen to practice his English so we chatte...