So the intrepid Beijing 5 flew back to the truck, now parked up in Chengdu, arriving at the glorious hour of 330am. Disastrously, we were too late for the big night out in the Irish bar. Given 40% of the Beijing 5 are Irish this made for some sad faces.
We were allowed a few hours sleep and then George took us off to the panda sanctuary nice and early in the morning (the lazy buggers sleep most of the rest of the day!). Prepare yourself for loads of pictures of really cute pandas.....
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| Cooling off on a block of ice |
From Chengdu we went to see the big Buddha at Leshan, the biggest one in the world.
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| Dragon carved into the wall on the walk up |
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| It's quite big |
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| The stairs down to the Buddha's feet |
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| Temple at the top |
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| Demon playing a mandolin! |
Jenn, Aoife and I then proceeded to spend the rest of the day being slightly less cultured, hanging out in some hot springs and getting our feet nibbled by fish. Possibly the weirdest sensation, but had lovely soft feet afterwards.
From there it was a bit of a mad dash through the rest of China on some terrible roads, though in full view of an amazing new road being built, complete with kilometres of tunnels and bridges. We stopped in quite a few towns including Lijiang and Dali which are quite touristy, but also quite pretty.
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| Grave in rice paddy |
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| Lijiang |
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| Lijiang |
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| Lijiang |
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| Barbequed chicken feet, Lijiang |
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| Bugs and things to eat, Lijiang |
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| Clare's cafe, Dali |
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| Dali |
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| Fire festival, Dali |
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| Fire torch, Dali |
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Aoife says goodbye to George
(I'm sure there's one of me with him, but I don't know who took it!) |
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| A collage we made for George |
And so to Laos.....
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