Chengdu, China

Chengdu 1/2

Day 1

Peng Hotel: for the first few days we stayed in a 5 star hotel booked by John as it was my (Nina) birthday. Was amazing having so much space after 4 weeks of hostels - such a treat!! After checking in, we headed out for our first dinner of mapo tofu - a dish I’d been wanting to try in its place of origin for ages :chefskiss:

Sichuan market tour and cooking class: Spent the morning relaxing in the pool and spa 😎 and then went to a local market where we met our tour guide Jerry (a legend). We tried some local produce, the sichuan peppercorns were so strong that chewing on just one made our mouths numb for 10 mins! After this we learnt how to cook 5 different Sichuan dishes:

• Sichuan spicy cabbage
• Twice-cooked pork
• Fish-fragrant Aubergine
• Mapo tofu
• Spicy cucumber salad

Chinese bar friends: it turns out that every bar in Chengdu has a live singer with a guitar, we ended up at one south of the centre and met some locals v drunk and wanting to practice their English. They gave us a bottle of whiskey and one of them fell asleep on the stage - was a fun night which we ended at a club called .TAG. Not the best music so we had ended up leaving early but one to check out for good events!!

Day 2

Both nursing a bit of a hangover we had a chill morning in the spa + neutral food (including the best roasted sweet potato of my life).

Best dinner: dinner was at Nianfeng restaurant. We ordered pig elbow (?) in Sichuan sauce, fried yellow croaker fish, fried prawn dumplings (basically fancy prawn toast) and bamboo shoots with pickles - everything was amazing and there was so much of it, we barely got through half, the waitress was definitely laughing at how much we ordered.

Sichuan opera: after dinner we went to a famous Sichuan opera house. Part of the show is opera but there’s also loads of stunts like face changing and fire breathing as well as puppets and a shadow hand show which was surprisingly so impressive!

Chengdu 2/2

Day 3

Wenshin monastery: sadly had to say goodbye to our hotel this day. We went to a Buddhist monastery near by our new hostel. It was very peaceful and interesting to see the locals practicing their rituals. Ate some thick, spicy, slightly sweet noodles which were 👌.

Day 4

Pandas!: the Chengdu panda research base is part of the breeding programme for pandas and provides a home for them before releasing them to the wild. We saw so many pandas, all eating or chilling and generally living their best lives. The red pandas which are native to Sichuan were also so cute!!

Jinsha site: this was a bit dry but quite cool seeing the remains of a civilisation 1000 BCE! Ate some Dan Dan noodles and pork wontons before which were 👌

Jinli street: lots of street food and v touristy!! Couldn’t stomach much food after ordering a kg of fried pork by accident.

Day 5

Mt Qingcheng: one of the four holy mountains in China, said to be the origin of Daosim one of the main religions in China. Saw the cave where the founder of Daoism lived and many temples!

Spicy spicy hotpot: as you can tell by the how hellish the broth looked it was v spicy - luckily the waiter made us order one with a non spicy soup in the middle which ended up working over time. It was so good even though it gave us belly ache.