Today is all about what I came to Chengdu for: PANDAS!

I wake up at 6:30am to meet in the lobby for 7am departure. There are two others in the lobby, as I discover in the taxi, a couple from Finland who have been studying computing at university here for the past year. The taxi stops at another hostel en route and we pick up three more people. We arrive at the Panda Centre at 8am. The entrance itself looks like a panda! The first area we get to is the giant adult panda. This big male panda is sat amongst a mound of bamboo shoots. According to the information board next to him, he has an unnaturally long snout and was the inspiration behind Po in Kung Fu Panda. I loved him. I sat and watched him munch for twenty minutes before moving on. I wondered if this sanctuary was cruel for him but I checked online and apparently pandas are usually solitary animals who eat and sleep all day. How true that is, I don't know. Next up the panda cubs. We were there before the cubs had been let out but this gave us the advantage to get a good viewing spot. At 9am the cubs were let out. 6 cubs walked out towards the piles of bamboo and all began to eat. One picked up bamboo in each hand and laid back exposing him tummy. Pandas remind me of me when I'm hungover, eating pizza in bed with Bek. To lazy to sit up and just feeling around the bed for food. I spent three hours in there watching all the different aged pandas. They're split by age; new born, baby, cub, sub adult, adult and then there's a red panda area. As I walked out to meet the taxi that was waiting for us I saw four cartoon panda statues and I watched locals pose with them. Over the entrance, I had noticed on the way in, they were playing Kung Fu panda. I stood and watched it for 15 minutes before I realised I was going to be late. 

Back at the hostel I checked out, left my back in the storage room and walked around Chengdu, in the opposite direction to yesterday's. I had intended to buy some snacks for my overnight train that evening but I couldn't work out what I was ordering! Not wanting a repeat of my last journey to the station I headed back to the hostel and ordered a taxi to the station. 

I don't know how I had confused myself so much but when I got to the station I had 17 minutes to get my ticket and get to the platform. The train stations in China are really busy places and not be able to read signs or explain what I want quickly meant that 17 minutes was a problem. I queue and get my ticket in a speedy 6 minutes. Get in the queue to enter the station where they check your ticket and ID. 3 minutes gone. Queue at the security point, put my bags through and get a pat down. 2 minutes more. I see the sign for my train. I have no idea how big this station is. I run up the stairs and throw my ticket under the nose of a guard. 9 minutes left. He points to another ticket checking queue. I end up behind this middle aged women who has a trolley that's too wide for the walk way. Trying to help, I push the trolley while she pulls, the trolley shoots through the gateway and smacks her in the shin. She's not happy. I apologise, but it falls on deaf ears and she just yells abuse at me. I run down a walk way throwing my ticket under more noses and eventually make it onto the platform. My carriage is 13. The first carriage I meet is 1. I have two minutes left. I run down the platform, my pack on my back and my day pack bouncing away on my front. I am so sweaty and deathly scared that my China ‘fall over’ is going to happen on this platform. I make it to carriage 13 and the train pulls away before I've made it to my bunk. (When I say ‘fall over’, I have managed to properly fall over in every country so far and I'm clumsy enough that I don't see it stopping.)

I take my pack off my back and hoist it up onto the overhead shelves. A young girl leans across from her bunk and helps me. She speaks a little English and we chat. I lie on the bunk, get my breath back and drink all the water I had bought for the journey. 

When I've regained my composure and I'm no longer dripping with sweat, I take a seat on the small fold down chair by the window and look at the surroundings. 

I make eye contact with a fiftyish year old man sat with a friend on fold down seats farther along. I nod and he nods in return, raising a small bottle of water like liquid. He breaks into a grin and walk along the train towards me and hands me an unopened bottle of the stuff he's drinking. It's rice wine, 42%, and the two of them are drinking it like it’s water! I refuse but he leaves the bottle on the small table in front of me. Half an hour later he raises his SECOND bottle of rice wine to cheers. I show him my bottle is still unopened and he does that gesture only spotted in a pantomime. He does the ‘lightbulb’ moment ah, and raises a finger and waggles it at me. He starts walking down the carriage with a can of beer. This I happily accept, handing back the rice wine, I crack open the beer and we cheers. He sees that I my table is bare, other than the iPad I'm reading from, and does ‘ah’ again, goes back to his table and takes two big handfuls of elephant nuts. Another half an hour passes and, like a waiter, he comes back with another beer and more nuts and he won't take no for an answer. He then stops the passing beverage seller, rolling through the train with his cart and buys some dried meat, one pack for him and one pack for me. He's pretty drunk by this point and on his third small bottle of rice wine. The girl translates that he says he's drinking it to help him sleep! Forget sleep, I'd be vomiting and passed out! Fortunately the girl who had helped me with my bag explained that it was beef, nothing that I would find unusual. This beef was so good!! If anything I was excited to have it because I'd been eyeing up all of this dried meat in the supermarkets but didn't have the guts to taste any. 

Shortly after my second beer and nut delivery, with beef, a group of girls got on the train. They were incredibly loud and excitable. In the same way I'd share a packet of crisps with friends this girl offered chicken feet to her friends who each took one and simultaneously pulled out two tissues each. I watched them all laugh, chat, joke, chew on chicken feet and spit them out into their tissues. Stuffed from my free dinner of beer, nuts and beef, I climbed back into bed to carry on reading. An hour or so later a mighty argument kicks off, between the girls and a group of elderly people. The elderly people are trying to sleep and these are showing no signs of calming down. I have no real idea what is going on but two stewards have to come to diffuse the situation and the girls quieten a little. 

A put on my music and fall asleep.