Qu Chengdu

"Qu" means "to go to" if you were wondering about the title. Mum and I are currently in the little town of Chengdu in Sichuan Province (this little town is roughly the size of London!). We arrived here yesterday evening on a flight from Xian.

Xian was really awesome. We struck out early on Friday on a tour to see the Terracotta Warriors. They truly are an impressive sight, and estimates suggest less than 20% has been uncovered so far. The warriors are well worth the trip to Xian. Our tour also included a few little side trips, one being to a silk factory which was pretty interesting after years of breeding silk worms in mom's kitchen as a kid.

Beautiful. It took 40 years to complete the tombs apparently.

There are just so many, its hard to do it all justice.

That evening we explored the muslim district of Xian and sampled some of the street food for dinner. Saturday morning saw us out early to hire bicycles and ride around the very impressive Xian city wall. The huge ancient wall is about 14km in circumference and makes for a beautiful and interesting ride. The whole way along you can peer over into the city, we even happened upon our own little Chinese Opera in one of the parks below.

Buying some snacks in the Muslim quarter of Xian.

Mum sets off to tour Xian from above on the city wall.

The bonus with photos is you can't hear how bad they sound!

We boarded our flight to here yesterday afternoon and upon arrival headed straight for the nearest expat bar to watch the Super 14 semifinals. Awesome. Go the Sharks!

Carrying our red wine induced hangovers gracefully, Mum and I spent Mothers Day on a day trip out to Leshan to see the Big Buddha. Dafo is the biggest buddha in the world, standing (or sitting) a mighty 71m high. His ear alone is 7m in length. Very cool.

Just look at the size of it compared to the people!

We're now about to find ourselves a local restaurant to sample the fiery Sichuan cuisine. Its supposed to be a monster. Wish us luck...