Eating, drinking and being hot

Lots more street eating in Xi'an, ( photo of Bell tower in the centre of the city) & enjoying all the fountains in the heat, one day was 39 degrees,  then managed to get a flight to Chengdu. Trains were all booked out due to student holidays unless we wanted standing only... But it was 16 hours so we flagged that. Flight was delayed, arrived at our hotel at 2.30 am!! Hung out at the people's park yesterday, drinking tea, you get a whole flask of water so you can make a lot of tea. Avoided getting our ears cleaned out!! Photo of Trevor saying no to one guy who is holding his ear cleaning instruments. Something this city is renowned for. I thought they were offering accupuncture to begin with... But Lots of Chinese people getting it done as well as neck & head massage. An interesting place to sit and watch the goings on.  It is a country of contrast. Both cities we have been in are very modern, some very upmarket expensive shops and everything you could possibly need you can find, (we found the pupu caterpillars that were found in Nepal, a whole shop selling them, small boxes for around $3000 nz ) There are lots of lights on all the big buildings and fountains everywhere, nice parks and gardens.  The young people are dressed really well the most amazing high heel shoes  on all the girls. Then the back streets with people sitting outside washing clothes, selling food, playing cards, drinking tea and bicycle rubbish collectors with brooms and shovels, fruit & vege vendors. They work all hours of the day & night. All grotty apartment living with their little business downstairs, mainly food, very basic. I think everyone eats out. Quite a few beggars. Xi'an had thousands of high rise apartment blocks and thousands more being built. 8 million people in Xi'an. We haven't seen a stand alone house, noone can buy land here. They just lease places for 70 years or so or rent.   So far the people have been pretty nice to us but courtesy and service don't appear to be part of the culture.  We have to keep our wits about us crossing the street. It is chaos at intersections. Safety in numbers seems to work cause you just have to walk slowly across amongst the traffic and hope nothing hits you... It is hard to describe it. Nothing actually stops, everything just weaves in & out of everything else, buses, cars, bikes, pedestrians all going different ways. We visited the pandas this morning, they are so cute!! You can't possibly come to Chengdu and miss that. The hotel we r staying in is called Mr Panda!