Heather Fell, Olympic modern pentathlete silver medalist, writes about her life 'on and off' the track.

LIVING in Devon I think it is normal for us to think of London or any other major UK city as being rather loud, busy and crowded. However, a trip to China would certainly leave you longing for the peace you could find anywhere back home.

As I write this I am sat in my hotel room in Chengdu and 25 floors up I can hear constant noise of horn beeping, drilling, dogs barking and various high pitched Chinese music - oh, and now and again a car alarm too. This city doesn't seem to sleep — or at least due to jet lag I didn't last night — however, it does quieten down slightly in the early hours.

Chengdu is probably best known for its pandas but as I visited the sanctuary on my last visit I decided to check out the local area this time. First stop was the nail parlour. Okay not quite that glamorous but the lady at her market stall painted my nails a lovely pink sparkly version of the Union Jack. I hope they last until the Jubilee!

With the British pound being so strong in China I had a fair amount of change left over for a touch of shopping. As I only had a few days here I didn't have time to put an order in at the tailors so clothes shopping was rather limited. To start with I could only find what I thought were children's sizes until I realised that I am actually a giant in comparison to most of the locals — so this left me with a good excuse to buy some clothes for a couple of friends' new born babies. There were many cute looking baby grows; however, I'm not quite sure my friends would appreciate the fashion out here, instead of nappies the young children have a large 'hole' in their trousers!

Times readers can be updated on what Heather is up to via?her social networking site twitter:heatherfellnews