panda panda panda!

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we arrived in chengdu and someone from our hostel met us at the train station and got us a taxi which the hostel paid for, this seemed a bit crazy to us but whatever.
the hostel was really nice and relaxed and had a reasonably priced tour to the panda reseach base leaving the next morning so we booked on.
the panda's were really cute and we were lucky to be there in the morning when they were feeding the young panda's and the kindergarten area was really active. the staff were helping the pandas to do forward rolls and one of them fell down the ditch between the tourists and the pandas. We spent a couple of hours there and saw fully grown pandas and red pandas before going back to see more of the little ones who had already started sleeping, although we did see one climbing a tree and then falling out! one of the staff tried to catch it but fell and hurt herself and the panda was fine!
chengdu was ok but there wasn't so much to do there we saw tian fu square which was nice and the huge statue of chairman mao. Wenshu temple was the best thing for me, we had a wander round the huge grounds and it was very peaceful then had traditional tea in the teahouse in the temple with the tea leaves all just floating in the cup and lots of staff wandering around filling up your cup whenever you take a sip! pauls favourite place was people park where you could watch the locals doing their daily tai chi and also people ball room dancing or making sugar pictures to sell to tourists!
from chengdu we also caught the bus out to leshan to see Dafo the giant buddah carved into the side of the mountain to protect the people from flooding. it was very impressive apparently its fingernails are the height of an average person and six people can sit on its big toenail! we thought it would be a very peaceful religious place but its crazy hectic with local people and chinese tourists. we were a total novelty to the local people who all seemed to want to have their photograph taken with me! it was really weird and we were talking to someone in the hostel about it later who told us the same happened to him at the great wall so he asked fo 10 yuan per photo and made 150 yuan which is 15 pounds! we might try that next time, maybe! we get stared at a lot here and some people we've met get quite annoyed but i think you just have to laugh so we keep smiling and say hello and wave and they all start laughing. someone taught us how to say 'stop looking at me' in chinese but it probably just makes them stare more because you are speaking chinese, and apparently shouting 'boo!' works better but i don't think we would ever do that!

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Photos

Baby Pandas
Feeding off the bottles