Day 27 Chengdu, Pandas

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Hello Followers,



We mainly came to Chengdu to visit the Giant Panda breeding research centre. It is about 10km north of Chengdu however, it's quite hard to get there via public bus if you can't speak the language. Louisa and I did it a few years ago but we had our Chinese friend Amanda to escort us on the bus. This time though, Neil and I paid about £13 each for a tour from our hostel. A private car picked the two of us up at 7.30am and drove us to the research centre, the ticket entrance was also included and then the driver took us around the feeding areas for the pandas, which happens first thing in the morning before they all go back to their favourite pastime: sleeping. Going this early meant we missed all the tourist so had front row views. We saw adult and baby pandas and also red pandas as you can see in the photos. It was a great morning, we even watched the David Attenborough documentary about the centre, which was really interesting. We didn't pay to hold any baby pandas.



We were driven back to the hostel, arriving about midday. We had planned to then catch the bus to Chengdu university and have a look around the area but as we both have colds, we had a very lazy afternoon in the room :-(



We went out about 7pm to the Irish bar about 6 stops away on the metro, we thought we would treat ourselves to a western meal and a few beers. It was very busy in the bar, with the most amount of white people we have seen in a long time. There was a free line dancing lesson on the stage and a pool table. For food Neil went for a burger and I had a blue cheese, bacon and pear salad with chips-mine was amazing! Neil however felt ill after his, I think he is definitely suits to asian food! We had a few games of pool against the local and then made it back to our hostel.



All for now-busy day in Leshan tomorrow.



Love V&N x

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