Pandamonium!

Asia » China
April 10th 2015

Published: April 11th 2015

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chicksinchina

Dressed for action

We had to wear these lovely suits to work with the pandas.

April 10 - Pandamonium!

Breakfast was a spectacle. We headed to the small dining room just before a large family of Chinese tourists. They ripped through the buffet with no regard to us even being there, Sharon had to shoo them off our table and then, within minutes, there was food all over the place and they were finished. A very funny and strange experience.

Today was one of the days that we had really been looking forward too. The day we volunteered to work with the giant panda. It's expensive to be a volunteer but I think well worth it. We traveled out to the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda. We put on our very attractive and very large overalls and headed up the hill in a cute electric bus to our first job.

Our first job was to clean out the panda enclosures. Noelene and I were a pair and Sharon and Judi were a pair. Noelene picked up panda poopy and I cleaned out all the old bamboo that Hide Xi had eaten the previous day. Then I cleaned the poopy out of her enclosure.

Selfie on the electric bus

We smashed huge bamboo sticks on the ground to make it easier for the pandas to eat and then added the fresh food to the enclosure. It was amazing being up so close to these adorable creatures. They actually made eye contact with us.

After that, we had to weed the drain of another enclosure and then we spent time looking at all the other pandas. There was one who was a little sick, twins up a tree, another one who couldn't sit still up his tree and many more. They were amazing.

We then had to hand feed the panda cake to the pandas. We waited for Mae Ling to put his arm out of the cage onto a metal bench. He's trained to do this so they can monitor his health. When his arm is out, we pop the cake into his mouth. He looked up at you with those lovely panda eyes.

We had lunch with the rest of the workers which we all really enjoyed (see picture) unit Sharon found a bonus fly in hers. Yuck.

During the lunch break we went back to

Feeding bamboo to the panda

town to explore the river side. A beautiful town with markets, old bridges and lots of local tourists. This place was near the site of the 2008 earthquake that killed 50000 people.

We went back to Mae Ling and Win Xa (Windsor) and hand fed them again!

We went back to Chengdu, relaxed and did some washing.

Additional photos below

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