Home of the Giant Pandas

Chengdu - home of the Giant Pandas! What a great place....this city has everything...and yes we were happy to see Starbucks again, isn't that sad!!

Today we visited the Panda base, about 10 km's out of town...we had organised to be taken out there by Mr Wang, through a local guesthouse....it turned out that we were the only 2 going...and our pick up was at 7.10am...nice and early because it's best to see the Pandas munching on their bamboo for breakfast. Mr Wang had trouble finding our hotel though so there were lots of phone calls back and forth - we rang Mr Wang (he said "wait, wait"), then he rang us about 20minutes later, speaking Chinese (hmmm, a few swear words perhaps?!), then we rang the guesthouse, then Mr Wang rang the guesthouse, then the guesthouse rang us. Then the guesthouse rang our hotel (to get someone who could explain the location in Chinese). Then someone from our hotel came down and signalled for us to follow him. We followed him around the block, he stopped to ask directions from someone, and then we kept going. Then we saw a guy waving at us impatiently. He said something about '3' and waved his arms (like he had driven around 3 times or something). Then we hopped in the van and he took off - really took off!! We got to the Panda Base and he hurried us along - it was almost a sprint to the Pandas!!! I guess he didn't want us to miss out, seeing as though we were about an hour behind schedule!

The pandas did not disappoint - they were gorgeous (see pictures).

Off to bed now after our early start....

written by  arterra on November 29, 2007 from Chengdu, China
from the travel blog: China Adventure
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