Adorable pandas

We repeated the greasy Chinese breakfast at the Ibis before taking a taxi to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. We hadn’t planned on going there as we had been 13 years ago. However, since we had the time (because we went to Leshan yesterday), we thought we would.

The taxi ride was very reasonable at CNY37 which made us realise that we had been ripped off with our previous tuktuk and motorcycle rides (but they were in situations where we didn’t have any choice).

At the first panda enclosure we visited, the very first panda we saw was chomping away on bamboo shoots.  He stopped suddenly and remained absolutely motionless for maybe half a minute. Both Kim and I thought it was a robotic panda and had malfunctioned!

Like Chengdu, the panda venue was unrecognisable from our previous visit (apart from a bronze monument). It had been expanded to include many enclosures and houses that accommodate adults, young adults, cubs and newborns.

Of course, there were also red (rather than giant) pandas which were in fact the original pandas discovered by Westerners. They are more mobile and rather elusive when it comes to wanting to get a shot of them on camera.

We were impressed by how the place had been developed but the crowds were horrendous, as with anything of interest in China. Kim thought it was better than San Diego zoo, which is kind of a benchmark (apparently).

We taxied back to the city, hopping off at the bus station. I tried to book our return travel from Jiuzhaigou back to Chengdu. They asked for my outbound ticket and reissued it as a return and collected the difference in fare. The new fare was less than double which means a small savings, but it was an open ticket. So, after that little bit of effort, we still don’t have a return booking. But, we were surprised the staff put in the work just for us to get a little savings.

We grabbed lunch on the way back to the hotel. We ducked in and out of different places as it drizzled a little.