What I've been up to …

Yesterday (Day 2) we went to the Panda Base, which is about 13km northeast of Chengdu.

I am too tired of walking for the past 3 days that I am not in the mood to write much. So, let’s enjoy the pix…

Buying tickets (who else!):

The tickets were ¥58 each. A quick look at the tickets:

No guidebook or map to guide us in. I tried to memorise the big map;

Too much for this old brain to swallow. I instead went up the stairs on our right, to the Tourist Information Centre (The Panda Museum is there too).

I asked if they sell any guidebook of the place (like in Keukenhof). There was none. The lady at the counter told me that if I buy postcards from her, she’d give me a map of the place for free. So I paid Y20 for a dozen postcards, all with pictures of pandas (and got a map).

Quite satisfied, I came down the stairs:

So we walked in, with a “too simplified” free map in hand.

First stop was the golden panda:

This billboard reminds me of James Herriot (I love his “All Creatures Great and Small” books and BBC-TV series. He made veterinary sounds interesting!);

We had to go through a few avenues of bamboos:

Eventually we came across the red pandas:

Some close-up shots:

They are not really pandas :

We kept on walking, until we came to the adult panda enclosure. Who said after 9am all pandas snooze off? This one is still busy eating (it was almost 12 noon by then):

This one is a sub-adult (youth?) panda, with a special pose for me:

And this one is still busy eating (panda bears consume a lot of the bamboo leaves that the Panda Base has to buy the bamboo shoots from the villagers!):

Sequence of panda munching on bamboo leaves … burp!:

The panda visit concluded when we found out that the nursery was closed. We took a breather by having some coffee at the Panda Cafe inside the reserve. I ordered “pancake with chocolate” (expecting fluffy pancake) but what came was merely a “lempeng”. What a disappointment :

Even the chocolate spread was tasteless!

We then visited the nearby Swan Lake. Some visitors bought the fish food and fed them:

Saw a peacock too:

On our way out,  I obliged (to the photographer) for a shot at the entrance:

Earlier I saw a souvenir shop outside the Panda Base, so I went there to get some souvenirs. Not much of what I wanted (and could afford). I bought some but I need to get other souvenirs elsewhere before I go home, or many friends will not get anything from this trip.

I however came across a Panda wannabe:

Shots of some of the pandas we saw:

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