Pandas pandas pandas

Pandas

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Arrived in Chengdu after travelling there by sleeper train, 25 hours! Stayed at a lovely hostel there and right in the middle of the Old town by the Wen shu temple. Went straight to explore the area and found lovely old buildings and shops, restaurants and stalls. The road the hostel was on particularly was typically Chinese with tiny canteen restaurants with noodles and veg being cooked outside and men playing Mah jong outside. Everyone was outside. We wandered around and then booked a panda trip for the morning.

The pandas were in a Research centre and there were many more than I expected, we saw how lazy they are and how they just eat bamboo early in the morning and then go to sleep for the rest of the day. There were even tiny panda cubs about 4 months old indoors in a big cot, they were fluffy and greyer. Learnt that the first born panda cub is often rejected or hurt as the Mum does not know what is happening. There are only 1000 pandas left in the wild. We also saw red pandas, more like racoons, there are only 500 of these in the wild.

In the afternoon we went to Wen shu temple, very impressive, tea at the tea house was still like mud though.