Stop! It's Pandatime

Yesterday, I got up early and went on a trip through the hostel to do that typical China thing-see the pandas. The 1/2 hour excursion took 7 of us from the hostel, and 3 from another hostel, to the Chengdu Panda Research Base, where pandas are bread and researched. The place is like Jurassic World for pandas. First we saw black swans, which are indigenous to China, and noted for their beauty

Happy visitors (mainly domestic visitors) wear panda hats and pins. There was a panda cafe, and a panda shuttle to take folks back and forth through the park. We saw the huge black and white pandas, from smaller ones (who are still large) to big ones. We also saw cute read pandas, which are endangered. The park was mobbed, mostly with Chinese tourists, once again, but the pandas we're cute and funny.

That was the morning tour-after that, we all got back in the bus, and went to the Big Buddha in Leshan, the tallest stone Buddha in the world. This entailed a two hour bus ride through traffic (which I slept). First of all, the tour driver brought us for lunch at a restaurant, (of course we had to pay). We had good Chinese food while he stood over us. (He did have to interpret, since the menu was in Chinese)

Then, we got on a boat, rode about 10 minutes to the other side of the river.and saw the big Buddha, cut in the rock. We had the option of hiking down the side of the Buddha, but decided to take the boat-which was fine. The Buddha was impressive.

At the end of the day, it was another 2 1/2 hour ride through traffic back to the city. I was tired but looked in the various shops.