Sunday July 15, 2018
Today was panda day! We had all been looking forward to it very much. The weather forecast was calling for possible rain late in the morning, and clearing skies in the afternoon.
We went down for breakfast right at 6:30 am when the buffet opened. Again, it was a lavish east-meets-west buffet, and we all got plenty to eat. The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, our destination for the day, opens at 7:30 am, and so we had requested a taxi for 7:15 am. Multiple staff members at the hotel tried to talk us out of this, because the hotel has a free shuttle that departs at 8:15 am. They acted like going any earlier than that would be unnecessary, but we took the taxi anyway. At 30 yuan/$6 CDN, it was overpriced for the distance travelled, but would turn out to be money well spent.
We got to the centre around 7:25 am and the taxi dropped us off right out front. We were immediately accosted by hawkers outside the park gates who were peddling all sorts of panda headbands, hats, stuffed animals, etc. Chad hopped into line to buy entrance tickets, and the rest of us hopped into the queue to get in, which had already started to build. Chad came over with our tickets right as we were approaching the turnstiles. In we went.
It was misty and damp, but not raining. By the time we got inside, there were already lines for the trams that will take you to the back of the park. We bypassed those and started walking.
There are lots of signs posted around the park telling you where to go. We didn’t have much of a game plan, other than to see some pandas.
However, as we passed enclosure after enclosure, they were all empty. This was kind of befuddling, and we were beginning to wonder if perhaps the hotel staff were correct in telling us not to go so early. We did see a couple of pandas behind glass in one area, but they were sleeping and it wasn’t a great sighting.
Eventually we happened upon a building and entered it, not knowing what was inside. We walked along a mostly empty hall that had a row of windows covered in curtains. We had just set off down the hall when an employee appeared on the other side of the glass as she drew back the curtains. Lo and behold, we were in the panda nursery!
Window after window opened, and we saw panda cubs of all ages, from the very smallest pink hairless ones, up to fuzzier babies, and finally some cubs that actually looked like pandas.
We were simply lucky to be in the right place at the right time to enjoy this experience with hardly anyone else around.
It was probably still before 8 am. We were able to walk back and forth from window to window and spend as long as we pleased at each one.
After we’d had our fill of panda babies, we went back outside to the panda enclosures, and now the bears were out.
And we were lucky to have some pretty awesome sightings.
Pandas in groups, pandas on their own, pandas climbing trees, and lots and lots of pandas stuffing their faces with bamboo.
It was still early, and the park was still peaceful and relatively empty. This was exactly what we had hoped for.
We toured around the enclosures to see all of the bears (the centre is home to 83 of them), and we went to the red panda enclosure, too.
We also stopped in at a couple of gift shops that are sprinkled throughout the park.
After a couple of hours, the crowds had grown to a level that was starting to make our visit decidedly less enjoyable. It was getting tough to navigate the narrow walkways around the enclosures due to the sheer number of people in the park, especially in the locations where the pandas were present. We passed by the nursery again, and I noted an impossibly long line of folks waiting to get in.
People were being fed through in a non-stop one-direction single-file line; no stopping to take a photo, or doubling back to see something again.
Also, most of the pandas had by now finished feeding, and had gone to lie down. Time to go back to sleep.
Shortly after 10 am, it started to rain. And not just any rain; buckets and buckets of rain that surpassed even what we experienced at the Great Wall. In no time at all, we were soaked right through, despite having rain jackets and umbrellas with us. It felt like every single patron in that park put up an umbrella, and if we thought it was tough manoeuvring before, it was now ten times worse.
We had planned to eat lunch in the park at the Bamboo Restaurant before leaving, but this felt like the universe was pointing us in a different direction. Our hotel was running a free shuttle back to the property at 11 am. We decided to jump on it, even though the rain was starting to let up. We had accomplished some great sightseeing in the first few hours of our visit, and anything more would be of considerably less quality. None of us felt like sitting through lunch in our wet clothes. They literally needed to be wrung out.
So we made our way to the front of the park, where guests were continuing to stream in through the gate.
Tour buses were still dropping them off in droves. We had five minutes to find our hotel shuttle in the midst of all the chaos, and we got lucky and found it. We jumped on and headed back to the hotel, where our first order of business was changing our clothes and hanging our things up to dry.
We had a 2 pm late checkout time, so we went down to the hotel restaurant for lunch and ordered off the menu. Pork and prawn wonton noodles for me, a spicy Sichuan bowl for Chad, a club sandwich for Liam and plain noodles for Mallory.
The food was great. Over our lunch hour, Chad tried contacting Mr. Orange via WeChat to see if we could be picked up earlier than our scheduled 2:30 pm meeting time.
The day before, we had received an email from Air China notifying us that our flight time was changed and would now be departing 90 minutes earlier. We had planned to spend a few hours wandering on Jinli Street in Chengdu before heading to the airport.
Unfortunately, not only did we not hear back from the Mr. Orange office to confirm an earlier pickup time, but our driver was actually 20 minutes late based on the original pickup time, having been slowed down due to a major accident on his route. He called ahead to let the hotel staff know so they could notify us. This was one of those grin and bear it moments, and the only time Mr. Orange let us down.
Finally we were picked up and driven to Jinli Street. Based on our flight departure time, we had about 75 minutes to wander.(Jinli Street turned out to be our favourite of all the markets we visited in China, and would have been worth more time if we could have squeezed it in.)
So it was a rushed visit, but in that time we sought out one of the local candy makers who makes animal-shaped lollipops right in front of you, and bought some;
…we sampled the sticky pineapple rice;
…we tried a cute panda-themed dim sum; and we browsed in several shops.
We would have liked to watch a short face-changing show, but simply didn’t have time for that. Our driver met us back at the appointed place and time, and we were off to the airport.
Checkin at the airport was pretty quick and easy. We shopped in a few stores, and grabbed dinner inside the airport.
Despite all the negative reviews we’d heard about Air China (not to mention our own scheduling difficulties – they canceled our original flight about two weeks before our trip started, which necessitated some scheduling changes on our end with regards to hotels and transfers) – our flight boarded and left on time, and was smooth as can be. We landed in Guilin, collected our luggage and met the driver who was waiting for us. This was a driver arranged by our hotel in Guilin, and not through Mr. Orange.
I was not at all impressed by this driver, which made me realize how good we’d had it with Mr. Orange. This driver’s van was full of garbage, and he drove recklessly, weaving in and out of traffic excessively (even by Chinese standards) and traveling much faster than the other vehicles on the road. I tried not to think about the fact that China has the highest per capita traffic fatality rate in the world as we sped through the city.
Finally we arrived at our hotel, the Secret Courtyard. It’s a cute boutique hotel, and I think it promises some stunning views, which we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see.
For now I am off to bed. I have had a very sore throat building all day today. I don’t feel like I am otherwise sick, and am wondering if China’s air quality (or lack thereof) is starting to affect me. Hoping that the fresh air of rural China over the next few days helps to clear it up quickly.
Cook Family Travels 