Diary for ScouseLeeM on Tour


Chengdu

2010-09-11 to 2010-09-12

The final stop in China, here to see one of the great endangered species. No wonder they are endangered -big fat cuddly bears designed to be meat eaters, but who rather sit on their arse chomping bamboo, and have little or no interest in sex...

Still, they are cute - Chengdu's panda breeding research base is only haf an hour from the city, and allows the pandas to live in a wild state, with over 80 acres of hills, forest and bamboo groves to choose from. There is also a centre where infants are nurtured, we even saw 1 and 2 month old cubs in incubators. There were no guarantees of us seeing the pandas, but we were more than lucky. I've uploaded a small selection of the many shots I took, various adults and cubs in different states of activity.

A fitting finale to this tour, and think I will need to come back to nail Hong Kong and Tibet...for my final night, treated myself to a traditional 90 minutes Chinese foot masage, a deep soak in a wooden tub with medicinal salts, plus scalp and face massage. All yuan spent, time to get home for a full fry up...