Chengdu & Kunming, China, Asia
5.30am and we arrived in Chengdu on an overnight train, an early arrival but it meant that we were able to get to the Chengdu Panda Reserve straight after breakfast when the pandas are at their most active. An ecological conservation base dedicated to saving the Chinese endangered species - Giant Pandas and the Red Panda.
We spent a few hours in the reserve, watching pandas ranging from 6 months to 7 years old, eating away on copious amounts of bamboo, and then fooling around in their enclosures, swinging from trees and playing with eachother. 44 pandas are well looked after in the reserve with just another 1000 living in the wild - a tough job to keep their breeding program going and saving the pandas from extintion.
Aside from the panda reserve, Chengdu has a lot of space to relax. A beautiful monastry , Remnin Park (People's Park) where a few of spent hours in a typical Chinese tea house, drinking tea and playing cards whilst sitting next to a pretty lake. Surrounded by locals doing exactly the same thing, it was an excellent way to take time out from a hectic tour.
In Chengdu we also had the opportunity to to partake in a cookery class, having already took a lesson in Thai Cookery earlier on in my trip I was eager to pick up some tips on Chinese cooking. 5 dishes later and I learnt that the basics to Chinese cooking is oil, salt, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and corn flour. Much of the cooking is fried and so after the course I realised that it's not particularly that healthy - I have no idea how Chinese people stay so slim!
With the end to the 1st part of our trip, our next train was to Kunming where 5 people would leave the tour and another 5 people would join. Kunming itself is not that interesting but is a gateway in and out of China, luckily for us we were celebrating a 30th birthday which meant we spent the afternoon in a bar, followed by dinner, followed by more drinks and games and finally moving on to kareoake!!! A social event that is taken very seriously in China, so we thought it best to hire our own room and sing at the top of our voices without offending the local people.
We spent a few hours in the reserve, watching pandas ranging from 6 months to 7 years old, eating away on copious amounts of bamboo, and then fooling around in their enclosures, swinging from trees and playing with eachother. 44 pandas are well looked after in the reserve with just another 1000 living in the wild - a tough job to keep their breeding program going and saving the pandas from extintion.
Aside from the panda reserve, Chengdu has a lot of space to relax. A beautiful monastry , Remnin Park (People's Park) where a few of spent hours in a typical Chinese tea house, drinking tea and playing cards whilst sitting next to a pretty lake. Surrounded by locals doing exactly the same thing, it was an excellent way to take time out from a hectic tour.
In Chengdu we also had the opportunity to to partake in a cookery class, having already took a lesson in Thai Cookery earlier on in my trip I was eager to pick up some tips on Chinese cooking. 5 dishes later and I learnt that the basics to Chinese cooking is oil, salt, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and corn flour. Much of the cooking is fried and so after the course I realised that it's not particularly that healthy - I have no idea how Chinese people stay so slim!
With the end to the 1st part of our trip, our next train was to Kunming where 5 people would leave the tour and another 5 people would join. Kunming itself is not that interesting but is a gateway in and out of China, luckily for us we were celebrating a 30th birthday which meant we spent the afternoon in a bar, followed by dinner, followed by more drinks and games and finally moving on to kareoake!!! A social event that is taken very seriously in China, so we thought it best to hire our own room and sing at the top of our voices without offending the local people.
posted by Lou @ 1:33 am
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