Pandamonium

We arrived in Chengdu just before midnight and caught a taxi into town. It stopped at the end of a very dark and muddy alley. There was a small line of red lanterns in the distance and after much shouting in Chinese and guesturing we were finally persuaded that this was indeed the right place. We picked our way through the debris and mud and finally found The Dragon Town hostel - a little oasis in the middle of a huge building site. From this unauspicious start things improved enormously. Our room had the best shower in China and the restaurant downstairs served proper coffee. After a day pottering around a large statue of Chairman Mao, we took a trip out to see the panda reserve. This was the highlight of our trip. Although it is a breeding zoo, the pandas were gorgeous. They were climbing up trees, getting stuck upside down, munching bamboo and generally being completely cute and cuddly. In the nursery were 5 teeny weeny baby pandas in incubators. Hermann managed to usher me away before I could smuggle one out. There were also smaller red pandas which has led me to the conclusion that Ginger does indeed have panda genes.