China & Tibet
5th to 19th September 2018
Day 14 - Fly to Chengdu - Tuesday 18th September 2018
Day 15 - fly home - Wednesday 19th September 2018
Day 14 - Fly to Chengdu - Tuesday 18th September 2018
So it was up bright and early again this morning..... meeting at 6:15am to get the coach to the airport - about an hour and a quarters journey. Checked in ok and even had time to get a coffee. The flight to Chengdu was good, just under 2 hours, and after we arrived, Bill told us he has been tracking that flight for the last few days, and most have arrived late, one not till 8:30pm!
We were met by our Chinese guide, Abby, and got on the coach to go to the Panda Research Centre. To get there we saw lots of new building, again, another newly developing city... China’s fourth largest. The weather is cloudy, a bit drizzly at times, and very muggy.
Reaching the Panda Centre, our first stop was for lunch in the Bamboo Restaurant... very nice and a bit different to what we have been having. Chengdu is in the Sichuan Province, and is renowned as the food capital of China.
After lunch we set off around the Panda centre, all the paths were lIned with bamboo.... but apparently not the sort the pandas like to eat! That is brought in every day from nearby. We were extremely lucky and saw pandas up in the trees, and down on the ground eating, some even moving around. Apparently they are extremely lazy animals, especially in the afternoons!
We also walked through the Panda Nursery building, and saw a few baby pandas, all sleeping, in what looked to be a playpen. We went through it again a bit later, and saw one of the baby pandas being fed a bottle. About 50% of panda births are twins.... in the wild only one will survive, as the mother can only look after one baby and chooses the fittest, and abandons the other baby. At the centre the survival rate for twins is nearly 100%, as the other baby is hand reared. They started off with 6 rescued pandas, and now have 146 pandas, and are aiming to release some back to the wild.
We also saw, only just, as they were high up in the trees, a couple of red pandas. They are a bit like a cross between a fox and a raccoon. They weren’t being terribly cooperative about having their photo taken.
There was also a short film about pandas and the research centre, that was interesting and informative, which was good to watch. This was a definitely wow factor visit for our last day.
The wow factor continued when we arrived at our hotel for the night, definitely the best for last! We went out to a local Sichuan restaurant for dinner....it was very nice and again ate with chopsticks.
Said goodbye to three of our group.... two Australians who were catching a later flight than us to Sydney, and one Brit who was joining the Grand Tour of China and continuing with them.
No of steps walked today 11575
Day 15 - fly home - Wednesday 19th September 2018
So today was a very long travelling day! We had our early morning wake up call at the hotel at 4:30 am... left the hotel at 5 am to travel to the airport, for our 8:20 flight to Hong Kong. After check in, had a coffee in Starbucks with the rest of the group..... and said goodbye to the other two Australians who at Hong Kong would be catching their flight to Perth.... and the couple from Northern Ireland who are staying on in Hong Kong for a few days ( we should have thought of that!)
A quick turn around in Hong Kong.... about an hour to get from one plane to the next, to find it was slightly delayed! Had good views coming into land of the islands and skyscrapers.
Onto our next plane, and a 13 hour flight to Heathrow....losing 7 hours with the time difference. We then said goodbye to the rather diminished group and got the Heathrow Express to Paddington. Having allowed plenty of time before our train back to Nailsea, just in case of delays, we had rather a long wait there. Finally made it back to Nailsea, again the train was delayed, just about midnight where Rach kindly picked us up and dropped us home. After 26 hours of travelling, it was rather exhausting.
No of steps walked today 8331
