Chengdu and Wolong

Got another overnight train from Xian to Chengdu. Although I have been warned that they are uncomfortable and overcrowded, I've actually found them to be very good. Theres not really much to do in Chengdu, a few nice parks and a big statue of Chairman Mao is about it, but I just went there for a night so I could get a bus to Wolong. One interesting thing that I did find was a Carrefour supermarket, it basically had all the things you would expect from a Western supermarket and alot of other things as well. Fish in tanks, so you could just choose the one you wanted, live turtles and the meat counter seemed to have any part of any animal you could imagine. Somehow managed to win some cream to make your skin turn whiter. Even after nearly 2 months in the sun with the temperature over 30, I may be slightly more tanned than when I left, but don't think this is something I'll ever have any use for.

The bus to Wolong was another transport adventure, as yet again it turned out that for about the last 50km they hadn't actually built the road yet. The bus had to stop for about 3 hours as the track isn't actually open during the day because they are still building it. But it was a nice journey beside a river through the mountains. It's another place where very few Western people go, so no one spoke any English. But found a nice hotel to stay in and had a nice meal by just going into the kitchen pointing at a few vegetables and they made it into something very good.

The next day I went to a panda research base/breeding centre, which was very good. Chance to see a lot of pandas in almost native conditions. They have a few baby pandas there at the moment, the youngest was 10 days old, it had to be kept in an incubator and didn't really look anything like a panda as it had no fur yet. A slightly older one that was nearly a month old was very cute.

Had planned to carry on travelling further west towards Tibet, but as far as I could work out, the 'road' was even worse so it wasn't possible. Instead I returned to Chengdu and headed further south to Emei Shan.