Wednesday, July 4, 2007

We have finally made it to Chengdu

On Sunday morning we watched our train pull away from the platform while we were standing on the opposite side. Yes, we missed our train by a few minutes, but were able to get an 80% refund and buy a new ticket for the next day. So we hung around in Guangzhou before returning back to Foshan for the evening. The next day we made it to the train on time. We spent 33 hours on the train watching the countryside, playing cards, reading and sleeping. We arrived at the very busy Chengdu train station were we navigated our way through the crowds to the ticket booth to buy a train ticket to Lhasa, Tibet. Travelling to Tibet is quite complicated. Unable to buy the tickets we decided to find our hostel and see what we could plan at the hostel/travel agent. After much planning we have booked a plane, permit, and 4 day Mount Everest tour to Tibet at a much higher cost then expected, but I think it will be worth it.
Oh, yesterday I vistied the Panda breeding and research base. The Giant Pandas are so cute. Did you know that they also have red pandas? Pandas eat only 20 species of the 300 species of bamboo in China. They are in danger of being extinct but the reserach base has been sucessful in their efforts. A baby panda was born 3 days ago. We couldn't see it as the mother would shelter it from the live video camera in her den. The pandas are very funny creaters who sleep for most of the time. We arrived at feeding time so we could see them awake and playing with each other.

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