China

May 5, 2025May 4, 2025 Kirsten

Dujiangyan Panda Base pt.1 – Pan Pan Garden pt.1 ~ Bing Jing, Nong Nong, Chun Yu + Ji Fu

First pandas in China of the trip! Always starting with the Pan Pan Garden area because it’s the first one you come to when you enter – unless you are taking the internal tourist bus. I have posted about this section before from my last visit, so I won’t write much, but there are 5 yards here to see pandas in – on this trip 3 of these held individual adults, 1 held two youngsters together, and the final held a mother and her 2 cubs. I didn’t see a lot of one of the individuals, Mei Xi, but I did spy everyone else living in this garden!

May 3, 2025May 3, 2025 Kirsten

Asia Diaries: February 2025 ~ Daytrips from Chengdu to see pandas – Dujiangyan, Ya’an and Chongqing

For this trip I decided to make Chengdu my base for the week and take daytrips out to see pandas from there – and all making use of public transport rather than having a friend take me or booking a driver/guide. It’s all really definitely possible, but for me it definitely felt easy because I’m relatively experienced in travelling around in China. So lets chat where I heading to see pandas on this trip – I took these daytrips on 3 consecutive days:

April 28, 2025April 20, 2025 Kirsten

Asia Diaries: February 2025 ~ Relaxed Chengdu afternoon at the Wuhou Lantern Festival

A relaxing afternoon after a very hectic morning/half day of travel stress! My flight was originally scheduled for 2:20AM from Kuala Lumpur to Guangzhou, arriving at 6:40AM then I had a few hours layover until my flight to Chengdu at 9:30AM which got me in at 11:55AM. With almost 3 hours to enter China in Guangzhou and grab some breakfast, I should have been fine. But as we boarded the plane in Kuala Lumpur and settled in, the captain announced a 2 hour delay! They hoped we could maybe get an earlier slot (hence why we were boarded), but our departure slot was now 4:20AM =O That left me with under an hour to enter China (meaning go through passport control and get back through security again), won’t lie, that was a stressful thought! Because of that I didn’t get much/any sleep, and my seat neighbour didn’t help – he was a ‘manspreader’, not only putting his leg into my foot space (and his socked foot onto my bag?!?!) but also stretching up then leaning on my shoulder with his elbow?!?! So while he nodded off within about 5 minutes of them announcing the delay, I did not. We indeed took off 2 hours late and I think I managed 20 minutes of sleep here and there, but definitely not enough – at least I had brought some snacks.

March 3, 2025January 12, 2025 Kirsten

The 5 PANDA BASES in Sichuan Province – a summary on visiting + what’s next when you’ve seen it all!

I can finally tick off the list seeing all of the Panda bases in Sichuan Province, or more specifically in the Chengdu area! When I had the dream of seeing all the bases, I don’t think I intended to see them all on one trip, but that somehow managed to happen (although I’ve seen some on multiple previous trips too) – and I think it was completely worth it. When I was first looking up about seeing pandas in China, and even on more recent trips, I could never really find one resource that covered all of the bases – or even where they all were, especially somewhere that wasn’t a tour company. So hopefully this is something I can contribute to with this post summarising all 5 of the main giant panda bases in Sichuan Province that you can reach from Chengdu – covering the pros and cons of each, perhaps helping you figure out what might be the best option for what you want to see of pandas!

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