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Kirsten

Magical first time at Shanghai Disneyland

When I was thinking about planning my trip to China last year I focussed on going somewhere I hadn’t been before – other than Chengdu I’ve been to Xi’an and Beijing, and while I love those cities, I need to branch out! I also need to visit some smaller places (for example Guilin is high on my priority list, it looks beautiful!), but I was thinking I should tick off the major sites first – which brought me to Shanghai. In my research Shanghai Disneyland kept coming up on travel blogs and TripAdvisor, but I was a little apprehensive about going alone. I then searched on Youtube and came across videos by thisnatasha, who has been solo to Shanghai Disneyland and really made it look super easy, so I became sold on the idea! I started my 2019 China trip in Shanghai, spending 4 days there split between Disneyland and visiting the city – it’s safe to say that the 1.5 days I spent at Shanghai Disneyland are in my absolute life highlights of things I’ve done, I just had the best time there and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since!

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Kirsten

Chengdu Panda Base – 2017

Back in November 2017 I made my second visit to the Chengdu Panda Base and spent a whole day here, which is definitely what you need to see everything more than once! On my first visit I took public transport to get to the base, this time round I took a taxi, so got there much earlier – from the centre of Chengdu it took under 30 minutes and cost around 50RMB. Getting here earlier made the difference with both beating some traffic and seeing the pandas more active in the morning. When the pandas slowed down for an afternoon snooze, I stopped off in a cafe for a break too, then did my second lap of the Base later in the day. Hopefully you enjoy this selection of photos from my trip!

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Kirsten

Dujiangyan Panda Base – 2017

I already wrote about the CCRCGP Dujiangyan Panda Base in my introduction post a little while back, and there I shared about my first trip to the base back in 2016 – I visited again in 2017 and got some great pictures from this trip too, I just had to put together a selection to share! On this trip I visited in an afternoon and the base was almost empty – there was a group doing the keeper experience (learning about pandas and their care, helping out with cleaning of the enclosures, and preparing the bamboo and other snacks), and a few visitors who were serious photographers, with camera lenses the length of my arm! But that really was it, we had the place mostly to ourselves, which was great to experience, and such a quiet and peaceful environment to watch the pandas from – which makes a big contrast to the Chengdu Panda Base.

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Kirsten

Chengdu City Guide

Welcome to Chengdu! Chengdu was the first city I visited in China back in 2016, and I’ve been back every year since – however I did most of these things in the first two years, and only added a couple of things in my last two years of trips. If I am able to travel this year I’m planning to tick some sights off my ‘to see’ list in the city. I really love the city, I don’t find it too hard to navigate, and it really doesn’t seem too big – however the population is 16 million, fairly close to Beijing 21.5 million (for reference, Scotlands apparently tiny population is 5.5 million). But it has such a different vibe to Beijing. In the past 4 years there has been a lot of development in the city, whole skyscrapers have been put up all over the place and I’ve really felt the expansion of the city when travelling around the area of the Panda Base which is just outside the city centre. This isn’t an extensive guide by any means, but just provides a few really interesting and cool things you can do to add to your trip to see the pandas (which is probably the reason for most trips to the area)!

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