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!

I made my fourth visit to Chengdu in November last year – and managed to squeeze in 3 trips to see the pandas at Chengdu Panda Base! They were all a little short for my liking, but still there was plenty of time to see all of the pandas. I stayed in the nearby Crowne Plaza Chengdu Panda Garden which made multiple visits very easy as it’s barely 5 minutes drive down the road. Compared with my visit in November 2018, there were quite a few changes – mostly outside of the base. The main road along the front is now closed off to traffic, and across the road is now a huge pedestrianised plaza with offices, shops, restaurants and convenience stores, and it’s all decorated with pandas in mind, there are pictures everywhere, there were some paw prints all over and on the ground, even the rubbish bins had pandas all over them! Here there were machines where I *think* you could buy tickets to go into the base, there were no instructions or signs in English at them, so I bought my ticket at the main desk by the entrance, which was no problem. Inside the base there were also a few changes, with ‘Panda House 1’, the oldest house built, being renovated – I’ve since seen online the large renovation and expansion plans that the base has for the coming years, it really looks like it will be amazing.

*My trip to Chengdu was part of travel for a work conference, my employer paid for my flight to China and my hotel in Chengdu, where the conference took place. On two visits to the Chengdu Panda Base, I paid for entry myself, on the third the visit to the base was included in the conference schedule.