Pandas

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!

April 21, 2025April 19, 2025 Kirsten

P A N D A S @ Z O O N E G A R A M A L A Y S I A February 2025

Wow, 2 days and 2 new panda locations for me! Now it’s time to share about the giant pandas living in Zoo Negara Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur! Alike in Singapore, the pandas here are living in a purpose-built home, they are always kept indoors and there is temperature control, so it’s lovely and cool for the visitors too. For me, this was by far the best bit of the zoo, and while it was sometimes busy, it never felt too full and I was always able to get a spot to see the pandas – what helped here was that buggies/prams/pushchairs were not allowed in the building, and needed to be left outside, so this ensured the walkways inside were clear and having experience the opposite at many panda locations, this made for a better visit. There was always a staff member at the entrance, reminding about the rules for visiting the pandas, including that food and drink could not be brought in and that visitors needed to remain quiet. Inside there was also always either a staff member or a zoo volunteer also ensuring that the rules were abided to and making sure visitors quietened down if they were too loud. For me, it worked really well and I had a great visiting experience here!

March 17, 2025March 15, 2025 Kirsten

P A N D A S @ R I V E R W O N D E R S S I N G A P O R E February 2025

It’s my first time visiting the giant pandas in Singapore! Giant pandas arrived in Singapore from the CCRCGP Ya’an Bifengxia Base on the 6th of September 2012, and honestly I had no idea how long ago it was, that’s over 12 years they’ve been living in Singapore (I really had it in my head that it was more recent). They stay in the River Wonders park of the Mandai Wildlife Reserves area in a specialised climate-controlled home, the Pavilion Capital Giant Panda Forest. The River Wonders park (formerly River Safari) gradually opened across 2012-2014 (it looks like there were different phases, with the pandas being opening stars!), so it’s a pretty new zoological park in general – more on that in an upcoming post with what else you can see at River Wonders!

So finally in February 2025 I’ve made it to visit these pandas, my first pandas of this trip and of 2025 and the first pandas I’ve seen in almost 9 months, that’s the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing a panda (well, since before there were pandas living at Edinburgh Zoo)! I had such a great day visiting the pandas here, was a great viewing experience and environment for pandas, and I would highly recommend it if you’re ever in Singapore, or a nearby country. And had such a lovely experience meeting some of the Singaporean panda fans – I then went on to meet one of their friends when I was in Dujiangyan, and met one of them again in the Chengdu Panda Base, who it turned out had seen me and Jeroen (from Giant Panda Global) at the Dujiangyan Base last year when we were mobbed by school kids, what a small world!

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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