Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

After an awesome few days away from the cities, unfortunately we were back for more. Despite my general prejudice against cities, Chengdu was a pleasant surprise. A few nice parks, some great Sichuan food (spicy!) and an overal far more relaxed atmosphere made this place definitely worth visiting. The highlight without a doubt though was still the Chengdu Panda Reserve. Great opportunity to come close to these rather… uhm, laidback animals. I guess anyone would be laidback if they were forced to spend the majority of the day eating (vast quantities of bamboo) and the rest of the day sleeping it off. The only panda that put on a bit of a show was a 1 year cub wreaking havoc on its poor mum who, although she tried to keep up, was no match for the little ball of energy. Very entertaining.

Then came Huanglongxi, another historic town. Apparently quite old, I found it pretty characterless, with a lot of the old section feeling as if it had very recently been restored. Perhaps getting its house in order for some soon to be expected tourists (sidetripping from the Olympics)? The main attraction (in my mind) was the 1500 year old monastery which I have to admit was pretty interesting mainly because it felt a lot more authentic than the rest. On the other hand, by this stage we had seen our fair share of temples and monasteries…