Panda reserve and Big Leshan Buddha

2 May

Day 158: Chengdu

At 7.30 we boarded our minivan and together with 2 more mini vans with people staying in our hostel, went to Panda reserve. It is 30 minutes drive from Chengdu and it opens for public at 8 am.

Panda reserve is a kind of zoo but just for pandas. You can see Panda bears in open spaces, surrounded by forest but it is still is more like zoo park.

To meet Panda in a wild is almost impossible, so we accept the reality and go enjoy these beautiful creatures.

And the red ones:

And the baby ones:

After Pandas, we are going to Big Buddha, 2 hours drive and we are there.

There are two options to see Buddha: buy entrance ticket (90 Yuan – 9 euro) and walk to the Buddha or take a boat (70 Yuan – 7 euro) and see it from the river (The statue is facing the river).

We have decided to walk and it was not the right decision! :-D What we did not know, is that to go down to the Buddha feet, there is a long queue ….like 3 hours long!!!

After waiting waling around and then waiting for 40 minutes, we took couple of pictures with Buddha head and went to take the boat.

70 Yuan more and finally we could see the whole Buddha.

Around 3 hours driving to Chengdu, we finally arrived and could relax a bit. This time Tommy was with us, so we could communicate with locals and in conclusion had a great hot pot dinner in one of the restaurants close to our hostel. Lots of meat, fish, vegetables and beers – we paid 35 Yuan each (3.5 euro). This is what I understand by a good price!!! :-D