lost or what?

I was up early, out before 7 when it was still dark, the internet tells you to get their early before they get sleepy. The internet also told me to go to a bus station south of the city, to take the only public direct bus, 902.
It is not easy to get there, despite it being the most popular tourist attraction in town, basically its assumed you will go with a tour group.
So After a 30 minute speed walk I stride confidently into the bus station, which is a hive of poor people with all their worldly belongings.
All the busses seem to only go to the other side of the country. Theres an information booth with a young girl, I ask in Chinese for 902. She informs me in perfect English that 902 has not run since they started building the subways to reduce congestion, you must go on tour bus!
I ask how a Chinese person would get there, she gave me instructions to take 3 busses....challenge accepted.

Getting on a bus at this time of morning was really dangerous. They barely stop, are all 100% full and you charge into the street before it gets there and hope to not get run over.
If you dont do this you will be at the back of the scrum and never get on one. It took me 2 goes to get on my desired bus, but they come every couple of minutes.

After a nail biting ride, sometimes at great speed, I arrived at a bus depot. Now what.
The bus I thought she told me to get next was nowhere I could see, no numbers on signs or the ground.
Time to employ a new tactic, follow the cute looking girls with panda merchandise. This proved a succesful tactic.
The reason the bus I was told to go on doesnt go at the moment is because of the construction around the Panda Research Base, you drive around it and then back to the gate which is currently somewhat hidden.

Up until now, I had no idea if I was going to the pandas, a Sewerage factory or an Engine plant. Various bus signs that had English listed such things as destinations.

And now we get to the Pandas.
As mentioned the small ones are about 6 months old. There are maybe 20 small ones throughout the park, some are rotated into duty to be petted by the few American tourists who are prepared to make a $200 donation for the experience.
I think they are too big to hold currently, so I am not sure what the VIP experience currently is.

There is a heap of new, fancy looking architecturally unusual buildings under construction, with the associated noise levels. I think there has been a lot of recent attention to this facility that has seen funds pouring in. Various celebrities seem to have sponsored facilities under construction.

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........ I am using dots to count where I am up to.
There are 2 distinct areas, I guess they are working on a Disaster recovery strategy so that they dont all die off at once due to disease, fire etc.
The area closer to the main gate, the sunshine nursery, is roughly 10x busier than the moonlight nursery at the back of the park, which seems to actually have more pandas.
My top tip, go straight to the moonlight nursery.

Its me, in my signature purple shirt, commando shorts, clown shoes, a winning combination.

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*** astericks this time

The park is rather nice, away from everything. Off in the distance here you can see a new style upmarket Chinese suburb.

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### last one!

Apparently red pandas, also called the lesser panda, are more ferocious than the big ones. Theres warning signs everywhere, but strangely no real fencing.

I didnt bother with many photos of the lesser panda.

Still in the Panda park is this nice looking lake.

Which upon closer inspection has a terrifying swarm of gold fish making life difficult for swans.

The photo doesnt capture it, but the fish literally climb over each other to get out of the water and try and get the food!
The girl screamed each time but kept doing it anyway because her boyfriend kept stuffing up the photo.

Getting back again, an even bigger challenge! I got on a random bus that came assuming it would go somewhere like say, the city.
Instead it went a differnt way and I became confused as to which was North or South. The sun was too far over head to know precisely and blackberrys famous GPS failure was indeed still a failure.
I changed bus but couldnt find out where I was, time to go on foot to get my bearings!
After about an hour, I worked out where I was based on a river that ran through a really impressive nice park I found myself in.
I was nearby the Northern train station which is the last stop on the metro.
That blue building sits on top of the metro, to get there I walked across construction sites, fields etc. I had my doubts but other people seemed to be making the trek.

Judging by the buildings nearby, its an area due to be demolished soon!

Back in the city now, I got off a stop early.
Tomorrow I am going to Chongqing for 6 days, but then I am back in Chengdu, in a different hotel. This is it (the middle building), Celebrity Ruicheng. Its enormous!

Eager to get back and edit and upload my photos, I bought a sandwich and portugese tart from an upmarket bakery. Its in a box but it is made on site.
It wasnt good, sure it was fresh high quality ingredients, but they put so much mayonnaise on it that to me it becomes almost inedible. The portugese tart however, fantastic.

I hope you all (all? I think no one reads this!) appreciate the effort I made editing all these photos!