Today was Panda day, and then an overnight train to our next stop the city of Xining (the capital of Qinghi Province and a stop on the old silk road), and it is also the first of two consecutive overnight trains that will get us to Tibet. But let us start with the Pandas. Chengdu is the home of the Chinese Panda Breading Program and this program is accommodated in a huge complex close to the city. Within this complex there are extensive facilities to accommodate very large crowds of tourists wanting to see the famous Pandas.

We were warned last night that today would be hot 35-40 C° and that as a consequence we would need an early start; 7:00am. Also because of the heat all the Pandas would be in airconditioned enclosures, and because this was still summer the crowd would be large.

Of course all of those warnings were well founded, it was hot, crowded, and the Pandas lazed around in A/C comfort while us poor people sweated. The crowd was enormous, noisy and by our Western sensitivities pushy. But the pushy bit seems to be SOP ( standard operating procedure). I cannot say the Panda experience was pleasant, it was just too hot and good photos too hard to get, but it certainly was interesting.

Lunch at a Tibetan restaurant was a pre-acclimatization for Tibet and then to the station for the train. The night run looks like being comfortable as the group has a 4-berth sleeping compartment for each pair. So Nina and I are together and alone.

It is not possible to say much about Chengdu as the stay was way too brief to get anything other than a glimpse of this enormous city.

So far I have neglected to make any comment related to picture number 3. Some readers might recognise the image as the control panel for a new style electronic toilet. We discovered these toilets at the entrance to the Panda park> We were surprised to find that the toilet seat was warm/hot when we sat down. On further examiniation we discovered that we could make the toilet wash our backsides with water of varying temperature and in various locations on our anatomy. I think we have decided we want one even though we did not find out what the massage button did.