A Panda Named Amanda

The time you are receiving this blog may seem a little weird considering it would make the time here 5am, but dont worry because its correct. Today we are waking up at 5am to catch a bus an hour away at 7 and to ride for 10 hours westward into China towards Tibet. The place we are going today is a mountain village right on the border of Tibet, but dont worry about us because we are not going backpacking or roaming around the woods, we are just going to chill with some of the villagers. This would be like if we went in America to go stay on a farm with some family just to see what it is like, Max and his dad wanted to show us a different scene than the big cities we have been staying in so far this trip and the village we are going to will be a drastic change. The reason we have to take a 10 hour bus ride to get there is because this place doesnt have an airport near by. When we get there we wont be having internet so this will be my last blog for 2 days, but we will have electricity so I will be able to still write. We wont have running water though, so we arent going to shower for the next two days and were going to be pooping in the ground, like real men. Im really excited to see what this is going to be like and I'm sure it will be very interesting.

Yesterday we ended up sleeping in until about 11 and grabbing a bite of lunch before we went to the national giant panda research facility. The giant panda is the national animal of China like the bald eagle is for America. Chengdu where we are staying has the biggest breading and research facility for giant pandas in the world and it was just 7k from where our hotel is. So we took a cab and walked around the panda zoo for a majority of our day. There are only like 500 giant pandas still alive in the world and we were able to see some of them in person. It was really weird because its almost like they weren't real because I am so used to seeing the stuffed animal ones that their faces were just not animated enough to look real. They were real though and they were as cute as you could imagine. The facility itself was really big and the pandas were all kept in air conditioned cages because the summers are very hot for the giant pandas. It took us a long time to walk all the way around the facility and it was really hot inside so we were dying to make it from cage to cage all day. The pandas really had it made because they could just laze around all day with as much bamboo and their air conditioned rooms made it look like they were just relaxing all the time. They were really slow and would just flop on their backs and let their arms just flop wherever they landed. We got to see full grown ones as well as the little cubs. When we saw the little cubs they were so cute cause there were 3 in the same cage and two of them were playing while the 3rd was just being lazy in the corner watching. The two that were playing were both trying to get on this wooden platform and trying to keep the other one from getting up. When one would climb up the other would pull him down and then the other could climb up and take his place. It was like little kids playing king of the castle or something. The other really funny thing was that the farther west we go, the less likely it is that these people have seen white people or black people for that matter, so when we were at the panda facility it was like we were also an exhibit. There were these two guys and a little kid in particular that actually stopped Gordon and asked to take a picture with us. As we made our way through the facility we were almost to the end and we kept seeing signs for a red panda exhibit. When we finally found what it was, we cam across an animal that none of us had ever seen before. I havent even seen this animal on the Discovery Channel or national Geographic. It was like a mix between a panda and a racoon and these things were really cool. It looked like it should be the coolest house pet ever. Apparently though it is called a red panda and there are about 5,000 in captivity, but there has never been a successful release of one into the wild. If they were to be able to survive on their own, they would repopulate quickly because the only animal known for preying on them is the snow leapard which is much more endangered.

When we left the panda place we ended up going back to the hotel for a little bit because it was already almost time for dinner. For dinner we went to this really really nice 5 star restaurant that was the best hot pot place in the city, in the city known for its hot pot. This place was a 5 story restaurant where we took an elevator to the 3rd floor for our meal while they had a traditional chinese opera perform when we had finished eating. The hot pot itself was awesome. It is kind of like a fondue but we had a waitress do all the cooking for us. She would bring out raw meat on a plate and dunk it either in the boiling spicy soup, or the boiling chicken broth flavored one. After a few minutes of cooking and soaking in the soups we could eat. The food was delicious and there were spices in the hot one that would make your whole mouth tingle for like 5 minutes after your ate it. The food we had was delicious and as soon as we thought we were almost done she brings out one last meat dish before the watermelon. If you thought some of the foods we ate earlier were bad like the chicken feet or the pigeon, then you might want a trash can near by because the last dish was a pigs brain. Yeah. So when she brought it out, it looked like something hannibal lector would be eating, just raw pigs brain on a plate exactly like you would expect a brain to look. So the waitress cooked it in the soup and Max told us how every good hot pot place as really good pig brain and its something that he actually really enjoys. Gordon George and I used this time while it was cooking to find our balls to man up and try it. And it was really weird tasting. The texture was the worst part cause it just took the taste of the soup, but it was slimy and soft. After that we clensed our pallets with some nice tea and got ready to watch the show.

The chinese opera was really cool. It had traditional dances like we saw on the water in Nanjing, but also had a really cool face changing guy that did a sweet dance while changing different masks really quickly. It reminded us of ancient chinese magic.

I'm sorry that this blog is getting cut short, but we are in a rush now to catch our bus to the village so I will be sure to tell you all about the end of the opera and our village adventures when we get back to Chengdu. I hope that everyone is doing well and we all miss you a lot.


Marty