Chengdu Celebrity Spotting.... Landslide in to Travel Plans

I went to see the stars of the South West - Chengdu's famous pandas! Very cute, a little sleepy and as always - very hungry. I especially liked the panda who sat in a pile of bamboo munching away. They were actually a lot less lazy than I expected! There was a nice Attenborough DVD in the museum and so his dulcit tones really set the tone for the trip.

Did you know, pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year?
Or that they are very picky eaters and throw away 75% of the bamboo they're given?

We went outside of the city to an ancient town called Pingle (say  Ping-leh, not Pingle as in Pringles!) with some beautiful  architecture, riverside teahouses and a bamboo boat trip down the  river. Chrysantaneum, rose and berry tea by the waterwheel is a  cooling remedy to the heat (30C+!) and humidity (100%!!!) here in the Sichuan basin!

Near Pingle is the longest chain suspension bridge in China - not  longest suspension bridge, nor longest chain bridge, the  longest-chain-suspension bridge. Out in the countryside people speak  harder Sichuan dialect which isn't like the Beijing standard Chinese -  I couldn't understand anything old ladies said!

Anyway... just yesterday a real spanner was thrown into my travel  plans. The Grand Plan was a ring trip from Sichuan Province into Yunnan Province via the Tibet border through high altitude border  towns in the  mountains full of Tibetan monasteries and really rural,  unspoilt beauty. I knew the road was iffy and very dangerous... but  just yesterday the whole west Sichuan (i.e EVERY ROAD I was meant to  travel on) has been closed off to foreigners due to dangerous road  conditions (landslides, flooding etc. from the rains). So dissapointed! But at least it wasn't the reason I came to China and  I'm now able to chill out in the best hostel ever with a lot of  friends :)

So, now the plan is to wing it! Getting back to Yunnan and heading to  the Nujiang Valley, home to one of only two undammed rivers in China,  scunched next to the Burma border and home to half of China's endangered plant species. Can't wait!