Pandas, Cable Car, Old City & Hotpot

The way we see it, there are 4 big ticket items that anyone visiting China needs to tick off, The Wall, The Forbidden City, The Terracotta Soldiers, and Pandas. We decided to get out of the gates early and headed for Chongqing zoo to see some pandas. The pandas were incredibly cute, but we must have come during nap time - easy to do as I think they sleep for 90% of the day. Many of them were sleeping in what looked to be very uncomfortable poses, draped over poles or starfished on platforms. Nathan managed to spy one which wandered into its cave at the back of the exhibit too, but that was the most action we saw.

Diane enjoyed a little prance in some of the flowers before we left the zoo and headed for lunch. After lunch we took the old cable car across the Yangtze River. This cable car used to be one of the main ways to get across before all the modern bridges were built.

The cable car put us back in the middle peninsula, close to the raffles tower complex again. We passed an old temple, dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers, and headed for the old city. This area, now very much a tourist attraction, demonstrates how Chongqing used to be built. Given Chongqing's mountainous geography, they would build platforms on big piles and then build their buildings on top of that. We climbed down through the nine levels of the old city, encountering a wide array of traditional foods, sauces, teas and even a smoke breathing dragon!

After leaving the old city (which was very busy and loud) we found a Majiang room and taught Ross and Diane the basics - we will test them on this later. Chongqing hotpot for dinner before hitting the hay.Read more