Today we disembark the Yi Dun Cruise Ship and fly to the city of Chengdu, the home of the Chengdu Panda Research Base, where they breed Pandas.
We woke up at around 5:00 AM to give us enough time to take showers and then go to the buffet for breakfast, or at least we thought. Someone had asked about the breakfast time yesterday when we met with our guide Michael, and it was our understanding from him that the buffet on the ship would be open early.
Stephanie was not going to go, still nursing her stomach problem, so I was just going to get her a croissant after I finished eating and bring it back to the room. I headed to Deck 7 to the World Cafe and I did not see anyone on the way there or inside sitting down, not a good sign. They had food dishes in the serving areas, so I thought maybe it would open at 5:30 AM, roughly five minutes from now. I saw a server behind one of the buffet stations, so I asked what time they were opening. He said it was 6:00 AM, not 5:30 AM, not helpful. I thought I would just head down to Deck 1 to The Library Bar to see if the coffee station was open, they also always have a few breakfast items, mostly rolls, and muffins.
There was a good crowd there when I arrived, I guess a lot of other people found out the same thing about the buffet. There were a few items at the bar to eat in addition to the items they normally have in a glass display case, but it was all pastries and croissants. I ordered a “to go” coffee and a cream cheese-filled roll for myself, and I then got Stephanie her croissant. I carried everything back to the room for us to eat there.
We ate our light breakfast and then finished packing our carry-on bag.
We left the room at about 6:35 AM and headed to the Theater on Deck 2. About half our group was already there, and within five minutes, everyone else had arrived. We left the theater at 6:40 AM with our guide Michael, and headed to the disembarkation point. We all checked out from the ship one by one, scanning our cruise cards at the security desk. Once off the ship, we all proceeded into the terminal to walk to the area where all of our large luggage was stored.
It was a really long walk there, we had to actually go into the ferry terminal next door to the cruise terminal. We walked at least 15 minutes before we got to the luggage storage area and retrieved our two large suitcases. We took then a short distance over to the waiting bus that was going to take our group of 22 to the Hong Kong Airport, about a 40-minute drive away. Since we are now back in the “land tour” portion of the trip, we are back with our original group again.
Since it was early on a Sunday, there was not a lot of traffic. We arrived at the Hong Kong Airport and it was huge. We pulled up to the departure gate for our airline and waited for our driver to get all of the large suitcases out from under the bus. We all had to take our baggage with us into the airport. There was a security station just to enter the airport, and they swabbed everything for explosives and then scanned all of our luggage, including any carry-on bags and backpacks. There was no body scanning, only the luggage at this initial security checkpoint..
Once everyone was inside the first security point, we all gathered up and Michael took us over to check-in. There were several open stations, so it did not take long to check-in. We asked the lady for seats together and she asked about aisle or window seats, and we said aisle. Our bags were slightly overweight, domestic flights in China are less international flight limits at 21 Kg, or 44 pounds, but ours were apparently not enough over for them to care. We left check-in in and that was when we noticed from our boarding passes that we were on the same aisle, but the seats did not seem together, mine was Seat C, and Stephanie’s was Seat G, so we thought we were on different sides again. It was what it was, we did not have time to change them.
We headed out to go through security. We had to scan our passports and then do a facial recognition check based on the passport photo before we could enter the security scanning area.

We already knew we needed to take out all of our batteries and laptops and tablets from any baggage and place them in a bin. Then we went through a metal detector and then we were individually scanned by handheld devices and patted down. I had to open some of my small bags with batteries for inspections, and they seemed to target the three GoPro batteries I had bundled together with a rubber band.
Nothing was flagged, it just took some time to get through. Once through security, we had to make a long walk out to the gate. It seemed to go forever and the numbers were not advancing very fast. After walking for at least 15 minutes, the gate split into three sections, one left, one right, and one down an escalator. Our gate was to the left, but this drastically reduced the gate numbers, we only had a few more to go before we got there.
We had at least an hour to wait until we boarded, so we just found an open area to sit in.

Boarding time came and it was a little bit of chaos, there is no zone boarding in China, so everyone just gets into a single line. We were close to the gate, so we were able to get into the front portion of the line, and there were a lot of people behind us. We boarded and headed to our seats, Stephanie had to go down one aisle and I went down the other. We were close, but not next to each other.
The flight left on time and the flight duration was just under two hours. It is interesting because meals are served on every flight we have been on so far, even though the flight durations are not that long. They first served beverages and we had water, and shortly thereafter the food came out. There was a hot dish covered in foil and a box containing the rest of the meal. I selected a noodle dish and it was not bad. Stephanie did not eat much, just a banana that was in the box, still nursing a sensitive stomach. There is always some type of liquid in the box, and sometimes a type of sauce, none of which I used.
The flight was on time, and another interesting thing they do on these flights is make an announcement about closing the bathrooms with 40 minutes left in the flight, which is made about 50 minutes out. It seems excessive, normally flights in the US start descending with about thirty minutes left. After the bathroom rush, the flight attendants do come by and lock the bathrooms using a slide behind a small door.
The flight arrived on time and we deplaned and headed to baggage claim. After everyone in our group got their luggage, we all headed outside to walk to the bus. It was quite a walk, the bus was in a parking lot, not in the arrivals area. After all of our luggage was loaded up, and we were all on the bus, we headed to our hotel in the downtown Chengdu area. It was the Hotel St. Regis.

Our guide Michael said we were going to make a stop by the People’s Park on the way to the hotel, it was not a planned activity, but we had arrived about 2:30 PM, and had some free time, and he said he knew we had missed a lot of sights on the cruise due to the weather.

We had to walk about five blocks to the park from where the bus could drop us off, and there were a lot if interesting stores along the way, some selling spices, some selling Chinese liquor, some selling meats, fresh and cooked, and others just general items. It was quite interesting to see and we took photos of all of the strange items.
We arrived and headed into the park, which was quite busy because of the National Holiday. There was one area that was a bonsai garden with hundreds of bonsai plants in it.
One lady was making special hard sugar candy decorative treats, so Stephanie gave her the 10.00 RMB and she spun a wheel to decide which decoration the lady would make, the arrow stopped on a dragonfly, and the lady made it on a flat stone board, and put a stick at the bottom. It was a candy treat to eat, but Stephanie just wanted it for a decoration.

We walked by another area with a tea house, and it was also crowded. In the area around the tea house, a play was going on, it was described as a Chinese Opera, and all of the performers were dressed in costumes with large heads. There was another area right by the tea house with shops, more like small booths, so everyone had time to shop.

We walked around the park and found an area with pink and blue flyers hanging on wires. This was a match-making system, and most of the papers put there were done by someone’s parents, going someone would see the information and contact the person described on each flyer.
The pink ones were for females, and the blue ones were for males, and they were in separate areas.
We were at the park for about 90 minutes or more and then headed back to the bus, passing by the same stores we had passed on the way to the park.
We got onto our waiting bus and headed to the hotel. On the way to the hotel, we passed by a square with a lot of decorations and a huge statue of Chairman Mao, the first Communist leader in China.
The square would have been nice to see, but it was quite a walk from the hotel, so we decided to pass, we were tired from all the walking in the park.
It was a cloudy day in Chengdu, and there was rain expected for tonight, but luckily the forecast for tomorrow was partly cloudy skies.
We arrived at the hotel and it was really fancy. We were given a room on the 10th Floor, and many of our group were given higher floors, but it did not matter, we were only here for one night. We headed upstairs and went into the room, which was really nice.
It was by far the fanciest hotel we have stayed in. We were in a corner room, or at least it seemed so, we had gigantic floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of the room. The TV was inside the desk, on the end, and it took us a while to figure out how to get it to come up and then how to turn it on.

The bathroom was huge, and it had an electronic toilet/bidet, with a light and heated seat. The shower had several nozzles in it, and that also took some figuring out later when we used it.
There was a ceremony in the lobby called the champagne sabrage. It is held every evening at 6:00 PM. According to the St. Regis Hotel website, the origins are as follows: Dating back to the battles of Napoleon Bonaparte, who famously opened champagne with his saber in both victory and defeat, the art of sabrage is the signature ceremony of the St. Regis Evening Rituals. We headed down to see what it was. There was a long staircase coming from the second floor, and promptly at 6:00 PM, three men in formal attire came down the stairs from the second floor.

They stopped about half way down, and one person drew a saber, and used it to knock the top of a bottle of champagne. Then that bottle of champagne was served to anyone in the lobby, as well as some that had already been poured into glasses. It was over in abut 5 minutes. We sipped our champagne, and then headed back up to the room to get ready for dinner. Of course, you can pay abut $500 to do this with some friends, you get to use the saber on the champagne.
We settled in and rested for a bit before we headed downstairs for the buffet dinner, which was good. Afterward, I tried to work on the blog, but we were tired from the long travel day and we need to be up early tomorrow. The bus will be leaving at 7:00 AM to head to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, which is a large park and sort of like a zoo but just for Pandas.
We called it a night at about 10:00, once we figured out how to close the power-operated curtains on the windows since there was a lot of light in the room from the adjacent high-rise buildings, which were decorated with special lighting.
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