Had a great two night stay here at Chengdu. After arriving from Tokyo after 10 p.m., we had a bit of trouble trying to get into the country via TWOV, but after about 20 minutes and three different immigration officers passing around our passports, we finally made it out. I don't speak a lick of Chinese, but based on the paper they were looking at curiously, it may have been the fact that no one seemed to know what the hotel was, which would not be surprising, since it only opened a few months ago. 

That theme carried forward to the cab driver. One of the best things I learned from FT in preparation for this trip was to print the Chinese website of the hotel before arriving. Without it, I would've been sunk, as none of the taxi drivers we encountered on this trip spoke any English. After we hoped in and showed him the printout, he was confused at first, but radioing his dispatch seemed to give him at least some inkling of where the hotel may be, and after a 30 minute drive and 70RMB later (more because of nighttime, I think), we zoomed into the hotel entrance:







Check in was quick. Status noted, diamond benefits not explained (and it didn't matter, a letter was waiting in the room), DSU confirmed into a Grand Suite King on the 28th floor, and the front desk agent walked us over to the elevators to make sure that we knew that we had to swipe our keycards to get to our floor. (As with other Asian hotels, the lobby is on the 15th floor, so two elevators were needed to get to the room). 

The room was very nice, albeit not very large. Based on the floor plan, the Grand Suite is two standard rooms together. 

Living room:



Bedroom:





Turndown service waiting for us (water and chocolates replenished nightly):



Wetbar area:



Bath:



Super large shower (probably the best part of the room for us):



Weird, stale chocolates in the living room:



View from the room:



Breakfast was in the main restaurant in the morning (6-10:30 on weekdays/6-11 on weekends), as I was told at check-in that the lounge was not yet finished (although no offer of 2,500 points for lounge closure). As most of you, we've had some great Asian breakfasts, and this one fell somewhere between good and ok. Great fruit juices, though.







Dan dan noodles:



Seating area may look like it could be any HR in the States but it looked a lot swankier in person:



I had called the day before checking out for a 4 p.m. checkout, but the agent noted that I already had it. That's great. There were also drinks offered in the lobby area, but we didn't get a chance to try this out. 

The primary purpose of this trip was panda viewing, as the wife loves panda. Happy wife, happy life! It's true that the only place that allows panda pictures is the Dujiangyan Panda base, which was a 90 minute drive from the GH. We hired a driver to take us to the Dujiangyan Panda base where you could volunteer for the day (read: do some sweat inducing labor involving bamboo and panda poop), feed a panda treats and carrots, and hold this guy (Bing Jing) below for 2,500 RMB:



Since my wife loves pandas, it was completely worth it, even if the panda picture experience was only 30 seconds. If you're interested in the driver we used for the day, send me a PM and I'd be happy to help. The driver was great at accompanying us all day and taking photos of us during our panda experience. Although do note that you were not allowed to take pictures with the panda together as a couple. 

The next day, we took a cab to the Chengdu Panda Research Center for 40 RMB. This base was much closer than Dujiangyan and had many more pandas. We aimed to get there at opening, so we left the hotel at 7 and got to the center right at the 7:30 opening. This was the perfect time to see a bunch of pandas interacting with each other:



Since we had a flight to catch, we left about 10, just as the hoards of tour groups started arriving. By this time, though, the pandas had already started to take their mid-morning naps. So all the warnings about going at opening were spot on. That's when the pandas appeared to be most active. The return trip to the hotel took much longer with traffic and came out to 65 RMB. 

Back to the hotel, it's worth noting that it's connected to a department store with several restaurants on the 9th and 10th floors. There's also an ATM in the basemet level of the department store (Bank of China and some other bank) and several across the street that all dispensed yuan fine with my non-chip US bank ATM card. 

55 RMB back to the airport during daytime hours.

Check In

Good!

Room

Small!