Four Friends, Pandas, and Way Too Much Chili

I'm Olivia from Australia, and this trip to Chengdu started with a group chat that somehow turned into four plane tickets. The four of us had been talking about visiting China for ages, and Chengdu felt like the perfect first stop. I love anything handmade or related to traditional culture, while my friends mostly wanted pandas, good food, and cute cafés. Somehow, everyone got what they wanted.

We booked everything through China Comfort Travel. Scarlet Li helped us sort out the itinerary after we changed our minds more than once about hotels and arrival times. She never made it feel like we were being difficult, which, honestly, we probably were.

Our guide, Ms. Lin, was just lovely. She wasn't constantly explaining every little thing, which I appreciated. We'd chat while walking between places, and every now and then she'd tell us a local story or recommend somewhere that wasn't on Google Maps.

After landing, we dropped our bags and wandered through Du Fu Thatched Cottage before heading to Songxianqiao Antique Market. I could've spent half the day there looking at old teapots, carved seals, and handmade fans. One elderly artist was teaching visitors basic Chinese calligraphy, so of course I sat down to try. My friends said they'd wait for me, then disappeared to buy snacks instead. Twenty minutes later they came back carrying grilled tofu and bubble tea while I was still trying to make one Chinese character look halfway decent. The old gentleman stamped my paper with a red seal anyway and told me I'd done well. I suspect he says that to everyone.

Dinner that night was our first proper Sichuan meal. One of my friends confidently poured what she thought was soy sauce onto her noodles. It was chili oil. She took one bite, went completely silent, and then drank almost an entire bottle of iced tea. We laughed about it for the rest of the trip.

The pandas absolutely lived up to the hype. We arrived early enough to catch them eating breakfast instead of sleeping, and watching one roll down a grassy hill for absolutely no reason made everyone around us laugh. We probably took far too many photos, but none of us cared.

Later that afternoon we ended up in a small traditional paper-cutting workshop. I thought only I'd be interested, but somehow all four of us ended up cutting red paper for nearly an hour. Mine actually looked like a panda. My friend Kate insisted hers was a flower, although it looked suspiciously like a starfish. The instructor smiled politely and called it "very creative," which was probably the nicest possible way to put it.

One of my favorite days was visiting Longxing Temple. After a simple vegetarian lunch prepared by the temple, a local craftsman showed us how to make traditional incense using powdered herbs and wooden molds. It was surprisingly calming, and the whole room smelled amazing. My first incense stick snapped in half because I pressed too hard, but the craftsman just laughed and handed me another piece of clay to try again.

We also visited Mount Qingcheng, which was much more walking than we'd expected. At one point we were convinced we were almost at the top, only to turn a corner and find... even more stairs. Ms. Lin quietly handed us some local rice cakes she'd packed earlier and said, "Energy first, photos later." It turned out to be excellent advice.

Our only real travel mishap happened on the last evening. We'd all bought panda souvenirs, and one of my friends suddenly realized she'd left an entire shopping bag in a café. We rushed back expecting the worst, but the staff had already put it aside for us. Nothing was missing, and everyone seemed far less stressed about it than we were.

Before flying home, we grabbed a few boxes of panda-shaped cookies at Yintai Center for our families. Looking back, Chengdu wasn't just about seeing pandas. It was slowing down to make incense, struggling through paper-cutting, laughing over accidental chili oil, and collecting the kind of little memories you never plan for. My suitcase came home heavier than when I left, mostly because of handmade souvenirs... and probably the snacks too.