Day 7

In the morning we tried to change some money at Bank of China. We were successful but it took a long time. You have to fill a paper first and wait for your turn. Than at the counter you have to fill out another form which is almost exactly the same as the first one and on the top the banker fills out 3 other forms. She counts the money three times, checks each individual note both from the front and the back. So it was at least 45 mins (and only one guy was in front of me who was local and did not change any money).

Forgot to tell this before but almost every time we pay in the stores, the dealer checks if the notes are fake. Funny to mention as well that they hardly ever use any coins. Even the yiao (10th of the yuan, worth about 1.5 cents) are paper bills.

The road to Wolong took us approx. 3 hrs. We have seen a huge water dam and an artificial lake between the mountains. The last 50km of the road was under construction so it wasn't allowed to use it between 8:30 and 5:30. What happened is basically the gatekeepers asked us to to bribe them. They wanted 100 yuan, but we ended up giving them 60 in order not to wait three and a half hours.

We arrived to the Panda Preservation Center just around half past 4 so we decided not to go in for only one hour. So we were heading to Wolong village to find accommodation, but not for long because when we were passing by a small tractor, the driver
decided to change lanes without looking back and hit our car. The injury is was not very serious but by the time our driver got out the car half of the village was gathered and started yelling at him and blaming him for the accident. Of course they weren't right obviously. But it seemed our driver is in trouble and the locals are ready to take revenge. After Zoli and I got out from the car they calmed down a bit when the saw we are about 30-40 cm taller than them on average and about 1.5x the bodyweight. The police got there within 10 minutes, they took some photos, calmed down the locals and told Zhang Lin to take us to a hotel and than go to the police station.

We managed to find a room really quickly, it was very cheap (15 yuan per person) but it was dirty. We took it because we didn't want to made the cops to wait to much. The cops told Zhang Lin that it wasn't his fault but the other guy doesn't have any money so he cannot pay for the damage. And I guess they've never heard of a liability insurance before.