Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-- The Buddha
The pride of Chiang Mai, the two giant pandas are responsible for increasing visitor numbers by more than tenfold, and revenues by more than twenty times. The panda enclosure is heavily air-conditioned and may be the coldest place in the North. (Bangkok now has a couple of bars where the temperature is kept at a "comfortable" -10 Celcius.)
We were lucky to see this panda. His/her mate left just as we arrived and he quickly finished off his bamboo snack and ambled off after her.
Had a bit of a row prior to entering. Everybody has to purchase special "Panda" tickets to get in and they wanted to charge the "Foreigner Price", approximately 10 times as much as the Thai price! A differential I flatly refuse to pay anywhere in the country. They eventually permitted me access as a Thai, but I had to pass a spoken Thai test before they would do so.