Step 12 - Bird is the Word

Part 2; A Buddhist
For all the photos of this Chapter, follow this link.

Just to keep people up to date with the gruesome happenings here, as of this morning I've come down with a stomach bug. Being near the end of my second month, I'm somewhat surprised it's taken this long. It's not giving me too much hassle, but I don't think I'll be pushing my luck and going any great distance from a bathroom...

(This part was written sometime around the 17th... I'm much better now. More current news below...)

Tomorrow, the 23rd of October, I don't have classes. Instead the Uni is having some sort of sports festival/carnival? I'm not really sure, but in exchange for a free tracksuit, I am now required to get up at 7am tomorrow to take part in the opening ceremony 'walk-around'. I'm not really sure what this entails. Hopefully nothing much - I still hate 7am. I'll have my camera and results should be posted up here soon enough. Last weekend I went to the Panda zoo/breeding station/whatever you want to call it. I'll leave the details on that to my next post though..

Off we go again.

Now on with the 'adventure'! After leaving the hot springs, we (Patrick and I - the others had returned to Chengdu after descending Emei) chilled out at the hostel, played cards and ate peanuts. Later that night we were expecting Mike and Jonas to join us, and then we'd be leaving for Leshan the next day. The night was made more interesting due to our hostel roommates - from memory there was a 34 year old Englishman who called himself Tom, and 2 German girls in their mid-twenties.

The images aren't in sync with this post I'm afraid. Nice view though.

I loved this guy. Very random.

The reason I say 'called himself' was because he was a bit of a mystery character - he was loath to give an age or a name, so both of those details could be false. A bit of a wandering nomad/hippie, he held some quirky and far-left beliefs. Not that the far left is necessarily quirky (though it is, heh), but he carried a bunch of trinkets and talisman for safety/good luck. Particularly amusing were the verbal clashes this character had with our American friends when they arrived, as what I would generalise as middle or moderate right views clashed with far leftist opinions. I was pretty intrigued by the theory from my room-mate that 9/11 was a product of 'the Corporatocracy'. This level of conspiracy theory really wasn't something I expected, but he explained it away with, 'What do you expect, my grandparents were both card-holding Marxists'. Hmm, okay?

One of the many.

Anyway, back to the trip. The reason people go to Leshan is to see the Grand Buddha, apparently the largest in the world at 71 metres tall. It's carved into a rock-face overlooking a river and in short, is supposed to be quite spectacular. This was the destination of our next stop, though we passed through another city on the way there. This place is called Jiajiang, and is home to the Thousand Buddha Cliffs. That said, we only managed to see 163 or something. We probably could have persevered and discovered where the rest where, but we were tired and it was getting late. So onto another bus and into Leshan it was.

More of the many!

It's not exactly the most exciting town. We spent the first night getting drunk and playing pool. I remember walking for something like 15 minutes to find a place that was still open and selling water at 1am. Waking up the next morning, we started fairly early. The somewhat-average hotel we were staying in had a somewhat-average breakfast buffet, but it gave us some nutrition anyway. It's a fairly long taxi ride out to the Giant Buddha place, and not a very exciting one at that. Arriving at the entrance, once again we were screwed around by attendants who weren't that keen on giving us the student discount. Seriously, enough of that shit. It's really not cool.

Oh Leshan! You did make me smile occasionally.

Anyway, we argued for 5-10 minutes and they eventually caved. Even with the student entry, it's relatively expensive. Hummm, what to say about this place? It's fairly big, and the Buddha is a fair walk from the entrance. Shall we say 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes, with stopping and looking at things and taking pictures? Yes, we shall. Along the way there's various other Buddhas, including big ones laying down, carved into the side of hill. Temples etc etc. Stairs. It's not that exciting. Lots of Chinese tourists gawking at the four white guys - Sometimes with reason - Mike and Jonas noticed a stream. This stream had crabs living in it. They decided to catch one. Many a Chinese person did stop and gander.

Some people are kind of ridiculously good at Pool/Snooker. I'm not one of them.

Did I mention yet that there was a lot of people? Well, there was. Seeing as it was the National Holiday, the place was swamped with Chinese tourists. That's cool, except the queue to actually get to the Giant Buddha was bigger than the Buddha. Maybe an exaggeration, but we're standing there in line, and it's really not moving very much at all. By my guess, it was going to take 2 hours to get a decent view, and 3 hours to get really close. I really didn't want to be standing there in line for that long, and neither did anyone else, so we bailed by the side of it's head. If we had waited, the path would have carved down the side of the cliff face so we would have been able to see all the splendor of the Buddha. Sorry big guy, my legs were tired and I was thirsty - What can I say?

A Buddha of the side variety.

All was not lost however - legendary texts (Lonely Planet) mentioned an island that was pretty much right infront of the Buddha, which could be reached on a ￥1 ferry. Lo and behold, the book spoketh true. Anyway, out on the island is a teahouse where you can chill in the shade, a small amount of sand and then small sharp rocks going into the river. Now the thing is, to actually get a good view from the island, you have to wade out about 50 metres - if you're clever it doesn't get very deep, but you're still getting your pants wet. Now, my camera was playing up at the time (corrupted memory it claimed, to my horror, though it was fixed with only the loss of a single photo), so I decided I'd sit in some shade on the beach, take it easy and let them take their shoes off and go fight the tourists for a view.

Chinese women in pretty dresses and long heels, stumbling over terrain their footwear was so desperately inappropriate for.

Settling in with my hoodie for a sunshade, as it was actually quite warm, I watched people. 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes pass. I'd seen some interesting stuff - Chinese women in pretty dresses and long heels, stumbling over terrain their footwear was so desperately inappropriate for. I'm surprised I didn't see anyone twist an ankle. I was starting to wonder what had happened to the guys though. I had their bags and shoes... not exactly like they could forgot about me and leave, but what was holding them?

The closest I got to a good view.

Finally, Mike appeared. Turns out, walking over small sharp rocks in bare feet is really, really painful. Which makes movement really, really slow. It's even harder when there's a strong current in the water. Mike had thongs on - Jonas and Pat didn't. Which made it all the worse for them, after having struggled all the way out to get a good view, they found that there wasn't much view to be had. Due to the time, about mid-afternoon by now, the sun was catching the cliff face and casting a big shadow over the Buddha. Whoops? Mike and I waited for the others to catch up, and we were soon on our way.

Waiting on the bus, we looked up and saw this. My favourite picture of the trip was thus born.

Where to? To kill time. We chilled out, had some food, got bus tickets. We were leaving Leshan. It hadn't been a very successful place, but it was an interesting enough place to wander through for a day or two. Next destination was Ya'an, to see... I can't even remember what to see. Next post, I'll tell you what we did see, regardless of whether it was planned or not.

Here's a scoop! There was a car-crash! Or a bingle, if you will. Fun and games for all...