Mmmmmmmm, I'm liking China but I have one complaint, the beds are so hard, I had to check mine was not made of concrete, no joke!    So I awoke on the wrong side of the bed, not grumpy, just tired and a little sore.   Mum did warn us of this, apparently you can ask for a topper at some hotels.

We started off with a road trip, about 2 hours travel time to Le Shan, south of Chengdu. On the way - what I did see was chequerboard fields and well-irrigated plains, mostly vegetables, and in the hills, the high quality "green tea".    Apart from that, have to be totally honest, I think John F was the only one that didn't fall asleep, so didn't see much more countryside until we arrived in Le Shan.

On arrival in Le Shan, we took a ferry boat, to see the giant 230ft Dafo (Great Buddha) from the river that he oversees - he actually views three rivers below him - the Min, Dadu and Qingyi rivers. 

In AD713 a monk - I think his name was Hatong, built the Buddha to safe watch any passing boats, unfortunately he never saw the project completion in the AD800's when the legs and feet were finished off.    Hatong lived in a small cave at the back of the Buddha which still remains there, the statue has only survived due to it's drainage system, and upkeep to date.

The boat was an interesting ride, we all wore life jackets, that were like your first set of floaties and the size was probably like my first set too - way too small.   Big Buddha is best seen this way, if you haven't got alot of time, take the boat ride and then say farewell big fella because when we did go to the actual site, the place is very popular. We patiently braved a line that we waited on for over an hour, John, Dad and myself, then made our way down a very steep set of steps down to his feet. By the way, his feet are about 8 metres, he's got the world's largest ears I reckon, 7 metres and has a whooper of a nose 5.6 metres, which had to be repaired as it did break off. Then up we went again but on the other side, I liked the idea of doing it, for the exercise too, almost felt like doing the Red Arrow - which for those that know Cairns, know it's a long haul and especially for the unfit.

In between the ferry trip and the walk, we were introduced to our very first "Chinese Meal", Sichaun style - we did have a type of sweet and sour pork (no vegies - very different to Australian type Chinese), eggplant, beef and vegetables, and then this chicken dish which I tried to remember the name but it was way to hard to pronounce let alone remember, it was made with peanuts, and cucumber - very nice, refreshing taste.   When we talk of Chinese meals, I was told by our guide 'Lilly" - there are different types of foods in China, just depends what area we are visiting, but for those that are keen on "fried ice-cream", they haven't even heard of it!   They do have fried banana's, no batter - this must have started this odd tradition in our chinese restaurants.

Today was a bit dull, it threated to rain all day, we were lucky enough to miss it just as we headed back to Chengdu.

We ventured out on our own for the first time tonight. Straight across from our hotel, was one of the main roads linking to the wide Chun Xi Lu Shopping Mall - so we've gone from the old to the fashionable new this evening, the place looks like a well lit Christmas tree, with flashy front shop windows and billboards.   We decided because we were on our own and to stay on the safe side as none of us really wanted to get any tummy probs before the Pandas and the group tour, we went to ............wait for it...........Pizza Hut!   Don't laugh or be disappointed, as Chinese food can surprise you, it can be fresh and light with no chilly, but some dishes have a bit of spice, which if you are not so used to that all the time, a pizza sounds pretty good, plus we'd had such a large meal at lunchtime, we wanted a quick, small, easy evening.