Big Buddha! No not a curse but the object of our visit after leaving the Giant Pandas. In fact we were vistiting the largest outside seated Buddha in the World...are you impressed? You should be!

It was actually very impressive - we went on a boat trip to see it from the river first (though as we all got on the wrong boat we nearly didn't go anywhere!) and then climbed up a rather a lot of steps to see it from the top. Mark bravely walked down hundreds of steps and then back up to also view the Buddha from ground level.... Kim decided that even the biggest Buddha in the world didn't justify such an outlay of energy!

From the Buddha we headed off to check into Baguo Monastery at the foot of Mount Emei. A real monastery with real monks...as we found out when they started chanting, hitting gongs and drumming at 4.30am! We even had to walk through a temple complete with 6 huge blue-haired Buddhas to go to the toilet! Kim felt almost spiritual going to the loo during the early hours...until she saw a ghostly monk gliding through the grounds - and nearly ran back to the room!

The following day we headed off to the summit of Mount Emei by bus and cable car. It was very foggy on the mountain but as soon as you reached the summit it was clear blue skies with a sea of clouds below! The summit was crowned by temples and a huge golden statue of 6 tusked elephants and of course the ever-present persistant souvenir sellers! We all headed off back down the mountain and after lunch headed off on our 3 hour hike to another monastery up the mountain where we were spending the night. The scenery was stunning but the 1200 steps at the end to reach the monastery were pure hell. We had also been given walking sticks to fight off killer monkeys (well, not killer monkeys, but vicious thief monkeys at the very least). Mark gallantly saved a woman from a monkey by poking it and it then turned on him hissing. We ran off and needless to say he didn't poke any more! However our tour guide nearly got her camera stolen out of her pocket and another girl got her coat ripped as we were surrounded by a pack of the red-faced creatures! We celebrated reaching the top intact with chips and pancakes, which our local hosts found rather bizarre!

The walk back down was not nearly as bad and we treated ourselves to an afternoon at the hot springs - pure bliss! Robin had a go at fish therapy - where you get in a pool and thousands of fish eat your dead skin (nice!). Unfortunately he later found that a fish had swam into his shorts and got boiled to death in the 43 degree extra hot spring...poor thing what a way to die!