<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->

25 August: Xi'an

I was up early, Leanne had packed her bag the day before, but I had opted to rather get up a little earlier and do my packing. The alarm went off at 07h00 and I started to pack, Leanne was up soon after helping with the last few things. We left our bags in the bags storage room and booked out a Mongolia lonely planet before enjoying breakfast at the guest house restaurant, muesli with yogurt, although the caption should have read the other way around. After breakfast we met up with the 4 English and headed out to find the bus to Leshan, where the worlds largest sitting Buddha could be found. We found a bus that would take us to the intercity bus station where we could get tickets, problem was the traffic and we sat there for at least 40 minutes going at a snails pace through the city. We arrived at the bus station and bought tickets for the 2 hour journey there, 45Y per person, was a little much, but thats all there was. 20 minutes later the bus came and we departed, I spent most of the time reading up on where to go in Mongolia and what to do, wonderful things but at exorbitant costs! Leanne wasn't feeling to good and tried to rest for most of the time. She didn't have much success and unfortunately the road there wasn't very interesting, there was also a constant white haze due to smog from the 3rd most polluted Chinese city.

Arriving at Leshan we were shown to a bus heading to the big Buddha "theme park". Then we found out the entry fee was Y150 per person! One of the girls had a student card and was able to get the 50% off, it had come in usefull many times according to her. The rest of us all had to fork out the Y150 each, before continuing onwards. The entrance was beautifully presented with trees lining the pathway and a bridge over a river, a huge reclining Buddha had been carved into the mountain and was apparently 300 meters long, it was huge! We followed the walkway up the mountain, at one point lined with mural carvings of an Indian dancer, Cambodian Ankorian Buddha's and also a Shiva god.

From there the pathway went steeply up the mountain, down the other side and up another mountain before we reached some other temples, which were a prelude to the sitting Buddha, the walk was at least 25 to 30 minutes. The temperature and humidity was excessive and all our shirts were dripping with perspiration. We came to a temple cave, nothing more than a cave that had been 10m deep, where a monk had stayed for 9 years overseeing the construction process. It was here that we were first able to see the face of the Big Buddha, it was huge, in total the sitting Buddha was 71m tall. A small walkway led down to the riverside where one could look up to the statue. We walked down the steep steps lined with railings all the way, I can only imagine how it must have been scaling the 100m cliff before the railings were there.

The river flowing below was also not small and it was really flowing at a fast pace, with the city sky scrapers in the distance. We stood there looking at the statue and resting for a few minutes before starting up an adjacent path to the top. The Chinese were of course huffing and puffing all the way up, no cable car here! We visited 2 more temples before starting back and walking along the river with perfect reflections of bridges along the way. Arriving at the main road we flagged down a bus who would take us to the bus station, eventually. It circled the city a few times before dropping us at the station, at least we had a city tour! After buying our tickets and snacks we waited 20 minutes before boarding the bus back to Chengdu. It had been a long day and there was still much to do when we got back, a shower and decent food was at the top of the list.

Driving into the city we were again surprised by the extent of constructions, huge developments with even larger buildings! Chengdu we had read was voted one of the best Chinese cities to stay in, but then again it was also almost top of the list for pollution, you cant have everything. Back at the guest house we had very little time, we showered and ate with haste, our meal was the Chengdu specialty of twice cooked pork and also chicken with peanuts.

We had little time to make it to the station and when we at last flagged down a taxi and arrived at the station with thousands of people, we met the inevitable show stopper, no tickets! We only had 40 minutes to get on the train and going back to the guest house and returning surely wouldn't be enough. We looked everywhere, but couldn't find them. In the end we moved to a quieter spot to continue our search, moving there Leanne saw something lying on the floor, it was our tickets! I had seen it too but thought it to be rubbish and left it.

We past the inspection, greeted the English couple before buying snacks and heading to the waiting room before our train came. 30 minutes later we were on the train and in our beds, there were 6 in a room, 2 at the bottom (the best), 2 in the middle (ours - okay) and 2 on top (the worst). We caught up on some of the writing before retiring for some well warranted sleep.