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Chengdu + Le Shan
27th Aug - 29th Aug (Day 176 - 178)
We've spent three days in Chengdu, unfortunately for me I came down with a mild case ofdelhi belly - still, had to persevere on. I blame it on China Southern for bad aeroplane food and two baby cockroaches... We arrived at our hostel quite late as our plane was delayed, and we were picked up by the most rickety minivan ever. The journey into Chengdu was ok, the city is thick with smog, so much that i could feel it in my lungs. There were lots of traffic and the driving here is even more crazy. Several times i had to close my eyes and just hope. I dont even understand why there are traffic lights or lanes here. We eventually made it safe and sound to our hostel which is a converted warehouse, it has lots of character.
The next day we woke up bright and early to go to the panda sanctuary for the morning, to watch the panda feeding and panda playing. They were extremely cute and it even brought out the soft side of Chris. He loved it equally as much as me. There is no where else in this world that we can see this amount of pandas playing around and especially the amount of baby ones there were. We especially liked the way the pandas wobble their bottoms as they move and when they rolypoly and try to climb trees. We saw a few newborn pandas and they look like worms not as cute as when they are a bit older.
The day after we took a day trip to Leshan. From doing some research it is supposedly very easy to get here, one bus to the main bus station in le shan and another to the site. We were on the bus and we must have been nearly there when the bus stopped in the middle of a highway and told people to get off for the big buddha as the bus didn't stop at the main station! we were conned. once we got of the bus we were met by a silver minivan driver who would take us to the big buddha for 2 yuan each. He took us to there with no problems but of course it cost more than from the bus station.
We paid the entrance fee and once inside the queue to cimb down to see the big buddha was huge. Again this demonstrated the massive numbers of domestic tourists everywhere, it does make the experience less pleasurable for foreign tourists. Queueing on the way down was horrible. I was being pushed and shoved the whole way, there is no sense of queueing here. A older man behind me started shouting at me in mandarin, i had no clue what he was saying but shouted back in english. So here we were on a cliff side shouting at each other in two different languages... in the end i just turned around and was told to be quiet by Chris. I was really looking forward to seeing this huge buddha carved out of the side of the mountain but other tourists' behaviour made it very disappointing for me.
Aftre visiting the big buddha we left via the south gate which had virtually no tourists. Bonus points! The area we walked past was very beautiful, passing temples in the side of caves that once had monks buried in there, a small fishing village and a beautiful bridge to an island, where we took a hike up to another temple. Highlight of the day. We walked down the otherside of the island where were suppose to catch a ferry back to the main island and pass the big buddha (rough guide info) however there were no boats to be seen instead we took a bus back to main bus stop. The bus driver was extremely helpful especially because he spoke no english and we spoke no mandarin.
We got a bus back to Chengdu but ended up at a different bus station from before. We took a local bus to the right bus station and for the next hour and a half attempted to flag down a taxi to get back to the hostel. It was a very stressful day.
Flight to Xian tomorrow, hope we don't have the same minivan....
xxxxxx
- comments
David Chung Hi Tina and Chris, We feel for you for all the pushing and shoving. We had a similar experience at Ocean Park. Hope the rest if your trip is less stressful.