Advertisement
Published: February 16th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Wanna guess where we went today?
Bad as fast food is for you I was ready for this. The hotel her has good food but you and only eat so many noodles before you have to have something American Yesterday was another day to get out and “enjoy” the weather here and see some sites. We decided it wasn't cold enough outside so we visited a temple that didn't have heat, doors wide open on each end so you got the draft action going and the ceilings were so high what little heat there was from people and candles was up the the 20+ foot ceilings.
However, interesting place especially when you here the legend about the place. What there is left of the building/courtyards is about 1300 years old. Before the city moved in on it, (it's now surrounded by what looked to be apartments, mostly) it was so far from the main building where the monks lived that they had to ride a horse to the gates when it was time to lock up for the night other wise they wouldn't have enough time to get them closed by walking to the gate. It must have been an impressive place, but hey that was when land was cheap :-)
The legend goes that in ancient times there was a dragon the lived in a well here. It would of course do bad things to travelers as
Main entrance
This is the front of this 1300 year old temple dragons tend to do from time to time. The monks built a massive Buddha, covered in gold to put over the well to entrap the dragon. Evelyn told us how tall this thing was, in meters, but I forget what the exact height was. Tall, at least 20 feet or better. You were only allowed to take a picture of it if you made sure you didn't cut off it's head in the picture and you couldn't use a flash, and yes there was a monk standing around watching. We didn't even try, unless you had some kind of special wide angle lens there wasn't anyway you were going to get all of this thing in the picture. I'm thinking that's just a sneaky way of saying “no photos, no photos”.
There were some interesting trees in the courtyards, Camphor trees that were well over 200 years old. They are kind of baby trees since these things live much longer then that. There's one in Japan that's over a 1000 years old. I've never seen one let alone knew they were evergreen trees.
Oh before I forget, something else I learned on this trip. You ever notice a
Young sapling
I mean it's only 200 years old. lot of these ancient places have 2 lions out front guarding the place? Didn't know that there is always a male and a female lion. They always look the same to me since they both will have the full mane like normally seen only on the male lions. The way you can tell is look at their feet. The male will have on paw on top a globe. The female will have her paw on top of a baby lion. That and the male will be on the right as you approach the entrance. Check it out next time you see a set of lions guarding some place.
While we were there we met this woman, not sure how old she was but she was pushing an older woman, maybe her mom, around in a wheelchair. She was absolutely fascinated with us she only knew about 3 english words but she didn't let that stop her from trying to talk to us. There was another couple, not with our group, there from near Pittsburg, PA. She got into a guess you're age game with them. I'm not sure what she said when the woman from the states told her she was almost 50 but I'm pretty sure it was something along the line of “don't lie to me, how old are you really?”
We left there to go on a Walmart run, yep Walmart. We needed to get some more pants for Qing Ling, it's the tummy thing again, and one of the couples with the baby girl needed more baby stuff. Other then having a weird flat kind of escalator, no steps, just a conveyer belt mostly, it looked like any other Walmart.
History lesson: The Walmart we went to is right across the street from August 1
st square. What's so special about August 1
st? That was when the last civil war broke out known as the Nanchang Uprising. This square is the second largest one in China, right behind Tiananmen Square in Beijing. There wasn't a lot going on yesterday but I understand it's quite a busy place in warm weather. There even a musical fountain people tend to hang out by to cool off during the humid summers.
And of course no “western trip” to Walmart would be complete without a stop my Micky D's. Other then the people you wouldn't have know you were in China same old McDonald's including the Big Mac combo meal. Which is what Qing Ling picked out. Nope, not going to have a problem introducing her to western food.
On a sad note, I did break my new daughters heart for the first time and it involved jumping on the bed. Funny how hotels just brings that out in kids. Anyway she missed clearing the gap fell right on top of Jasmine, who immediately starting crying. All I did was firmly tell her (again) to stop jumping on the bed. The combination of seeing Jasmine hurt and me fussing did it. She layed down in the floor and got real quite then started crying. Of course she didn't want any part of me trying to comfort her. Oh she was playing the guilt-tear thing completely. After leaving her alone for while she came over and gave me a kiss on the check and wanted a hug. So guess I didn't break her heart to much. Oh yes, I can see she's going to learn how to work daddy really quickly :-)
We were supposed to get some of our paperwork back yesterday but Evelyn said they wouldn't have it ready until late so she sent us back to our hotel and went to wait on the paper work. We'll get our kids passports today along with the other paper work. Then it'll be time to start packing for Guangzhou. Early flight tomorrow, I think about an hours flight from here maybe longer. Sure hope the sun comes out before we leave. Did I mention it's really foggy here this week?
Advertisement
Tot: 0.24s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0725s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb