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Published: December 4th 2008
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China Trip Journal - 9 ***
Saturday, October 18, 2008
11:33 PM
Leshan tour… http://picasaweb.google.com/mtml072/Leshan#
So I was able to book a tour with the same tour guide I've had before, and since he knows where to rent a car and a driver; I thought it would be better to have him take care of all that.
All day tour for two people:
The tour guide's fee: 200RMB
Car rental with Driver: 650RMB
Tip: 50RMB
Lunch at the fishing village: 120RMB
Total: 1020RMB/151 U.S. Dollars
Leshan Entrance fee: ~320RMB (47$ for two)
After breakfast we met up with our tour guide and left for (its a two hour trip One way) Leshan. We stopped by a tea garden where tourist would normally stop by after an hour's drive. Or, to just simply take a little walk and look around the tea garden and get a few snacks.
We got to Leshan after a couple of hours, and it was a little cold. We started to ascend towards the head of the giant Buddha, and oh boy! There's a lot of stairs. It was just a beautiful walk. Then there's a lot of people. One lady held
Leshan
Stairs towards the foot of the Giant Buddha. her hand in front of me because they are trying to take a picture of their friend in front of the Buddha's head, so we sort of waited our turn and that was a bad idea. We each got our rushed pictures through and for sure they don't hesitate just getting in front of you to take their turn. They don't have courtesy! They don't fall in line! They don’t have a sense of personal space! They are just plain rude! They push each other through a narrow steep stairs, and they just don't get it! That's there's no where else to go since it's packed with people. But oh well...
So that was an extremely annoying experience. It's actually not worth going through that, if we weren't planning to go to the fishing village or to the temple. Then we got to continue on to a small and old fishing village. There's a lot of restaurant type with live fish and turtles on a wide pale. You pick the ones you want to eat and they'll gut it for you and cook three dishes out of one fish. The turtle, I am not sure how many dishes can they make out of it.
So our tour guide found a restaurant for us to have lunch, and he said that that restaurant is clean. Quite the contrary. The tin cup they use to serve us tea still have the paper sticker from the manufacturer on it (see picture.) But it tasted alright. The water was boiled and so I summoned up all my courage and have a little taste of the tea.
Then, here comes lunch! The lady who have howled at us in Chinese, probably telling us to eat at her restaurant brought in a live flapping fish. Her and our tour guide negotiated the size and the price (Of course in Chinese.) Then we had our three dishes of that fish, a twice cooked pork, and rice. I was skeptical with what type of fish it was, and where they'd fished it out. We were told by our tour guide about the two river, and one of them is Chengdu river which is said to be horribly polluted then the other side (which I forgot the river's name) was suppose to be clean fresh water from the mountain. We were told that the fish came from the clean river. In any case, we definitely wouldn't know the difference. So T and I ate a few pieces off the dishes prepared by the lady. They tasted good, but I am still reluctant to eat as much, because of my stomach still feeling uneasy. It's enough that I've tasted them and it taste good, and that's it! The twice cooked pork is always the favorite. So there's not much to say about that.
Then after wards we went up to the Buddhist temple (forgot the name) and going through the stairs was definitely a good work out. It was long sort of windy stairs. It looks cool though. It was nice and peaceful to walk there and it's just beautiful. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the temple. But inside one of the temple there's a lot of statue and there was a game for tourist according to our tour guide. You pick a monk statue, and you count it from that point up to your current age, then you give the number to the monk he will give you a piece of paper with your fortune written on it for ~10-20RNB. Unfortunately, the monk was gone so I couldn't get my fortune telling done. But, oh well…it's just probably not meant to be.
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