Everyone's on holiday

---

It was off to see the big Budda at Leshan. I was still feeling a little rough, and am developing a nice black eye. Looking forward to seeing the Big Buddha, which is a massive Buddha carved into the side of a mountain at the conversion point of 3 rivers. It's several hundred years old and mean't to be spectacular. However, it is now May week, which is a 1 week period where the whole of China gets a week off, and travel to the sights. And boy do they come in droves. We walked up to the Buddha, to then walk down to get a good picture. However, there was the biggest queue I have seen (much larger than the one in Hong Kong). It was madness, so we only saw its head, which was a pity.

We then carried on to Emei Shan, where we stayed in a Buddist Temple. This was amazing, however the facilities are not five star and actually not even 1 star. We were taken to our rooms which were fine, but then shown the showers, which were like something out of the dark ages (and turned out they were over 30 yrs old). These were a show in a stone cupboard, along with the spiders and everything else. We were then taken to much newer showers, but this would involve showering with everyone else and no doors. This option was more preferable than the spiders and was a new 'cultural experience'.

It was then up at 4.30 am to leave at 5.20am for the bus, however, at 4am the monks started chanting and banging the drums and bells, so really it was up then. Once on the bus we were then due to go up the mountain to the top for a cable car and views of the summit. However, after a 2 hour bus ride which was the most sick inducing thing I have been on in a while we got to the top to find torrential rain and high winds. Most of the group were not prepared for this. I felt ill equipped (even though I had my waterproof jacket). We then decided to miss the summit out and go back a little down the mountain to wait for the rain to stop. We stopped in this hotel reataurant for 3 hours for the rain to slow and our local guide Natahan went down the mountain to the shops and brought everyone rain ponchos.

We were due to walk to another monestary to sleep another night. However, with the rain half the group decided to go back to the 1st one and not do the walk. But stupid me, I opted for the walk. In the end it turned into a lovely walk. The sun came out and off came the mass layers. It was a great walk where we saw monkeys and walked up A LOT OF STEPS. Put it this way the final set were 1119 steps straight up. This was a killer for the knees, but great practice for the wall. This monestary was lovely though. It was quiet (for the first time in ages). It was really peaceful and we had lots of monkeys here as well. They can get quite risky at time and attack. We therefore had walking sticks which doubled as monkey scarers.

This monestary was probably one of the best nights sleep I've had in a long time. It was great. I had a massive canopy bed which was lovely to sleep in and had dinner at the Hard Wok cafe.

The next morning, it was a much easier walk down the mountain and a bus back to town, with an afternoon stop at the hot springs where I soaked in Cocoa, milk, lime, peppermint, tea and many other smells.

The following day I went on a rickshaw countryside tour. This was amazing, it was really good as it showed an insight into real like. Only 5 of the group went on it as it was an optional activity, but very good. We went to a local market and saw all manor of items that you don't want to know about, but apparently this was tame compared to the one in Yangshao (which had dogs for sale). Lots of live and dead animals, and also a pigs face. It was then off to visit a noodle factory, but on the way we did an impromptu stop at a Kong Fu school, which was amazing to watch. The standards of the facilities would not be acceptable in england, but the skills they had were very impressive and scary. So fast and powerful.

The noddle factory was facinating to watch. It's a manual process, which is dependant on the sun to dry the noodles. They only stop when it rains. We then were invited to a house next door, which he showed us glass making. This was very impromtu. He heard the western voices and jumped out of bed to get us to look. Very enterprising really.

We also had lunch in a traditional marjong meeting place, and saw them making granola oil with a very old machine and this young girl pushing the seeds through with her hand. It was filthy and dark and not good working conditions. We then headed to Patrick's (our guide) teachers home. This teacher is 91 yrs old and teached English. He still owns a small farm plot which he keeps and lives in this lovely old 300 yr old home. However, not for long as the definition of progress in China is to tear down the old and build new. So in the next 2-3 yrs he will be evicted from the house he has lived in all his life to make way for more ugly concrete flats! (rant over now).

It's now off to get the sleeper train to Xian.

---