Day 28 Leshan

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Hello!



Woke up early this morning to catch the (many) buses to Leshan (to see the Grand Buddha). We are both feeling quite ill with cold :-( but we only have one full day left in Chengdu so we have to do this trip to day if we want to see it.

We set off to catch the 55 bus at the end of our road, which was 20 minutes to Xinnanmen bus station, only 22p each. There we had to walk back on ourselves a little to get to this main bus station where we bought £5 tickets to Leshan, the large minibus left very soon after we bought these tickets so there was no waiting round for us :-)

Two hours later we arrived in Leshan, but to get to the Grand Buddha we had to take the local 13 bus that left from just outside, lucky we met a Malaysian family that escorted us pretty much the whole was to the buddha, because we weren't sure where to get off at.



Tickets were £5 each at a 'student rate' for us. It was a great sight-a as you can see from the photos, a lot of walking up and down steps though. It got a bit crowded at one point with tourist, but all in all it was pretty good.



The Grand Buddha was started in AD 713, by a Buddhist monk called Haitong, with the intention and that the Buddha would calm the deathly currents and protect the boatmen when fishing. The Grand Buddha was finally finished 90 years after Haitong's death.



Whilst at the site we also visited the Mahaoya tombs and the Wuyou Temple. The temple contained over 1000 terracotta arhat (Buddhist angles), all with different postures and facial expressions. Really worth seeing, a lot of walking but as the weather is only about 14'C it wasn't too bad.



We had lunch about 2pm in a local street food eatery, it wasn't great but never mind. We managed to find our way back to the hostel, with another 2hr bus ride home. I slept the entire way back ?



We had our favourite Dan-Dan-Meir for tea again (mine 'boo-la' and Neil's 'La') (not spicy and spicy).



Now in for the night for a film and chill out after a busy day.



Hope you enjoyed reading





Love V&N X

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