Big Buddha caused big problems

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Today, we decided to make a day trip out to Leshan, a town about 2 hours from Chengdu known for only one thing - the worlds biggest monolithic Buddha (ie. Buddha carved out of one piece of rock).

The bus trip to Leshan was boring and uneventful, although we did get an occassional glimpse of some pretty chinese country side. Sichuan is very green, and we're sure we'll remember the images of green for the many years to come.

Dismounting from the bus, we discovered that we'd been brought to a big Buddha reserve. Here, we would have the opportunity to walk through forests and up steep hills and discover many old temples as well as the Big Buddha himself. Being the lazy people, we looked hard and fast for the monorail or cable car, or SOMETHING, that would take us straight to the big buddha himself without the requirement for walking through the forests and up the hills - but alas, no such luck.

This we commenced a 4 hour walk through bushland looking at temples and buddhas. It was relatively pretty, very green and I guess relaxing - well for the first hour anyway. We saw a few old temples which were picturesque and a number of landscaped pools which I guess we were meant to find relaxing. After an hour, we finally came to the Big Buddha himself. Yup, he was big - a whopping 75m of rock buddha that was carved out of the side of a cliff.

Much to Melenie's disappointment, I insisted on walking all the way to the bottom of the buddha down this really steep staircase to take a picture of the guy. Unfortunately, I forgot that walking down meant that I'd also have to walk up. The walk up was painful because the steps were really tall. Our thigh muscles got quite a work out, as did the grumbling, whinging muscles of my wife!

We then decided to continue on towards Wen Shu temple where they apparently make vegetarian food that looks like meat eg. beef thats made from veges. Unfortunately, we got completely and utterly lost and ended up trudging around the bush and up and down numerous hills without seeing anything interesting apart from the occassional hawker trying to sell us a necklace and a few frustrated looking tourists who obviously just as lost as us. We ended up emerging in some 1000 Buddha park where they apparently had 1000 different buddha statues distributed a very pretty garden. The place was actually quite beautiful and would have been worth a visit, except for the fact that we were now tired, cranky and just wanted to get to this stupid Wen Shu temple.

In the end, we had to abandon our search for Wen Shu temple and head back to the tour bus to make the journey back. On the way back, we stopped and this excellent chinese restaurant where I insisted on ordering the least chinese but tastiest meal I had in China - super oily western style chicken fried rice with extra msg. Mmmm!!

After our tiring little trek (yes we agree that we are terribly lazy and unfit), we decided that we had earned a visit to a massage parlour. Massage is a popular thing in China, and its incredibly cheap. Melenie decided to have a full body massage while I had a foot massage. It ended up costing about $6AUD for both of us to be massaged thoroughly for a full hour!! The foot massage was fantastic - I discovered pain in my feet that I didn't realise I had. Melenie's body massage was equally fantastic, and included a vigorous head message, a back massage, leg and calf massage and even a bottom and boob massage (which was kind of awkward - thankfully the masseur was a girl). We left the massage place totally elated.

That night, we decided to try out a local specialty called Sichuan Hot Pot. You basically get a two pots - one with boiling chilli flavoured oil and the other with a tasty soup. You then order dishes of meats and vegetables and dump your food in the boiling pots to cook. Its basically like steam boat or fondue, but everything is really spicy ie. Sichuanese. It was quite tasty, but a bit expensive. They had more of those tongue-numbing poison berries in the chilli oil pot as well, so we spent quite a bit of time picking them out.

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Photos

Thats a big buddha!!
Thats just his head, and it was about 10 times my height. The entire guy is 75m tall, and is the biggest monolithic buddha in the world.

Buddha picking his ear
There was a room full of buddhas all doing weird things like picking their ears, combing their hair, scratching their head and pulling funny faces. Yet these odd poses didn't prevent the locals from bowing and praying to the statues.

One of the many buddhas in the 1000 buddha park
Stupid statues. We were so sick of buddhas by the end of the day.

The Frog and the Princess
Melenie thought kissing this frog would turn him into a prince. Okay, she really actually just dropped something beside the frog and it just looks like she is kissing him.