December 24th - Chengdu to Leshan - The Giant Buddha
Our stop in Chengdu was very temporary, as our next goal was to go see the Giant Buddha in Leshan.
Here's our last picture of inside our hotel in Chengdu. One thing I don't think I've mentioned before is all the bikes. There are a lot of bikes...
One fun adventure was that, once in the Chengdu train station, I had to, well, poop.
I checked both large bathrooms - there is no toilet paper. You're expected to bring your own (fairly common in China).
Here's a picture of inside the train station.
Once in Leshan you can really see that my camera is a bit better.
We had met up again with our friend Meyo who showed us some local aspecs of Leshan, including food.
The type of spice in this dish is very similar to Chengdu, it's slightly numbing.
Before we get to the Giant Buddha - let's explore some neat aspects of Leshan. Like, this sidewalk railing I evidently found very interesting and took a picture of.
In China, lots of public community spaces have workout equipment, mostly for the elderly. I still found it fun, however.
From our sidewalk, we could just make out the Giant Buddha.
So, we began our trip to the Giant Buddha via Taxi.
Once we made our way to the Buddha, we could see Leshan from the shore.
Like everything in this region, the Buddha and surrounding rock is covered with vegetation.
Of course since the Giant Buddha is such an important piece of history and popular tourist attraction, policy are nearby.
That's not unusual, however I find their vehicle particularly "cute" with its tiny tires.
After paying for our ticket we started our trek to the Giant Buddha. Right at the start of the trail is this thing.
The path up the mountain is lined with sandstone. The walls of the path have many holes in them. This is due to tourists poking their fingers in the wall, since sandstone wears away easily.
Lots of things are omitted from this point since they don't really want you taking pictures. Also, note regarding our tour guide. I VERY MUCH do not recommend a tour guide. It took forever, I just wanted to go up the stairs to see the Buddha, and I remember almost nothing the guide said.
Eventually, we found our way to the last set of stairs.
Finally, we get a sight at the Buddha's head. At this point, we took a path around to the other side, before we would start our descent down.
So, let's go down to his feet!
Honestly, it's really cool to see from this perspective.
It took generations of people to build this. We can't stay forever, however, and we go back up. This time I'm able to get some higher up views of the chest.
That's most of our day in Leshan. At the train station we found yet more interesting soda.
We took the train back to Chengdu, where we would spend one more night. Meyo stayed on the train and headed home.
However, this isn't the end of our day.
If you remember the interesting modern architecture I saw before in Chengdu, with the building with the middle section that looks all mangled? It lights up at night.
Once back at our hotel, we made it into downtown to see the busy nightlife of Chengdu.
For food, we found the underground subway food station. This place has an amazing smell.
We settled on something to order. This ended up being wonderful, despite looking fairly simple and being in a small underground shop.
When we finally got back to our hotel for the night, we had a little surprise waiting for us in the door.
As a bonus, I did explore our hotel room a little that night, and I found some interesting things.
Our room had one of those windows designed to emulate sunlight. If you open it, the window doesn't go anywhere - there's just a light inside. However, this light's wiring was very questionable.
Yes, I did just segway right from exploring and food to some random electronic thing I found interesting.
Anyway that's the 24th. The next morning we'll be leaving Chengdu.