Last night was a disaster. After such luck getting a plane ticket, we landed in Chengdu only to have no ride to the hostel. We were supposed to have an arranged pick up waiting for us, but with the flight change and the fact we were a little late getting in, it didn't pan out. The problem was we didn't have a copy of the address or the phone number with us. Long story short, through the random acts of kindness of about 6 strangers, we used a restaurant's internet cafe, got the address, and secured a taxi. He tried to charge us double, but thanks to one of the strangers, we knew better. We finally got to the hostel and settled in at around 1:30am, 2 and a half hours after landing. We made arrangements for the next two days, and finally got to sleep.
Up bright and early again, we got ready for our first day and headed down to the front desk. Here we met with Ray, one of the employees and finalized and paid for all of our arrangements. Today we would be seeing the Leshan Giant Buddha, but we'd be on our own. We were hoping to go on the hostel's tour, but there wasn't enough interest for a trip today. Getting a van for just us wasn't practical, and it would've cost $90. There was an easy way to get there, but it involved a few steps and felt daunting. We wakled down to a huge statue of Mao, and ate some McDonald's for breakfast, pondering whether or not we'd actually be able to do this. I got freaked out for a few minutes. The trip involved catching a Chengdu city bus to an intercity bus station for a 2 hour ride, then another bus or taxi after that. Luckily we figured out the first step and our confidence grew a little bit with each one after that. The buses were decent, and at least air conditioned, but left much to the imagination.
We made it to Leshan and spotted (the only other) 2 foreigners that were on our bus, and arranged to split a taxi. It was an older father and son duo from Holland who are travelling China together for 4 weeks. We got to the Giant Buddha sight, parted ways and made our way inside. The Buddha was quite amazing, and the surrounding grounds and temples were beautiful too. It was so busy, though! There were literally thousands there, yet Dani and I only spotted maybe 10 other foreigners. I think it would be fair to say the line was over a kilometer long, and moving slowly. We spend over an hour and a half just to get near the front, and then the real madness began. We descended a steep, narrow path along the side of a cliff that afforded us some wonderful views of the Buddha. At over 70m tall and 25m wide though, he was not very photogenic. It was absolutely massive. The head was the most beautiful and well preserved part, but it was all quite amazing. The toes were each the size of a person! After the vertigo-inducing decent, we stayed on the platform for awhile taking pictures and soaking it in. We climbed back up, through an exit on the other side, and decided to head out. The josteling of the crowds really wore us out.
This time we decided to take a local bus back to the bus station, and it was the oldest, sketchiest one either of us had ever been on. Driving in China is one of the scariest and most unorganized things I've ever seen. Now we're on the long bus back to Chengdu, and we're going to get some legit dinner and good sleep tonight. Blogger is blocked here, but Gmail isn't, so we might be able to send some stuff home to Heather and see if she can post it for us. We're off to see the pandas tomorrow, which should be a total highlight for the both of us on this trip. We secured train tickets for tomorrow night, but they're hard seat tickets, which the guy from Holland told us are like wooden planks. 15 hours on that? We might need to do something about that...more on that later.
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