After seeing the pandas in Chengdu (totally worth it!!) and exploring the crazy backstreets, I spent my last day in Leshan, a town 2 hours outside of town and home to the world's largest sitting buddha! I thought it would be a bit cheesy, but heard it was good to see and it was really impressive! The Buddha is on an island connected to two other islands that were all temples and tombs...one guy explained it to be as "buddha land." I actually even ran into a guy I met in Lijiang and hiked Tiger Leaping Gorge with from Sweden! SMALL WORLD! I decided to save money and skip the tour arranged by the guest house and head there on my own....an adventure too long to list here, but long story short I made it to the train that night with 10 min to spare! (phew!)The longer I am in China, the more competent I feel travelling around here. I book my own train tickets, take local buses, eat at street stands.... I am getting used to being talked about and laughed at in chinese by people (this usually happens when im eating and trying to order food in the chinese food stalls). Still not quite comfortable yet buying things from the street stalls/shops in the local chinese markets....my experience trying to buy a tshirt for example:
I go into a store and point at a shirt on the wall. The woman working in the store either: ignores me, stares at me then ignores me, stares at me then laughs with her colleague who is also staring at me, or...comes and talks to me! Loudly. In chinese. A whole conversation in chinese. I tell her I dont understand...she keeps talking to me in chinese...i point at the shirt again then at me...she disappears and comes back with a different shirt that is wayy too big....i point at the shirt I want again, then at me...she pushes the other shirt at me. I look at the shirt and gesture for smaller? She speaks in chinese. I nodd no thanks and leave as she follows me and yells something in chinese. People on the street stare at me.
Geez....buying a shirt! I could just go to one of the glossy stores on the main streets with white people smiling in the windows, but the shirts there are 60 Y, versus 10-20 Y in the side streets...I really want to buy cheap knock off shoes in Beijing--we'll see how that works out LOL.
Sooo...today I am chilling then going to see the terracota warriors tomorrow and some other tourist stuff. I plan on climbing Huashan, one of taoisms' 5 great mountains the couple days after...it can be done in one day, but i want to stay overnight on the west peak at a dorm/monistary to see the sunset, then wake up early and see the sunrise from the east peak...supposed to be fantastic (and those that know me know im pretty into sunsets/rises)! Plus now that Im on the last days of my trip I am travelling slowly and enjoying it all at an easy pace...I have had about 5 different plans for these last two weeks, but they have all been trashed now:
plan 1: spend the last week in Korea--no time due to re-routeing around closed roads :(
plan 2: 3 days trekking/horseback riding in Songpan from Chengdu--they wouldnt sell me a bus tickets to Songpan. NO foreign tourists can take the bus to Songpan until june because the roads are too dangerous and they didnt want anyone dieing (apparently one bus crashed last year and that was that). Tried to get around it by bribing a chinese girl to buy my ticket for me, but they said they wouldnt let me on the bus and id lose my money for the ticket...boo!
plan 3: book it to beijing, then take a train to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia and take a tour of the grasslands-- 10 hour train to Hohhot (1 day + 100Y), tour (2 days--500Y), 10 train back to Beijing (1 day + 100Y) = 4 days and 700Y, with two of these being on a train. No way dude.
THE FINAL PLAN: hang out in Xi'an for awhile, then head to Beijing.
Ps--I miss canadian beer.
