Chengdu, and Sichuan in general, has some pretty amazing sights. I'm fairly sure I will have to come back at some point to make the most of them, but at least I know I saw the two most famous.On New Years Day itself, we caught a bus to a small town two hours from Chengdu, called Leshan. This town's main attraction is a 70m high (can you see the people next to his head in the above pic?) seated Buddha carved out of the sandstone cliffs above the river. It is a really magnificent sight. The photos speak for themselves really. We came upon the Buddha
level with his head and, after queuing for about an hour, walked (slowly) down a congested staircase lined with further carved niches to get a fantastic view of this massive creation as we wound our way down to his feet.It's quite a difficult sight to comprehend really. Bloody huge. And bloody old. Coming up to 1300 years old. Amazing.
The rest of the day was uneventful. We went to an awful restaurant and once back in Chengdu were unfortunate enough to get in a taxi driven by the world's worst taxi driver. We gave the woman the address of our hostel only to end up being dropped off at some random crossroads - not at the hostel as we wanted. We hadn't got a clue where we were but she was adamant we get out, so we stood around for a bit looking lost, and were about to get into another taxi to see if they could take us all the way to our destination when our original driver swung round in her car and pointed us down
the road. Okaaay. So we walked a bit further, tailed the
whole time by this woman in her empty taxi, shouting out further directions as we came to each junction. Finally we came to a place we recognised, gave her a thumbs-up and she went off on her way. Ok so we got there, but I mean why?! Would it not have been easier to just take us to exactly where we wanted to go?! Sometimes I just don't get people.
The journey so far...
Days: 17 Distance: 3860km (give or take the usual crap)
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