Monday April 18th

Today turned out to be a little disorganised....I shall start with breakfast.  When I got up this morning, I felt fine and decided to have dry cereal, but my stomach didn’t know what to do with it.  It wasn’t as bad as before, but I took a “Resolve” anyway, before we headed out to depart at 9am.

It was 9:30am before Tony told us it would take about 2 hours to get to the Grand Buddha at Le Shan.  2 hours?  That would take us to 11:30!  And indeed, it did.  So much for a ‘half day’ at the Grand Buddha of Le Shan – we were there for about half an hour – 30 MINUTES, and we spent all the time on the boat.  Which is all very nice for the photo of the entire Buddha, but I was actually expecting and looking forward to standing at the very top, and walking down to stand right next to his feet before walking all the way up the other side.  I knew I shouldn’t have had any expectations, and usually I try not to, but I was really looking forward to this – as was Mathew – and all we got was half an hour on a boat.  I wanted to walk around and stand beside him.

Grand Buddha (Dafo) at Le Shan

Anyway, the Buddha himself was very impressive indeed, sitting at 71 metres high, most Chinese say if he stood up he would be the tallest Buddha in the World!  He is carved into red sandstone and has two guardian figures, one on each side of him.  Yet another UNESCO World Heritage site, the Grand Buddha (or Dafo) was created after a monk called Haitong in AD 713 decided to safeguard the passage of boats by having a protective icon carved into the cliffs!

When we got onto the bus to go and have lunch, I got very upset and started to wonder how much time we might end up spending at the rest of China’s best known attractions.  For a 2 hour drive, we could have left the hotel at 8am and had an extra hour at the Buddha.  I was not happy.  It was not actually until I got back to the hotel I looked up Dafo in the guide book, and discovered that there was a museum up there as well as ancient shrines and temples nearby which we could have spent the entire day exploring.  Will I ever get the chance to come here again?

Next, we went to an ancient town which boasted “typical Chinese streets”.  The thing was, it took us 2 hours to get there, and we had to use a diversion because the road we were going to use was closed and we had to back track.  When we arrived at the town, it was a ‘village’ called Huanglong Xie which had been built to show different styles of architecture, and inside most of these buildings were mostly food and clothes shops, and after the ONE HOUR we spent wandering around, most people in the group hadn’t actually bought anything.

Unnecessary twee village

Sure, it was nice to see it but we didn’t NEED to go there, and we could have spent the ENTIRE day at Le Shan.  Plus, when we got onto the bus and he told us we’d have the opportunity to see a show the next day instead of tonight, he said “we’re going straight to the restaurant, then to the hotel” which was fine, but it took us 90 minutes to get there!

So in fact, we travelled a total of 5 and a half hours to spend 1 hour at a twee village and 30 minutes at Le Shan.  We SHOULD have left an hour earlier and spent ALL DAY at Le Shan, walking around him first, then on to the boat, having a late lunch and enjoying the museum and ancient shrines on the other side.

This was not a good day, although Dafo was impressive himself, I was very disappointed with how badly we had used the time today, knowing what we could have done had we made a whole day of it.  It was hard for me to try not to expect the rest of the holiday to be the same.

In the meantime, we had learnt quite a lot about traffic in China at this point.  Basically, it’s everyone for themselves!  First we thought lights and signs were more of a suggestion to road users, but the road itself turned out to be the suggestion.  Here are some observations and facts:

PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGS: Traffic only tends to stop for you on these if there is a red/green man for the pedestrians.  Cyclists, mopeds, and motorbikes don’t usually bother with these at all.  If there are no lights and or not red/green man – good luck!  Traffic won’t stop for you, it will slow down, toot the horn and make its way around you.

MOPEDS: You don’t need a license to ride one of these on the road and it shows.  Mopeds are very popular and people who ride them along with bicycles and motorbikes take no notice of traffic lights whatsoever.

DRIVE ON THE RIGHT – This is sometimes seen as a suggestion too.  In the countryside, drivers regularly overtake regardless of vehicles coming the other way. If there is a vehicle coming the other way, you just continue overtaking, toot the horn and everyone squeezes through.  Fortunately, most of these country roads are wide enough!  Also, drivers who toot their horns regularly do it to say the following:

a)      I’m overtaking you

b)      I see you’re overtaking me

c)       I’m coming around this tight corner

d)      Get out my way, I’m coming around you and I’m not stopping

e)      I’m overtaking, you’re coming my way – let’s make this work

Oh yes, and overtaking on corners when you can’t see vehicles on the other side coming towards you?  Sure, that’s fine too!