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Tuesday 9th September - day 20
Chengdu
The journey to Leshan looks easy enough, a bus down to xinnanmen bus station and then a coach from there. When we get to xinnanmen, we decide to get some fruit for the journey. We grab 2 bananas and 2 apples, the prices per kilo, clearly marked on. We watch the woman key in DOUBLE for each item - 14 instead of 7 for the weight of the bananas and so on. Realising she's blatantly ripping us off when she asks for 15rmb. It should have been 8 max. Telling her no, and indicating what she's done on the scales and pointing to the sign she starts shooting at us in Chinese. We tell her no and I put the bag of fruit down and make to leave. Crazy woman grabs my arm but I pull it away and walk out the shop. She grabs onto Yasmin's arm, scratching it with her dirty nails and is stopping her from leaving. Yasmin's shouting at her to let go and she's still shouting at us in Chinese. Other Chinese women are in the shop trying to calm the woman down and I eventually manage to pull yas down the stairs, as yas is pulling her grip From her, and the woman lets go. We are both furious and in shock. She's probably fuming as she cut the bananas from the bunch - but that's what you get for trying to scam people.
We make it into the bus station, pay 96rmb for the tickets for both of us and sit in disbelief from the fruit ordeal for the entire journey there. We are dropped off from the second bus it seems, in the middle of leshan itself. There's locals offering taxis and even though we normally wouldn't agree to it - as it's obviously a scam, we agree to share a taxi with two Chinese girls for only 5rmb each. When the taxi makes it's 5 minute journey and drops us off at the oriental Buddha park - which leads into the park where the Giant Buddha is. This obviously looks the the way to get to it so we cough up the 90 into the park and 80rmb each for the Buddha. We have something to eat outside, order beef noodles and get dumplings. Typical. All dumplinged out after last night, they are the chilli ones though so it's ok. Once in the oriental park, there's a series of Buddha statues, monuments and carvings including a 120ft 'sleeping' buddha in the hills. We enter the giant Buddha park from the south gate and make our way upwards, emerging at the Buddhas head. The Buddha is 230ft and is carved into the red sandstone face of lingyun hill. The Buddha overlooks the min, dadu and qingyi rivers. The Buddha was built in AD713 to safeguard the passing of boats - the idea belonging to haitong, a monk.
The Buddha has to be restored every 10 years to combat plant invasion and pollution. We view the Buddha from the top of the hill, which is close to its head ( it's ears droop 23ft!) and then take the narrow stairs down to the bottom, some good viewpoints on the stairs. At the bottom, the Buddhas feet alone are 26ft!
After countless pictures we head home, exiting from the north gate, which looks like the entrance we should have came through - it would have cut out the oriental park fee. We catch a local bus to the bus station and take a bus back to chengdu. Congratulating ourselves on how easy the journey back was, we realise we've been taken to a bus station on the outskirts of chengdu which isn't even marked on our map. After some walking around trying, unsuccessfully, to match a street name to somewhere on the map, we go back the coach station and get a bus into the main train station in chengdu, as it's easy to get back from the hostel from there. That takes about an hour and it's 8pm by the time we make it to pizzahut in one of the centre malls. It's well deserved after the nightmare getting home and the fruiting incident this morning.
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