One Big Buddha
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2006
1
58
374
Trip End
Mar 15, 2007
Emei,
China
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Once Idan & Lihi had emerged we got the local bus through Chengdu city centre to the bus station to go to Leshan with Chengdu appearing like any other Chinese city so I was not too bothered about not exploring it yesterday.
The bus to Leshan was a tad more expensive than we'd been told but maybe that was to cover the complimentary water and peanuts giving out on board, suppose there not really complimentary then.
Another bus in Leshan dropped us off at what we were told was the entrance to the Big Buddha but as we were about to purchase our entry tickets (China really is the land of the admission ticket where even the smallest park often has a entry fee attached) we were told the entrance fee was 105 CNY instead of the 70 we knew it was.
Arguing with some guy at the gate who we were not even sure worked there we kept being told the only price was 105 CNY for the whole scenic area despite us only wanting to see the Big Buddha and pay the 70 we saw against its name on the ticket price board.
A bit more quarreling later we found there was a typically unadvertised student price of 55 CNY which I was happy to pay with my IYTC card but Idan & Lihi had no such thing and already bearing a grudge chose to give me there camera and I would meet them at the exit instead.
Giving the size of the Buddha I was surprised it took me so long to find it one inside or more likely my less than perfect sense of direction lately was to blame.
Giant Buddha
Once I did finally reach it I immediately noticed Idan & Lihi already there in front of me. They explained that a short walk back down the road was another entrance to just the Buddha that the bus did stop at but the driver told us it was not the entrance and took us to the other gate instead they also mentioned a pedicab driver wanted 50 CNY to take them the short 2 minutes walk to the gate.Lihi in the end passed her flight attendant card off as a student card to the non-Hebrew reading ticket person (heck it easily fooled me when she showed me it too) so felt like we had at least got our own back a little bit on their scams.
Anyway the Big Buddha was err...big and certainly well worth the hassle we had to see it in the end.
From here we continued by bus to Emei were again we were jerked around by the taxi driver for more money and charged us a third more than the usual price we were told to take us to the hotel.
The Teddy Bear Hotel itself was a really nice place with big clean rooms and lots of teddy bears which explained the name at least as well as adding a 'Bear Burger' to the menu. We were curious about that, having see it on a flyer for this place, until we arrived after thinking nothing but panda bear since yesterday. The dinner, although not trying the bear burger at this stage, was great with a good range of vegetables in a fantastic sweet and sour sauce and some fresh salads - I'd gotten a little weary of all the fried food lately which is hard to avoid when seeing the word 'fried' in front of three quarters of menu items.
