Leshan - Christmas Eve Mishaps24 Dec 2008
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Leshan
Safety first!
by Chris
I thought it would be fun to share with everyone the comical misadventures that made up our December 24th: We had originally planned to go to Leshan on the 23rd, but we decided to rest up that day, as Lora had been sick (flu-like) the day before. So we decided to spend Christmas Eve day traveling to Leshan to see the world's largest Buddha, and we thought we should be back to our hostel in time for the Christmas Eve party, complete with glutinous rice balls - it seemed as good a way as any to spend Christmas Eve here in Chengdu, China.
Before I go into the mis-adventures, let me tell you about the Leshan buddha. It was carved into the face of a cliff overlooking the point where two rivers meet; construction began in AD 713, and took approx. 100 years to complete. It is 71 meters (234 feet) tall, and if you wanted, you could apparently have a picnic on his big toe! From photos I had previously seen, I thought it looked really cool (kind of like the ones in Afghanistan that the Taliban blew up, but in a more humid climate). I knew that you could climb from the head down to the toe, and that you could take cool photos from boat ferries that ply the river(s). Check out the photos - it does look pretty amazing!
The hostel where we were staying in Chengdu did not offer a day-trip tour to Leshan that really suited our needs. So having been successful so far in China, despite the most challenging language barrier of our trip, we decided to take a public bus to Leshan and tour the buddha on our own.
We left the hostel without a hitch - taxi to the bus station, no problem. We found a bus that was leaving for Leshan (2 hour bus ride) in twenty minutes - just enough time for a bathroom stop and then boarding. The bus ride there was pleasant. When we arrived, one person offered to pedi-cab us to the boat docks for around 50RMB (about $7.30US), then another offered a taxi-cab ride for 25RMB. We had read in our Lonely Planet guide that 10RMB was a fair price. Though $7.30 may not sound like much, if we let people charge us the "tourist price" everywhere, we'll be coming home much sooner than planned. It took us a few minutes, but we found a taxi driver that would take us there for 15RMB. Note: in everywhere else we went in China, the taxi drivers all used meters. We were dropped off at the docks, and we went to look for food. We found some tasty soup and dumplings for about $2 each.
We then found a kiosk - it appeared to be the only place selling ferry tickets to the Buddha. I think the English wording on the sign was "tickets for buddha boat tour" or something to that effect. The price listed was 50RMB - exactly the price Lonely Planet quoted for the ferry ride. We bought tickets from the agent, and were told the boat would leave "one minutes." We finally thought what she meant was 1 o'clock (it was about 11:45 am). So we walked down to the boat, and were chased off by someone telling us to come back at 1:30. The same person tried to take our tickets, but - savvy travellers that we are, we didn't give up our tickets until being allowed to board. We then almost missed the 12:45 boarding, when a nearby vendor caught our attention, pointing out that others were then boarding the tour boat.
The boat "hovered" - staying kind of still against the river current for about 10-15 minutes for the photo op. Really cool. Then the boat turned around and went back. Finished - all done. In retrospect, and after reviewing the Lonely Planet guide - it's not really clear, we think the photo-op tour boat and the ferry are two different boats, perhaps each of which charge 50RMB/person. But we no longer had time to find and take the ferry to get up close and climb the buddha stairs, which was really what had seemed the coolest thing to do from other photos I'd seen. Perhaps after seeing the Forbidden City in Beijing, it was the place I was most looking forward to experiencing in China. Oh well, things are tough all over, or as my friend Tony told me before I left, I will not be able to see it all.
In any case, we got on a taxi, which this time used the meter. We were taken to a different Leshan bus station than the one where we arrived, but they had a bus leaving for Chengdu within 10 minutes, so no problem, we thought. Except Chengdu has about 8 different bus stations - the one our bus delivered us to was way out in the boonies. No taxi driver wanted to take us so far into the city center - at least not without charging an extravagant price. We had already spent a great deal of money for just a 10-minute buddha photo-op, so we really needed to stop the bleeding, so to speak. Speaking all of four words in Mandarin Chinese at this point, we managed to communicate with someone at the bus station's information counter that we wanted to know how to get to the more central bus station. She told us "bus 28." We located an English sign that pointed to the local bus stops nearby, and saw on a posted (Mandarin only) bus route map that route #28 appeared to go near the central bus station. We waited about 10 minutes, paid the equivalent of $0.15US apiece, and rode the local bus through traffic to the more central bus station. Go us!
Riding that local bus, we were not sure where to get off, so I put on my extrovert hat, and started a sign-language conversation with a trustworthy looking guy on the bus, communicating using our map that we wanted to get off near the central bus station. That guy, and a nearby girl, got off at our same stop and walked with us for two blocks to the central bus station. Great, we were now in the part of Chengdu we wanted to be in, though still a few miles from our hostel, and not very sure how to get there. We spent the better part of the next hour (around 5:30pm by this time) trying in vain to hail a taxi - they were all full, and we were competing with more savvy Mandarin-speaking locals who were also trying to hail a cab during rush hour. Oh, did I mention it was about 35(F) degrees outside? So we spent about an hour in a nearby coffee shop thinking that it would be easier to hail a cab at 7 or 7:30.
Not so - we tried for another half hour, to no avail. We were cold, tired, and hungry for dinner on Christmas Eve. We walked the entire way back to the hotel, singing Christmas carols as we went (my creative wife's suggestion) - that was pretty fun, and it helped take our minds off the cold and fatigue. We now looked forward to eating a good Christmas Eve dinner at the nice restaurant next to the hostel (hostel guests get 30% off). An hour or so later, we successfully located our street, only to learn that the restaurant, and almost all others nearby, were only serving special Christmas meals at very high prices - way out of our budget. We arrived too late for the hostel's glutinous rice-balls, so we ended up on the cold, outside porch of Starbuck's, sharing a tuna sandwich, because "there was no room in the inn."
