Monday 9th April 2007
The worst of the illness having subsided this morning, V felt weak and nauseous but was at least no longer sick. We ad an early start to catch the bus to Leshan, the site of the Giant Buddha, the world’s largest sitting Buddha and at 1200 years old pretty ancient too!
At this point in time it’s probably right to mention how blessed we are to have in our group two pharmacists, a doctor, a paramedic and a medical researcher. They’ve helped keep us on the straight and narrow!
The bus ride took two hours and we arrived in Leshan to a second day’s rain. Having split up into taxis our driver unfortunately got the wrong end of the stick and dropped us on the wrong side of the river. After a few confused minutes in the wrong place we caught another one and got dropped off at the right place.
From there we walked up to the entrance of the grounds and made our way up the hillside to the head of the Giant Buddha. This was amazing and we learnt about its history. We then proceeded to walk down one side of it and back up the other. We then had the chance to look round some of the other temples in the grounds before taking a taxi back to the bus to head back to Chengdu.
After an afternoon nap we headed for the Szichuan Opera. We took taxis to a lovely part of town where there was a nice shopping street which we meandered along before taking our seats for the ‘Opera’ in a small open-air theatre. While awaiting the start of the opera we were served jasmine tea and peanuts and offered massages – not the dodgy sort this time!
Reluctant at first, once we’d seen some of the others being pummelled for the princely sum of 50 Yuan, we were both well up for it! After this the opera had a lot to live up to but we weren’t disappointed. There were about 6 or 7 different acts. The first was a sort of kung-fu act, followed by a woman with a large puppet doll, then the man who made shadow puppets with his hands. He was AMAZING! This was followed by the comedy knife-throwers who took one of our party, Rob, up to be their stooge, and blindfolded him while they ‘threw’ knives at him, placing them in the board around his head.
The worst of the illness having subsided this morning, V felt weak and nauseous but was at least no longer sick. We ad an early start to catch the bus to Leshan, the site of the Giant Buddha, the world’s largest sitting Buddha and at 1200 years old pretty ancient too!
At this point in time it’s probably right to mention how blessed we are to have in our group two pharmacists, a doctor, a paramedic and a medical researcher. They’ve helped keep us on the straight and narrow!
The bus ride took two hours and we arrived in Leshan to a second day’s rain. Having split up into taxis our driver unfortunately got the wrong end of the stick and dropped us on the wrong side of the river. After a few confused minutes in the wrong place we caught another one and got dropped off at the right place.
From there we walked up to the entrance of the grounds and made our way up the hillside to the head of the Giant Buddha. This was amazing and we learnt about its history. We then proceeded to walk down one side of it and back up the other. We then had the chance to look round some of the other temples in the grounds before taking a taxi back to the bus to head back to Chengdu.
After an afternoon nap we headed for the Szichuan Opera. We took taxis to a lovely part of town where there was a nice shopping street which we meandered along before taking our seats for the ‘Opera’ in a small open-air theatre. While awaiting the start of the opera we were served jasmine tea and peanuts and offered massages – not the dodgy sort this time!
Reluctant at first, once we’d seen some of the others being pummelled for the princely sum of 50 Yuan, we were both well up for it! After this the opera had a lot to live up to but we weren’t disappointed. There were about 6 or 7 different acts. The first was a sort of kung-fu act, followed by a woman with a large puppet doll, then the man who made shadow puppets with his hands. He was AMAZING! This was followed by the comedy knife-throwers who took one of our party, Rob, up to be their stooge, and blindfolded him while they ‘threw’ knives at him, placing them in the board around his head.
Then came the fire-spitting, face-changing act. In this the actors change the masks on their faces so fast that you blink and miss it. No-one knows how they do it! There were a couple more acts filling in and before we knew it the opera was over and we were heading back home in a taxi.
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