Tag Archives: Culture

Kunming

Day 34 – Visiting the YuanTong Temple in Kunming

Again a visit to a local temple, this time the Yuan Tong Temple in Kunming. This is one of the most important Buddhist temples in China, with a history going back over 1200 years. Finding it was easy with the map provided by our guesthouse Lost Garden and we walked there in about 15 minutes. The entrance is squeezed in between the normal shops and buildings, but somehow temples always show itself by the big group of people begging, selling stuff or just hanging around in front of the entrance.

The grounds were beautiful, we walked around a bit and suddenly we saw a lot of people walking around with bowls of food. After a bit asking we identified the kitchen and there they were giving veggie food for 7 rmb a bowl, as Charlotte was hungry we decided to try it.

And we got the last bowl, the veggie was all out so it was basically some rice with potatoes and curd, but that was exactly the right thing for our daughter and thus we had a improvised lunch with some old Chinese ladies, who shared table and some pickles with us. Very nice experience.

After lunch we just wandered around the compound, enjoying the many beautiful photo spots (Martijn), the quietness (Manu) and the option to play horseland on the stair (Charlotte).

On return we even did some exercise – Charlotte always asking “Daddy, am I a sporty girl” :o)

 

Chengdu, Emei Shan, Sabbatical

Day 20 – Emei Shan

After a good night sleep in a room full of teddy bears (Remember the name of the Hotel) we had our breakfast and went to the bus station to get to the holy mountain Emei Shan. Based on the weather, afternoon would get a bit rainy, and the fact that we did not want to do a 2 hour drive through the mountains twice with Charlotte to get up and down we decided to do only the lower part of the mountain.

After about 30 minutes of bus ride we arrived at the Wannian Cable station and wanted to buy the ticket… and that was a shock. We had to pay 185 RMB entry fee as well ass 65 RMB for the cable car, altogether 630 RMB. A very big bite in our budget, but then again, when you’re at a holy mountain and made the trip you do not say no. Only thing we were thinking when seeing the hordes of Chinese tourist later on was that is must be even more expensive for them.

After a short cable car ride we arrived at the Wannian monastery and had our first experience with the, sometimes very aggressive, monkeys who live on the mountain. They jump on tourist who have water bottles outside or open backpacks and steal what they can get. But we were warned and got sticks for walking and for ‘hitting the monkey’ as our guesthouse owner said. Only problem was that Charlotte was now very keen on hitting a monkey, not the best education 😉

to be continued…..

Chengdu, Leshan, Uncategorized

Day 19 – Visiting the Giant Buddha of Le Shan

Today we checked out in time and went to the Chengdu East Railway station to get the bullet train to Leshan. As we will return to Chengdu we decided to split up our stuff and leave one backpack at the railway station with the left luggage, also a primer for us to try this out. So after handing over the backpack and ensuring multiple times to the lady that we would be in time to get it back (she closes at 9pm) we got on the train and went to Leshan.

Arriving after a mere hour ride we were already there. Time again for some logistics, as we wanted to take the bus in the evening to EmeiShan we took at taxi to the XiaoGao bus station and dropped the second big backpack off there with the left luggage. Then it was on to the big Buddha park, and we were amazed. Everybody is always talking about the Buddha, but there is much more to see. There is also a big Oriental Buddhist Park which contains thousands of Buddha statues, unfortunately we did not have enough time to see those. So if you go to Leshan, you can easily spend two days there, and enjoy the bit less crowded parts of the area.

For the Buddha we just let the pictures below speak for itself, after leaving the park we walked through a small fisher village where we had a well earned drink (there are a lot of stair to be done here) and Charlotte had noodles again to show off her chop stick capabilities. And of course the mandatory Lao Wai pictures..

Then we took the bus back to the main bus station to get a long distance bus to Emei Shan, as our hotel there should be right next to it. Well, that went a bit wrong, as we’re standing at the ticket desk and want to buy the tickets we got the typical Chinese “Meo”, as in we do not have tickets anymore. Shit!

Now what, ok, good to have 3g on  the mobile phone in China, a quick check showed that there were still train tickets available. It was 17:14 and the next train left at 17:48. Get a taxi!

Somehow the taxi driver understood we were in a hurry because we were going at much too high speed through the city, only slowing down when there was a speed trap. At 17:28 we arrived at the train station, thanked the driver and went to get tickets. Again shit, a long queue in front of us. This was already where we decided to take one train later and then everything was relaxed again. We go out tickets, waited about an hour for the train and arrived after 15minutes of bullet train and 5 minutes of taxi ride safely at the Teddy Bear Hotel.