Road Trip China Style: Mt. Emei and the Giant Buddha at Leshan
Conveniently nearly every hotel in China has a tour desk, or on site travel agency, you can book tours, tickets and the like. Assuming they speak English or you speak Mandarin.
In my case it was neither, all I could do was look at the pictures of the temple at the top of a giant mountain and some more pictures of giant Buddha statue carved into the side of cliff face by a river. I wanted to go, but how.
It turned out these were pictures of Mt Emei and the nearby Giant Buddha. Luckily I had been getting along well with the lady at reception who spoke English and asked her about the two places. She suggested I go on a tour, I suggested otherwise, she strongly suggested I go on a tour, I caved in.
I’ve always liked doing my own thing, in my own way, and never been a fan of playing follow the leader but in this case she suggested that transport between Chengdu and these places was difficult and the tour group made it easy, and really cheap. I’m a sucker when people say ‘savings’.
Oddly, we didn't go to the hotel tour desk, I was to meet her on the 5th floor at 5pm. OK, whatever. At 5 pm I went there and, sure enough, she was there, and she asked to wait while the travel agent came. Then she explained, I needed to keep it quite as I was getting a good deal. I said…