Biggest Buddha in the World, National Day, and Fireworks!

Day Twenty Two (Thurs Oct.1st ): Today is National Day, the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, and I forgot to type that all of China has been getting ready for this before we even got here and that it’s going to be celebrated for a whole week! Today we woke up early to go to the Grand Buddha in Leshan. There were six people including mom and me. There was a Japanese man who was tall and spoke good English, a middle-aged couple (a lightly chubby, bald man with a middle-aged woman with brown hair), and a middle-aged man from Turkey, bald at the top with a rim of brown hair. A small van picked us up at 9:00 a.m. and took us on a 2 hour ride to the “Grand Buddha.” The driver told all of us to meet back there at 3:00 p.m. After the ride, we walked to the entrance and bought two tickets and walked to the top of a cliff. Along the way, there were smaller buddhas and other things carved out of the stone. After we climbed to the top, we had to wait in line because it is apparently a popular tourist site. The “Grand Buddha” is about 71 meters high, and his big toe is about 8.5 meters long! It was started by a monk in 713 AD and took 90 years to build! When we got past the line, we started to descend down to his feet. After a bit, I started to feel sick in my stomach, so we did a quick walkthrough, which was pretty hard considering on the stairs down we were smashed because of all the people trying to get to the bottom. On the way up, we stopped for something to drink and to go to the bathroom. After that I felt a lot better. Then after we exited the “Grand Buddha,” mom wanted to go to the boat tour that went by the “Buddha,” so we walked along a street where people were trying to get us to let them taxi you on one of those three-wheeled bicycles with the seats on the back. Mom asked where the boat tour was, but, of course, the guy spoke Chinese, but appeared to know what we were trying to say. So mom let him take us for a ways but after he could not figure out where is was and started to ask people where it was, mom got tired of it and seeing as we had a time limit, we got off, paid him, and left. We tried to talk to some college-looking kids. A fruit seller said that it was 500 meters down in the opposite direction. After we got on the boat ride for the “Grand Buddha,” the boat sat in front of it for 40 minutes. Then we walked back to the van… Fireworks! After it got dark, the National Day Fireworks started. Uh, darn, tall buildings are blocking most of the view… oh well, from what I can see, the 4th of July fireworks in NYC are better…