Chengdu, China - September 25, 2002
I woke up in Leshan and saw the world's largest Buddha. It was pretty impressive. I took a boat across the river for about 10 cents.. and explored it the place.. they basically take you up to the top of the Buddha's head.. where there are lots of souvineers and restaurants and all the materialistic things you can possibly find and put them in one of the very holy spiritual places that you can imagine - Asian-style!!! Asia is one of the most materialistic places imagineable, and Buddhist seems to be able to fuse just about anything and everything along with it, including everything you can imagine of a materialistic nature in whatever kind of spiritual place you can imagine. Anyhow, the Giant Buddha was pretty impressive. We took climbed down some extremely steep stairs which hugged the mountain. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could have built those stairs on that cliff. Just walking down them felt like you were going to fall over the edge at any second. They were quite frightening, and fortunately they had built guard rails. I can't imagine before guard rails how frightening it would be to descend those stairs. The Buddha was quite amazing though. At the bottom, we saw the giant feet, much taller and 10 times longer than any human being. Very impressive. At the end we climbed back to the top through kind of tunnels and made our way back to Leshan across the river.
After the Buddha experience, I tried to get to a neighboring city about one hour away.. to catch the train back to Kunming.. but unfortunately its just a little pit of a place.. and the train wasn't going to leave until after midnight - which meant 12 hours sitting around doing absolutely nothing with everything I own on my back and a ton of attention of every person who hasn't seen a westerner before. So instead of hanging out there, I just took another bus back to Chengdu, which was the local bus taking about 4 hours instead of the standard 2 hours which I would have had from Leshan.
Back in Chengdu wasn't bad though. The place really started to grow on me after a couple days. It was much different than Kunming, but has that growing on you effect. Its the exact opposite of Vietnam. When I first went to Vietnam I absolutely loved it, but the more time I spend in Vietnam the less and less I like it. But these Chinese cities seem so characterless and uninteresting at first glance, but the more you get to know them, the more interesting they become. Anyhow, thats the way it was for me with Chengdu as well.
Anyhow, from Chengdu, I'll be heading back to Kunming soon. I am a little anxious to get back to San Francisco now. As an aside note, my girlfriend just got a job in San Francisco, and will be waiting for my arrival as well. Originally, I believed I had another month, because she was quite busy with other things in her life, so I was taking my time getting back. But as it turns out, I'll be heading back in that direction.
Also, as a side note, I had been seriously contemplating teaching in Hanoi.. and the plan was that my girlfriend would join me for a month or two if I had signed a working contract there. But my feelings about Hanoi aren't nearly as high as they were about a year and a half ago. Hanoi isn't a bad place.. its just that I'd rather be living/working in San Francisco instead. Anyhow.. next journal will be coming from Kunming.. and I'll be working my way south and back home..
Continued journal entries in China:
September 27, 2001
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