Fortunately no cockroaches appeared during the night. I learned the hard way that we were now staying at a hotel where the toilets can’t handle toilet paper, it has to be thrown in the basket next to the toilet. I had done this all the time at public toilets, but it wasn’t necessary at our hotels in Beijing and Xi’an.

Unfortunately it was still raining. That morning we went in a minibus to Leshan. There is this strange deal here where the bus drivers always bring with them 1-2 people in the bus. This chauffeur brought three, and it got pretty crowded. On of them even managed to throw up, fortunately someone gave her at plastic bag in time (the bag was afterwards carelessly tossed out into the street). When the chauffeur stopped somewhere to pick up two more passengers Kath said no. They were allowed to ride with us to the nearest bus station, but then they had to get off.

Leshan lies a 2 hour drive away from Chengdu. You can tell that you have now reached a more rural district. You can see fewer signs in English and people carry their goods in the traditional hang-a-stick-over-the- shoulders-with-a-basket-on-each-side-thingy. We stopped there to have lunch at the Yangs' Restaurant. This is again a miserable looking abode, with old wooden tables and tiles on the walls. I guess that we should be glad that we didn’t get to see the kitchen. But the owner speaks good English (the place is mentioned in LP), and he served us an excellent banquet meal for 20 Yuan pro person. Yum!

Afterwards we walked down to and along the river, and we then took a small ferry over the river to see Leshan’s great attraction: The Giant Buddha. It is an enormous sitting Buddha (71 m) which has been carved into the mountain, it is supposed to be the largest in the world (his big toe is for example 8,5 m long). They started to build it in 713 AD, and finished 90 years later. When you climb up the stairs to the top you get to his head, and then you can walk down a steep narrow stair carved into the mountainside to stand at Buddha’s feet. There were a lot of Chinese tourists there, and as usual they wanted pictures of themselves in front of the Buddha from all the different angles. We were lucky to have the rain stop long enough to have a nice look around the place, which also consist of a temple, other statues etc. We took the ferry back, and then we had to ride the bus for another hour to the holy Buddhist mountain of Emeishan.

The plan was to spend the night at the monastery of Baoguo, but because of some kind of festival they didn’t have free rooms. Baoguo is a small place with about 5-6000 inhabitants at the foot of the mountain. Instead Kath and the local guide Mr. Zhang had booked a room for us at a local hotel. When we got there Kath looked at the rooms and thought they seemed fine. The reception also looked OK, but someone has mentioned the expression ”beware of the nice reception”. It seems that the Chinese often redecorates the reception and nothing more (and of course raise the prices as a result).

The room Alison and I were given was not much to write home about. But the only concrete flaw was that we only had a quarter of a toilet seat. Donna and John in the room next door had none at all, and we managed to use this to get another room in another building. These seemed better, but it turned out they weren’t all that great either. Toilet with a crack that made funny sounds during the night, cracks in the roof etc. When you see the old Chinese buildings they had this amazing craftsmanship, but somewhere along the way they seem to have lost a lot. And they certainly have different standards when it comes to cleaning (when you see someone brush over a very dirty wall-to-wall carpet with an even dirtier mop, you wonder why they even bother). Kath told us that she had complained that there was something wrong with her bathroom so that when she showered all the water leaked from the bathtub onto the floor. The lady who came to have a look at this looked at Kath as if she was a complete idiot, and then she resolutely walked out into the bedroom and came back with the slippers you find in all hotel rooms and dropped them in front of Kath. Then she left.

In the evening we had a meeting in the reception about the mountain trip we were about to start on. Kath explained that we had two alternatives, A and B. Plan A was the original plan, which was going up to Jinding Golden Summit (at 3099 metres), and then the long way down. If it kept on raining however, we wouldn’t be able to see anything at the top. Plan B would be to drive and take a cable car up to Wannian Monastery, walk to Qingyin Pavilion (1-2 hours), and from there on to Hon Chun Ping to spend the night (which we would also do according to Plan A). Then the next day we would walk to Baoguo via Quingyin. We agreed at the meeting to wait until the next morning to reach a decision. I must admit that none of the alternatives tempted me at all, especially in pouring rain. There was some dissatisfaction in the group, I don’t think any of us was feeling all that intrepid at that time…. After the meeting we had dinner at the Teddy Bear Cafe across the street from the hotel. This cafe has also been recommended by LP, and we had a very nice banquet meal, with among other things some wonderful eggplant-dishes. This is the Sichuan Province, which is famous for its good and spicy food. One funny detail is that instead of using napkins at the dinner table, the Chinese often put a roll of toilet paper on the table instead. In some places they have these pink or red plastic containers that they put the toilet rolls in, with a hole on the top to pull the paper out. Very elegant!  Then it was back to the hotel to pack, as  we could only bring with us a daypack for the trip. The large backpack had to be packed so we could stash it in a room at the hotel.