Leshan, China; losing weight the Chinese way

What can I say but that its been a very wild two days. As I left off, we were in Chengdu. The next morning we awoke early to catch a half day tour to a Panda Breeding Base where the endangered species are born and raised.

At the center, you can make a 1000 Yen donation (about 150 US dollars) to hold a baby Panda. Wow! Briana paid to hold a panda and I took tons of pictures for her. For me, I got a bonus just being that close to a baby Panda. They are so cute.

This is a picture of a random person holding a panda I took with my camera.

The center also housed Red Panda's. They kind of look like big red tabby cats.

The next half of the day, we went to Leshan, about 2 hours outside of Chengdu where we were eager to see the Giant Buddha. What we were absolutely not prepared for was the stairs. You laugh now, but if only I could give you the full scope of what I mean.

Here. Here is a extremely small fraction of the many, many stairs that we went up, then down, then up, then down.... get the picture? Me and Briana were drenched in sweat because of the humidity. It was quite a hike.

Can you see me at the bottom? These are some serious stairs.

(I'm carrying lunch)

This is right next to the Buddha, see the people way at the top? You start there and climb down these intensely steep stairs against the side of the cliff.

So anyway, the stair climbing, in my opinion, was worth it. We reached the top and saw the Big Buddha. Then, we climbed down the cliff to see the rest of him from the bottom up. He is quite amazing, over looking the river. An easier way to see the Big Buddha would have been by boat, but hey, we took the more crazy route as usual.

Here is the Big Buddha.

This is Briana at the top...

And this is me at the bottom..!

There was much more to see at this park besides the Big Buddha. Me and Briana agreed that we could have easily spent the entire day there at the Buddha Park. There were many temples and things to walk around and see.

So busing it back to Changdu, we caught an overnight sleeper train (15 hours) to Xi'an. And here we are. We are staying at probably one of the nicest hostels yet.