China's Sacred Wonders: Mount Emei & Leshan Giant Buddha

Yo, what's up everybody, hope you're all doing well. If you've been following along with our China vlogs, we were last in Chongqing but since then we've taken a 3-hour high-speed bullet train over here to Ermei Mountain. Yeah, Ermei Sun is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains here in China and today we're going to go to the very top. But with all these types of mountain peaks, the weather is always kind of hit and miss, so we're just going to see how we get on today. Let's go! so it's 10.40am now and there was about a 10-minute short brief stop as well for people to use the bathroom and things. But we have hopped off now at Leitongping Station, which is the terminal station for the shuttle and it's where we will eventually come back and return back down the mountain. It was pretty windy though I think because when I got up I was all groggy and all that and I could feel the turns while I was having the nap as well in between. So yeah, we've got a little bit of a walk. I think it's maybe 30 minutes and then we're going to catch a cableway to the top and hopefully by then I've woken up a bit more. Before we came here I was checking this mountain website for the temperature of this mountain and it was saying that it was going to be 10 degrees and then I asked the local taxi driver how warm do you reckon it's going to be and he said it's going to be maybe 10 degrees cooler than the ground temperature which is currently 30 degrees here in June and it looks like the taxi driver is correct. It doesn't feel that cool up here at all. I think it's maybe around about 20 odd degrees, high 20s, so a t-shirt would have absolutely been fine. We weren't really sure how to dress and even if you come up here unprepared there are plenty of jacket rental stores. It's very handy. Thank goodness that it was a very brief cable car ride because it was super packed and when we got off it was noticeably a lot cooler but again the sun's out here so it's nice and warm and I don't know if you can see but right behind me is the golden statue. We are at the golden summit pretty much just at the base here and that statue is known as Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, also known in Chinese as Huxian Pusa. It's 48 meters tall and even looking down from here back up at it, very impressive. Also very golden and very bright. I can't help but keep squinting while we're here. I wish I bought my sunglasses. Burmese Sun is one of the four sacred buddhist mountains here in China and at 3077 meters it is in fact the tallest one as well. Now it's located in the Sichuan province and the tickets today cost 85 New Zealand dollars which included the bus ride as well as the cable car that went all the way to the top and of course our return tickets as well. I watched a couple of videos where some people did the hike from the bottom of the mountain all the way up here and it takes 12 hours of strenuous hiking and Yen and I definitely were not keen for that. The easy route was the way to go for us. Now if you're lucky then you should be able to see a blanket of clouds right over here but unfortunately for us today it is just one big massive block of clouds that gets stuck right in it and when we came here a lot of people did recommend that you should stay overnight at because at the midway point of the mountain there are actually eight different uh I guess you could say attractions there as well and viewpoints yeah and there's a bus that actually takes you around there so if you want to explore everything two days is the way to go. There's plenty of accommodation here though even at the top there's accommodation and I think that's for people who want to come up here and see the sunrise in the morning but you know that's not guaranteed either I was looking at the weather forecast and it was pretty much raining and cloudy for the entire rest of the week so we're incredibly fortunate to have this sunny day today. Yeah we are. Hey everyone it's a new day today and we caught a 15 or 20 minute high speed rail over from where we're going to be checking out the famous giant buddha later on. Yeah but shout out to Tingting who's our friend back home in New Zealand who's recommended that we get something to eat here in Jiaxinglu which is exactly what we're going to do first. Let's go. As we were walking down the street we did notice a couple of restaurants hadn't opened yet and our taxi driver did mention that this place was more for dinner time but here we go we've asked for some local specialties and we got this bo bo ji here as well as a tian pi ya which is a sweet skinned duck which I'm really excited to try but let's try this bo bo ji first and looks like it's very heavy on the oil and chili but let's give it a go. That's delicious it's not very spicy at all it's more like a flavor spice and the oil has seeped in through that meat giving a good amount of flavor. Okay but let's go in for some of the duck now. Oh that is tasty guys it tastes like candied duck like regular duck but with a thin layer of sweetness in it which goes really well with the duck flavor and even our drink here is the local one it's plant-based with milk so let's give that a try. That's a really unique flavor to it actually and it tastes like wheat and milk with a hint of sugar that's pretty good. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this point because we came here to Luoshan Giant Buddha expecting it to be a very small little area but it turns out to be quite large and in fact we went to the first stop in order to catch a boat ride because it is very hot today it's a heat wave in China at the moment and it's about 36 degrees but they said that there's no water there so unfortunately we've had to come and catch this sightseeing bus which cost us 20 rmb all the way down the road until this point here which is the south gate wasn't it? Yes that's right. Yeah so hopefully we're going to be able to catch a boat from this pier we'll see how things go. Let's make our way to the boat now and hopefully you guys can hear me because it is quite noisy but our tickets were 70 yuan each and I'll give you a little bit of information about this giant Buddha. It stands a whopping 71 meters tall making it the tallest and largest stone carved Buddha in the world and it is situated at the confluence of three rivers where a lot of shipwrecks used to happen in the past but the initial construction was initiated by a monk back in 713 AD who believed that the statue would help watch over the rivers and protect the people from the turbulent waters but unfortunately he passed away before the construction was completed in 803 AD by his disciples making it a 90 year project and if we want to get really technical the statue is actually of a Maitreya which is a specific Bodhisattva that will become a future Buddha it's believed and a Bodhisattva is a spiritual being that has attained enlightenment but postpones nirvana in order to help others so hopefully we're going to be able to catch a great view of it really soon. And there it is behind me looking super impressive. Now interestingly it did actually stop shipwrecks and lives being lost to the rivers if only because the rocks from the construction of the statue ended up in the riverbed which made the waters calmer and safer than before. Okay guys we're going to wrap things up here because it is so super hot I feel like it's gone up a couple of degrees since we last said that. Yeah it's been really awesome and special this trip being able to go to all these different landmarks there's something that we've saved on our bucket list for a very long time so it's nice to finally be ticking them off. Yeah we hope you guys enjoyed following along if you did you know the drill please give us those thumbs up drop us a comment we always enjoy reading them and if you haven't already please do subscribe for more adventures while we're here in China. We'll catch you in the next vlog. See you everybody!