The Journey Begins

A rough map of our trip

My school is closed for the holidays.  I have four weeks before classes start again, so I decided to travel to the south of China with my coworker and expat friends.  We started off the journey in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province and home of the pandas. 
Pandas used to live all over Southeast Asia in the wild, but now they are concentrated in parts of Sichuan and two other provinces.  Chengdu is home to China's panda breeding research base, where we went to see them up close. 

Pandas seem very lazy, because they have to eat all day long just to get enough nutrients.

Chengdu seems refreshingly clean and warm to us after the smoggy, cold north, so we after seeing the pandas, we enjoyed a day of strolling the streets of the city and exploring an area around a monastery.  Our second and final day in Sichuan province, we decided to get on a bus to Leshan to see the world's tallest Buddha. 

 The Buddha was carved about 1200 years ago, with the goal of calming the dangerous waters of the river rushing past.  After 90 years of work on the Buddha, apparently the river did slow and calm.  Our first sight of the Buddhas was his head.  I think his ear is supposed to be about 7 meters long. 

The stairs down to the Buddha's feet

After climbing down a perilously steep path, we arrived at the Buddha's feet.  Later we took a boat in front of the statue so we could see it better. 

 Today we are getting on a 24-hour bus to Lijiang in Yunnan province.  I will hopefully write in more detail as our trip continues, but for now I'm off to the next adventure.