Leshan

The Buddha sits at 71 metres tall. His ears are 7m long, and his toe is 8.5 metres long.... and he needs a good wash.

We took a pleasant walk around Leshan to get to the Buddha.

...we were being very careful not to perish on the way, as it is "Nice to Live" apparently.

This sign is very apt for the last couple of weeks in China.

Little did we know that the day after Jason was going to have to protect "his bird" from a monkey and pay the ultimate price.

There are lots of people who come to see the Buddha.  As you can see on the left, it is important for Chinese tourists to be seen holding up the Buddha or putting their arm around him. It was very difficult to just get a photo of the Buddha but this is something we are used to by now.

The chaos. So we started singing our now modified song:

"You're so Vain,

I bet you think this photos about you,

You're so Vain,

I bet you think this photos about you, don't you, don't you, don't you."

... and repeat whilst facing perplexed looking Chinese tourist.

There are steps that you can take around the Buddha.  Here you get crushed in the race to get to the bottom to have a photo looking up at the Buddha.

Jason got told off for taking a photo and creating a person space infront of him for 5 seconds. There is no decorum in this country.

His fingers are bigger than us.

Claire had waited about 5 minutes to get a photo of this Buddha.  Lots of locals kept running infront of the camera to get their picture taken. Jason had had enough and ran infront of the camera and copied what all the locals were doing.  He caused quite abit of laughter, but they hadn't realised the joke was on them.