The other (well, as well as all the other ones and the
general “chuck it all in and go on holiday for six months” thing) foolish thing
we did in Chalong was walk to Big Buddha.
Before you write us off as cultural heathen, I’ll explain.
It wasn’t Buddha that was the problem, it was the fact we decided to trek 10km,
on foot, in shorts and Vans trainers, to get there.
And so Thursday morning we set off, equipped with long skirt/scarf affair (me, temples frown on lady legs and shoulders), mosquito repellent (to stop us being bitten) antihistamine (in
case we were and Andy started going into anaphylactic shock, he’s a bit body
sensitive), suntan lotion (it was pretty much high noon), six large bottles of
water (obvious) and some flipflops (me again, I just don’t like having hot
feet). It was like an Xtreme Churchgoing Expedition.
Before we could reach spiritual nirvana, we had to walk
along the motorway. The first 4km of the journey were spent on the hard
shoulder (no pavements in these parts), dodging lorries and drain holes, and
accompanied by continuous horn honking and calls of “Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk?” (pretty
much any time Thai people see Farangs walking they assume they have only
ventured out in order to find transport).
Even this waterbuffalo looked at us like we were mad.
Around 2km in, I decided that what would really help a 10km
trek in crazy arse heat would be a face like thunder and a mild case of “woe is
me-itis”. In case you have any doubt
(unlikely) it didn’t make things easier.
After 4km, we got to turn off the motorway, onto a smaller
road up the mountain. Handily, this point is stocked with stalls selling
tourist tat, offerings for the statues and coconut water.
Remarkably, given my love of tat, I chose the most refreshing option.
Just past this delightful sausage display (doesn’t everyone
hang their meat by the main road?) we found the bottom of the hill.
What followed next involved another 4km, some “look at the
amazing view” comments from Andy, quite a lot of groaning and puffing on my
part, and some elephants (sadly chained up as a tourist attraction, so we
didn’t stop to take photos with them).
Inspired perhaps by the idea of
“Sandwishes”, about three quarters of the way up we stopped for a coffee and to
slip off our shoes.
Post coffee, I couldn’t get mine on again, so I switched to
flip flops. Logically this seems crazy, and we all know I love a whinge, but
they served me well for the rest of the day.
After around 2 hours, we finally made it to the top. I
swathed myself in additional layers until all flesh was covered (it wasn’t a
sartorial high point, I’ll admit) and we went sightseeing.
The Big Buddha is indeed very, very large, 45 metres/147
feet tall. Sadly at the moment, he’s wearing a bit of scaffolding (they’re
developing the site into a large-scale tourist attraction and spiritual hub)
but it was still impressive.
There was
also a little golden Buddha (12 metres/40 feet) and plenty of monk effigies
where you could think nice thoughts and zen out a bit.
Perhaps it’s because of the large numbers of
tourists marauding around (some of whom were upsettingly sitting on the laps of
statues) or the fact that I’m not a practising Buddhist, but I didn’t get the
hit of karmic calm I was expecting. It was however a good time to reflect on
our travels and family and friends back home, and buy a bit of marble in their
honor to be included in the renovations.
Then it was time to laugh at some monkeys (one of whom was
drinking pop that had been left out for the gods) and sample some coconut ice
cream.
We’d obviously run out of steam or camera batteries (we did
take a lot of photos of those monkeys) by the return journey, as we’re completely
bereft of imagery. Suffice to say, Andy was valiantly attempting to ignore two
big blisters and we made it about 6km of the 10km downward trek before finding
a taxi for the last bit.
So that was our “rest day”. Time to head back to training
again…
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