Bow to the Big Buddha

Today our aim was to get to the Big Buddha on top of the hill in yonder distance but before contending with that we were woken up with the sound not of waves in the ocean but rain hitting our balcony and villa doors. We had seen some lightening out at sea the night before but early morning you hadn't heard rain like it! By the time the sun had risen luckily the rain had stopped and it was a glorious day.

We asked the hotel after breakfast about how to get to the Big Buddha and they said you can just get a taxi and as there was a taxi service in our hotel we went to find out the price. It turns outs that to have a private car and driver for the day was 400 bhat more than just getting a taxi to the Big Buddha - so celeb treatment number 2 we were off to see the Buddha in a private car!

Our first stop up the mountain towards the Buddha was to a view point over looking the bays of Karon and Patong. It was a spectacular view which many a tour group were stopping at so there was the typical toot sellers and on this occassion there was also a guy with 2 massive volture like birds! The other wildlife was also massive, namely the spiders and lizards!

We then got back in the car and headed furtehr up the mount! Our next stop after thankfully driving past the monkey show was another elephant camp to trek some more! OK so we have dopne some trekking in Krabi but what the hell, this time our ride was called Cocao and he was pretty relaxed. This time the trek was on a pretty flat track again over looknig the bay. It was a chillaxed plod along, the guy even offered us a chance to ride the elephant like he did by sitting by his head but we politely declined and stayed firmly in our seat! The elephants here seemd happy and followed instructions a little more easily than in Krabi. We even managed to barter the guy down in price for our photo - well it was a good shot of us!

Our next stop is the Big Buddha! As we approached the white marble Buddha it grew in size until we were dwarfed by its stature. It's a free attraction though I did have to borrow a shawl as I had a strapless dress on. It is still a building site really as they are planning on developing the area around the Buddha and also in sie it. The Buddha itself is a magnificent feat, apparently it's not the biggest Buddha in the world but it's still pretty damn impressive.

There are a number of other Buddhas around the site including another pretty big gold one! There was also one still being built that was standing but it still had its head covered with mesh, it was kind of freaky. Around the area were a number of bells where people had written their wished and hung them up so everywhere you walked was a quiet tinkling in the background. The view was amazing -you can see why they picked it as a site for the Buddha. It was built to honour the king and done all through donations, that is impressive, we bought our fridge magnet here and a necklace pendant so we have now officially contributed to the cintinous build!

Our time here finished with a fresh snack of coconut ice cream at 25 bhat! It was yummy and definitely needed as it was ridiculously hot!


Needless to say we were pleased to get back into the air conditioned car! We then went to Wat Chalong - quite a large area of temples. All the temples we are visiting are special in their own way and are impressive to say the least. We were looking around as you do when we heard what sounded like cars backfiring/gunfire/fireworks! It was very weird. What it actually was were people paying to set off fireworks in a brick build cavern thing - that was definately strange. We also saw a wedding couple having thier pictures taken - he was definitly punching abouve his weight snd also suffering in this heat in his suit!

 

The day was passing by and we still had our private car. He offered to take us to Tiger Kingdom which sounds amazing - a tiger zoo - but after looking at the leaflet it is actually where you go in the cage and pose with the tigers! Err no way! However tame they say they are it's not even worth the risk! We aksed politely to bypass this so instead we headed to a jewellery store - again not by choice - it was axactly like China, full of jems which they try and force you to buy - not a fan to be honest. We headed back to our villa for some much needed R & R. Our private car was another celeb highlight for sure!

Tonight we headed to Karon for tea - we found a good restaurant on trip advisor and the food was fab - the area however was dead! The only real busy-ness anywhere was in a bar with a band playing and that didn't have many people - we did however see a guying walking an elephant down the street! Just like you'd walk a dog!! Only in Thailand hey!