No Monkeying Around

So this last weekend was a crazy fun trip. We went out to an area called Emei. It's known for the famous Mt. Emei or Emei Shan. We left early Saturday morning and got back to our dorm late Sunday night.

Saturday featured us going to the largest sitting Buddha in the world. He is right next to water and carved right into a cliff. It's a crazy sight to see. His head is over 10m long. It was really interesting. The stone there is soft so carving is easy but at the same time, it is surprising that the carving would last for so long from the erosion.

Sunday feature us going into the National Park. We went up to the top of Mt. Emei but it really wasn't that impressive. We drove most of the way up and even hopped on a cable car.... Oh China. You just love to make everything tourist friendly. At the top was a giant stupa and a temple.

After lunch, we had the choice to go to a famous temple in another part of the park or go to the a monkey preservation area and see wild monkeys! It was an easy decision for me. I chose the monkeys. We had to really hurry to get there because it was 7km(about 5 miles) away. It really didn't feel like that long though. It was really worth the trip too. The area had a lot of wild monkeys that were actually pretty dangerous. There were a lot of hired park workers who hard sticks and sling shots to protect the "observers." They really didn't do too much though because the monkeys were running around like crazy. We could buy food and feed them too. However, the monkeys would steal anything that we were holding so it didn't take long for them to hijack all the food. Erin got mauled by a monkey and dropped the three packs of food that she bought. The monkey grabbed all the food and ran up into the trees. It was hilarious from my perspective but she was really scared after that. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty freaked out by the monkeys too. They were scary.

The path did a loop around the highly populated monkey area. There were two main bridges for the short path. The second bridge was guarded by monkeys. They wouldn't let anyone pass unless we gave them food. I saw a big monkey land on a guys back and just grab onto him. A park worker beat the monkey off with his stick. The man was lucky to not have been biten. I thought the same was going to happen to me when I didn't have food. Luckily, I passed freely. Eva was stopped by monkey who grabbed onto her legs and wouldn't let go. Monkeys are so quick and so strong and can really jump far. They are really funny to watch but at the same time can be very intimidating. I was so glad I made the choice to go see the monkeys though. They were definitely the highlight of my trip. I mean, how many people can say that they've seen wild monkeys?