To get to this place, you have to endure half an hour on a winding, single lane dirt road that has to accomodate large buses heading in both directions. The result: bus drivers playing chicken with each other, three-quarters of the way up the mountain, with a chincey little guard rail that didn't look like it could withstand me running into it, let alone a four-ton bus full of pilgrims.

Funny story: it took a few cars hurtling off the side of the mountain before they put anything up along the side at all!

There are stray cows everywhere. When I first saw one, I tugged on Ga Mun's sleeve and asked him why they were trying to graze on the middle of the road. He told me that they are no longer cattle, they're wild.

Seems that some farmers tried to settle the land a while ago, but since it was a mountain, it was incredibly hard to grow anything, so they gave up. Guess it cost too much to ship the cattle back to the main island, so the just left them.

Apparently, this is like some Buddisht Mecca for people. Not on the same scale, of course, but people come from the far reaches of the motherland to check this place out. It was another 40 degree day and the place was packed with psychos trying to scale the mountain to reach the Buddah.

This thing is enormous! The biggest in Asia, I think. Wait, they have one in China that's pretty big too. Check out the people on the stairs. They look like pixels compared to this thing. And the stairs, my god, the stairs. 800 steps to enlightenment.

My aunt had to find a washroom, so we headed to the area opposite the Buddah. I bought a $4 drink and waited for her with my uncle here. The soft hum of Buddhist chants and the smell of their food permeated the air.

We're in a garden, that's surrounded by the monks' quarters, various temples and a whole lot of incense smoke. The trees gave us some relief from the unforgiving heat, but you couldn't see shit from here, so we had to press on.

Huh. The stairs were a breeze. They were uniform in size, at a decent incline and had flat surfaces. I'll tell you something, once you've done the Great Wall, you can laugh at stairs too.

The Buddah faces west, so the sun rises behind it. Lots of photographers spend the night at the monks' quarters to wait out sun rise because at a certain point, the rising sun looks like a halo above Buddah's head.

I don't know what these statues are supposed to represent, but they are all facing him. There were about 6 of these smaller statues on the platform below the Buddah. Below are some shots of the view from the uppermost platform.

My uncle kept commenting on how beautiful to clouds were that day and how lucky we were to see them. I don't know what the big deal was, but here you go. Clouds.

We wandered around the main area a little after we descended from the statue. Near where the buses stopped, there was a small tourist area that has info on the history of this place, as well as many Buddah-related trinkets for sale.

What was most surprisng about this place was that it wasn't full of Chinese people only. Most were, but there were also tons of white guys in golden robes too. That has nothing to do with this picture above, but I needed something to fill this space.

This really bothers me. I don't think they should have Coke machines in this place. It really takes away from the holiness of it all. I've never been the the Vatican, but I'm sure that Michelangelo's works aren't staring down on frikkin' soda machines.