Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Wa Fo Temple and the Botanical Gardens


Jim has been interested in going to the temple of the reclining Buddha for a while, but it is a bit out of town or so we thought from looking at the map. We decided to make a go of it and were pleasantly surprised at the less than 10 dollar taxi fare. When we arrived at the temple gates we were surprised again to find out that the temple was IN the botanical gardens. We headed directly to the Buddha and a well preserved temple with the best stocked gold fish pond in China. We bought some food for the guys and they were jumping out of the water by the thousands to get to the stuff. The turtles in the pond were herded together on a small raft to keep safe from the swarms. The temple also "sold" fish and turtles to release....back into the pond! Then the next day they go and pick more out of the same and sell them again. I don't really know what Buddha would think of that...

The rest of the garden was equally nice. There was a LARGE tropical conservatory (the biggest in Asia..) full of all of our common plants from the beach, just kidding. Actually there were many different ecosystems inside. The desert one was the most unusual i thought. That is a golden barrel cactus that Jim is next to. I have never seen that before,. Also check out those Lily pads, they look like plastic, but they are 100% real. i would like to bring a few of those home, but the suitcases are full to the brim. we will be buying another one shortly.
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