Showing posts with label Temples. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Temples. Show all posts

Saturday, 3 March 2012

Five Days in Beijing: Part 6 - Chairman Mao and Yonghegong Lama Temple

We got up pretty early on our last day in Beijing to try to fit as much as we could in before our evening flight. We started off the day with a long subway ride to the far flung reaches of outer Beijing as I wanted to do a little camera lens shopping. Electronic goods are seriously overpriced in Korea due to the extortionate import tax they slap on everything non Korean and even domestic goods are more expensive than they would be in the UK or America as there isn't so much competition due to the import tax. So buying camera equipment can be pricey here (unless you buy "grey market" goods) and prices in China looked pretty tempting. 


We travelled out to the outer ring of Beijing city to go to an electronics market there. I was still feeling rather sick from my food poisoning but that didn't manage to dampen my zeal or buying camera stuff. I ended up with a new macro lens at a much cheaper price than I could have got it for in South Korea so I was pretty pleased. One of the weird things we noticed in this part of Beijing well away from the tourist areas was the throat tickling smog. The pollution really was noticeably worse and we were very glad when we got back on the subway and escaped to the more tourist friendly cleaner air of the old city. 


Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Sunday, 8 January 2012

Japan Take Two: Kyoto, temples galore!


Day two in Kyoto and we made sure we got an early start to avoid the heat as we were heading out to some of the most popular temples in Kyoto, the confusingly similarly named Ginkaku and Kinkaku temples. Ginkajku temple was built as a retreat for shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa in 1482 to get away from the hubbub of the civil war, after his death it was converted into a Buddhist temple. Ginkaku has stunning gardens including white sand piled up to represent mount Fuji, raked gravel zen gardens and mossy woodlands. The woodlands provided perfect shade from the sun so they were very pleasant and relaxing to stroll around.  

Raked rows of sand in Ginkaju temple grounds

The carefully smoothed pile of sand is supposed to represent mount Fuji, it was being maintained by a guy with a watering can and plastering board.