Hello everyone,
Jintian 6 yue 27 hao. We found a computer lab here in WuYishan. The internet for google is relatively slow especially for picasa.
Let me catch you up on what has happened so far:
1. Shang hai (above sea) to Huang Shan (yellow mountain): We were able to ask for two tickets in Chinese and get a sleeper train to Huang Shan.It was a 13-hour ride. whew.
2. The crazy van driver from Huang shan: He scared the heck out of me and many other people who boarded the van. All of us were heading to Tangkou- the base of the Huang shan mountains. We found that everyone in the van was a student, too. All but two of them were Koren and knew chinese. Three of them knew english and spoke to us. Riley and I weren't sure we were gonna make it to Tangkou alive so we kissed for our possibly last time.
3. Korean friends: The crazy van ride must have made us bond cause once we landed they invited us to lunch then go whitewater rafting with them. The view of the mountains is stunning. As far as we knew, our camera didn't work so we just soaked in the beauty thru our eyes.
3a. Subject to cultural but cheezy entertainment: Before we could go rafting we walked up to a tiki-like bar where in 5 minutes a guy would peek at us from the stage then walk across. Then 5 minutes later another guy would walk the other way. The music was on and this went down for about 30 minutes. Finally the three guys and five girls danced in ethnical chinese outfits. One guy jumped on a pile of broken glass and another guy sung a song. Finally, they let us go. White water rafting was my first time. It wasn't epic whitewaters but it was very fun and everyone had a good time splashing water and eating mango pops.
3b. The endless steps: We took the van up to the bus station. Bus to gondola. Riley and I shared a cable car with two belgians. They asked us if we forgot to bring our camera and we told them it wasn't working. I pulled it out to give it one more try and it suddenly worked!! Praise God! Now all we have to do is figure out how to upload them. Meeting the group again, we realized just how many steps there are on this mountain. It is full of steps. One seemed to be endless without breaks in the middle. Because of the elevation it wasn't hot but man there's a lot of steps!! We finally got to the top and took pictures to celebrate the victory...even though there were many more to follow.
4. Hostel in the clouds: The Korean students helped us get hotel arrangements before we parted from them. The one they were in was booked and kinda pricey. My chinese is good enough to say "do you have...?" and we were hungry for noodles and some places around didn't have any. Not that there were many restaurants just at the hotels. The hostel was very packed with people. There are about 17-18 bunks in one room and a community bathroom on each floor. The room had one window the size of a cheese single, haha. Riley and I meet a girl, Li Yun and her mom from my rooom.Her parents and her took this trip. They were fun to talk to in Chinese. She knew english but we wanted to practice our chinese.
5. Sundown and 3am wake up: The Li family were shouting sun down! sun down! and called us to go outside with them to watch the sunset. It is very different from ones I've seen as it was very dark with a strip of white and gold. The mountains looked black and the sky was dark dark blue. It was also lightning a little. It was really romatic. So the news was that we were supposed to wake up and leave around 3am. When it came, a lot of people were packing to leave. I woke up to Li Yun's mom snoring like a rake over rocks but Riley said he had worse--a whole room of snoring men.
6. The sunrise: is very beautiful we have pictures. It came out at about 4:30 It gets bright at around 5am. This day our goal was to reach Celestial peak (heavenly peak). I showed Riley a picture that inspired us to go to the peak but I showed him because it was so scary and I was determined not to go. He was determined to get me to go with him. We had a lot of hiking to get there.
7. Then we passed the TaiChi techno monks: We weren't sure if they were monks or not but they were hardcore. They were shirtless, blue pants, and carried a small boombox with techno music. It was cool and music was hilarious.By their pace and the fact that they were going uphill the parts everyone else was going down, we figured they had done this trail many times before and this was nothing.
8. The Carp's Backbone: google it and look at the picture. I'm kinda afraid of heights and you'll understand I was scared to do it. That's where we were going. As we were hitting checkpoints and getting closer to it we hid our bags somewhere safe. Suddenly we see the steepest steps up a mountain, ever. Those steps belong to Celestial peak where the carp's backbone lies. We get to the entrance and the gate is locked. I couldn't go (and I didn't want to go) but Riley was determined and he went around the gate (with difficulty cause it was barb-wired around some parts--like they didn't want people to go---a sign?). It is 1.5km up 1.5km down and Riley was the only one on it that day. I said a pray for him. It is a lot scarrier than it looks in the picture he told me and even more dangerous on some parts of it. Riley made it up and back and has a video and pictures of it. It was really cloudy up there. When people hike around certain parts on HuangShan they hook their locks with their name and date on ropes to show that they've been there.
9. The 18ingredients and the taxi: After walking back to reach a gondola then take a bus to town, we found a Best Western hotel in Wenquan. We spent time taking a good shower then resting. We went to town to find some food instead of eating at the hotel. It was pricy. Restaurants were a long way down the windy road and it was drizzling. A man on the main road convinced us that the restaurant he knew was good and cheap so we went. The food was really good and cheap and the chef explained to us explained to us that the vegetable/herb dish has 18 ingredients in it that he got from the mountain. When we got the check he kept explaining it to us that the vegetable/herb dish has 18 ingredients in it from the mountain that's why it cost more. It was dark and pouring down and we decided to take a taxi back up to our hotel. It was way harder than it looked cause when we asked people they looked confused and said there wasn't one. Finally, one hotel down below did call a taxi for us and we got to our hotel.
10. Huangshan to WuYishan: With help from the hotel desk clerk, we were able to get train times for going to WuYishan. So we took a bus to Tangkou--->van to Huangshan train station. This driver wasn't as scary as the first one but I wasn't any more relaxed on the ride. He was just less risky than the first guy. We got our tickets at the train station then found a restaurant that has jiaozi (dumplings) which is hard to come by in the country it seems. Again the food was great when it came to the check the cook explain to us that we got big bowls (da) and showed us. It was really funny at the end.
With 2 trains and 12 hours we finally arrived in WuYishan and found a very decent hotel. We are planning our next move and our next place is Fuzhou.
Still working on gettting pictures!! Miss you all a lot!!
Love,
Diane
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