Huangshan: Mountains on Mountains

December 6, 2014

One of our unique trips was to Yellow Mountains (黄山 - Huangshan).

The overnight train was surprisingly crowded but I guess that makes sense since it made a lot of stops along the way and it wasn't too bad overall. It was ¥164 for soft seats. When we got to the terminal after 11 hours, we took the shuttle vans (¥20) to Tangkou. The shuttles looked sketchy, but they're legit. Outside of the terminal, there's so many people bombarding you trying to get you to buy hiking attachments, mittens, etc. I saw a lot of people with the hiking shoe bottoms though, probably a non-slip thing. So this was about an hour and a half ride to Tangkou. 

From here, we had to take another bus to the bottom of the mountain. After much confusion of which ticket to buy, we bought our tickets and it was a little weird because we had to pay like ¥3 extra for insurance or something? Didn't need that.....so just got a refund.

 We got some food and stocked up on snacks and water for the next day and a half. Figured that it'll be way cheaper than finding food on the mountains.

 Noodles for breakfast/lunch

Went back to the bus terminal and couldn't find our bus tickets..wtf. Searched through all our bags and couldn't find.. I went back to the restaurant to take a look because that's where I last saw it. Turns out I accidentally left it there -.-;; the girl threw it away so she had to dig it out from the trash (eww). She was like, "is this important?" YES IT'S IMPORTANT. Not her fault at all though. At least she was nice enough to pick it out and clean it off for me. I was surprised she didn't know what it was and didn't sell it to other tourists.

 So we made it to the the bottom of the mountains. It was so embarrassing cuz when we got off, we weren't sure which direction to go. I saw a lot of people get on a bus so I followed them on, thinking we had to transfer buses. But then we realized this was a bus going back down to town and people laughed at us D: a lot of them. We decided to take the cable cars up instead of hiking 2-3(?) hours >< it costs ¥65 (one way) for a ~10 minute ride.

View from the cable car

 We hiked around looking for our hotel and it was so miserable seeing some of the other hotels and finding out that was only the halfway point. Spam of photos while trying to find our hotel, not sure where was which part.





 There was this mini bridge (not really a bridge since it wasn't really connecting much) with couple locks.

The hike was basically like ascending stairs to hiking up the mountain and it was so awful, getting tired every 5 minutes. Maybe it's the elevation, but I think I'm just unfit.


 Finally we found our hotel after like 2~3 hours of hiking. We got a double room at 白云 (Baiyun) for ¥342 (~$55), which I thought wasn't that bad at all, since all the reviews online said it was really expensive and overpriced. The only downside is that it's pretty far to get to, but it's close to the sunset locations (but far from the sunrise locations). The walls are also very thin, so if other guests are loud, you can hear it. Our bathroom had a very distinct smell (not of shit).

We got here and rested for a bit, and headed off toward Fairy-walking Bridge since the map showed that to be the closest location for a good view of the sunset. We found a good spot with a lot of a decent amount of other people, but continued on to try to get closer view. It was also really, really windy and cold. The wind was blowing hard so it was uncomfortable trekking on and waiting for the sun to set in the next 10 minutes.







Sunset!

 We never actually made it to the Fairy-walking Bridge, I wanted to get to it, but it was way too cold and I couldn't :( Cory fell asleep and slept through the night....and I stayed awake, doing I dunno what, before finally going to sleep as well. It was too dark and cold to keep hiking and we were tired. 

December 7, 2014
We couldn't get up in time to see the sunrise, so we ended up just sleeping in. We checked out, then departed to try to find other nice places.


Monkey Watching the Sea (猴子观海)


 Trying to be artsy, but the man in red ruined it >:(

After a while, we were pretty much done hiking, so we took the cable car down, bus down the base of the mountain, and shuttle van back to Tunxi. We had quite a bit of time before our night flight... So it turns out that it IS the norm for cab drivers to NOT go by meter when going to the airport >< One site told me to always go by it in Huangshan, so we ended up not getting onto like 3-4 cabs cuz we thought they were all trying to rip us off. We ended up paying the guy ¥25 (they usually ask for ¥30). And I guess it makes sense for them to not go by the meter especially at this time of the day because the airport is TINY and they won't be able to pick up any customers back into town. There's literally like 10 flights (inbound and outbound) in one day.. We just hung out in the airport for hours doing homework because we had nothing else to do.

 My conclusion of this trip... I don't think hiking is for me. I get soooo tired after a few minutes. I also think that we came at a bad time because the weather was "too nice" for the scenery to have that cloudy, ethereal effect that you can find for the photos online. It's supposed to have that effect after it rains or something. But when we came, it was clear and sunny (though super cold and windy). I'm not sure if I'll come back here though, I wouldn't say no though. It's still a beautiful place, but just...hiking...no.

 So this is also the conclusion of all my trips in China :) Until next time!

Shaxi's Friday Market

September 5, 2014: Shaxi, Yunnan

Roosters at the Li Family outside of the bathroom.

We trekked through like the fields basically...I guess to take a different route and see other parts of town? I swear our tour guide did this out of spite because she knows I dislike wearing my boots/shoes and I wore flip flops again, and before we went through the fields, she called me out for it >< 

 Outskirts of town

 They have a Friday's market every week and we were lucky enough to be here while it happened! 

They sold all sorts of things, such as phones, clothing, socks, food (a whole market section as well), bedding, toilet paper, probably anything you can think of (kinda, not really).

This guy was trying to sell some sort of oil. Apparently it burned through his lighter so it started fizzing. He also has a live snake and a chicken, but I couldn't tell what they were there for. 

I didn't really buy much aside from a pillow case because my pillow in the apartment was disgusting so I was trying to buy a new one.

After looking through everything, my stomach wasn't feeling well so we went back to the Li Family and ended up skipping out of the rest of the afternoon's activities because we ended up napping for like four hours. 

We walked about 35 minutes to the Orchard Pear Temple for dinner and saw rainbows (not sure if it was multiple or the same one) on the way! We got there right as people were leaving, but we still had enough time to eat and catch a ride back. 

Not a very productive day for us...I felt bad since we skipped out on the activities ><

Cooking & Farming at Pear Orchard Temple

September 4, 2014: Shaxi, Yunnan

We got up to go to Pear Orchard Temple. On our way there, we saw a funeral ><; 

I was put into the cooking group..towards the end of preparing the food, I cut my index finger with a cleaver :( So I sat out for a bit and did everything with my other hand because I didn't want to get my blood all over the food lol. It's healing fine though; the first few days I applied Neosporin to it religiously and kept it bandaged up.

The one complaint I had with this activity was that during the prep we were told to wash the veggies 2-3 times. Two girls were doing that since there was only so much sink space, but they only washed it once, so I told them that if they only washed it once, they should do it again. One of them responded that they've already washed it thoroughly and it can't get any cleaner than that. Apparently a while later, when our guide was looking at the veggies (while I sat out), she told them that it wasn't clean enough, but by then it was too late to clean again since we were on a schedule. 

I was able to help out with the cooking still. We made eggs & tomatoes, salad, tofu, egg-battered goat cheese, traditionally steamed rice, potatoes, and probably another dish or two that I forgot. As you can see, we used GIANT woks to cook :o

After lunch, we had like two hours of free time and a few of us went to this meditation room and just fell asleep there :X It eventually got too breezy so I woke up.

Next it was time to switch off for the farm work. I don't remember if I actually was (since it was a month ago) but I remember being kind of cranky for this..hmm.. I know when our RA demonstrated it to me, I didn't expect him to do it so all I saw was an axe being flung toward me and it scared the fuck out of me D:

I hated this in the beginning because I had so much trouble with being able to cut down each stalk. Even when hacking it like 15+ times, it didn't seem to do much.. so I kept switching tools. Eventually, I got the hang of it with the machete sort of cutter. And it was quite fun actually. We only did this for about an hour or a bit more.

When we got back, we took a break before making mooncake! It's not like the lotus one that I'm used to but rather it's a more.. dry kind with a very sweet filling inside (sugar, peanuts, and other stuff).

 We had this professional mooncake baker come in to show us how it's done :O

Saw a rainbow right before dinner! It was such a nice view too!

Dinner that the second group made. 

I think that was it for the rest of the night. At midnight we sand happy birthday to one of the girls from the group.

Shaxi: Around the Town

September 3, 2014
Wednesday, we set off for Shaxi. It was about a 2.5 hour bus ride there and we had a homestay at the Li Family in Xia Ke Village. Shaxi is an agricultural town, so if you think of 乡下 kind of lifestyle. You can see the sewage throughout the town and there's lots of crops everywhere.

Kind of a shabby room for the seven of us. I mean it does its job, but not what I was expecting. Though, given the environment, it is expected. I'm thankful that the Li Family has Western toilets.

We got settled in for about 15 minutes before heading out for lunch. We had a guide who brought us around. It was about a 20 minute walk into town.

Lunch:

I was kind of annoyed with having to wear my boots because we were strongly, strongly advised not to wear flip flops or the like, but the roads didn't seem too bad and I didn't care about getting it dusty or slightly muddy so I just changed into flip flops.

After lunch, we walked around Shaxi for a bit and I tried this rice drink (1.5¥) and it was pretty good.

We continued to tour the town some more, looking at local street food and checking out the buildings.

To: 小倩

希望你看到这些字的时候是和你心爱的人一起

(Xiao Qian, I hope that by the time you see these words, you are together with your beloved)

Woman making carvings. Was tempted to buy a fan-shaped one, but didn't think I should hoard so much.

This dog followed us around for a bit and when he(?) saw us getting friendly with other dogs, it would BARK at them sooo much. 

Had some free time, but ended up going back to the Li Family. 

The roads in Shaxi were generally like this, think very village-style

Dinner was buffet style, so no pics. But we saw a lot of locals getting this noodle bowl, so we were able to try that as well.

Since this post is already pretty long with lots of photos, I'll end it here ^^;; Until next time!