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Published: April 21st 2010
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Chinglish
haha! Oh China and it's signs The main reason I went to Yellow Mountain was my friend Fran. She just turned 50 over the weekend (spent on the mountain of course) and it was her idea to go to the mountain during one of our long weekends. I heard that if you are in China you should definitely go to see it. We decided to take the bus there rather than fly since it was significantly cheaper- plus I have already taken a few flights this year, why not try something different?
The bus left the Shanghai South Railway station at 7:58 am….only 4 stops away from my place. You would think that I beat my friends; Cynthia and Fran, who were coming from Pudong (the other side of the city) but unfortunately I was running out the door at the last minute- as per usual. Everything takes longer than expected! So, no I did not beat them, in fact they were there before me, when I rolled in at 7:45am.
The bus ride there was pretty smooth sailing, surprisingly for China. It left at 8:00am and arrived near the mountain around 3:00pm. We stopped once for the bathroom- good thing I skipped the coffee that morning.
up early
almost time We then took a bus up to the starting point on the mountain where the cable cars are on the East side. We decided to take the cable car up because we probably would not have made it before it was dark. The cable car lasted about 20 minutes and the scenery was great.
Once at the top, we walked to find our hotel on the top of the mountain. The hotel was okay, but not the 4 Star standards we would expect to pay for. That being said, it was on the top of a mountain, so what can you really expect?
We checked in and decided to hike around for a couple hours until it was dark.
As for Saturday night, it was pretty low key. Had some Chinese food in the hotel….but I guess I should mention that all the tables were full in the restaurant, so we ended up joining a family of 3 at their table. Normally at home this would be considered very strange and unusual, but not in China! Just cram as many people together as possible….who cares if they do not know each other? We ate our food and celebrated Fran’s 50th
Birthday…in style! Haha
The night resulted in buying some snacks and beer from the little store and heading back to our little room for a little socializing. It seems like wherever we go in China we are told to be quite. I’m not sure why, since the Chinese people are not the most quiet people on earth. Anyways, we were surprised when someone in the room next to us banged on the wall at 8:30pm, signaling us to BE QUIET. I’m sure our laughter was quiet enough for them to sleep.
The alarm went off at 5am, to go see the sunrise. We headed out to find a spot (amongst all the other people doing the same thing). Much to our disappointment there was no sunrise for us to see because it was too foggy. So back to bed we went before the long haul down the mountain.
The decent began at about 10am and ended at approximately 5:30pm. Throughout these 7 ½ hours, we hiked up steep steps and climbed down steep staircases. We were told that the West side of the mountain was the “less traveled” side and the most difficult. We were all shocked to see
the crowds travelling down the mountain. Anyone in China knows there is no such thing as a line….but there was The Line of All Lines on the mountain that day! There must have been about 300-500 people waiting to get down the mountain. Talk about a bad set up….if you wanted to walk down, there was one way. If you wanted to take the cable car, there was one way. Well sort of. We decided we would be there until 10pm at night, so some serious butting had to bed done. I guess this was payback for all the times we have been pushed, shoved and line butted here. Opps, our bad.
We passed the line and continued on our way. We finally made it to the bottom, and I think we had all had enough by that point.
We got on a bus to take us to the bus station, where we would need to take another bus to another city, about an hour away from the mountain.
This ended up being a lot of fun because some random guy was taking a bus of people and when we asked where to buy tickets he said, right here! So
we never did buy a ticket, we just paid him as we entered the bus. Oh China. Anything goes.
The bus driver was hilarious, someone cut him off on the road and he said something in Chinese (that did not sound friendly) although my Chinese could use some work! Ha!
Then Cynthia chimed in (in English of course) and he thought this was pretty funny. We all started laughing and the “bus organizer” wanted to know what we were laughing about, and if we spoke Chinese.
We got to our hostel and it ended up being really nice.
The next day we had to take a 4:00pm bus home to Shanghai because that was all that was available. When we got on the bus another foreigner informed us that we woul be also stopping Huangzhou....no one informed us of that when we bought the tickets. This ended up adding another 2-3 hours onto our already 5 hour bus ride. To top it all off, the bus driver was from another province (apparently) and got us lost, more than once! AND.......here it is folks, he had a GPS!
My favourite part of the ride home was when we had not stopped
in 5 hours to pee and everyone had to go. It took me and Cynthia to tell the bus driver (in Chinese I might add) we needed to pee, as well as our foreign freind and some of the others.
We made it back in the end around 11:30.
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Shelley
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WOW!!!
What a fabulous weekend. Just curious....do you have China Pants???? LOL ! Be Safe Shelley!