Phoenix Lake Hotel Emeishan

... blanche. Mais ce blanc infini donnait quand meme un autre effet qui te fait titiller en dedans.

Le premier plan etait de dormir une seconde nuit, au sommet du mont. Mais ca nous a prit moins de temps que prevu, alors on a opte pour effectuer la descente complete et dormir au Teddy Bear, ou nous avons deguste un souper tellement merite, malgre que nous voulions trouver un restaurant moins cher de rue, mais dans la ville de Emei, y'a comme un ...

... sur leur porche en soupant aux meme affaires que les snacks de toute la maudite journee, essayant de developper un plan, le premier etant de les emouvoir un peu, faisant semblant de mourrir de froid et de faim le temps qu'on cherche un autre.

On est finalement entres une deuxieme fois, le tout pour le tout, essayant de leur faire comprendre que de toute facon on etait les seuls clients qu'ils auraient pour la journee (un peu dur, ils ne parlaient que mandarin ...

... little suckers are dangerous and mean; they got the man's pack and ripped it apart. The woman cried and and repeatedly said "wo de dongxi, wo de donxi (my things, my things)” while the man fought with the monkeys and I tried to get the woman's things. We finally succeeded and headed for the Venerable Trees Terrace. What a lovely place and what lovely people to run this place. I paid 30 RMB for the night in a dorm room ( a bit damp but its in the rain forest ...

... was counter-balanced by the smell of our squat toilet
and sound of the Chinese dudes who carry stuff up the mountain
urinating outside our door all night.



Set off on the last 10km
or so of the climb and after a few hours found ourselves back in the
throng of the tourists. After the final slog to the top we were
greeted by the amazing sight of the 50m statue of Puxian and his four
six-tusked elephants at the Golden Summit. The climb itself was great ...

... br>As your looking at these pictures I can almost hear you say "What is that crowd doing up there on the top of the mountain? I thought it was hard to get up there!" Well it is hard to walk up the mountain but there is a bus, all the way to the cable car and top. Those who took the cable car will have been moved by the spectacular sunrise but they will not have deserved it they way we did.

Then there was the walk down

... with a band of monkeys! We were too late to be of much help, the makaks were already fleeing the scene with one of the traveller's backpacks. We watched helplessly as the monkey ripped it to shreds and then tried to devour the contents. At one point the monkey had a mobile phone pressed against its face... if I had been quicker with my camera it would have been a priceless picture!

After careful planning this time and after learning from our mistakes from the month before, we headed off to Chengdu for the second time. This time it coincided with the Qing Ming Jie (Tomb Sweeping Day) festival, a public holiday in China. It is traditionally a day of mourning where you remember who has died and clean the graves of the loved ones. It's quite different to western culture where we visit the grave whenever we feel like it. This meant that we ...

... we took a gondola to a halfway point and did a 5 hour trek to see a number of temples en route. The place is a bit over the top. We wanted nature, but it does not feel very natural when you're walking on concrete steps and there are stalls selling things all along the way. The rich Chinese pilgrims are carried up in chairs hoisted on two men's shoulders. We were offered this form of transportation many times but passed. We ...

So Emei Shan was ... in the not-so-recent past and I haven't talked about it yet. Emei Shan is a mountain in Sichuan about 2 hours out of Chengdu by bus. We all went there as a group with USAC. We left early on Friday morning, which meant a long weekend for me since I have no classes on Thursdays. First we went to Leshan to see the famous "Big Buddha." We saw it via a boat so we had good views but did not get to climb it. The river we were boating on smelled like a special kind ...

... a bridge over to Wayou Shan. More steps took us up to the pink walled monastary, was a very peaceful place some fantastic statues and a lovely temple where there were monks praying. Feeling better after our experience there we went down to the bottom, expecting to find a bus or boat, but there were no directions to anything! managed to flag a taxi down to take us into Leshan. Halfway there we had to stop as Niamh needed to throw ...