Emei Shan Trip
Trip Start
Aug 23, 2008
1
18
41
Trip End
May 11, 2009
Emeishan,
Sichuan,
China
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Then it was time for lunch! (Good thing we didn't eat before!) We had a really, really good chicken dish at the restaurant where we ate. After eating we did a little shopping at the stalls around where the bus parked (I got a bracelet), and then hit the bus to drive the rest of the way to Emei shan.
We checked into our hotel which was nice and had a hot spring on location which you got free entrance to with your overnight stay. Whoo! We dropped our stuff in our rooms and headed to the mountain to see some monasteries. At this point I realized a couple of things. 1) Emei Shan is very, very touristy and 2) I had forgotten my back medicine back in Chengdu. The second point came about due to the frantic decision to change my bag at the last moment. So I was not in a good mood, but despite tourists more obnoxious then us, I tried to have a good time, which I did once we got off the more beat monastery path and headed deep into the metropark type woods to a female monastery. Even though there were still stands selling merchandise, it felt a little more remote and peaceful.
We headed back to the hotel and ate a nice dinner, though it may have been a little too exotic for my tastes. The full fish complete with eyes that one of my table mates decided to consume pretty much put me off from eating that night. After dinner I was super psyched for the spa. I put on my bathing suit and tennis shoes (i had forgotten to bring sandals... again my rush!) and I looked like a tennis player the way that my bottom has a skirt instead of the normal swimming bottoms. We walked over to the spa where most of my male companions purchased a chinese speedo type suit for like 20 元. Again this made for quite the laugh.
So the spa. You enter the main room and give your ticket to the lady behind the desk and in return she gives you a key for a locker. You then go to your respective boys/girls rooms where you hand your outsides shoes over for some sandals (see? it worked out!) then enter a locker room full of naked chinese women. It was a little of a woah, and I was super glad I decided to change before I left. I put my shirt in my locker that unlocked with a nice magnet electronic lock thing and was handed a warm towel. Then me and the other two girls headed down the stairs past the showers, toilets, and feet cleanser area out to the pool. It opened into this large swimming pool complete with elephants that shoot water out their spouts. Then there were more private smaller and warmer pools farther out.
We wanted a hot pool so we headed down to find one, but instead of taking a path we climbed over some fake rocks. We did this because we didnt know there was a path. I overheard some chinese people talking about how dumb we looked and about how pretty the girls were which made me laugh inside. We found some more people from our group, and hung out in the hot pool for a while. They had these cool chairs that had water jets shooting out from all ends. But they were all taken by Chinese when we got there.
We decided to go back to the big pool where splash fights ensued, then to the steam room, and then back to the small pool to get some of those jets! We were all pretty done with the pool by this point (probably 2 hours or so in) so since it was friday night, we decided to try and go find a bar. So we got our stuff back and changed and headed to a bar that was completely empty. So we kept walking and ended up getting rained on. We took shelter in what we thought was a bar but really was a coffee place my friends got some stuff but I didn't want anything. It was overpriced and I don't like coffee. We did end up getting some food right after and I had a huge fried egg which made me happy for a time.
The next day we had our free breakfast (which to my sadness was not like an american free breakfast) and headed to the mountain where they took our picture before admitting us to the mountain. We had a bit of a walk to the first monastery and I started to climb the stairs and then decided to take the cable car instead, which was a better choice because of all the future walking of that day and the lack of back meds. We got to there and of course there was a monkey. That little piece of hell.
The monkeys are wild but depend on tourists for food. So they are mean and attack you. They could do some serious damage. Some people thought they were cute, but I thought they were mean and ugly. They employ people at this place whose sole job is to hit the monkeys off of tourists or trash cans.
Where we were there was an old buddha from 399 AD which was really cool. He's riding on an elephant so there are elephant carvings all over Emei. Apparently in this sect of Buddhism they revere the elephant as well. That made me happy. I like elephants. I wanted some peace and solitude so I wandered to a small corner and looked into the woods and saw like 12 monkeys, 2 who were plotting to come into the area where I was. They hissed at me, the little meanies. I hightailed it out of there pretty quick. I heard soon after I left they attacked an old woman who was stupid enough to feed them.
We then walked down 45 minutes worth of stairs. It sucked. A lot. But then it was lunch time, although it was completely vegetarian which was sad. I still found I would eat some things. Some people then went higher to see more monkeys, but i started to head for the bus and ended up chilling buy the river for a long time. It was really cold but I stuck my feet in any way. It was finally the peaceful place I was looking for.
My pictures have a lot of Elephants and a lot of Water in them. But I hope you enjoy them. Since then I have been doing school work and teaching and the like. Just more normalcy in Chengdu.
