9 mountains - 29.5.11 (Day 12 - Hiking up to Mt Emei)

The monastery at the foot of the mountain

I woke up once and knew I missed the soccer game. It was already 6am. I continued my dream and woke up at 8am instead!! I tried to have some bread for breakfast but it was too dry to eat much. So I decided to move on and eat later. At 9am, I'm probably the latest hiker. It was a misty day. And drizzling as well.

I passed by the tourist centered and walked in to find out that Emei Shan actually as another specialty. This was the only place in the world where you can find Bearded toad!! So named because the front of the toad's mouth are spotted with many points that looked like mustache.

From Baoguo monastery at 550m, I passed by many monasteries to reach Wannian, where the cableway station was. It was a 14km walk and took me around 4.5hours, going uphill and downhill!!

A place to burn incense!

Tomb at Luofeng

Along the way, I detoured to Luofeng hut where there was a tourist landscape spot to watch white clouds. But I could only see forest and a deserted cemetery after a long walk.

I met a couple of guys catching crickets from a hole, probably as bait to fish. Saw a water snake and smelled a lot of different plants! The sound of birds chirping was so soothing to the ears.

Just when I thought the ticket office was closed for the day, I reached the counter. They even took a picture of you to make sure you were the rightful ticket holder!

Met a Sichuan girl when I was resting at a hut. She was 20 and often walked up alone, and stayed at Qingyin monastery about 11km away.

I came back to the main road and heard a Cantonese song from Eason, Yu Wo Tong Zai! Thought a local misguided me but met two young girls to confirm the right path.

Sweet potato, dumpling
and rice cake for lunch!

It probably rain last night and made the steps very slippery, especially during descend. At Qingyin monastery, many tour groups were seen. Shortly after I reached Wannian monastery. From here onwards, it was much quieter with only hikers around.

A hardworking local!

At 1200m, it started to get very windy. I wore my jacket. Around 2:46pm it drizzled again. I was greeted with more uphill and downhill!!

View from Emei Shan!

Along the way, I passed by a group of youngsters and reached at one point where I met a guy and a couple. The couple were in distress. The lady's backpack was grabbed away by the monkeys!! She lost everything including her wallet and identity card. They were stranded there. I walked on to try my luck. It was kind of scary after hearing their experience cause I did not know what to expect. A short while later, I encountered a huge ape. Before I could think, he just walked over, grabbed my shorts and jacket to try to unzip my sling bag!! The guy came to my rescue with a stick. He was shouting and hitting the stick very hard to make loud noise but the monkey didn't seemed to be affected at all!! We retreated back to the resting area where we met earlier.

Shops along the hike to the peak!

We didn't know what to do next. Soon the group of 5 youngsters I met reached as well. We met a group of local coming down from the same path. They were suggesting to make noises with the stick and shout them away. I bought one for self-protection immediately.

Angry monkey!!!

And so, the 7 of us dared the path again in a group with two guys in the front and two at the rear. We yelled and hit the sticks very hard to scare the monkeys away. There were many of them. They tried to surround us! We didn't know how many!! We managed to create a path for us but when we walked pass, the monkeys tried to attack from behind. The guy and me supporting at the rear were so tensed!! We all shouted until we ran out of breath!! We survived the scare in the end!! Didn't know if there were more monkeys ahead, we moved in close proximity while still hitting the sticks for another 10 minutes or so. The experience was pretty thrilling and reminded me of the movie Congo!!
And so we continued going up and up and down and down and up and up again for 21.5km from 1020m to 2430m!!!

Almost reaching the destination!

That concluded my 11 hours of craziness for 35.5km, ascending almost 2000m above sea level!! Definitely surpassed the toughest day of my Shikoku pilgrimage! The last 2 hours were really a torture. Although I had one more sweater on, I was in short and the drizzle all the way up made the walk very chilly!!

Along the way, we stopped a couple of times for some short hot snack.
Finally at 8pm, we reached our destination. Surprisingly the hotel wasn't that expensive compared to other mountains I'd been. A private room was rmb120 but the youngsters managed to bring down to rmb100 instead. And two could occupied a room to cut the cost further!! We had our dinner together. I needed three bowls of rice to replenish the lost energy!! The youngsters were students and going to graduate soon. A couple of them were in Phd!!!

After dinner, we were back in our room! I needed a hot shower so badly to warm myself up. After that, I was all wrapped up in warm clothes. My roommate, FeiPeng, from Nanjing, even slept topless!! We watched the match-making TV program till 11pm before we switched off the lights.

The students were planning to start the hike at 5am tomorrow or 8am if it were to rain!

9 mountains - 28.5.11 (Day 11 - Arriving at foot of Mt Emei)

Statue at foot of Emei

Woke up once at around 6am by those alighting passengers. Continued my sleep until my alarm rang at 7am. Still not satisfied I went back to my dream for another hour.

For breakfast, I went to the dining berth. Saw a western breakfast that comes with ham and fried egg in their menu!! Tempted by it, I asked for a set but too bad, they didn't serve that meal! I had to settle with my bun I bought at the supermarket yesterday.

The distance in km
from foot to peak

From Shaanxi, the train crossed over to Sichuan province now. It was only 10am and I still had almost the whole day to burn till 5pm!! The 4-year-old daughter was very cute and talkative!

An hour later, I was almost bored to death!! Read up on another famous tourist spot in Sichuan, Jiuzaigou, and pondering if I should drop by there as well. It would be a 12hours bus ride from Chengdu! And Emei to Chengdu was another 2 hours train ride!

Classic!!

Counting down 5 hours and 40minutes to destination! Thankfully, Stephen Chow came to the rescue shortly with the movie "Xi Xi Zi Wang" on TV!! Even though the dialog was in Chinese and hardly audible from the TV, I was constantly performing backend Cantonese translation at the back of my head and would smile and giggle to myself on many of the scenes. Until I surprised myself too when I laughed out like a madman at one of the scene where Stephen was reciting his script in deep concentration and his mucus was dangling from his nostril and almost touching on Karen Mok's face! The other passengers must be thinking I was crazy!! Yeh!!

I wanted to go LeShan as well

Pavilion at foot of Emei

Around 1pm, my berth partners reached their destination at Mianyang. The movie ended soon and I had my lunch box. I daydreamed for half an hour until I actually felt like dreaming!! Took a solid 2 and half hours nap!! In between, I had some new "friends" at my berth.

My pee woke me up at 4pm. Updated my blog and idled for a while, the staff came to switch my ticket. I got ready to alight. Exactly at 5:10pm, after 18 hours and 52 minutes, I finally reached the town, Emei. As expected, there were many drivers asking for a ride. I just walked away as usual. Then one of them mentioned rmb3 which was the standard minivan rate I read up in the book. So, I followed the old man and the lady with him. They initially thought I was with another three.

Eerie waterfall at night!

When they realized, the others were not going to the same destination, the old man asked the lady for opinion since I was already in the car and the only passenger. Luckily they didn't ask me to wait for the van to be full. Just for an extra 2rmb, I thought that was more than fair for him to bring myself only to the destination. The only other catch was to follow him to his recommended hotel. Since the price had been fixed, I thought of saving the trouble to look for hotel again there. The old man asked me which province "Singapore" was in China when I told him where I came from!!

Very poetic!!

The foot of the mountain was only a short 6.5km away. At the hotel, I knew I would be short-chained when the staff sent me to a non air-con room, because there was probably only two such rooms in the hotel!! So, I got to practice my stamina before my hike tomorrow by climbing 5 stories up to my penthouse!!

Statue at foot of Emei

Very conveniently I turned on the TV and happened to caught another match-making program, called Ai Qing Lian Lian Kan. This was different where a guy introduced himself and the 50 girls would chose to opt out until 10 were picked to the front to ask questions. It was always funny to watch such program and felt like joining one myself!! =]

Small waterfall at foot of Emei!

After the program ended, I went out for dinner. Immediately I was dragged to a restaurant. I was tempted by the barbecue again. There were so many variety that I just picked one each, without knowing what meat they really were! But the real mistake was actually not telling the staff to save the chili. After only 3 sticks I already worried if I could finish the other 6!! Even the vegetables were unbearable for me. Luckily, I was so smart to remove all the chili seeds that I could see and that helped a lot!

After my meal, I walked around the area to check out the hiking path starting point. The foot of the mountain wasn't what I expected. There were many hotels and restaurants and the starting point had a lot of photogenic decorations to take pictures. Saw many tourists.

I walked down further and passed a bus station. Went in to check the schedules to Chengdu and Chongqing. There was another tourist spot at Leshan which was just half an hour away. Thought of dropping by to see the giant Buddha statue after my hike at Emei! Then, I met an old Japanese couple. And unashamedly, I showed of my Japanese immediately. They were staying at Emei for 3 days before going to Chongqing to take the cruise along Yangtze river!! After the couple left, a local came over to me and started speaking Japanese!

I continued to explore around and found an alluring sign!!! It said "jiu ba" (bar)!! I couldn't resist and walked in to check out the place. It was a nice and cosy bar indeed. There was also a youth hostel next to it.

Nothing much left to explore, I went back to my room around 9pm. The shower was great. The water spray was strong. And soon I was glued to the TV again. Sudirman cup, French open, and the sports news. The Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United was lived at 2:15am!! Again, there was another match-making program. It wasn't as funny as the other two I've watched before. It was pretty stressful for the guy because the 24 girls could opt out anytime and the guy may ended up with no one left before he could finished his 3 videos to introduce himself!!

Around 1:30am I thought I better catch some rest so that I would not be sleep-hiking tomorrow!!

I set the first alarm at 3am to catch the soccer game and another at 7am and happily dozed off.