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Once we left Chengdu we were headed back to Hong Kong for a few days of rest and relaxation. Or probably more appropriately eating and shopping. There was some drama though before we left Chengdu since our plane had to sit on the tarmac for almost 2 hours due to a backup in flights leaving/arriving due to the poor visibility due to pollution. I was really happy to be back in Hong Kong with my cousin and her family.

Over the last few days in Hong Kong I did more than enough shopping with my cousin and her friends. Jeff got to sample a lot of different types of food that he never had before. One day my cousin Mabel took us to a Noah’s Ark theme park. Interesting but it definitely was not Disneyland. We gave up on part of the tour since it was taking forever to move from one section of the ark to another.

One of the best meals was at a seafood restaurant near my cousin’s place. Within about 10 minutes walk, we reached the restaurant and the cool thing was that you buy your seafood from vendors across the street from the restaurant and take it to the restaurant for them to cook it up. A whole bunch of different types of seafood that we don’t have here in the US and some really great flavors.

Alas we had to finish up our trip and made our departure towards the airport. Jeff was mad at the Hong Kong Airport since they had a second security inspection right after you hand over your boarding pass to board the plane. They confiscated his bottle of water that he just bought. Bummer.

Noah’s Ark 1:1 replica

Jeff loves sushi

my daddy

my aunt and cousin Mabel

Waking up the next day in the darkness of our monastery room we did a quick clean up and pack so we could start making our decent down the rest of Mt. Emei. After a quick breakfast we started the slow walk down the mountain. We kept a steady pace going down stairs and after a little bit our sore legs started to feel the pain. However as we kept walking we realized that we were getting much closer to the next waypoint.

Sure enough we reached the next major stop within an hour. Our hope began to rise that we would soon be off of the mountain. Not saying much, we continued to focus on our slow decent down. Locals would see us and try to have us pay them to carry us down the mountain but we refused. After a while it became a pride thing.

There wasn’t much to see except the usual cliffs and trees as we continued to walk. Then we happened to hit the monkey zone. This was an area of the mountain where the wild monkeys congregated and interacted with the tourists by stealing food and drinks. One of the park staff walked with us for a bit scaring off the monkeys with his stick. Unfortunately for Jeff, a monkey tried to climb up his leg and while shooing him away, his buddy climbed up a pole and snatched a bottle of Coke from his backpack. After hearing him swearing at the monkey I took a swing with my monopod to no avail. Score Monkeys 1, Us 0.

After leaving the monkey zone we thought that we would be right at the exit of the park. Oh no, it was much more deceiving than that since we had to walk along a rocky trail past a temple, around some shops along a lake, and then along a mountain road next to a stream. Finally after another hour of walking we made it to the parking lot where we grabbed the first bus out of there!

We took the bus down to the Teddy Bear Hotel and ordered up a big lunch and then grabbed our bags. Our French friends, Pierre and Jessica, left us a note on our suitcase with some contact info but it was a little hard to decipher their e-mail address. Hopefully when they return from their trip we’ll get in touch. We finished up lunch, switched the boots out for shoes, and grabbed a cab down to the bus station and caught the next bus to Chengdu.

The ride back was slow due to rush hour traffic and once in Chengdu we had to battle the locals for a taxi to get to our last hotel. I was able to snag a taxi and after a long day of hiking we made it to the Tibet Hotel which was a very nice looking hotel. We got into our room and took a long shower and decided to splurge and have room service again instead of venturing out to look for a restaurant. The food was good but I wanted a massage so I took Jeff with me downstairs to the hotel spa.

The spa was quite nice and pretty empty probably since it was a Friday night. We went further back to a private room with 2 tables and a bath tub and shower area. Quite nice. Our masseuses came in and it was a pretty standard massage except that they focused mostly on the spine and also lit our backs on fire. Mind you it wasn’t like they poured gas on us and threw a match. They had some soaked face towels which they lit on our backs causing some intense heat onto our spine. Pretty different stuff which I don’t think they do back at home.

[caption id="attachment_2263" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Super tired after 10 hours of 'Stair Master'"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2268" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Tibetan Hotel, Chengdu"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_2269" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="This was a super nice bathroom compared to the one in the monastery"][/caption]

Today was truly the beginning of two days of pure pain. We woke up early to get a spot at the top of Mt. Emei for a good view of the pending sunrise. We trudged along in the darkness until we found a wandering guy renting flashlights for 4 yuan ($0.60). After we had our new source of light, we made our way up many more flights of stairs to the top of the Golden Summit. Mind you it was freezing cold at this hour and we still had roughly 45 minutes until the sun rose. I took some shots of the moon over the mountain while Jeff held the spot.

After much waiting and fighting off other Chinese tourists, the sun finally started to rise. It was different since due to the smog and clouds, it came across as a red ball in the sky. After it disappeared, it came up again and we got all the shots that we wanted. Pierre and Jessica found us and we took some shots at the sunrise spot as well as at the Golden Summit. We talked a bit more about the rest of each of our trips over some mediocre milk tea and then packed up to start the rest of our day.

Pierre and Jessica took the bus down to the base since they were heading to Leshan but we were starting our descent down the mountain. At the start it was a pretty simple trek down the mountain. Steps going up and steps going down. We came across some monkeys along the way and fed them the rest of a banana that I was snacking on. Luckily they were distracted by some other tourists and left us alone. We continued on until we soon found ourselves to be the only ones left on the trail. It was nice to have nature around but also a little uneasy knowing that the only way off the mountain was to head off to one of three bus stops on the mountain.

After a little while we soon came across a snack bar and then later another one. We soon figured out that there were snack bars about every 30-45 minutes of hiking. Around lunch time we settled down at one and had lunch of scrambled egg noodle soup. We both enjoyed it although Jeff had an extra bonus of a hair and a fly in his. As we continued hiking mostly down some steep stairs our bodies started to feel the pain of not being fit enough for this trip. Soon enough my calves began to tighten and Jeff had a tweak in his right knee. Our pace began to drop and we started to worry a bit about getting to the monastery before night fall.

We consulted our map whenever we hit a major location such as a monastery or landmark. Jeff’s knee continued to get worse and we were soon using the handrails to help us along. Hobbling along we continued our way until we reached one of the major monastery’s for the night and settled in after 5 hours of hiking.

The monastery that we crashed at was called Xianfeng. It was a major monastery on the mountain but the rooms were kind of lacking for the mid-level price that we paid. There were holes in the walls and dead insects around the room but it did have a TV and two beds with electronic heating pads. Jeff took a shower first which required him to walk to another building and past the outhouses. The showers were actually pretty decent compared to the room but the squat toilets left little to be desired. As the night progressed, we huddled in a bed with the heating pad turned up waiting for the morning to come.

The moonlight

Pierre and Jessica from Paris

I had the ‘I woke up at 5am to see the sunrise’ face

Very impressive buddha built at 10,000 ft high

Egg noodle, it was pretty yummy

Endless stairs

More stairs

Jeff: I loved our monastery experience

This room had not much to offer, but we experienced how local people live

Creepy hallway inside the monastery

After sleeping for a very long time, we woke up and pulled down the laundry to see if it was still wet. Unknowingly we also pulled in a huge moth which Jeff released back outside. At that point we decided that it was time to eat breakfast since I slept through dinner the night before. Crazy thing was that around 1AM it sounded like someone was trying to get into our room which made me jump out of bed. Must have been a lost backpacker I guess.

Breakfast was a funny Chinese adaptation for french toast which were two hamburger buns dipped in egg wash and a quick fry along with 2 fried eggs and what was suppose to be bacon looked more like cha shiu. I dug out one of my instant coffee packets since coffee was super pricey and Jeff had a lemon soda. We ran into Pierre and Jessica again and they were off to hike the mountain, hoping to reach the summit by sunset. We said goodbye and packed up our stuff and headed to Leshan which was an hour by bus away.

Leshan is known for it’s humongous Buddha statue that is 71 meter tall carved into the mountain. The crazy thing is that one monk started working on it before blinding himself in a protest against the government. Other monks helped him finish off the statue later on. The one thing that we didn’t expect was a massive amount of stairs which is what we got. After about an hour of hiking, we finally made it to the big Buddha which is the biggest in the world. However we were short on time so we took a few pictures and headed back to Mt. Emei.

Once we were back at the bus station at Mt. Emei, we got 2 tickets and took the bus ride to the top of the mountain. The bus trip took about 2 hours and stopped at each of the major bus stops along the way. Right after we got off the bus who did we run into? Pierre and Jessica looking super tired. They were glad to see us and we were surprised to see them. They told us of the tedious hike up the mountain and having to fight off monkeys that were trying to take their food. We decided to hike up to the cable car that would take us to the summit.

Along the way we ran into more monkeys that were taking runs at Jessica. Pierre chased them off with a stick. We were all glad to have made it to the cable car which was pretty pricey for a five minute ride up. Beautiful views of the mountain greeted us as we ascended towards the summit.  Luckily for us the hotel was literally right outside the station.  We all checked in and took a quick rest before running up to the top of the summit for some sunset photos.

[caption id="attachment_2193" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Padlocks along the stairs"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2183" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Near the top of Mt.Emei"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2185" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Cable car to the Golden Summit"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_2186" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Sunset at the Golden Summit"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_2187" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Sea of clouds"][/caption]