Wondering how my Yellow Mountain excursion went?
Well, here's a play by play.
We got on a 6:30 am bus to the city of Huangshan (literally translates to Yellow Mountain). It took about 6 hours to reach our destination. We travelled in a group of 6 people, and three of the kids in our group planned to stay on the mountain that night, watch the sunrise, then hike back down on Saturday and get on a bus back. Young, Kat and I were under the impression that there was a bus coming back to Shanghai around 6 pm that night and we were hoping that would pan out as we wanted to get back to work on some school assignments that have been piling up. We were going to cable car up/down and walk up/down whichever direction we didn't cable car. The hotel clerk informed us that the latest bus leaving Huangshan was taking off at 3:30 and it was currently 12:30...speed bump number one. We decided to just pay for a night at the hotel and we would just take the 6 am bus back the next day. The tickets were just 150 yuan each for the bus back, and now we had more time on the mountain.
So, we paid 180 yuan for a room with three twin beds, didn't even know that was a thing, but hey that's pretty cheap. The six of us ate lunch next door to our hotel whcih ended up being about 12 yuan each, dirt cheap as usual. There was this small Asian man in a sweatsuit trying to help us out and telling us we could go eat at his restaurant and saying he could drive us for 20 yuan or something. As we ate people would come in to the restaurant and try to sell us things. Those were our first tastes of how they treated foreigners in this town; we literally had to yell/shoo them away or they wouldn't leave, i was really flustered by their persistence.
Next, we had to pay 19 yuan each to get on a bus to take us to the entrance of the 'park' which is where you start climbing the mountain or get in a cable car. Our friend Orin collected the change from the ticket booth lady and when he tried to hand us each back 1 yuan coins (they're a pain to carry around) all of us told him to keep it as a token of appreciation. Passing up that 50 cents proved fatal later on...At this point I should mention that Young had about 100 yuan in cash and I had been spotting him throughout the trip. We got to the entrance of the park and this is where we part ways with out other three friends who were going to climb, and it's also where everything turned south for Young, Kat and I....
We realized at this point we really didn't have the option to climb the mountain up because the cable cars stopped running at 5 to bring us back down. In addition, the buses from the entrance of the park back to the hotel stopped running at 6. So, we go to buy our tickets for the cable car, which were 80 yuan each. The woman at the counter tried to tell us they were 150 yuan each, we were so confused and kept asking her why until she was finally like, okay fine, 80. We looked at each other like wait, I think she just tried to rip us off... When we tried to go get in the cable car they asked us for our 'park tickets' too. Then we realized this place was a giant tourist trap and we had to go buy another ticket. We went back to the same lady, she tried to charge me 390 yuan for two park tickets when the sign clearly said they were 115 each. I kept saying 230 over and over and over until finally she was like, okay fine. At this point I was completely irate that at a public park they would try and rip people off that like. Thank goodness I've been in China for 6 weeks and knew when someone was trying to hustle me, but even then, I really didn't expect it at a place as official as this.
So, the three of us got an 8 person cable car to ourselves, which was perfect. It was disappointing to not be able to hike, but the views were so incredible we couldn't stay upset about it. Pictures can barely do it justice. Apparently, the director of avatar actually visited the Yellow Mountains and Pandora's floating mountains were inspired from his visit. My first comment was "I feel like I'm in Avatar" so I guess he did a pretty good job of replicating the scenery.
At the top, we got to see the most beautiful view. Those 20 minutes we spent with that view made the entire weekend worth it. You'll understand the magnitude of what that means at the end of this post...
When we went to buy our tickets for the cable car ride down we realized our fatal mistake...Honestly, none of us expected to drop that much cash this weekend. We knew the general cost of the park tickets, the cable car rides, and the bus tickets, but I had not anticipated spotting Young, and in general we didn't expect to have to pay for all of these things...After purchasing our cable car tickets, I had zero yuan, Young had zero yuan, and Kat had 31 yuan. That's about $5 between three people. But, we've survived on much less in China, so we didn't panic just yet.
We got down the mountain just fine, made it to the bus stop and then...the workers at the ticket booth for the bus decided to inform us that our tickets were one-way, and didn't allow us to get back down to our hotel like we thought. So, we needed to cough up 19 yuan for each of us, 57 yuan total, and like I said, Kat had 31 yuan. We start to search every pocket, crevice, nook and cranny for coins and yuan bills. Somehow, we found 17 yuan worth of coins amongst our things and got to 48 yuan. Picture this, three college kids freaking out about not being able to get down this mountain, we're searching every single place we can think of, and there are about 5 park employees staring at us this entire time. Kat goes "Wow, we really shouldn't have let Orin keep those 1 yuan coins..." at which point I start laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants (and my family knows how serious I'm being when I say this). At one point, we dropped a few coins, and they rolled over to the other side of handrail. Young leaps over this handrail to pick up coins that are worth less than 10 cents in US dollars and we are beside ourselves with laughter. Honestly, how can this be real life?
Now, I just read "Heaven is for Real" so maybe I was just in this mindset without realizing it, but I truly believe we received a gift from God. Kat reached into the small pocket in the front of her Kavu that she apparently never uses and pulls out a 50 yuan bill. We all saw it and legitimately screamed. Screamed. We handed the ticket office the 50 yuan bill, 6 one yuan coins, and 10 .1 yuan coins. The guy tried to tell us he wouldn't accept the .1 yuan coins but at this point we had absolutely had it and Young goes "no, you will accept those, and I will take these" as he grabs the three tickets. Never laughed so hard. The bus ride down to the hotel was at least 25 minutes long...imagine us walking down...not plausible.
Oh but wait, where does the bus drop us off? Not at our hotel, that's for damn sure. The driver pulls up to what is clearly the last stop as everyone gets off and we have zero clue as to our surroundings. This is when I finally said, "so, should we start to panic now?" We are pretty much broke, have no clue where we are, and the only thing that can get us back to our hotel is our room key that has the hotel's name on the top. I mean, talk about a disaster.
We decided that the first thing we needed to do was find an ATM. We knew that without money we were completely vulnerable in this country. We start walking and who do we see? That little Asian man in the sweatsuit I mentioned earlier. It was somewhat comforting to see a friendly face until he started badgering us about how far we were from the hotel and how he would drive us there for 20 yuan. We told him we needed to get to a bank and asked if he would just give us directions. He tells us he will take us to the bank, and then the hotel for 20 yuan at which point we all knew that was a terrible idea. We said no thank you and walked off. Multiple people, not official taxi drivers, just people on the street, were yelling at us in English telling us that they would drive us where we needed to go. It was honestly really scary, I felt vulnerable and knew that we stuck out like sore thumbs. We were turning everyone down because we would never get into an unofficial taxi or any kind of vehicle in Beijing, Tianjin, or Shanghai.
I asked for directions form a convenience store clerk to a China Construction Bank (partners with Bank of America) and someone told us it was a 20 to 30 minute walk. We knew that was our only option at this point so we set out on our way. When we walked out of the convenience store, the man in the sweatsuit was standing there asking if we needed help. I have never been so scared to see someone pop up like that. Several of the people that were asking us if we needed rides were following us along the street, in their cars, yelling at us. One man got out a few yards ahead of us and started walking with us telling us we were 'rude' and that if we were going to treat people like that we should 'get out of China'. I walk home to my apartment late at night, and before the sun comes up in Atlanta all the time. I am one of those people that probably should get nervous about situations like that but I don't and I can tell you this is the first time I have genuinely been scared for my safety. I was so worried we would never make it back to our hotel and I didn't know what to do. Maybe these men really were just offering their help, and they didn't mean any harm, but we really couldn't afford to take a chance like that. It seemed so strange they would be that persistent just to earn 20 yuan.
When we started getting worried and discouraged about the bank I decided we should go into a hotel and ask them to call us a taxi to our hotel. They called a cab and then told us it was going to cost us 60 yuan. Not only was that ridiculous, we genuinely could not afford it. We had no choice but to keep walking until we finally reached the Construction Bank about 20 minutes down the road. We got out some money and we immediately felt so much better. It's crazy to say this, but in this country I often feel like if worse comes to worse I can pay people off, and without money I felt like I was completely out of options.
How did we get back to the hotel you ask? Well, here's where we had no choice but to take a leap of faith. We kept going into hotels and asking the front desk to call us a taxi, but between the three of us, I'm the most proficient at Chinese, aka our communication mostly came down to sign-language per usual. No one seemed to understand until finally someone told us that it was an hour long walk and he would drive us for 30 yuan. At this point, we realized that this may actually be a pretty normal thing for people to offer to drive because this was at least the 8th person to do this to us, and we had seen about 2 taxis driving through the town. We decided that we had no choice, got in his car, held onto the locks the entire time to make sure he didn't lock the doors on us, and by the grace of God we made it back to our hotel safe and sound.
I was so discouraged during that fiasco I was not convinced we would ever see our hotel again. Anyway, we made it on our bus the next morning. The bus ride was absolutely miserable and for some unknown reason it took us 8 hours to get back to Shanghai. Overall, the weekend could have gone much smoother. Glad it's over. Don't think I will ever be visiting Huangshan again...
We couldn't pass up this bottle of wine at the convenience store after that stressful day. I mean it's 'Great Wall' wine, so it's almost like we had to buy it, right?
However, it was worth it just to see that view. It was really spectacular and I'm glad we made the trip out there. The three of us never fail to get ourselves into some kind of predicament.
I've decided the perfect way to describe my daily life here is every time I leave my hotel room I'm 'doing it live'.
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