Would you do that naked?
We are no longer in Beijing. We are officially at the base of the Yellow Mountain, the most beautiful place in China. We didn’t do a whole lot today, but we had some interesting conversations. As we were discussing our phobias, we began talking about Fear Factor and all of the stuff we would do for a million dollars. Somehow we got on the topic of laying in a bed of spiders naked, which led to a lot of things naked. Let’s just say that none of us would lay in a tub of spiders naked, but some would have no problem doing other things for a million dollars. We just had a lot of fun on the bus.
We aren’t really sure why we had to leave so early this morning, but we left the hotel at 8:30, packed and ready to check out. The first thing on our agenda was a tour of the Hutong area. This is in the third ring of the city and is a very old part of town. These are little villages where an entire family will live. The parents and sons and their children all live in little houses. We didn’t know that we were actually going in to someone’s home until we got there. Another little tour guide lady led us around the area. She took us into a man’s home where we got to talk to him about the area and how they lived. He and his wife open their home to a ton of tourists and sometimes even cook them dinner. There are a few families in this area who do that. It’s a very historic place to live and now it’s expensive to live there. His family had owned the home for 53 years, but the homes have been there for about 200 years. It was neat to get to see that part of the history.
After we were done there, William took us to another shopping area. This was 5 floors filled will any kind of thing you can think of. All of it was over priced and you had to bargain with all of the people yelling at you, but most of us bought some souvenirs. It’s very difficult to shop in China. They are all yelling “HELLO HELLO PRETTY LADY COME LOOK SPECIAL PRICE FOR YOU.” We were kind of tired after a while and began to just joke around with the people. It’s almost kind of fun once you just start messing with them. They won’t let you walk away from them. It’s impossible. I’m pretty sure William got a manicure while we were there.
After buying a few things for less than half of the prices they started out with, we went to lunch. It was at this Mongolian restaurant which had a ton of meat. It was probably some of the best food we had had in a while. I really liked the little potato slices they had. Yum. They tricked us by having cool tent tables set up, then they took us to this back room. It had a little lounging area in it, so I guess it was all right, but we still wanted to eat in the tent looking things.
Once we left the restaurant, and after Meg had set William straight, we went to yet ANOTHER shopping mall. Yeah, we were pretty much tired of shopping, so we walked around for a bit and then sat in Starbucks until it was time to get back on the bus. We were very much ready to be in a new place. We got to go to terminal 3 of the Beijing airport, which is the brand new portion they built for the Olympics. It was HUGE! But since they are being eco-friendly, there was no air conditioning. Yep. You heard me right. None. It really wasn’t too terribly bad, especially where we waited for our plane. We had to go down the escalator 2 floors to get to our gate and then on a bus to the runway where our actual terminal and plane were.
Let’s just say that we think this was the pilot’s first time to fly an airplane. After so many flights, we have gotten use to a lot of things, but this was pretty much the worse flight yet. It was only a 2 hour flight, but we still got dinner. I’m telling you, these Chinese airlines really know how to treat passengers. We arrived in Huangshan to meet our new guide, Raymond, who took us to our 4-star hotel. Tomorrow morning we will be packing up to head to our mountain resort on the Yellow Mountain. We are all really excited. Some of us will be taking the cable car up and some of us will be hiking the mountain side. Either way, we will all get to enjoy the most beautiful place in China for a day before we come back down for our flight to Shanghai and then our flights home. We are all pretty much ready to experience American culture for a while. We’ve enjoyed being immersed in China, but we are ready to see family and enjoy the home comforts again.
Peace Out
Ashley
