Monday, December 03, 2007

mountains, mountains and mountains

its been quite an interesting trip in china so far. all my weekends have been spent sightseeing at places around where i stay. its quite amazing that china has so many rivers/mountains/islands/great walls for you to see. i have been to at least 5 places to see atractions already =.= but the place i went to wenzhou 2 days ago was definitely the best. i originally intended to post some visuals namely pictures and videos(wow OP line lol) however due to the fact that blogger in china takes about close to 9 years to upload one picture, i have strongly decided against doing so since i will probably take a lifetime to finish uploading pictures.so...that will wait till when i get back.

with my intention to write my longest post ever on blogger disrupted by the inability to blog pictures i shall narrate my story of the trip to wenzhou instead. my mum was really enthusiastic to see another mountain attraction though she has been to at least 2 mountain attractions in china prior to this but she went ahead to book the tour anyway. so on saturday at 6 am, we left our home to go to some pick up point for the long ride to wenzhou. even though wenzhou is in the same province, it took us almost 6 hours to get there. and considering china has a lot of provinces it probably takes about 1 million singapores to fill all the provinces. at an unearthly early morning, it was already very bright and i wanted to sleep on the bus considering i slept at almost 2 earlier that morning. but alas, when the bus came i was shocked. i was not expecting much as there were only 10 of us on the 'tour' but the tattered looking bus was signs of things to come. i sat on a seat which could not be adjusted and when the driver sped off at a speed of 100 km/h, the intense vibration on the bus probably led to resonance which is actually the phenomenon where there is maximum transfer of energy from the driving force to the driven force or something like that. so with an intense vibration on my butt, it did not take long for it to first become uncomfortable then numb. so i was once again deprived of sleep.

after what seemed like an eternity we stopped at some place before wenzhou to see the great wall of something. unlike the great wall of beijing, it is a mere fraction of the size of the one in beijing but i guess its the same.you see the same brick walls, get amazed by how they manage to build such a thing back then in the olden days. you climb and walk till you die and when you finally reach the top, you look out and see the scenery, snap a few pictures, then make your way down again.

with the "great" wall conquered, there was another challenge ahead of us, enduring the remaining 3 hour ride to our next destination. i manage to sleep for a while i think and we arrived at this jing qu which is actually pretty famous. there are like many many stretches of mountains with stories and the very anticipated waterfall. we went to see this particular mountain where at 8 different angles, you are able to see 8 different things. its totally cool and amazing how we manage to see from a crocodile's open mouth to a woodpecker. the tour guide was quite good and she managed to get us to see what we are supposed to visualise. when we finished the 8 angles thing, we proceeded to the waterfall. WOO. i was dam excited cause i have never seen a real waterfall. but i was greatly disappointed. the tour guide told us that due to a lack of rain for the past month, the great da long qiu(the waterfall) is a pale shadow of its actual beauty. so as expected we saw no shit waterfall but treated to a sight which can be visualised as a person peeing on a urinal and slowly trickling down. its so unfair cause on some display photos they had, the waterfall was just chio. but either way to plunge pool there was still a good place for pictures and we took quite a bit of pictures there.

by then it was already close to 5 and we went to check in our hotel and have dinner. the hotel was a 2 star hotel but i think it was decently furnished. at least the things inside worked. we then went to another mountain range to view the night scenery there. unlike singapore, many countries choose to splurge on more important amenities other then lamps on the roads and it includes china. so with only the torch of the tour guide and sparing number of lights around, we depended on the stars to navigate and not stumble on the steps. but the scene was marvelous, it was really cool how we manage to see one mountain into an eagle,an old man, a pair of breasts =.=. its really cool and you wont able to imagine it unless you are there.

following that we headed back to the hotel to rest for the next day where we were supposed to wake up at 7. but despite my fatigue, i was not able to sleep till late once again. dam the screwed biological clock of mine. so the next morning when we went to yet another mountain range. its interesting that the entire place is called ling dang jing qu bu there are like at least 4-5 different areas within this entire place. so each time we went to see something different. the highlight of this attraction is definitely the cool lift that brings us up to 68 storeys up the mountain. its dam amazing how they manage to build a lift to bring us up 68 storeys and its built on the mountain also. super cool. the view up there was breathtaking. there was more hiking to do as we had to move across a thin bridge in midair supported only at the 2 ends. so if you drop down, its highly likely you will be unrecgonisable. this is where the unscrupulous merchants jian tactics come in handy. you see when you are high up in the mountain, you will want to go higher and see mroe things. so being the jian and smart merchants they are, they build a little attraction there then collect entry tickets which cost an additional 3 dollars to the initial entry ticket you pay at the start. so of course we paid the money to go higher and we had to climb up on wooden planks supported by a net below with air below it once again. so dawn and my mum were both really freaked out and took 10 years to climb up but they managed to in the end and we got to the other side. we saw a few lakes which had a mini statue in the middle. the intention of it was to earn more money. so basically there were places for you to throw coins in and when you hit the target, you get to see water squirting out of the statue. there were 4 in total. a guanyin one, a dragon, a ji gong and a snake. in case you had no money, the people at booths nearby were prepared with tons of 1 dollar coins(probably reused each time people throw the coins in) for you to change. i manage to make the guanyin and dragon squirt the water but by the time we reached the ji gong one, we ran out of coins.lol. took lots of photos before we went down to ground to watch a breathtaking performances. across 2 mountain peaks lied a rope. pretty much like those you see in the moscow circus. only difference the mountain one is about 200 storeys up and i witnessed something really spectacular. first, one person scaled down the entire mountain jumping around. then, another feng nv balanced on the thin rope doing stunts along the way doing 360 turns and stuff. thankfully neither of them fell and died and we witnessed a really good performance. of course the people there did not miss out on money making opportunities. before the show, they started inviting people to sit at what is the best place to view the show. so people starting flocking the area and sat down. then this lady will come and ask you what tea you want with different grades of course. the flask of water was already ready on the table and to sit down, every person needed to buy a cup with tea leaves. for first timers like myself, we wanted to watch the show and thus paid to see it. so technically although the show was a free performance, we had to pay in the end through the tea. how jian but i admire their money making ideas. its really no wonder china produce some great entrepreneurs such as ___ and ____. i dont know any of them actually but i am sure you get the idea.

it was time to go back after that and the long journey was more bearable since our butts were already immuned to the numbness. we arrived home at about 5 and we then went to dad's boss house for dinner(on his invitation of course).

something really irrelevant and out of point. i think next year euro 2008 will be real nice to watch especially the group of death. HOLLAND FTW!

Twistin' at 2:47 AM