Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Heaven and Hell in 4 days...
九寨沟… they call it a fairyland…so it seems…now the 3 Singapore Students decided to embark on a voyage to the legendary scenic land since it is a supposedly a stone’s throw away from Chengdu… Well… it is not exactly a stone’s throw…unless u have a professional pitcher who can pitch a stone like hundreds of miles away… we decided to go budget and take land transport instead of flying…and hence commencing the 10 hour journey…Day 1
Oh yeah, Day 1 starts at the ungodly hour of 6.30am where we were transported from a tiny van to a tour bus. Sad to say, the tour bus was already very packed when we boarded, so we had to take the seats towards the back. I was so lucky that I got a seat right at the back of the bus that boasted virtually no damping and guaranteed motion sickness. It really didn’t help that the roads ahead were in the mountainous regions complete with uneven paths and hair pin turns…Then I begin to praise myself for the ingenuity of bringing medicine for giddiness and nausea… Lunch was an eye opener and it definitely made a lasting impression on me or should I say ‘depression’…. dampened quite a bit of my spirits… didn’t realize the food could be so terrible… started to get worried about the remaining days…I admit that I am picky about food
Day 2
Breakfast rivaled lunch
Pretty waterfall
珍珠滩瀑布 the scene of Sun Wu Kong and his master pulling their white horse across filmed here
At night, went to this 藏 family’s house where a series of singing and performance were staged. They were adamant to make you drunk by toasting you homemade wine every now and then…of course…by the 6th cup…my face could actually put a ripe tomato to shame…wasn’t much of a drinker actually…then they make you dance and while other people were catching the beat…I was struggling to follow…and there was this over zealous auntie who was so into dancing that she did not realize that she had elbowed me below the shoulder in her haste to follow the beat and to this very day…the region hurts…yeah present tense….HURTS… had quite a bit of fun though…
Day 3
This day we were supposed to go to 黄龙 which was another scenic spot with lots of colourful lakes, ponds, pools… whatever u call them… What we didn’t know was that we had to climb up 4100m to reach the summit where the beautiful pool was…Many or should I say all the people in the tour group chose to take the cable car either up or down or both ways cos climbing was too taxing and those who chose to climb most prob didn’t make it up cos of high altitude sickness…Saw people carrying little bottles of stuff…then I realized that those were mini oxygen tanks...Oops…didn’t know that the mountain was that high…we have virtually nothing with us and so we were half prepared to drop dead and die halfway up….the motivating factor to move upwards was powered by the fact that we dun want to waste the entrance fee and also the sufferings on the road earlier…we held on yeah…Surprisingly, we were the only 3 who climbed up the mountain and then subsequently walked down... the other tour members were super impressed cos we got down even much earlier than those who took the cable car…the young and able...haha…it was indeed a beautiful place…just a pity that we could only see a few pools…I commented that it was such a pity that there was not much water at this point of the year if not it would be prettier…and Ming said ‘yeah, only the 五彩池 is in season’…In season…what an apt way to put it…
The evening was a particularly trying one with delayed dinner cos we had to get to the hotel which was at this particular place super far away…had to take like 4 hours bus there…I decided to curb my reliance to the medicine by refusing to eat it…and I realized that sleeping did nothing good but make u feel more terrible when u wake up…so I spent the first 3 hours looking out of the window, observing the driver drive, gazing at passing yaks and sheep….Realized the bus driver was quite set on getting us killed cos he was racing like at 120km/hr around hair pin bends along the mountainous road and I suspected he was super sore when another tour bus overtook him and he resolved to race the other bus just to satisfy his desire for road superiority at the expense of the 20 odd innocent tourists who just wanted to stay alive… Sun set and darkness came…nothing to see outside and I was resigned to singing ‘Pinky and the Brain’ silently for the last 1 hour to maintain sanity…
Day 4
Going home…going home…Ming had a lot of grievances against the bus uncle…well all of us had …but Ming had it worst cos she suffered the most from motion sickness…clinging on the dirty blue curtain as if her life depended on it with a 痛苦的脸according to zinc…but the bus uncle was the one who could get us back…we boarded the bus praying that we would be alive and kicking the same hour the next day… At last civilization was in sight…never had the smell of polluted air been this fresh and welcoming to my senses…yeah it did... the malnourished trio was so ready to kiss the Chengdu city floor after alighting from the bus…And of course…civilization means decent food …that’s important…
九寨沟 and 黄龙 are nice places to visit…simply breath taking and u will never believe that water could be so blue until u see it for urself…just bear in mind that the conditions may be trying or just dun go budget…
