Five o’clock came very early this morning. I didn’t sleep well. It was absolutely freezing in my compartment, there was a draft rushing through, and there were weird noises all night. I rushed to put clothes on when I woke up, because even though it was freezing in bed all night, it was still a heck of a lot warmer than it was out of the covers!
The first task of the morning was to walk a metal “gang plank” in the dark that was a bit slippery from the rain. Oh yeah, it had broken rungs as well. Seeing as I have poor depth perception in the dark, and my balance sucks, this is not a task to throw at me when I have just woken up. At least our guide gave me his hand… you know, so I could pull him into the water too if I fell in. Haha.
We walked through very deserted streets in the darkness of pre-dawn. We later found out that the streets really were deserted. The town of Fengdu will be submerged by the rising water (due to the dam) so is being relocated across the river on higher ground. We arrived at the chair lift that would take us up to the top of the mountain. That was a relief because I sure the heck am not into climbing anything, especially at 6 am. The chair lift looked rather rickety as well, so maybe it was a good thing that we took it in the dark.
We arrived at the top, without a guide (oh well) and proceeded to walk thru a Buddhist temple called Ming Shan.
The first part we came to had a three highly arched bridges leading to the temple. We also had a good view of the city waking up below (the one across the river) as dawn cracked the horizon (it would be another hour before the roosters started crowing though). We just followed the crowd of people. We saw another temple with a giant statue of a Chinese man in it (don’t know who it was, because, as I said, no guide). Then we went to the Temple of Heaven. It had all of the zodiac gods inside, dragons curving round the pillars and, outside, grass was growing on its roof. It was very cool.
Beside the Temple of Heaven was a large pagoda. It had really nice views. We saw the rice terraces and the mist on the river. There were stairs to climb up the pagoda, but they were blocked off. Not like I was going to climb it anyway.
Finally we took the cable car back down to Fengdu, and saw that it was the real ghost town. It looked like Beirut! All of the buildings were abandoned and gutted. It was actually kind of sad, because tons of villages and cities along the Yangtze have been, or will be, submerged. The number of people that have to be relocated from their homes is amazing. I should mention also that the cable car looked much better in the dark. It didn’t look too sturdy in daylight.
After we reached the bottom of the mountain, we wandered over to Ghost Town (the tourist attraction rather than the gutted city). The whole thing was cheesy but fun. There was a cheesy hell that we walked through. Then we had to walk up a billion steps (that really was hell) to see another area, and then we walked back down again. I’m going to get lots of exercise on this trip if all of the tourist places have this many steps.
When we got to the meeting place at the scheduled time, our guide was still missing. As we didn’t want to miss our boat, we started walking back to it. As we walked all of the touts would shout, “Hello! Hello!” But not in a friendly way – more like shouting at you. It was just a ploy to get your attention so they could try to get you to buy things they were selling. Many of them had oranges, which looked really good, but I had already bought some back in Chongqing to bring with me.
Back at the boat, we had to cross over the metal gangway again. It looked exactly like I had imagined it in the dark – not safe! Crossing back to the boat was a bit easier though, and not as scary, because at least I could see where I was stepping (i.e. on a rung that was actually there). It was a good thing that we started to walk back to the boat too, because, our guide was waiting on the boat for us! I suspect that our guide does not really know that much English and any instructions we get from him we should triple check.
Back on the boat again, I just went back to bed. I piled all my blankets on top of me and got somewhat warm with them. Later on, when I woke up, I made this arrangement with the chair beside the bed. I wanted to sit up and look out the window, but stay warm at the same time, so I put one blanket across the bed and onto the chair, which was long enough to flip over my feet when I sat on top of it (sat on the bed with my feet on the chair). Then I put another blanket over my lap, and finally a third blanket was wrapped around my shoulders. It worked very well for keeping my body warm. Unfortunately, it didn’t due too much for my fingers, so I didn’t get much typing done… and I actually just fell asleep again.
Eventually lunch rolled around so we wandered up to the “restaurant” and had the special – tofu and mushrooms on rice with one tiny, itty, bitty piece of chicken. It was really spicy, which was good, because it made me warm at least. It was actually pretty good, especially since it only cost 5 yuan (about 60 cents US). After eating, I pretty much spent the afternoon like I did the morning – bundled in blankets dozing off to sleep and looking out the window.
Once dinner came around we were back up to the restaurant where we met Eric, a guy from Sweden, and a couple (she was from Shanghai and he from Germany). We all compared how much we paid for the temple tickets, etc and that is when we found out we really had been ripped off. Oh well.
After dinner we arrived at Zhang Fei temple… another site to see in the dark! I swear this is the most sightseeing I have ever done outside of daylight hours. The temple was up a ton of steps, which does not make me a happy camper. It was just a rather boring temple too, that just had some statues depicting the story from The Three Kingdoms (famous Chinese tale).
The street to (and obviously from) the temple was lined with people selling littletrinkets though. We just browsed through them on the way back to the boat. Cal bought a string of plastic chili peppers. He let me do the bargaining for him since I seem to be better at it. I got them for half the asking price for him. I didn’t buy anything though. While the stuff was all interesting (stamps, old coins, etc), what would I do with it? So I just enjoyed browsing and taking incognito pictures with my camera. I discovered if I just let it sit on the case (which I have around my neck) it is much less obtrusive than holding it in my hands. Then I just sneakily press the shutter button and get some surprisingly good, not to mention pretty much level, shots. I’m going to make good use of this trick for the rest of my trip!
After the temple, you guessed it, I went back to the boat and bundled up in blankets for the night. Tomorrow we are scheduled to hit the Three Gorges at … sometime before the sun is actually up. Oh boy! I wonder if the gorges will look better in the dark too.
To see all my pictures from this day, check out my photoblog!
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