We got pushed off the bus to this! And told we were here.
It took off and we were left standing in the middle of no where with a few dingy looking houses, dogs and people washing socks. One lady came over telling us to come and eat or we think asking if we wanted a hotel. We tried to explain about our hike and showed her in the book. She’d obviously just been cleaning fish or something disgusting because she had this gross black and white goo stuff all over her hands, and instead of just looking at the paper she grabbed it and was pointing to things. It was gross but I found it hilarious because it was Vikki’s not mine.
She started walking off down the road so we followed her, we walked for about 10 minutes thinking she was taking us to a hotel or something and a car came along the opposite direction. She pulled it over, said something to the guy who nodded, waved good bye to us and turned around and left. The car did a u turn and waited for us to get in…she obviously knew the guy so we decided to give it a whirl. He only drove probably a k up the road and we saw a big sign saying Qidu National park.
Don't know if you can read this by clicking and making it bigger but it cracked me up!
Once again it was deserted I don’t think anyone does anything out doors-y in the winter, and fair enough because it’s not what you’d call beautiful scenery. We walked for probably half an hour and saw an awesome crack in a rock called “the thin line in the sky” (I think) walked up and down some massively steep steps and saw a monk’s attempt at building something to some sort of Buddha on the hill.
Following the map, we headed up the next part of the path, only to be told no by one of the check point dudes with a walkie talkie. We asked why but he spoke absolutely no English and we showed him on the map that we’d only walked about ¼ of the track, all he could say was no and seeing there weren’t any signs saying no admittance and clearly a path, we just started walking. He got all huffy and followed us down the path for a while till we hit the dried river bed. The path kept going but he was standing in the way so we jumped down onto the river bed and had a look around. Meanwhile a group of Asians walked up the path and he started saying something to them. So while he was pre occupied we took off up the river bead and went out of sight. It was a pretty cool walk as there were overhanging rocks and sections of ice everywhere.
We got to a dead end in the river bank where there was a cement bridge that the path met up with. We looked up and saw our friend with the walkie talkie sitting on the bridge looking so smug that he’d beat us here!
The path clearly kept going and we could see foot prints in the dirt so we got pretty annoyed that he kept saying go back. He was talking to somebody on his walkie talkie, so I motioned to the map and said we're just going round the corner to take some photos and see whats there, then we'll come back!
We started walking and we're laughing about it thinking for once it was good to be unable to speak or understand the language and we wondered if he was following us because we couldn't hear anything. Vikki didn't want to turn around because we'd get told to come back again so I had a quick look thinking he'd be waiting on the bridge for us and he was about 20cm behind Vikki! haha he was like a full on stealth soldier! so after another probably 10 minutes walk we came to a big fence with a sign no admittance, even though we were annoyed our walk had been cut short we were happy not to go in there. Vikki however just went to have a look through the fence and the guy thought she was going through and started yelling and screaming for us to turn around...they're obviously hiding some weapons of mass destruction or something in there the way he was carrying on.
We made our way back but still it looked as if he was going to follow us the whole way, so once we had gotten back to "legal" territory we decided to sit in the river bed and eat some of our snacks. Not because we were hungry but to shake this guy off us so we were on our own. We absolutely cracked up when we looked back and he'd sat down on the path behind some grass and lit a smoke!!! we spent the time just eating and chatting and trying to get him in a Where's Wally photo we got up to leave. In that time 2 other guards had come up to have a laugh at us and keep him company but none of them were laughing after we'd sat there for over 40 minutes! We walked out of the park and back to the bus stop where we had to basically run onto the road to wave the bus down or it wouldn't have stopped. Clearly not many people get off here...
Where's Wally? Hint he's near the dead tree!
I was feeling sick so lay down with my head on my bag and slept most of the way home. Vikki woke me up to say everyone was getting off but we had absolutely no idea where we were and no map. We walked down a food market street to buy some noodles for dinner and I went to take a photo of the street.......NO CAMERA..... so there goes that $400...
A guy sat next to me on the bus for like half an hour so unless it was sitting near the top and fell out when I was moving my bag, he must of nabbed it while I was sleeping...Luckily I didn't loose any photo's apart from the mountain but I got Vikki's. I'm not too worried about it but I would love the money back to travel with!
Vikki slept over that night and we had to get up at 6am to make our way to our first Mandarin class. 2 hours of peak hour public transport (saturdays are never quieter) we got to the school. It's just the four of us and two chinese teachers. It was a good class but a long day and freezing with no heating.
I met up with Jessica and Doris and Wangfujing street for dinner before they took me to a concert at the forbidden city concert hall. I had no idea what I was going to see, Wade bought the tickets last week but since Doris was oging and there were stacks of kids I assumed it was a kids concert. No, it was a Danish Girls Chior...... with a few classical piano and organ solo's. Fortunatly I sat down next to an english speaking Dane guy who told me all about it and could tell me what the songs were about. there were a few in English and the last one was in Chinese. Not my favourite form of entertainment but it was a nice theatre and an OK experience. Still not sure why so many kids...
Sunday we all woke up sick so no swimming, just a lazy day of Uni work and lots of planning for the scary open week for parents this friday.
Monday was a nightmare for me, I had the sorest throat and seeing it was the start of a new topic "animals" all the content for the kids was new.
Tuesday - Woke up with completely no voice! but felt ok apart form a sore throat. So I happily went along to school knowing it wasn't possible toteach. The principal wanted me to go home and come and teach on friday to make up a day. I refused saying I have to see if my planning is OK with the kids for open day so I made Sally teach and I just took notes on what was going OK and what was clearly not. After lunch we came to an agreement that I would go home and have wednesday off to get my voice back, teach on Thursday as a final practise for open day and then just come in for the morning classes on Friday with the Parents.
It's now Wednesday afternoon and I still have a shocking sore throat but my voice is a bit better. I'm sure I'll let you know how the dreaded parents day if, and wont be surprised if I'm telling you they've kicked me out, which wouldn't be half bad.
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