A slow morning
After an extremely hectic day at the Terracotta Army yesterday, I loved every moment of my lie in. We were taking a train to Hua Shan, to the East. Hua Shan, or Mount Hua, is a popular and well known mountain in China. Mat and I have set out to conquer it. The train to Hua Shan was at 12:30pm, so we had plenty of time to take it slow.
A Chinese girl at our hostel called Ping Ping/Jane said she’d like to join us. The more the merrier I thought, so we willingly agreed. She’s very enthusiastic and excitable, seems very nice. When we arrived at the train station, it turned out there were no more seats. As we had booked in advance, Jane had to get a later train. The train to Hua Shan was brief, at only half an hour in length. We did get confused by our seats though. It seemed that this train was solely a sleeper train. That meant everyone’s seat was a bed, which caused me to think I’d got the wrong section of the train.
Getting to the hostel
After we got off the train, we had to get to the hostel. Sounds easy…right? What could go wrong using Apple Maps? Well, for starters, the bus we were waiting for showed no signs of appearing. A few unhelpful folks walked on by us, despite our cries for help! Eventually a woman and her teenage son approached us. He was able to translate between us, his mum, and a train station official. They advised us to take a nearby taxi, and told us it should be no more than ¥15. Thankfully, they also told the taxi driver where we needed to go. They were an absolute god send.
So we finally arrived at the hostel, we only knew because that’s where the driver dropped us and pointed to it. From the front it was a restaurant, but as we went in, the owners sorted our booking out. I wasn’t holding out much hope to be honest. The walk to the room was through other people’s hung out washing. Surprisingly though, the room was a decent size, and the beds were of a good size and cleanliness. Not too long afterwards, Jane arrived, she was staying in the room next to us.
We stayed at the Huashan Mountain Spring Guest House, check it out here.
Could it possibly be...?
When Jane arrived, we went for food as we were all very hungry. We decided to have dinner downstairs in the restaurant. Jane was thankfully able to go through and translate what all the different foods were. Just as we were debating what to have, I turned the page, and there it was. One of the most beautiful images I’d seen in such a long time. Sweet ‘n Sour Chicken was on the menu. I excitedly showed Mat, and the both of us were proper buzzing. This was the best day ever!
We had quite a few dishes because, unlike the West, in China you buy the dishes and then share it all between you. The portion sizes are always huge. This is a mistake we’ve made several times. We got Sweet n Sour chicken, Kung Pao chicken, another dish with beef, and a huge bowl of rice. It was an extremely satisfying meal which was devoured by the three of us. After the meal, we were all exhausted. We decided to go back to our rooms and take a nap. There’s something satisfying about going to bed and waking up before bed time.
Scouting for snacks
After our power nap, we needed to go to the shops to acquire nourishment for tomorrow’s ascent. It was kind of late for the shops, with it being 7pm. In our area, we couldn’t really see many shops. There were a couple with some mediocre snacks, and because no one could decide, we eventually just went for the cheapest shop. Not exactly a feast fit for a king, but enough for a backpacking hike.
Having acquired the food for tomorrow’s climb we all decided to get an early kip. I had a 6am start to look forward to…yipee.
