China Adventures!: Huanshang (Yellow Mountains)

This past weekend was our first 4-day weekend, but we were told about it only the day before. So we had to rush to make plans and decided to go to Beijing! Everything was in place except for the train tickets. Unfortunately there weren’t any train tickets left because we were trying to buy them the night before we left.

One of the girls in the group did her research and the next day came up with a whole itinerary of what we could do instead. Woohoo! So we went to the Yellow Mountains in Huangshang. We all knew it was going to be a hiking trip, but we didn’t have any idea of how big of a hiking trip it was going to be!

We left soon after the last group got done teaching at 6:30 ish and eventually met at the train station at 9pm. We couldn’t get tickets for the 10:30 pm train but we could for the 1:30 am train… so we just kinda hung around until then. Then we had a 7 hour train ride (not the most fun thing in my life) and got to our city at 9 ish am. Then we took a bus up to the city, hung around there for a while, then started our hike at about 11:45. Now when they said “hike” I imagined walking up a slightly sloped dirt path for a while since it was the first time that all of us would be exercising since like high school. We were all quite surprised to find that we were hiking up a couple thousand steep stairs. What? It wouldn’t have been that bad because the view was supposed to be GORGEOUS, but it was so misty that you couldn’t see any of the greenery around you and it rained the majority of the time.

After a while we turned into drenched robots that just kept moving out of muscle memory and were soaked to the bone! And it didn’t help that once we got to the top we couldn’t find out hotel so we had to wander around aimlessly for a bit. All a part of the adventure, right? Oh it gets better. So, one of the main purposes for this hike was to see not only the gorgeous mountainside but also the incredible sunrise. Well after thawing ourselves all night and trying to make up for the lack of sleep from the train, we pulled ourselves out of bed at 6 am and waited outside for the sun to rise. When it never did, we asked the front desk and the lady said, “Oh, no sunrise today.” WHAT?! That was a serious bummer. So we crawled back into bed and slept until like 10 am.

The plan was to hike back down the mountain the next morning, but that wasn’t going to happen! So we took the cable car down. I was super stoked to see the sky view of these famous mountains, but low and behold there was too much mist again to see anything. Super disappointing. All in all it was a very good adventure and a fantastic story plus some bragging rights :D

That night after coming off the mountain, we went to the hostel that we had booked. Haha, no going to lie, I was actually happily surprised at the hostel. Because I had heard such awful stories, I was pleased to see how not-awful it really was. That was an adventure. The next day we went to the hot springs. Oh boy that was happiness. If every you are in China, I strongly suggest going to HuanShan Hotspring. There are about 15 different pools that each have something different infused in the water: Vitamin C, Wine, Coconut milk, Jasmine Oil, Wormwood, rose petals, etc. There is a plaque next to each pool that describes how each are medically healing and what they heal. There was also one bigger pool that had thousands of tiny ceramic beads in the bottom that massage you as you move. My personal favorite pool had lots of little fish that would eat the dead skin off of your body as you sat there. That feeling is so hard to describe! It like tickled so bad that it hurt. You had to clench every muscle in your body just to keep still and not squeal the entire time. It was so awesome!

Let’s see, then we went back to our nicer hostel that night and slept so super well. It was smart to go to the hot springs after hiking that rigorously because then none of us really got sore. The next morning we checked out of our hostel and had some beef noodles for lunch then just wandered around until the other half of the group would meet up with us at 3. We ended up at KFC, for the 3^rd day in a row (this town only had fancy sit-down restaurants, small grocery stores, or KFC) and played the card game Scum for hours while snacking on chicken, fries, and ice cream. I didn’t eat anything though because my stomach started hurting after this… sort of candy… that I had bought. I only got 2 rounds of the game done before I had to lie down. Almost an hour later I was puking over the squatty. NOT FUN! I don’t know if it was the beef noodles, which everyone else ate, or the weird candy, which everyone also ate, but what ever it was it did NOT settle well in my stomach. Soon after the group arrived so we started our 5-hour bus ride home. I still wasn’t feeling normal so I sat next to a cold window and slept most the way. I woke up when the bus stopped at the Metro Station, walked off the bus, and puked again in the nearest garbage can. This Chinese man kept staring at me and I wanted to say, “Yup, Americans puke too!” Haha, but I didn’t. The good news is that I was fine for the rest of the night and didn’t get sick again after. Woohoo!

Oh, some tidbits I forgot to add in there:

In the nicer hostel, I once thought I heard my cat, Bappy, scratching his ear and it made me miss him so badly!

Second, because the food is interesting here, almost all the volunteers that I’m with buy chocolate and oreos whenever it’s available. This is the first time that I’m actually grateful that my body doesn’t allow me to eat chocolate because that would get super spendy and super unhealthy fast!

Last, when I was sick, all of the girls were super awesome to offer me all sorts of drinks and pills to help me feel better. I am so lucky to have this awesome group, I love all these girls!