Mike: My Day of Non-Leisure

It’s taken us a while to get this posted. I wrote it a few days ago, but the pictures were taking forever to upload. Here we go…finally.

Hanna made the right choice by not coming to hike Mt. Emei. The first sign was when I stepped on the bus at 6am, and staring back at me were blue plastic grocery bags that could be used to collect the fine signs of motion sickness. I had the pleasure of hearing 3 or 4 people use these bags. About halfway into the two-hour ride, we pulled over, and the whole bus evacuated…except for me, the dumb American. I didn’t realize some girl puked in the front of the bus. A huge hose was brought on, and the entire bus was flooded. Not quickly mopped. FLOODED. Good times.

After some confusion about where I was supposed to buy the tickets and some panic as the bus was leaving without me, I made it to the top. From there, it was still an eighty-minute hike up to the summit. Picture stairs that go on forever, and that was my hike. (Another sign that Hanna made the right decision. I could hear her complaining in my head…) There is a cable car that takes you up, and there are also guys whose sole job is to cart people’s fat asses up in lounge chairs:

Guess they had a long day:

Tired.

The views on the hike up were unlike anything I had ever seen before:

Sea of Clouds.

Witch's Cauldron.

Cottage. Not Cheese.

At the summit was a huge golden six-faced Buddha that’s about 160 feet tall. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it for some reason. (When I got back, Hanna made fun of how many pictures I took…hey, it’s as impressive in person as it looks…):

Awesome Self-Portrait. The Sun Was Bright, Friends. The Sun Was Bright.

Temple & Buddha.

Massive.

I spent an hour at the top and indulged in the only food I brought with me: Double Delight peanut butter & chocolate Oreos dipped in a jar of peanut butter. (I was taking cues from Hanna’s Snickers diet.)

I was also asked to have my picture taken twice. Yes, Chinese tourists love taking pictures with a Westerner. One kid was a bit scared of me, but his dad kept pushing him closer and closer. Hopefully I didn’t scar the kid for life.

On the hour hike back down to the bus stop, the weather went from warm and sunny to misty and chilly within about 10 minutes. You couldn’t see the path twenty feet in front of you:

Eerie.

Because I don’t list “professional hiker” on my résumé, I took the bus down to the next level, and there I enjoyed another three-hour hike. Luckily this time it was pretty much all downhill. Thank God. Hawaii, excuse my blasphemy, but I think this walk was even more beautiful than the road to Hana. Centuries-old stone carvings and wooden bridges lined the path at different points:

Spot the Tourist.

Double Bridge. No Rainbow.

The life-threatening highlight of the trip was the ecological monkey area. I had read that many macaques live in the area and have the tendency to attack tourists, steal their food, and generally cause monkey havoc. I was not prepared for what I was about to witness.

Advice I Heeded.

I thought it would just be a flat area where you could view the monkeys from afar. No, no, you enter a bridge-laden course where the monkeys have free reign:

Bridge of Death.

The monkeys hang out underneath the bridges, swoop up onto the handrails, and block the path. It’s a moment of fear: do I just stay here and hope the monkey will leave, or do I forge ahead and hope the monkey will stay still?

He'll Cut You.

Waiting to Pounce.

These guys aren’t small; they’re about 3 to 4 feet high. 3 to 4 feet of pure terror. A monkey jumped onto the neck of the guy in front of me and clung on for dear life. Finally a park employee with a huge bamboo stick strolled over, and the monkey jumped off. The same attack by the same monkey happened three minutes later. I wanted to take pictures or video, but I was too busy wondering if I might be clawed to death on a Chinese mountain.

She Was All Happy and Peace Signy One Minute...But She Was Screaming in Agony the Next.

I was gone from about 6am to 4pm and saw it all: huge streams that trickled into dry riverbeds, a sea of clouds that had no end, sheer cliffs that people posed a little too close to, random pagodas and temples that provided moments of calmness from the tourist masses, and a lot of people puking on a bumpy, windy bus ride.