nice places i visited.

Huashan

I reckoned this as one of the best places in China that i've toured thus far.. Although it was the longest and most tiresome climb, the cooling weather and picturesque views were more than enough to offset them.

We met some really interesting and somehow, overly enthusiastic locals on our way to huashan and all of us decided to conquear the mountain as a team. Before that, cj planned on taking the cable ride up, but he was conviced by the rest that conquering by foot is more meaningful. And so we did.

Hee i am kind of boliao. my main motive to climb the mountain was to do what every boliao people would do when they visit huashan. =X Theres this belief that if you get a pad lock and engrave your partner's and your name on it, lock it onto the metal chain on the mountain and throw the keys down the cliff, then yar, something good will happen or whatever.
So i bought it! anyways its just for fun's sake la huh.


Theres alot of such metal chains on the mountain and its packed with pad locks!! interesting ehs.










and thats mine~








on the long way up, the views all around were superb! I am glad there were interesting people with us orelse the climb would be a more torturous one. anyways it took us abt 4 hours to get to where the cable car would have taken us to..








our new found frens, and a weird super tall guy in the group =X








do we look like we are infront of a painting? =)








Theres 5 peaks on the mountain and this is the lowest one. and thats the only one that we managed to get to. Its really sad, despite setting off from the hostel at 7, it wasnt enough to finish the mountain. By the time we reached this peak we only had less than 2 hours to get to the 4 other NICER peaks. So spending a nite on the mountain is the correct way to go.. watch the sunrise the next day, get to the different peaks and decend in the late morning. something like that.. =(





the higest point we went to before we had to make a uturn.











despite not attaining our goals, we were still happie at the end of it! hee because we knew we were heading to the muslim quarter for the yummilicous food .. kekes









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Luoyang

We were off to luoyang the very next day. Its a place with alot of noodles and nothing much to eat. but its not as bad and dirty as what some blogs reflected.



This is the hostel that we stayed in hostel. Not authentic anymore but relatively cheap and looks quite like a hotel instead.







This is our room. Doesnt it look like a hotel? With aircon, TV and attached bathroom. its 100rmb per room per nite. fair enough, and good for my aching legs from huashan .







Longmen grottos


A place with alot of niches and buddha statues . IF i aint wrong, the work started in the ming dynasty or something. Pretty cool isnt it, i wonder how the people in the past could do it without using sophisticated machineries that we have today.








This is the budhha with the Victory pose. can you see it?










I rem the guide was saying theres thousands of niches there and many many more buddha statues. But most of the statues were headless because of .. some head thieve or something.







This is the largest buddha statue there~! and luckily the head wasnt stolen. =)







And i love this the most amongst the rest! =) freaking hideous~ love it.








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Jingshanlin - Simatai greatwall

Back in Beijing, we went to quite a few places and this is one of them- the greatwall. Unlike the one that dorothy and i went to the previous time, cj and i trekked the wilder section of the greatwall. It is mostly unrestored, pretty dilapidated, but absolutely breath-taking.

You can see from the above pictures that theres absolutely no one on the wall! The wall almost belonged to us that day, except for some angmohs and irritating touts on the way.

we were mostly walking on such broken tiles

Broken walls

Broken watch tower

had to hold on to my cap because of the
super strong wind. theres totally no walls here..

doh, the wall-less greatwall.

Dispite some HUGE hiccups we had on our way there, and till now i am still having phobia on MIYUN bus station, this part of greatwall is really worth going. thumbs up~