Long story, no shortcuts

 Hangzhou 19. April

 trip Shanghai- Hangzhou-HuangShan

I have caught the sniffles, so I snooze in to give my immune system some rest. Wayne & Jeannine are up at the crack of dawn to see some early morning lake light, but they get stuck watching some people do Tai Chi.
 

  At lunchtime we finally depart to see the Lingyin temple. We need to catch the overland bus to HuangShan City later, so we are on a bit of a tight schedule. Instead of the envisaged quick temple visit, we land at the foot of a mountain. Turns out the whole valley is the sight, with several temples, hills, streams – and a cable way.

We admire beautiful rock carvings of Buddhist sculptures ('many dating from the 10^th century') and get very sidetracked going up a mountain path which leads nowhere in particular. When our time is up we finally find Lingyin temple. We don't want to miss out on the 20m big Buddha and the temple, so we hurry through the halls, glad we did it, as it is all very striking and utterly unphotographable. 

two happy bellies

And then I loose our map. Which is a problem because without it we don't know how to get to the overland bus station. For half an hour we run around like headless chickens trying to figure out how to get to 'West Station'. There are no taxis and no-one speaks English. The information lady – after much phrasebook to and fro– gives us two numbers which could mean anything. Is it the bus line(s) we are meant to be taking? We don't have the time to be on the wrong (local) bus otherwise we will miss our overlander. On the verge of a nervous breakdown we meet our Bodhisattva. He speaks English and is busy sorting out some other Westerner's bicycle deposit problem. Having rented bikes in Hangzhou we know this can be a lengthy issue. Jeannine & I hover like vultures to get a word in for help with our much tighter deadline problem. We manage to shove aside the inconvenient Europeans (?) and selfishly prod 'Englishman' to translate to the information desk lady. He comes back with the two numbers we already have and enlightens us that these are the two busses we need to take, and as our life-saver, he pens a mantra for us saying 'West Station' in Mandarin. Unlike subway station and road names, bus station names are not printed in Latin script, so taking the bus becomes a game of 'spot the difference': Choose a distinctive Chinese character, see if you can find it on the list, then compare the characters before and after to your note and, bingo, you can count the number of stops before you have to get off.

All goes well till we have changed to the packed second bus which doesn't have a list of stops and moves in a time warp. Being able to stick our Mandarin note under peoples' noses we figure out that West Station is the terminus. Of a very long line. When we reach the overland bus stop, it's 2 minutes to departure, we don't have tickets, have no clue where we need to go, our bladders are bursting and we are starved. Time to give in, buy tickets for a later bus which will arrive in HuangShan City at night and have a pit stop. 

don't worry, be happy now

  We have some surprisingly nice fast food padkos and a relaxed bus journey.

Made it! On the bus to Tunxi

 In HuangShan City (also called 'Tunxi') the bus stops in the middle of nowhere to allow the taxi drivers to make some money taking passengers to the city centre. When I follow phrasebook etiquette and ask a driver to use the meter, he just laughs in my face, incredulously repeating my request to his colleagues. Fortunately Wayne says he has 'face' to spare and agrees to the asking price without a further humiliating haggle.

At the Huangshan Koala International Youth Hostel we get a fabulously friendly welcome, great food, superb rooms and a cold beer. They also sort out our accommodation and bus needs for the next day and we lean back, relax and play a game of Jenga before turning in for a short night.