China Dispatch - Emei Shan and the eclipse

Surprisingly we all got up on time and made it to our bus in time for the two hour ride up the mountain at 5:30 am. It was raining really hard and the kamikaze bus driver was on a mission to get us up that mountain with no delays. The break-neck speed at which he was taking the very sharp mountain passes was making many people on the bus very queasy. I was very happy that it was completely dark outside so I couldn't see the certain death that was awaiting us if we took a turn too quickly.

I wish this picture was staged for effect, but sadly, this is what Michael and I actually looked like during the ride:

We finally got off the bus and the cool, drizzly mountain air was very refreshing so we thought the worst of the morning was over. That was until we got in line to get the tickets for the gondola to take us to the summit of the mountain. Remember how I told you in the last entry that the Chinese don't really do lines... Yeah. This was the most insane experience of pushing and shoving and disorder I have ever experienced. A mass of people clamoring to get to the front, it didn't matter who was there first, inevitably some small Chinese person would appear in front of you and take your spot. We finally got our tickets and then had to go through the same madness to get into the line for the actual gondola. This mass of people was much, much larger but luckily the crowd eventually gave way to metal barriers that pretty much forced everyone into single-file lines. But for some reason the woman behind us wouldn't stop shoving and pushing up against mine and Deana's backs even though it was clear we couldn't move and weren't going anywhere. So Deana just kept leaning back on her.

While the lady never got the hint, Deana felt much better about the situation:

It was a wee bit cramped in the gondola: We finally made it to the summit and we were very excited to see this:
There is a huge Buddhist temple, statues, a monastery and a nunnery at the summit. It was a beautiful sight but everything was so shrouded in fog that our chances of seeing the eclipse was not looking too good. We had about 45 minutes to wander around before the eclipse was supposed to start so this is what we saw:
We could tell when the eclipse started happening because it started getting dark, but alas, we could not see the sun.
We were pretty bummed out:
But we all agreed that it was a very cool location and we were happy just to be there. After the eclipse we made our way back down the summit to wait in line to get tickets, and then to wait in line to get onto the gondola once again. This line was not any better. But while we were waiting the fog started to lift and the sun came out so we pretended that we were watching the eclipse. We were also able to finally see the top of the gold statue now that the fog had lifted: On our walk back to the gondola we encountered the monkeys:
Apparently the monkeys have learned that people will give them food, so if they even so much as smell food on you they will accost you to find it. We saw many stupid people actually holding out food for them and then get attacked.

This guy was taking swipes at people as they passed: These guys were just straight up attacking people: We took the gondola back down and then took a bus about halfway down the mountain to another gondola that took us to another monastery and temple.

There were statues of different Buddhas everywhere:
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Michael is actually a Buddha: We decided to walk the rest the way down the mountain. It was a lot of steep steps and the cool, crisp morning air was long gone by now. But the scenery was breathtaking and totally worth it! Once we made it down the mountain completely exhausted we loaded back into our car for the long ride back to Chengdu. Once back in town we immediately went to get the famous Sichuan hot pot. We had no idea how it worked or what to order so we had our guide order us the mild hot pot with various accoutrement before he left us for the evening. Here is what we got: It all gets thrown into a sizzling pot of hot peppers: It was all very delicious, but that Sh!t was NOT mild! Next up... We go to Lhasa, Tibet!