We caught a 8am bus to Yellow Mountain (Huang Shan, 黃山) and slept most of the way until we arrived around noon. Once we got there the person in charge of the bus told everyone the information they would need to book a hotel there if they didn't already have one and how to get a bus the next day to wherever they were heading to. There was a Spanish couple behind us who didn't speak any Chinese and didn't have a hotel booked. Charlotte spent the next hour once we arrived helping translate between the bus operator and the Spanish couple making sure they had a place to stay and got a rate similar to what we booked online as well as getting them bus tickets to their next location.
Gondola up the mountain
After getting some food to eat at the top (we had heard many times how expensive things are at the top), we headed to the gondola. We bought our park tickets which were expensive (~$34 each), but we got student tickets so it was halfprice. When we got to the turnstile for the gondola, the ticket collector asked again to see our student IDs, but refused us admission because the student IDs didnt have an expiration date on them, so we had to go back and pay full price. The gondola took about 10-15 minutes to reach the top which was consumed in fog. Everywhere we looked we could just see peaks of mountains coming out of the fog.
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Riding up the gondola
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Top of the mountain covered in fog
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Very foggy
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Charlotte under some rocks
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Charlotte at the edge of a cliff
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There were a lot of pine trees coming out of the rocks
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The people before us asked the workers why they needed to water the trees, they responded that its not water its drugs. Then asked if it was safe to leave that way, they responded that they do it almost every day and they are still alive!
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This rock is called "Monkey looking over a sea of clouds"
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Charlotte with the monkey in the background
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Tons of these flies were around
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People would put their dreams and names on locks, lock them and throw the key over the cliff
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Sunset
Hotel
We decided to stay at the top of the mountain since we had heard the sunrise was an amazing site from the mountain top. The hotel was listed as a 4-star hotel and even Deng Xiaopeng(鄧小平) stayed there, but then we looked at reviews, every review told of horrid conditions, but even though it would be our most expensive hotel in China, almost $100, it was still the cheapest and supposedly the best hotel at the top of the mountain. When we got there the lobby was ok and they said we got upgraded to a $200 a night online price which is $500/night front-desk price room because ours was under renovations. The rooms walls were covered in dead bugs and the carpet had lots of mildew on it outside the bathroom, but only needing a place to sleep we were fine. Other people prefer to rent tents for $30 and camp on the lawn in front of the building. Or just play basketball all night.
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Our hotel
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Our "4-star" hotel floor
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The rest of the room
Expensive food
We brought our own food up because we were warned so much about how expensive things were at the top, but then saw one restaurant and decided to test how expensive it was. We got a leg of fried chicken, a chinese tamale and a dim sum bun, for about $3. I guess Chinese people have a different idea of expensive than we do.
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