don't travel on may 1 holiday

This morning we headed out to catch our tour bus to Yuntai Mountain. We decided at the last minute to check this place out but we soon realized after we arrived at the mountain that going over the May 1 holiday – the Chinese Labor Day – was not such a good idea. So many people…excruciatingly painful long lines… pushy people shoving their way through lines and onto buses… the spitting.. the trash thrown everywhere… the smells… not good.

Nonetheless, to say the mountain, the waterfalls, the pools of water were not beautiful would not be fair, but sometimes it’s hard to separate your general surroundings with the beauty in front of you. That said, I would love to go back there again when it is less crowded, although even that is hard to come by. So the estimate is that the number of people who visited that day because of the labor day holiday ranged from 70,000-100,000 people at a time. On a typical day… 50,000 would be the norm.

Despite being in line and moving an inch at a time at times, it was still a good hike, up and down stairs and all. It made me regret hitting up the spinning classes I took up the past couple days, although we all know I need all the exercise I can take at this point.

After a long day, we headed to our hotel. So, the tour operator we took is a local Chinese one, but supposedly one of the best ones in the area, something my parents find very important for safety and comfort reasons. I, on the other hand, do not prefer tour groups.. but deciding so late in the game to go gave us little choice as most hotels and trains were all sold it already. So after we get on the bus to head to dinner and the hotel, we’re told that all the hotels were sold out so we were staying a good couple hours away from yuntai mountain… that got my parents quite worried about the kind of hotel we’d be staying in. After dinner… btw I found some extra protein on a cauliflower stalk over dinner… a little caterpillar of some sort. With my dislike for bugs, I’m surprised I didn’t scream. Instead I kind of stared at it wondering if it was supposed to be part fo the dish, then came to my sense and wiped it off, and almost ate the cauliflower… then quickly changed my mind and placed on the tablemat. GROSS.. I think in America or a different part of China, I would have flipped, but I guess this was a bit more in context so I believe I handled it maturely. ☺

So we arrive at our hotel and my parents are not happy. I mean, it was not nice, but it was not horrible. I’ve been in worse… but it’s not quite my parents’ type of travel… i could see the disgust in their faces... my dad made a comment that made us laugh… “after being here, I don’t feel so bad about being in heze”. Heze is the town they live in right now. At the least, staying in this hotel in this town brought a bit more perspective to their situation.