01-04-2012, 04:02 PM
Much as I hate to do it, I have to reference a Steinbeck work. It was the best laid plans of mice and men. It’s like I’m working with Lucy Jr. Only after she pulls the football away from my kick, she punches me in the head.
Louyang is the next big town over from Dengfeng. According to the map, it’s about thirty five miles away. Our destination was the Longmen Grottos which are located 6 miles before you get to Louyang. The plan as such was to take the Louyang bus from Dengfeng and the driver would let us off before we got to Louyang. We then would take a taxi from that nebulous point to the Grotto. This was according to Sal’s singing sensation and hostel owner.
In a strange twist, Sal and company showed up in the taxi at my hotel right on time. I piled into the front seat and we drove to the bus station. It was still quite dark as the sun doesn’t really start heating up in these parts until around 7:30. At the station, Patty bought us a breakfast of raw potato strings wrapped in a flour tortilla. I was originally skeptical of the dish, but it turned out to be quite tasty. I think there might have been some cheese in the middle which kicked it up a little.
In my travels, I usually find out when my particular mode of travel is leaving and show up at the appropriate time. For this trip, I keep getting taken to bus stations with no idea of when buses will be leaving. The plan being the buses are always leaving why not just show up and wait.
When I am on a vacation, I would rather spend my time doing things. I’m probably not going to come back this way again. I might, but just in case I don’t, let’s fill every moment with seeing new things and acquiring new experiences that the country has to offer. Let’s not plan poorly and waste our time sitting, hanging around in some dirty municipal bus facility surrounded by smokers.
The bus left at seven. I tried to get more details about the plan from Sal. I asked him to talk to our driver about when the buses returned from our drop off point. I was told they run all the time and not to worry. I was also told that he hadn’t really figured out how we were going to get back from Longmen.
What?
The great thing about the buses I’ve noticed,in China they seem to stop at random spots for people. We’ll be cruising down the freeway and suddenly we’ll pull over in the middle of a long stretch of nothing to pick somebody up. How did the driver know this person needed a lift?
We also did something I have never seen a bus do in the middle of a journey. We stopped to get gas. I thought we were pulling over to get another stranger when I saw the filling station coming up and the driver started slowing down. But no, he pulled up to the pumps and started topping off the tanks.
This was probably the first really clear day I have had on the journey. And with the skies relatively haze free, I got to see things that had been hiding in the fog during my seven day stay in Dengfeng. For instance there is a giant mountain at the edge of town. It gives a whole new dimension to the town. It’s one of those mountains that rises abruptly from the plane rather than sloping up gradually like the Sierras. I knew there was a holy mountain around from all my reading. But all the fog and haze made me forget that we were supposed to be right next to Songshan. The clear skies finally gave me a view of it.
I was watching the mile markers on the freeway so I could calculate where we should approximately get off the bus. I didn’t want us miss it, extend our trip and go all the way to Louyang.
Signs for the Longmen Grotto Service Area started showing up on the freeway signs. Lot’s of signs in China that I’ve seen have English and Chinese on them by. I was excited to see the 500 meter marker. I was less than excited to see the driver go right past the Longmen Grotto service area. Of all the possible place for us to stop, I would have picked that one.
The area we drove through became more and more populated. Highrises were visible on either side of the freeway. There was a lot of construction going on.
The driver yelled out something that had the words Longmen in it. I looked around, there were shops and building everywhere. No sign of UNESCO world heritage site. The bus stopped on a busy street on the outskirts of Louyang. If there were lanes on this street, there would have been six. The Chinese don’t really understand the concept of lanes, though.
This was the point where we were supposed to pick up the taxi to take us to our destination. A green taxi appeared and we got in. The driver made a u-turn through all the traffic to get us going in the opposite direction. A short ride later, we were at the entrance to the pedestrian walk way leading to the park. This way there plenty of shops for us to browse before actually got to the ticket booth.
Why Longmen? I was searching the internet for things to do and this came up. It was a cliff facing the Yi river that had hundreds, if not thousands of Buddha’s carved into the rocks. It could arguably be described as the world’s largest altar. The UN thought enough of it to put it under it’s protection.
We were almost there. My camera trigger finger was itching to go work. But first the girls needed something to snack on. It’s odd that I, the overweight one, never wants to stop for food and the little people are constantly questing for snacks.
At the ticket booth, Sal tried to lay out the plans for the day’s events. I told him to go on without me as I was going to be moving really slow taking pictures. I brought up the fact it took me two hours to get from the ticket booth to the front gate at the Shaolin temple. God knows how long it was going to take me to get through a picture taking cornucopia of this magnitude. We planned to meet back here at the start at 1pm.
As I strolled, I did my Nei Hao and picture taking routine with the local men. If I set up the tripod, I usually had someone come to take their picture with me. It is all very strange.
The first section of carvings I came to was pretty stunning. Imagine a fifty foot cliff face with hundreds of openings carved in it. The holes can be anywhere from a one foot across to three or four feet across. In each and every opening, there is a carving of Buddha. There are also statues on either side of the Buddha. In the bigger caves, you get panels of hundreds of Buddhas. They are every where. On the rock face itself are more carved representations.
Stairs led up to a much bigger opening. Here in a cave twelve feet tall was a Giant Buddha statue. Next to him, were his attendants. Age had done it’s work eroding the features, but it was pretty impressive. On the way back down, were more smaller caves. More Buddhas.
I stopped and looked at some information stands. This first section was the small section. It was still about 400 feet long. If I were running the place, the one thing I would invest in would be a bunch of do not touch signs. Whenever the railings allowed people to get right up to the carvings, people had to reach out and touch the stones. Those carving were going to be gone in no time.
Also in this first group were three pretty big caves. In each one was different aspect of the Buddha with different hand positions. Patty and Natasha were thrilled to find one of the Buddha’s making the peace sign. Pictures were taken.
It’s good I saw this section first. If I had seen this section last, it would have gotten a yawn. Think of it as an appetizer for the upcoming great meal.
It seems to me if you want to see something in China, be prepared to climb steep steps. The better the object for viewing, the steeper the steps. And more of them. The Chinese love steps. I just wish they knew theory about how to build them.
The stairs to the next section were steep and plentiful. From the bottom, you could just see the head of the Buddha peaking out. It had to be huge.
As is my wont, I made my slow laborious climb up the stairs. People took pictures of me, with me. The view at the top of the stairs was amazing. The sun still shone on half of the cave. The cave opening before me was three sides of a rectangle. The longest side was 80 feet across. The two sides were probably forty feet long. In the center of the long side sat the Giant Buddha. And I mean giant. At least sixty feet tall. And unlike many of the other statues, it still had plenty of detail. It was the most amazing thing.
To the left and the right, were more giant statues. The ones on the left in the shadow, didn’t have quite the detail as the main Buddha. Some appeared to have been broken. Or maybe mother nature had done her work. The ones to the right had plenty of detail. Once again, amazing. I took a lot of pictures. This might be he day when I took the most pictures.
Now the statues were in a bit of a recess. Shadows were starting to creep across the Buddha as the sun dipped behind the cliff edge. The thing about taking pictures of something that big, you kind of need to be far away to take a picture of the whole thing.
The way the Longmen park is set up is that there are bridges on either end of the park. The bridges cross the Yi river and on the other side are even more but less spectacular caves.
I decided to race across the bridge to take pictures of the Buddha before it was completely in shadow. I didn’t skimp on my picture taking on the way over but I did make my way quickly.
My haste was rewarded. The sun still shone on all the right spots. I climbed up to to a little platform in order to take an encompassing picture of Longmen. And another ‘Got Qi’ picture.
The caves on this side of the river didn’t allow picture taking, at least that is what the sign said. Plus, from the road, I could see plenty of more climbing. I decided to pass.
On this side of the river, there was a temple nestled high up on the cliffs that I had been photographing the entire day as the sun started to shine on it more and more. Did you catch the two words high and cliffs?
I climbed. I bought water at the top from a strategically based vendor lying in wait just beyond the ticket entrance.
This aerie was supposed to be a pretty famous site. The only empress of china used to hold court here. Famous poets had retreated here to write their poems. One of the building was used by the Koumintang to plan the destruction of the communists back in 1938. But most of it had been rebuilt. It looked great but you could tell all the building were relatively new. It was more like a recreation than an actual historic building. It did offer great views of the grottos across the river.
The journey through Longmen ended in a park which contained the tomb of a famous poet called Bai Lon(?) There were also plenty of Steles with poems on them. In the spring, when all the flowers were in bloom, this park would be something to see.
This ends the sweet portion of the day. Let us now return to the bitter portion of our journey.
Just before getting to the Bai Lon park, I had caught up to the group. There was no longer any need to meet back at the ticket booth as per original plan. There were taxis right here that could take us to the next point in our journey. What that point was I was still pretty hazy about.
But I could read a map and I could recognize landmarks. I could see the bridge we had passed over as we drove by the Longmen Service area. It seemed we could take the taxi to that service area and maybe get our bus back to Dengfeng without having to go back to the suburbs of Louyang. But to do that would have taken a bit of planning and some forethought.
At some point in the Bai Lon park, Natasha had become separated from the group. We thought she was behind us in the park. We made our way to the gate and waited for to catch up. As I sat, I listened to the ticket booth welcome people in it’s mechanical voice every time a ticket was scanned.
We waited about twenty minutes. Sal went back into the park to look for Natasha. He didn’t find her. We were all certain she was still in the park. A half hour went by.
Natasha had gone to our designated meeting place. The meeting place to go to if we were separated. She finally came back across the bridge to us to find out why we hadn’t gone to the meeting place as well. Anger. Grrr.
I floated my idea of taking the taxi to the service area. Sal countered there wouldn’t be any buses there and it would be best to go to the bus station, the bus station in Louyang.
The drive in the taxi took us about forty five minutes to get to the bus station. Half way through the journey, we passed the spot where our bus had dropped us in the morning. The street we traversed had a massive construction project occurring on both sides of the road behind this blue fence. Buildings were being torn down. The street pavement was gone, dirt left in it’s place. Traffic was atrocious as pedestrians and cyclists tried to cross in front of us.
Traffic in China is one giant rolling game of chicken, played by pedestrians, motorcycles and cars. Everyone plays. If you want to cross the street, you step out. If you have the balls, you just walk in front of the cars. The cars don’t seem very intent on stopping. You pass into oncoming traffic despite the density of traffic. One of the drivers main weapons is the horn. It is sounded to tell everyone else you are coming and they need to get out of the way.
Along this street to the bus station was the worst I had seen it. We came to one intersection, using the term loosely, where it was just everybody struggling to get through. We were there for ten minutes as people jockeyed for openings to get by, At one point a vendor push a rolling tray covered with confectionary bread showed he had the biggest balls. Looking neither left or right, he pushed right in front of the taxi. He didn’t stop for anything.
The thought keeps occurring to me is how could you ever negotiate this while being drunk.
The driver dropped us across the street from the downtown Louyang bus station. Going ten miles in the opposite direction from Dengfeng hadn’t done my disposition any good.
Sal asked if we should go get some food before getting on the bus. I suggested we find out when the buses left and base our dining plans on that. I was told the Dengfeng buses left from this particular station every twenty minutes.
We agreed to walk a block to see if we could find a McDonalds. For a man who craves all things Chinese and waxes rhapsodic over their cuisine, Sal sure needs to get to McDonalds a lot.
Across the street from the bus station was the train station. And in the train station was a KFC. That was fine by me. Sal’s memories of a nearby McDonalds he remembered from a previous trip started to surface. It was supposed to be only a block or two away. I asked him what if he remembered wrong? Patty assured me Sal knows these things.
We went to KFC. There was a delay as Natasha navigated the picture menu presented to us at the counter. It didn’t seem like it should take that long to point to what you wanted and pay your money. I ordered first while she looked. I was almost done eating by the time she decided what to order.
It just so happens, there was another bus station on this end of the train station, too. We just had to walk a few yards to get to it rather than going back the block and crossing the street to the other bus station.
Sal went and got us tickets. Our bus would be leaving in a little over an hour. I thought you said the buses left every twenty minutes? Those were the buses at the other bus station. Since we had time to kill, I suggested he should run up the block to find his McDonalds since he hadn’t really eaten anything at the KFC. He said the blocks were too long and plus it might not be there anymore.
I need to start bringing ready material with me on theses jaunts. The rest of the group whipped out their phones and started playing games. I spent the time reviewing pictures on my camera.
We went out to our bus at ten to four. The bus had already been taking on passengers unbeknownst to us so it was quite full when we got on. I go to sit next to a nice Chinese man. I had to carry my camera bag on my lap the entire way as it didn’t fit in the over head. It only took about ten minutes for my legs to cramp up.
The drive banality was lessened somewhat by the movie playing on the TV. I had made it a point to sit up front to be closer to the screen. On the way out, they had shown a movie with English subtitles. We sat too far in the back to read any of it.
The movie on the journey back to Dengfeng was not subtitled in English, but it had enough action that I enjoyed it anyway.
The bus made it’s way back through the streets the taxi had driven. Traffic was still insane. I used my camera to try and capture some of the traffic on video. After about a half hour from the bus stop, we made the turn where our bus had dropped us in the morning. Finally, we made it to the freeway. I waved as we passed the Longmen Grotto Service Area.The ride back to Dengfeng took almost two hours from Louyang.
We didn’t have to stop for gas on the return.
Exhausted in my hotel room, I was gladdened somewhat to take some pictures of Songshan mountain that was still visible in the darkening sky.
Louyang is the next big town over from Dengfeng. According to the map, it’s about thirty five miles away. Our destination was the Longmen Grottos which are located 6 miles before you get to Louyang. The plan as such was to take the Louyang bus from Dengfeng and the driver would let us off before we got to Louyang. We then would take a taxi from that nebulous point to the Grotto. This was according to Sal’s singing sensation and hostel owner.
In a strange twist, Sal and company showed up in the taxi at my hotel right on time. I piled into the front seat and we drove to the bus station. It was still quite dark as the sun doesn’t really start heating up in these parts until around 7:30. At the station, Patty bought us a breakfast of raw potato strings wrapped in a flour tortilla. I was originally skeptical of the dish, but it turned out to be quite tasty. I think there might have been some cheese in the middle which kicked it up a little.
In my travels, I usually find out when my particular mode of travel is leaving and show up at the appropriate time. For this trip, I keep getting taken to bus stations with no idea of when buses will be leaving. The plan being the buses are always leaving why not just show up and wait.
When I am on a vacation, I would rather spend my time doing things. I’m probably not going to come back this way again. I might, but just in case I don’t, let’s fill every moment with seeing new things and acquiring new experiences that the country has to offer. Let’s not plan poorly and waste our time sitting, hanging around in some dirty municipal bus facility surrounded by smokers.
The bus left at seven. I tried to get more details about the plan from Sal. I asked him to talk to our driver about when the buses returned from our drop off point. I was told they run all the time and not to worry. I was also told that he hadn’t really figured out how we were going to get back from Longmen.
What?
The great thing about the buses I’ve noticed,in China they seem to stop at random spots for people. We’ll be cruising down the freeway and suddenly we’ll pull over in the middle of a long stretch of nothing to pick somebody up. How did the driver know this person needed a lift?
We also did something I have never seen a bus do in the middle of a journey. We stopped to get gas. I thought we were pulling over to get another stranger when I saw the filling station coming up and the driver started slowing down. But no, he pulled up to the pumps and started topping off the tanks.
This was probably the first really clear day I have had on the journey. And with the skies relatively haze free, I got to see things that had been hiding in the fog during my seven day stay in Dengfeng. For instance there is a giant mountain at the edge of town. It gives a whole new dimension to the town. It’s one of those mountains that rises abruptly from the plane rather than sloping up gradually like the Sierras. I knew there was a holy mountain around from all my reading. But all the fog and haze made me forget that we were supposed to be right next to Songshan. The clear skies finally gave me a view of it.
I was watching the mile markers on the freeway so I could calculate where we should approximately get off the bus. I didn’t want us miss it, extend our trip and go all the way to Louyang.
Signs for the Longmen Grotto Service Area started showing up on the freeway signs. Lot’s of signs in China that I’ve seen have English and Chinese on them by. I was excited to see the 500 meter marker. I was less than excited to see the driver go right past the Longmen Grotto service area. Of all the possible place for us to stop, I would have picked that one.
The area we drove through became more and more populated. Highrises were visible on either side of the freeway. There was a lot of construction going on.
The driver yelled out something that had the words Longmen in it. I looked around, there were shops and building everywhere. No sign of UNESCO world heritage site. The bus stopped on a busy street on the outskirts of Louyang. If there were lanes on this street, there would have been six. The Chinese don’t really understand the concept of lanes, though.
This was the point where we were supposed to pick up the taxi to take us to our destination. A green taxi appeared and we got in. The driver made a u-turn through all the traffic to get us going in the opposite direction. A short ride later, we were at the entrance to the pedestrian walk way leading to the park. This way there plenty of shops for us to browse before actually got to the ticket booth.
Why Longmen? I was searching the internet for things to do and this came up. It was a cliff facing the Yi river that had hundreds, if not thousands of Buddha’s carved into the rocks. It could arguably be described as the world’s largest altar. The UN thought enough of it to put it under it’s protection.
We were almost there. My camera trigger finger was itching to go work. But first the girls needed something to snack on. It’s odd that I, the overweight one, never wants to stop for food and the little people are constantly questing for snacks.
At the ticket booth, Sal tried to lay out the plans for the day’s events. I told him to go on without me as I was going to be moving really slow taking pictures. I brought up the fact it took me two hours to get from the ticket booth to the front gate at the Shaolin temple. God knows how long it was going to take me to get through a picture taking cornucopia of this magnitude. We planned to meet back here at the start at 1pm.
As I strolled, I did my Nei Hao and picture taking routine with the local men. If I set up the tripod, I usually had someone come to take their picture with me. It is all very strange.
The first section of carvings I came to was pretty stunning. Imagine a fifty foot cliff face with hundreds of openings carved in it. The holes can be anywhere from a one foot across to three or four feet across. In each and every opening, there is a carving of Buddha. There are also statues on either side of the Buddha. In the bigger caves, you get panels of hundreds of Buddhas. They are every where. On the rock face itself are more carved representations.
Stairs led up to a much bigger opening. Here in a cave twelve feet tall was a Giant Buddha statue. Next to him, were his attendants. Age had done it’s work eroding the features, but it was pretty impressive. On the way back down, were more smaller caves. More Buddhas.
I stopped and looked at some information stands. This first section was the small section. It was still about 400 feet long. If I were running the place, the one thing I would invest in would be a bunch of do not touch signs. Whenever the railings allowed people to get right up to the carvings, people had to reach out and touch the stones. Those carving were going to be gone in no time.
Also in this first group were three pretty big caves. In each one was different aspect of the Buddha with different hand positions. Patty and Natasha were thrilled to find one of the Buddha’s making the peace sign. Pictures were taken.
It’s good I saw this section first. If I had seen this section last, it would have gotten a yawn. Think of it as an appetizer for the upcoming great meal.
It seems to me if you want to see something in China, be prepared to climb steep steps. The better the object for viewing, the steeper the steps. And more of them. The Chinese love steps. I just wish they knew theory about how to build them.
The stairs to the next section were steep and plentiful. From the bottom, you could just see the head of the Buddha peaking out. It had to be huge.
As is my wont, I made my slow laborious climb up the stairs. People took pictures of me, with me. The view at the top of the stairs was amazing. The sun still shone on half of the cave. The cave opening before me was three sides of a rectangle. The longest side was 80 feet across. The two sides were probably forty feet long. In the center of the long side sat the Giant Buddha. And I mean giant. At least sixty feet tall. And unlike many of the other statues, it still had plenty of detail. It was the most amazing thing.
To the left and the right, were more giant statues. The ones on the left in the shadow, didn’t have quite the detail as the main Buddha. Some appeared to have been broken. Or maybe mother nature had done her work. The ones to the right had plenty of detail. Once again, amazing. I took a lot of pictures. This might be he day when I took the most pictures.
Now the statues were in a bit of a recess. Shadows were starting to creep across the Buddha as the sun dipped behind the cliff edge. The thing about taking pictures of something that big, you kind of need to be far away to take a picture of the whole thing.
The way the Longmen park is set up is that there are bridges on either end of the park. The bridges cross the Yi river and on the other side are even more but less spectacular caves.
I decided to race across the bridge to take pictures of the Buddha before it was completely in shadow. I didn’t skimp on my picture taking on the way over but I did make my way quickly.
My haste was rewarded. The sun still shone on all the right spots. I climbed up to to a little platform in order to take an encompassing picture of Longmen. And another ‘Got Qi’ picture.
The caves on this side of the river didn’t allow picture taking, at least that is what the sign said. Plus, from the road, I could see plenty of more climbing. I decided to pass.
On this side of the river, there was a temple nestled high up on the cliffs that I had been photographing the entire day as the sun started to shine on it more and more. Did you catch the two words high and cliffs?
I climbed. I bought water at the top from a strategically based vendor lying in wait just beyond the ticket entrance.
This aerie was supposed to be a pretty famous site. The only empress of china used to hold court here. Famous poets had retreated here to write their poems. One of the building was used by the Koumintang to plan the destruction of the communists back in 1938. But most of it had been rebuilt. It looked great but you could tell all the building were relatively new. It was more like a recreation than an actual historic building. It did offer great views of the grottos across the river.
The journey through Longmen ended in a park which contained the tomb of a famous poet called Bai Lon(?) There were also plenty of Steles with poems on them. In the spring, when all the flowers were in bloom, this park would be something to see.
This ends the sweet portion of the day. Let us now return to the bitter portion of our journey.
Just before getting to the Bai Lon park, I had caught up to the group. There was no longer any need to meet back at the ticket booth as per original plan. There were taxis right here that could take us to the next point in our journey. What that point was I was still pretty hazy about.
But I could read a map and I could recognize landmarks. I could see the bridge we had passed over as we drove by the Longmen Service area. It seemed we could take the taxi to that service area and maybe get our bus back to Dengfeng without having to go back to the suburbs of Louyang. But to do that would have taken a bit of planning and some forethought.
At some point in the Bai Lon park, Natasha had become separated from the group. We thought she was behind us in the park. We made our way to the gate and waited for to catch up. As I sat, I listened to the ticket booth welcome people in it’s mechanical voice every time a ticket was scanned.
We waited about twenty minutes. Sal went back into the park to look for Natasha. He didn’t find her. We were all certain she was still in the park. A half hour went by.
Natasha had gone to our designated meeting place. The meeting place to go to if we were separated. She finally came back across the bridge to us to find out why we hadn’t gone to the meeting place as well. Anger. Grrr.
I floated my idea of taking the taxi to the service area. Sal countered there wouldn’t be any buses there and it would be best to go to the bus station, the bus station in Louyang.
The drive in the taxi took us about forty five minutes to get to the bus station. Half way through the journey, we passed the spot where our bus had dropped us in the morning. The street we traversed had a massive construction project occurring on both sides of the road behind this blue fence. Buildings were being torn down. The street pavement was gone, dirt left in it’s place. Traffic was atrocious as pedestrians and cyclists tried to cross in front of us.
Traffic in China is one giant rolling game of chicken, played by pedestrians, motorcycles and cars. Everyone plays. If you want to cross the street, you step out. If you have the balls, you just walk in front of the cars. The cars don’t seem very intent on stopping. You pass into oncoming traffic despite the density of traffic. One of the drivers main weapons is the horn. It is sounded to tell everyone else you are coming and they need to get out of the way.
Along this street to the bus station was the worst I had seen it. We came to one intersection, using the term loosely, where it was just everybody struggling to get through. We were there for ten minutes as people jockeyed for openings to get by, At one point a vendor push a rolling tray covered with confectionary bread showed he had the biggest balls. Looking neither left or right, he pushed right in front of the taxi. He didn’t stop for anything.
The thought keeps occurring to me is how could you ever negotiate this while being drunk.
The driver dropped us across the street from the downtown Louyang bus station. Going ten miles in the opposite direction from Dengfeng hadn’t done my disposition any good.
Sal asked if we should go get some food before getting on the bus. I suggested we find out when the buses left and base our dining plans on that. I was told the Dengfeng buses left from this particular station every twenty minutes.
We agreed to walk a block to see if we could find a McDonalds. For a man who craves all things Chinese and waxes rhapsodic over their cuisine, Sal sure needs to get to McDonalds a lot.
Across the street from the bus station was the train station. And in the train station was a KFC. That was fine by me. Sal’s memories of a nearby McDonalds he remembered from a previous trip started to surface. It was supposed to be only a block or two away. I asked him what if he remembered wrong? Patty assured me Sal knows these things.
We went to KFC. There was a delay as Natasha navigated the picture menu presented to us at the counter. It didn’t seem like it should take that long to point to what you wanted and pay your money. I ordered first while she looked. I was almost done eating by the time she decided what to order.
It just so happens, there was another bus station on this end of the train station, too. We just had to walk a few yards to get to it rather than going back the block and crossing the street to the other bus station.
Sal went and got us tickets. Our bus would be leaving in a little over an hour. I thought you said the buses left every twenty minutes? Those were the buses at the other bus station. Since we had time to kill, I suggested he should run up the block to find his McDonalds since he hadn’t really eaten anything at the KFC. He said the blocks were too long and plus it might not be there anymore.
I need to start bringing ready material with me on theses jaunts. The rest of the group whipped out their phones and started playing games. I spent the time reviewing pictures on my camera.
We went out to our bus at ten to four. The bus had already been taking on passengers unbeknownst to us so it was quite full when we got on. I go to sit next to a nice Chinese man. I had to carry my camera bag on my lap the entire way as it didn’t fit in the over head. It only took about ten minutes for my legs to cramp up.
The drive banality was lessened somewhat by the movie playing on the TV. I had made it a point to sit up front to be closer to the screen. On the way out, they had shown a movie with English subtitles. We sat too far in the back to read any of it.
The movie on the journey back to Dengfeng was not subtitled in English, but it had enough action that I enjoyed it anyway.
The bus made it’s way back through the streets the taxi had driven. Traffic was still insane. I used my camera to try and capture some of the traffic on video. After about a half hour from the bus stop, we made the turn where our bus had dropped us in the morning. Finally, we made it to the freeway. I waved as we passed the Longmen Grotto Service Area.The ride back to Dengfeng took almost two hours from Louyang.
We didn’t have to stop for gas on the return.
Exhausted in my hotel room, I was gladdened somewhat to take some pictures of Songshan mountain that was still visible in the darkening sky.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit