I think Janell has had her fill of temples and she has to do laundry, so I'm going alone and will meet her for dinner at a Turkish restaurant...yum.
OK, I suppose I should write about Songpan now as I don't want to forget, but writing about it seems a little tedious. I will do my best, though. We left around 7 AM on Thursday, the 26th and it took about 9 or 10 hours to get to Songpan. I don't think it would have taken anywhere near that long if the drive was on flat ground but once we got a few hours out of Chengdu we were basically just traveling up mountains. We stopped a few times and on one of those stops we met a German girl named Charlotte...I'm sure her English would have been great anyway, but she spent a year as an au pair in Michigan so her English was perfect. With about 1 or 2 hours left in the trip, the bus was stopped by police for about 30 minutes. It was, of course, quite dramatic for me since I had no idea what was going on and all the Chinese people were looking out the window and whispering to one another. It turned out, though, that the bus just had too many people on it (there were people sitting in the aisles!) so I think the driver just got a ticket, or something. When we finally got to Songpan and got out of the bus, the air was very cool...I had to put on my fleece or I would have been freezing. We checked into our hostel and registered for our horse trek (the guides were waiting right outside the bus so it wasn't any trouble to find where to go) and then we were pointed towards Emma's Kitchen, which was heavenly. It's a western restaurant that has amazing food and every time we were there, it was packed with foreigners. We found out that we were supposed to go on the hot springs horse ride but since Charlotte and everyone else around us was going on the Ice Mountain trip, we switched to that one. Ha. This is what I just found online:
| Name | See what ? | D | B | L | Rain ? | Best time | Cost | Tourism |
| Ice Mountain | Snow peaks, Lush valleys, Monastery | 3/4 | 4 | Hard | !!! | summer but clouds | free | no |
| Hot spring | A lot of lakes | 3 | 3 | Easy | OK | summer | 30Y | little |
| Mineral Water | 2 big lakes | 3/4 | 1 | Hard | OK | summer | free | little |
| Waterfall | Monastery | 3 | 2 | Easy | OK | yearly | 30Y | a lot (10 buses a day) |
| Huanlong | Mountains, Lakes, waterfalls | 3 | 5 | Hard | !!! | April to Oct | 80Y | a lot (5000 people a day) |
| Zoige | Grassland, Monastery | 10 to 12 | 6 | Hard | OK | Aug & Sept | free | little |
So, yeah...basically we picked the "hard" trail over the "easy" trail, having no idea what we were doing at the time. Oh, well- we definitely felt accomplished after we finished! The !!! means "may be hazardous when raining", which it definitely did during our trek.
When we were at Emma's Kitchen on Thursday night we met a guy from Toronto who was named Brendan, and he ate dinner with us then walked around the city with us that night. He was tons of fun, so that was great. Walking around the city was such an interesting experience for me...it looked totally different than anywhere else I'd been in China. Songpan is a minority town of Tibetans and Muslims, so the people looked entirely different than the Han Chinese that are in Chengdu (and in the majority of the country). Their skin was much darker and their clothes were very different. The Tibetan people have very pink cheeks that look like they put a ton of blush on them- it is quite a nice effect, actually. ;) We bought knit parkas and 1 or 2 scarves each in preparation for the next day. You have to do some major bargaining, though, especially as a foreigner. I find that it's much easier to bargain if you really don't care that much about what you're getting and really aren't willing to pay more than you say. The scarves and parkas turned out to be VERY wise investments, though.
Charlotte, Janell and I stayed at the Traffic Hotel that night then got up early the next morning to have a good breakfast at Emma's Kitchen before we left at 8:30 AM. It was raining and I had no waterproof options, so I spontaneously went into a store about bought a "North Face' (yeah, right!) rain jacket/fleece combo for 280 yuan (about $36). Although I'm sure I paid way too much for it, it was worth every penny over the next 3 freezing days. I pretty much wore socks, jeans, a long underwear type shirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt, the fleece/jacket, the scarf, and sometimes the parka every day- and definitely the parka at night.
So, we left at 8:30 AM. There were 5 of us in one group- Janell, Charlotte, and I plus 2 French girls named Magalie and Cecile. We also had 3 guides and I wish I could tell you their names, but I could barely pronounce them, much less type them. :/ We ended up calling them Be Careful!, Earring Man, and Beat the Sheepskin, respectively and for different reasons. They were all part of the Muslim minority so it was interesting to hear their perspectives on the Tibetan people. I hadn't been nervous at all before we left but as soon as I was on my horse, I got a little scared. It took me about 30 minutes to relax a bit and start to enjoy the ride.
Ok, I'm taking a break to go to Wenshu temple since this typing is going to take forever!!! I'll start part 2 either this afternoon/evening or tomorrow morning.
