Day 3: Camels, temples and Western Mountain.
Excerpts from my notebook:
22:15, Hotel Room - The TV here ain't bad at all. Last night I watched the Powerpuff Girls, and tonight I watch National Geographic. Also, during the past two nights, I have watched three movies: one featuring a deranged killer monster shark, one with a deranged killer monster spider, and one with a deranged killer monster psychopath. I only know the name of the last one: Dark Asylum. I also saw the PRC equivalent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. I did have fun today; we saw the Golden Temple, which is a temple made entirely of copper, and then we went to the Western Mountain. It's incredibly high, and we took a chairlift up, which was fun. It was 15 minutes in a ski-lift thing up a mountain 2280m above sea level (as opposed to Hong Kong's 100 m). Very cool. We climbed back down the mountain by 500-something steps and some stone passageways, passing several temples which were actually carved into the side of the mountain. The guide said it took 72 years to carve that path. Also, the tour bus is plagued with flies. They came on during a rest stop on the way back from the Stone Forest yesterday, and have been buzzing around ever since. It's horrible. After dinner we went to Beer Street, which is like Lan Kwai Fong, but not as busy. It's somewhat...er...loud, and the English translations of the shop names are awful - sometimes unpronounceable. Speaking of awful signs, I've captured quite a few during this trip. Really; they should hire me...however, if they want to compete against Japan for the most deformed English in the world, they're welcome. In fact, I reckon they have a head start.
I liked Western Mountain. Go see the album I have for it. We also went to Daguan Tower, which is famous, I believe. There were kites everywhere outside. I saw a camel outside the Golden Temple. I was quite surprised - it's not every day you get to see camels in temples...