Third day (3rd December)
Today, I slept in slightly later, so no Christmas cards yet! But I helped out with the preparation of breakfast, which I really enjoyed- frying pratas and chicken cutlets! Today's event was marked by a trip to Da Yu Shan between me and Gor gor!
We took this special cable car, which cost twice the price of the usual ticket due to a special feature- a transparent ground to allow us to see beneath us- and thus the name crystal cable car! But soon we regretted it! Not because the ride was not worth it (thought it's really a little expensive for a twenty minutes ride), but we probably did not need a return ticket at all, which could have saved us at least 30 bucks singapore dollars.
The ride was pretty much for sightseeing, and yeap, I saw everything from every direction, and the summit gave me an unexplainable kind of feeling that felt like I've returned to a village, taking out the commercialised part where the souvenir stores were. The steps to the Buddha contributed to a long flight, which was soon to be overshadows by what we were going to achieve soon later. Breeze at the foot of the Buddha was really comfortable, and the view was tremendous too! Gor spotted this little trek nearby and we set off towards that, thinking that we would come back for the snack that the entrance tickets were supposed to entitle us to. So off we went, and it's difficult to locate our bearings at that kind of level, so we merely trial and error, with one instance where we went into this place and got chased by a horde of dogs! Aggressive dogs, and noisy dogs, but fortunately not persistent or biting dogs. We immediately turned and walked away, pretending nothing had happened, and I could literally feel 3 or 4 dogs barking right behind my feet! Scary experience, but definitely a memorable one!
So we made our way to another path, and embarked on another route that was hidden behind another private temple. It was before long when we found a route that was going to lead us to a journey of no return. Initial target was to reach the peak of a nearby mountain to get a decent view, but on and on we went to a point we were just below the cable car soon later! So a conversation took place about whether we should go back, and both of us gave way to the idea of trekking back to the main land- easily 4 or 5 km up and down layers and layers of mountain bed! Cool stuff!
We encountered this non-english caucasian who was bathing himself in an abrupt stream right in the middle of nowhere and presented him with our snacking coupons, and in exchange he gave us a wrong advice which would lead us onto a detour to a wrong route- matter of a typical communication break down. An intended round about a mountain's rise and fall led us to a huge diversion which forced to make a big U-turn, but that was not in vain, because we got some of our best photos there! ^^
And on and on we went, setting little targets by little targets to reach certain check point within some limits of time. Cool stuff! We did stupid things to kill time- like pretending to be a fallen body and lie down on the track to attract attention from the passing by cable cars, sending emails on the cliff, waving to passing by cable cars, pretending that we were going to die, shouting "mommy, I wanna go home" to distract us from the aches! Fun! I mean, we had started out unprepared, with just barely 200 millimeters of water to last the BOTH of us through the ENTIRE JOURNEY! Definitely a big achievement! This was the most fun thing after I've gotten to Hong Kong, confirmed!
Dinner was at some restaurant which serves pretty good steak! Yum yum^^
Tomorrow onwards, we're gonna probably be entering civilisation more often- so it's shopping time! Confession: I haven't gotten anything yet, except entrance tickets and transport tickets to one place after another, so people who are expecting presents, please don't carry too much hope=P
Until then, see you guys soon! photos uploaded on face book^^