des hommes et des bambous, part 1

End of September, 23th and 24th to be precise…Weekend…

2 gays and 2 gals decided to go for a trip!

And what a trip!

We can call it: “des Bambous et des Hommes” ! Translation: “Bamboos and Men”

Let’s start by the beginning. You know when you stay too long in Shanghai, you always suffocate a bit, because of the pollution, because of the people, because of the noise (and what a noise!!), because of all the dirt and so on and so on… the list is very loooong!

So I decided to organize a trip, and a long time ago a friend of mine (Martin) told me that Moganshan is not bad, and Jerome also told me the same thing! Some other friends were there in August and they had a great time too!

So I supposed it’s a nice place to go and have some fresh air…somewhere you can breathe!

So I proposed to Laurent, Celine, Yi, Dave and Joyce to come with me.

Yes, you can say it’s a funny and fancy team! Only gays and girls…

But finally Yi and Joyce didn’t come. So it’s just for 4 of us…

We wanted to rent a car, but was a bit too expensive for us… more than 2000RMB for 2 days!!

It’s robbery!

Saturday morning, we plan then to take the train to Hangzhou and then from Hangzhou should be easy to catch a bus or taxi to Moganshan…

Of course, Dave was late (he is not English or what???), but thanks God for him, we couldn’t have train ticket for 9AM, so we were obliged to bought the 10AM ones…

When we arrived in Hangzhou it was already 12:30PM…

In the train station, so many people came and harassed us!! But it already becomes a routine in China …everywhere you go, people will follow you and try to sell you things or services that you don’t want or need…

At the end we found a guy in a “bread car”, kind of small car that can transport from 6 to 8 passengers. It’s very tiny though. We negotiated the price at 200RMB, which is correct. 50 each.

The we spend about 3 hours in the car, cause the way was really swingy, too many mountains…and also lots of roadwork are going on…

Around 3PM, we finally arrived at the entrance of Moganshan!!! To find out that we MUST pay 80RMB each to pass the barrier…SHIT!! It’s a mountain not a team park! It’s always like that in ; you always have to pay to go to the mountains, or lake or temples…wherever you go you got to funkin’ pay, and not a little money! 80RMB is one day salary for a middle class employee!!

ARGGG! When it comes to this kind of topics, I still go crazy even after all these years in … that’s so not fair…

ANYWAY, we decided then to go back down the mountain, just go somewhere we don’t have to pay. Finally few meters after, we found an hotel, not very sexy or very design…but quite cheap (120RMB/night for 2 people). Plus we were starving, so we took it. The hotel has a big yard, so we ate there and invited our driver to eat with us. It’s almost 4PM and we hadn’t had lunch yet.

After lunch, the driver gave us his number so we can call him if we can to go back on Sunday.

The woman of the hotel showed us the rooms and then we decided to have a walk in the bamboo forest.

The really story began there. Laurent wanted to find the DONGHU Lake in the bamboo forest, so we tried to find it…

As you already know, 2 gays and 2 girls together are not very efficient to find there way!!

So after a long walk on the country side trying to get into the hills, we get a bit lost…where is the fucking lake?! Hell!

But when we thought that we found the lake, a horde of furious dogs started to pursue us!!

First we didn’t even realized the danger, cause it’s was so sudden…but when Laurent scream and asked me to run, I ran the fastest I could! There is nothing worse than enraged dogs! GOSH, it was crazy!

The only good thing is that when we stop running, the lake was there! Just in from of us! So calm and beautiful as the day was ending…

We sat, and listen to the voice of the nature, watching the blue sky… everything was perfect even the temperature, not too warm, not to cold, not too wet…

Just, the lake is really small and it’s a man made reservoir in fact…anyway we don’t care, the water is clean and the green is everywhere! Really cool!

The night was falling, we have to go back to the hotel, BUT, then we get lost, really lost…!

Only bambous, no pathways…nothing that can help us…

The night was already there…no light to see…the Bamboo forest project started to run!

We were bit scared… and we called every 2 or 3 minutes our names to see if everybody was still there…we climbed, and climbed, hook on the bamboos with strange signs on it…

FINALLY after one hour of desperate climbing we found our way back!

And our hands were black cause of the bamboos with the strange signs…

We were exhausted! We had a quick shower and all felt asleep without having diner!  YES...The pot we smoked really killed us!