Day 2: After taking the shuttle bus, we wandered for a bit before finding the central bus station. It was so crowded! I think it felt more crowded than Shanghai or Beijing stations usually are. There was a sign that said "Mail the child" - we think it meant send your child somewhere on the train, but we're still not sure. Chongqing is a really hilly city; we went down into a metro station and the exit went out onto a huge staircase down to the riverbank. A cute puppy took a liking to Nicole and followed us halfway down. We're now on the bus to Dazu; Josef spilled water on his pants and it looks like he wet himself! :) On a less humorous note, the lady in between Josef and Nicole just threw up, a little in her plastic bag and mostly on the floor. Ick.
There have been multiple incidents now - our bus is the Golden Dragon, Golden Dragon flu, perhaps?
We finally made it to Dazu around 2 pm and grabbed some lunch before heading up the mountain. It was really good - why is food in Nanjing so bland? After that, we headed to the bus station only to discover that all the buses up to the rock carvings were done for the day. Some tuk tuk drivers offered to take us there in seven or eight minutes for ten kuai each, but we got a second opinion from some taxi drivers, who said it was a twenty minute drive. We ended up taking a taxi for ¥60, even though the driver was scared of the police noticing he had five passengers. As we drove up, the police had set up a road block, so Joel and Josef ducked down and pretended not to exist.
Once there, we bought tickets and saw the rock carvings. They were originally going to be ¥130, but we got student discount tickets for ¥60. Score! The carvings themselves were amazing - they dated from the 12th and 13th centuries and were remarkably well preserved. There were hundreds of Buddhas and demons and animals carved into niches in the rock, some weighing thousands of kilograms. We saw evidence of laying on of hands and the divine symbolism of three and twelve - pretty cool! After we finished, Josef bought a couple swords from a vendor at the entrance. Don't ask me what he's going to do with them. We took a small bus down the mountain; it had 19 seats, but we ended up squeezing 42 people on! Careening down the mountainside with so many people in a small bus was fantastic.
We got back to Dazu around 6:30. We made our way to the bus station via taxi, except for Seth, who ran ahead, but the station was closed for the day. Not a single night bus to take us out of Dazu. By this point we were pretty tired, and we didn't want to spend the night there, so we looked around. A taxi driver offered to take us to Chengdu for 1000 kuai. Then a girl in fuzzy pink pajamas came up to us and asked us if we needed a place to stay. We said no, we needed a ride to Chengdu, and she said she knew a place that we coud hire a private car to take us. Josef, Nicole and I followed her, and we sent Joel back to the bus station to wait for Seth, who was nowhere to be seen and not answering his phone.
We walked a ways and the girl's friend joined us. We followed them for another ten minutes or so through winding back streets until we came to the place, but it was closed. She made a phone call, and soon there were several guys around offering to take us in their vans (one was a bread truck heading to Chengdu anyway). The cheapest they would go was ¥1600, though, because they ran on natural gas, which is more expensive than gasoline. No dice. So we made our weary way back to the bus station.
Meanwhile, Joel had found Seth, who had gotten lost and went to the other bus station in town first, and they had looked for a place to stay the night. Apart from a couple brothels, each of the eight or nine places they inquired at wouldn't let us stay. One place said they had space, then ten seconds later said they were full. We met up, and the two girls tried to help us find somewhere to stay. We walked to a hotel, which seemed nice, but they wouldn't let five of us stay there and ultimately wouldn't give us a room because of the hassle. At that point, Seth and Josef were set on sleeping in the park.
We went to dinner with the girls, who were determined not to leave us until we were taken care of. They offered to call friends or realtors they knew and find us a place for the night, but we declined and planned an escape by taxi so we could be homeless uninterrupted. At dinner, though, a crowd gathered around us, having heard of our difficulties, and one guy told us about a bus his friend ran that left for Chengdu at midnight. Tickets were only ¥80, so we bought five and hoped it wasn't a scam. While we waited for the bus, the girls took us to karaoke and insisted on paying for it - they were insistently nice to us. We were probably the most interesting thing to happen to them all month, so maybe it was worth it for them, but either way it was really nice of them.
The bus was a little old and sketch, but overall not too bad. It left at midnight and got to Chengdu at 5 in the morning, then they let us sleep until 6:30 before kicking us off. None of us got much sleep, there not really being a comfortable position to sleep in on the bus, but at least we made it to Chengdu! Tender mercies for sure.
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