Yellow Mountain in the Sky.....

It is 4 am in the morning. Can't sleep. Now I know what my kids go through when I snore! This Chinese guy is good. He can beat anyone as a snorer. World Champ! Left Guilin and headed up to Wuhan. Already knew I wasn't going to be able to do what I wanted in Wuhan, so instead of trying to change up the rest of my schedule, I continued and took a rest day. To be honest, China is starting to wear me down. I find myself getting more irritable when I get pushed, bumped into, or just all the constant noise and infringement on my space. All petty stuff but it wears on you after a while. Got some

laundry done and took a walk down to see the Yangtze River. Massive river with lots of boat activity. Spent a few hours just wandering around enjoying myself without a schedule. Headed to Huangzhou on the 28th. Had a nice train ride. Tried to communicate with an older Chinese fellow for a couple of hours. He had about 15 of his family hovering around us laughing at me. Just love being that centre of attention! Got off the train and right onto the metro. It was dark out but I thought I could navigate from the metro to the hostel. Was lost for about an hour before I finally figured it out. Got to the hostel to find a purely Chinese place. Very few travellers and even less English. Wanted to go to the Yellow Mountain in the morning so I managed to get some info for travel out of the hosts. This could be fun! Got up at 5:09. Already behind schedule. Had a quick shower and hit the road. Had to walk about a kilometre to find the number 49 bus stop. Didn't take too long to find it. Hopped on and headed for the West Bus Station. Turned out it was the last stop and took a good 45 minutes to get there. Means I missed the 6:50 bus I wanted, so got a ticket on the 8:00 bus. Had a few moments so I went to MacDonalds for breakfast. The bus took just over 4 hours to get there. I arrived around noon with the intention of hiking around for 5 hours before heading back. It was raining and the mountain was

socked in. I thought this is my only chance to see this place so I started climbing up towards the entrance. Took me an hour to get there. By that time the weather had got a little worse, so now I thought my best option would be to take the cable car up to the top and hopefully get above the clouds. I was the only person in my car. Looked like the rest of the world decided to do it another day. Turned out there were lots of people already up there. The ride up was in the clouds and I didn't see much. Got off and started climbing further hoping for a miracle. Most people there were staying hoping the same. After about 45 minutes of climbing around we got a brief bit of clearance. So for the next 2 hours we went from being totally socked in to a decent view at times. Got some good pictures and enjoyed my experience even though it wasn't ideal. Headed back down and caught my bus back. Got off at the station and caught my bus back to about a kilometre from the hostel, hoofed it back arriving around

10. Was tired but happy I was able to pull all that off. Going to stay in town and go to the West Lake. Unsure when as it is supposed to rain today and tomorrow is the start of Golden Week in China. They all have a week off and they all go travelling. 2 billion travelers! I am scared and have been told to stay away from going out if you can. Lucky I booked everything in advance. I have talked to a few people who can't get any means of travel. Everything is booked solid for the week. Now this should be really fun! If the noise, bumping and pushing didn't get to me before.........