Thursday, October 1, 2015

Day 3 : Jiuzhaigou

I woke up at about 6.00 a.m., and discovered that there was actually a heated mattress on the bed. Darn. How silly of me to go to bed freezing cold the night before. Nevermind, AL and I would be warm and comfortable tonight.

The hotel was called Jiuzhai Paradise Jarpo Town Hotel. It wasn't exactly paradise like its name suggested.

The passageway to our rooms

Looking outside from the 4th floor window ... 

This building where we stayed in ... it reminded me of a prison somehow .. 

Some buildings around the hotel .. 

The reception building of Jiuzhai Paradise Jarpo Town Hotel

This hotel used to be managed by Intercontinental in the past, but it now no longer is. It is very rundown and not maintained well.

Upon presenting our breakfast vouchers at the dining hall, we were given a hard-boiled egg each. Sigh. So stingy, eh? I wanted another egg for lunch. So when the staff wasn't there, we managed to sneak a few more hard-boiled eggs into our bags .... :P

Mantou and preserved vegetables for breakfast.

Breakfast sure looked unappetising. Luckily, I had made my own cup noodles in the room and had brought it down to the dining hall with me, I ate that together with a hard-boiled egg. My steaming cup of Tom Yum noodles had never tasted so good!

At 7.45 a.m., we set off for Jiuzhaigou. The drive was about 15 minutes long from our hotel.

Jiuzhaigou is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and also a World Biosphere Reserve. It is part of Minshan, known for its beautiful scenery. The crowd was unbelievably huge on that day! In fact, it would be huge at any day!

Look at the queue!!!  

We chartered a bus .... and so we did not have to be in the public queue. We stuck to our original tour group in our chartered bus. Before lunch, we only managed to visit 3 scenic areas, but then the view was really breathtaking. :)) 

Nuorilang Falls  
Pretty, eh? I loved it here .... I was busy taking photographs .... and then my tour mates were no longer in sight. It was pretty scary. My colleague W, on his trip here, had actually gotten lost! So I was fearful that I would too! But there was only 1 route to walk ... and so I navigated it by myself. Halfway through, I met with a Chinese boy from my tour, and I walked with him to the exit. There, I saw AL .... phew. For a while, I thought I had lost my friends. 

Long Lake
By the time we got here, it was cloudy and started drizzling ..... and hence the dark picture ....

From Long Lake, we walked down to ..... 

Five-coloured Pond  
So beautiful and so clear! We spent some time here taking photographs ...... 

And then it was time for lunch. Lunch wasn't provided, but there were stalls selling instant cup noodles, rice, snacks. I ate bread which I bought on the road yesterday and also another hard-boiled egg which I had sneaked from the dining hall. 

Lunch :))
The bread had red beans stuck on it, quite interesting.

Next we went to ....  

Five Flower Lake, purported the most famous lake in Jiuzhaigou

So beautiful is the blue

Arrow Bamboo Lake
This was where the Chinese epic movie, Hero was filmed.

Pearl Shoals

Tiger Lake

Shuzheng Falls

Shuzheng Falls

Bonsai Lake
Our last stop before we exited the national park at 5.30 p.m.

The view was incredible, the air was fresh and crisp. It was rejuvenating. But my legs ached very much due to all the walking and climbing ....

After Jiuzhaigou, we were brought to watch a show. I think it's entitled "The Romance of the Song Dynasty".

The name of the show?  

 The Face Changing performance

The show with elaborate costumes .... I enjoyed it :))

Dinner was at the hotel and it was unappetising as expected ... The smell of the food made me want to retch. 

Yucky dinner

I did not eat the food and went back to the room to make hot cup noodles and cereal :)).

2 comments:

  1. The view really beautiful ... but not the food ..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah .... I survived on cup noodles and biscuits and muesli bars; I suppose if you had stayed at a better hotel and joined a better tour operator, your meals would be well taken care of.

    ReplyDelete

Revisiting Miri

I went back to Miri for the first time in 7 years and 10 months.  Miri Waterfront I left Miri in 2014, and years have passed in a blink of a...