Small and pretty
23.10.2010
As many of you know, I like to go to bed late, and wake up late...today I had to get up at 5.30...five-thirty is a nice time...to go to bed, but not to wake up!!! Anyways, I got out of bed, which really was very difficult as the bed had a heat blanket and it really was very cold in the room... The reason I had to get up at this un-Godly hour was that I had to go to the bus station to by my ticket for Huang Long, and that bus departed at 7 am.
It is only 90km or so from Jiuzhaigou to Huang Long, but the drive takes about 3 hours (and suppossedly takes you over a 4000m pass) And about the hights...I am not afraid of hights, but I think I may have had altitude sickness...NOT fun...a massive headache for two days, that pain killers did nothing to relieve, nauseous, trouble sleeping...but I should have anticipated it, as I went from Chongqing (0m) to Jiuzhaigou (3500m) in 1 hour, that is not exactly a slow ascent...
Huang Long was pretty, but I preffered Jiuzhaigou, which was in my eyes, more majestic. And the killer headache didn't help it either.
AND - I can now announce the winner of "The Worst Airport" - Jiuzhaigou Airport, Sichuan province, China.
I thought that I had seen some bad and borring airports. Chongqing is pretty borring, Nanyuan in Beijing is basically just a tarmac, Surabaya (Java, Indonesia) has just about no shops. But Jiuzhaigou airport trumps them all...they have no chairs!!! If you want a chair, you either have to sit in the ridiculously overprized, and bad, cafe, where a cup of coffee cost about 60RMB (that is the double of a Starbucks coffee) or you have to enter the VIP-room at a cost of between 80 and 260RMB...and on top of that you'll be freezy your ass of, as the airport administrators apparently do not believe in heating, even though it started to snow outside while I waited... On top of that they belive that one person is enough to check 143 Chinese and one Dane in in 40 min...
But, with a 40 min delay due to snow we got airborne, and an hour later we landed in Chongqing and my headache started to recede...wonderful...
I'll try and get the pictures up as soon as possible.
Best, Eva Maria
Posted by EvaMariaTravels 17:00 Archived in China