PengLai & ChangDao (2nd Trip)

In the second weekend which was June 18^th, Lauren, Ana and I went to PéngLái which is a coastal city that is around 1 hour far away by bus from Yantai where we live. Beside PéngLái is ChàngDǎo (Dǎo means island) which is an island 40 minutes away by ferry.

In Penglai we went to the ‘Eight Immortals’ temple, which has monuments of the eight legendary immortals. It was the first time I see how the Chinese are influenced by legendary superstitions. At every place you visit in China, you can notice Dragons, superstitious mighty Tortoises (the 2^nd iconic creature I noticed in China), Buddha statues and many other weird-to-us legendary aspects of the Chinese culture. I cannot say much at this point because it needs good deal of reading to know why the Chinese value these.  It is always nice to see how different people can have so distinct beliefs. Hopefully I will dedicate a whole post about this later on when I acquire more information.

The 8 Immortals Temple

Rounded Gate. An aspect of the Chinese architecture

The Tortoise, the Frogs, and the 8 Immortals at the back with their legendary supernatural animals

After finishing from the Eight Immortals we walked along the sandy beachside towards Penglai’s Pavilion. The Pavilion was on a hillside just at the beach. Its seaside location was nice along with the great greenery, which you find almost all around China. It had different temples and a wall surrounding it. Temples are the main traditional buildings of the Chinese architecture, as the mud castles (or Hisns) with the wind towers are the main traditional buildings of the Emirati architecture.

PengLai Pavilion

Cable cars going to Heaven!

After finishing from the Pavilion we went to ChangDao (island) which has attractions such as a Cliff, a Reef, a Mountain, a Beach and so. We went by a ferry that took 40 minutes to reach. It was my first time in such a ferry. We did not know anything about ChangDao which made it interesting to inspect everything on our own. On the island no one speaks English at all! And there was no single foreigner other than the 3 of us. Although we did not want a taxi, one taxi driver kept on following us for more than an hour hoping that we get into the taxi. We walked to the main touristic place from which we had to buy the tickets to visit the different touristic places on the island. There were two different tours the 1^st is to the Northern part (for 100 Yuans) and the 2^nd was to the Southern part (for 100Yuans) or 150 Yuans for both. We counted how much money we had left …and the shock was there! We can either go for

one of the tours and not sleep at a hotel since they were so expensive, or we can stay at a hotel and just not go to any tour and get back the next day (the ferries back to PengLai had already stopped for the 1^st day). We went around asking for cheap hotels. Walking and walking till we found a restaurant which served us great sea food for 10 yuans each! They turned out to offer low-cost accommodation at their place. They have rooms prepared for tourist who are cheap like us. It was so clean and we slept for 30 yuans each, which made it possible for us to go to the Northern tour the next day.

Norhern Beachside and Windmills

Northern Cliff side

Purple Starfish and Stones

Mini Crab

From the Cave

Time Machine. Should we go to the past or to the future?

Seafood at ChangDao. A variety of clamps, totmato with scrambled eggs, sliced potatoes, soup, and more.  Deliciousss!

Next day we woke up early and started our journey. And the exciting part is that we went around almost all the Northern part including the places that were not meant for tourist. There were no people along those places not meant for tourism. We went around the whole mountain that was touching the sea from North to East of the island, where at some point we found a coal mine that was hidden from the sight of touristic places (because ChangDao wanted to seem like a nature-preserving island as there are tens of renewable energy wind mills). The windmill farms were fascinating.

Along the Cliff

At the Rock

Crossing the forbidden border not meant for tourists

Afternoon we went back safely. It was a memorable trip not only because of sneaking throughout the wild nature but especially that no one communicates in English and we had to try our best acting and using hand gestures and our few basic Chinese words to communicate with people, besides that we were able to make it a worthwhile trip with the limited money we had which was really worrying me.

The pictures will continue the story vividly. I posted just the best few pictures here within this post. There are lots more playing in the Slideshow on the right side on the blog. If you click it you will be directed to the full web album.

Zàijiàn (Goodbye)!