I spent about 3 hours on a total of 4 buses getting to the place in the above picture (shenyang). it's called "guai po", which means strange slope. wow, worst idea of my life.
i thought this place sounded cool, so i asked the hotel people how to get there. she told me i could take bus 8 around the corner. so, i went around the corner and found bus 8. after being on bus 8 for 20 minutes, we reached the last stop, and the bus driver looked at me puzzled as to why i was not getting off. we were still in the city, and i thought this place was about 45 minutes outside of the city. he asked me where i was going, i told him guai po, and he told me that i was on the wrong bus. thanks hotel people. however, he told me that i could go back with him a few stops and catch another bus which would then transfer me to the correct bus. he gave me both bus numbers.
so he motioned to me to get off when we arrived near the correct stop and pointed it out to me. i walked to that stop and saw the bus i needed sitting there empty. i also saw a big line 10 feet in front of it, but i figured the line was for another bus since they were not boarding this one. i saw 2 of the employees hanging out on the empty bus so i went to go see what was up. we had a hard time communicating- i kept trying to figure out why the bus was empty and if i could take it. they weren't really working with me. so then i thought maybe that line really was for this bus and i needed to get in it to take it. i walked off the bus and got in line briefly, but i second-guessed myself again about it so i returned to talk to the 2 employees on the empty bus. i told them where i was going and showed them the buses that i needed to take. they looked at it, and told me that in addition to the 2 buses written down, i would have to transfer to a 3rd bus. really not sure why i continued on my way at this point...i guess i was determined to not let shenyang defeat me.
they told me i could get on the empty bus so i boarded and paid my fare. soon after, a woman boarded the bus with a small child. i was surprised how empty this bus was! then the bus slowly started up and lo and behold pulled right up to the big line. how embarrassing, laowai already got to board the bus, along with mother and small child.
very soon, we came to the correct stop, and they remembered to send me off. this next leg of the journey was the killer- i was on this dinky little city bus for probably 1 1/2 hours. thankfully i caught it in the beginning of the journey so i had a seat- as the ride went on so many people got on with big loads of produce and children and everything else. i probably should have given up my seat on numerous occasions.
as the ride went on, i got very worried that the bus driver had forgotten about me. i was sitting in the front seat so i called out to him and he told me that it was okay.
i made some new friends along the way- a sixteen year old high school girl and her mom, another young girl who spoke to me after the previous 2 people got off the bus....they all got my QQ number and my phone number so they could practice english.
the bus driver finally told me to get off the bus. i felt like i was out in the middle of nowhere, and there was no sign indicating that i was at the correct stop. luckily, another woman had also gotten off the bus so i made sure with her and she confirmed it.
i was so happy when the next bus came quickly. after being on the bus for about 30 minutes, all of a sudden it stopped at what looked like an auto garage along the road. a few people groaned and even exited the bus. so i'm thinking, omg, how long is this bus going to be here for. there was a young woman sitting next to me in a red pea coat and a tan bucket hat so i asked her what was going on. her chinese was very difficult for me to understand but i gathered that the bus wasn't broken, and she thought it would leave soon, so i sat tight. since we had a few minutes, i told her i was going to guai po and asked her how much she thought it would be to take a taxi back to the city from there. she told me that it would probably be like 100 kuai ($15). this seemed a little steep (for china), but i decided it would be worth saving like 2 or 3 hours.
the woman and i didn't talk too much after that, and someone else got on that wanted to speak to me in english so i just said bye to her when she got off.
finally, 3 hours later, i arrived at guai po. here is the draw for it- it is supposed to be this anti-gravity magic slope where you ride your bike/drive your car one way and it's really difficult, and then you turn around and go the other way and it's really easy. like some kind of geological phenomena. this is what i imagined- a really long slope (maybe a quarter mile long) on the side of a hill, where when you rode uphill it was really easy, and when you rode downhill it was really hard. that would be cool, right? well, this is not what it was. it was a flat surface that was like 20 meters long at the foot of a hill. when i rode my bike on the surface going towards the hill, it was a little difficult. when i rode it the other way, going away from the hill, it was a little easier.
basically, i think there is just a slight incline on the surface, which went up with the natural slope of the hill in front of it. wow, i couldn't believe all these people, including myself, had come out here for this. the english translation of the sign for it said, "the visiters who have come here all think it mysterious. no one knows its reason, nor cangives exact expaination scientifically." yeah, because none exist.
at least the place had other attractions i could amuse myself with, including a shoddy zoo with mentally deranged tigers, the dangerous slides in the previous post, a swinging bridge which i got destroyed on by some crazy chinese guys, and some hikes through fairly nice vegetation. i also give them props for controlling the crowd well and only letting a few bikes go at a time (i wouldn't have been surprised if it was a free for all). they did a pretty good job of turning this clearly fake piece of crap into an amusement area. still, not good enough.
after i entertained myself there for about an hour or 2 i exited the park and kept my eye out for a taxi. as i was walking, all of a sudden i ran into the woman in the red peacoat and tan bucket hat from the bus. i was really surprised, but also really happy to see her. i thought, what a wonderful coincidence!she asked me if i was still going to take a taxi or if i was going to take the bus. i told her that i wanted to take a taxi. she walked with me over to a taxi, and we talked to the driver. he just wanted to take me on the meter, but i wanted to negotiate a price since i had no clue how much it would be on the meter. she helped me do that, and we agreed on 100 kuai. then she got in the taxi with me. i was very, very confused what was going on at this point. was she coming back with me to shenyang?
for the first 10 minutes of the ride, the woman and the taxi driver were arguing with each other about something and the taxi driver sounded very angry...but i had no clue what was going on. maybe the price was too low for a laowai. they stopped finally, and about 5 minutes later the woman gets the driver to pull over next to a field so she can get out. i asked her where she was going, and she told me that she was returning to her mother's house. we exchanged good byes, i thanked her, and that was that.
still in shock, i mulled over what had just happened on the way back. i decided that there was no way that meeting her outside of guai po was a coincidence- it was so far away from her mother's house and there was nothing else out there except for guai po. what are the chances that she happened to be walking by it and i just happened to be exiting. all i could think was that she must have gone home after we met, and then somehow gotten over to guai po around the time she thought i might be leaving to help me with transportation. i wonder how long she waited there...
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