This weekend's adventure: Moganshan. Escaping Shanghai. Escaping 23 million people.
We took a train to Hangzhou where we got picked up by a taxi driver with a sign for our lodge for the hour and a half journey. This all seemed unspeakably convenient, but it there were some bumps in the road. He didn't know where the lodge was. We did some phone juggling. I called the lodge. He called his friend who spoke English. The lodge called him then had him hand me the phone. My confidence was soaring.
As we got further into town he slowed at the corner and started honking....another man ran over and got into the back seat with me. I stiffened!
What's going on!
I asked in Chinese to this man 'where are you going' and the driver said 'no no no'. What!
As I was running some worst-possible-scenarios through my head the driver handed me the phone and the voice on the other line told me the taxi driver didn't know the road to our place so he picked up his friend who knew the way!
We flew through the mountain roads, climbing hairpin turns in the dark and skidding around the dirt corners. When the taxi finally stopped a European woman peaked her head in the taxi and welcomed us. We weren't abducted!
We came inside the lodge area to have delicious dinner. The chick is totally cool and 'natural'....what i mean is not so natural as to be a hippie, but she looks chill with her curly hair and earthy scarf. I told her I was going to guess where she was from before we left this weekend and she's been giving us clues. It's cold where she's from, it's in the northern hemisphere, it's a small country that produces amber, she speaks a funny unrecognizable language, and there's a sea by her country. There.
