Being as my head is already huge, there was no room left for my face to swell up anymore. Quite frankly I didn’t have any aspirations of picking up backwards mountain women during our 6 hour hike up Taishan. I really didn’t care much about the bites, other than they itched like a piece of sandpaper made of magma. So we got ready and dressed and went off to find a suitable breakfast place to fill up on some tasty western breakfast substitute before heading off on our adventure.

We checked in to a cavernous pseudo-american coffee joint. The seats hung from the ceilings and were swings. Both of us ordered the most western food on the menu, which were club sandwiches. I don’t know what the deal here was, but we were the only people in the entire damn place, there were at least 20 waiters but still the food took forever and came out cold. Oh wait I know what it was…the waiters were all idiot fucking retards.

Ditched the coffee joint and headed to the train station across the street where we hopped on a local bus to head to the mountain for 1rmb instead of taking the scammy tourist buses. The bus ride was only about 15 minutes and then there we were, at the foot of the mighty mount Tai.

As usual there was the gauntlet of shops selling all kinds of random junk that had absolutely nothing to do with the actual attraction. This particular gauntlet continued almost ¼ the way up the mountain. We heard the climb took about 6 hours from the very bottom where we started. So our plan was to make it up in 2. I can say I’ve definitely had better ideas in my time. For once they weren’t overestimating the amount of time it would take for the average person to make the climb in a subversive scheme to manipulate them into taking the overpriced gondola. We started it, and being as the whole way consists of a paved path and stairs, it’s basically one MASSIVE stair climb. Unlike actual mountain climbing or scrambling, stair climbing is medieval torture on the calves. The other mistake made was that we started off jogging, running past everyone as they looked at us as if we had just escaped from a mental institution. This is what we were staring at for those next 3 hours:

And low and behold, the mountain woman:

By the time we reached the midway point where the tram and bus station was, if my legs would’ve had any energy left and some freewill they would’ve beat me to death. It was about 13 degrees but I was down to my beater and still swimming in sweat. The prospect of mountain women chasing me down for some mountain mating was not alluring to me, so put my hoody back on. After downing all the water I could, my friend came to me looking spooked like he’d just been buggered by the ghost of a shemale. He pointed me in the direction of the rest of the climb. This is what awaited us:

The next hour and a half was not particularly enjoyable. It’s times like these you realize that maybe you should get some exercise other than surfing the internet and walking to McDonalds across from your apartment. What really made us feel pathetic were the troops of old guys that were carrying these huge random objects up the mountain. Giant pieces of glass, bags full of garbage, pet monkeys, all kinds of crazy shit. The last stretch was a bitch and a half, my lungs almost imploded, but by the power of the Thor, I made it up. My friend beat me by a good ten minutes. After the giant climb, there was a mini town of sorts at the peak, with hotels, restaurants, and of course more junk gauntlets. For the record we climbed 1540 meters vertical in about 2:45, which to put in perspective is 3 CN towers.

This is the mountain that Mao supposedly climbed (haha probably got a bunch of peons to carry him up) and is quoted as saying “the east is red” while watching the sunset. Works on a bunch of levels don’t it? I came up with one of my own being as there was a nice thick haze covering most of the horizon. I said “the east is yellow”. Works on a bunch of different levels too…
I took a few more photos so I’ll let them speak for themselves:

By the time we had finished checking out the top, we decided that climbing down would be an unnecessary waste of time and energy, neither of which we had. For industrious individuals like us there were far more important things to do…like pass out. We took the cable car down, bussed it back to the hotel and then had a well deserved warm shower (we surprisingly had hot water in our luxury suite). Then we hit up a restaurant and had what was probably the best damn meal I’ve had in China. I’m aware my beast hunger may have had something to do with that, but I still savored it. Being as we had already walked the entire downtown, seen the main sight, and had very little else to do, we opted to take the red eye train back to Qingdao at 3AM that morning instead of waiting till the next available train at 8pm the following day. It worked out fine because we slept a bit in the hotel, got up, got on the train and had sleeper bunks so we slept again and had all of Saturday to rejuvenate.

So what else can I say about this place? There’s a ton of history dealing with emperors and other guys that climbed the mountain and made human sacrifices or goatsex or whatever, but history doesn’t really float my boat. We didn’t get to see much of a sunrise or sunset, we hear those are the showstoppers. With the air pollution the way it is here, unless you come on a translucent or transparent day, you aren’t going to see much. Avoid opaque, in fact, on those days try to stay inside completely. If nothing else, I can say I got enough exercise to last me until about this time next year, when I can then head off to climb one of the other 5 super magical mountains of China.

Filed under: tourist shit