We were finally on our way to Baoguo Village 报国寺 in Emei 峨嵋. It was my friend and I with our driver. Our transportation is a service provided by the lady we met at the Leshan Giant Buddha Park. It wasn’t free but I wasn’t too expensive either. I’m sure we would have been able to find a cheaper way to get there since it isn’t really that difficult to get around in China, but we didn’t really care anymore since we were quite tired from exploring Leshan.
Our driver was quite talkative, but since he doesn’t speak English at all, he can only talk to me. Since my friend wasn’t really able to communicate with him at all, he just dozed off and fell asleep on the car. Apparently, the driver was the son of the lady we met at the park. They own and operate this hotel in Baoguo Village of course catering to tourists. It would seem that they are not famous enough that they need to intercept people at the Leshan Giant Buddha Park to get customers. Our driver was saying that if we do not like the hotel we can always choose to move to some other place, but understandably, our transportation fare would increase a little.
So poor me, I was almost running out of Chinese to speak with our driver since he would talk about everything. I got exhausted talking to him that I started replying in short sentences just to finish the conversation. Our destination is not too far from Leshan city, we would have to pass through the city of Emei to get to Baoguo Village.
Emei City is an unremarkable city but it plays host to one of China’s most sacred mountains Mt. Emei or Emei Shan 峨眉山. Our journey was rather quick since we traveled along some excellent highways. Soon we were at Baoguo Village, the gateway to Emei Shan. Soon ww pulled over on of the side streets of Baoguo Village. We were at the hotel. The name of the hotel is Li Min Hotel 利民酒店.
The lobby is quite respectable, I wasn’t really expecting much and my tolerance level for discomfort is quite high, but this one was quite nice, so far. While at the lobby, another person, probably from the hotel came up to us and offered us a tour package to explore Emei Shan. They offered a trip to the top of the top of the Emei Shan. But they weren’t able to tell me why I should take them instead of buying the tickets myself. In the end we politely declined them.
We went up to our room and found that the room was nice and clean. The bed sheets where all nicely set. So far so good. I took a look at the toilet and discovered that they have a hot shower. Great since it is already quite cold here in Baoguo Village. I went to freshen up my face and discovered that the water from the faucet at the sink falls directly to the floor, there was no proper tube to channel the water some where else, so I ended up making a big mess in the bathroom. We were forced to to use their perfectly white towels as door mats to keep our feet dry when we come out of the bathroom.
Although, the hotel was not that bad by itself, the bathroom incident already gave us a bad impression of the place, nevertheless, we still took it since we were too tired to find other places. Why didn’t we complain about it? We were thinking that this is another one of those quirks which were have to deal with in our trip to China.
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