Whoo dang!

That's sort of a tasteless title actually, but that's how some tourists pronounce it, so whatever.

What I actually refer to is the Wudang Lamasery out in the brushier environs of Inner Mongolia, almost a 2-hr drive from where we are. I went there this morning. On the one hand I enjoyed getting out and seeing something new, on the other hand, I feel like we were ripped off by a friend of ours, which sucks a bit.

So yesterday, Alice informed me that we'd been invited to the monastery, which was cool, as long as we paid the gas to get there. She seemed sort of uneager about the gas part, but I knew Russ really wanted to go there, and I didn't want to keep turning these things down, so I agreed. Now... it probably would never have occurred to me to visit at this time of year. I had planned on going at some point, but never would I have opened my mouth to say "let's go tomorrow." Which this person did. I was a bit annoyed at having to get up so early, but I always am, so whatever.

We set out around 8 and had breakfast. I ordered some funky soymilk and was a little depressed about that, but moved past it pretty quickly. Then I passed out in the van, waking up a few times to stare out the window at some prime bouldering rock and some really crappy rock, neither of which I'll probably have a chance to see again before the spring, and again to chuck in Y10 for a toll booth, and to watch the introduction of gas into the van. Here's where I was astonished. So we agreed to pay gas for the excursion. Russ actually did this part. What I didn't expect was that we'd be asked to pay for an entire tank of gas (I'm feeling it was the entire tank). The total came to like Y105 and I'm feeling like we didn't use all of that on this trip. Now, I'm realizing that I was partly asleep and that there's no way now of knowing how much gas was left before we filled up, but... well, it was weird.

The monastery apparently raised their prices since the folks from my guidebook came by this way. It was a Y45 entrance fee, which was kind of a surprise for a monastery, but actually now I think it was worth it, because there were 9 different buildings to visit. I borrowed a camera and got to snap some shots at last. You're not supposed to take pictures inside monstery building, though I accidentally did inside one where I didn't see the No Cameras sign until I came out. But I got some nice compositions of pretty much all there was to see outside-- mountains, trees, shrines, living quarters, ramparts, exteriors, etc. When I'll see those, I'm not entirely sure, but they exist somewhere in this world, which is a relief.

We stopped for lunch on the way back, and I ended up paying for this meal which I think I ate very little of, but whatevs, though it never occurred to me to ask for the leftovers, which bothers me now.

I talked to Alice about the whole thing later and we were both like... were we taken advantage of for gas money? And we just sort of went through various reasons we were uncomfortable in general. I'm not really good at getting into details of this sort of thing without sounding paranoid, so I won't bother. But anyways it was odd, and I probably will start by refusing most offers from this person in the future. It's not that they're not... nice... it's just that I don't have an overwhelming sense of trust in them, so I'm going to follow my instincts some more since that usually works for me.

At a shop outside to monastery, I bought a really nice ring (well I think so) for too much money. Y30, but it's not entirely my fault. I mean, I have a fundamental problem with bargaining to begin with, and that's that I only open bargaining on items that I want and I don't want to walk away without it. This has been a real problem only once before when I didn't actually want an item, but because I was curious and asked the price, I accidentally matched wills with a hard-boiled seller and paid waaaay more for a bracelet (that I often wore afterwards, because dammit I paid for it) than I would have wanted to. But anyways, Y20 seemed about right, but I was willing to settle on Y25-27 andI'm pretty sure I could have gotten it down to there since the asking price was only Y45. Person who was with me though sort of cramped my style though and I had to settle on Y30 if I wanted it. So damn. But I like the ring a lot.

More about the monastery's buildings-- they were really cool, it shows that they're being taken care of. Most of the walls are covered in intricate Buddhist artwork which made me want to learn more about the symbolism in it. In one of the display halls was a large sand painting that was just awesome. I want to do sand painting.

I imagine that the scenery is really something in the right season, but again, I wouldn't have chosen myself to come this time of year, when most of the trees were on their way to being totally bare. Also it was really cold this morning, and that put me in a pretty nasty mood, though I'm pretty sure I did a good job of hiding it. Seriously.

So yeah, when pictures come in (I assume they will), I'll put them up!