The epic of Lao Shan pt2

I think I left off somewhere at the sichuan restaurant on Friday. For those who don't know it, sichuan style food is supposed to be among the hottest in China and I am here to tell you that this is no fib. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the actual restaurant but here is a typical sichuan dish and the exact one that we ordered. That red stuff isn't tomatoes or a sort of broth, those are actual chillies and buried underneath is an entire fish. Actually the waiter allowed us to choose the fish that we wanted to eat... we picked a pretty small sad looking one not knowing whether we could even hand what was coming.

The restaurant was actually quite beautiful and as it turned out our waitress was actually from the sichuan area so I feel like we got an authentic deal... and for the price it was a deal. (each person paid maybe 7 bucks US and that's with 2 pitchers of beer, rice, and dumplings). The greatest part about this place, though, was that peppery smell that had permeated every part of the restaurant. The smell literally knocked your ass into the first available seat; then you swig beer diluted with your own tears as you chopstick chillies into your mouth. Each bite is a little competition, who's the bigger man.
After dinner its off to one of the ex pat bars around town, this one is called Jack's. Where else can you drink Kentucky Bourbon while chatting with a surly middle aged Australian; every woman who peaked 30 years ago walks in and used "to be a dancer" when she was my age.

It was early to bed though, in the morning because Saturday morning was the beginning of the epic of Lao Shan. A rather large and beautiful mountain with a gaping view of the ocean blue.

First off was a visit to temples at Lao Shan. We had a tour guide but she spoke Chinese so fast that eventually I stopped listening to her, but apparently some of the buildings and shrines are more than 500 years old.
This is the doorway to the mountain as it translates. My ticket is good for another 6 years so I will be crossing this threshold again.

I was having some trouble getting photos on here in the order that I wanted so I made a slide show that I hope will work, someone will have to tell me on my facebook whether it works or not.

Anyhow, climbing that damn mountain was tiring but so entirely rewarding. You'll see what I mean.