First day of the Chinese New Year – the year of the Water Snake – and we are woken up by fire crackers that are right outside our window. 5 minutes later the hotel room phone rings and they ask when we want to have breakfast or if they should bring it to us. We said we will be right there. It was 7:30am and anyway the time our alarm clock rang.
Today we were definitely the only guests in the whole hotel. There was not even coffee because they knew we did not drink any yesterday. They had 3 small bags of milk because yesterday we drank 3 bags. In that sense the hotel does feel like 5 star. You get a very personal service and exclusive feeling.
Today we went to the older but bigger ski resort Wanlong. We were hoping to find still a lot of powder snow in this resort.
It was a nice morning with blue sky. At least where we were. Actually if you look closely you can see the smog and air pollution in the South – the direction of Beijing – hanging as a band over the mountains.
After a full day of skiing I had frozen toes and fingers which took a while to defrost as this older resort does not have the convenient floor heating. On New Year’s Day most shops and even restaurants are closed but the most trendy place in Chongli village seems to still be the Popland serving ice cream and Taiwanese style drinks. We got a milk tea to warm up and to cover the time until dinner. We found an International Hotel that had a restaurant which was open and had many local families having big dinners together and taking family pictures.