The view out the window of my hotel room!

Oh, my, God! (Well, I did pay for a “room with view”, but this?!)

The hotel staff was totally perplexed by my arrival. They absolutely were not expecting *me*. They were super nice, but insisted I must have come to the wrong hotel! Eventually that was all sorted out, and two desk clerks helped me get my bags to the room. I was stunned. I leveraged my limited Mandarin to say “very pretty” and “I like! I like!”

Everything about the room is top notch!

Well, as has happened at several other hotels during my trip- to help deal with my limited language skills, I set them up with my WeChat account.

I got s message that mentioned an observation deck on the top floor.

JFC!!! My room has the peasant’s view, ha ha. Up on the top floor there is about 240 degrees of view! Too much for a single panoramic photo!

By the way, I am pretty sure the front desk had never checked in an American before! Perhaps never a foreigner! They seemed perplexed about what to do with a passport!

On the bus. Lanping here I come!

As the train approached Dali I was stunned by the high mountain range to its west! Hmmm, on Friday I’m going to have to go past those mountains to get to Lanping!

I was aware of a Pagoda built on a mountain in Guiyang. It was said that from that vantage point you can see the whole city.

A problem was that I didn’t know its name, nor where it is located. Well my new developer buddy sent me a note asking what my plans were.
I mentioned the Pagoda. He provided me with the name and a image showing where it was located. Score!!

Did I mention that to get to the Pagoda, you have to go up about 500,000 uneven steps going back an forth, but ever upwards!

And yeah , the view was incredible!

I encountered some photos of these apartment/condo buildings on the Internet. But those websites provided little info, so it took research on a Chinese website to get more info, including a description of the location in Guiyang. I took the subway to a station about 4 or 5 miles from my target. Using Didi, and a map to set the destination, I stuck the pin where I thought the buildings should be. I was only off by about s half a block! Whoo hoo!