The bus ride to Yellow Mountain begins early in the morning (around 6 AM) and the ride is over 8 hours long. We actually arrived around 9 PM. As you can see, we are stopped in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere. Why? Because the bus's brakes were going out and they were smoking so badly that everyone thought the bus was on fire. So here we are, at least 5 hours from Hefei, semi-stranded on the side of the road and surrounded by farmland. We eventually got back on the bus and the bus driver said that we would all be okay because he would not use the brakes unless he had to. Well, we had a mountainous road ahead of us and we no longer trusted the bus. The brakes were never fixes so the problem would never go away. Fortunately, Yanming called us a taxi to bring us the remaining 3 hours to our hotel. We stopped for dinner on the way and ate freshwater eel which was surprisingly good.
On the way back to Hefei, we purposely chose another bus. However, this new bus wasn't without problems. First, the a/c was not working well but still Yingzi and her brother were getting cold. Yanming was cold because he was sitting directly under the a/c vent. So, we switched seats. Also, it was raining really hard and the bus was leaking water. Water started dripping on the people in front of us and then eventually everyone on the bus was getting wet! And when the bus would turn sharply, water would literally pour out from between the nauga liner and the roof onto people. So people were using the curtains to shield themselves from the water but that was only re-directing the water onto the people around them. It was really funny.