Lost in Cheng Du: Following instructions from the hotel

When travelling, I can not stand to stay in the hotel and do nothing.  A lot of families will do just that.  We want to see the province our daughter comes from.  We are always looking for gifts for the children when they get older.  We mainly look for crafts.  While we were driving around with our guide, we asked her if she knew of places they sold hand made crafts.  Either she did not understand us or didn't care to bring us there, she replied that they do not make crafts in Cheng Du. 

At the hotel, we found a kiosk that displayed sites in Cheng Du.  We found the Wenshu Temple.  It looked interesting and said it had hand made crafts.  We go to the person behind the desk.  Luckily, he knew where it was.  He tells us to go out the hotel and turn left and walk a certain distance and then follow the waterway, etc.  Bidding him a good day, we started walking. 

We made it to a bridge over water.  At this point, I did not see anything.  Locals were looking at us and we managed to convey what we were looking for.  These two teenagers tell us to follow them.  They walked us what felt like a mile.  They brought us right were we wanted to go.  Looking around, my wife was in heaven.  They had all kind of shops.  As I entertained Kayla and Mia, Angie started her shopping spree. 

A few hours later,  we went looking for the temple.  We found out that is was a monastery.  They expected each person to donate a certain amount of money.  We were short.  This woman spoke to the guy monitoring the door.  Next thing you know, they let us in.  We thanked them.  Walking around, we took in the gardens and interesting buildings.  One thing we found was the Temple.  On the kiosk, it looked huge.  While walking we were looking for it in the air.  It turned out to be no more than a story or two tall. 

By the time we left, it was getting late and cold.  We started walking.  Eventually we found a grocery store and walked around.  Once we were done, it was dark.  Not only that, but we were lost.  So we started looking for a cab.  None would stop.  We tried waving them down, but no interest.  Finally, we come across an area where a cab had just parked.  We approach the driver and ask if he could take us our hotel, which we had written in Mandarin.  He just laughed at us and shook his head.  Frustrated, Angie mutters something to herself.  Kayla hears her.  Next thing you know, she's yelling at the people who are laughing "f#&( you!"  They continue to laugh as we move away from them. 

One of the bystanders comes over to us and tries to talk to us.  He does so in Mandarin.  We can't understand him.  Then these college age kids come up to us and tell us that he will drive us to our hotel for $6 Yuan or so.  It was a decent price, but he did not look like he had a registered cab.  He did not.  He drives up to us and loads us in the car.  This is many years before Uber.  In the end, it was worth it.  Not only that, but we found out that if we had gone the opposite way from the hotel, the temple was a couple of blocks away.  We did go back to get more and made it back to our hotel.