The Island of Gulang Yu

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We arrived in Xiamen after an incredibly long 21 hour train ride. It seemed like we would never arrive. Once we did arrive, we were shocked by the giant WalMart and McDonalds just outside the train station. We had foolishly expected Xiamen to be a bit of smaller city of approximately 500,000 or so. Uhh... not so, we would guess the population to be closer to 2 million-ish.

Gulang Yu is an island off of the coast of Xiamen; it took us about 10 minutes to get there by ferry. Thank goodness we had taken the initiative to get our previous hotel manager to write out the chinese address of this hotel on a piece of paper. This way we were able to show it around when asking for directions, as there was absolutely no way we would have found our hotel otherwise. The hotel was quite nice, but was located down somewhat of an un-lit alley way near the ferry terminal.

We spent our time in Gulang Yu relaxing and wandering around the island. One of our favorite things to do was watch & listen to the local Chinese cowboy street musician. He was quite entertaining.

Next stop, Yongding County.

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