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Published: July 29th 2012
New photos on:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/ I decided to put a smaller selection of pictures on the main album (link above), a more manageable selection for people with limited time to spare. The other albums are there if you still want to have a look.
…..where were we, at the end of the last blog? Still gobsmacked by the scenic beauty & sheer audacity of the Plank Walk around Tianmen Shan as we board the train to Guilin in Guangxi province. The train trip is not entirely to plan, as usual. The plan is to arrive in the provincial capital, Changsha, around 6pm, have dinner then board the connecting train to Guilin around 10pm on a hard sleeper then wake up in Guilin around 7am. However.....
…..the actual trip is thus; arrive at Changsha, not the greatest place for a stopover, a bit before midnight, with everything pretty well closed. At least we had seats on the train but I've had to inform our accommodation & rearrange some hotels as Bruce & Kerry have decided to return to Australia earlier. Our sleeper train departs at 4am! It's Kerry's birthday. I feel somehow responsible for the poor connections as she tries
The train to Changsha
Bruce and Kerry charmed by their travelling companionto make herself comfortable on the stainless steel seats. Finally we get on the train & into our hard sleeper berths, Bruce & Kerry on the lower bunks while I have a middle bunk. Not good but, after the 5 hours standing in Satan's personal carriage on the trip to Zhangjiajie why, it's truly luxurious....
…..Guilin is a small, very picturesque, quiet city of around 4 million in the north of Guangxi, China's second most southerly province. There doesn't appear to be any heavy industry in the area, the sky is clear & the Li river looks really clean. A lot of people are swimming there. The city is crowded in summer though. I go to buy my ticket back to Yangzhou on the 9
th of July. “Mei you”, (“Not have”). Oh, no, not again. Finally I settle for a hard sleeper, middle bunk, for the 8
th.I have to make more phone calls to rearrange hotel bookings but least I won't have to stand for 20 hours. Of course it arrives in Nanjing at 8.30pm, too late to get a bus to Yangzhou. Don't complain. It could be much, much worse.....
…..we book a trip for tomorrow on
Li River, Guilin
Swimming on a hot summer's day the Li River to Yangshuo, a well known tourist town a few hours south of Guilin. Kerry deserves a good treat for her birthday after spending the first 4 hours of it, uncomplaining I might add, in the waiting room at Changsha station. I remember the restaurant we found here when I was here with a couple of teachers in the winter. Li River Cuisine.....
…..atonement! Great success. I manage to order tolerably well, Li River fish, nangua, a vegetable made into soft, fried chips, (Bruce is smitten), vegetable & meat dishes &
cold beer. It's a really popular restaurant, not surprisingly. Popular Chinese restaurants are not places for a quiet meal. People talk loudly, there's a lot of yelling, laughing & noisy eating. They've been to China before so they're not totally surprised.....
…..the options for the boat trip were; a) Western boat with English guides, (¥350 each), b) Chinese cruise boat (¥240) or c) Bamboo raft, only goes halfway then a bus takes you to Yangshuo, (¥150). We went for the middle option. We're asked for an extra ¥20 each for a seat. Woah! That's cheeky. Actually it's a good deal. It's a private cabin with
a table shared with two really likeable students, Susan & Chris, studying in Shanghai & who speak really good English. The scenery is reckoned to be among the most beautiful in China & can be seen on the ¥20 note....
…..the cabin with our new friends makes for a beautiful trip. The lunch however. A paltry offering of a few noodles sprinkled with a few pieces of, (of course), pork. Oh, well, I can wait until dinner time in Yangshuo.....
…..an annoying woman follows us to the hotel after we disembark, offering us tickets for the renowned open air light show. I phone Chris, our new friend. They will get tickets, probably cheaper. We can pay them later. We tell the woman. She's still cheerful & finally, after showing us her testimonial book, handwritten by tourists from several countries, she persuades us she'd be a good guide around Yangshuo tomorrow.....
….we meet Susan & Chris for dinner. Chris picks a restaurant after checking Yangshuo ratings on the internet via his i-Phone. It's good. Worth missing lunch for.....
…..the show is, as always in China, on an epic scale, & that's just getting to the venue, buses,
Li River Cuisine, Guilin
Bruce and Kerry, Happy Birthday Kerry! people, cars, dogs, bicycles in their thousands. There's a sort of amphitheatre facing some karst peaks which are backlit for the show. It's a cast of (at least), hundreds, costumes, some with computer controlled lighting built in, songs, smoke, laser lights, hectares of red cloth &... oh, just look at the photos! The storyline, if indeed there is one, is lost on us but it is spectacular. There's a marriage in a small boat, flaming torches, a gorgeous girl cavorting on a crescent moon & more bamboo rafts than you could shake a punting pole at. It was developed, (directed, conceived...), by film director Zhang Yimou, (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), also the director of the Beijing Olympic Opening cermony. Watch his movie, “Curse of the Golden Flower”, with Gong Li if you get the chance.....
…..next day, Moi Xie Feng, our guide is waiting outside the hotel at 7.30am. She is always cheerful &, despite not having finished high school can talk the hind leg off a donkey in 5 languages. For ¥200, plus another ¥200 for the trike & driver, (for the 3 of us that's around Au$20 each for the day), she shows us scenic spots &
places of interest around Yangshou, including the very basic old house of an 86 year old lady who is overjoyed to show us around for ¥10. A disturbing reminder of my 2 days in the farmhouse in the mountains of Guizhou visiting Miss Piggy & her then fiancee. Little paths by the river we would not have found by ourselves. She even takes us to her house & introduces her daughters & their friend. Her husband is a builder. They are determined to give the girls a better chance in life. I think we all end up with a lot of respect for her efforts. She says foreigners are MUCH easier to work with than Chinese people on tours like this.....
…..the lunch at her friend's restaurant is so-so & the price high. We forgive her however &, after a look around some nearby caves, passing up the chance of a dip in the mud bath, we finish off, almost literally on this hot, humid, sweaty, debilitating day, by climbing hundreds of steps, (800 I'm told), to Moon Hill. Beautiful view but, no more climbing, on this trip at least. Kerry & Bruce are bearing up remarkably well but
enough is enough.....
…..another great dinner at the Li River Cuisine restaurant, (make sure you go there if you're ever in Guilin), then off to the Home Inn, last sleep for Bruce & Kerry before their flight to KL tomorrow....
…..my train time doesn't fit in with my plan to see the terraced rice fields, which really need an overnight stay a few hours out of Guilin. Ah, well, next time. I find Guilin more amenable than Yangshuo which, as a town, doesn't have a lot to commend it except for the scenery around it. It used to be a magnet for western backpackers & has the usual pizza parlours & bars plus, of course, Western junk food, the Golden arches against a backdrop of karst peaks &, for those who can't stomach the thought of a Chinese chicken, with a head & feet, (it's not natural...), there's a KFC where you can comfortably eat one that has been processed through a machine so the whole bird becomes a squishy paste that can be formed into nuggets. Ah well, that's modern civilisation for you.....
…..the train trip back is something of a drag, ameliorated by books, Chinese
Homey Inn, Yangshuo, Guangxi
Our home(y) for a couple of nights lessons & even movies on my tablet. I have sporadic conversations with various people but the one who spends the most time talking, as we get closer to Nanjing, is a young fella with an impenetrable accent. When we arrive in Nanjing I end up going with him to his hotel, which turns out to be a really nice, clean place with a room to spare for only ¥140, or about Au$20 a night. Small but nice & a spacious bathroom. One more short hop back to Yangzhou tomorrow, only an hour or so on the train then I can prepare for the summer camp.....
…..what a great trip. Thanks Kerry & Bruce for being such entertaining, forgiving, easygoing, intelligent travelling companions. I'd do it again with you. Reading these blogs again, whether the reverse is true I can't say!.....
photos from the 3 Gorges on:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/China-3%!G(MISSING)orges-2012/ photos from Zhangjiajie on:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/China-Hunan-Summer%!/(MISSING)
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