Feng Huang, Hunan Province, China

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So that was the end of our cruise – the bus took us into Yichang city bus station, from where I caught a taxi to the train station, and got a ‘hard seat’ seat to Jishou down in Hunan province. From there I wanted to get to a picturesque river side town called FengHuang.
Unfortunately I had some bad news at this point. While on the ship I had photocopied the Hunan chapter of Lonely Planet’s China from my dutch fellow passengers. When I looked in my bag it wasn’t there. I think my room-mate might have picked it up by mistake when he checked out. This meant I didn’t know the names or numbers of any hostels in Jishou or FengHuang. Plus didn’t have any info of what to see or do there. I wasn’t too concerned as I thought if I just find one hostel with English info, I would be able to work out the rest, but alas, what was to follow was not smooth sailing.

So I settled in for the 7 hour trip down to Jishou, in the not-too-comfortable hard seat carriage, and pretty soon some working chaps took an interest to me and came over to chat. And smoke. Yes they all lit up, offered me one as well. I didn’t want to be rude, so didn’t complain (it is after all their country, and their culture) but I could hardly breathe with all this smoke around me. One of them was very friendly, but it was still almost all Chinese. At one part I told him I had come to China from Thailand, and he said that he thought Thai people were . I was intrigued to find out what he meant (was it complimentary or otherwise?) He looked up the phrase in my dictionary but couldn’t find an exact match – first he came up with one that said “monster, deformed”! But he wasn’t satisfied with that one, so had another go and found a better match: “kinky”. He thought Thais were kinky? Then I found out what he meant – he was talking about the “katoeys” aka “ladyboys” i.e. transvestites, a very common sight in Thailand, particularly in the big tourist areas. He had had seen TV programs about ladyboys in Thailand, and apparently thought this phenomenon was a bit weird!

As nice as my new found friends were, I was really counting the minutes until they would get off the train (after 3 hours) as I was about faint from lack of oxygen. Finally they said good bye and I rejoiced in the sensation of breathing again. (I should mention that the window next to my seat was broken, so I couldn’t open it.) After they had gone the air quality changed from suffocating too merely horrible. Numerous other people kept puffing away.

When I arrived in Jishou, about 8:30PM, 2 lovely young Chinese ladies (university students) sitting near me on the train told me they were also going to Fenghuang, so I could tag along. After some trouble we found a bus to take us from Jishou to Feng Huang. On the way 2 women on the bus took an interest in us. First of all they started singing songs through the bus’s Karaoke system, and my 2 lady friends joined in. (They actually sang really well.) Then the 2 local ladies showed us a few brochures – all in Chinese of course. When we reached Fenghuang, these 2 – may as well call them ‘touts’ - came along with us as we looked for a hotel. And then a 3rd one (who was, by the way, a spunk) joined us. So 3 touts, 2 chinese girls and me. We walked through the town, turned a corner, went through a large gate and down a hill, then I noticed the incredible view of the town. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was gorgeous. A river flowing down the centre, and old style buildings on either side, all lit up like Christmas. It took about 30 minutes of frigging around – all in Chinese – to decide on a hotel, but at least it was quite comfortable, and only 120Yuan. I had a balcony right over the river – the views were incredible. By now it was 11:30PM, but the touting ladies were still hanging around. One actually came into my room sat down on my bed and practically begged for me to go on a tour with her. I had no intention of doing so. I wanted to find a hostel with foreigners and get some information in English.

My 2 lovely lady friends (Mei Qing and Wang Meng Ting) and I went out to find a place to eat. The touts came along too. We deliberately chose an upstairs place to eat hoping the touts would not follow us – but that was no impediment to these people, they just marched up the stairs with us, and sat near the door! Finally after we had been there a good 20 minutes, the touts finally gave up and said they were leaving BUT would be at the hotel 8AM sharp the next morning ready to take on us a tour we hadn’t agreed on.

I shouted the 2 girls this meal, but the bill was a lot higher than I expected. Although food is generally cheap in China, if you don’t watch what you order it can get quite expensive. In this case it was about 170RMB, which equalled my entire expenditure for the day, including my hotel!!! We didn’t manage to eat even half of it. (I think Chinese, at least when in a group, seem to order too much food, so I’ve since become careful when eating with them. You can always order more if you don’t have enough!)


Monday 12 Sept
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Although I didn’t get to bed till after 1AM, I was up at 8, and had a walk around town to see if I could find an international youth hostel or hotel. I didn’t see any foreigners at all, and no hotel or inn that looked like it catered for foreigners, so I gave up.
I tried to find when I could get a train or bus for Guilin but couldn’t find any definite information AT ALL. Later, back at the hotel, an English speaking girl named Chloe showed up. She had been walking past the hotel and heard a wai guo ren (in apparent distress?) so came in to help. Through her I found that a train was leaving for Guilin 6AM the next morning from a place called Huai Hua, which itself was a 3 hour bus ride away. Last bus for Huai Hua would leave at 5PM. That meant I could look around Feng Huang till 4PM.

My lady friends didn’t surface till about 11, and invited me to go on a trip to see one of the local ethnic groups (can’t remember the name). After a huge amount of haggling they obtained a ‘taxi’ to take us there for only 5Y per head. Two of the touts were still present participating in the haggling. The whole time, the girls looked very worried as if the country bumpkins were doing them over. I could only stand and watch picking up the occasional phrase, but helpless to intervene. Eventually we piled in the ‘taxi’, and one of the touts jumped in to. I told her she wasn’t welcome but she refused to leave. The taxi took us at least 20 minutes out of town, and eventually took us up a side road, and stopped at a ticket office. To go any further (and see god-knows-what attraction) we had to buy expensive tickets. The girls were very upset about the steep price, and maybe didn’t have enough cash, because I heard them say ‘credit card’ in Chinese. I didn’t want to pay the steep price as I had no idea what we were going to get for our money. Plus I suspect the ticket entitled you to visit multiple attractions and we had little time. There was a great deal of heated talking until the girls said they no longer wanted to go there, and we were going to head back to Feng Huang. We started back by a different road (a very quiet one). Along the way the one remaining tout who had come along with us must have decided she was on a lost cause, and jumped out of the taxi probably when we were passing her own village. Later we stopped at a place where the girls dressed up in supplied minority dresses and got their photos taken. They looked lovely in the colourful dresses. (They got a few prints made, and gave me one. Only cost a few dollars.)
Back at Feng Huang we had a relatively expensive lunch at a non-impressive restaurant (they ordered far too much food, most of it was too spicy for me). The taxi driver invited himself for the meal !
I also visited an ATM machine, but had my withdrawal rejected. That was a worry – was there something wrong with my credit card. They then took me to a different bank. At that one, the transaction worked – what a relief!

By the time we got back to Feng Huang this taxi driver had been carting us around for a good 3 hours. I presumed he was going to ask for a fortune, but he only required 10RMB ($1.45) from each of us! Even though I hadn’t liked him at first, I gave him a tip.
At 4PM I said goodbye to the lovely girls and the same taxi driver took me to a disorderly bus station to get a bus to Huai Hua – however he warned that the road to Huai Hua was terrible, and I might consider going back to Jishou instead. Jishou, however was heading away from Guilin, whereas Huai Hua was in the right direction. I was on the verge of choosing Jishou, but by a stoke of luck I decided to go to Huai Hua – the road was indeed rough but not too bad, and some spots had lovely views. I got to Huai Hua in only 2.5 hours, found the train station easily, and, better still, found a stack of nice hotels around the station square. One of them had lovely western-style rooms with aircon and free internet for only 118RMB. (Tian Fu hotel.) I was relieved to be able to have a good rest before the early start the next morning. That was one of the best value hotels I had in China!

At the train station I tried to get a ‘soft seat’ ticket to Guilin, but they only had ‘hard seat’. I also found the journey would take 11 hours – not a nice prospect.
In the evening I couldn’t find a restaurant with an English menu, or with any tempting looking food on display, so I asked one of them to make me fried rice with pork.

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Photos

Karaoke leader on bus
After she finished the singing, she started her hardcore sales pitch.

Tour touts
2 of the touts who would not leave us alone

Feng Huang
A few people were swimming in this river.