Blogs from Hunan, China, Asia - page 2

Aby przejachać z Dazhai do Zhangjiajie trzeba pokonać ponad 550 km. Można autobusem, można pociągiem, można samolotem. Aby przygotować się fizycznie i psychicznie do ewentualnej, przyszłorocznej podróży koleją z Pekinu do Lhasy w Tybecie postanowiliśmy pokonać ją koleją. Nie jest to jednak droga usłana różami. Po standardowej wczesnorannej pobudce po pierwszym pianiu koguta czekał nas godzinny marsz w dół, do wsi na pierwszy z etapów naszej podróży - autobus. Odprowadzeni do wyjścia przez naszą gospodynie zostaliśmy miło zaskoczeni. Nie tylko ona zadbała o nasze bezpieczeństwo o świcie. Jeden z psów na granicy osady, gdy tylko nas zobaczył, zerwał się na równe nogi, dał poglaskac, po czym szedł z nami nastepne pół godziny obsikując wszystkie krzaki po drodze. Gdy zaczelismy zbliżać się do lezacej w dolinie wsi, najwyraźniej stwierdzil, że nic już nam nie grozi, obsikał ostatni ... read more

Today I woke up in Sheraton, a 5 Star hotel which had an awesome American-style breakfast. Then we drove to the river and took a boat cruise of four lakes and two rivers. Then we drove to another attraction which had a lot of rocks and bridges, and we saw a glass bridge. I named one of the rocks “person looking at cell phone” because it looks like a person that was looking at a cell phone. Next we went to a Banyan tree park which had a very expansive tree that was over 1000 years old. Then we went on a ski lift/cable car which took us to the top of the mountain to see the birds’ eye view Guilin. Lastly we drove to a cave called Reed flute cave and we saw many awesome ... read more

Today was quite uneventful. We woke up and ate breakfast as normal, then we proceeded to drive to a new city Chang Sha. on the way there we stopped at some places that demonstrated some stuff, and we bought some black tea that I really liked. Then we went to eat Korean BBQ. I won’t say it was my favorite meal because it wasn’t Chinese, but it was VERY DELICIOUS. Then we kept driving for 5 hours and got to our hotel.... read more

Today was by far the best day we ever had in this China trip. When we woke up, we went to another Chinese-style restaurant for breakfast and drove to tour the Tianmen Shan, or in English, heaven door mountain. It is very high, and near the peak there is a hole due to cave collapse. We rode a very bumpy, steep, and adrenaline-pumping bus ride up to the hole, but to get to the hole we had to ride the escalator or climb 999 steep steps, so my dad and I chose the latter and raced up the hill while my mom and the others rode the relaxing but nevertheless long escalator ride up. When we got to the top, we waited quite a long time for my mom and the others. Then we took pictures ... read more

Oh, the lady just wouldn't shut up! For half an hour! My four hour bus ride from Zhangjiajie to Fenghuang was annoyingly punctuated with selling spiels on the sound system that would drown out the music in my headphones. Not all of us can afford Bose noise-cancelling technology. Because I couldn't really understand everything that was being said - I can pick out words that I know but not enough to understand everything that is going on - I also wondered if this was a tour bus that simply sold out its spare seats to people simply wanting to get from A to B. The lady did seem to talk about what "we" would be doing and was providing a little bit of information about our destination. The rest of the time she was simply flogging ... read more