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Published: October 25th 2008
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The bus was grand and we arrived in Tunxi 7 hours later. The town was deadly- really typically Chinese and really well kept- we were impressed and ready to give China another fair go. The hostel was pretty cool too.
We had to leave at 6 the next morning to get to the mountain which was a total epic to get there. It’s a mountain range that has apparently inspired all of China’s poets, painters and philosophers over the centuries and is a haven for hoards of Chinese tourists. We knew all of this before we went but we were the ONLY westerners that we saw there bar two we spotted as we were leaving. The stares and pointing were really starting to wear thin with both of us by this point and no one likes to feel like they are in the minority no matter where they are.Word of advise if you have freckles and are planning a trip here- you better have thick skin because everyone thinks that I am disease ridden over here and they expressions on their faces when they look is pretty insulting. We just started being shitty back which is probably a crap thing
to do but sometimes enough is enough. I stared a couple of women out of it and felt really shit. Later on we actually bumped into them with their family and they were really friendly to us - all smiles and everything and asked if they could get their photo with us….I really felt like a bitch then but sometimes its hard to keep a level head here.
One of the main reasons that we wanted to go the mountain is that lots of couples go there and tie a padlock onto the chains there. According to Chinese legend once a couple does this they will be together forever and if they break up they have to go back, find the lock and try to untie it. This would be pretty hard to do because you have to throw the keys of the lock away after to tie it on. It was really cool and again it was great to be somewhere and do something that we had wanted to do since we saw the program on TV.
The morning was great and we felt brilliant heading back to the hostel…then the day took a bad turn. It
started with walking back to the hostel. An oul’ bag came up muttered something at me in disgust , tutted and spat at my feet. What a cow…I think it was something to do with the freckles or how I was dressed but I tried not let it get to me but it kind of soured the day. We had to try and get tickets to Yangshou- our next stop on the trip. Again the hostel couldn’t book them so we had to get a taxi to the train station, queue in 40 degree heat, and, when we go to the top of the queue, we were informed that the train was fully booked until 6 days later. Back in a taxi to the hostel to try and come up with an alternative plan. We could get a bus to Huangshou and try and get a train from there to Guilin and then get another bus to Yuangshou. We really wanted to go there because the couple we met in Tokyo highly recommended it and it was on the River Li which was supposed to be beautiful AND it was geared for western tourists which sounded like something we needed
badly. We also wanted to give China a chance to redeem itself and thought that the only way to do this was to get out of the cities and go to the countryside. We booked the bus tickets to Huangshou and tried to book a hostel there- it was fully booked. Would anything go right for once!!We just picked a random hotel and headed out for dinner. Gary nearly lost the plot- the spitting incidents were coming thick and fast and he was facing the spit bucket. This was in a really high class restaurant BTW. We also realized that the pork we ordered was pigs ears- nice. We ate everything else that didn’t look like dog and went back to get to bed- we had been up since 5 that morning. Just as we were getting ready for bed Gary realized he lost his mobile phone. Things were at an all time low and we had some thoughts about heading straight for Hong Kong. Gary was really starting to get down on the whole place especially but I was determined that we weren’t going to let China get the better of us. We decided to go for it and
headed on the bus to Huangshou the next day.
We booked the tickets for the train and headed for the station the day after to start our 23 hour journey. We were in a cabin with a little old Chinese lady and a student from Huangshuo. He could speak English and bought us beers and I was thinking this could be cool. Then he deiced to tell us that he was in love with his COUSIN(I kid you not) and wanted to marry her but the government wouldn’t allow him. In fairness they were distant cousins but he wouldn’t shut up about her so me and Gar pretended we were having a midday nap to try and get rid of him. The journey was pretty cool - not too bad at all. We headed down to the restaurant cart had some beers and played cards. Pretty soon the staff were around us totally into what was going on in the game. That’s the thing I can’t figure out about here. They are really good hearted and friendly people in most situations. They didn’t have a word of English nor us Chinese but they were laughing and smiling with
Huangshan
The Camera doesnt do it justice us. We just can’t figure them out!!
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