Blogs from Anhui, China, Asia - page 2

After descending Huangshan Mountain today after two days of climbing up and descending stairs, I decided to stop at the hot springs at the mountain’s base to sooth my tired legs. With a single admission fee you can luxuriate in over 30 different pools including the wine (French, of course), coconut milk, ginseng, jasmine, green tea and rose water tubs. There’s a restaurant, various rest areas, and all the green tea you can drink (not from the taken from the pool of the same name, I presume). The place was immaculate. I arrived at about 1 PM and was tempted to hang out into the evening. After about 3 hours, though, i thought I'd relaxed enough and headed back to my hotel in Tangkou.... read more

Hey it’s Hannah. Yesterday and the day before we had to leave our luggage because your not allowed to bring luggage to the hotel at the Yellow Mountain. Yesterday we finished climbing the YM. Then we went to two villages like my tour guide’s village. Then we went to the old street and had some hot cocoa - my mom got Bailey’s coffee and it had a panda face with paws that were made out of crème. Ha ha ha. Then we went to dim sum - yum yum. We had very good foods like sticky rice and dumplings. Then my mom, and Mrs. Montague (mont-a-gue wrong pronunciation last time oops)(name:Karen) one time they brought out wooden hammers to “RELAX THEM”. Then we went to the airport and flew to Shanghai. It’s so sad we have ... read more

Despite a forecast of rain, it turned out to be a nice day for our visit to the orphanage. Eight years ago the road was treacherous and we passed many accidents on our way to Huainan. It took us over three hours to get there from Hefei. Fortunate for us, there is a new highway so it took us half that time. And like every other city in China, Huainan’s population has grown considerably and there are a lot of new high-end apartments springing up on the outskirts of town. We were not allowed to visit the orphanage on our original visit as the location was considered bad feng shui, and now we know why. It is located in a very poor part of the city next to the “cave of 10,000 corpses”, a sad reminder ... read more

Hey it's Hannah. I split up with my two friends because their orphanage is further away, just the Montagues (mont-a-huez)(our friends in the adoption group with their daughter AiLi (pronounciation: I-lee) my friend) and us. It was a 4hour trip to the Yellow Mountain. In Chinese it's Huang Shan (hwong-shawn). BLEH!!!!!!!. I do NOT like long car/plane/bus/train/etc rides. We went to a market and bought stuff for my brothers it was really fun we also had some tea samples. I liked the oolong tea - yum. We bought some oolong tea to bring home. Write back tomorrow. -Hannah ----------------- Today we split up our group - we drive 4 hours south of Anhui to Huangshan with one other family, while the other two families headed to Naning to visit different orphanages. Huangshan is a relatively small ... read more

We arrived in Tunxi via a 3 hour bus ride from Hangzhou, a bunch of non-cabby cabbies were waiting at our arrival looking to score some customers. Like usual we ignored all of them, grabbed our bags, and kept walking. We went to the front entrance of the bus station and saw a row of cabs with their drivers hanging outside of their cars. One guy on his phone, away from his car, stops and asks us if we need a cab, we showed him where we needed to go, he quoted us a price and we were off..... to a parking lot with a non-cabby cabby! Dammit. We laughed and hopped in anyways, so much for our tried and true methods. Non-cabby cabby is talking to us in Mandarin the whole time and we have ... read more