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Published: June 14th 2012
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From Ping Yao we took the overnight train to Xi'An so we arrived in the early morning. It was not quite as comfortable this time - we were in a hard sleeper (not literally a hard bed or anything, just 6 bunks to a cabin, and no door on the cabin - so generally less attractive), and we were on the middle bunks which meant no head room apparently, even for little old me. We slept ok considering, but got woken up a little early for our stop, and then nearly got off at the wrong place! I'm sure it would help to read Chinese symbols, but no time to learn now!!
We stayed in a real backpacker hostel in Xi'An, with Western breakfast on offer and flags and handwritten notes all over the wall from previous guests. It was a lively place with events on each night, a pool table, table tennis and a rooftop terrace to relax on. Felt very chilled out while we were there, and a nice place to finish our busy days. We spent the day we arrived going to the Terracotta warriors on our own steam, and managed to do it for cheaper than
the tour would have and had more time. It was a fascintating place, if a little busy with tourists. Unfortunately, a lot of the warriors were off touring the other countries of the world, and even on exhibition in Shanghai, but there were still an impressive number standing guard for us.
We also visited another nearby tomb on the following day, of an emperor who apparently wanted a slightly different afterlife. He was buried with little statues of farmers, sheep, pigs and piglets, goats, cows and horse-drawn carriages. These weren't so impressive in size and lifelikeness as the warriors, but the detail and the variety of statues was possibly more so. There were so many sheep!!
We spent a day trip climbing Hua Shan. A mountain with smooth sides and 5 peaks - NSEW and Central. Of course, we climbed them all, and didn't even stop when it started to rain on the last one. Ok so we got the cable car up before we started walking but we still climbed from around 1100m to 2100m at the highest, and we did it 4 times! It was good practise for being at high altitude too, as we just
breached the 2000m mark.
We flew to JiuZhaiGou from Xi'An, which means nine lakes in a row. We only stayed a couple of nights as the main reason was to visit the national park. It was pretty expensive to get in, as is everything in China - in case anyone thought this was part of cheap Asia! Apparently anything that people want to visit has a price tag, from caves to lakes to temples to whole towns! I have to say the national park was worth it though. It stretches some 35km, so there are shuttle buses to get around, and is full of boardwalk paths between magical spectacular lakes, mountains, waterfalls and forests. The sights/scenic spots had names like "Five-coloured pool", "Dragon lake", "Sparkling Falls", "Ancient Forest", and they were pretty impressive. There were brightly coloured turqoise lakes, enormous waterfalls spanning 300m of cliff. And the place was really peaceful - which is saying something in China!!
After having a great time at JuiZhaiGou, we got the bus to Songpan, a couple of hours away. We stopped here mainly to cut up the longer (8hr) bus journey to Chengdu, but we were so glad we did. It
is a little town in the mountains of Sichuan and is inhabited with mainly Tibetan people, so the villages and hills are vividly decorated with bright coloured ribbons, artwork and carved stones. The people were all traditionally dressed as there was a festival on in the town when we arrived. And everyone was so friendly!! We spent the next day pony trekking across the hills and through the valleys, with a man who took us to his house for lunch of fresh bread and cucumber salad. It rained and we got wet, but he lent us massive ponchos (we looked like we should be in Lord of the Rings!) and it was great fun, if a little painful sitting on the masses of packs loaded on the back of the ponies! We tried the local food, which was delicious, including yak butter tea, yak meat with potato, tomato and garlic, and plenty of noodles and veg. It all felt pretty wholesome and good for us, which is more than I can say for most of the other Chinese food we've eaten.
We made it to Chengdu the following day and stayed 3 nights. We went to the Giant Panda
sanctuary, which also had red pandas. We watched the laziest fattest pandas eating and the baby ones playing, and laughed at all of them quite a bit. We did another mountain walk to QingChengShan, which had lots of little temples to visit along the way, and a big pagoda at the top. We had to laugh at an old man arguing with one of the ladies that takes your photo and prints a polaroid for two pounds. When we got to the top it was all we could hear. Even the Chinese temple staff who were busy with prayers and calligraphy came out for a nose at the commotion.
We got a bus to Leshan for the day to see the Giant Buddha which was very giant! It was much bigger than I expected, and when they say in the guidebooks that you are the size of its toenails, they aren't joking! It was great to see, even with the masses squashing us to get down the narrow stairs cut into the cliff in their neverending rush to just get somewhere. We managed to hold them off to stare at it a while, and obviously take pictures. There were
some other interesting temples in the park too, one with lines and lines of statues of monks painted in bright colours, a bit like parliament!
That evening we headed to Zigong to stay, from where we visited the salt museum, mine, and dinosaur museum on the following day. Apparently famous for salt and dinosaurs, we had to see both. The salt mine still works and uses ancient techniques to get the brine from the ground, boil it in natural gas cauldrons and harvest it for sale. The dinosaur museum was also great fun. We felt like little kids again, staring at the massive skeletons and trying to learn the names of them all!
After that we headed back to Chengdu - another long bus - and spent a couple of days wandering the city, seeing parks and museums - lots more pottery and culture.
We flew to Guilin for a night before travelling to YangShou for a week. We expected it to be a bit like a holiday - less moving around, good weather, relaxing things to do. We have definitely relaxed, going cycling round the nearby farming villages and fields, along the river Yulong, taking a
bamboo raft along the river. But the weather was different to what we expected. It was 60% humidity and nearly 35C every day. We spent the mornings getting out and about, seeing the nearby moon hill with a hole in it, and walking or cycling, then spending the afternoons chilling out in A/C bars and reading lots. So kind of like a holiday! The landscape is spectacular - they call it karst hills. Big blocks of limestone scattered around the flat farmlands and rivers. And it is very green, full of trees, hundreds of different colourful (and enormous) butterflies, and apparently half the world's population of mosquitoes, which I have more than contributed to with my 30+ bites.
Finally found a computer with USB that works, so I've backed up my precious photos, but unfortunately no luck getting them on the blog as apparently not enough memory on the computer :-( Fingers crossed my next post will be photos only - to catch you all up!
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