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Published: November 29th 2007
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Tongli
Cute little town northwest of Shanghai. It has canals running through Old Town Tongli. These little boats would take you on a "very romantic" tour of the town for a couple bucks. We opted for the less costly option, our feet. So I've been traveling through China for quite awhile and many exciting things have happened. However, they decided to re-do the blog website over the past 2 weeks making it almost impossible to access my account. Well, the website is prettier now and I can finally finish updating you on what I was doing two weeks ago. I swear, at some point, I'll actually write about something that happened in the last 48 hours instead of stuff that happened weeks ago.
I started this on Nov. 20
Anywho, I started off in Shanghai a few days ago with Jules and two of the guys I met in Mongolia, Mark and Matt (turns out we are like four peas in a pod and have been traveling together ever since we all met on the White Lake trip in Mongolia). Well, I decided that I hate big cities and Jules decided she wanted to see Hong Kong. Luckily, Matt is a city slicker like Jules and Mark didn't want me running around the chinese countryside alone so we parted ways early on Nov 18. Jules and Matt headed for Hong Kong and Mark and I hopped on a train for Tongli
Garden at Happy Farming House
Little garden and pond inside one of the historic houses of Tongli. If you walked across the little bridge across the pond, the goldfish and coy would swarm around your feet and move in a blob with you every step of the way. A little cool and a little creepy. a small canal town northwest of Shanghai. However, in order to get to this town we had to take a train to Suzhou and take a short bus ride. Well, things went smooth until we had to find the bus station. Lonely planet told us the bus picked up in front of the train station so we fought off the taxi, motorcycle and rickshaw drivers until we got to the bus station. I did my "I'm a lost forgeiner" look and showed people where I wanted to go. They pointed me across the street to another bus stop. We went over there and I tried my tactic again, this time we were pointed back across the street to the bus stop we were just at, grrrrr. Luckily, a police man happened to be handy when we went back across and in broken English he kindly directed us to walk about a half mile to the bus station.
After we got our exercise dodging bus, taxis and motorcycles crossing the street three times, we found the bus station! Everything after that went very smooth and the locals were super helpful. We arrived in Tongli in no time and headed straight
Yummy
Me, eating whole crab along the river. I heart China! for Old Town Tongli. It was the kind of town I had been looking for. Cobblestone streets, canals running everywhere with little chinese gondola's and waterside cafe's everywhere. Mark and I wondered the streets, saw a couple historic buildings and gardens and even went to the Chinese Sex Culture Museum. I wouldn't have gone in except that the sign outside just sucked me right in. It quoted some random German guy as saying "if you only go one place in China, this should be it". Well, in that case, I figured I'd be selling myself short by missing the greatest thing in China if I didn't go. So we went, we laughed, we were amazed, horrified and thought it was by far the best museum we had visited in China. Who needs the Forbidden City when you have a sex museum?
Once our Tongli experience was completed, we headed back to Shanghai and caught an overnight train south to the Hunan province. We arrived at the rail station and had to find a bus to our next destination, Fenghuang. I was almost out of cash so we set off to find some. After an intense ATM hunt, a couple
Along the river
This is my favorite place in China so far, Fenghuang. It's a lovely little town with a river that runs right through the middle of it. You can see a few pagodas in the back ground as well as the stepping stones and wooden bridge used to cross the river. Very nice! of taxi trips across the city and fighting off impatient chinese women while trying to cash a travelers check, I was finally able to obtain some money and we went on our way.
Upon arrival in Fenghuang we were approached by a young man who guided us to his families hotel where we got a sweet room complete with our own bathroom, a heater, an actual matress and even a computer with free internet. Heaven! and it was cheap too! We spent the next few days in Fenghuang strolling along the river, eating the best street food I've been able to find in China, trying to communicate with the locals and shopping till we dropped. It is such a fun little town and a great place to spend a couple of days. The street food was amazing! Whole fried baby crabs covered in hot chilly oil, big pots of boiling snails, and pig face! Yes, that's right, pig face! They skin the head of the pig and then nail it up flat on the side of a building to dry before they gobble it down. My favorite one I saw had a cigarette hanging out of it's right nostril.
Houses on stilts
Houses suspended over the river in Fenghuang. Hong Qiao Bridge is in the background and in the foreground is the "garbage man". We saw him paddling up and down the river fishing out garbage with a little net. Someone's gotta keep the river clean. Tasty!
Fenghuang was my favorite town in China by far. If you ever go to China it's worth a visit! Once we left there, things got interesting. You'll get the full story later, but the condensed version is this. Got on a train, got off a train, got on a bus, discovered my friends money belt was gone which contained both of our passports (i'll explain later) and now we're back in Beijing! Don't panic though, we both have new passports and are drinking Tsingtao beer straight from the brewery, which we toured today, awaiting our new chinese visas to be processed! Gotta love traveling!
Hope everyone is well. Happy late Turkey Day! I miss you all!
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Jesse
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Crabs in China?
Damn sister.. careful, I had a friend who had a bad experience with crabs in college.. I think his girl was from China as well!!