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Published: July 21st 2008
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Fenghuang are mythological Chinese birds that reign over all other birds. The males are called Feng and the females Huang I leave Yangshou with yet another slight hangover and get to Guilin.. OF COURSE I HAAAAD TO miss the train by 10 minutes so booked into
Flowers hostel again until the next day - here I meet .....John, as in
John Candy look alike... American guy that lives in
Beijing, got chatting as I am heading there in 2 weeks and he lives and studies there, he invites me to stay in his apartment, I say I'll think about it, so we exchange numbers and I head off - Story on John Candy coming soon..... I end up taking bus from Guilin 2pm to
Huahuia arrived in at 4am and then bus at 9am to
Fenghuang... 114 Yuan should have asked bus man if I could sleep in bus but instead got a bed for 3 hrs... probably better off...
Not only do I find myself speaking Chinglish but I also typing too...
Anywhoo I’m shattered by the time I get the next bus on to Fenghuang to meet Yota my Japanese friend, I pick up
a Korean guy along the way that has no English.... or did he.... I’m trying to remember back to December here..bear with me...whilst I reminisce.... and when I say pick up I don’t mean 'pick up'.. I mean another travelling buddy...
Rock into Fenghuang really early, already the hustle and bustle of morning tasks have begun...setting up of street veg stalls... loading up the wheelbarrows of food.. the local restaurateurs are putting out the papa smurf table and chairs...& We happen upon our hostel that Yota recommends (& in the LP) by the waterside.. I'm thinking... it has to be just as charming if not better than Yangshou...
By the way Fenghuang is cold... crispy cold so first things first I head off shopping with the boys in tow.. jeans.. jackets.. leg warmers....retro style!!!
All in all this place is just picturesque... its beautiful, everything about it is charming and before I know it I find myself at the local restaurant eating nuuudaaal soup and day dreaming about life in China & how I have to learn how to make this soup.. this stuff is like skinny soup, every time I eat it I feel like fading
away... full of hot chillies and what ever else they put in it, tis lush!!
Kim (Korean guy) Yota and I hang out in this town for a few days.. I don’t want to leave at all but time is running by and Yota and I decide to leave together to
Xi'an to see the
Terracotta Warriors via a place that was recommended to us by a passing tool... the City of
Zhangjiajie (pronounced Jan JA Jay) or as Yota christened it..
(Fuckin Jan Jaaaa Jaaay) Wulingyuan Scenic area Get an over nighter to this dump of a city and it all goes Pete Tong... bags are wearing us down..... we have no Chinese and nooo one speaks English.. Its hell trying to sort out a room with a budget... we succumb to flagging a taxi down as my this bag is a killer, arrive to a hostel in an even worse part of town...(it's on the LP) we are the only 2 sleeping there .. Its massive and cooold... drop the bags and head to the streets for some grub..with a warning from the hostel guy...
don't stay out late, it’s too dangerous...
don’t stray.. It’s too dangerous.. just stay some meters from the hostel.. Brilliant!!!
Another sanario for dinner ... we are trying to enquire the price for just something simple from a street stall (me with my LP dictionary and my only Chinese word for what food I like and Yota with his Chinese looks) we get no where fast, they are coming back with astronomical prices.. like 10 euro for nuudal soup.. because we are foreign, so we move on.. and on and on... until we find someone that wont rip us off..
Early night and an Usain Bolt out of there the next morning.... but as we squashed ourselves on to a filthy bus a dodgy looking guy with tattoos on his knuckles pick pocketed Yota, I can see it all unfold & try to warn him but with all the commotion he doesn't hear me, in a split second he had his wallet, took the cash and dropped it like a hot Peking duck with special fri rice from Happy Chans... I tell him it was the guy standing there next to me with the mad tattoos on his hands but Yota seems to have lost his English after the
fright so after the third time I just said... forget it.. tattoo guy was sweating and shaking and looking up at the ceiling in the bus (what ever that was about I don’t know) & looked like he was going to do something crazy if he was backed into a corner and I valued my life more than 200 dollars of Yotas cash....we bailed on the next stop & hail a taxi - now don’t ask me why we didn’t get a taxi in the first place.....
Arrive to Wulingyuan Scenic area the main reason for coming to this city, find a cheap hotel for the night and checkout the entry prices to the park to find that it was waaay to pricey and neither of us were prepared to fork out, cant remember how much they were asking prob not that much (maybe 40/80 dollars each) but at the time it was alot for just a park and after Yota getting pick pocketed all that cash we decided it wasn’t worth it so planned the exodus out of there to Xi'an...
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Chris Oquist
non-member comment
Fenghuang!
Great photographs! I was in Fenghuang last month and was absolutely blown away. We actually went to Guilin and Yangshuo afterwards so I think we did the reverse that you did. Anyway, I enjoyed the shots - wish I would have thought of the cigarette-in-flattened-pigface shot! I put some photos from our stay in Fenghuang on my blog, Aper(cul)ture! www. aperculture .com Let me know what you think, Chris