Huangshan, Guilin and Hong Kong

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Our final couple of destinations in mainland China were Huangshan and Guilin. Forget manmade marvels, the reason to head to these two places is that they are two areas of outstanding natural beauty.

First up, in order to get to Huangshan we needed to take a six hour journey on a long distance bus from Shanghai. Booked a week in advance (again, satisfyingly easy to do) we had seat numbers one and two, right at the front of the bus. On a comfy new bus and travelling along smooth roads, this was perfect save for being so close to the driver and conductor / ticket tout.

To sum them up, in a country where driving best practice is not so much 'Mirror, signal, manoeuvre' but rather 'Beep, beep, manoeuvre, beep, manoeuvre, beep, beep', this driver must have passed his driving test with flying colours. In the coach driving equivalent of Top Gun, this guy would have been Maverick (or Iceman, depending on who you consider was the winner in the movie)...

With regards to the conductor (Goose / Slider), anybody who has ever eaten in a busy Chinese restaurant can attest to how noisy the Chinese can be. However, this man took the ability to talk loudly (most impressively whilst on his mobile phone) to a whole new level. If his volume was anything to go by, it was clear that he passionately believed that in a country of 1.3 billion people he really did need to shout in order to be heard.

Of course these are massive generalisations. The most common claim against car warranties in China is not for replacement horns (although that would be funny). Nor do all Chinese shout all the time. In the same vein, not all Americans are obese and not all Germans get up early to put out their towels out (some put them out the night before). And finally, not all accountants are boring...

With our ears still ringing we checked into our hostel and got ready for the next day. Shan in Mandarin translates as mountain, so there would be climbing involved. Huangshan means Yellow Mountain, but it means so much more...

Huangshan is a mountain of granite peaks, with pine trees rooted into the unlikeliest of cracks and with mist swirling up from the valleys below. If you ever see any Chinese art showcasing those three things it is most probably going to be Huangshan, as the mountain has been inspiring artists and poets for centuries and is considered to be their ideal landscape. To emphasise its cultural significance further, it is another UNESCO world heritage site and the fee to get onto the mountain is higher than the entrance fees for the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Terracotta Warriors and the Forbidden City.

Setting out at 5:30am to avoid the crowds, it was a one hour bus journey to the village at the bottom of the mountain where everybody has to change onto another bus (which requires another ticket) that, depending on which bus you get on, takes you to the cable car station at the bottom of the eastern or western steps.         

The guidebook describes the eastern steps as very steep and difficult to climb and the western steps as even steeper and more difficult to climb. Sadly through a combination of the eastern steps being shut and Rich insisting that we would climb the mountain and only get the cable car down, we found ourselves at the bottom of the western steps.

Having only climbed one of the sets of steps we can't validate the guidebook's assessment of the relative difficulty of the western steps, but we can categorically state that they were one hell of a work out! We did the eight kilometres to the western summit cable car station in three hours, climbing over 2,000 steps to get there. Carved into the granite, some of these scaled the sides of the mountain in what must have been in excess of 60 degrees. These were no ordinary steps!

Although the temperature was only in the mid-twenties the humidity was 100% and the sweat was dripping off us. So good did we look, that within two minutes of reaching the top three people had asked to have photographs taken with us...

Fortunately it wasn't just the ascent that took our breath away - some of the views were exceptional. The angular granite outcrops, rising sharply out of the valleys were very impressive. The mist that we had added to that. With mist covering the mountain an average of 250 days a year, you're twice as likely to get it as not to. However, we were lucky and 'our' mist was at a nice place in-between a weak puff in the sky and thick pea soup. Just enough to keep it moody...

To complete the round trip we continued across the summits to the top of the eastern steps. This was still a fair effort, another couple of thousand steps up and down over another 13 kilometres - enough to complete the half-marathon distance. As with everywhere in China, we had to share the  mountain with  hoards of tour groups, but as we got closer to the eastern cable car they disappeared and there were times when we had the mountain to ourselves. Those moments were lovely!

Before descending we had one last thing to do. Custom has it that lovers attach a padlock engraved with their names to chain railings on top of the mountain. Throwing away the key (or not even having a key in our case) then cements that love forever. No use fighting it anymore, we're locked in now...

It was all downhill from there. The mountain, that is! Down a hugely unnerving cable car that crossed horrifyingly long distances between support pylons - distances that should not be spanned by just a single cable. Well, those were Rich's thoughts anyway. At least we were going down, some of the faces of people going in the opposite direction were a picture. Two thirds of the way down we went over a ridge and dropped down into some pea soup. After that it didn't seem so bad anymore...

After a great day, Rich's new favourite to date, we headed back to town. As food on the mountain was so ridiculously expensive (a bottle of water was 800% more expensive on the mountain compared to at its base), all we had eaten all day was the small packed breakfast and lunch that the hostel had provided. Given our level of exertion during the day, it was perhaps inevitable that food lust would kick in...

After much deliberation it was agreed that top of the fantasy list was a G-burger, from the Glamorgan on Cherry Orchard Road. An outstanding burger  on any ordinary day, after two months on the road and with us being as hungry as we were, the G-burger became the stuff that dreams are made of. The 100% beef patty, the cheese, the sautéed onions, the slices of bacon (real bacon), the tomato relish!! There's even now talk of stopping off at the pub on the way back from Heathrow once we arrive back in the UK...

It probably didn't help that outside of Beijing and Shanghai we have found food a bit more inaccessible. As much as anything to blame for this is our lack of ability to speak any meaningful Mandarin. In Huangshan all of the restaurants seemed to follow a similar format, which required pointing at the semi-fresh looking raw ingredients in a fridge or the very fresh (but sad) looking raw ingredients in the cages out front. Without knowing what we were pointing at, or knowing how it would be cooked, we chose to stick to the hostel restaurants for the couple of days we were in town. There were just too many known unknowns and a few unknown unknowns for us to be comfortable, which is a shame as it would have been nice to try the local fare.

One known known though was that when we got back to Shanghai we would be heading to the Brazilian barbeque. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a Brazilian barbeque includes a buffet of salads and carbohydrate based foods and waiters walking around with lots of freshly cooked meat on spits. Armed with very sharp knives, the waiters carve hunks of meat onto you plate until you cry mercy - it's all you can eat! 

So, after catching a night train back to Shanghai, that's where we headed to for lunch. Who'd have thought that a man who is supposedly trying to cut down could still manage to get through five steaks?!?  Mmmm, mouthwatering!

This time it was only a short stay in Shanghai, approximately 12 hours. After saying our good-byes to Rich's Dad and burdening ourselves with the full weight of our backpacks once again we clambered aboard the second of back to back night trains. Travelling in hard sleeper, both of these trains were great. As we stated in previous blogs, the Chinese trains are nice and smooth and allow you to get a good night's sleep. We even had two pillows each!! At under £20 each (less than we paid for a three hour journey in the Russian third class equivalent between Moscow and Vladamir) these were phenomenally good value...

When we boarded our 24 hour train journey to Guilin Rich couldn't help but remark that so far every train that we had travelled on had departed and arrived on time. That was all the temptation that Murphy needed to enact his law, but fortunately we were only an hour late. In the grand scheme of five months off, we're not expecting much sympathy...

Well publicised by HSBC for the local fishermen using cormorants to help catch fish at night, Guilin is best known for its karst landscape jutting up out of an otherwise flat landscape of rice paddy fields, with the River Li weaving slowly between the limestone outcrops.

We gave ourselves three days in Guilin. One to take a cruise on the River Li; one to visit some mountain paddy fields; and another to sit about and relax.

Our trip down the River Li was a lovely way to spend a morning. The two or three hour boat trip cruised slowly down the river, allowing us plenty of time to soak up the scenery. Relative to the densely populated parts of China that we visited to date, by comparison the lands alongside the shores of the river were lined only by farms and bamboo thickets coming right down to the water.

Rather than share a big tour boat with hundreds of other tourists we opted instead to go on a bamboo raft, which only fitted five people plus the driver. Only a couple of inches above the water line it was a more interactive experience, especially when the bow wave of one of the larger boats completely submerged the entire deck of our raft temporarily at one point. It was also inevitable that it would rain whilst we were on our cruise, and when it did decide to pour down the way that the rain bounced of the river surface was beautiful and gave it a pretty little silver sheen.

En-route, the boat stopped off at a riverside restaurant where the food could simply be described as expensive and inedible. Never a great combination for an eating establishment, it left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth (pun only partially intended). 

On the second day we headed to see the Longji terraced rice fields. Historically, these were constructed out of necessity by Chinese ethnic minorities in order to live in the mountainous terrain that they retreated to after conflicts with the ruling Han people. The result is a great example of man altering his environment to survive, changing the natural rounded shape of the mountaintops into a series of steps that are used to grow crops.  For the most part dug out by hand, they were incredibly impressive if only to consider how much effort or how long it must have taken in order to bring about the transformation.

After our day of chilling out in the hostel, we caught a final night train to Shenzhen. This time, the only tickets available were soft sleeper (equivalent to Russian second class). Although still not expensive, they are probably not worth the additional expense over hard sleeper.

Arriving in Shenzhen, it was only a ten minute walk to the border crossing with Hong Kong. Walking across can now be added to our list of ways that we have crossed borders whilst on this trip...

Having lived in Hong Kong for thirteen years, Rich always enjoys going back. Visiting again, Claire preferred Hong Kong second time round. For both of us it was refreshing to get there. Hong Kong is the first country on this trip where English is an official language and because of its heritage the whole place is very westernised. It was just very easy to be in Hong Kong...

Unfortunately, to continue a theme, the weather in Hong Kong included lots of rain. However, having visited Hong Kong only two years ago we had already visited the main sights together and only missed out on visiting the Big Buddha and one of the outlying islands from the list of things that we would have liked to have done. No worries, with Rich needing to visit Hong Kong every three years in order to keep alive his permanent residence, this is a place we will be back to again soon...

With the weather set in we set about doing two of the things that Hong Kong does best - food and shopping! Mixed in with buying beach gear and some second hand reading material for our upcoming trip to Malaysia, we ate at Dan Ryans (American), Grappas (Italian), the Conrad Lobby Lounge for curry tiffin (Indian and great desserts), Jimmy's Kitchen (International) and Dot Cod (Seafood). It was also great to catch up with Rob and Abby (Rich's best mate from back home and his girlfriend) for dinner, a few drinks and lunch again the next day...

To continue racking up the costs in Hong Kong, on our final day there we went to the Shatin Racecourse for the 1 July, Reunification Day, race meeting. Although a largely unsuccessful day a gambling, with the rain holding off it was still a good day out. For anybody ever in Hong Kong, the racing is a must-do, with the night racing at the Happy Valley course being the choice venue...

Finally, to bring our time in Hong Kong and China to an end, on 2 July we caught an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur. With nine days booked on the Perhentian Islands, it was time to stop moving around and just lie on the beach...

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Comments

[Dancing Dave]

BEAUTIFUL....
Great pics...great adventure