Huaihua to Yangshuo

I ended up reaching Yangshuo much much faster than I thought. For a big part, this is to win 2 days of relative quiet before the big crowds arrive. So I committed here for 4 nights, 2 of which are more than doubling in price for the same room,

 

But a big part of this is the connection from Hunan. Huaihua was the only way out (other than heading back north from the village of Fenghuang - being the main transport hub locally. I quickly found out, however, that there were no buses whatsoever going or stopping at Sanjiang (the entry port for Guangxi's Dong villages) or to Tongdao (the equivalent option on the Hunan side).

 

So I got me a ticket for the Guiling-headed bus that would stop in Longsheng along the way. The lady selling the tickets said it will be about 5~6 hours to Longsheng, and the only bus was leaving at 17:30. A quick calculation could show that on an optimistic view, it will be somewhat tough to be doing any price negotiations on hotel rates arriving when I would, but there I was writing my last update in Huaihua and waiting for the bus.

 

As I was looking at the map on the bus, and knowing that the way to Guiling was to take 10 hours, I quickly figured that 5~6 hours might not be the best of estimates. After a couple of hours on the road I asked the driver, and he estimated arriving at Longsheng around 1AM. Ouch - in towns like that you can expect the doors of all hotels to be locked.

I told the driver I would be staying on the bus all the way to Guilin, since I don't expect to find any place to stay at that hour. For some reason he did not bother to ask for extra money.

 

With some luck, the bus had a flat tire and we had a stop for a couple of hours for the drivers to figure out what to do and then change the tire. I'm not being sarcastic at all about the "lucky" part either. That meant that I could stay lying in the sleeper bus the few extra hours, and we ended up arriving in Guiling just past 6AM rather than the middle of the night.

 

I still had to wait until 7AM before anybody woke up to talk to me in the designated hostel, and until 12AM before I could get a room. So left my bags and went for the Guilin round - not that much to see in these mini-cities anyway.

I made the right bet, heading straight for the hill-set at the north of town, called "Folded Brocade Hill" (Diecai Shan) - rather a set of three hills packed into one "park" - great views of the city's surrounding, and a great morning wakeup set of hill-climbs.

When I say views - the city itself is quite boring in terms of city views per-se, but the city is built in between and around a set of Karst peaks, like those in Zhangjiajie and Dehang - they give a nice view around, and it's interesting to see neighbourhood built in between clusters of those peaks.

 

So the next morning, after a long sleep, I took the bus heading for Yangshuo. It's another very small town - I basically got to see the main streets here in the 15 min walk from the bus station to the hotel at the other side of the center. But it's the surrounding that should be really really nice, and I'll be heading out there starting tomorrow.

 

Today, I will be finally heading to the much awaited (on my side) show by Zhang Yimou called "Impressions" - a big nightly show running for quite a while, supposedly using some 600 paticipants, and a light show over some neighbouring hills. To be picked up for the show in 15 minutes.

 

All this talking of hills brings us nicely to address Chris' comments on the food here.  The connection is quite straightforward and was forming in my mind for a while.

 

I find that climbing hills/ steps is very much like eating spicy food. The more you do it, the less you can full the "itch" of it. Spicy food doesn't taste so spicy, and your lungs and leg muscles complain much less after climbing Zhangjiajie's 4,000 steps to the "yellowstone village". But with that numbness of the associated pain, does not come a real relief for the body. Even after getting completely used to climbing or eating spice, your bidy still knows what's happening - the way to realize that is the sweat usually - it's a way to know you've been eating super-spicy food or have been climbing for a while, even though your mouth or legs do not really complain ...

 

And with this connection, When I saw Chris' comment this morning, I tended to agree - the food in Guiling that I managed to sample twice was quite hopeless. Mainly, in the center, you see a lot of touristy traps which I tend to religiously avoid. Those probably were serving the supposedly local "Beer duck" dish.  But my opting into what seemed like nice local options was not with much success this time. I ate in a very down-to-earth-local joint for lunch/ breakfast - it was quite busy with locals, north of the north hills, near the "east gate" - dishers from 1~2 yuan to big ones for 5 yuan ... I can still feel the bad taste from that imitation-tofu dish I tried there.

At night I went for something claiming to be Chongqing food, to taste one of the worst ever imitation-lamb dishes.

 

However, walking around Yangshuo (maybe somebody heard Chris complain before), I saw quite a few Dumpling stores (dedicated ones, no less, with names like Dumpling King). So it's here waiting for you if you're into it.

Also managed to find a cool restaurant for lunch with English menu and some cool Sichuanese dishes (marked nicely by 3 chilly symbols, and with nice extra spice as asked).

 

Quick update - Huaihua, Hunan

I was "deprived" of proper internet access for a number of days now, and am realizing that I haven't put on any update whatsoever for a while - not to mention that I probably didn't really write anything proper since leaving Kunming.

 

I'm kind of stuck in a city called Huaihua for a few hours - a train-hub city, but nothing more - although I randomly explored a bit, and found a huge market, and a street corner with some interesting old-China people passing time.

 

I'm trying to find my way to the Dong villages in south Hunan/ north Guangxi, but transport from my last stop to that area seems to be non-existent, so I'll have to burn a few good hours here, then skip to a place callen Long-sheng (Entry to the "Dragon's backbone rice terraces"), and later get back to the Dong villages before moving on to Guiling and Yangshuo.

 

I'm somewhat fearful of that part coming (Guiling/ Yangshuo) - as however I'm trying to plan things - it seems I'll land in these overly-touristy duo smack at the worst time possible - the Chinese golden week - a week in which 1 Bn people take their longest vacation during the year ... it's going to be somewhat of a nightmare.

 

Going through Hunan was surprising in a few ways, wonder if I should write about this separately, but might as well write something while I'm into it.

 

A lot of people asked me when I was planning the trip why I would be wasting valuable trip time on Hunan. My guide book as well, while giving a Hunan chapter, managed to make Hunan sounds uninteresting, and avoided many of the exrtreme superlative used for Yunnan.

My main reason though - was the food. Hunan is supposedly giving a good serious competition on fiery-spicy food to better-known places such as Sichuan and Chongqing. So I could not give this one a miss.

The legend was enhanced during my short stay in Shenzhen - we were entertained by Phoneix, a Canadian that runs a chain of restaurants in Shenzhen, feeding 10,000 mouths a day together with his Chinese wife's family. Apparently his first success in the world of consumer-food was getting rich by collecting dropped fish-heads from the garbage-cans of Canadian restaurants, and then shipping them to be sold in China.

When I mentioned heading to Hunan for some spicy food, he had a story for us - he apparently went to visit Changsha (the Hunan capital), stayed in a nice hotel, and wanted a nice quiet non-spicy breakfast. He asked the staff to prepare a simple omelet - he specifically said - just fry two eggs without any spice. "No problem", they said and then brought him his eggs. When he got the eggs, he asked the waiter what is that red color floating on his eggs. "That's just for a bit of flavor, not spicy" ...

 

Spiciness is quite disappointing.

As I arrived in Changsha on a plane striaght from ShenZhen, I was ready for the big challenge, but ended up staffing myself with an overdose of food, as I kept trying different restaurants, with repeting disappointment.

 

Later on, I gave up on the food-marathon, and settled on just eating, but kept on trying. Things can at times get spicy - as I now tend to be quite extreme when I ask for food. It now goes something in between: "Can you make that EXTREMELY spicy?  I mean REALLY spicy, and not 'foreigner' spicy ..." (I gave up on using the word "Very", as it didn't get the desired effect), and between (earlier today): "what's your spiciest dish here? Please make it with extra chillies".

But even then, it's spicy, but no killer-spicy. Nothing like that Habanero-sauce we got in the Mexican joint in Shekou-Shenzhen ...

 

Anyway, despite of the spice-issue, I'm super happy I came through Hunan. This place is super not given the proper credit.

Changsha is admittedly easy to give up (although it has quite a nice museum), but some of the places on the west side are killers: Zhangjiajie, Dehang, Fenghuang - really nice places all of them.

 

Zhangjiajie is apparently the place in which they filmed Avatar - while it's overpriced - it's definitely amazing. (and although you can see there was a lot of effort put into the place, they still managed to do a really louzy job with signs and maps - maybe you're meant to come on a guided tour).

 

The real shit though is Dehang. Most people will completely skip this one, but that's THE place to go and see. If Avatar was filmed in Zhangjiajie, that it was conceived in Dehang - it's a much smaller scale, but all the better for it - you feel like you're inside the thing. Every turn and step you make, you stop and say "wow". Maybe before "Avatar", you'd imagine the creatures leaving in the forest, and the birds on the top of them cliffs a bit differently, but you'd still just know that they're there.

There are a couple of hiking routes from the village, and into the gorges between those cliffs and forrested hills, running along villagers, rice fields, cows and water buffalos. At the end of the second little hike I made (these are much more worthwhile then Tiger Leping Gorge to my opinion, and with much much less effort - completely paved routes, almost zero climb, but wonderful wonderful surrounding), or just when I thought I have reached the end - getting to the waterfall, the path seemed to continue, but changed to a more significant climb - stone stairs. I thought they'd go a few meters to get a view of the waterfall from another angle, but they just continued on and on. I looked up - but you couldn't tell at no point where they were going, you could only see up to the next flight of stairs. After about 10 minutes, I seriously thought I should give up - looking back down, I was dreading the way back on the slippery stairs (indeed, I slipped twice when eventually making my way down), and I was in no mood for massive stair-climbing (did the 4,000-steps climb in Zhangjiajie a couple of days earlier). But then, I figured there's nothing to really do once I'm back in the village (all the Chinese tourists come to the town for the "folk-dance-show" in the early afternoon, go around shopping, and then head away - the previous night the only other foreginers in the village seemed to be a gay couple from Valencia), so I thought I'd give it a bit more.

After about half an hour of a climb, I reached it - and it was worth it for sure - you get to stand on a peak of one of them columns (or at least you feel like it - it's actually connected to a ridge on one side, or they'd be no way really to climb up to it).

Amazing.

 

Litang to Chengdu

Finally arrived at the big city.

I more or less decided to run through the route - known as the "backdoor" route to Tibet, and make it here. The road is really really nice, as expected, but highlights in specific places along the way seem to not be high highlights, and I decided to cut a few of the original plans and be able to spend some more quality time in places that will appeal more later on. 

The drop into Chengdu requires some serious acclimatization. Coming from Litang, cool and dry, being the highest city in the world at just over 4,000m altitude, arriving in Chengdu, notoriously hot and humid, can be quite a shock, even though I'm told Chengdu at the moment is quite cool and comfy (with daily highs as low as 30 degrees C).

Now that I'm in Chengdu, see if I can find some time to upload some pictures, and maybe right a bit more soon.

Found a nice new hostel here (they kept asking how I found out about them, as they are quite new, and do not yet appear in any of the travel books etc). Spolling myself rotten, in a room with an A/C, warm and nice shower, King-sized bed, and the place is in the noisy middle of the city and yet perfectly quiet throughout the morning and nights - only sound is when people are playing Ping-pong in the afternoons. [ Called Nova Traveller's Lodge ]

From here I will do my skip - Fly over to Shenzhen and HK, and will get back on a train to Changsha, Hunan (for some of the spiciest food around).

Through Shangrila

Shana Tova!

 

Out of the trek ...

Well, actually a couple of days ago.

 

Will write about it soon, and then maybe write abit more back about previous stories. But that won't happen until at least Chengdu.

 

Anyway, got out in one piece, and moved on to the last of the line of touristy old-towns (Dali-Lijiang-Shangrila). Intended to stay here one day for recovery and then head on into the "back door" route towards Chengdu, going through some Tibetian towns between high mountains, including some very long and bumpy but supposedly amazingly beautiful bus rides. Seems this has been postponed for tomorrow, so here I am writing.

 

And writing this one was not easy ... Shangrila has a number of cafe places with internet access. Meant for foreigners such as myself. But they normally have one computer, and the few places I found, had that one computer occupied. So I went out on an Internet-bar seeking adventure. Followed some vague directions, got out of the old town, asked some more people, and eventually got to the desired place.

A couple of Israelies I met on the way told me exactly were to find it, and said they used the place easily, and were not asked for even their passport (surprising, but cool, since I am not really carrying my passport with me).

 

Alas, when I got to the place, I was encountered with somewhat of a blank wall: " you cannot use the computers here without a CHINESE ID card " ... ?!

This should obviously not be the case ... ID I know about, but categorically not letting foreigners use internet, that will be a new one ... Adding the fact that a while back on the same day, I know that the same exact place let other foreigners use the computers/ internet without even a glance at their ID's, made me think these guys are just being lazy in some way. I tried one more place I could find across the street, but same answer (and that's after I had to really insist to get an answer, they just tried to completely ignore me and just wave me out).

I sent a message to a Chinese friend, and said I'm gonna go to the police. The friend's reply was along the lines of "Police? what help will they be?"

And indeed, I was about to head back to the old town, when I ran into a few policemen standing at the side of the road with nothing better to do, probably there on some traffic-control mission, and I thought "why not".

I asked them if they know if it's possible for foreigners to use Internet in China, and they said yes. I told them about my little story, and surprisingly enough, one of them accompanied me back to the place, and here I am. What transpired, I did not exactly understand. It seemed like he didn't exactly tell them off, but rather, he gave them his own ID, and I am using the computer under his name somehow - whatever works, right?

 

Shangrila, I was told would be as bad as Lijiang, only smaller, but I do not really agree. Yes there is an old town with cobbled streets, and there is a concentration of shops there. But actually, local people get there as well, and it's a spit away, to get outside of the old town (you are actually supposed to for most of the things you go to see, if you do).

 

Also, the bars - very very different from Lijiang, and that makes a HUGE difference.

The bars in Lijiang are super pricey, and are filled with loads of tourists (although most are domestic tourists).

Here, the bigger chunk of the bar-goers are the locals, mostly tibetians. They sing and dance Tibetian hits, drink beer and Tibetian butter tea, ... but mostly ... they are local. Big difference.

 

For better or worth, everywhere from the Tiger Leaping Gorge and on, 50% of the travellers seem to be Israelies. You can't go around for 5 minutes without running into one, and the places are so small, you run into the same people over and over again.

Daisy's, one of the Cafe-restaurants here, actually had a Jewish New-Year dinner yesterday - I ran into a sign in Hebrew yesterday, but timing didn't work out for me to join.

 

 

Lijiang to Qiaotou

Qiaotou - or Bridge's head - is the entry point to the most famous track to be done in Yunnan. I'll be disappearing into the gorge (Tiger Leaping Gorge 虎跳峡) for the next 3 or 4 days, and can now write from Qiaotou, at a hostel that finally has descent access and seems to be able to talk to my HardDisc as well (so that I'll have some space for more pictures).

 

I decided to run away from Lijiang as fast as possible - guess I might write about it at some later point properly, when I get to sit down for a while. Lijiang is a heaven for you if you want to buy a whole lot of Schmonzalach. Otherwise - give it maximum a day and run away (or skip altogether). I went for a day-trip today, to a little village called Baisha just off Lijiang, after checking out - planning to be back for the last bus towards Shangrila.

 

Although every ride I took today ended up dropping me off a couple of Km from where I was trying to get to, I miraculously made it on time back to the hotel, and got on a bus one hour before the last one (an hour which was to be well spent).

 

The ride towards Shangrila (at least the part so far, and I expect the rest as well) is amazing. People talk about taking night-rides. I don't think this is actually available for this route, but if it is - don't take it!  Go during the day, and get your nose stuck to the window. The Bus goes up mountains, and comes back down to beautiful vallies on the other side. On and on with beautiful scenery.

All these touristy cities are not that interersting, but the roads kick ass.

 

At some point I actually got to think that there won't be that much extra in going through the track, as I've been seeing the same views/ scenery for the past couple of hours from various angles. But then - I am not one to break long standing traditions, even if they're dictated by Lonely Planet.

 

But of course, we need to spice it up with a bit of adventure of sorts.

For one, it seems that this is a good timing to get to the gorge. While the lower route is blocked with mud-slides, and road-construction works, the loaded tourist buses are staying away, and so are the prices around. Judging from the amount of places along the way that have big signs saying "Tiger Leaping Gorge" - this is a disaster just waiting to happen, and very soon.

 

And there's a good reason I'm mentioning all of this - at the first sign I saw, I jumped into attention, sure that the bus is about to stop and drop me off, but it continued to go. I looked back, and saw the two Chinese guys that bought their tickets in the same time with me, saying they're heading to the same place. Apprrently it was the same area, rather than the same exact place ...

And the driver seem to have heard my thoughts about continuing all the way to Shangrila.

Yes, you figured it out ... another one.

 

The signs continued to say Tiger Leaping Gorge, but the bus driver didn't say anything, and the two guys seemed to be sitting there.

At some point one of them heads forward, and tells me he's going to ask the driver ... then some commotion - apparently the driver decided the 3 of us are together, and they're heading to another mountain further up the road.

 

I was let off, and the driver said, the village I'm looking for is about 1km back. I waited for a while for a bus, but decided to just head on back. Good warmup for the following day - only that I intended to leave behind 70% of my bag's weight behind. Luckily it was downhill, and indeed after about 1 km I reached the village. Alas, the area I was looking for is on the other side of the village, so another km or so.

 

Mid-way, I asked someone (in Chinese), what direction is the Tiger leaping gorge. "Let's talk English".

"Ok, where is the Tiger leaping gorge?"

He pointed further down the road.

"Great, do you know where this place is?" - I showed him the name of the guest house I was hoping to find.

"Yes, Tiger leaping gorge, that way, then turn right" (pointing more or less left)

"Right, but do you know where THIS place is" showing him again the name of the place.

"It's about 500 meters, then turn right"

"You mean left?"

"Go there, then turn right. Ticket office, Tiger Leaping Gorge"

"Right man. Thanks! Let's talk English indeed"

 

But here I am, batteries getting charged, photos downloaded, ready to go.