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WED 1 OCT
The next morning we had a taxi ready to pick us up at 4:30am! In hindsight that was much too early and we spent over an hour at the train station, but now we know for next time.
Our train arrived a little bit early and we managed to find somewhere to perch for our 4hr15 train journey. After the first hour-ish we reached Chengde and the train emptied, so we were able to find a seat. We were all pretty tired and had a bit of a nap which made the rest of the journey go pretty quickly.
We arrived in Zhangjiajie about 10am and met up with other Matt (note the two t's), Sam and Aggy. Whilst we were sorting ourselves out we were eyed up by a tour company and he offered to buy our train tickets. After a short wander around and a look at the very busy ticket office at the train station we decided to follow this guy to his office and see what he had to say. When we got there he tried to sell us a tour of the park with hotels included, but we had already reserved our hostel and just wanted to book our train tickets before going to find the hostel.
We caught a taxi to our hostel, and for most of the journey it looked as though he didn't know where he was driving to, but after about an hour we arrived outside the hostel, which looked like the picture on the HostelBookers website, but it also looked very closed. Eventually a woman came out of the Hotel, and we had to ring Amy to translate. Amy told us the hostel has never received our booking, and there was no-one at the hostel that spoke English. After some trouble with a phrasebook, and some locals hoping to practice their English, we worked out that they were'nt going to honour our booking, and that we could stay there for 100RMB a night each, instead of the 16RMB we'd originally intended to pay. We decided to cut our losses at this point, because we didn't know where we were, and took the taxi back into the city. It was an expensive round trip.
When we arrived back in the city we had few options. We decided to go back to the guy who was buying our train tickets. We decided we would take the tour guide if the price included three nights hotel, since we were pretty stuck for that final day.
We got the extra night included, and 40RMB knocked off the price, and still had the feeling we were being done, but it was affordable, and it meant we had a bed for the night. We got driven into town to get some cash, then had some lunch next to the office whilst they sorted out our hotel.
The first hotel wasn't too bad, it was clean enough, and next to the office so within walking distance of the city centre, but we didn't have any hot water.
That evening we went for a walk into town, me and Matt J did some exploring on our own to begin with and I bought him some lotus root from a street vendor, the crazy boy wasn't impressed! He took lots of pictures of the back streets and markets, it was clear he doesn't get out of the big city much.
When we regrouped and headed into town as a group we found the river and spotted a church (the first one we've seen in China). Because some of the group were quite Christian we decided to explore down the river and see if we could visit the church. On the way we met a Chinese man called Mr. Ju who was very interesting to talk to and he joined us as we headed towards the church. He was from Zhangjiajie and used to be a teacher, he taught Russian but his English was very good. He had recently returned from America where his son is a doctor in chemistry and does medical research. His other son had stayed in Zhanjiajie and is an engineer, very clever family.
The church was very strange. Like most things here, it was something western with "Chinese characteristics". The posters and messages on the walls were scary more than inspiring. Matt J was excited though and he started talking to a girl who ran the church who was very excited for us to be there. She kept telling us that Jesus loves us and that she was blessed by God that we were there. She sang some songs for us and played the piano and for one very worrying moment I thought she was going to ask us to pray. We took some pictures with her permission, and then we waited whilst she ran off to get a gift for Matt. Her father kept bees and she bought him a bottle of honey, which was very kind because honey is quite expensive here.
We left, walked back into town and said goodbye to Mr. Ju. When we found the main part of town, we got a drink , then found some 3RMB street noodles, mmmm. On the way back to the hotel, we also saw some people selling what looked like sugar cane and a few of us tried it. It's been a long time since I've eaten sugar cane but it was sweet and cane like so I guess that's what it was!
When we got back to the hotel we caught up with Richard who had been sleeping. We bought some rice wine and decided to play some cards in our room. This became a ritual most nights, but we were pretty rubbish and had to stick to the simple games like liar, pontoon and chase the ace.
THURS 2 OCT
The next morning we were up EARLY. We had to meet at 6:30am, what a stupid time of day. The shower was still cold, and silly me thought we'd be going to our next hotel to leave our bags so I thought I'd wait until we got there.
Once everyone had finished eating their fried rice for breakfast, we met Captain Jack (our tour guide) and took a long taxi to the Forest Park. When we arrived we got some real breakfast of un-sweetened rice pudding and Yorkshire pudding (I wasn't keen on friend rice for breakfast) and left our bags at a restaurant we were going to eat at for lunch.
We entered the park, which was beautiful, and the first part of our itinerary was to climb Tianmen Mountain. It was an interesting walk, as much for the people as the scenery. The place was packed with thousands of Chinese visitors who had come during the National holiday. We had to trudge slowly up the mountain behind hoards of people and it was very slow going. A lot of the time we managed to push through and then regroup with everyone a bit later. There were small men carrying people up the mountain in seats on sticks, and one tactic was to follow them, much like ambulance chasing, but I abandoned that idea when I realised I was standing underneath something very heavy on some very steep steps.
It was a long and tiring walk but the scenery was amazing and I was really enjoying being in the national park. There were frequent break areas next to viewing platforms where you could buy all sorts of things, food, drink, souvenirs, and there was an area halfway up where there were lots of people dressed up in the Tujia minority clothes and you could dress up and have your photo taken.
When we eventually made it to the top, I bought an ice cream! Mmmm! It was corn on the cob flavour and quite strange, I'm still not sure if I liked it or not… We went up the viewing tower which was like a temple, bought some postcards and took lots of photos. When me and Mat were waiting, another tour guide started talking to us. He told me I looked Russian, but took quite a shine to Mat and told him he looked very English, and he looked like David Beckham who is the most beautiful man in the world. Mat found this very awkward, so the nickname has stuck hehe.
We then went for a walk around the top of the mountain and took lots of pictures, before heading back down for lunch. We were all starving by the time we got to the bottom, we had started walking before 8am and it was after 2pm when we made it to the restaurant.
The restaurant was very expensive, and it seemed this was a start of a trend. In Yiyang (and even Changsha) I would expect to pay about 10RMB for a vegetable dish and about 20RMB for a meat dish. It was double this price. We were a bit torn on the food, Mat and Aggie went to get cheap noodles, Matt had friend rice and Sam had some beef to himself, so that left me and Rich and we split some dishes. It was expensive, but since they'd looked after our bags all morning I felt obliged to eat there.
After lunch we picked up our bags and started to head to the hotel. We had been told we could either walk up Tianzi Mountain, or take the lift, and our hotel would be at the top. What Jack failed to mention is we would be carrying all of our luggage for the rest of the day. We had to walk an hour along the river (which turned into an hour an a half because of the amount of people) before we would be able to start walking up the mountain, but it was on the way to the lift. When we arrived at the bottom of the mountain there was only me and Matt who wanted to walk up, but we were prepared to do it on our own so we sorted out our bags and got ready to ascend. Jack had other ideas. He came up with very many excuses and told us the walk would take over 2 hours (it was about 4:15pm) and the buses would stop at 6pm so we could not walk up. I'm still not sure why he kept changing his story but it's quite clear he didn't want us to walk up the mountain so we carried on to the lift with everybody else. It was another hour (and a half) walk to the bottom of the lift and by this time everyone was knackered. We all gave Jack our 60RMB for the lift (and then realised it was 56RMB each) and shot up the mountain fairly quickly. From the lift we had a short walk to our hotel.
This hotel was worse than the one before. It wasn't that clean, the had scary dogs, still no hot water an Sam and Aggy's room smelt terrible. We did some complaining to Jack an managed to get their room changed and the hot water turned on. We then went to look at the menu at the hotel for our tea, and it was even more expensive than lunch, and 15RMB for a bottle of beer! We were starting to find this holiday much more expensive than anticipated and me an Mat went on a recon mission to see if there was anywhere else to eat, against Jack's advice because there might be "snakes". We found some stalls near the lift that sold chestnuts, and bottles of beer for 10RMB but that was it. We bought a stock of cheaper beer and decided we'd have to eat at the hotel. Jack joined us and ordered some crisps which were very well received.
After we'd eaten we decided to buy some rice wine, we asked Jack for our 24RMB that he'd pocketed from the lift and we used it to buy some of the dodgiest home brew I've ever seen. It was disgusting but it was good enough for card games and all six of us listened to music from my MP3 player and played drinking games until the early hours of the morning.
FRI 3 OCT
The following day, our third in Zhangjiajie we had a later start (8am!!) but we were all awake by 6am because it seems that's when the hotel decided to wake up and do work and dancing and anything else that was noisy!
We tried to clear our muggy heads, packed up our bags and got ready for our new day of exploring the park. When we met Jack downstairs we were told that we would spend our third night in the same hotel, but none of us were happy about this because the hotel was not near anything and it wasn't very nice. We did some more complaining until Jack agreed to take us to another hotel. We headed out into the misty weather and caught some free buses to the other side of the mountain.
We had some breakfast before walking up to the third hotel to leave our luggage. Breakfast was good, vegetable noodles is not normally what I think of for breakfast but it was very tasty, an after some trouble that the waitresses found amusing, we also managed to order some cha (tea).
Afterwards we walked up to the hotel, it was probably the worst out of the hotels but I liked it. It was in the style of an old Chinese courtyard house, but very run down and messy. We had hot water and air-con heaters so it was good enough. We left our bags (but there were no locks on the doors) and went back out into the park. We caught another bus for about half an hour to a viewing area that was very popular and had lots to do.
Unfortunately, on the way there it started to rain, which reminded me I'd left y umbrella in my bag at the hotel… I had also left my coat at the restaurant from the first day and I could tell I was going to end up cold, so I bought a very shiny pink spacker mac. Sure enough the rain continued all day, and I felt quite smug in my spacker mac as everyone else got wet and eventually gave in and decided to join me and Jack looking stupid.
The weather hampered us a lot that day, which was a shame, because it was very misty and we couldn't see much, The views cleared for about half an hour after it rained the first time, but then it misted over again and never really got better for the rest of the day.
We had some more expensive food for lunch (at a pretty rubbish restaurant) and were starting to just get used to it, visited a Buddhist temple, took some pictures and practised our bargaining at the gift stalls before deciding it was too cold and foggy and went back to the hotel.
When we got off the bus near the hotel it was almost 4pm. Jack told us there was a walk we could do from that spot that was "very dangerous, it's famous for danger!" but it would've taken 2-3 hours and we were all very tired and wet so we missed out on the danger zone.
We got back to the hotel, had a shower, put the heating on and dried our clothes. We resigned ourselves to eating at the hotel restaurant again, but decided against eating the dried up dog leg for 200RMB each. We ordered our food for later and rented a Mah-jong set which Jack taught us how to play. It was good fun, and we ate our dinner quickly (the dining "courtyard" was effectively outside with a roof) and then went back into the warm heated room to play more Mah-jong, drink beer and play cards.
SAT 4 OCT
The next day we tried to have an early start because it was our last day. We got up ready to eat breakfast at 7am then get going but it turned out the buses didn't start running until 8am so we took our time eating our bland rice pudding and steamed bread (yay!!).
As we were getting ready to leave Sam joined us and told us Aggy was sick, so they decided to stay in the hotel and rest whilst we took the bus to see the "Natural Bridge". We thought it would take a long time but it was only about 10 minutes on the bus and we didn't stay very long. We unfortunately did not see much of the natural bridge due to the natural mist. We walked around looking at "white" for a while before deciding to cut or losses and go back to the hotel.
We arrived back about 9:30am and then had a debate about what to do for the rest of the day. Some people wanted to visit the Yellow Dragon Caves, for an extra 120RMB each, some people didn't want to spend more money than they had to (me!) and also Aggy was still ill (but feeling a little better). Eventually after much discussion, we decided to not go to the caves, but to head back to the city and visit a temple. We also were divided on how to get down the mountain so we split up.
Most people caught the lift back down the mountain, even though it cost 56RMB. Me and Mat were cheap skates and decided to walk. Jack told us it would take 2.5 hours, or 2 if we walked quickly. We were to meet everyone else at the bottom by the river, they would have to walk from the lift to us for about an hour so they shouldn't have to wait to long if we got started first.
Jack wrote us a little note, waved us goodbye and we got going on our mission down the mountain. It was mainly small steps which hindered our progress. I was not like long-legged Mat and could only take one step at a time, and I could only do this so fast without running. Even so, we were fairly surprised when we made it to the river after 35 minutes…
We stood around for a while waiting before taking a stroll along the river to meet the others coming the other way. When we met them we finished the long part of the walk back to the park gates.
At the gates we waited for Jack before he organised our "transport home". He also recovered my coat and Mat's jeans from the restaurant on the first day, although he had to threaten to involve the police before they "found" our things.
We ended up catching a very dodgy cramped bus back to the city. It was a long journey and I was dozing through most of it but I remember someone with a cockerel…
When we got back to the city, Jack waited whilst some people ate in KFC (which doesn't really cater for vegetarians but I was very happy with my cup of warm coffee) and then walked us along the road to show us the temple, and the walking and food street we had found on the first evening.
From this point we were ok on our own and said goodbye to Captain Jack and went to get some much more affordable 3RMB noodles for lunch.
Whilst we were eating I had a phone call from Jack and he wanted to talk to us so Richard went to find him because I had just started eating. It turned out Jack wanted the copy of the contract back and was getting quite distressed about it. Richard was feeling guilty because we liked Jack, but he was also getting quite wary of the company by this point and didn't want to hand the contract back until he knew what it said, he didn't know he was signing a contract when he signed the paper and it was all in Chinese. He sent a very upset Jack on his way and came back looking quite worried himself.
After we'd eaten we went to visit the temple, 20RMB was an affordable price for entry and we still had time before our train left at 5pm. It was a very pretty temple and I took lots of photos, I like temples they're very peaceful and it was very beautiful next to the backdrop of the Zhangjiajie mountains.
When we had finished in the temple we took two taxis back to the station. The other group fell for the trick of not making the driver use the meter and paid twice as much as we did! I'm quite fussy and I check every time I get in a taxi that the meter is running.
We had an hour to waste before our train left and we bought some munchies for the journey. We then went to find our platform at the station. On the way in you have to have your baggage scanned and go through a metal detector like in airports. They found an aerosol in Richard's bag and he had to empty it out before we were allowed through. When we got to the platform the train was already there, it seems trains in China are always early.
We had all managed to get tickets for the same train, which only took 5 hours to get to Changsha instead of the 12 hour sleeper train that seemed to be the default (I have no idea why) and this train went through Yiyang on the way. Me and Richard were in a different carriage than everyone else, I guess because we had a different destination, but when we sat down some girls wanted to swap seats with us from the carriage with the others in. We agreed and ended up sitting right behind everyone else which was very convenient! So we could chat, share biscuits and do some Chinese flash cards. As the journey went on, people got tired. Me and Richard started a brilliant game where someone suggested two things an you had to say what you prefer, or your favourite type of something, for example "Coffee or tea? What's your favourite city?". It was pretty sad but kept us entertained for ages!
When we left the train in Yiyang, there was lots of people queueing to get onto it. It made me glad we were leaving, I had a text from Mat telling me oxygen was getting precious!
We caught a taxi back to campus and realised part of the skill to bargaining is knowing how much something is worth. No taxi would take us using the meter, and wanted us to pay 20 RMB. We knew it had only cost 15RMB on the meter when we went to the station on the way to Zhngjiajie so weren't prepared to pay more than that and walked off. They called us back and we managed to get the taxi for a reasonable price.
When we got home, we both sorted ourselves out, I had a quick (warm!!) shower and then we were still in the spirit of holiday and decided to go out for a beer and some night food. Also, our internet was broken so neither of us had chance to catch up with the world.
Afterwards, back at my apartment I had a very warm, clean, comfortable nights sleep!
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