Sorry for not updating this sooner/more often!

From September 28th- October 3rd Kathryn and myself had time off teaching, so we spent the week travelling around our province, Jiangxi.

Jiujiang and Mount Lu

Saturday morning we were packed and off to Jiujiang! Barely on the train 5 minutes and we were approached by two college students who were keen to learn about the UK and practice their English, so most of the two hour journey was spent talking to them. That evening they took us out for food and drinks - I had forgotten just how spicy food is in Jiangxi; it is notorious for its spice. After cooking for ourselves for so long we had been able to monitor how spicy we made the food, so it came as quite a shock eating food as spicy as the food we had been given. One of the students (who's English wasn't great) described the food as 'garden creatures', so we assumed that we had eaten snails…

Next morning we were up and out early to Mount Lu and the National Park. Eventually we found our way there, and after an hour on a bus driving up an unsafe road hanging off the face of the mountain we made it! The views were amazing, and although some places were very busy with tourists, there were many other places that were quiet and peaceful. We paid extra money to see the 'Three Step Waterfall', so for the next hour we walked down steps dreading the walk back up them. It was massively unsafe - at many points there was no handrail and the steps were small, broken and it was terrifyingly steep - but eventually we got there. The waterfall towered above us but the views above were stunning. The walk back up the many thousands of steps was genuinely one of the worst things I've ever experienced. In Jiangxi at the minute it is still really humid, so although walking up the steps was bad enough, it was made a whole lot worse by the humidity and lack of places to buy a bottle of cold water.

Nanchang

On Monday morning we were off again and travelled to Nanchang, Jiangxi's provincial capital. It was so nice to be in a city with such easy access to western things - chocolate, biscuits, milk, cheese; we really do take things for granted in the UK. After being without so much of this food for 6 weeks, we stocked up on provisions in a Walmart we found and even had dinner in Pizza Hut! This came as a very welcome treat, in Yihuang our diet mainly consists of apples, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, potatoes, rice and noodles. If you want to lose weight, come to Yihuang. We spent most of the day wandering around and exploring small shops.

On Tuesday we decided to visit the Tangweng Pavilion, basically the Chinese version of a palace. It was painted in bright colours (mainly red) and was a prime example of how the Chinese don't do things in small sizes. Everything was beautiful, albeit MASSIVE. The palace was built over seven or eight floors (more steps, yay), and each floor told you different parts of the history of the palace - or at least that's what we guessed from the pictures, there were no English signs anywhere. The higher you got the more amazing the views became, as you could see further and further across the city. Tangweng Pavilion was definitely one of the most beautiful places I have visited since our arrival in China.

Yingtan (just about) and Mount Longhu

On Wednesday we travelled to Yingtan, where we intended to spend a few days exploring Mount Longhu and other various historical sites around it. The train took around 3 hours, in which we had to stand for the entire journey. We were cramped into the smallest space with around ten other people and we had our bags with us, which didn't help and probably annoyed those around us.

We arrived in Yingtan and immediately tried to get a taxi to our hotel. The prices they were going to charge us were extortionate and we started feeling more and more lost - we were in an unfamiliar town and we had no clue where to go. Fortunately a man pointed us in the direction of the bus station and showed us the bus that would take us right where we wanted to be. After around an hour on the bus, we thought we had missed our stop; we were no longer in the city and countryside now surrounded us. Eventually we approached an ancient Chinese style town and were told this was our stop.

Quick note: always always always Google Map your hotel, or you will end up in the middle of nowhere like we did…

The town we ended up in turned out to be really nice! It wasn't massively touristy and the buildings were the sort of ones you think of when you thought of china as a kid. The streets were too narrow to fit cars through and there was loads of shops selling a plethora of goods.

Next morning we bought our tickets and went to Longhu National Park. It is really famous for its natural landscapes and the rocks tower from the ground in all sorts of strange shapes. It was here we were finally able to go on a bamboo raft! It was good fun and somewhat peaceful on the water. Health and Safety from the UK would have a fit if they saw it - the bamboo was held together by thin rope and passengers had to sit precariously on rickety little wooden chairs. Once we were off the raft, we walked about and until we came across cormorant fishing, one thing you have to see if you ever go to China. Another very interesting experience we had was when we somehow ended up praying to a huge, old Buddha statue. Still not sure how we came to do that.

That pretty much sums up our week travelling! I apologise again for not updating this more regularly, I have no excuses as to why.

Uploading pictures on to Off Exploring is a pain - it takes forever to upload even a few, so I have set up a Flickr account where I will be putting up all photos of my year in China from now on: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127491838@N02/

Zàijiàn!