One of the reoccurring illusions we had while traveling was the assumed distance of whatever attractions we were going to.... As per last post, you probably remembered that we ran into a weird "down time" situation since our next destination was so far away that tourist buses stop running after noon. We had never bothered to check if the Rice Paddy were close to Guilin prior to arrival, the assumption was: "it must be close by, because it comes up when I am researching about Guilin". It turned out to be a 2.5 hours bus ride.
The down time did us good though because we had the night to enjoy the city. This is where another illusion came in: "the invisible clock" ticking at the back of our heads rushing us through everything because "we are only gonna be here once", so often times, we forget that we were actually in an incredible place and always wanted to move to the next place - a constant
wanderlust.
Chinese tourist hawkers are good at exploiting this, so even though we knew better already, we were still out looking for packaged deals After a casual walk down the main street, the number of "travel agents" striking us deals were so high, they could have put
Jimmy McMillan to shame.
They were good though, with every one of them offering prices cheaper than the previous one, it was like they are specifically targeting us (which they probably were with Jeremy looking like a Russian Bear who had just ran to China)
We eventually caved down when Chinese Flo bundled us with a deal too good that combined a night stay at the hotel. I figured it couldn't hurt although it was an all Chinese tour (time to practice my real time translation skills).
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| at the base of the mountain. About to switch over to another smaller bus that will climb the curvy mountain road like a roller coaster cutting 180 deg turns at ungodly speed. |
The tour started bright and early at 6:30 the next day as the bus driver shows up and picks up all kind of different groups. Our tour guide was much more professional than Dirty Harry that featured the Suzhou-Hangzhou group. Not only was he a master of ceremony throughout the day on the bus, he also flawlessly hid all the "shopping locations" into our trip constantly, reminding us that we were just helping the locals when buying their merchandises even trying to teach us how to haggle in their dialect. Luckily when you travel with white people that can play "I dont understand" we can work our way around these tricks pretty easily.
We first visited a local Yao village where the women traditionally grew their hair and only cut them once in their life before they get married. These were the people who generations after generations have carved out the magnificent terraces because they were not "liberated" by the communist army until 1996.
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| tradition or not, they bring in the money |
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| the show was even done in english |
We also heard that during the Chinese Civil War, a lot of Nationalist soldiers were hidden around here, so the area was in lock down and who knew, the wonderful rice paddy were kept only because the locals couldn't get out and farm on the more fertile land....
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| street food? |
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| show's done, back to the bus and off we go to the next stop |
After the "Long Hair Village", we finally arrived at the top of the mountain but before we get to see anything, we were kindly guided into the "local favorite restaurant" for some food. Luckily, we brought our own food and the guide want too keen on keep us there so we used the opportunity to run up the mountain before everyone get there.
Enjoy some breath taking scenes courtesy of Brian Lee because at this point of my journey in China, my camera died. sucks
For the two hours we were up there, it was probably the most peaceful time we had in China: zero honking, no shouting, and barely a person in sight, it was also because it was the middle of new years as the guide later told us horror stories of people stuck in traffic going up the mountains for 4 to 5 hours during travel peak time and some even end up denying entry in the mountains.
On the way down, we accidentally ran into a new year feast preparation. there were life stocks being brought in for what looked like a giant party, we even saw people lugging washing machine in to the village with bamboo sticks. Then, we were stopped as a cow suddenly appeared on the track, about to be finished off.....yeah...we watched it got tied down, took a few hammer blows in the head, and then boom, dinner.
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| ah, chicken roast, should be delicious.. |
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| oh! it's a cow |
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| wait...i guess steak's on the menu? |
After the mountain, we ventured into the packed train station for our next leg of the journey. It was our first train ride and also the first over night. We've all heard about these stories of booming train technology all in the same time how sketchy it can get at night so we were planning on taking different shifts to watch our stuff (which after 3 hours, turned into "whatever")
As we sat on the train trying to get some rest, radio started coming up, keep in mind this was past 12....The nocturnal children started wandering about (the bad ones, they stare and scream and just dont care), luckily, i sat by the window and were traveling with more interesting people.
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| overly excited carmen, not knowing what's about to come |
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| after this, all documenting process stopped |
The 7 hours train ride took little time to get used to, as the sun came up, we were slowly arriving at our next pit stop: Huaihua, a small city in the province of Hunan, where we will be boarding a bus to Fenghuang, our next destination.
