Month: October 2016

Day 186: Guilin

Today marks the beginning of “Golden Week” – the National Day week-long public holiday when EVERYONE in China has vacation. If we thought China was crowded before, this week is supposed to be “nightmarish” for tourists. We had no illusions about visiting any attractions today – our only goal is to return to the city of Guilin in one piece, and get a good night sleep before our escape from mainland China tomorrow morning.

New guests hadn’t yet arrived at our hotel, so the morning was still pretty peaceful – we enjoyed our al fresco breakfast and took our time packing our bags and checking out of our room. We expected a huge line for the buses back to Guilin, but luckily we seemed to be travelling in the opposite direction as the masses – everyone in China was on their way *to* Yangshuo, we were the only ones leaving!

Igor is super excited for his perfectly cooked sunny-side up fried eggs

Igor enjoys our hotel view one final time before we check out

It’s the beginning of Golden Week, and while this is the second busiest travel week of the year in China, everyone is going *to* Yangshuo, we are some of the only ones leaving, so we have a near empty bus ride to Guilin

Our hostel in Guilin was located in a (relatively) quiet neighborhood outside downtown. On the downside, we were not within walking distance of any grocery stores, pharmacies or fast food chains (sadly, we were really hoping for some KFC…), but on the plus side we were close to a walking trail that lead us on a loop through several little villages along the river. The attractions weren’t very exciting, but that probably helped keep the number of tourists low

Taking an afternoon walk along the outskirts of Guilin

Igor does his best “Chinese tourist” impressions: snapping selfies and hiking up his t-shirt when he gets sweaty – so charming.

We’ve been in China for a month, and we are still baffled as to the footwear the Chinese select when going for a walk.

We usually ignore the souvenir stands, but there are some impressive artisans outside the Reed Flute Cave! We watch a man create glass figurines with a blow-torch, and a woman hand-stitch elaborate silk murals

Dozens of local tourists, enjoying the flower fields outside Guilin

We try to ignore the dozens of touts calling, “BAMBOO?” at us as we walk around the pond

Igor indulges in a bottle of fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice – YUM!

After nightfall, we venture out of our hostel in search of dinner. We bypass the public stage (where a Chinese opera is in full performance) and take a table at the “Often Full House” – indeed, there were quite a few tables full, so they get props for accurate advertising!

Our waitress brings us our Saran-wrapped dishes and a couple of menus. We are *really* hoping the “Fried Dog” is just a really bad English translation…

NO, WE DID NOT ORDER THE DOG MEAT.

Day 185: Biking the Li Valley

One of the highlights of any trip to the Guangxi is taking a bike ride through the Li Valley, in order to admire the karst mountain peaks that surround the area. We rented a pair of 10-speed mountain bikes from our hotel (only RMB 30, including locks so we can secure that during our hikes!) and took off towards Yangshuo. We had fantastic weather in the morning, during the most scenic part of our ride. Though clouds rolled in in the afternoon, we welcomed the shade as we parked the bikes for a mountain hike.

One of the most famous mountain peaks in the area outside Yangshuo is “Moon Hill” – a mere hour away if we stuck to the main freeway. However, we had all day to explore, so we grabbed a tourist map and charted a course along the Li River, cutting inland around the half-way mark. When we asked our hotel manager how long our proposed route would take, he seemed aback; “I think, maybe, 6 hours just to get there!” We must be faster bikers than the average tourist – even though we ended up taking a wrong turn, doubling our distance – the entire ride there and back took us 7 hours.

According to our tourist map, we should be biking along the river. Once we reach the river, however, we discover that the road is set back from the river, winding through the little villages and farms along the way – it’s still very scenic, but makes navigation a little difficult for us whenever we come to a fork in the road

It’s a glorious morning for a bike ride in the Li Valley

Deserted roads and lovely landscapes in the Li Valley

We pass by many farms and fields of crops during our bike ride

The Li Valley: picturesque fields, mountains in the background

We reach the small Liugong Village around 11AM, and pull over to the a quick water break, before crossing inland toward the Moon Hill

All the cute animals we cannot pet! A sweet, attention-hungry puppy begs for a belly rub, and a drove of curious pigs

We end up taking a *long* detour when we turn right too early, but finally reach the Ten Mile Gallery, which is littered with scenic spots (requiring admission tickets). We first stop at the Big Banyan Tree – a 1,500-year-old tree that sounded a lot cooler in the brochure than it was in real life. Also, correct us if we are wrong, but it looks like their precious banyan tree is being attacked by a strangler fig?

More bamboo raft rides along the smaller Yulong River

After biking for about 4 hours, we were getting hot and hungry – we try to buy some ice cream in the Banyan Tree park but are horrified by the RMB 20 price tag! We exit and pick up a couple of chocolate ice creams for RMB 5 each immediately outside the ticket office – my mama didn’t raise no fool!

Another 2KM down the road is our main attraction: Moon Hill – a limestone peak with a round hole that looks like a half moon or crescent moon, depending on your angle (the sign claims you can also see a “full moon” – we didn’t see it really see how that is possible given the hole is not a full circle…?)

View of Gaotan Town from the top of Moon Hill

A rock climber hangs precariously from the roof of Moon Hill – watching him dangle, several hundred feet from certain death, we honestly have no desire to ever take up that sport

Hiking down the hill, Lindsay mimics the selfie-obsessed locals by posing at the appropriately named “Vanity Lookout”

Enjoying a peaceful alfresco dinner at our hotel on the outskirts of town, admiring the bright lights of Yangshuo *from a distance*

Bolstered by the delicious breakfast that morning, Lindsay finally braves some Chinese food for dinner. Igor sticks to Western standards, which works out just fine for his chicken sandwich and fries, but is a total disaster for his “French Onion Soup” – a milky mess of chopped red onion covered by a piece of white toast and slice of Kraft Singles!

Day 184: Xingping & Yangshuo

Even though the neighborhood and clientele of the This Old Place Hostel were incredibly quiet, Lindsay had a HORRIBLE night sleep due to a loose piece of metal sheeting that rattled, clanged, and SMASHED against the roof of the building – since our room was on the top floor, the banging was directly outside outside our window. Even with earplugs, the noise kept waking Lindsay up until 2AM when the wind finally died. Igor, however, can apparently sleep through a tsunami and slept like a baby. When the sun came up at 6:30AM that morning, Lindsay begged Igor to let her sleep in while he took a solo hike to the Xingping mountain viewpoint.

Igor takes an early morning hike to a lookout point, giving him a bird’s eye view of Xingping

Xingping and the Li River

When Igor returned at 8AM, we packed up and headed down to breakfast. We decided to try and find the Fishing Village again, carefully reviewing the directions for the hiking trail with the hostel staff before we left (good thing – turns out we were *way* off the track yesterday). Since check-out was at noon, we locked out bags in the hostel’s free storage lockers before we left.

We load up on a proper Western breakfast (delicious!) and run through the directions carefully with the hostel staff

Climbing stone steps on our hike over the mountain to the Fishing Village – crossing our fingers the “leaves of three” we see on the path are not poison ivy – we encounter more pomelo trees as we close in on the village

Walking through the 400-year old alleys of the Fishing Village outside Xingping

A big pile of tiny, dried fish for sale. Well, it wouldn’t be a Fishing Village without fish!

The #1 attraction at the Fishing Village is the “Clinton House.” Back in 1998, during Clinton’s inaugral visit to the country, he asked to see “the real China,” and was taken to this tiny, backwater village. The owner of the house the Clinton family toured has turned it into a little shrine to the US president (charging RMB 5pp for a looksie!) – you’d think the guy would play up the fact that Hillary was there too, given the current election, but he only has eyes for Bill! I guess he’s not really following the US election.

A mural of photographs dominate the wall of the “Clinton House”

The house visited by one US President…and maybe a future US president? (Lindsay’s keeping her fingers crossed!)

Following the stairwell up to the roof

Taking in the beautiful view of the terracotta tile roof of the Clinton House

We had no desire to climb back up the mountain and potentially expose ourselves to more poison ivy, so we followed a little old lady down to the river to see if we could hire a bamboo raft back to Xingping. She tried to sell us tickets on the cruise ship for RMB 200, which we refused as we didn’t want to be packed on a boat with 50 Chinese tourists. We asked again for “bamboo,” to which she argued back something we couldn’t understand. After several minutes of hand gestures and Google Translate, we finally figured out that the bamboo rafts weren’t allowed to run until noon (we had read about this – the local government bans bamboo rafts on the Li River from 10:30AM – 12:00PM everyday in an effort to control water traffic) so we would have to wait 15min, plus, the rafts weren’t allowed to go all the way to Xingping, we would have to walk a “little distance” then take a ferry for RMB 10. Price stayed the same though, which seemed like a rip off to us, but we agreed anyways.

Our little old lady waves to us as we take off from the Fishing Village

The bamboo raft crosses the river, then takes us down a narrow stream. Once the water is too shallow for the raft, the driver beckons us to follow him on foot – he guides us about 500m down the bank, and then leaves us at a paved path to find our way back to Xingping

We know the general direction for Xingping, so we keep walking along the riverbank for about a kilometer until we see the wharf

Once again, we take in the beautiful karst mountains surrounding the Li River

Once we reach the wharf, it’s a short ferry ride back to Xingping

Before heading back to the hostel, we have one last attraction to visit – the 20 Yuan Viewpoint – a vista of the Li River that is duplicated on the back of the RMB 20 banknote

It’s a 20 Yuan View!

Grabbing a late lunch at the This Old Place Café – keeping it simple and satisfying with a club sandwich and a side of fries

Buses to Yangshuo run every 15min, so we have no wait and there are plenty of seats available when we walk to the bus stop

When we arrived in Yangshuo, we were a bit disoriented – our cell phone GPS has been on the fritz ever since we arrived in China and we couldn’t figure out where we were on the map. Our hotel was supposed to be a 20min walk outside of downtown, and we couldn’t find a marked taxi anywhere! Just as we had resigned ourselves to walking with our 18kg backpack, a short Chinese guy came up to us and started to ask, “Where are you going?” We asked if he had a taxi – turns out Yangshuo is full of unmarked taxis, so we hopped in the guy’s sedan and let him drop us off (it would have been an hour walk, BTW – so relieved we caught a ride!).

We enjoyed the rest of the evening in our quiet, Riverside Hotel – far from the hustle and bustle from downtown.

Day 183: Li River

We left our hotel at 5AM and got to the airport 3 hours before our flight to Guilin. This might seem excessively early to some, but when we saw the MASSIVE lines at security we realized we would barely make it through before our boarding time. We watched Chinese travelers with suspicion, as they tried to casually wander to the front of our line, “pretending to look at something” before edging their way in – nice try! We, of course, accidentally chose the worst line – which was actually three lines merging into one. By the time we realized our mistake, it was too late to start over and we just tried to take pleasure in denying anyone behind us the ability to cut by swinging our backpack back and forth.

When we got to the baggage x-ray and metal detector, Igor could barely keep his temper as the security agents ran his bag through the x-ray three times, and dropped his telephoto lens in the bin after inspecting it. We were confused as to why Chinese airport security bothers to have us walk through metal detectors, as everyone is also patted down by an agent with a hand-held metal detector. Up until now, we have always been patted down by agents of our own gender, but today Igor got a very thorough pat down from a female agent, who seemed to think he had explosives hidden in his underwear!

We were finally cleared to go, and we rushed off to the Executive Lounge where we stuffed ourselves with as many cookies and crackers as we could in the 15min before our flight began to board.

Once we arrived in Guilin, we caught a taxi to the Yangdi boat jetty on the Li River where we planned to catch a one-way bamboo raft to the “ancient” village of Xingping. Unfortunately, our timing was off and we reached the ticket office just as they closed for their hour and a half lunch break. Igor remained in the line, however, and viciously defended his spot when cutters tried to edge in front of him when the ticket agents reappeared. Since each boat fits four people, we were prepared to fork over double the cost, but luckily a Chinese tour guide waved us over and paired us with a French couple. We scored the front seats on the boat (#1 – yeah!) and finally had a chance to kick back, relax, and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Gathering strength for our final travel leg in mainland China – we load up on packaged snacks at the lounge in Chengdu and power through the ticket line for our bamboo raft ride down the Li River

A couple of boots on a faux-bamboo raft, motoring past majestic karst mountains surrounding the Li River

The Li River flows past a towering karst mountain

Even though there are hundreds of PVC “bamboo” rafts at the dock, the traffic along the river is pretty dispersed, and we enjoy a serene 1.5hr voyage from Yangdi to Xingping

The scenic landscape of the Guangxi Province, China

Cruising down the Li River

Our boat drops us off at a quay a few kilometers outside the Xingping “ancient” city, where a few hawkers stand by with trained cormorants for tourist photos. We bypass the birds and continue on to the city, ready for an afternoon hike

After dropping off our bags at our hostel, we tried to follow their hand-written directions for the nearby fishing village, but after two hours wandering around the farmhouses and orchards outside the town, we were forced to acknowledge we had gone the wrong way, and gave up for the day. We headed back to the hostel for showers and a good dinner – we’ll try again tomorrow!

Following a dirt path out of town looking for the Fishing Village, we get horribly lost amid the tiny farms and give up

Pomelo groves surround the Xingping village

View of the Li River from our hostel window

Staying in a hostel?!? Yes! And *Igor* booked it this time! This Old Place Hostel is awesome – the staff is fluent in English and have a wealth of printed information about activities in the area, prices and schedules for buses, and even help fellow guests advertise they are looking for more people to share the cost of a tour. When dinnertime rolls around, we head downstairs to play cards and order some pizza from their wood-fired oven

Day 182: Chengdu

No visit to China would be complete without seeing pandas, so Igor scheduled a 24hr layover in Chengdu so that we could visit the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. Touted as a “wildlife reserve,” make no mistake – this place is a zoo. I don’t mean it’s overrun with tourists (comparatively speaking, this is one of the more manageable crowds we’ve experienced in China), I mean this place is where one goes to see captive pandas on display. Now, this might be a let-down for people who want to see wild animals, but as I’ve said before, we LOVE zoos, and had no illusions about what to expect before visiting.

Since our flight from Zhangjiajie landed at 11AM, we knew we would miss the best time of day to see the Giant Pandas (first thing in the morning, when they are the most active), but we took a taxi straight to the Panda Center with all our luggage anyways. Luckily, the Panda Center has free luggage storage services, so we were able to run around the park in comfort. And even though our visit corresponded with the sunniest and hottest part of the afternoon, we were lucky enough to see four very active Giant Pandas (when I say “very active,” I don’t mean they were doing cartwheels or anything, but they were sitting up and eating – apparently that’s really all you can expect them to do). We also saw a several *adorable* sleeping baby pandas (you have to get here at their 9:30AM feeding time if you want to see they playing) as well as some foxy Red Pandas. All in all, a very satisfying Chinese attraction – Recommended!

We arrive at the Zhangjiajie Airport at 7AM – 2.5hr before our flight – only to find the ticket counter isn’t even open yet! At least we’ll be the first ones in line…

We’re here to see pandas and chew bubblegum…and we’re all out of bubblegum…

We see a huge crowd with their mobile phones out – I think it’s safe to assume there’s a panda over there!

Eating and sleeping – what pandas do best

Igor rolls his eyes at the great wall of mobile phones – although, to be fair, this park was one of the least frustrating attractions we have visited in China. We suspect the visitors were more acculturated city-folk verses mainland “country-bumpkins”. True, there were crowds and lots of cell phones, but people were much more courteous about letting others take a turn with their camera, and no one pushed or cut in line all day!

BABY PANDAS! OMG, CUTE CUTE CUTE!

The raccoon-like Red Pandas – not really related to Giant Pandas, but they sure are cute!

Strolling the bamboo-shaded paths at the Chengdu Panda Research Base

The look of sheer bliss on this guy’s face as he chows down on a stick of bamboo is just precious. When he finishes the sticks in his hand, he starts frantically searching through his pile of bamboo, looking for another tasty snack – Who’s a hungry panda? You’re a hungry panda!

The park has a large population of raggedly-looking peacocks running around – we feel so bad for them as they are clearly harassed by all the local tourists who pull out their tail feathers for souvenirs

A flock of surprisingly friendly black swans swims in the “Swan Lake” – they seem jealous of all the attention and food the tourists give to the koi – they just want a little love!

Panda sperm! This facility is all about Giant Panda reproduction, and trying to bring the population back from the edge of extinction through breeding in captivity

China LOVES Kung Fu Panda – his image is EVERYWHERE: buckets of ramen, the sides of buses, and – of course! – at the Panda Research Center! Somehow, I doubt DreamWorks has approved the image licensing for these statues…but then, China doesn’t seem to care about American copyright laws

We spent a few hours at the Panda Center before catching a taxi to our hotel – a really cute place with staff that spoke *fantastic* English! Since we had an early flight the next morning, we pre-booked a car to take us to the airport in the morning, and called it an early night.

The Wenjun Mansion Hotel is so quaint – an old-fashioned (but newly renovated) building surrounding a courtyard in an “old-city” style neighborhood of Chengdu

Still boycotting “exotic” foods, we have a safe (and tasty!) dinner at Pizza Hut – which is surprisingly swanky: they even had a wine list!

The brightly-lit, walkable “old-Chengdu” neighborhood of Qintai Road – we didn’t expect to like Chengdu this much, but this city is really enjoyable! Wishing we had another day or two to explore

“Dance-aerobics” and a Chinese opera house in the Chengdu Culture Park

Walking by the Sanhua Tower during our evening stroll in Chengdu

Returning to the charming Wenjun Mansion Hotel – as much fun as Chengdu is, we have an early flight in the morning

Day 181: Zhangjiajie City – Tianmen Mountain

Our plan for the day was to visit Tianmen Mountain National Park – a 5,000ft high mountain featuring a distinctive “keyhole” opening on its highest peak and one of the world’s longest cable cars to the top. The hotel staff told us the cable car doesn’t start running until 8AM, so we headed down to the buffet breakfast around 7AM, before hailing a taxi to the park ticket office.

Waiting in line for the cable car up to the top of Tianmen Mountain – it’s just after 8AM, so the wait is very short

The 7KM cable car line is the longest in Asia and takes us half an hour to ride to the top. We snigger as one of the scared Chinese tourists holds onto the rail with white knuckles, but when the car started it’s steepest part of the ascent – 37⁰ angle with a good 4,000+ft drop – Lindsay started to get a little vertigo herself!

We have a foggy view of the surrounding peaks from the top of Tianmen Mountain

We have to wear protective covers for our couple of boots as we walk across one of two glass-bottom walkways that circumvent the cliffside

The view from the glass walkway is dizzying, as it is a straight 4,000+ft plunge to the bottom – no pushing!

A cement walkway plastered to the side of the cliff leads us around the mountain

We enter the appropriately named “Forest of Wishes,” where hundreds of thousands of visitors before us have tied red prayer ribbons to the surrounding trees and guardrails with their wishes written on them in Chinese. A nearby vendor is selling blank ribbons and markers nearby

We walk along the “complicated” landform, careful not to “drift” off the precipitously high walkway

We spot a rare break in the flow of tourists and take a few precious moments to admire the view from an empty bridge

Lindsay plays around in the “Bai He” – a wooden structure with moveable walls inside. It’s some sort of symbolic I-Ching art installation – whatever, it’s fun to turn the inside into a maze!

Lindsay tosses a pebble into the “Son Craving Cave” – hoping for twin girls!

Yu Hu Peak – more like, “YA HOO!” peak – just like in the other parks in China, the local tourists like to scream at the top of Tianmen Mountain to hear fellow travellers echo their call

View of Tianmen Mountain from Yu Hu Peak

Descending from Tianmen peak via a series of about a dozen escalators hidden inside the mountain

Hundreds of “locks of love” adorn a giant lock at the base of the “keyhole” opening of Tianmen Mountain. We walk down a very steep stone stair to the beginning of the road, where we will catch the bus down to the city

An incense-burning altar contributes to the hazy atmosphere at the keyhole viewpoint on Tianmen Mountain

We catch the bus back to the city – even though it’s only 11KM, it takes us a little over an hour to traverse the 99 hairpin turns down the mountain

We are starving by the time we get back to the city, and the humid heat is making us way too cranky to search for food. Without a second thought, we march into the air-conditioned McDonalds and pig out on fast food. We catch eyes with half a dozen fellow Westerners and the thought crosses our minds: “So…China has defeated you, too?”

Once our bellies were full of burgers, we got a second wind and decided to find a grocery store to stock up on snacks and pick up something to bring back to the hotel for dinner. We spent the rest of the afternoon hiding in our air-conditioned Best Western, uploading photos and writing blog entries.

Pairing our second bottle of Chinese wine with hard-boiled eggs, bread and bananas – real gourmands, we are. Unfortunately for us, the Best Western doesn’t have any English-language channels, so we watch one of our remaining “Continuum” episodes that Igor downloaded before we left the USA

Day 180: Zhangjiajie – Day 2

Lindsay (strongly) insisted I write a guest post.

Last time I wrote something that wasn’t code was in college, so I’m a bit rusty. Apologies in advance 🙂

So here’s all the wonderful things Lindsay missed:

After a strenuous hike of about 3 hours to a mountain top we skipped the day before….

…I emerge at the top a sweaty, tired mess. Besides beautiful scenery during the ascent, I was “rewarded” with a sea of selfie snapping tourists at the top who arrived by tram/cable car/elevator. They swarmed me for group photos as if I was Brad Pitt fresh off a divorce press release. I contemplated setting up a stand and charging 10 yuan per photo; surely it would be way more lucrative than my former career! but alas, I had more park to cover.

After 15 minutes of trying to do the penguin shuffle to “enjoy nature” with thousands of others (and resisting the very strong urge to jump off a cliff to make it stop — good thing there are signs… )

I saw the one person that would make it all OK. That would make the entire crowd fade away a distant memory. That would make Lindsay wish so much she was with me. He appeared high above the crowd, smiling at me with his long white flowing beard, with a halo of white and red lighting the way. Yep, you guessed it — it was the Colonel Sanders, and yes, the Chinese let us build a KFC at the top of their beloved national park. I bet if Trump privatized our parks, we’d have something similar at the top of Grand Canyon. With a “beautiful” Trump branded elevator 🙂

I won’t disclose whether I ate there or not — but let’s just say the other options in the park were limited:

Seriously, what is that? pigeon chicks? What ever happened to General Tso’s chicken or sweet & sour pork??

Anyway, back to the park. Chinese have an interesting approach to nature conservation — they litter their parks with (dare I say it, tacky) escalators, elevators, bridges, ‘glass’ walkways, trams, cable cars, and tourist shops. It’s really more of an amusement park vs. a natural landscape. Different strokes for different folks I guess, certainly not my (or Lindsay’s) cup of tea.

I did, however, cave and ride the “world’s largest outdoor glass elevator” (Lindsay refused on the first day due to the hefty $10 price tag); Luckily she wasn’t there to reel me in, and by golly, sometimes, you just gotta treat yo’ self 🙂 I got lucky — there was zero line, and in no-time I was whisked away in an elevator crammed with 15 tourists to the top of the mountain. Lucky for me, everyone in my elevator was incredibly short, so even though I was crammed in the middle of a heap of tourists, I had a lovely unobstructed view. The 3 minutes of Oooh’s and Ahhh’s from the other tourists were so intense, I thought we might be watching the moon landing for the very first time. Either that or they were having an intense 3-minute long orgasm. Either way, I thought the experience was just OK, certainly not worth standing in line for and not “Oooh/Ahhh” worthy.

As much fun as I was having, I did miss my dear wife, and was thrilled to reunite with her outside the park gate promptly at 5:30pm for our onward journey to Zhangjiajie city!