Travelation

I'm Back!

First of all, I want to apologize for my absence.  Once I returned from travelling, I picked up a lot of side jobs to make extra money for my semester travelling plans.  Then people started to return to Nanjing after the summer break, my job started again, and I found myself wrapped up in everything but writing.  BUT, I'm back.  

I have decided to use this space to wrap up my summer vacation.  Then I'll try to catch you all up on my travels of last semester up to this point:

Before leaving Langmusi to head to Xiahe, Molly and I had made a bet with Winnie and Rowan about hitch hiking to the next town.  While we left Xiahe by bus, we had to stop half way to transfer which is where we hitch hiked our last two hours to the next small town.  The man spoke very little English, so Molly chatted with him using the Chinese that she knew.  I listened to music and enjoyed not having to ride on another bus.

 This town inhabits one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries outside the Tibet autonomous region.

Once we arrived, we ate at a little place that we read about in the Lonely Planet Guide:
We frequented this restaurant where we met a guy who was staying in our hostel and who we ended up spending a lot of time with.  His name was Max, and he was from Canada.  One of the best parts of this trip was the amount of people we got to meet from all over the world.   Because of its small size Xiahe was another very relaxing town.  We spent a lot of time hiking and bike riding and just exploring the small shops.  Again, we did a lot of reading and writing in different places all over the town.

 

 

After this first day here, the Chinese government came to town and told all hotels and hostels that foriegn visitors would be requried to vacate the city.  Not complying with this order would put the hostel in danger of getting into trouble.  When we went to book another night at the front desk we were informed of the news.  However, it took us awhile to understand why we had to leave the town.  Basically, the Panchen Lama is second in command after the Dalai Lama, and he was coming to town sometime during the next two days.  Apparently, a few years ago, there were some riots and people were killed and injured.  They don't want something like that to happen in front of foreigner eyes. 

It was an interesting feeling being part of the minority group that is told where you can and cannot be.  While it was kind of discouraging, we decided that we were not going to leave.  Even if no hostel or hotel would allow us to sleep in a room for a night, we decided to put our money together to buy a tent and the essentials for sleeping in the mountains where at night it got pretty cold.  Luckily, after visiting essentially every accomodation in the area, we found a place that allowed us to stay.  But it was obvious that this rule was being enforced. First of all, we were turned down by many places including the renting of bicycles from one place.  Next, the presence of the authorities was much more prominent than it had been before where it seemed almost non-existent. Our friends Winnie and Rowan were prohibited from even entering the town at all and had to skip over it.  And, prior to the demand for us all to leave, we saw other foreign faces roaming up and down the streets.  It was clear that they had all obeyed the command to leave Xiahe.  

In our effort to stay in town, we managed to concoct a scenario where we would see a major political uproar.  To our disappointment, nothing happened and it was very calm.  It's definetly better that nothing went down, but it would have been a pretty cool story.

Because we were able to stay, we also rented bicycles and rode way out of town to see some scenery:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needless to say, this place was absolutely gorgeous.  We were also able to get up one morning at 5:00am to visit the monastery.  While I don't have many pictures of this, it was a very meaningful     experience to watch the devotion of the monks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The man on the left was laying down in an almost push-up-like position then strategically raising himself to a standing position.  Another man on the opposite side was following the same routine.  As they both practiced this worshipping ritual, they chanted prayers in Tibetan.  We watched them for about 15 minutes, and the pattern was never broken.  I imagine that along with getting in their morning prayers, they killing two birds with one stone and getting in their daily excercise.

One thing that we all found quite ironic was watching the monks circle the monastery in a worshipping walk in their monk-garb, in Nike sneakers, playing on his Iphone.  I wish I would have snapped a shot of that.

Molly and I finally left Xiahe...not because we wanted to, but because we were running out of money and we still had to get back to our homes.  We did have to stop in Lanzhou for a night where we ate some local delacacies in the night market.  Then we turned in and took the long, 20-hour train ride back home.

I can honestly say that this was one of the most interesting, meaningful, and rewarding vacations I have ever been on.  I thank the people I was able to travel with and all the wonderful people I met.  Although I was gone for almost a month, it just barely scratched my travelling itch - I am ready for more!

Here's to stressful yet successful travelling! 

Langmusi

So far the journey had been amazing.  I saw some of the coolest and prettiest places I have ever seen before, but I think this town was my favorite.  The village is divided by the border between Sichuan and Gansu province, so half of the town is in one province, and the other half is in another province.  I'm pretty easy to please.

The village has one road that runs through it, and only half of it is paved (if that's what you call it).  We had taken another bus to get here.  Once we arrived, we wanted to sit down and eat!  However, the boys took it upon themselves to choose the hostel.  Again, mistake allowing them to take charge.  When making a hostel decision in a small village like Langmusi, the important things are the bathrooms and showers.  We entered 3 different hostels before the boys chose.  Did they ask to look at the rooms? No.  Did they ask if the hostels had showers? No.  Did they scope out the bathrooms to make sure they were decent?  No.  To this day, Molly and I still have no idea what made them choose the one we stayed in.  We would walk into a hostel, ask if they had a room, and then leave.  Eventually, Jake and Spencer said "we'll stay here."  The price was good...about the same as the other ones.  However, the bathrooms/showers were absolutely disgusting!  I know that I'm in China where the bathrooms are usually less than clean.  I know that on top of that, we were in a small village so the chances of having a nice bathroom are pretty much non-existent.  But come on... This is the restroom area.  Yes, that is meat drying.  To the left were the showers, to the right was were we did our laundry (right under that drying meat), directly ahead is where the trash is stored and where they heated the water for the showers in the evening, and behind to the right were the toilets.  They really knew how to utilize space!  Eventhough the toilets and trash were in the same area, the putrid smells that filled the air pretty much came from that meat.  I asked the lady if they would be using that to cook with, and she replied with a chipper "yes!"  Needless to say, we avoided eating meals at the wonderful hostel the boys chose.

We had planned on only staying here for a day, but Molly and I decided to stay for three days.  Although it was such a small town, it was so beautiful and relaxing.  It was nice to be able to hike up into mountains without stairs being carved out for you or a lovely constructed boardwalk so you don't go off the trail.    
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first day Molly and I sat on this mountain for about an hour just taking in the beauty and breathing in the fresh air.  This Monk decided to sit with us for a bit.  This is where my obsession with Monks began...

At dinner, we met a group of people who were sitting next to us.  They were Chinese tourists sitting with one of the local Monks.  I began talking to one of the men, and he was translating for the Monk and I.  During this conversation he, invited us to the skyburial the following day.  While in Songpan, a Russian couple had told me about this...I was totally stoked to get an invitation; however, Spencer and Jake thought it was quite morbid.

A skyburial is a Tibetan funeral ritual that involves burning of clothes, chopping up of the human remains, and vultures.  I know it sounds really bad that I was so excited to see this, but it wasn't near as freaky as it sounds.  First of all, I wanted to go because this is a raw cultural experience.  Secondly, we were not allowed to be close enough to the area where it was all happening to see anything too graphic.  Here's how it went down...

Molly and I woke up at 5:00am to get dressed, leave the hostel, and meet Winnie and Rowan at their hostel to make the trek up the mountain.  While getting ready, Jake changed his mind and decided to go.  Once we all met up, we entered the temple area and hiked up to where it would take place.  At first, it was hard to find.  We weren't sure exactly where to go, so we wondered about for a bit taking photos of the gorgeous scenery.
 (The photograph at the start of this blog is also taken here.)
It didn't take us too long to get to the top, but because of the high altitude we all ran out of breath pretty quickly.  Eventually, we found where the burial would take place...it would be hard to mistake it for anything else.
These are the tools that are used during the ritual (you can even see the leftover blood from the last person).  While I took other photos of remains left around this area, I am not going to post them for many reasons.  We found this at about 6:45am, and the skyburial was supposed to have already started.  Since it hadn't, we thought maybe we had mixed up the days.  So, we wondered some more and took more photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we returned to the site there were other people beginning to show up.  We soon found out that we would be present for the burial.

It may seem morbid that we wanted to be present for this ceremony, but we were kept far enough away that it was not a graphic scene.  It began by men burning the clothes of the deceased person.  As soon as the smoke started to rise, vultures from miles away started flocking over the mountains toward us.  It was absolutley breathtaking.  It was a perfect photo opportunity, but I had already put my camera away in respect of the ceremony; however, there were plenty of Chinese tourists with camera lenses the size of telescopes that I'm sure got some pretty graphic photos by the end.  I was able to take a few of the vultures though: 

 

As they arrived, they sat on the side of the hill that we had just hiked up...waiting.  After awhile, the men then emptied a bag of human remains onto the ground around the burning clothes, and hte birds immediately attacked.  They knew exactly what was going on, and when it was time to feed.  For quite some time, we could see them eating something.  You could see things fall out of their mouths as they would hop or fly away to eat their share, but it wasn't obvious what it was even though we knew.  Then there comes a certain point when the men scare off the birds again and begin to use the tools in the above picture.  Apparently, if not all of the flesh is eaten, the person is not lifted up.  There is a stragic way to chop up the body so that everything that needs to be eaten is consumed by the vultures.  This part was a bit more gruesome because you could hear the chopping.  We couldn't see anything, but the sounds were awful because we knew what was being chopped.

These men who do the chopping are highly, highly respected within the community.  However, they are feared.  They are not exactly apart of the community because of the fear they bring the other people.  In these Tibetan villages though, the choppers are necessary and very important.  To become a person who does this job, you have to be in the bloodline.  I find the so interesting.  While these people are so respected and so important, they are shunned from everyone else because of their occupation.  So, is it an honour to have this job? 

This basically took up our whole morning.  Well, until 9:00am (it felt like it was much later).  We didn't do much of anything else but have lunch, chill out, and hike into the moutains for the rest of the day.  It was nice to relax. 

We spent quite a bit of time in this little cafe.  Although we didn't eat here, we sat and read our books, wrote in our journals, and I took a nap.  It was quite comfortable, and the vanilla latte was tastey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also spent some time outside of Winnie and Rowan's hostel.  Along the road was a mote-like canal.  As we sat on the porch, we watched the employees dipping water out of the canal with buckets and splashing it on the street.  This was to keep the dust down.  It didn't look too hard, so I decided to hop in and help out a bit. 

Appaently, this is not common for people to help out with this.  The workers found this absolutely hysterical at first.  But it did not take them long to start giving me instructions to move down the road.  Even though the water was less than clean with the food waste streaming down from the restaurants up the road, I had a blaste helping out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The workers were not the only ones getting a large charge out of me helping out.  Chinese tourists had also stopped to take photos.  I didn't even realize it until later when we met two men who had stopped to take pictures, and they told me over drinks.Wang and Wang Di.  The man sitting down is Wang Di, a famous water-color painter from Qingdao.  He comes to these areas once a year to get his inspiration for his work.  Although he did not speak a lick of English, the man standing up, Wang, spoke really good English.

Molly and I had made the decision to leave early the next morning, but Wang and Wang Di invited us to a Tibetan horse race and archery festival.  This is a traditional festival dating back at least 500 years.  Even though we didn't know what it was exactly, we decided to join them. 

We had to be up at 5:00am again.  We all met in front of Winnie and Rowan's hostel and piled into two cars that Wang and Wang Di had set up for us.  Our idea of an arrow festival was that we were going to see arrows being shot and what not, but it was not at all that.  It was large, hand-carved, wooden arrows that individuals stuck in the ground.  Then prayer flags were draped along them in hopes and thanks for good harvest for the year.  Prayer confetti papers were thrown everywhere while people chanted and continously walked around the center stone or road their horse to the highest spot.



It was really noisy at the top of this mountain with all of the chanting, but we stayed very quiet.  It was nothing like anything I had ever experienced.  I just wanted to take it all in.  I watched the way people concentrated on their prayers.  I watched little children bare-backing a horse on the top of a mountain while throwing up prayer cards.  I watched the arrows be stuck in the ground strategically so the prayer flags could be wrapped around them.  There wasn't much socializing....just worshipping and praying.  How some of the motorcycles got up this steep hill is beyond me.  I wouldn't feel very safe riding up or down this thing.  It was hard enough hiking up it.

Eventually, this part of the festival came to an end, and everyone headed down the hill to the horse track.  We all sat in the grass lining one side of the track and watched in awe as these men bare  backed racing horses.  

  





 

 

 

We only stayed for two of the races, but it was pretty cool.  One horse didn't negotiate the turn right and ended up galloping into the audience.  That was a sight!  People running and screaming...glad we weren't further down.  However, the horse made it back to the track and finished the race in last place.

We thought that this was the end of our adventure for the day, but surprise! it wasn't.  Wang didn't tell us that they were taking us to another village to some natural hot springs.  There were two hot springs.  We weren't going to get in because we didn't have our bathing suites, but we allowed our bras and underwear to suffice.  This was the only photo we took since most of the women in the water were totally naked.

Sitting in these hot springs are supposed to be really good for your skin.  It was neat to sit right by the mountain where the water flowed out from.  It was so hot I was sweating.  It felt like a scorching bathtub.  We had been in a hot spring in Yanshou earlier on in the vacation; however, after experiencing this one, I am pretty sure that one was fake.  They were more like hot tubs. 

After sitting in here for about 20 minutes or so, we headed back to Langmusi where Molly and I packed up and headed out for the last major stop of our journey.

 Next stop, Xiahe!

Songpan

To get to Songpan we had to take a bus or rent a van.  The only bus leaving the next day didn’t leave until 2:30 in the afternoon; normally, there is a bus leaving at 8:00am, but it was running illegally, so the government suspended its running time for one month…that makes sense, right? (Oh, China)  Since we wanted to have the entire day to horse-back ride and explore the small town of Songpan and the illegal bus was on suspension, we opted to hire a driver and his van; we would depart at 8:00am for the 2-hour journey.

Emma the woman who organized our Songpan hostel, our van ride, and our horse-back riding excursion decided to ride to Songpan with us to pick up some fresh ingredients for the Juizhaigou hostel.   One main ingredient that she needed to get was yak meat for their yak burgers…mmmm, delicious! It was very convenient having her with us because she directed the driver straight to our hostel and spoke with the guides for our horseback-riding excursion. 

At the beginning, the horse-back riding was lovely.  The sun was shining and we were ascending up into the mountains with gorgeous views.  The only mishap at the beginning was Spencer’s horse taking “the path less traveled” or never taken before.  At first, we thought we were supposed to follow him, then we thought that the horse would come back, then we ended up having to stop and wait for about 10 minutes because the guide had to chase Spencer and his horse up the brush-covered hill.  Later we found out that he fell off the horse because it was being a bit crazy...Yikes! 
While we were waiting for Spencer to return to the group, it started to rain.  Luckily the guides were prepared and covered us with large, rubber-like, rain ponchos, but not until we were good and wet.  In fact, just wet enough to be freezing for the rest of the journey (yes, this was about 30 minutes into our 5-hour excursion).  However, it was absolutely gorgeous.

Had it been sunny, the pictures would have been a lot better.  The horses on the left were just a few of many wild animals we saw roaming the hills we traveled on.

 

 

 

Although it was beautiful, it was the scariest horse-back ride I have ever been on.  There were times that we were walking on the edge of cliffs with a what looked like forever long drops, going down steep hills that also had cliffs, - one wrong step by that horse would have either killed us or hurt us badly - and my crazy horse that fought with Molly's the whole time (my horse did not want anyone else leading him, so we got to expereince all the horror first).  While a lot of the fright came from the fact that the path was muddy and slippery from the rain, I still think that it would have been scary without the rain in a few places because of how narrow the path got.  There were times where I was literally, out loud, talking to myself telling myself that I was okay...that everything was going to be fine...to take deep breaths.  At one point, we came to a spot where on the left of us was the wall of the mountain, to the right of us was a steep drop, and the front of us was an extremely narrow part of the trail that included a sharp left turn at the bottom.  As soon as my horse saw it, he turned around and started galloping (not walking--galloping) toward the rest of the group which caused a few of the other horses to freak out.  The guide had to hit my horse in the face to and block his path to stop him.  This was one of those times I was just talking about where I began to talk to myself out loud.

Besides the rain making the ride cold and scary, it also ruined our lunch.  The tour included a stop in a little, remote village near the top of the mountain where the locals would cook us some food.  Since it was raining, and there had been landslides lately, there was no one in the village.  Not only was there no one to cook for us, there was literally no one in the village at all.  We walked around the whole thing, and we did not see one person.  It was a cute little place though.It was filled with small alley-ways and channels that led to other passages or people's houses.  Entrance doors and windows were left open just enough to peak in to see the decor of Tibetan inhabitants.  The atmosphere screamed zombie movie!  I am not a huge fan of zombie movies, but I have seen my fair share: small group of people enter a village where no one is to be found.  They wonder for a bit and all of sudden zombies come from the litte alley-ways or channels, out of the open windows and half-opened gates.  I hate to admit it, but it made me a little nervous.  It was too quiet to believe that anyone inhabited the place at all, but it was clear that there were familes living there.

On the way back, the guides decided to make us ride the horse over a pile of rubble that they had previously made us all dismount for on the way in. 

After the horse ride, we all took much-needed, long, hot showers.  The temperature in the evening dropped significantly, so significantly, in fact, that Molly and I went and bought fleece pants and hats.  I also bought a fleece jacket, and Jake and Spencer bought pants and even gloves.  We had just come from Chengdu where it was scorching hot, and now we need winter clothes. After our purchases, we scoped out the town.  Molly and I had some drinks with about 10 Tibetan guys.  One of which spoke excellent English.  None of the other guys new any; so as it goes, "gombay."  Which means drink all the beer I just poured in your glass at once.  

Next stop, Langmusi! 
 
   

  

Jiuzhaighou

We had to take a bus from Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou.  In talking to other travelers at the hostel, the hostel staff, and the ticket salesperson at the bus station, we found out that the normal route that takes 10-12 hours was closed because of land/mudslides, so we had to take an alternate, longer route that was supposed to take 16 hours.  Wonderful!  Spending 16 hours on a bus where there are no toilets, it stinks, we are escalating in elevation, children are kicking our chair and pulling our hair, and there are buckets for trash, the vomitting child that sat behind us, and a urinal for the boy that couldn't hold his pee, was not exactly what we had envisioned.  Good news: it only took us 12 hours--we took the original route.  Bad news: there were definetly recent landslides that blocked half the road in many different spots along the moutain, and there was a wreck that stranded us on the mountain for about 45 minutes.  A semi-truck had jack-knifed--it looked like some rocks had either fallen on top of the truck spinning him out of control on one of the sharp turns, or what he was carrying slid off in his attempt to avoid fallen rocks plus trying to make a sharp curve.  Either way, it was a bit disconcerting. 

Since it was an all day bus ride, we couldn't do anything the night we got there except get Molly a jacket.  Because of the increase in elevation it was quite a bit colder.  Luckily, I had brought some yoga pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. 
 
The pictures that I am going to provide in this blog will not even come close to portraying the enchanting beauty of this place.  Not only are you surrounded by mountains and water in this nature reserve, but the water is turquois, clear, mirror-like, different shades of blue and green, and scattered about are waterfalls that range from small, narrow streams to large, wide, gushing cascades of water misting the air.  For me, this is a place of serenity.  The pure, refreshing atmosphere, the bright colors illuminating the lakes, the rolling, green mountains, the sound of running water coming from all directions...my Heaven.You easily see the fallen tree at the bottom of the lake.   

 
  
Waterfalls are my favoite things in nature.  The only thing that could have made this better would have been less tourists and a natural path that is not so restrictive and planned-out. 
 
By the end of the day, it had started raining.  We spent from 8am - 5pm here.  Although we saw a lot of the gorgeous lakes, we did not get to see all of them.  It was exhausting walking around all day especially since we weren't used to the high elevation.  Where we started, it was an elevation of 3,800 meters.  By our quick breathing and shortness of breath, it was obvious that we were at such a high altitude that we were not used to. 

This was the only day we spent in Jiuzhaigou.  I could have easily spent another day in this reserve.  Getting into the park was pricey but well worth it.  With a student ID, we were able to get a discount.  Again, our hostel, Uncle Jiangs Family House, was amazingly helpful in getting there from the bus station, the food was great, and the staff was more than happy to schedule our transportation for the next day with advice on where to go once we got to Songpan.  

This was one place that I was not even close to ready to leave, and even now, I want to go back.  All I kept thinking while exploring the reserve was the stillness of the water would make for one hell of a rock-skipping competition; I really wanted to swim in that water; and if I could just have a house with a lake and/or waterfall like that in my backyard, I would be set and be the happiest person on earth.  It's a perfect place to sit and read a book or write.  The peacefullness of this place is unexplainable even with so many people around.  It's wonderful. 

Next stop, Songpan! -- The start of the Tibetan villages. 

 

 
 
 

 

Chengdu

Arriving to our hostel at 3am really put a strain on our Chengdu plans.  Instead of getting up early to see the whole city or go to the panda reserve, we slept in and basically wasted our day.  However, it was absolutely necessary.  There had already been too many nights where we only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep.  When we finally got up, got moving, and got breakfast it was already 11am.  Molly and I were trying to get a legit plan down for the rest of our trip, so we could plan to see the pandas.  The one thing that we were certain of was that we wanted to go to Jiuzhaigou.  While talking about it, an Australian man, Francis, overheard us and chimmed in.  This conversation changed the course of the rest of our trip.

He easily convinced us to stay in Sichuan longer to visit part of the Tibetan plateaus.  So, we are knocking out Chongqing, Yichang, and Wuhan but adding Songpan, Langmusi, Xiahe, and Xian.  Although this allows us to see more of Western China and visit more rural areas, it meant that we had to leave Chengdu the next day; therefore, no panda reserve.  This was devastating news since one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Chengdu was to see and hopfully hold a panda.  In the end, I think it will be worth it because we are getting to see more of rural China than we thought we would.

The one day we had in Chengdu we spent enjoying the cuisine, visiting a museum, a Daoist Temple, and People's Park.  The food was intense to say the least.  The first experience: spicey noodles. We told the waitress "just a little spice", but in Sichuan, that is still pretty dang spicy.  The noodles we ate literally numbed our mouths.  It was the weirdest feeling ever.  They have a spice called ma (which literally means numb) that makes your mouth tingle into numbness, which basically enables you to tolerate the spiciness.  It works.  While the roof of my mouth, my toungue, and my lips had a bizarre tingling or prickly sensation, I could no longer feel the heat of the spicy dish.  I had never felt anything like this.  Thank goodness Jacob knew about this spice because if he hadn't told me about it, I may have thought that some kind of drug was slipped in my food.  I think everyone else enjoyed it or at least didn't mind it, but I didn't really like it at all.  I was too worried about the way my mouth felt to enjoy the food...hell, I couldn't really taste anything anyway because my whole mouth was numb.

The second food experience: street food.  Although it didn't have the numbing ingredient, it was spicey.  I only ate half of it, but the flavor was delicious! 

The third and final Chengdu, Sichuan dish: hotpot...of course. 
 Now, I have had hotpot before, and I actually enjoy the spicy side of it.  The flavor is quite nice.  This spiciness, however, was on another level.  At the beginning of the meal, each patron was given an oil-based sauce in which each person could add his/her own ingredients to.  The whole point of it was to cut down the spice to make the food edible.  I had not yet experienced this.  You can always get sauce on the side, but it has never just automatically come with the hotpot, but it was necessary.  We ordered a half and half hotpot...one side was spicey and the other side was not. 
Other tables, however, had all spicey that was divided into like 9  different sections.  I am guessing either different flavors or different levels of spiciness.  Eventually, everyone at our table gave up on the spicey side because after eating it for so long, the flavor was lost to the spice.  While I would never be able to eat this food regularly, it was delicious.  And I must say that I am proud of myself for eating all of this spiciness because I normally shy away from spice.  China's changing me, man.

The museum was free which is always a plus.  It was very interesting seeing all of the artifacts that are 1000's of years old and only discoverd within the last 30-40 years.  Most everything we saw was excavated from Chengdu and Chongqing. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daoist temple was really pretty, but we were hoping for more.  However, the area surrounding it was lovely and made for a great walk. 
 
 
From the temple, we went and enjoyed tea in People's Park. 
Parks in China are always interesting(a.k.a. great for people watching).  We saw people excercising and sword dancing.
 
After posting up on some rocks watching the sword routine, we took a quiet stroll around the little lake which was very relaxing. 
 
It was a nice but too short of a visit to Chengdu.  There is much more to do in this city, so hopefully in my time in China, I will be able to return to visit the large Budda and hold a panda.

Next stop Jiuzhaigou! 

Guilin/Yangshou

We took a 3-hour bus ride from Sanjiang to Guilin.  Although we didn't get much sleep the night before, I was not able to catch any z's on the ride because the scenery was so gorgeous.  Traveling through more villages, rice terraces, mountains, along streams and rivers, and seeing waterfalls and old rope bridges kept me occupied the entire time.  I half wished that we were back on the 1960's train, so I could catch some of these views on camera. 

We stayed at the Wada hostel (the staff was very helpful and friendly) where we met up with Louie, another CIEE person.  Since it was the 4th of July, we went to dinner and went in search of a U.S. party.  When we came up unsuccessful, we hung out around the lake having drinks and ended up at a little pub in the middle of the city. Combine mine and Louie's outfit, and we have red, white, and blue :)

Although the views all over Guilin are beautiful because of the constant backdrop of mountains and it's tropical feel, it's a pretty low-key city.  Therefore, we only spent this one night in Guilin, and headed to Yangshou by bamboo raft the next day.  Our trip down the Li River was great.  It took about 4 hours, which was the perfect amount of time to spend in the sun.
Arriving in Yangshou we had no where to stay.  It wasn't really a part of the original plan, but since Yanshou is a major tourist town, it was easy to hop around from hostel to hostel until we found one with beds open.  We ended up at Showbiz Inn hostel.  This place was amazing.  The staff was great, they spoke great English, they helped us book everything from our water cave excursion to our all-day bike ride with a place to go swimming to our flights to Chengdu.  Although they didn't have a restaurant at the hostel, the town has an abundance of cafes, restaurants, and bars.  The Showbiz Inn also has a bar on the rooftop, and the best part is it was only 25RMB a night.  Can't beat it!

This city was a lot of fun and a perfect way to break up the trip a bit.  Since it is so touristy, western restaurants invade this place.  Anywhere from a good wood-burning-oven pizza to Indian to French to Middle Eastern.  All of which we tried.  The Indian food was by far the best.  However, Riley's Cafe had a sweet American breakfast deal that I don't think can be beat.

The two major excursions we did were the water cave where we got to swim in a mud pool and a bike ride around Yangshou. 

Now who wouldn't LOVE getting muddy?  It was like being a little kid again. The mud covered us from head to toe!  And...we got to slide down mud slides splashing into the muddy water. 
Then after playing in mud for about a half an hour and successfully convincing ourselves that it was cool, we cleaned off and sat in the hot springs. 

And for our second excursion, we rented bicycles.  We thought it would be fun to ride to the river and go swimming.  It was so hot out...what a great idea!  We ended up getting lost...go figure.  We had old, old bicyles (kinda like the 1970 Schwins), and we ended up off-roading with them.  I am positive that these bikes were not made for this.  I'm talking gravel, back roads through tall fields of grass, having to constantly be dodging huge pot holes, riding by random, wild animals, and inadvertently coming up on small villages.   The villages made the ride worth it.

We stumbled upon so many cool sights that even if we didn't find a place to swim, we would have been happy.  However, we did find a place to swim.  Well, we created a place.  It wasn't exactly an area where people jump into the river to cool off.  The locals who were around playing cards, selling things, and just hanging out got a kick out of us jumping in the water.  We had quite an audience for awhile. The whole bike gang of the day.

What a great, inexpensive day spent in the sun and getting excercise.  The next day we took it easy because we had to take a bus back to Guilin and then a flight to Chengdu.

Next stop Chengdu!








 

 
  

Sanjiang

We made it to Sanjiang a little late.  We were able to finally get off the train at 1:20am which arrived in Sanjiang County...not Sanjiang city.  This meant that we had to take a half an hour van ride into the city where there is a place to stay.  Luckily, the Lonely Planet guide did give us some places to stay, and the driver could understand us well enough to get us to a hotel.  We literally spent about 6 hours in this hotel showering and sleeping. 

The next morning we bought our bus tickets leavign for Guilin at 1:30 and headed to the Dong minority village.  The fact that we were the only tourists in the village added with the spontaneity of the stop made this a definite highlite of our trip.  The narrow alley ways, the crumbling buildings, the random corn and rice fields, and the villagers hard at work gave us a new way to look at China.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course I had to take photos with the elderly!  The people in this village were so friendly.  I just wanted to give them big hugs, but I refrained.  Since we stumbled upon this town, we only had a enough time to spend a half a day here...bummer.  Had we known how amazing and how authentic this stop would be, we would have planned to stay longer.  We are just happy that we had the time to experience it at all especially since it wasn't part of our original plans.  And, what's weird is that this was the first day that everything went smoothly for us.  It was a nice change of pace.

Next stop Guilin/Yangshou!

Zhangjiajie

The first leg of our trip: Zhangjiajie...pronounced jongjiejia.  The attraction: the mountainous views that inspired the movie Avatar. 

We arrived in this city located in Hunan province Friday afternoon on July 1st after spending 9 hours sitting on a hard seat in the train.  I had vowed before leaving that I would not sit on the hard seats, but I caved.  Surprisingly, the train ride was quite pleasant.  The train car we were in emptied out, so we were able to lay down across the seats and get a few hours of sleep.  Once arriving in Zhangjiajie, we immediately booked our next train to Nanning in hopes that we would get beds.  Nope.  The only way we could get on the Sunday train was to sit on hard seats yet again...for 14 hours.  Deep breaths...

The hostel in Zhangjiajie was amazing.  It was very clean, affordable, and the staff was extremely helpful Zhongtian International Youth Hostel. Up till this hostel, our trip had quite a rocky beginning.  It was nice to have a place so nice after spending the last day figuring out where to go, waiting in lines, and sitting on trains.

Saturday, we headed up to the mountain reserve.  For anyone who has been reading my blog or has talked to me since I visited Taishan, you know all too well how much I despise stairs.  Most mountains in China require you to walk up tons of stairs, or you have to pay.  I knew going into this trip that I would be spending a good chunk of my money on transportaion getting to the tops of mountains because I'll be damned if I ever feel like I did after walking up and down Taishan mountain.  So, it began with the cable car to the top...how satisfying.

The views were unbelieveable:

This photo doesn't do it justice.  This place is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.   Standing at the top of one of these peaks is absolutely breathtaking.

The natural bridge.

Hiking around the mountain: day 2

Since our entrance fee into the reserve was for two days, we decided to stay at a hostel at the top of one of the mountains.  You know how I was just talking about spending extra money to avoid the hell of climbing stairs?  Well, I had to climb stairs.  It was only for an hour, but you better believe I was not happy and everyone around me knew it.  We had already walked around the mountains for hours, we had walked down the mountain by stairs, and the only thing we had for lunch was almonds.  Needless to say, the conversation up the stairs was exteremely negative from all four sides. 

One good thing about going down the stairs: These little guys were everywhere taunting tourists.  If you had a plastic bag with food, they would attack the bag and steal it from you.  Because we didn't have a plastic bag, we were fine.  But other tourists were not so lucky.  It was hilarious!

Since we had only eaten almonds and we grabbed a banana after the treacherous climb, we decided to go to our hostel to eat and shower.  This was at 5:00.  We checked in, and for being at the top of a mountain, the hostel was really clean.  The staff did not speak very good English, but it was good enough.  We ordered food immediately and sat and waited.  We ended up waiting for 4 hours.  We asked over and over and over again and the response was always: "one moment" or "just a few moments."  Finally, the man told us that the water was broken, so not only could we not eat, we couldn't shower either.  Let's put this into perspective:  We had literally eaten nuts and berries (the banana) all day long.  We're starving.  We had been up since 7am.  We had been hiking around the mountain, up and down stairs, in the sticky, hot sun.  To say that we were smelly is an understatement.  We were foul.  Now, we are in a hostel where we cannot get food nor can we shower.  HA!  Just another part of the trip that isn't going right.  Of course, we all sat and laughed hysterically while half crying.  Luckily, they still had some thermoses filled with hot water, so we bought some noodles, and that was our dinner.  At this rate, we were on schedule to loose a lot of weight this trip.

As we were sitting in the lobby, I looked up and spotted an enormous spider.  I'm talking tarantula-like.  The body of this thing was almost as big as a sand dollar.  Then add the legs...Oh my goodness.  Just thinking about it while writing this makes me cringe.  Before Geoff or Jacob could make an attempt to kill it with a magazine, it had moved across the room positioning itself high enough to be outside of anyone's reach.  By this time, I was climbing across the tables and couches to be as far away from it as possible.  The other Chinese workers sitting in the lobby did not even seem phased by the spider or by me acting like a nut--climbing around in a fit of hysterics.  The more I watched it moved, the harder it was for me to breath, and the closer my knees came to locking and me to crying.  I started pointing to the spider and with hand gestures, I was asking the Chinese men to kill this huge thing.  Casually, one of the men got up, got bug spray, and sprayed the arachnid.  He did not use enough.  Although it fell off the wall, it was running in my direction.  Immediately, I was moving further and further away while simultaneously fighting the tears that had welled up in my eyes from streaming down my face.  Eventually the spider lost against the homo sapien, but it gave a pretty good fight.

Going to bed this night was not easy for any of us.  Geoff had a nightmare, Jacob kept believing that spiders were crawling on him, I had convinced myself that the dead spiders sibling was going to end up in bed with me, and Molly just couldn't sleep.  On top of it, we were all stinky and sweaty from not showering.  Who can sleep like that?

Sunday, we left the hostel, ate some food, explored a bit, left the mountain, and went back to our original hostel to shower.  It was the best shower ever!   While waiting to go to the train station, Molly and I realized that our train ticket did not have a letter in front of it.  For example, trains usually have a letter in front of a number like T8768, K7658, D6567, G7342.  However, this was just plain ol' 2011.  We immediately thought the worst: plank seats.  So, we researched how we could get off the train early, and just like that our trip plan changed.  Instead of being on a slow train sitting on hard seats for 14 hours, we decided to get off the train in Sanjiang which cut our trip down to 7 1/2 hours.  

All I have to say is thank goodness because we ended up being on a train that I am pretty sure has been running since the 1960's.   Yes, we had the wooden seats with minimal padding.  There were no sperations between the seats.  It was like sitting at a restaurant booth.  The car did not have air conditioning, instead it had small, oscillating fans and open windows.

Although we realized this 7-hour train ride was going to be terribly uncomfortable, the first two hours were amazing.  The landscape that I was able to see and capture on camera because of the open window was phenomenal.  It was such a raw, authentic experience that I wouldn't trade this seat for anything.  

Poor Molly and Jacob had to sit in the three-seater booth.  Eventually, the two people sitting across from Geoff and me switched Molly and Jacob, so we all got to sit together.  It still wasn't too bad until at one stop when the flood gates opened and 100's of Chinese people with standing tickets entered the train.  At that point, it's almost impossible to get up from your seat without loosing it and having to argue with someone for it back.

While all of these people were hovering over us, there was a child that was about 4 years old or so standing with his parents by us.  He didn't seem to care that 4 foreigners were sitting to his right until he reached in his gum container, turned to Jacob, and threw the piece of gum at him hitting him right between the eyes.  Geoff, Molly, and I could not contain ourselves.  And neither could the child's parents.  Instead of getting after the child, they laughed and told him not to do it again.  I was surprised that it didn't happen again with the reaction he recieved.

Sanjian couldn't come soon enough.

Hoping for better luck!

Some scenery photos that I caught from the train:









 

 

 

 

Summer Travels

Summer is here! Which means that I will be traveling around China for the next 20 days...woohoo! I left Nanjing on June 27th for a crazy few days in Shanghai with Ryan and Zach. Those two departed from Pudong airport to go back to the States, while I met Molly, Geoff, and Jacob at the train station. The trip started off a little rocky. We had all the planes made, but being the procrastinators that we are, we did not have any train tickets. This led to us not being able to take the train we originally planned to take. We spent most of Thursday researching different trains we could take and trying to rearrange our trip, so we could still hit up all the places we wanted to see. The original plan: Zhangjiajie (inspiration for Avatar mountains), Nanning (visiting a friend), Guilin, Chengdu (hold a panda), Chongqing, cruise up the Yangtze river seeing the three-gorges damn, get off in Yicheng, Wuhan, and finally back to Nanjing on the 20th of July. Well, we found a train to Wuhan. So, there starts our trip. Arriving in Wuhan, we found out that we could get a train to Zhangjiajie leaving at 3:40am. The train ride was 9 hours long on hard seats. Oh my! Hard seats for long periods of time are trying. However, the ride was pretty good. The car emptied out, and we were able to sleep! That's all I ask for. Basically, the first leg of our trip was standing in line and riding on trains. However, we made it to Zhangjiajie to our great hostel safe and sound. Tomorrow, we will hike up the mountains and stay in a hostel on the mountain. Then Sunday, we will head to Nanning. We do have train tickets there...we'll see how accurate the end result of this trip is to our original plans. But that's the fun in it :) Pictures to come... Here's to traveling!

Semester Ending

This semester I taught Oral English.  My job was literally to get the students to talk.  Since I love talking, I think my classes were a success :)  I had wonderful students who were willing to participate.  Basically, I lucked out.

Other teachers that I know around China and in my school have not had such a great experience.  Not all students are always wanting to participate.  Heck, some teachers have experienced students not even wanting to learn English, but it is required. 

On top of teaching English majors, I only taught 3 days a week...a total of about 12 hours.  Wednesday was my long day -- a grueling 9-hour work day with an hour and a half lunch break plus half-hour breaks between each class.  However, I did pick up a little extra work here and there.

Since I taught Oral English, my final exams were one-on-one conversations with each student.  I would call them into the room, and we would talk for awhile about different things and I would ask them questions about the stuff that I taught them this semester.  It wasn't too bad, but Wednesday I gave a little over 60 exams.  Even for me that is a lot of talking. 

All in all, I had a great semester with great students.  I learned a lot. 

Now, all of my friends in Nanjing are going back to America, and I will be traveling for the summer with people that I was fortunate enough to meet in Shanghai at our CIEE orientation.  We will be doing up Southern China.

Happy Summer!

P.S. My internet has not been doing so hot lately, so posting to my blog has been somewhat difficult.  I have so much more to share, so hopefully I will be posting a lot in the next week or so!