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: