I was in the middle of sorting through my photos when my computer decided that it would be a Fantastic idea to "upgrade" to Win 10. I then had to wait about an hour for the damn thing to complete installation, and now I'm still having trouble trying to adjust to the new buttons and settings and the strange new interface. Not to mention the fact that my computer is now all sluggish and slow because it can't handle the upgrades. Thanks a lot for that, Windows.
Finally finished sorting through my 400 odd pictures and have filtered out exactly 88 pictures to post here. I'm still not decided on how many entries I want to divide it up into, but no matter, for the time being. At least I actually have all the pictures I want.
I'm still numb. I don't know why. I feel that I don't write as well as I used to. I really need to do more writing. Also, I don't know how honest I can be in these entries, because of censorship and all that. I will try to be as forthright as I can, though.
I went with Priscila, and this trip was about two months in the making. The two of us had originally planned to go to Angkor Wat, but the plane tickets were just ridiculously expensive, plus there wasn't a direct flight to Siem Reap, the village that houses the famous Wat. The two of us dithered a bit, then one of us - I forget which one - saw cheap (for Asia anyway), direct tickets to Zhangjiajie, and we said, yeah we'll do that one instead. We booked the tickets and a nice place to stay, and left it at that, didn't do any more planning. Nothing like my Europe trips, where I would plan my itinerary down to the slightest detail.
Our flight was due to leave TPE at 8am, so we both had to arrive there at about 6am. We went separately - she went from the central main station whilst I took a bus that conveniently happened to stop ten minutes from my house. As it was, the entire world seemed determined to go on a holiday, and the first airport
I feel like I'm not going to be able to finish the entries all today - it is already nearing early evening - and in case I don't, I want to write this all down, lest I forget. I've already forgotten some of it. I miss the dear old lady who owned the hostel, along with her son - I liked how warm she was, and how she always smiled and tried to speak to us in a mixture of Hunan dialect and Putonghua, which I found terrifically hard to understand. The morning we left, we sat together with her and her son, the hostel owner, one last time in their communal room, and she put her hard on us with a somewhat pensive expression, and said that she wished we weren't going. It reminded me once again of what I didn't like about travelling, the people that you meet and love and then leave. Two years ago I said that leaving is never easy for us travellers; that we travel because we want to find the people that we fell in love with again. We're searching for the same familiar faces in a sea of strangers, over and over again.
Customs was relatively easy to get through - much easier than Europe. The flight took about three hours, and it was terribly bumpy. Priscila and I were extremely jumpy - it's strange, the two of us are much more well-travelled than the average person and have been on a lot more flights than most, but we hate flying with a passion. There are a ton of things we don't like.
When the plane touched down at Zhangjiajie airport we both nearly cried with relief.
We both took a bus to the city centre of Zhangjiajie, which was a half hour drive. The bus station was ridiculously hard to find, and was about twenty minutes walk from the airport itself, which was basically in the middle of nowhere.
Found it, however - thanks to Pris - and got onto the bus, which was dusty and not unlike some of the rural eastern European buses I've been on. Actually, a lot of China reminded me of eastern Europe, especially Romania. Just the buses though, and some of the buildings - the Chinese are nothing like Romanians.
Our first glimpse of a real Chinese town, and it was an exhilarating experience for me. My very first Chinese town, deep in the heart of rural China. The air was dusty and hot and dry, the people looked alike me and yet unlike, and I felt so far and yet still close to home.
Priscila and I found a local supermarket where we stopped to buy some drinks. The people there were very warm and friendly, and told us that we were very pretty, which was very gratifying. The women themselves were mostly ethnic Miao, with wide, clear brows, slightly flat noses, and long, thick, lustrous black hair that they wore in braids, or in ponytails. I asked one of the shop girls where we could eat, and she recommended a restaurant that was fairly close by. As Pris and I walked out, we saw two other Taiwanese backpackers, a pair of men-boys in their mid twenties, who looked ostensibly and hilariously Taiwanese to the point where it was almost cartoonish. They really stood out like a sore thumb. We had a good laugh at them, and we found the restaurant and sat down to an incredibly delicious meal.
Their staple dish, 三下鍋, is basically cloves of garlic, lots of pepper, onions, potatoes and various sliced meats, all fried together. It was incredibly delicious and went very well with white rice, but I can see how people might not like it so much. We also had fried egg, which was fried with spicy peppers, and some fried veg.
We then took a bus up to the mountains, Wulingyuan, where our hostel was located. It was about an hour long ride in a small, rather rickety bus. Our hostel was located fairly close to the park entrance, and was about twenty minutes walk from Wulingyuan bus station. A lot of the hostel area was under heavy construction, however, which was a rather unpleasant shock.
Walking there was extremely difficult. The locals told us that the entire tourist area was being renovated, and that it would look splendid once the construction was complete.
We found our hostel, which was quite lovely despite its slightly unfortunate location in the construction site. It was your quintessential youth hostel, and reminded me of a thousand other hostels I had stayed in, all over Europe. The landlady was a little old woman who looked to be in her sixties, and she was very warm and welcoming. Her son the landlord, a man about ten years older than us, arrived a little while later from his other inn (also in Wulingyuan) to check us in.
We asked the hostel owner about the construction, and he apologised for the inconvenience and told us that he'd upgraded our bedroom. We were pleasantly surprised when we saw it - it was clean and airy and light, and we decided to stay there after all. Construction aside, this was probably the nicest hostel I've ever stayed in.
TBC..
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