The Chinese new year is over and we are safely back home. Our trip started last Saturday at noon, when we (Michi, Huiqin, Esa, AJ and I) took a bus from HK to Guanzhou. Bus took almost 4 hours (supposed to be 3) and in Guanzhou we had only couple hours to spend. Nicely enough to find the railway station and have a dinner.
Guanzhou railway station:
And from the inside, quite a few people... It makes a simple countryside guy like me confused:
From Guanzhou it was a nice 14 hour train trip to Zhangjiajie, which is in the northern part of Hunan province, somewhere around middle China. When we booked the tickets there were only 2 soft sleep and 3 hard sleep places left. Though when we got to the train quite a few softsleep places were vacant. The train ticket booking system is pretty complicated in China. Usually you can only book tickets a few days before the departure, so making long time plans is virtually impossible. From HK you can book tickets to somewhere in advance, but not back, though you have to pay quite a lot of extra of course. So we had only tickets to Zhangjiajie, but everything was blurry after that.
The train left at around 19 so we would arrive in Zhangjiajie in the morning. As we are such gentlemen, girls took the softsleep and we guys got the hardsleep tickets. The trains were surprisingly good - especially the softsleep ones, where you get your own cabin for 4 and can close the door and all. The hard sleep is open car with beds in 3 layers. The beds are comfortable enough, but if you can't sleep in noise, like other people talking to phone in the middle of night, babies having a crying concert and the speakers starting to play VERY loud Chinese music at around 5 o'clock in the mornign I advice you to pay the extra for the soft sleep, at least if you need to be fresh and clean in the mornign. Ah and also, at least the hardsleep cars didn't have a heating system, so when the outside temperature changed from 20 to around 5 during the trip, it wasn't very warm anymore in the morning =)
Softsleep cabins, at least Michi was satisfied with it (train was supposed to be full, but Michi and Huiqin got a the whole cabin for themselves):
Waking up so fresh and so clean after a night well slept (not) in the hardsleep cabin:
The arrival to Zhangjiajie was cold. Yeah, I know +5 is not really cold, but when you are accustomed to +20 you really need a sweater, skiing cap and a scarf to survive already in the not so extreme weathers. So now I don't wonder why all the foreigners are wearing winter clothes in Finland already during autumn. But still I don't understand why Hongkongese do so in +15...
Second day Sunday 18.2.:
Arrival to Zhangjiajie:
First thing in the mornign was to try to get tickets back home, which turned out not to be so easy. By the way, Huiqin is living in France, but she speaks fluent Putonghua which makes things quite a lot easier in China. When we got to ticket counter they said that latest you can get tickets is Tuesday 20. at that point our plan was to come back on 21st so we had to make a new plan. So we went for a breakfast to discuss what to do.
Most of the buildings in Zhangjiajie don't have any kind of heating as didn't our breakfast restaurant:
After Chinese breakfast our plan was almost clear, to go to a travel angency and try to get tickets back on 21st. The plan was good, but sometimes the travel agencies can be convincing... We ended up buying a packet tour around one of the Zhangjiajie's nature parks, which included entrance fees, accommodation for 2 nights, English speaking tour guide and transportation. It costed 800, which afterwards said was perhaps a bit too much (since it didn't really include all entrance fees), but still not bad since it would be pretty difficult to get there to see everything by yourself. We also solved our transportation problem by buying flights to Guanzhou for 490rmbs. Softsleep traintickets would have been over 400, so the price difference compared to comfort was in favor of flying. Unfortunately buying the packet ment that we didn't get to experince the 2€ hostel...
Convincing travel agent and Huiqing negotiating the price, actually customer service in Zhangjiajie was surprisingly good, taking into account that we were in China:
So at that point we had pretty much everything arranged to have a perfect relaxing nature holiday. Didn't have to worry about anything, just go with the flow. So we let ourselves to be taken care of by our tour guide Mark, who turned out to be a really nice guy. Of course trying to get extra money at every possible change, but that's how it works. There is no free lunch in this world...
After ~1 hour minibus ride we arrived to the nature park, which name I still don't know, I guess it's written on the rocks:
So the first day we walked in the park and climbed quite a few steps. AJ counted the steps of the longest trip up the hill and it was 2800 something if I remember right. Taking into account that we were carrying most of our luggage (left some to the travel agency) the whole time, it was really good exercise. The views were really nice and different from anything I've ever seen. But the nature park in China means something a bit different than in Finland. The are stony paths wide enough for a car to everywhere and also buildings and people selling tourist grab everywhere. To most of the places you can get also by a cable car or lift, but we took the hard way and walked. You can also hire couple of Chinese to carry you in a chair for a few dozen yuans.
First climbse of what it looked like:
Views from the bottom of the park:
Some more:
There were also some additional challenge for some parts of the paths:
Our guide Mark on a chair in which you can get yourself carried up the hill, I don't think it would pass the finish work condition checks:
Finally the first day views from the top of the hills:
As you can see the view distance was/is not wery great. IRL it was better, but my camera's optics is not the best. Some might argue that it is mostly fog, but the last day we were in Zhangjiajie was really bright, but still you can't really see much further... What I think is that the airpollution in China is totally out of control and even in such nature place the smog is everywhere. The fact is that China produces over 70% of its energy from coal and I guess mostly without any filters...
After first day of hiking our accommodation was on top of the hills on a small hostel village. I don't know what we should have expected from our 20rmb hostel, since the one we were staying there supposedly costed 130rmbs. Othervise the hostel was nice enough, but people in Zhangjiajie don't really know how to appreciate warmth. Outside temperature was between 5-10 and they kept the doors open all the time and didn't have any heating. In the rooms there was aircon that you could use as a heater, but since the walls were freezing cold and the heater didn't really work too well, the night was like living in a tent on Finnish autumn. So if you don't like a little adventure perhaps you shoudn't go there during winter... For me it was ok, except I hated to take a shower there =)
The hostel village somewhere on top of the hills:
We also had a little basketball match on the yard to keep warm =)
Othervise nice enough room, but not too warm...
Third day Monday 19.2.:
We started the second day by taking a minibus to a nearby scenery spotting place. There the first thing was to find an open restaurant to go for a "breakfast". The winter is surprisingly not season in ZJJ, so all the reastaurants and places are not open.
The food in Zhangjiajie was really good compared to HK. They knew how to cook vegetables and also the local speciality sausage (smoked airdried meat), was really good. And the rice came in buckets, not in any lame cups:
The second day was much easier than the first, since we were mostly walking on top of the hills and just looking at the sceneries.
The height differences were really something and the handrails protecting from dropping directly a hundred meters or so were not alway looking too trustworthy. I discovered that I may have a slight fobia of heights.
Some parts of the paths were build in pretty interesting places:
After the day of sightseeing we left the mountains and took a minibus to a nearby village. The hotel there was a bit better than the first, though the heating wasn't perfect even on that one, but at least warmer than the first. I would say around 15 degrees during the night =)
Monday was the firework day in Chinese new year, but in the village there was no official fireworks so we had to make one ourselves. During the new year Chinese actually shoot fireworks all the time and everywhere, during the day and night. And I guess there are no laws on how big the fireworks can be, since these ones are HUGE. The usual ones are more or less the biggest you can get in Finland. And the prices are a bit more affordable than back home.
First we bought just small and medium sized ones. The biggest thing was perhaps 70cm high and costed 70rmbs. It was really nice and loud and it made car alarms go on 100m from the launch spot =)
But hunger grows while eating... So we just had to get the biggest they got! And that one was huge... The original price was 250rmbs, which was way too much for us, but there were some Chinese who also wanted to see it, so we manage to make a deal that we paid 150 and they paid the rest after bargaining.
But have to admid that it wasn't that much greater than the 70rmbs one, the blasts were just a bit bigger and went higher, but I would definetly buy 2 or 3 smaller ones instead and fire them at once...
To the Caves and Guanzhou 20.2.:
After seeing the mountains for two days, we decided to go underground for a change. There are some caves in ZJJ which names I again don't remember. I haven't really been to any big caves so it was nice, though very Chinese kind of ones again, since there were different coloured lights etc. everywhere. But definetly worth of seeing:
After the caves our tour guide Mark invited us for a lunch with his family. His family's (included his parents, brother with wife and he with his soon to be wife) house was near the city, but in the middle of rice fields. It was a very nice and interesting experience to be eating with the locals. Also the views were really nice and calming. But one thing I cannot understand with Chinese, they don't care at all about cleanliness. They just dump all the garbage everywhere and don't seem to mind at all. I could never live in the middle of all that rubbish...
Eating with the family:
The views from their yard:
And the yard itself:
Here are couple of original sized panorama pictures of the sceneries if you want get a bit better view of what it looked like there. Each of the pictures is about 1,5MB:
Mountain view 1, Mountain view 2, Yard view 1, Yard view 2
After the lunch and some hanging around in the city, we took the flight to Guanzhou where we stayed for two nights. Have to say that Guanzhou is not very interesting place to visit. Just a city with lot of business. And a polluted one... I'll try to make a short story about the illeffects of China's industrilization soon...
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