More Rice Terraces
Crusing the Li River
Marina out for a cruise
Typical Chinese long distance train
Neehow - Big hello from Chengdu, Sichuan, China! AND Home of our NEWLY “UN”censored blog..
We have been all over the place this past week and it’s been hard to even keep up mentally with the numerous hours of travel.
Here is the place I usually tell you something about the country. This week I figured we would have a slight change; I’m going to tell you a bit about the normal day for us and what we do…..
Our backpacks – we have one big one each; is roughly about 18kg (40lbs). I also have a daypack which weights about 4kg (6lbs) holding our journals, guide book, reading books and the essentials, IPOD, pocket knife, camera, etc. When we chose to go somewhere, we either simply go to the bus or train station and show them the name of the place. Typically we try and get the hostel/hotel to write it on paper – such as the date, time and location. These hostels are a dream, as mid level hotels can be pretty bad for help – many times only speaking the local language. Hostels in the countries we have been to are geared up for info.
We either book our accommodation from flyers in hostels, our guide book, or from a hostel website. From there we get the bus, walk or take a taxi.
Ordering food is quite simple; we have a Point It book so if the menu is in a different language and we can’t read it, we just show them chicken, noodles, rice, etc… usually is not a problem and pretty straight forward.
The foreigners we meet fit one of three criteria in this order; English teachers, Tourists, students. Its very rare to find anyone out of these 3.
We now seem very accustomed to things travelling like living out of a suitcase, negotiating for most things, and having to deal with dodgy taxi drivers. Some days are a pain and some days it just really comes together as you will read below. Today things have also come together with sorting all the trips.
The past week's itinerary: Guilin > Yangshou > Kunming > Chengdu
Monday: Bamboo Raft on the Li River - In the still dark morning, we woke at an ungodly hour to catch our bus to the Li River for our bamboo raft trip. This was certainly not a mistake! The river cruise is probably one of the best in the world as far as scenery goes. As a matter of fact, it’s also the picture on the back of the 20Y note! See my picture attached of the lush green mountains. Having arrived in Yangshou, we quickly knew this was an incredible place, not just because of the awesome scenery, but this place was going to be fun. Yangshou is certainly a tourist town, but it is FUN - with a capital F! We stayed at a great hostel and quickly became acquainted with what seemed like every tourist in the town. It was also this day, that Marina learned how to ride a bike (on her own)! She did well, but I think a little more practice is needed before we bike the Himalayas - just kidding.. :D
Tuesday: Bridge Jumping - After a sleep in we rented scooters with 6 Canadians and made our way through the incredible rural scenery on the way for Dragon's Bridge. Yes, everything is called Dragon if you have been following the past few posts. The bridge was in a little town with restaurants and locals chilling around it. Rising like a dragons back above the ground, it sat approximately 12 meters (40 feet) over the water which was pretty deep. For each jump, all the locals would watch, cheer us on, and then clap once we surfaced after the SPLASH! Such a good time! That night was the Yangshou party, call it Warrensburg on a Wednesday night, IOS in the August, or maybe New Orleans, but that’s a stretch - this placed rocked! And our rooftop bar at the hostel, whilst showing the great scenery all around, also had a Beer pong table - what a great way to start the night and you can guess how it ended... VERY LATE!
Wednesday: Leaving Yanshou - it’s probably what a Heroin addict faces when quitting. You just don't want to.... it’s all too good, but we had a schedule to keep and whilst we could spend the next year in Yangshou we went to Guilin to get the overnight train to Kunming, Yunnan. We had bought the tickets already and thought it also would be good for our health to hit the road - Yes, I must be getting old! The train ride was ridiculous as the train occupancy was twice the amount of seats they had. Luckily we had booked seats a week prior, but it was still rough.
Thursday: Kunming Hot Pot - Well, we have the rain again, I say have as it hasn't been sunny since Wednesday :( Kunming looks SO fun, but having been soaked with the rain for being 20 minutes outside we didn't want to venture to much further. We went to a nearby hotpot restaurant and ordered the spicy broth. For those who don't know hot pot, its simple; there is a pot of liquid on a burner on the table; to our surprise, the spicy type, had at least 1kg (2.2lbs) of finger chilies in it. Now most of you know, I love spicy food and can handle it for the most part, but this was sick. We ate our food, but with the boiling water all juices started to evaporate and it was left with something police departments use to fend off criminals! Nonetheless, we finished our food :D
Friday: Changing direction - Having seen the forecast for Yunnan which said rain for the next week and our plans consisted of outdoor activities, we decided to get the heck out of Dodge! So we caught a train that night to Chengdu, Sichuan province. We chilled in the day, played pool with a few fun English people we met the night before and then caught the train. This was our first sleeper, a soft one as we could only get seats before. I guess that’s what happens when you have 1.2 billion people; and its probably more like 1.5 billion, but we won't get into that now...
Saturday: The Leg and Whistle – Having arrived in Chengdu we were ready for a good night out. The Leg and Whistle was a fun bar celebrating its 3rd birthday so we met a lot of fun and wild people. You know how you get on fire playing pool; that was me last night! Not to brag :D
You will hear some incredible stuff we are doing today. Marina is dying for me to tell you, but I think we will wait until next week ;) sorry…
So what is coming up for us; tomorrow we go to Jiuzhaigou National Park, then we celebrate my birthday back in Chengdu (Oct 14th) and then to Emei Shan for more mountain hiking. Great news today, we managed to find a decent trip to Tibet and will leave in 8 days! This is a huge relief, and I just booked us a week in the Andamen Islands diving for late November :D
See you next time!
Dan and Marina
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