Livin' the celebrity lifestyle

Pick of the day: Public WC, Yushan train station

Style: Cinematic squat

Atmosphere: Communist

Extras: The communal atmosphere here is a bit of a taste of the last of the communism in china. The new style is consumer communism where EVERYTHING exists for profit. Not here though. This loo was free and to top it off the trench running the length of the stalls (which have no doors) gives a river like view as you look down at what those around you have offered.

13/04/13 to 23/04/13: SanQing Shan National Park, Yangshuo, Nanning to the China/Vietnam border

Our next stop from Shanghai was a lonely planet recommendation for a more off the beaten track Chinese national park, SanQing Shan.

Getting there proved more irritating and difficult than we’d envisioned. First off was a train to the town of Yushan, where it should have been possible to get a bus to the base of the mountain where we had planned to stay. In all our journey from station to hotel had three main grievances.

Number 1: We came out of the station and everyone is screaming SanQing Shan at us. We pick a friendly looking lady with a three wheeled flat bed and jump in. She did not take us to SanQing Shan. She took us to the bus station. False advertising.

Thinking we'd hit the jackpot

Number 2: On arriving at the bus station we were told there was no bus to the part of the mountain we wanted but we could get one to the other side of it. Not much use. Then a young girl said we could get the bus half way and then a taxi for 80RMB. Then everything seemed ok and people were nodding and we were ushered onto a bus.

Number 3: Turns out the bus wasn’t taking us to SanQing Shan but decided to drop us in a town near where we wanted to be, next to a taxi. The driver was unfortunately of the rip off the foreigner variety and decided that instead of 80RMB, he wanted 200RMB. When we said this was ridiculous he pointed out it was getting dark and we had no other choice. Dickhead.

Having finally arrived in the correct part of the mountain, considerably poorer and in a very bad mood we checked into our dodgy hotel (rock hard beds, no restaurant) and went to bed early ready for trekking into the national park the next day.

Early the next morning a lot of noise heralded the arrival of what looked like half of china in tour buses. We headed out, found a couple of shops that sold crisps, biscuits and cakes and armed ourselves for the journey (no breakfast though as there were no actual restaurants in the town and neither of us could stomach super noodles at 8am). We decided to forgo the cost of the cable car and walked to the trail head in the national park. Error. Not only was it a 2 hour walk up around 800m vertical ascent of stone steps (seriously hard work) but the whole way up we were hounded by Chinese tourists who kept shouting hello at us and constantly either took our photo or insisted being photographed with us. We now know what it must be like to be a minor celebrity and it is about the least fun thing we can imagine.

Having reached the top of the cable car we climbed another few hundred steps to gain the walkways which had been built into the sides of the granite spires for which the park is famous. For some reason most of the Chinese tourists did not get this high and so we left the flag-waving, loud-music-via–microphone-playing crowds behind and more or less had the mountain to ourselves. The huge granite spires were breath taking and the walkways built into the mountain meant that we could see them from a vantage point that we would otherwise have struggled to reach.

errr... more board walk

We walked back down to the bottom as the sun was setting thoroughly happy with our little bit of mountain time but a little worried that our legs might actually give way. Super noodles for dinner in the absence of anything better and the next day we had to negotiate trying to get back to the train station. The complications of this were compounded by the fact that our legs hurt so badly that neither of us could get either up or down stairs or manage anything more than a very slight incline on the flat. We were told that there were no buses back to town. We chose not to believe this and went into one of the posh hotels where an English speaker told us there was a bus at 3pm. A private bus driver swore blind that there were no buses going to Yushan and that we had better just pay him to take us there. We refused and waited. Turns out a few hours later that 

the same bus driver was driving the 3pm bus to Yushan!

He dropped us somewhere in the town and having no idea where we were we clung desperately to a kindly-looking elderly couple who had got off at the same time as us and a young couple. We showed them a scrap of paper on which we had got the man in the hotel to write ‘train station’ in Chinese and in an act of completely unexpected kindness the lady of the young couple hailed a rickshaw, bundled us into it, told the driver where to go and paid for it with her own money. We left before we even had the chance to realise what was happening, let alone pay her back. We were pretty touched.

And so, on the back of yet another pot noodle we headed to Yangshuo.

We had been looking forward to Yangshuo with its Karst limestone peaks and more tourist friendly atmosphere. On arriving we realised one thing. It had suddenly got hot, real hot, and muggy to boot. I(Ben) had been dreading a haircut but now the need was desperate so I picked the best looking place and got a buzz cut. Cue heat stroke the next day!

We had been keen to see the dragons back rice terraces several hours north of Yangshuo so hopped on a tour. We had thought this would just be the transport there but in true Chinese style we had suddenly found we had joined the flag waving masses. We managed to convince our “tour guide” to allow us to bugger off on our own once we had arrived thus saving us from the more hectic tourist traps there that the guide’s only job is to guide you to and actually spend more time exploring the terraced hills. These were beautiful and were just tiny terrace after tiny terrace (each no more than a metre deep and high but thousands of metres up the hillsides) that were each irrigated by their own little water supply and sprouted green rice a few times a year. Unfortunately the heat stroke had kicked in and I spent most of the day wanting to vomit.

Its like walking round a 3D OS map

The following day we hired some bikes and went for to explore up the valleys. Our friends Mark and Ruth(from Mongolia and Shanghai) were staying at a nice place in the countryside so we went there and luckily they showed us the best place to cycle to along the river where other tourists were taking bamboo rafts poled by locals back down stream. It was hot sweaty work cycling in the heat which was only exacerbated when the local kids decided to jump on the back for a lift. The buggers even ran off with out paying for the ride!  After a nice day’s ride we met them back for cocktails, dinner and a swim in the river.

Honestly, wtf?

Bike 'n' boat Yangshou style

The best way to cool off

Yangshuo is one of, if not the most, famous climbing location in china (sport climbing anyway), so we hired a 

rope, draws and harnesses and biked off to the nearest section, Wine Bottle, so named thanks to a karst peak eroded like a wine bottle. Not quite the iconic Moon hill with its tuffa clad arch, we found that the easy grades suited us thanks to months of no exercise. We got shut down big time!

Vi was more happy about the memories of good red wine invoked by the crag name than the actual climbing

Not the best place for sunsets but you get the idea of the landscape

On our final day in Yangshuo we signed up for a cooking class to get some dishes and skills to take home with us. This proved to be a fantastic experience with the day kicking off with a trip to the local farmers market (a genuine farmers market, not the middle class things we have at home) before getting into the 6 dishes we were going to cook. We learnt some great things such as heat up the wok till it is smoking BEFORE adding the oil otherwise your food will taste oily, and other nuggets.

Heading out for breakfast

In Mongolia its all boiled in a wok. In china its all fried in a wok. The cleaver is ubiquitous throughout.

After failing to get a visa extension in Beijing we had toyed with the idea of heading to Hong Kong to get a new visa before heading to Vietnam, but after much deliberation we decided the expense was too high and it would be better to just risk the overnight train. (As a recap our Chinese visa expired the day before our Vietnamese one began)

The train to Vietnam departs from the provincial capital of Nanning which really has little else going for it. We overnighted here in a nice new hostel which seems set up for the Vietnamese-China overland traveller and got the train the following evening.

Loading up on train snacks

Unlike all our other train border crossings this time we had to disembark with all our bags at both border points. In the end we left china with 28minutes left on our visa which was an improvement on Russia, but thanks to the time difference entering Vietnam we arrived 30mins before our Vietnamese visa began (it’s an hour difference, but also an hours train ride between the two border points). Luckily the Vietnamese didn’t really give a crap so stamped us in anyway and  we got back on the train for 4 hours kip before we would pull into Hanoi….