🙂 Incredible scenery… Yangtze River dolphins!
🙁 Vile toilets and hacking up all around us and hard sleeper! Yangtze River dolphins were declared extinct in 2007
We took a rickshaw to the train station and after taking directions we queued on the platform for the plush soft sleeper … when we tried to board we were stopped – it transpired that we were miss-sold and had in fact paid soft sleeper prices for the hard sleeper – $80 for $10 tickets!! It was too late to do anything as the train was departing so we could do nothing other than head to our set of six hard slates shared with twenty other people who cleared their throats constantly so that we were having to avoid the crossfire of phlegm … aaargh. We had a very disturbed night’s sleep as Trent was constantly harassed by people coming to touch his head – news spread like wild fire and we were clearly the objects of great interest for all passengers on the train! The toilets were disgusting and only got worse as people do not use toilet paper but simply smear their faeces on the surrounding walls. Trent made a little friend so that made the journey a little more bearable.
Woke at 07h00 to the sound of more hacking up … the scenery was amazing … drumlin type hills, paddy fields, people and buffalo toiling, stone houses… fascinating. Bland cold noodles were served for breakfast. Paul wrote the following in our diary, “Tracy slept all morning leaving me to deal with the brat from hell…showing off to the stupid grinning Chinese who were adulating him. As it got dark tried to get Trent to sleep but the chap on our slate kept stuffing bananas into him … very badly behaved. Played canasta until 23h00. Woken at 03h00 by the Conductor and we readied ourselves for arrival in Guilin at 04h00. Tout tried to sell us tickets to Yangshuo for $25 each! Ended up buying tickets for 15Y each and boarded bus at 05h30. Absolute maniac driver. There were two young men who were blatantly pickpocketing the sleeping people on the bus! Unbelievable! We were extremely vigilant and showed them that we knew what they were up to and indicated to them to steer clear from us when they sidled up n the seat behind us. Arrived at 07h00 and headed to the Youth Hostel we had found which was the only accommodation in town for Westerners. We hired bicycles – quite amusing as they asked which bike was min when we asked for a child seat … we assumed they would put it on Paul’s bike, but they put it on mine!! An old man flagged us down and asked us to join his boat – it was beautiful and splendid scenery! We even spotted river dolphins! Amazing. The Yangtze river dolphin (Baiji) was last seen in 2002, and declared functionally extinct in 2007 and was only to be found in China’s Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia.
After our boat trip we cycled through the market … there were definitely cooked dogs and cats hanging up! A funeral appeared to be taking place.
We then cycled about 30Km through the the countryside – fascinating to watch the paddy fields being worked. Met some amazing tiny old people who did not mind having their photos taken. We stopped at a terrible restaurant and ate snake!
We left the food place and when we were nearly back realised that we had left our camera behind! When we got back we found them all taking photos of each other and the lady asked us for 5Y to get it back – Paul just laughed and took it and cycled off. We stopped to buy a large ornamental fan. Got back to the youth hostel where we had a beer and chatted to some nice Americans from Hawaii. We then headed out for night time cormorant fishing … poor birds have a noose around their necks so that they cannot actually swallow the fish. Trent was tired and being quite naughty so we got him to bed … Paul had the runs….
The next morning we were up at 07h00 and after a dire breakfast headed off on a tour called Moon in the Hill with a young girl called Swallow who was touting outside the hostel. She took us on a lovely walk to a stunning vista point.
She took us back to her house for food…very interesting as she actually had a hidden sister who lived a secret life in a cave within their home due to the one child policy…she said that if the police had found out they kill the baby at birth by putting a needle into the soft fontanelle in the skull – gruesome! We enjoyed a lovely meal with her and Trent played with the little girl.
After we left Swallow we boarded the night sleeper bus to Hong Kong – surprisingly comfy – except when we looked out and appeared to be driving through a river with the bus rolling around in the water!
Go to: Kunming
Go to: China
