Lunchy lunchy

Following our recent string of small disasters involving any attempt to follow a map while in sparsely populated areas, we were justifiably nervous about venturing into the Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces. Our daring plan (which seemed perfectly reasonable before we found ourselves wheeling bikes through crops and vicious brambles yesterday) was a 5 hour hike between the villages of Pingan and Dazhai. We got into Pingan nice and early (thanks to our taxi driver’s direct route and much beeping and overtaking) so we armed ourselves with a tiny map from the ticket office and set off for the first viewpoint.

The size of this place is incredible – the terraces are so steep and they just go on forever….we hiked for hours and were surrounded by terraces almost the whole time. They must be amazing in summertime when they’re green and filled with water but, like all the other places we’ve visited in China, it was still worth coming in winter to have the paths to ourselves.

I think the best thing was being in amongst them, feeling miles from anything and hearing the echos of roosters crowing in the village we left half an hour ago. After the chaos of Chinese cities, that kind of peace and quiet felt miraculous!

  

 

 

We had exited Pingan without a hitch, then got a little confused by the lack of obvious trail, but were pointed to the right path by some nearby construction workers.

The locals from Zhonglu started to appear along the trails soon after…coming from a village in between the two money spinners (with guesthouses and restaurants), when their village doesn’t get a look in on the tourist dollar, they seen to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. We’d heard stories from travellers in Yangshuo of being scammed by the Zhonglulians, having women running along in front of them, screaming at other locals not to tell them the way to Dazhai etc.

Before we reached the village itself, we mostly just received many offers of “lunchy lunchy” in Zhonglu and offers to guide us there. Arriving at the infamous village with some trepidation, we considered having some lunch at some woman’s house (there are no actual restaurants) but were scared off when we caught sight of the meat (?) she was planning on serving… to appease her, we bought a drink, but she still refused to give us any directions to Dazhai. It’s rumoured that they actually removed all the signs to Dazhai from their village…

 

 

Luckily, the men of the town weren’t concerned with lunch and guiding offers, and they helped us get out of the place and on our way to Dazhai. We arrived in Tiantouzhou (about 45 minutes before Dazhai) and decided to stay there the night, on recommendation from the Venezuelans we met in Yangshuo. Unfortunately, we mixed up their hostel advice and ended up staying in the place they warned us not to stay in because it was freezing. Consequently, there was a toasty warm hostel in Pingan and we sat in Hostel Siberia with ice forming on any body part that we kept still for too long…  luckily, the food there was amazing.

The next morning we hiked the rest of the way to Dazhai and caught the bus to Longshen, to get back to Guilin. Josh was concerned that we might have jumped onto a tourist bus (which would then stop at various tourist spots and we’d have to wait while everyone watched the long hair women show etc) but as number of people on the bus started to reach overload point, and the doors became completely blocked by giant feedbags full of farm produce, it looked fairly likely that we were on the local bus.

Everyone else got off the bus in a town that we were fairlysure wasn’t Longshen (with no real basis for this claim) and the driver tried to get rid of us…we stayed on the bus asking “Longhen?” “Guilin?” until they shuffled us onto another bus, and then that bus driver stopped a bus heading in the opposite direction and told us to get on that. We gave up trying to interpret Chinese characters using the guidebook (e.g. “so, three runged ladder, backwards E with a hat, tree with a roof means Longshen”) and put our trust in the bus people. Even though we were probably butchering the place names beyond recognition, they had put us on the right buses and we arrived in Guilin.

We grabbed our bags from the hideous Flowers Hostel, where the staff were far too busy rolling their eyes and looking pained to be remotely helpful with anything (ironically, their English was quite good) and jumped on a bus to another hostel that sounded far more promising (in between that, there was an attempt to walk there before discovering we were going in completely the wrong direction, but there’s no need to go into that).

The shower at the Wada hostel was the best of the whole trip – possibly because we’d hiked for many sweaty hours the day before, then the Tiantou hostel had no water, so no shower (literally no running water, we had to flush the toilet with a bucket). Plus, the last shower at Flowers had required far too much concentration at the end of a long day (teetering on the edge of the squat toilet in the tiny cubicle-sized bathroom, trying not to stick my foot down the toilet drain) so I wasn’t even game to wash my hair. Josh got in the shower at Wada after me, exclaiming how awesome it was….then the shower-head dislodged from its holder and sprayed wildly around the bathroom…soaking his towel.

Josh here… the rest of this post is me:

Ok a couple of quick housekeeping things. First up, yesterday was my sister Sarah’s birthday. I’m not great with numbers, but I’m fairly certain it’s her 30th, so lets all give her a big clap.

Secondly, I take full responsibility for the ice box we stayed in. It was my idea and I mixed up the bits of paper that told us where we should and shouldn’t stay. We were the only people in the whole place, and our room was on the third floor, so I went into all the adjacent rooms (Which were unlocked) and took as many quilts as I could find. We slept fully clothed under 5 THICK quilts, and we were still cold.

Finally,  we booked as many of the trains as we could, but it’s spring festival and it’s impossible to get anything from this point on. Everything is sold out and we can’t find any way to travel north to Avatar Mountain as we’d originally planned. The trains are booked, and the buses are too long and unreliable to risk, so we’ve made the choice to head south instead. Tomorrow, we fly down to Guangzhaou, which is our gateway to Hong Kong, and the last stop in China before we head home. As much as we wanted to go up to Zhanjiajie (avatar mountain), there’s no reliable overland route that fits in with our timetable… so south we go.