We are staying at the Xiangdian International Hotel which is a short walk from one of the entrances to Wulingyuan National Park. Wulingyuan is China's first National Park and a UNESCO protected site. By all accounts, it is one of the most beatiful places in the world.

We got a great deal on our hotel room which is huge and has a view of the park, but this is not really an "International" hotel, it is a Chinese hotel. And the differance is critical. From what we can tell, 99% of Chinese tourists travel in groups and the hotel is geared to handling groups. They are not sure what to do with two westerners traveling alone although the brochure in the room says "Our hotel is equiped with the alone type guestroom". There are two diningrooms, the Chinese Diningroom in which you can only dine if you have a group of ten or more, and the Western Diningroom, which is in the eastern part of the hotel and serves Chinese food.

We arrived at about 9AM and our room wasn't ready so they suggested we have breakfast in the Western Diningroom. I had noodles with pork and green onions and Michele had noodles soup and we both had cooked to order (in front of our very eyes on the buffet line) fried eggs. Eating a fried egg with chopsticks is a new expearance but, by putting it on top of the noodles or in the soup, it can be done.

Meanwhile, at the park, it was raining and packed.

After falling asleep on the train to Zhangjiajie, we woke the next morning (OK, I woke several times during the night when we stopped at various towns. The first time, I wandered down the hall to use the squat toilet only to be stopped by the warning not to use in the station.) to the end of the ride in a mountainous area.

By then it was starting to rain and by the time we got to Zhangjiajie, it was really pouring. Unfortunately, from the station (which was magnificent)

to the taxi stand was a about a 1/4 mile in the rain, so we were pretty wet by the time we got in the cab. The trip to the National Park at Wulingyuan was about 45 minutes in the rain and we got to our hotel damp but unscathed for our first real travel with no English speakers to help. (At Moon Hill, we had somebody write the name of our new hotel in Chinese so all we had to do was show the name to the taxi driver and argue price using sign language.

In the mini-series, Shogun, about half way through, after the hero has been living like a Japanese for a couple of years (maybe five one hour episodes in our time), the hero runs into a group of Dutch traders. They are shockingly gross: pinkish-red, fat, loutish Europeans. That's how I felt when we checked in to our hotel: we had been on train all night, hadn't bathed, walked through the rain, and the girls behind the counter were impeccable in their purple silk.

When we left the Yangshuo area, we felt like we had really entered China. No internet, no English signs, nobody who spoke English to help us. First we took a three hour taxi ride to Liuzhou. We rode through miles and miles of farming country under a heavy sky that got darker with each mile.

We thought that we had no idea what to expect when we got to Liuzhou, but, when we got there we realized that we had expected some signs in English. There were none. The train station was big and looked great from the outside but the inside was sort of sterile and dirty at the same time.

We got there at 7PM expecting to  eat before our 9:15 "soft sleeper" to Zhangjiajie and we sort of fantazied that we would have an internet connection, but there was no restuarant, no snack shop; so Michele wandered out into the city and got some food in strafoam boxes that we ate in the waitingroom.

We were the only westerners in the train station and everybody watched us as we ate. The schedule sign did have our train number, 2012, so we felt fairly confident that we would get on the right train.

The train ride turned out to be completely painless bordering on comfortable.

Because we are trying to stay loose, we are spending alot of time on logistics – and everything doesn't always work out. We had expected to leave Yangshuo a day earlier but we couldn't get train tickets from Liuzhou to Zhangjiajie on the day we wanted to leave. So we spent a day hanging out, taking portraits of some of the women working at the hotel and watching the locals staring into space.

In the late afternoon, we climbed the local star attraction – the moon palace at Moon Hill – which is an arch in the mountain overlooking the valley.

Climbing a to a star attraction in China is really walking up a paved path. But, in this case a paved path that does go on for a good bit and one that gets steep at the end.

At the end, we got above the arch

and had an impressive view.

-S

The second half of our big activity day was a trip on the Li River. There are all kinds of options from a full day trip on a fairly large boat from Guilin down to Yangshuo to an 1/2 hour trip from Yangshuo to Yangshuo. In our quest for information on Wulingyaun, we came across the only travel agent (here) who knew how to get there.

Sort of in passing, we decided to to go on a "bamboo raft" trip on one of the most famous parts of the river; the Xingping Town area. It was already pretty late in the day, after cooking school and lunch, so we got our stuff together and took a local  bus to Xingping. It is about an hour trip, past miles of farms and the usual surreal landscape.

At Xingping, we get on the river on our "bamboo raft". On the Li, the bamboo is really a set of ten metal tubes that look like bamboo including the slight taper and the ridges; the boatmen use outboard motors rather than poles which is a good thing because the river is big, fast, and strong.

Almost every hill seems to have a name – sort of like Yosemite. One of the most famous, of which we have no idea of the name, is on the 20 yuan bill, and a very popular location for weddings. As you can see here, there are several lucky couples checking out the location.

Along the river there are flocks of ducks that we thing are domestic ducks just out for an outing. They are great fun to watch, sort of popping out of the water to shake out their tail feathers. Ducks really are intrinsically funny animals to watch.

Along both sides of the river, the area is pretty wild, which is one of the most surprising things about China; how much of it is still wild. I guess it is a result of being wet and hot, if not outright tropical, so everything grows quickly.

Also, the farming seems to be in harmony with nature. Chickens are running around the farms eating the bugs, the irrigation ponds are also carp ponds, on the side of the fields are little clumps of mint and basil. This is not like the Italian landscape where the Romans cut down all the trees two thousand years ago for their hot baths. (From what I've read, The Romans were as addicted to wood as we are to oil – finally denuding Italy and north Africa and then fighting the Germans for their forests.)

Anyway, at one of the most famous hills (something like "seven horses jumping"),

we turned around and went back down river as the sun was setting.

The boatmen at Xingping were wrapping up the day, 

and we got on a local bus for the trip back to Yangshuo. But we were early, so we sat and watched the bus driver, the conductor, and a few regulars play cards to pass the time. All the buses seem to have a flat table over the engine which makes a great place to put packages or play cards.

A long day that ended with our first Kung Pao chicken since we have been in China.

-S