Travel the World Together

The day after our visit to Window of the World, we checked out of our lovely hotel and after they nearly conned us out of 1000 yuan, met up with our tour group. It was quite a big group, enough to fill several carriages of a train and we were all given these lovely trendy blue and white peaked caps as well as some name tags to wear.

Wearing them became more and more optional as the journey progressed, and personally was never an option, but they served to help create some great photos.



The train journey lasted about 5 hours and took the opportunity to chat to a few other (Chinese) tourists around us and got to know a couple of them. Once we arrived at Zhangjiajie we were split off into part of a much smaller group and a minibus whisked us off on the start of what would be an intense few days of sightseeing. I've never done the organised tour thing before, and would never normally consider it, but really, it was the best way to see this amazing part of the world.







Time for a group photo outside the park gates at Huangshi Village (Sarah, Liana, Nick, Elisha, Jess, Anthony and Aaron) before we were taken up the nearest mountain by a cable car to catch our first glimpse of these amazing peaks. I thought Yangshuo was impressive. No contest.







The cable car whisked us up in 2 minutes. The alternative was a climb up about 3800 stone steps, taking 2 hours. Unfortunately our tour program was too intensive to allow us to climb all these steps. Honest. Laziness has nothing to do with it.

I'll let the pictures here speak for themselves.




































The Chinese have a habit of naming everything. They see symbolism in every stone and every crag. At home, a mountain is a mountain, a rock is a rock. Here, it is a pig carrying his wife on his back, a monkey gesturing for peanuts or army generals standing to attention. This formation is the 'five fingers'. Problem is, I can count six...















In the evening we terrorised the village and villagers by going in search of beer. We were successful and drank at a small alley 'restaurant' where there were crates, cages and tubs outside with chickens, pheasants, rabbits, frogs,
terrapins, tortoises and fish in them. They were meant to eat but we looked at them and petted them instead. Many beers and many rounds of 'I have never' later, we came to settle the bill and were asked for 20 yuan per bottle! Outrageous! That's club prices. We pushed the woman down to about 12, but that's still double what you should pay. Problem was, we'd already drunk the alcohol so were hardly in a position to argue! Later on back at the hotel a couple of the more drunken among us wanted to go on an adventure. I suggested going back and setting all her animals free. Don't think they did though. Shame.