I’ve edited the 750+ pictures I took in China down to a more manageable 200 or so, and they are now online HERE. Please enjoy! Comments are welcome here.

ALSO, a note about photographs on What-What dot com: I’ve added the Lightbox application to my blogging platform, so you can now see photos embedded in blog posts in a nice pop-up form without going to a separate web page. Click on the above image for a sample.

Our last day in Hong Kong started late, as we got up slow and puttered about with breakfast (hard boiled eggs, toast, waffles with peanut butter and chocolate) and such. I think we’ve realized that Hong Kong is much better is you have money. A lot of money. Bags and bags of it. Trying to be budget and underground will get you nowhere here, or at least nowhere very exciting as a foreigner/tourist.

Though it was only cloudy where we got up, by the time we left it had started a light rain, so we went to a cafe at the Eaton Hotel where we could use computers with internet. We checked email and news for the last time, and I read the papers, including the Village Voice-esque HK Magazine.

Eventually the rain broke and we got on the metro to Hong Kong island (the Bridal Tea House is in Kowloon), then a bus to do a short hike along the “Dragon’s Backbone”, a ridge that runs along the east side of the island. Though we were hoping for views of the sea, it was fogged in; nevertheless we had a good walk. After the rains the flower and plant life seemed so alive, and as the path wove through some very dense forest, it felt like being in a rainforest. We saw many large and pretty moths and butterflies, as well as countless shimmering spiderwebs.

The walk took a couple of hours before heading down into the lazy surfer town (and obvious expat enclave) of Shek O. We got some chips and a weird lemon chew thingy and hung out on the beach for awhile just watching the locals and some kids (and a few mangy stray dogs).

Heading towards the end of our last day, we went back to Tsim Ta Tsui and stumbled upon a shopping district that reminded me of Broadway in downtown Manhattan. I bought a shirt there; in fact I’d wanted to buy several, but either the sizes were bad or they cost too much. Again, Hong Kong is best with lots of money to burn.

For dinner we found a south Indian restaurant mentioned in HK Magazine. The food was great; very new to both of us and delicious, but eating spicy the night before a (very long) plane flight was probably not the best idea. Still, the only illness I’ve felt in the whole trip has been a scratchy throat I’ve had since getting to Hong Kong, which is I think due to all the rain of late. Conversation was subdued – what do you say after being in the same space constantly for 17 days?

We went to the hotel and packed up our stuff. I nearly passed out from food coma and finishing the pálinka, but we headed out after all, late once again and too tired to go back down to Tsim Ta Tsui to the bars we’d seen down there earlier. We bought some drinks at 7/11 and walked the market on Temple Street for the umpteenth time, though I finally gave in and bought some sunglasses. And with that we went to sleep in our tiny room in the Bridal Tea House. No wild night of partying, no big speeches or reflective monologues, just tired.

———————-

Day 18: May 23, 2008

Got up at 7:15, swiped a few slices of bread from the dining area and caught the A21 bus to the airport. Sat on top, as we have with all the buses in Hong Kong. No problems, no traffic. The weather was beautiful – just right to see us off.

The end.

Clouds but no rain when we woke up (slowly) at around 8:30. We packed up our things and went down to look for breakfast around 10am. Not much available, of course. There’s a buffet at the hotel, but it costs way too much, and we feel like we’re overspending here anyway. We got some bananas and sweet breads the night before, plus a bit of yogurt, so that tided us over for the morning.

We walked over to Mong Kok station and took the metro to Hong Kong island, Central. From here we walked over to the peak tram and rode up, hoping to get some views before the forecasted rain began. It ended up still being pretty cloudy, so the furthest we could see was the Central/Admiralty area of Hong Kong island. The temperatures were a bit cooler here, but still quite humid, so we walked around a bit at the top. (The “Sky Pavilion” or whatever they call the viewing platform costs extra money – a scam and a half when you consider that the same views can be had for free. But a sucker is born every minute, as I noted when watching some German tourists buying a cheesy print of the peak view from a vendor at the top. I’m sure the postcards move quick as well…) Soon we got back on the tram and went down.

From there we headed to the excellent botanical gardens, surely a highlight of Hong Kong. It’s free – an obvious benefit – but (thankfully) doesn’t therefore skimp on quality. Gorgeous flora, from flower trees to all kinds of varied bamboo, ferns, palms and flowers lined clean, well-kept pathways leading by aviaries and mammal cages. The amazing birds ranged from gray-necked and red-crowned cranes to stunning Macaws and Golden Pheasants, which look Egyptian with their casque of bright yellow-orange feathers. I’d never seen any like it.

There were several species of monkey in the mammal area, including a trio of large orangutans munching on fruit, some hyperactive ring-tailed lemurs, some of whom had babies hanging on their backs, and other apes swinging around by their arms only, eagerly anticipating lunch. Great stuff! We also saw a 9-meter-long boat and some Chinese alligators, which I believe they (also) eat.

Speaking of which, we ate lunch at a noodle shack in a market side-street near the famous “escalator to the mid levels”. We had checked out the escalator itself, but hunger was strong by this point so we didn’t spend much time on it. The noodles were with veggies (and “fresh fish balls” in mine) but the broth was definitely chicken stock. We talked about how we had so little problem in general finding vegetarian food on the mainland but in Hong Kong it’s virtually non-existent outside of Indian restaurants. I think it all adds up to the economic disparity. In China, most people are (or come from) poor farming backgrounds, so meat is less available and vegetables standard fare. Ironically enough, probably all the meat in Hong Kong comes from the mainland.

After the gross-out, we browsed the market, deciding against buying more trinkets. While there was really no way to know it in advance, things were far cheaper in mainland China, if you could bargain, that is. Even with our modest skills, we could get some good stuff. But in Hong Kong, suddenly we felt more than a bit miserly, even switching hotels from the swank Metropark to the matchbox-sized rooms at the Bridal Tea House to save $50 or so.

Anyway, we wandered around for a bit in Central, then jumped on the double-decker tram to ride across town. It’s a great thing to do, as a way to see the main avenues and buildings of Hong Kong proper. We sat on top, in the front, so I could take lots of pictures out the window. It’s a truly amazing city, and I could see why so many travel guides call it one of the world’s must-see cities. I already know I will be back.

Back in the botanical garden, I’d found myself wondering, no doubt due to the many, many skyscrapers all around us, how 9/11 even happened. It’s so crazy, so bold, so fantastical, to be truly astounding to this day. It probably always will be, and from that day I knew it would be the defining moment of our generation [along with the first black president, I hope], much as the assassinations of JFK and MLK were to my parents’.

We had hoped to go up in a building to get another view, but it was a hotel and we didn’t ask. Instead we had a kind of gross drink at a cafe chain and then headed back on the tram towards central. We got off around the Star Ferry terminal and caught the boat back to Kowloon. It’s still a bargain at just HK 2.20 (US $0.25) and has good views.

On the other side, we saw a group of bicyclists getting ready for what looked like a critical mass ride, which struck me as incredibly cool for such a bike-unfriendly city. These guys are the hardest-core. We got on the metro and headed back to the Metropark Hotel to collect our bags (and pay the bellboys for it) and bring them over to the Bridal Tea House (great name, huh?). Our double wasn’t much more than a closet with a bed. It was difficult to turn around in the bathroom.

After a rest, we went out into the Temple Street area again to look for food. Again, there wasn’t much to be had that wasn’t full of meat. E was getting irritated and our endemic indecision mode was in a tough place. I just wanted a beer at first, so we sat at a crab shack for that (or was that the previous night? Writing several days after the fact, I lose track of details [try writing weeks after the fact - Ed.]). Things started closing up, so we wanted to just bite the proverbial bullet and get something at the one (not cheap) vegetarian restaurant we’d found, but by the time we got there it was closed. So we went to a “cafe”, which was like a diner, Chinese style, and E had a gross egg-and-tuna sandwich while I got a boring mushroom and greens w/rice dish for too much money. It was huge though, so I was very full. After that, we went back and crashed.

Fourteen [expletive] hours later, after no sleep due to the [expletive] roads they called “expressways” in a tiny bunk with one pee break, we finally arrived in Shenzhen, four [expletive] hours behind schedule. There was a flat tire in the middle somewhere, but I thought they’d fixed it pretty fast. The AC was either off (sub-tropical) or on (arctic). Our breakfast was cashew nuts.

Shenzhen is very industrial, and thus very forgettable. We had to take city bus 7 from the bus depot to Luhuo terminus and then walk across the border to Hong Kong. The differences were immediate and striking. Cleanliness. No spitting. Many people speak English, and many signs are in English. A huge metropolis. Electricity in the air. We had walked from communism to capitalism and ate vegetarian rice balls for brunch.

We were happy to have reserved a room two nights before, over the internet at the hotel in Yangshuo, as after the bus ride and lugging our increasingly heavy bags, things were getting tiring. We got to the hotel (the Metropark Kowloon, by far the swankiest join we’ve stayed in yet, with a pool on the roof that we unfortunately didn’t use due to the rain) without any problems. The metro system here works just like in Japan, with a distance-based fare system and turnstiles, and it’s clean and fast. We were a little taken aback by the eager bellboys, clearly hoping for tips. That’s something I know nothing about.

Room 725. Shower. Nap. It had been raining since Shenzen, with no sign of letting up, and we wore the North Fakes out and about. They didn’t work so well – eventually our shoulders were damp. I guess we got our money’s worth.

Dinner on the street was takoyaki (lots of Japanese food here) grilled squid with some sweet n’ spicy marinade/sauce. E wanted some fish balls so we got those too. We immediately noticed the lack of virtually any vegetarian options at almost any eatery. Whether restaurant or street vendor, it’s all chicken or pork, pork or chicken in every variety: noodles with pork trotters, chicken neck soup with chicken liver dumplings, even fish balls in chicken or pork broth. It seemed like veggies aren’t even in the diet! What a change from mainland China, and a total flip of what we expected of the two places, Hong Kong being the more cosmopolitan and all that.

Anyway, we poked around the Mong Kok area, checking out the night markets and stopping in a few more hotels to check prices. The YMCA is a fancy place in this town, and we were taken aback in general by prices, which were higher than both what the book and our online research had said. We opted to reserve at the Bridal Tea House Hotel for the next two nights, then went back to the Metropark, tired and wet, around 9pm and crashed out. We had bought some bread, cheese, fruits and hot chocolate at a nearby grocery and cafe, and we ate these with BBC world on TV (less censorship here than on the mainland) and then hit the sack.

When we woke up it was still raining. I felt a bit queasy from last night’s spicy food. We packed up our things and stowed the bags at the front desk, then wandered around and ate a couple of bananas and some bread before going to this bookshop/hostel that was mentioned in the L.P. Here we ordered a breakfast (they’re pretty much the same everywhere, for about the same price, but this one was significantly smaller than the one from M.C. Blues) and read up a bit about Hong Kong.

After waffling a bit about the bus tickets, and as the weather began to finally clear, we first went to the station, canceled the tickets minus a 10% fee and headed back towards the hotel, checking prices at a few tour operators along the way. While the bus station price to Shenzhen was over Y200, we’d been quoted Y130 from the lady at our hotel the night before, and used this as a starting point with the tour operators, whose prices generally started at about Y170. Apparently there are privately chartered buses in addition to the regular ones, which bring costs down. We found one place that could match the Y130 but not beat it, so we bought some ginger candies and returned to the hotel to think it over.

We asked Owen about tickets as well, and even though the lowest price we could find until then was Y130, he arranged for us to jump on the ESL student sleeper bus for Y100! What a guy. He had been so helpful the entire time, and now to do this really meant something to us, especially after all the other shady dealings we’d had. If you’re ever in Yangshuo, China, please go stay and/or eat at his place, the Cormorant Restaurant and Guest House, at the north end of West St (the main tourist drag).

With only half the day gone, and another five hours before the night bus, we rented some bikes at about 3:30pm (lime green mamacharis) and set off down the road towards moon hill (again, at Owen’s advice). The karsts, when you can see them, are really amazing, rising dramatically out of the ground like some subterranean giant’s fingers clawing up through the earth to snatch us. We were happy to just have some better weather and independent transportation – there’s nothing as freeing as a good old bicycle. There were lots of Chinese and more than a few western tourists also out and about on two wheels, and thus there were plenty of locals out hawking this or that trinket or foodstuff.

We stopped at one decrepit viewing platform before reaching moon hill. Seeing lots of signs for some cave baths, we took a dirt/mud road out a couple of kilometers to see if we could check them out for cheaper than the touts were offering, but we started feeling short on time so we turned back, opting to poke around Moon Hill village instead.

At the village, or rather on the way there, as she intercepted us by bicycle (Astounding! You think that with the extra speed you’ve lost them, but no – they’ve got it all figured out), a woman offered to cook us a meal of vegetables and rice in her home. First she asked something like Y40, but after first politely declining and looking through the village (nothing of interest), she again approached us and we accepted for Y20 – that’s under $3. We followed her behind some half built/destroyed buildings to a driveway and swatted at flies as she made our dinner from vegetables pulled from her garden over a wood-fired stove. She made a simple but decent meal of potatoes, carrots, greens and eggs with scallions and rice. Her son, returning from school, helped. We had to rush, and wished we could have talked with her a bit more (she spoke a few words of English). Part of her approach to us included breaking out a small photo album with pictures of other foreigners who’d done the same thing, making us wonder how often she did it. Just to imagine that this was profitable for her was tough, but she wouldn’t have accepted otherwise.

We made it back to the rental place just in time (they closed at 7pm and we needed our deposit to pay for the bus tickets), then wandered about town waiting for our bus. We happened to stop into a shop where they were selling “North Face” jackets, and we were able to bargain from his Y600 initial “discounted price”, which he insisted is what he charged even the Chinese tourists with, to Y300 for two rain jackets with removable fleece liners. I had to pay in US dollars ($23 – though we had to compromise on a disputed exchange rate) because we were running short of renminbi (the Chinese currency, also known as “yuan” or more commonly “quai”). Obviously the jackets were “North Fakes”, but hey, what could we expect for $23?

We eventually met up again with Owen, who took us to the bus station. Along the way he asked about the meaning of different rings on fingers (i.e. if a pinky ring means anything special – in China a ring on different fingers sends a certain message about the wearer’s relationship status and/or goals), and we asked him about his tour business and relationship (both of which are in Guilin). He told us that China is still very traditional and that it’s uncommon for couples to live together before marriage.

We were a little bit worried that there wouldn’t be enough room on the bus, but Owen’s connection had arranged it, and we got upper bunks near the back. We were so thankful to this guy; I even tried to give him some money ($20, which would have been way too much), but he wouldn’t accept it. He even stayed to wave goodbye. They were playing the end of John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” – the part when Chow Yun Fat is trying to save his girlfriend in a standoff and both are blinded in the firefight, then cannot find each other as they crawl through the blood-and-rain-soaked ground – on the bus. How prescient. The ride to Shenzhen would prove to be a nightmare.

Woke up to strange dreams and pouring rain, which was actually a bit nice, as it gave us some time to relax and write.

We got going from the hotel at noon and wandered in the rain from restaurant to restaurant, comparing prices for breakfast meals, which all seemed about the same (some variation on eggs, toast, fruit, yogurt, bacon, etc). We had asked to borrow an umbrella from the hotel but they only wanted to sell us one, for Y20. We ended up eating at another place in the book, M.C. Blues, and were satisfied with the amount of food and fresh orange juice, though it was still a lot more (Y25) than we were used to paying.

After that we went to the bus station and bought sleeper tickets to Guangzhou for Y120 each, then hopped on the local shuttle for Xingping, a town a ways up the Li river where we could get a boat trip. Once there, we bargained down from Y150 to 40 for the two of us to go up to Yangdi and back on a “bamboo” boat, which was really just ‘boo-shaped metal tubes welded together. The trip was pleasant, with plenty of dramatic karst peaks, caves in the sheer cliff faces and bamboo sprays lining the banks. But when we arrived at what the boatman supposedly said was Yangdi, we just turned around and came back, and the trip was decidedly less than the hour and forty-five minutes it was promised to be. We were even dropped off at a different point than where we started from, necessitating a 15 minute walk or Y2 bus ride. Of course.

It is these types of bitter endings, such as the massage [our ignorance of local tipping practices notwithstanding] and the bus to Yuanyang, that have to some extent soured our experience of China. We have no idea if we’re getting ripped off to begin with, as in most transactions the prices for foreigners are wildly overvalued, but we sure as hell feel that way by the end of them, E especially so. I keep trying to put things in perspective, reasoning that $6 for two hour-long bus rides and a boat trip was worth it. Maybe – no, of course – it was, but does that change the way we felt cheated? Perhaps those penny-pinching Israelis back at the Gorge were right, and that you can’t compare things relatively, you have to shoot for as close to the actual Chinese price – the market rate, if you will, in a state economy – as you can.

Anyway, we finally got back to the hotel to learn that we could have gotten the sleeper bus tickets all the way to Shenzhen (which lies at the border with Hong Kong, an hour or two further along than Guangzhou) for Y130. Great. Cold, we took showers. E was in a bad mood (no surprise, with the rain and the ripoff). I went out to pick up the laundry and found a cheap noodle place that did some spicy veggie noodles and tofu with mushrooms for Y20. I got it to go. E bought some cold beers downstairs and we ate in – what a relief. The day ended as it began: relaxed.

Got up around 8:30am and walked in the morning mist and a light rain around the city. First we stopped to get some fruit and coffee smoothies that it seems ALL the Chinese kids were drinking, then E bought a pair of shoes from a discount shop. Not really interested in paying the steep entry fees for Guilin’s sights (mostly caves and faux parks), we wandered around a few of the man-made ponds, one of which has two pagodas – the “sun and moon” – which were quite atmospheric in the mist. We ate the mangosteins we’d gotten yesterday along the winding path.

Guilin seemed much cleaner than most of the cities we’ve been to so far, and we heard far less hocking and spitting than elsewhere. I suspect the reason is the area’s tourism potential during the Olympic games. What an interesting time to have come to China!

Eventually we ended up at the Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that we’d seen in the book. Despite the Chinese-only menu, the staff nicely tried to help us choose dishes based on the food types listed in the back of the Lonely Planet, and even told us the prices (especially of the more expensive ones) before taking our order. We ate a fried tofu and mushroom dish, a bowl of noodle soup and some sweet n’ sour eggplant, along with some deep fried peanuts as a snack. Funny thing: they brought us forks.

After lunch we poked through a street market trying to bargain for some so-so boxer briefs, then went to a massive department store called the Niko Niko Do Plaza (I think) and bought several kinds of tea and a bunch of snack-type things in the basement supermarket. Some of the teas were extremely cheap – about Y25 per 500 grams (which is a heckuva lot of tea) – but others were outrageously expensive, getting up above Y2000 for the same amount.

Having written our postcards over lunch, I now needed to get some e-mail access to retrieve the actual addresses, and in doing so we happened upon a fascinating thing: the gamer cafe. Over two large floors in a nondescript building, hundreds of computers – all with flat screens, microphones and webcams, and all populated by young Chinese doing everything from video chatting to hardcore gaming to sleeping. I couldn’t recognize most of the games, but they looked fantastic. I’ve been out of that loop for awhile, despite my good friend Peter’s recent documentary on the subject. It took us a while to find an open terminal, but we did, and 10-15 minutes of usage cost a mere Y0.50! That sure beats the Y10 per 10 minutes they ostensibly wanted at the hostel.

We returned to the Backstreet, picked up our bags and took the bus to the station. While waiting for it, we saw some dragon-boat ceremony (maybe practice) on the river. We had decided against doing the day-long river cruise to Yangshuo due to the exorbitant price (anywhere from Y300-400 per person), but the bus was equally annoying because the damn driver blasted the horn every five seconds for little or no reason at all.

We got to Yangshuo by about 6:15pm and started our accommodation search. This was the first city we’ve been to in China that actually had sold out hotels. After viewing a few so-so places that were asking so-so rates (Y100+ per night, a lot more than we’d been spending), we finally persevered and found a Chinese hotel at the norther end of the main drag where we could have the rooftop studio for Y55 per night. It had a great view from the terrace, although the foggy weather obscured all but the closest of the bizarre karst mountains that seem to poke out of the otherwise flat terrain quite inexplicably. Something to look up on Wikipedia when I get back.

As the proprietors couldn’t really speak English, the restaurant-owner from next door came over to help. He was a nice guy and very helpful, so we ate at his place and had a long chat with him afterwards. We ate a local fish stew that reminded us of Hungarian halasleves, plus some fried veggie dumplings which were ok. A big group of English students also ate at the small restaurant, and they “practiced” with us and among themselves, to much amusement all around. The owner, “Owen”, told us that they come to the ESL school in Yangshuo from all over China to get “real world” experience with the many, many foreigners there.

During our chat, Owen revealed some tips about getting better prices for stuff (never give them a price, just keep asking them to go lower and lower, then finally ask for half of their best price – amazing), which Chinese people can regularly get for about 10% of what we pay, and we showed him where Hungary is on a tiny globe that he kept on a shelf. He even treated us to a beer, a small but kind gesture that we hadn’t really felt before. It turns out (though not surprisingly at all) that speaking Chinese really would help a lot.

After dinner we walked around the crazy tourist street – all touts and blaring nightclubs – and I got testy because I was tired, so we headed back to our room and passed out.

We got up about 8am and took a taxi to the “Twin Dragons Bridge”, which, like many sights listed in the book, was mediocre – it barely went over a stream. We had more difficulties with the cab driver: when we tried to ask how much a return trip would be, he put up three fingers, and motioned back and forth. We took this to mean Y3 there and Y3 back. Suspecting that this might be a bit low, we even tried to confirm this when we got to the bridge. But he really meant Y30 – exorbitant for the maybe half hour the entire excursion took. We argued a bit, then just gave him Y15 and got out. I was looking over my shoulder for the next two hours, thinking he might have called some cabbie friends or the police to push us around. That didn’t happen, but I still felt like we’d left an impression as belligerent foreigners.

We we got back to town we did a little shopping, then checked out of the hotel and got on the bus to Kunming without difficulty. During the not-uncomfortable ride I watched some great kung-fu movies. I think Jianshui was the one place so far that we were a tiny bit sad to leave, thought I don’t know if there was much else to do there. Perhaps it was just the relaxed vibe. Once we got to Kunming we got a great hot bowl of silken tofu with spices, scallions and soybeans and a bag of mangosteins from a street vendor. I haven’t mentioned these delicious fruits until now, but they are one of the highlights of China by far. Sweet-sour, succulent and easy to open. We also had a bunch of lychees with us during our days in Yuanyang which were quite nice as well, though more sour. Now we’re finally on our flight from Kunming to Guilin, after catching an easy taxi ride to the airport. The meal sucked, but we were hungry enough to eat it.

————-

Getting into Guilin and finding accommodation was relatively painless. It definitely felt like returning to civilization from some far-ranging camping trip. We took a bus with only Chinese people (as opposed to the express train that many foreigners pay too much for) to the train station area, then caught a city bus (our first public transport in this trip so far!) up intothe central district where we thought we’d look for a hostel or guest house.

On the bus from the airport we could see the neon-lit brothels that cluster along the utility road south of the train station. This was our first experience seeing the seedier side of city life in China. Just imagine being a Chinese prostitute, or a rice farmer, or an old woman hawking trinkets, or a construction worker breaking rocks, or selling fruit on the street, or any number of terrible jobs this planet somehow generates. I am so incredibly lucky.

A few days ago (on the 12th, I believe), there was a massive earthquake in Sichuan province, near the provincial capital of Chengdu. Tens of thousands are expected to have perished, as many are missing and already nearly four days have passed. It’s terrible, but somehow I still feel as detached as I would have if we were still in Hungary or the U.S. I guess I am too cynical or just too numbed to these things: as long as it isn’t me or my loved ones I can’t say I truly care all that much. Does that make me a terrible person? Or does that just make me normal?

After some dispute over who’s turn it was to be navigator (I’d apparently been dominating the map work since day one), we got to the Backstreet Hostel, which had concrete floors for more money than we expected, so we walked about the neighborhood a bit, poking into other hotels to find that most if not all were way more expensive than we could afford. We debated over a shabby private room near the Backstreet, which we could bargain down to about Y80, but because it had no amenities (internet access, information in English, etc) we decided to just stick with the foreigner place. We got a good room with a large double bed and A/C (which was necessary to use, because the windows didn’t open and it was hot and humid in Guilin).

After dropping off our stuff we took a walk through the lively central area looking for food. I had had a hankering for kaiten sushi, but by the time we found a place it was already closed. Instead we got a tuna salad and pizza at Rosemary’s Cafe, which was actually in the book (we only realized later) listed as an “expat fave”. Whatever. Guilin in general is very friendly and set up for foreigners, with even the bus routes written in English. We both felt that it would be a good city to be an expat in. I thought it felt a bit like Nagoya.

Next we looked (not too far, I admit) for a place to get a massage. It wasn’t hard, as there were a zillion places to get it. We negotiated the price of a combined foot bath/massage and body massage down from Y150 to Y100 for both of us. Probably they were willing to give us a good rate because of the late hour, about midnight, and we were definitely their last customers of the day Anyway it was nice enough – strong hands in those women! – though they didn’t seem to care about finding our sore spots, instead just doing a sort of routine rub. It was discolored a little bit at the end, when they asked for tips (which are generally not given in China), then gave us a face when all we could give them was Y1 apiece.

Tired and relaxed (after two beers at the restaurant I nearly fell asleep on the massage chair), we headed back towards the hotel. Everything was shut up by 1am except for some Chinese restaurants, where I suppose all the area workers go to eat once their shifts end. We checked email for a bit, which they kindly declined to charge us for, then collapsed into bed.

We met Daniel at 5am and jumped in the car. The ride out to the “best sunrise spot” was about an hour, over mostly cobblestone roads, so very rough and uncomfortable. When we got there, a heavy fog obscured the paddies, but as the sky became lighter it cleared for about five minutes and I was able to snap a few shots; though on brief review in the viewing screen I’m nearly positive they’ll be crap. The best picture will be of a local Hani minority woman, to whom I gave Y1 for a pose. I think she’s there every morning, along with a couple of young girls selling eggs to the pro photographers will the medium format backs and big lenses, frantically switching filters and bodies despite the simple fact that the was nothing much to shoot. But from the postcards we saw later, the potential is truly great: brilliant reds, purples and oranges over the mottled and patterned landscape of rice paddies.

After 45 minutes or so, we headed to the next paddy, but it was the third stop that really demonstrated the scale of this area, as after a short walk to a lookout point, we could see the entire Yuanyang valley, at least 30km long, and covered almost entirely in rice terraces. Our driver pointed far off into the distance and said the name of our town, and we could follow with our eyes through the morning haze as the road would its way around the mountains and through the villages to where we stood. Below, hundreds if not thousands of rice terraces had transformed the landscape into a bizarre pattern of twisting lines, resembling the altitude lines on topographical maps and broken up in patches by areas of dense forest. It was striking, and though a bit of haze remained, we could imagine how powerful this spot would be at sunset, when it is reportedly best.

After a stop at the obligatory market stalls selling a mix of local [or so we thought!] embroidery and the standard Chinese junk, we got back to town around 10:30am. E and I shopped a bit (I got some sandals for Y100, or about $15) and then joined Daniel for an early lunch of mushroom soup and the surefire scrambled egg & tomato dish. Afterwards we checked out of the hotel and got on a bus for Jianshui. As we had asked (or tried to) at the “luxury” hotel (still no English spoken there, either) up the road, we thought there would be a comfy motor coach that we could sleep on during the 3+ hour ride, but nooo, they just pointed us back to the main square, where first we had to deal with a testy “bus lady”, who gets the money from passengers and touts the occasional stops along the route. While it was still a long, hot ride, with a screaming baby and some heated words between the bus lady and some Hani women, who we’d dropped off at a bad spot on the outskirts of some nameless city, at least this time we took the expressway, so it wasn’t as bumpy as the mountain roads we’d been conned into taking on the way there.

Overall, I think that our experience in this highly recommended place was ruined by the grueling transport and ugly town. I was ready to write furious emails to the Lonely Planet editors on this point, as it was really not clear how ill-prepared we, the average tourists, would be. Just the bus ride, with even the women hocking and spitting on the floor (not even out the window!), picking their noses and just being generally pretty gross, would really put most people in a bad mood, and I wish the negative sides of the place had been better conveyed. At the very least, a mention that this trip would be ideally suited to people with good experience in China as opposed to first-timers would be essential.

Anyway, we made it back to Jianshui, where I melted down a bit after some annoying haggling with the door women. That evening we tried to eat at the restaurant in the Zsu Family Gardens (another LP recommendation that was completely out of date), but it was closed, so we wandered about the back alleys until we got to the one other place recommended in the book, which turned out to be great. It was a sit-down BBQ place with a friendly staff that grilled our chosen veggies, tofu and goat cheese while we drank beer and smiled at the child of a couple sitting at the same grill. We also ate some delicious “peanut noodles”, which were wide, flat rice noodles served cold in a peanut and soy sauce broth.

Amazingly, Adrian, who we’d parted ways with the night before in Yuanyang, found his way to the restaurant and joined us, clearly as surprised as we were. Though we’d actually followed the book’s suggestion (despite our near-total ambivalence about it), he said he’d just found the place randomly. We had a good long chat, until most other customers had left and then had a walk about town before going back to the hotel and to bed.

Today was the worst day of the trip so far. As mentioned before, I think my expectations have been steadily getting lower and lower with each place. On the other hand, it could be that our initial excitement is wearing off and we’re entering the mid-trip lull. I was hoping that “one of the most spectacular sights in China” would redeem this feeling, but so far I doubt that it can.

First, we got (or at least felt) ripped off by the bus ride to Yuanyang, about 4 hours south of Jianshui. We had gotten to the bus depot in Jianshui by about 8:30am, and were steered away from the normal ticket line by a seemingly honest woman wearing a red headscarf. (Incidentally, the Muslim [or what I stupidly assume to be Muslim, based on little else but women with head scarves] population on the whole has seemed cleaner and more honest than the other Chinese.) She lead us to another woman, in uniform by the bus platforms, who sold us a ticket (including receipt) that we explicitly asked take us to Xinjie, the further point of the two bus stops in Yuanyang (the first is called Nansha). After asking several times that it was to Xinjie, not Nansha, and receiving head nods in assurance, we forked over the Y31 each and got on the small bus.

After 3+ hours of incredibly bumpy, mountainous roads, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way, we arrived in Nansha, ferried into another minibus already packed to the gills, and promptly told we owed another Y10. Protest yielded no result, and we were forced to pay up – total bullshit! The hour long ride up the hill to Xinjie was intensely unappealing: bumpy, twisting roads sitting in the back of the van in which at least two people were vomiting, one of them while nursing her child.

Then we arrived in Xinjie. What we expected to be a charming mountain village with cobblestone streets and a friendly atmosphere turned out to be an ugly shantytown with no English spoken (which we’d assumed based on the guidebook’s assurance that it would be very tourist-friendly) and nothing appealing at all. Touts even tried to get into the car before it had stopped to pick up those who’d [illegible - I think I was falling asleep when I wrote this].

We finally found the budget hotel, a place just off the main square and recommended by Lonely Planet. The rooms were far from “spotless”, and most of the other information about the town was hogwash. The place did seem used to a few foreigners, though we observed later that the tourism industry in Yuanyang seems to have been imposed from above; the locals didn’t seem to know about it. After some bargaining, we got the price down Y5 to Y40 ($5.50) for the night. We got some food at a nearby place: tomato & scrambled eggs, tofu (we asked for five pieces and got a whole plate!), eggplant and rice.

Afterwards we walked up through some rice terraces to the next village. The poverty here was intense: young, dirty children playing in the same open sewer as the black pigs in the street. I’d never seen anything like it, and we didn’t feel comfortable venturing any further beyond the gate. It’s a hard feeling to describe, but there’s something about being party to such a vast difference of wealth, health, experience and so on that made me feel complicit in some kind of exploitation, as if by only witnessing this poverty I was somehow condoning or even promoting it, like some guilt-trip travel brochure: “Come see the incredible poverty of Yuanyang! It’s the eighth wonder of the world and you need to come take pictures of it! Your conscience will never be the same again! Then relax in our poolside cabanas . . .”

When we got back to the hotel, we met Daniel from New Zealand who had just arrived from a tour of Vietnam as a guide for high-school kids, and a Swiss guy named Adrian who had also just arrived from ‘Nam. We chatted a bit on the great balcony outside our rooms, then went to dinner at the nicer state-run restaurant across the square. Daniel, the Kiwi, was headed back to Vietnam from Yuanyang, so traded his LP to Adrian for the Mekong delta guide. We ate mushrooms and cabbage, some sautéed green beans and some delicious red bean paste cakes. A few beers washed it down as we got to know the two guys.

After dinner, Daniel, E and I arranged an early-morning trip to the rice paddies in one of those 3-wheel motorcycle buggies that just barely fits three people. At first the guy wanted Y150, but we got him down to Y100, which was what Adrian said he’d paid for the same trip.