Fengtwang

I didn't badly sleep in, I was checked out by 10am but still managed to have a whole day in transit even though it is not far from Zhangjiajie to Fenghuang. Even though I have a lengthy visa here I’m still pressed for time. I was at the bus station for 10:30 out the ticket office by 11 and in Jishou by 1:30. After a quick breakfast/lunch I got my ticket for Fengfuang and missed the first two busses. On one of them I put my rucksack in the baggage compartment and by the time I got on the bus there were no seats left and I had to remove my luggage. The Chinese don't really do queuing. It was 5:30 by the time I got into Fenghuang and due to poor directions from hostelworld it was 7:30 by the time I had checked in. That’s a whole day taken up travelling about 100 miles. Were it not for two Americans that I bumped into I would never have found my hostel. They stayed at the same place as me and speak fluent Chinese but it still took them 4 hours to find the place. The 3 of us went for an evening meal, they were good company. Like most expats I've met they seem to have a love hate relationship with China. 

I’ve had chillis in every meal since Tunxi which is about 10 days. Either Hunan chillies are weaker than most varieties or you get immune to them. I’ve been quite happily munching away on them. The small fish are my favourite food. The slightly bigger fish are a nightmare because the bones are noticeable but still too small to pick out.

Fenghuang cuisine is interesting. There are a lot of Pheasants in cages. There are also a lot of pigs smoked whole and one of the local delicacies is flattened pigs head. They batter the head with a club until it's nice and flat. I’ll stick to my fish with eyes. I’ve also seen something that looked like a mongoose or a civet and some sort of giant grey mole rat.

I spent one day wandering about the village. It's not really a village, especially during the autumn festival, it was jam packed. 

There were people from the ethnic minority Miao tribe who were available to hire for photos. The people who paid them were ordering them about as if it were a professional shoot, grabbing their arms and placing them in a certain way then changing their minds and moving them slightly. As the chinese middle class becomes bigger, I assume they will travel around Europe more, I can imagine a person in a kilt being treated like this, it's quite depressing. But anyway, the scenery was nice, and the way the town was lit up at night was cool. However, it was a long way way to come to see what I saw.

I started to get a bit pissed off with people as the day wore on. I couldn't be arsed being photographed like I'm some sort of zoo animal. In the night market one guy was shouting hello in English so that I'd turn around and he'd get a photo of my face. He took at least 30 photos of me as I ate my noodles. He was totally shameless about it all. This is the little cockmunching eunuch and his smelly wife here. I can smell their lack of cultivation just by looking at this photo. 

I was then faced with a bit of a dilemma. I really want to go to Jiuzhaigou but don't want to go in the middle of winter but also didn't want to trek down to Hong Kong from way up there in the north of Sichuan to renew my visa. I opted to renew my visa as soon as possible which meant going back to Changsha. I hate back tracking and went to the bus station first thing in the morning and got a bus at 11. It was 7pm before I arrived in Changsha. Another day of doing nothing. Luckily I got a night train to Guangzhou that night. It instantly changed my mood once i got a ticket. I've wasted far too many days in Hunan and was glad to be getting a move on. I had been envisioning myself spending two or 3 days more in Changsha waiting for trains to be available.

Some things I forgot to mention from earlier

·         * The Shaolin temple has numerous holes in the trees caused by the students poking their fingers at the trees really hard in their quest to becoming the ultimate ninja.

·         * According to my phrasebook the word miantiao can mean noodles or tampon depending on how you say the first syllable. I’m sure I’ve gone into a restaurant and asked for noodles and received sniggers.

·        *  Mount Huangshan has over 4500 species of plants.

·        *  I haven’t felt affected by my sciatica since Nanjing.

·        *  Even though I live an unconventional lifestyle, I’ll always think times new roman is the best all round font.

(To Dawn) – I misread my lonely planet. Huangshan doesn’t have leopards and pangolins, Zhangjiajie does. I got the two mixed up. I didn’t achieve my lifetime ambition of getting eaten alive by a big cat anyway, you didn’t miss out on much.

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