Wasting time in Hunan

Wuyuan - Zhangjiajie

I had an early start. Up at 5:30am and travelling for 13 hours before I arrived in Changsha. The guy who’s house I was staying in had arranged transport for me as public transport is more or less non-existent. It was a rickety old lorry full of bricks that was also the school bus. I was a bit sad to leave but it was raining and I would have felt I was wasting my time just hanging around the village then do a bit of labouring when the weather was suitable for harvesting rice. It took ages to get to Wuyuan town which gave me an idea of how far I must have walked to get to Guankeng. 

I got a bus from Wuyuan to the provincial capital, Nanchang. The journey through the rest of Jiangxi was interesting but Wuyuan is clearly the nicest area on the road from Hangzhou to Nanchang. Outside of Wuyuan County the farm buildings often look like they are decorated in bathroom tiles. Wuyuan is much more classy. I was in Nanchang for 3 ½ hours. It was so fascinating I’m not going to even start going into detail. The coffee was nice, I’ll leave it at that. I then got a train to Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. Changsha is like Taiyuan. The office blocks have big spires and light up at night even though they are the same height as the surrounding residential towers. The drivers are one notch more chaotic than the other parts of China just like Taiyuan. I was going to sleep at the train station but my muscles were really stiff from the farm work so I got myself a motorbike to the only hostel in the city. None of the taxi drivers knew where it was so I had to get a motorbike. I love having the wind in my face and have decided that wherever I settle down I’m getting an electric scooter. However, I will not drive like this dude who picked me up and certainly not in a city like Changsha. Fate was out of my control so I just kept my eyes looking forward and didn’t think about the busses swerving around us. I did some research online and found out that I’ve already paid back almost half the price of my tent by opting not to camp using one of the tents up Huangshan. 

I ended up staying in Changsha too long. My hamstrings were unbelievably stiff and  was told that Zhangjiajie would be jam packed for the October holiday so I hung around there until my muscles loosened up. I can’t believe how much my muscles ached after half a day’s work. I guess I need to man up a bit, what a blouse I am.

Zhangjiajie City is nothing to write home about. I stayed in a nice wee hostel in an office building. It is only 30kuai now that I’ve got a card which gives me a 10kuai discount every night. I’ll get my money back on the card in 5 nights. The weather forecast was terrible. The Forest Park is expensive for a two day pass and I didn’t want to go there when there was nothing to see. I did a bit of 3D modelling and reading, I also mapped out the course I’ve taken in Google Earth just for the sake of it. I have lost my Google jumper. More to the point I lost my only jumper and had to buy a new one. I’m also going to get rid of my big towel and get a hand towel instead. I drastically need to reduce the weight I’m carrying.  I can’t afford to go up and down steps all day with a backpack on. My knees would disintegrate.

Zhanjiajie Forest Park

Even though James Cameron got his inspiration for Avatar from Huangshan, Zhangjiajie more closely resembles the scenery in Avatar. It was on my must see lists for China. It was nothing special in the rain. The views were ok and I’m glad I went. My camera got a bit wet and broke for a few days. More importantly I went to 5 banks in the evening and none of them allowed me money. The next day I went to loads of banks and had the same problem. Unfortunately an Australian who was staying in my hostel managed to get money from a bank that refused me. He had also gave me a lend of money to pay the park entrance earlier on in the day because I didn’t realise how little money I had. Because my Hotmail is blocked I could have contacted the bank but would not be able to receive my response. I set up a new Hotmail account and requested a new password for my old account. Unfortunately I couldn’t open the email to see my old password.

I've spent 50p on cigarettes and bargained so hard for a bowl of rice this evening that I ended up getting a heap of veg and a refund. Because I exaggerated about how skint I was, I put the equivalent of 30p beside her wok when she wasn't looking because I felt a little bit guilty.. I also got a free lunch from a customer in a restaurant that felt sorry for me because I wouldn't pay 70p for a meal. It was a cheap day. 80p and 30p was voluntary. It's my ambition to live on a dollar a day for a month once I'm more of a hardened traveller. The day didn’t go how I planned. I wanted to be in Zhangjiajie Park in glorious sunshine but it's been good practice for me. If I can live on close to a dollar a day in a city I should be able to do it in a rural part.

The next day I went to the Western Union to pick up money that my brother sent me. The Western Union was closed for the Autumn Holiday and wouldn’t reopen for 6 days. I did not understand the guy who was telling me it was closed. He wrote it down on a sheet of paper and my heart nearly sank when the woman in the hostel translated it for me. All I had was the 50 kuai deposit I got when I checked out the hostel in the morning and a few 1 Yuan coins. I’m glad it was me who was in that situation and not a melodramatic sort of person. I was a bit distressed but was up for the challenge of living on peanuts. I probably couldn’t buy 6 days’ worth of peanuts for 50 odd kuai. I was skint. One night’s accommodation in the cheapest place available would be 45 due to it being the holiday season. I couldn’t access a phone to call RBS but a Canadian guy I met let me phone RBS and I got the problem eventually sorted. The card didn’t work in the first two ATM’s I tried, I was elated when I finally got money. I got a new Hotmail password from my older brother so all is back according to plan. What an anti-climax.

It was late afternoon by the time I’d got my financial situation sorted and got myself some breakfast and opted to stay another night in Zhangjiajie to avoid travelling in the dark so I can hop off at a random village if it looks nice. I got my evening meal from the woman who gave me free food yesterday and paid the full amount from both the meals then chilled out in the evening making models of Chinese style windows on google sketchup. If I build my own place I can resize the model and then have the correct dimensions to make the individual pieces.