{"id":990,"date":"2011-02-28T14:24:16","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T06:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=990"},"modified":"2011-02-28T21:39:07","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T13:39:07","slug":"990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=990","title":{"rendered":"Climbing the Dragon’s Backbone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 13 – “You can’t get there from here.” Part II<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since I had prolonged my stay in Xingping, it was time for me to head out.\u00a0 With Aga and Radek along, I took the direct bus to Guilin from Xingping.\u00a0 (Where was this bus when I was trying to get to Xingping?)\u00a0 Before we left, Norman gave us very specific instructions on how to get to our next destination.\u00a0 He was adorable.\u00a0 He told the bus driver to make sure we got off at the right stop and then wrote the next destination on a piece of paper in characters so that we didn’t have to try to get our meaning across.\u00a0 Norman told us that we would have to walk about 1 km to get to the bus station.\u00a0 (Oddly enough, Guilin has three bus stations–thankfully, Norman had written down the name of the bus station, so we could continue to show it to people and ask where it was).\u00a0<\/p>\n

We finally found the bus station (it was about 1 pm) and got in\u00a0line to buy bus tickets to Longsheng, my next destination, and the hub for people wanting to get to “Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces.”\u00a0 We got to the window and the attendant insisted that we didn’t want to go to Longsheng and instead that we wanted to go to Heping.\u00a0 Hmm… Well, I think I know where I want to go.\u00a0\u00a0I kept saying I wanted to go to Longsheng.\u00a0 He kept saying we wanted to go to Heping and\u00a0continued to resist.\u00a0 He still\u00a0wouldn’t sell us the tickets to Longsheng. Who knows why…\u00a0 Finally, we boarded a bus to Heping.\u00a0 Maybe it was faster…who knows…<\/p>\n

The ride to Heping was a bit terrifying.\u00a0 We were driving through mountains on narrow switchbacks with drops off the edge.\u00a0 The view was spectacular though! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Sadly, I took no pictures of this because I was hanging on for dear life.\u00a0 When we got to the ‘pass’ the bus stopped at what can best be described as a very tiny ‘convenience store\/truck stop’ thing.\u00a0 I’m not sure, but I think we stopped to add water to the bus.\u00a0 I don’t know what that means. Don’t ask.<\/p>\n

We made it to Heping.\u00a0 Heping is basically a street.\u00a0 We weren’t actually sure how we were going to get to Dazhai (which was our final destination) from Heping.\u00a0 There were some minibus drivers where the bus dropped us off, but they were charging an arm and a leg to get to Dazhai.\u00a0 (We decided that if we had to use this as a last resort, we would.)\u00a0 The man at the bus station in Guilin who would not sell us tickets to Longsheng insisted that there was a public bus that went directly to Dazhai.\u00a0 This is where we waited for an hour for the public bus.\u00a0 We still enjoyed our time waiting and continually telling the minibus men that we didn’t want their service.\u00a0 They kept approaching us and asking if we wanted to go with them.\u00a0 So, I offered them the same price as the public bus (7\u5143) and then they left us alone. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Everything is about money. And if you are foreign and in China, it is assumed that you have money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bus finally showed up but there were no seats.\u00a0 This does not stop the driver from taking us though.\u00a0 Remember that thing about maximizing profits?\u00a0 If he didn’t take us he would be missing out on fares.\u00a0 So, we were standing for the ride.\u00a0 Now, we were still pretty high in the mountains and had to come down a ways to make it to Dazhai.\u00a0 These roads were even narrower than the other roads…and I was standing…hmmm.\u00a0 The view was once again wonderful but I was not enjoying the ride.\u00a0 I was anxious to arrive and get off the bus.\u00a0 We stopped once along the way to pay our “National Park Fee” (again 50\u5143) so that we could enjoy the rice terraces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We made it to Dazhai.\u00a0 There were many native women who were more than willing to carry my bags for me…for a price. \ud83d\ude09 I just kept saying “Wo men bu yao xie xie.” (\u6211\u4eec\u4e0d\u8981\u8c22\u8c22–We don’t want, thanks.)\u00a0 We had come this far on our own with our bags, what was another 30 minutes? \ud83d\ude42 hehehe…..<\/p>\n

I called the woman at the hostel to see if there was a quick way to get there. She told me to give my phone to someone to talk to her and then that person would lead us.\u00a0 We did this and were then on our way.\u00a0 The woman who was leading us was tiny. Seriously tiny. Except her legs.\u00a0She had calves of steel.\u00a0 Probably from climbing up and down the mountain multiple times throughout the day.\u00a0 We were doing horribly.\u00a0 I knew that the hostel was on a hill but I didn’t fully understand the magnitude of the hill.\u00a0 Especially with a large travel backpack on my back and my day-pack on my front.\u00a0 It as brutal.\u00a0 The woman basically laughed at us the whole way up the hill.\u00a0 It was a little humorous.\u00a0 We were nearing the top (at least we thought) and decided to stop on a bridge for a bit to have a rest.<\/p>\n

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This is the tiny woman with the calves of steel.\u00a0 I love her sweatshirt! Hilarious!\u00a0 She kept asking to carry our bags.\u00a0 Can you see why we kept saying no?\u00a0 (She’s actually 20 years old! \ud83d\ude09 She just looks like she’s 65ish–hehe… We kept noticing that there were no school-age children in this village–only small children and adults\/old people.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally we made it to the top (to Tiantouzhai) and after a bit of nonsense got checked into our rooms.\u00a0 We then visited the ‘restaurant’ and enjoyed a lovely supper.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I crashed that night after a really LONG day of trying to get to Tiantou village.\u00a0 I think I fell asleep at around 9:30.\u00a0 It was awesome.<\/p>\n

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See that building with the orange and red on it to the right? That was the guesthouse we stayed at. It was an awesome view from the room. \ud83d\ude42 <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 13 – “You can’t get there from here.” Part II Since I had prolonged my stay in Xingping, it was time for me to head out.\u00a0 With Aga and Radek along, I took the direct bus to Guilin from Xingping.\u00a0 (Where was this bus when I was trying to get to Xingping?)\u00a0 Before we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1000,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/1000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}