Many people have seen, or at least heard of, the film “Avatar”. Of those people, nearly everyone would’ve assumed that since it was one of the biggest CGI and 3D films on the planet then the scenery was 100% CGI. The scenery in Avatar was, in fact, real and I had the chance to visit it first-hand. To say it was “good” or “awesome” would’ve been a bit of an understatement – breath taking may describe the feeling when you first see the mountains overlaid onto a blue sky with the odd cloud or two dotted around. Pictures really don’t do it justice, so to imagine what it looks like in person, imagine you’ve just been dumped in the middle of Avatar!
Whilst the scenery was amazing, we went to the National Park on a tour package which was paid for by Yandi Institute. The tour was interesting, to say the least. It started at 0600 on a Monday morning at which time we were catching our bus at the coach station (although in China, it’s just called a “long distance bus” and “coach” doesn’t have much meaning). The journey was around 5 hours and moderately comfy although I still hadn’t gotten used to the fact Chinese vehicles really aren’t built for anyone much taller than around 5’10” so my knees were quite squished and even more so when the person in front decided she wanted to invade my little bubble by putting her seat back, back.
On arrival we were ushered into a building to eat what they attempted to call “food”. I think the only reason part of us enjoyed what we were fed was because we were so hungry. Lunch lasted all of 5 minutes before we were whisked off to visit site number one – a cave!
Now, at first this cave was interesting and quite impressive because of its size but once you’ve seen the first ten stalactites and stalagmites, they all seem to look quite similar – so we whizzed around the cave and enjoyed the boat tour provided at the end before regrouping with our tour at the designated time. Sadly, there aren’t many photos as the lighting didn’t allow for good photos.
After the cave we were put back on a bus for 40 minutes to take us in the direction of our hotel. Our tour guide (nick named “flagman” because he always carried a flag and spoke no English at all) failed to (attempt) to convey that we’d first have to go to a sales pitch! The tour group was crammed into this little room to be given a 30 minute talk on how amazing and special Bamboo is and how many different products can be made from it – it’s the same talk Gemma and I had when we visited Xi’an except this time we didn’t have someone translated into English for us! 40 winks later and we were nearly at the end of the talk but we weren’t free yet! We first had to walk around a carefully constructed labyrinth (they called “a shop”) in which we were followed by several Chinese women who were ready to pounce the second we showed any sign of interest in any item they had for sale.
We escaped the sales pitch and waited for the rest of the group (who appeared to want to buy everything in the store) to emerge before marching toward the hotel.
Upon arrival at the hotel, our promises of “3 star luxury” were quickly diminished. The only stars this hotel were capable of achieving were the ones that it’d drawn on the window itself. The rooms we were given were a mess and the air-conditioning units wouldn’t work until 7pm. The rooms hadn’t been serviced since the last guests had stayed there and attempting to get the chamber staff to understand this proved difficult. At one point she said “tim bu dong” which is Chinese for “I don’t understand”. She didn’t understand what? Why we didn’t want to sleep in dirty bed sheets, why the room hadn’t been serviced or generally what we were saying? We decided to phone Steve – one of the most helpful people we’ve had at our disposal during the summer. He spoke to the reception for us and told them they’re to clean our rooms and make the air-con work – and so, our wish was granted. The staff “cleaned” the room and put fresh bedding on the bed and clean towels in the bathroom but neglected to hoover or sweep the carpet and left a 10 week old bread crust rotting under the bedside cabinet.
After dinner (which was another attempt at something that tasted good) we were taken to a show! This was a truly spectacular show which made great us of the “unreal” environment and some fantastic lighting. At one point a Chinese man was swinging from a rope high up in the mountains with very little safety precautions. Although we were foolish to think that we could just sit and have a peaceful evening! Before the show started we had to listen to an auction for paintings for 30 minutes – it’s hard enough listening to a woman screeching in English, but for them to screech in a language you really don’t understand it’s very testing.
The performance was over and bedtime was upon us – off to sleep we went in our wonderfully clean and shiny rooms. The following morning we were awoken at 5am by the hustle and bustle of the Chinese, in the corridors. I awoke and attempted to have a shower only to find that the hot water wasn’t on in the morning and a cold shower was all that was available – so be it. Breakfast (another failed attempt) was served at 6am and we arrived at 1 minute past to be told we’re late! Some Chinese women shouted something at us in Chinese before dumping some rather bland food on the table. What a great start to the long day ahead of us!
Into a coach we got and off to the mountain we went. We arrived at the foot of the mountain we’d be climbing and ushered into another bus. That stopped and we were then ushered into another bus after which we arrived at the top of the mountain and were told to meet at 12 noon. Off we toddled to look around – the scenery was truly amazing! As I’ve said before, the photos really don’t do it justice but they give a good idea of what it was like.
Time soon flew by and lunch approached – I’m sure everyone can, by now, guess what my description of the food is going to be. After lunch we were given more “free time” and told to meet at the bottom of the mountain at 1630. Flagman tried to convey to Matt that there were two options: A cable car or a path but instead he got across that he would be going down the mountain by a car and would meet us at the bottom after we’ve walked. It was only on our arrival at the bottom that we realised what he was trying to get across to us.
The walk down was painful – for every ten steps we went down, we’d go up another 20. It felt more like a trek rather than a simple walk down 1400 metres of steps to reach the bottom. Eventually we made it and were just about ready to curl up into a ball and go to sleep except, we had to go to another sales pitch! This time it was about Chinese tea.
We were all taken into the Tea centre and given a talk (in Chinese) about how Chinese tea is made and what the different types are used for. We were given the opportunity to sample different types but being a coffee lover I was left rather unimpressed with the bitter-sweet taste that was being left in my mouth.
We escaped the talk (and their labyrinth shop) and made our way back to the hotel to relax. After dinner we were invited to the room next door by some people we’d met during the day. They spoke pretty good English managed to help us through quite a few things during the day and invited us over to play card games and chat. One of the boys didn’t have an English name and asked us to name him so we chose “Oliver” (although quite often just shortened it to “Ollie”). He was extremely interested in learning some English card games and getting to know us a bit more which made for an enjoyable and relaxing evening for all.
The following morning, we were awoken by the rowdy strangers in the corridor again and made our way to breakfast at some ungodly hour. Since it was our last day we were hoping that we’d be free from sales pitches but we couldn’t have been more wrong. We left the hotel at 0630 and were taken straight to a sales pitch about Jade! We didn’t leave the shop until 0830 because (again) most of the tour group wanted to spend thousands of Yuan on Jade jewellery – did they not realise they’d need to carry it around the mountain with them all day?
Eventually we were free and were taken to the base of the mountain we’d be climbing. This time there was the option of a cable car (both ways) for only RMB100 (£10) which we took without a second though. We were given only 90 minutes to go up, look around and come back which meant if we’d have walked we’d only be half way up the mountain by the time our 90 minutes was up.
The photos at the bottom will illustrate the kind of scenery we saw during these 90 minutes and there really isn’t much more I can say about it – it just wouldn’t describe it.
After we were done we had our final meal and were then taken to one (final) shopping trip which lasted over an hour. This time there was no sales pitch it was just a massive warehouse that sold everything from Tea to Jade to Bamboo to sweets – but it didn’t change the fact we didn’t wish to be there and we most certainly didn’t want to be waiting around to go home.
Once again, we had to wait for the Chinese tour group to finish buying more things before getting back on the bus and making tracks for Zhuzhou. Overall the tour was badly organised and put us off organised tour packages so much that we cancelled another trip we had planned with them BUT the scenery we saw made up for the agony we were put through.
Next stop was Shanghai and Beijing in only 2 weeks.
