Saturday 15th September 2012
This morning we went on a little excursion to Huangguoshu waterfall, the largest waterfall in China... I think. It was an early rise again, but definitely worth it!
If you read my previous blog post, you will be aware that James had an unfortunate incident with his shoes. They had not dried off this morning so, instead of just braving the damp, he thought he would wear the complimentary hotel slippers. Well I say slippers, they were pretty much a sole with a flimsy bit of papery fabric to make them into some sort of flip flop.
Whilst we were walking towards the waterfall, Georgia thought it would be absolutely hilarious if she trod on the back of James' slipper. Of course, this led to the flimsy thing breaking, a James having to hop his way around.
The walk between the entrance and the waterfall was just over half an hour, and we were given some rather dashing waterproof ponchos to wear so we wouldn't get wet when we got there. The walk was very picturesque and when we finally got to the waterfall it was an incredible sight.
We then walked down some steps to the 'rhinoceros pool', which is the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, and managed to get a group photo! This normally proves difficult as there are twelve of us and we never seemed to be in the same place at the same time.
By this point, James' other slipper had come off and Humphrey was starting to get concerned. The only shoes available at the gift shop where crocs, James was not willing to pay this and kicked up such a fuss that Humphrey ended up buying them just to get him to shut up. Classic James.
He seemed to really like James, as when we were on our way out, he decided to dare James to climb up some rock. This wasn't doable with crocs on, but it was rather funny!
For lunch we went to a restaurant nearby the entrance to the park. Tiny cages containing various birds and animals in cramped conditions. It was sickening. To make matters worse, half way through our meal, James decided it would be hilarious to put a chicken's head and some dried fish into my bowl. My appetite left me completely. So gross.
We then went to another part of the national park I can't remember what it was called though! There was a smaller waterfall and 365 stepping stones over the water, each with a day of the year on it. We followed the stepping stones around until we reached what we thought was the end of the park, but there was plenty more to see!
We passed through various rock formations, where Georgia, Josh, James, Ben and I thought it would be a great idea to pretend to be die hard tourists and take photos every five seconds, trying to get as many Chinese tourists in the background as possible.
The five of us caught up with the others at a building where we all had an ice cream. We were so lucky it was such a beautiful day. Humphrey told us to have a twenty minute rest before we started off again and ended up walking through some beautiful caves. The photos I took were pretty bad and do not do the place justice, so I'm just not gonna bother putting them on here.
We then drove home for two and a half hours and passed the time by singing songs off of pop party two and now 57. I literally have the best iTunes.
We got back to our apartment at around 6, so Georgia, Josh, James and I decided to go to Dico's and then to the market. What we didn't realise was that the market closed at 7:30pm on a saturday, and they started to lock up. It was quite scary as it is really easy to get lost in there, luckily we found our way out before getting locked in!
Friday 14th September 2012
Today we all thought we were going on holiday to Anshun city to see Huangguoshu waterfall, the largest waterfall in China.
We all awoke early to get to the train station, we were just given an address to show the taxi drivers and hope for the best. Trying to communicate with the taxi drivers is hilarious. They just chat away to us in Chinese and we're like uhhhh we don't speak your language? I wish we did though, it would've made our lives a lot easier!
The train ride took about an hour, and the seats weren't as uncomfortable as we thought they would be! We then arrived in Anshun, and were greeted by Humphrey, a CC English school teacher. We presumed that we would have these two days off, but as soon as we got there we were taken straight to another branch of CC English school. There seems to be a never ending amount of them!
Thankfully, we were in pairs again today, so I went with Georgia. Our first class were absolutely adorable. They can't have been very old as they didn't know much English, but they weren't as young as the kindergarteners. Naturally, as we are performing monkeys, Georgia had to sing 'Someone Like You' and I had to sing 'Baby'. We were told this, we didn't request this. As we're top friends, we decided to just sing them both together to ease the embarrassment. We ran out of dance moves by the time we got to 'Baby'. We proper went for the high notes in 'Someone Like you' though, and they seemed to think that we were actually good! God knows what they were listening to because I was hurting my ears with my own voice! They were probably just humouring us.
We then went for a little walk around the city. Anshun is a very pretty city in comparison to GuiYang my photo definitely doesn't portray that, but trust me it was! The buildings were not as modern, which brought about a more traditional community feel about the place. Eventually we ended up at a small all you can eat restaurant. We sat on little plastic stools and all crammed around one tiny table.
When we got back to the school, we all went into the main hall, which was relatively big, and split up into six groups, two of us to a team of about four. However, to get into the groups, we had to line up on stage and do a dance to which the students then had to pick who they wanted in their team. Thankfully I was one of the first few to be picked, probably because of my blonde hair, and Ollie then followed me onto team two.
We then had a series of challenges to complete as a group. This included painting a chinese script, doing origami, attempting some sort of knitting thing and making an outfit out of bin liners and other random items we were given. This was highly amusing. After each activity we were given a score, and at the end the group with the lowest score had to do a forfeit. This happened to be Emma and Dan's group, and they did a lovely rendition of the Cupid Shuffle, this was now our go to song for forfeits.
After we had finished the challenges, we gathered up our stuff and went to leave. However, before we could leave the hall, we were bombarded with the students asking for photos and autographs. I literally felt famous. It was so weird.
We then all scrambled into taxi's to get to our hotel, naturally Georgia and I were sharing a room again. interestingly, the ensuite was made from glass, with the bottom half frosted. So if anyone walks in while you're sitting on the toilet, then they can see you as demonstrated by Georgia in the photo below, I'm sure she will appreciate this. Delightful. We then dumped our stuff in our hotel room, then jumped back in the taxi's to go and get dinner. We hadn't eaten for ages. Starving didn't cover it.
We were told we were going to a DIY BBQ restaurant for dinner, so we let visions of hamburgers and hot dogs make up for the lack of food for the day. Unfortunately, we were disappointed once again by the lack of western influence on the restaurant. There were fridges full of different meats and vegetables which you put on your plate and then took back to your table, which had personal sized fryers on them. Oh, I forgot to mention, you had one pair of tongs to share between both he raw meat and vegetables. As most of us didn't particularly fancy the high risk of food poisoning, so we politely made our excuses, saying we weren't hungry and we wanted to have a walk around the city.
Thankfully they let us go, and we managed to find a dico's. I have never been so thankful for chicken nuggets and chips in my life. We then met the others, and Humphrey gave us a tour of the local market we were hoping they would have a few good fake stalls. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything there that we couldn't get in GuiYang. The worst part of this little trip was that it was in one of the poorest parts of Anshun, and there were a lot of homeless beggars. It really hit home how lucky we actually are, and how ungrateful we were about dinner!
We then said goodbye to Humphrey and went back to our hotel. As it was still relatively early, Georgia, James, Josh and I decided to explore the city a little more. We went for a long walk and ended up at a lake with a ginormous golden dragon boat there. It was incredible. Yep, my photo captures its beauty perfectly. This is what you get for taking photos on your iPod touch.
At this point James was bored, and this never ends well for anyone involved. He thought it would be funny if he played football with a cup. This ended up with James misjudging how well he tied his shoelaces and a shoe in the lake. It was hilarious. Luckily he managed to fish it out the lake.
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| Dat grammar tho. |
