China: Coffee and Crashes

On the long drive back to Shanghai from Wuyuan, I am determined to find a Starbucks to get a shot of my own personal crack.

A man has needs

Sure, Starbucks is shit, but in Asia that's quite often the best you're gonna get for a Flat White.

Not only did my rental car come with my own personal driver [I can hear the sound of Facebook unfriending as I write this], but we also paid the small fee for one of these new fangled GPS systems that all the hip kids are raving on about these days.  The GPS has a fancy function in it where it can help you find the nearest Starbucks or KFC, so we head off to find some coffee.  Long story short, we took a three hour detour only to find nothing.

I could swear it's round here somewhere....

James needs crack.

Never one to give up, we set of for the city of Hangzhou to find the next Starbucks in the GPS system. When we get there, we're greeted by an empty river, and even less sign of a Starbucks.

Crack crack crack.

We give up on the GPS (Goddamn Piece of Sh*t) and after hunting through a wealthy looking suburb we eventually find one and I have that caffeine injection I've been yearning for.

From Hangzhou to Shanghai is not too long a drive, but as we get onto the final highway into town we run into a police roadblock which forces us off at the next exit.  Over the loudspeaker they are saying that they've closed the highway due to a traffic jam and so we have to take the long way back into Shanghai.

The next day we hear on the news that the highway was closed down because a tour bus overturned.

Stink.

Wuyuan (China) Road Trip - Part 3 - Jianglin Hills

Early in the morning we set off for another historic village - again it's closed for business and the local police turn us away.

The Sexy Police.

We head off to see Jianglin hills - a famous picture perfect postcard spot in China.  The area has lots of terraced farming here - and is famous in spring for what Wikipedia tells me is officially called Brassica Napus, but which normally goes by the far sexier name of rape.

NSFW

  The problem is the farmers don't want to grow the flowers because they're pretty much useless to them, but the local government want them planted because they bring in the tourists.

Sadly it's the wrong season for rape, so there was only a token field for the tourists, but after a short walk up the hill, the Jianglin hills still put on a spectacular show.

Be honest - what Google search term brought you here?

More pics can be found here here and over here

Wuyuan (China) Road Trip - Part 2

The next stop on the road-trip itinerary is Dazhang Shan Mountain.  An up-and-coming Chinese tourist spot you can see that they are expecting throngs of tourists to come through here at some point with a half finished cable-car that will soon be ready to take all those weary tourists badly in need of a rest from sitting down up the hill.  It's becoming apparent to me that in Asia a tourist spot is not really a tourist spot unless there is a cable-car involved.  They're bloody everywhere.

Walking is tiring

After parking the car, we're told in that friendly I'm-being-shouted-at chinese way by a woman selling food that tickets up up the road that way.  So we head up the road that way and reach the turnstile area with the security guard who tells us that the tickets are down the other way.  Damn you.  So we go back down the other way, purchase some tickets, and proceed that way to the turnstile.  Now to check that people don't use tickets twice (and possibly for other purposes) they have a fingerprint scanner at the entrance gate where you have to get scanned before you enter.  I couldn't get the damn thing to work with my huge caucasian fingerprints (and general caucasian thick-headedness) and eventually frustrated the security guard so much that he just let me through anyway.  
James 1 - China 0.

Dealing with James is tiring.

Walking up the hiking trail is actually rather nice.  It's rather similar to going on a bush walk in New Zealand, only twice as hot, and with lots of paving stones and stone bridges everywhere.

It looks a lot like New Zealand,

but is far more educational.

At this time of year we only see about 20 other people making the journey to the top.  I imagine the mountain will receive a lot more once the dormant cable-car overhead springs into action.


After a grueling slog up the hill in the heat we're nearly at the top and are greeting by a crappy looking 50s era power generator that's still in use, and a swing bridge.  Wen finally succumbs to the heat and I'm forced to trek on by myself while I leave her to die alone.  Further up the hill and I cross a rickety wooden bridge - the first time I've felt unsafe on this hike.  Many of the boards are rotten or missing, and the wood flexes in a disconcerting way as I walk across.


Finally I reach the first of the two great waterfalls at the top that the mountain is famous for - White Dragon Waterfall.

Not bad

Damn it's hot up here and I'm sweating like [removed for reference to your mum].  I have to backtrack down the trail to the fork in the road and go to see the Great Dragon Waterfall which I'm not going to bother uploading a photo for because it was dry and just looked like a large, slightly wet rock-face.


I head back down the hill, pause for a moment of remembrance for Wen, and arrive back near the old power generator.  We find that there's a free bus service going back down the hill which we gladly take as we're still leaking sweat like [removed again].  We have a twenty minute wait for the bus driver to wake up from his nap, and sit on the sweltering bus where the bus driver's daughter and her baby brother are hanging out.


She asked Wen [Yes, I see the plot hole - it's gaping like [removed]] a question in Chinese.  "Is that a westerner?".  
I was her first.  
"He has blue eyes" she says.  
This fascinates me as it indicates that they don't get many westerners round these parts!  I tried to talk in some simple English to her, but she says that she learned some English in school but has forgotten it.


Meanwhile, the thermometer on the bus is oscillating between 39 and 40 degrees Celsius.  That can't be right!  Well maybe it can - that would explain why I'm hotter than I've ever felt in my life, and have sweated more than I've ever sweated in my life.     


Finally the bus driver woke from his slumber, hopped in the bus and proceeded to attempt to win the World Rally Championship for Bus Drivers that was going on in imaginationland in his head.  He careened down the mountain road which is barely wide enough to squeeze two cars past, without slowing down for blind corners.  I felt safe though because he parped his horn when he went round the sharpest of corners.

A gentle portion of the ride

We make it back to the rental car alive, find a large fresh scratch down the side of the car, and drive to Woolong Valley / Hanxu Caves to find accommodation for the night.   It's not quite sundown yet but we are both exhausted and I succumb to the heat myself with a headache after carrying my heavy bags up 3 floors of stairs. Some chinese TV, a nap, and a meal are in order.

And we couldn't have picked a better spot.