Getting there
7/28/2015 We arrived very late the night before because our flight was yet again delayed. This was definitely a reoccurring theme. We arrived at the airport in Zhangjiajie at about 1am. There were only a few taxis available and they weren’t budging much on the price. We tried our best to work them down, but they knew we had no other choice at this hour. So we paid an outrageous fee and we began our hour long taxi ride toward Wulingyuan park where our hostel would be. When we arrived into the little mountain town, you could tell the town was going through big changes. Roads were being built and lovely 4 star hotels fresh from construction were all over the main roads. The driver had trouble finding the address and asked us if we had a phone number. Unfortunately, Agoda does not give over hotel phone numbers.
He drove around in circles for a bit. We started to get nervous that we wouldn’t find our hostel. The lights were out at this hour in nearly every building. Even if we did find the hostel, we didn’t know if anyone would be awake to check us in. Our driver made a few phone calls. We couldn’t understand what he was saying. We saw one building that looked a little like the picture of the outside of the hostel that was on the website, but the driver had parked on the far end of a different street. We tried to tell him we thought we knew where to go, but he kept saying something in Chinese and didn’t move the car. We didn’t know if we were supposed to get out or just sit there stubbornly until we knew we were at our destination. After a minute or two of parked car confusion, a man walked out toward our cab and motioned for us to get out. Who was this guy? Then in English he said, “Destination Youth hostel, follow me.” That driver didn’t screw us over. He somehow contacted our hostel, woke up the concierge and had him come out and find us. We paid our cabbie, grabbed our bags and followed the concierge. We made it!
He drove around in circles for a bit. We started to get nervous that we wouldn’t find our hostel. The lights were out at this hour in nearly every building. Even if we did find the hostel, we didn’t know if anyone would be awake to check us in. Our driver made a few phone calls. We couldn’t understand what he was saying. We saw one building that looked a little like the picture of the outside of the hostel that was on the website, but the driver had parked on the far end of a different street. We tried to tell him we thought we knew where to go, but he kept saying something in Chinese and didn’t move the car. We didn’t know if we were supposed to get out or just sit there stubbornly until we knew we were at our destination. After a minute or two of parked car confusion, a man walked out toward our cab and motioned for us to get out. Who was this guy? Then in English he said, “Destination Youth hostel, follow me.” That driver didn’t screw us over. He somehow contacted our hostel, woke up the concierge and had him come out and find us. We paid our cabbie, grabbed our bags and followed the concierge. We made it!
Wulingyuan Park
7/29/2015 We had two full days to spend at Wulingyuan Park. So we woke up Wednesday morning ready to go. The guy at who runs Destination Hostel, who helped us the night before, gave us a map and showed us what he suggested for two days in the park. He recommended that since we were getting such a late start and the city buses stop running at 6pm, we should take the city bus to the second entrance and do the day 1 route backwards so we exit at the main entrance right by our hostel.
We walked toward the bus station which was about a 10-12 minute walk from the main entrance. As soon as we reached the bus station the number 1 bus pulled up and we hopped on it. It was 2cny per person. We rode the city bus through town and toward what looked like a ticketed entrance to a park. It turns out that this was the entrance for Yellow Dragon Cave and not Wulingyuan park. So we hopped the number 1 back to the bus station and took a smaller private bus to the far entrance.
It turns out that the suggestion of going backwards for city bus sake (which didn’t really work out for us anyways) turned out to be a genius way to avoid the tour groups. We started on the nature walk along the stream. We hoped to make it to the end and hike up to one viewing points and take the cable car back down. We didn’t finish the nature walk soon enough, but that walk was worth spending our time on. It was relaxing and beautiful and not over-whelmingly crowded like everything else in Disney World.. I mean China. The nature walk brought us over a swinging wooden bridge through a valley surrounded by Wulingyuan’s famous spire mountains. It had the epic ness of Yosemite, a national park with monumentous beauty. We continued along the stream. We took frequent breaks and let Raya play in the stream. This was a great walk for families with young children or older family members.
The walk was also full of monkeys. Every couple of meters we passed a team of monkeys climbing the trees overhead, running through the dense forest or swimming in the stream. Some of the tourists tried feeding the monkeys. This ended the same every time. The monkeys would hear the crinkle of a bag and know the snacks were coming. A horde of them would immediately rush the person holding the food, the snack handler would scream, drop the whole bag and run away. We knew better than to tempt the monkeys. I remembered the way my sister Laura ran from the monkeys at monkey beach on Koh Phi Phi. Bahahahaha.
There was one point on our stroll where a girl of about 14, who was separated from her group was walking along side us. She threw a few snacks toward the monkeys. I warned her in English, "be careful." She understood me and responded "ok, thank you." She trailed ahead of us for a bit. A few minutes later we caught up with her near another group of monkeys. She was standing still reaching in her bag for some snacks. The monkeys heard the sound and suddenly they started dropping out of the tree all around her. She looked up from her bag and she screamed as the monkeys started coming at her and jumpin up toward her face. I picked up Raya off the ground and yelled "throw the bag. Throw the bag!" She looked at me, and threw the bag. However in her panic that silly dumb girl threw the bag right at my feet. what the fack!?!? The monkeys abandoned their previous target and trampled each other at my feet to get the bag of snacks. Fortunately they got the bag quickly and scurried right back off into the trees.
The rest of the walk was relaxing. After a few hours of strolling along the stream, we hopped the free shuttle car back to the main entrance and made the 5 minute walk back to our hostel.
We walked toward the bus station which was about a 10-12 minute walk from the main entrance. As soon as we reached the bus station the number 1 bus pulled up and we hopped on it. It was 2cny per person. We rode the city bus through town and toward what looked like a ticketed entrance to a park. It turns out that this was the entrance for Yellow Dragon Cave and not Wulingyuan park. So we hopped the number 1 back to the bus station and took a smaller private bus to the far entrance.
It turns out that the suggestion of going backwards for city bus sake (which didn’t really work out for us anyways) turned out to be a genius way to avoid the tour groups. We started on the nature walk along the stream. We hoped to make it to the end and hike up to one viewing points and take the cable car back down. We didn’t finish the nature walk soon enough, but that walk was worth spending our time on. It was relaxing and beautiful and not over-whelmingly crowded like everything else in Disney World.. I mean China. The nature walk brought us over a swinging wooden bridge through a valley surrounded by Wulingyuan’s famous spire mountains. It had the epic ness of Yosemite, a national park with monumentous beauty. We continued along the stream. We took frequent breaks and let Raya play in the stream. This was a great walk for families with young children or older family members.
The walk was also full of monkeys. Every couple of meters we passed a team of monkeys climbing the trees overhead, running through the dense forest or swimming in the stream. Some of the tourists tried feeding the monkeys. This ended the same every time. The monkeys would hear the crinkle of a bag and know the snacks were coming. A horde of them would immediately rush the person holding the food, the snack handler would scream, drop the whole bag and run away. We knew better than to tempt the monkeys. I remembered the way my sister Laura ran from the monkeys at monkey beach on Koh Phi Phi. Bahahahaha.
There was one point on our stroll where a girl of about 14, who was separated from her group was walking along side us. She threw a few snacks toward the monkeys. I warned her in English, "be careful." She understood me and responded "ok, thank you." She trailed ahead of us for a bit. A few minutes later we caught up with her near another group of monkeys. She was standing still reaching in her bag for some snacks. The monkeys heard the sound and suddenly they started dropping out of the tree all around her. She looked up from her bag and she screamed as the monkeys started coming at her and jumpin up toward her face. I picked up Raya off the ground and yelled "throw the bag. Throw the bag!" She looked at me, and threw the bag. However in her panic that silly dumb girl threw the bag right at my feet. what the fack!?!? The monkeys abandoned their previous target and trampled each other at my feet to get the bag of snacks. Fortunately they got the bag quickly and scurried right back off into the trees.
The rest of the walk was relaxing. After a few hours of strolling along the stream, we hopped the free shuttle car back to the main entrance and made the 5 minute walk back to our hostel.
Wulingyuan day 2
7/29/2015
We woke up a bit earlier today and decided to try the go backwards approach again today. We were gonna start with the giant mountain elevator on the far side of the park. The guy at our hostel warned us that there is usually a minimum 2 hour long line for the elevator. We mentally prepared ourselves for this. The park ticket is reusable for up to four consecutive days and requires your fingerprint to use. We didn’t realize it was good for four days, so we only planned for two.
We entered through the main entrance and took the free shuttle over to the elevator. The signs were clearly labeled in English which shuttle goes to the elevator. There were no tour groups in this line and we got on the first shuttle bus. We had the same luck when we arrived the elevator. All the masses must have started closer to the main entrance because the line to the elevator only had a 40 minute wait and it was about 9am by now. The line however was dog eat dog. Line etiquette in China is similar to Korean... As in there is no etiquette. People kept coming in from the sides and trying to cut us off in line. Whenever a small space would open up in line people would push, shove and elbow you in the face to get a little bit closer in line. Despite us trying to be firm and hold our spot in line, we definitely got passed by at least three groups of Chinese families.
Finally we made it to the final line up for the elevator. It felt like one of those elevator theme park rides except there didn’t seems to be any organization or safety precautions. The elevator door in front of us opened up. I grabbed Raya up into my arms and we were smashed into the elevator by swarms of people waiting in our line and two other elevator lines. I guess there is no maximum amount of people allowed because everyone who could force themselves into that elevator got in. The heads of all the children in line disappeared and I was shoved so violently that I’m certain that had I not picked Raya up, she would have been trampled or lost in this stampede.
The elevator was so packed and people were so violently packed in that it was impossible to enjoy the 106CNY glass elevator that scales one of the most beautiful cliffs in this park. Get me off!!! Flashes of photos went off in my direction. "Oh my God, there’s a foreigner on this elevator with us" and 30-50 more cameras pointed in our direction an blinded us with their flash. The elevator bell rang and it was time for everyone to stampede off. We did our best to skip the first couple of photo spots to bypass the elevator mob.
The views were lovely from up here. There were avatar themed photo zones with snacks and souvenirs for sale. It was awesome. We followed the path to the next shuttle station. Again, there was a long line going in the direction we came from and we hopped on the first shuttle heading back toward the main entrance. This was an awesome route!
China is like being at Disney World all the time. This is even more true if you’re visiting a tourist attraction. There are constantly crowds of people everywhere pushing and shoving. Every shop you pass is trying to sell you something, you have to constantly dodge the loud speaker tour groups AND everyone and their mother is going to ask to take their photo with you. It's chaos. We suffered soo much harassment from people sneaking photos of us or asking us to pose in multiple group photos. At first we were good spirits about it, but after so many people trying to coerce Raya into photos with their kids and making her cry which the ruins our travel experience, we were over it. China is not a country where they value courtesy or consideration of others. Our efforts to show these values were treated like oddities. We learned to go with the flow and come up with creative ways to ruin all the sneaky photos being taken of us. So, if a rumor starts that all Canadians are nose pickers... I'm sorry! That’s my fault. We have a Canadian flag left on our bag from the girl who previously owned it and I think there are about 450 Chinese people with a photo of me wear that bag and picking my nose. Sorry Canada. My bad.
7/29/2015
We woke up a bit earlier today and decided to try the go backwards approach again today. We were gonna start with the giant mountain elevator on the far side of the park. The guy at our hostel warned us that there is usually a minimum 2 hour long line for the elevator. We mentally prepared ourselves for this. The park ticket is reusable for up to four consecutive days and requires your fingerprint to use. We didn’t realize it was good for four days, so we only planned for two.
We entered through the main entrance and took the free shuttle over to the elevator. The signs were clearly labeled in English which shuttle goes to the elevator. There were no tour groups in this line and we got on the first shuttle bus. We had the same luck when we arrived the elevator. All the masses must have started closer to the main entrance because the line to the elevator only had a 40 minute wait and it was about 9am by now. The line however was dog eat dog. Line etiquette in China is similar to Korean... As in there is no etiquette. People kept coming in from the sides and trying to cut us off in line. Whenever a small space would open up in line people would push, shove and elbow you in the face to get a little bit closer in line. Despite us trying to be firm and hold our spot in line, we definitely got passed by at least three groups of Chinese families.
Finally we made it to the final line up for the elevator. It felt like one of those elevator theme park rides except there didn’t seems to be any organization or safety precautions. The elevator door in front of us opened up. I grabbed Raya up into my arms and we were smashed into the elevator by swarms of people waiting in our line and two other elevator lines. I guess there is no maximum amount of people allowed because everyone who could force themselves into that elevator got in. The heads of all the children in line disappeared and I was shoved so violently that I’m certain that had I not picked Raya up, she would have been trampled or lost in this stampede.
The elevator was so packed and people were so violently packed in that it was impossible to enjoy the 106CNY glass elevator that scales one of the most beautiful cliffs in this park. Get me off!!! Flashes of photos went off in my direction. "Oh my God, there’s a foreigner on this elevator with us" and 30-50 more cameras pointed in our direction an blinded us with their flash. The elevator bell rang and it was time for everyone to stampede off. We did our best to skip the first couple of photo spots to bypass the elevator mob.
The views were lovely from up here. There were avatar themed photo zones with snacks and souvenirs for sale. It was awesome. We followed the path to the next shuttle station. Again, there was a long line going in the direction we came from and we hopped on the first shuttle heading back toward the main entrance. This was an awesome route!
China is like being at Disney World all the time. This is even more true if you’re visiting a tourist attraction. There are constantly crowds of people everywhere pushing and shoving. Every shop you pass is trying to sell you something, you have to constantly dodge the loud speaker tour groups AND everyone and their mother is going to ask to take their photo with you. It's chaos. We suffered soo much harassment from people sneaking photos of us or asking us to pose in multiple group photos. At first we were good spirits about it, but after so many people trying to coerce Raya into photos with their kids and making her cry which the ruins our travel experience, we were over it. China is not a country where they value courtesy or consideration of others. Our efforts to show these values were treated like oddities. We learned to go with the flow and come up with creative ways to ruin all the sneaky photos being taken of us. So, if a rumor starts that all Canadians are nose pickers... I'm sorry! That’s my fault. We have a Canadian flag left on our bag from the girl who previously owned it and I think there are about 450 Chinese people with a photo of me wear that bag and picking my nose. Sorry Canada. My bad.
After several more hours of hiking this magnificent national park, we headed home for rest. We tried the local cuisine of sour fish soup, tofu and tea. It was really yummy, but our stomachs were still weak and we could barely eat any of the food.
Yellow Dragon Cave
7/30/2015 Our sleeper train wasn’t going to leave until 5pm, so as an after-thought we decided to check out the Yellow Dragon Cave we found on our first day. We took the #1 bus to the cave entrance. We had no idea what we were in for. We saw a sign saying that it takes up to 4 hours to tour this cave.
We were led into the cave with a large group and a tour guide speaking Chinese. We decided to ditch the group since we couldn’t understand anyways. This cave was massive. Actually this cave was beyond massive. This was the biggest cave I’d ever seen. It was so amazing. Stalagmites and Stalagmites were lit up with colorful lights everywhere and there were stair cases leading to larger and larger openings inside the cave. We couldn’t believe how impressive this place was. It may have been just as impressive as all of Wulingyuan park. We weaved up and down the stairs and caverns for about an hour and a half before we came across an underground river. This cave was soo big there was a river that ran under of it.
We started to suspect we might have to turn around to find an exit. We were going to be cutting close with time if there wasn’t an exit soon. Jeff started getting seriously nervous and we almost turned around. Instead, he ran ahead to see if there was someone we could ask about an exit. Finally, we found a Korean tour group and he asked them. They confirmed that there was an exit if we kept moving forward. This cave was outrageously huge.
Just a little bit beyond where Jeff met the Koreans, there was a boat dock. Yes, a boat dock inside of a cave. They checked our tickets and put us on a boat. We got to ride on a boat on a river inside a cave. This exceeded any expectation of what we thought checking out this cave would be like. So amazing! The cave continued on for a little while beyond the river boat ride and we were back out above ground. Yellow Dragon Cave was absolutely amazing.
We were led into the cave with a large group and a tour guide speaking Chinese. We decided to ditch the group since we couldn’t understand anyways. This cave was massive. Actually this cave was beyond massive. This was the biggest cave I’d ever seen. It was so amazing. Stalagmites and Stalagmites were lit up with colorful lights everywhere and there were stair cases leading to larger and larger openings inside the cave. We couldn’t believe how impressive this place was. It may have been just as impressive as all of Wulingyuan park. We weaved up and down the stairs and caverns for about an hour and a half before we came across an underground river. This cave was soo big there was a river that ran under of it.
We started to suspect we might have to turn around to find an exit. We were going to be cutting close with time if there wasn’t an exit soon. Jeff started getting seriously nervous and we almost turned around. Instead, he ran ahead to see if there was someone we could ask about an exit. Finally, we found a Korean tour group and he asked them. They confirmed that there was an exit if we kept moving forward. This cave was outrageously huge.
Just a little bit beyond where Jeff met the Koreans, there was a boat dock. Yes, a boat dock inside of a cave. They checked our tickets and put us on a boat. We got to ride on a boat on a river inside a cave. This exceeded any expectation of what we thought checking out this cave would be like. So amazing! The cave continued on for a little while beyond the river boat ride and we were back out above ground. Yellow Dragon Cave was absolutely amazing.
We took a bus to the train station. Next to the train station was the cable car entrance for Tianmen Mountain. The views of Tianmen Mountain were amazing. If only we had one more day in this city. We boarded our sleeper train to Nanning.