Hunan Province

After we visited the rice terraces, we went on with the night train to our next destination: Changsha. Changsha is the capital of the Hunan province, and the highlight in this province is the city Zhangjiajie. This trip was organized by a guided tour as well, and I can tell you it was the worst.

Nighttrain

Once in a lifetime, I wanted to experience a night on a night train. And yeah, it was a quietly nice adventure! The beds are small but comfortable – kinda cozy. It was ridiculously loud in the first two hours, and the people were smoking beside the wagons, but still, you could smell the cigarettes clearly. Later, once the lights turned off, the people went to sleep. It began to become quiet, and you could start to breathe again and to sleep. However, there must be that one !%$§ing guy who played videos extremely loud while everyone was already asleep. And that for one hour. Why so selfish?!

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We arrived early in the morning, and thus, we had to wait like 4 hours in KFC. Then we met our group.

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Tianmen Mountain

The first destination was the Tianmen Mountain, which is near Zhangjiajie and probably the most famous city in the Hunan province. I was blown away because I thought Zhangjiajie is just a small city, but in fact, it’s huge (like every other Chinese city).

Already in the first minutes, I started to get disappointed. We had to choose between the Tianmen Mountain or the glass bridge. Actually, we couldn’t choose as we booked it as an option before. But the fact that we couldn’t visit the glass bridge has been just a huge disappointment. The glass bridge is, in fact, one of the highlights if you go to Zhangjiajie. And also, the National Forest Park, where you can see the Halleluja Mountains, and all the other great scenery spots were left out, and thus, this trip became nearly useless.

The mess continued. Our tour guide, who looks young and does not seem experienced, bought the wrong tickets. So first, we went by bus to the mountain, waited for half an hour, and then go back to the origin place again, to finally take a different cable car. That situation is just one example of how twisted and not well organized the trip was.

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The Tianmen Mountain itself, however, was breathtaking.

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This is a good moment to tell you a few of our apartments. Mostly, our apartments were admirable, but there are, of course, apartments that look ugly as shit. Here is a good example.

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Additionally, I want to point out how many Chinese people smoke in South China. It does not matter if it’s in Restaurant, in an elevator or inside the hotel lobby or hotel room. They smoke everywhere and ignore all smoke prohibited signs. But I can remember, in Germany, it was the same for more than ten years ago. Right?

River Cruise on Fengtan River

The next day started, and we began our trip with a river cruise. But to be honest, it was nothing special.

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Oh, I can remember the following dish. It was amazing!

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Fenghuang Town

Later on, we arrived in the Fenghuang town where we also spend our new year festival. On the internet the town is praised as “the most beautiful town in China”, and, well, I can’t doubt that! It is truly the most beautiful town I have seen so far.

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Later that day, we went to a show again. But this time, you can not compare it to the last show, which we have seen in Guilin. The performance was terrible, and it looked unprofessional overall. Furthermore, it was ridiculously cold in there, and the sound was way too loud.

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In the evening, we were thinking about how to spend our new year. Before, we bought local liquor from Guilin, so, our nearly only option was to try it. We killed it and then we went out to see the town’s scenery again. At night it is even more beautiful! Right before it was midnight, we went to a bar because she had to go to the toilet. In this bar, you could not breathe. I have never seen such dense smoke. And well, while she was on the toilet, it was already the new year! So, my new year was in a ridiculously crowded bar, where everyone was totally drunk and shouting at me, wanting to take a picture. She came back, and we enjoyed the town’s lights again. Then we went back to our hotel as we had to get up early.

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Morong Miao Village

The last day started, and how else could you spend your time with a lovely village visit! But this time, the village is real – I promise! So, as in every village, we were welcomed with a singing performance, followed by a standard museum walk, followed by a typical performance. They showed us the same method on the neck like in the other village. AND, the same advertisement strategy with the silver products appeared again. It was so funny, we just laughed at the whole village trip and excluded from the group.

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But as I wrote in the other article: The indigenous people get money and thus, get a better life. So it’s okay to support the locals in this way! By the way, a new village is getting built! If I come back, I can leave my money there. 😉

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Our next flight’s destination was Kunming!