China Part 2: Zhangjiajie

Oh Zhangjiajie Zhangjiajie Zhangjiajie… I still don’t know if I know how to say the word Zhangjiajie properly.

Because I don’t have much time, I will try to make this short. But let’s be real, that isn’t gonna happen. I also want to talk about the transition day, going from Guilin to Zhangjiajie because that was an interesting day, to say the least. It took us the full day to get there because we first took a train to Changsha, (which is a city that has the same population as Hong Kong, which was kind of mind-blowing for me and made me realize how populated China really is.) And then from Changsha we took a bus to Zhangjiajie, and we had quite the experience getting from the bus station to our hostel!

So many weird things happened during this day. There was a homeless guy that came up to us with the weirdest look on his face and started hitting us with a chunk of money, there was a guy with no hands that came in our bus with this weird Chinese music just walking the aisle of the bus asking everyone for money. I used the most disgusting bathroom in the world. I won’t describe it. And then of course, our “taxi” ride to the hostel.

It wasn’t a taxi, it was a Chinese couple with a van. And we were just showing them on google maps where our hostel was, and it was impossible to actually communicate with them other than my very limited mandarin skills. I was able to negotiate the price and ask them how long it would take but that was about the most I could do other than point on the map and say “我们去这” which means “we go here.”

Anyways… as mentioned in my Yangshuo-Guilin post, the people in China are messed up drivers. Always honking at everything and flashing their lights, so it was already an interesting ride ignoring the fact that they didn’t actually know where our hostel was. I was tracking where we were on my phone to make sure we were going in the right direction, which luckily we were. But we actually stopped maybe 5 times because they didn’t know where they had to go and were asking people. Once we finally arrived at the right street, we couldn’t find the hostel. It wasn’t clear which one was ours so we stopped at another hostel to ask them and then we realized it was up the hill and then the driver didn’t want to bring us there unless we paid an extra 20 yuan. This didn’t go very well. We were all arguing and basically they wanted to kick us out of their van but we weren’t moving xD

Finally they dropped us at the hostel and it was the sketchiest place ever. When we arrived to our room, the patio door was just wide open. Also in Zhangjiajie it was 3 degrees, so very cold, and there was no heat in the hostel. Thank god that the beds had heaters or else we probably would have all had to squish in one bed just to be warm.

Once we got settled, we went for a late dinner at a little Chinese restaurant near our hostel, which was also pretty sketchy looking. We ordered some food and this one dish, that was apparently pork, tasted soooo weird to me. It didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t taste like pork. So then Rens said he thought it was dog. And I was like OH FUCK. YUP. HES TOTALLY RIGHT. We are in China…. This place is sketchy AF…. This is probably dog. And I started freaking out a bit, like I just ate dog. So I stopped eating completely.

Julien was like nahhh come on its not dog, its definitely pork don’t worry. But I thought he was just saying that so that I would just continue eating and Rens goes on saying “Yes it is definitely dog. I’ve had dog before in Amsterdam and this is definitely it.”

I thought it was weird that he already had dog but I just believed him because I was so tired so I decided to ask the server if it was actually dog. Because I didn’t know how to say dog in mandarin, I just said “woof woof” and apparently this was like the most hilarious thing for them because they were filming me asking the guy “这个是… woof woof??” And the server was laughing too and said that no it wasn’t… but I wasn’t sure if I believed him.

Finally in the end, Rens and Jorien were just screwing with me!!! I WAS SO MAD! LIKE I THOUGHT I HAD EATEN DOG!! Not funny, plus I barely ate!! I was so pissed but actually it was really funny.

OK I didn’t even start talking about Zhangjiajie yet…

SO ZHANGJIAJIE!!!!

I will actually skip the details now because it’s already too long of a post.

This place was literally insane. I am so happy to have been. I had no idea a place like this even existed in the world until I saw some pictures of other exchange students who went last semester. Our world is literally magical… I don’t understand how cliffs like that exist. All I can say is it was freezing, rainy, uncomfortable but… the best time ever.

Chinese people kept taking pictures of us and with us, I was attempting to talk to them.. It was so fun. We took this cool elevator up one of the cliffs and saw the nicest views, we took a cable car as well which was amazing.

Because it was rainy, there was SOO much fog, and sometimes we couldn’t see anything which we were a little upset about, but then we realized that if we just waited a couple minutes, the fog moved and we could see everything! It was incredible. Actually makes the experience even better I think.

These photos are from the same spot taken only 5 minutes between eachother.

AHH so amazing… Really I think everyone needs to go to Zhangjiajie once in their life.