We booked into a new hostel in Tunxi. We use the www.hostelworld.com site regularly to find places to stay. The site rates the hostels by availability, guest ratings, or price. It also gives us directions to find the hostel and lists all its services and facilities. It is a valuable resource and means we have somewhere prebooked when we arrive in a city and don't have to wander around looking for accommodation. Our little ASUS notebook is so great for doing this! How did we survive in the 70s!
The Koala hostel in Huang Shan Xi (the name of the modern city but Tunxi is its ancient name)is owned by the same people as the one we stayed with in Shanghai so we knew it would be very nice. All the staff are very young and can speak English and are keen to help out where they can.
Hong Cun- the previous posting was done as a day trip from Tunxi. Sorry we got our posting out of order.
The hostel was in Old Street- a street of old buildings that has been preserved for the tourists and is full of shops selling things Chinese tourists might like.
Through the hostel we booked a bus to Huang Shan- Yellow mountain. After an hour and a half we arrived at the entrance to Yellow mountain. At the hostel they had told us that the weather forecast was for cloud and rain and other travellers told us that accommodation and food on the mountain is very expensive so so we decided to just do a one day trip to the mountain.
The mountain has been a tourist attraction for 1200 years. Countless painters and poets have trudged around the range, seeking inspiration and bestowing the peaks with fanciful names like, Nine dragons, Taoist priest, Ox Nose, Fairy Capital and Hunchback. So being a national holiday you can imagine the people jam on the steep stone steps! Well it didn't rain and it was a hot sunny day so we have some great views although the pollution haze set in in the afternoon. It is a spectacular place and not for those who do not have ahead for heights!
A cable car took us up the mountain and then we walked about 5 hours up and down the various peaks and caught a second cable car down again. We are pretty fit as we walk everywhere so we had no sore muscles the next day. This man never had sore legs either!
The tour leader with flag and microphone headsets!On the drive back we saw these drying in the sun, under the eaves of the houses or on the line with the washing.
Qingming is a Chinese festival to remember the dead. Tombs in the fields were decorated with these colourful fans and families were tidying up the graves.
