Monday : sunny

Our super market shop was better than our last shop breakfast. It was hard to eat noodles at 5am. After eating we packed up and checked out, and went to the station.

Still no English at this station, but had no trouble finding the right platform. We had so many people staring at us at the station. Just blank stares though, it was ticking us off, it was too early for it. We just waved at them, like You Right Buddy! What's the go are they that secluded here? At least smile or say hello. Don't just stare with your mouth open.

We did finally have a bloke come up to us and start talking. We had a good convo with him, he also told us how many stops until our one and what time the train will be arriving at that station.

The train arrived 40min late and we boarded. It was filthy there was rubbish everywhere. People smoking and spitting it was like being back on vietnam's trains. What happened to the new and clean trains? Aren't the country people good enough for them? At least we had padded seats this time, and it was only 4hrs and not 10. The fella we met earlier (David) found us on the train and we continued the conversation for at least an hour or so before he got off. Nice bloke we exchanged details, I think he wants to come to OZ, he was asking a lot of questions about Australia, I had to tell him about Cricket!

We arrived at Sanjiang and taxis were everywhere, they weren't metered taxis so after a bit of negotiating we found a ride into town. No problems at all getting a taxi, wish they would all of been this easy.

Mr taxi man dropped us at the bus station for our connecting bus. We got our tickets and had a 20min wait before we made sail. It was a shonky old bus, only 1.5 hrs spent on it though.

We hopped of at a town called Longsheng, lucky us we didn't need to go looking for our next bus, the bus driver found us. We must of looked lost. She said she was going to Dazai and that's were we wanted to go.

Turns out she was going past Dazai, and we got punted off the bus in the middle of no mans land. Oh but we got told there will be another bus coming. No bus came but another taxi did and stung us for the ride into Dazai. He knew we were desperate. In the taxi already were 4 Israelites, they had plans of stealing a farmers lamb and sacrificing it, by blessing it and then slaughtering it, OK freaks all the best for you and that! We left them at the village gate entry.

We were pretty dirty at the bus driver, we paid to be taken to Dazai and instead got left stranded, and had to pay someone else to get us there. Apart from that incident and the standard of transportation it was a very smooth trip, all our transport met up and we got here in record time.

There is an entry fee into this scenic area. A man greeted us at the gate and offered to show us a room at his guest house. Seeing how we didn't have anything line up we followed him.

It was a full timber farm house, the whole village is made up of these timber homes. It was a big room private bathroom $10 a night we took it.

We just laid down in a room for a few hours looking out the window at the mountains full of rice Terraces eating cashews. We badly needed to do laundry, I'm down to my last shirt, found out there were no laundry facilities in town so we wash some items of clothing in the room ourselves and hung them out to dry.

Soon it was dinner time Kim noticed a sign in a restaurant advertising free wifi so that was our choice. It was a great tasting meal, nice relaxing arvo the beers always help. We booked some plane tickets to Shanghai on the 31st while we had the net.

As we were walking back to our room after dinner, the village started to let off crackers and big fireworks. We got to watch a bit from our room.

Then cleanup before bed, from experience these villagers get up early, and we have a big trek planned for tomorrow.