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The epic adventure continues. Hungry, tired and completely lost we were somewhat desperate. The railway station opens up onto a MASSIVE square which on one side was home to several hotels. Slightly pessimistically we approached one of the 4* hotels, planning on simply using their Internet to find a hostel. However, we then notice that the price of a room is 128RMB - in other words split between three people it would cost just £4 each! This is just as cheap as a hostel! Feeling so relieved, we booked a room and headed up. Room 519 - we love you. The room was airconned, had internet, a large ensuite and two single beds which we pushed together to make a king size. Next job: food. By this point all we had eaten in 24 hours was a pot noodle on the train so to say we were starving was an understatement. To give you an idea of how hungry we were, we would almost have considered eating the pork liver from Hangzhou. Yes, that bad. All we wanted was some familiar western food so what better than KFC?! Fortunately it was only a short walk from the hotel.
The city of Huaihua is very bizarre. The population probably comes just short of 10 million, despite it not even being on any maps since it is too "small", and there were many huge developments in progress everywhere. The city was a bit of a building site but one of the most genuine Chinese civilizations we had visited which was cool.
Our walk took us down an alley with a string of brothels that was quite awkward to pass. KFC was located in a HUGE modern shopping mall. We found it so strange how such an irrelevant city is so developed - really reflects how huge the Chinese population is! In KFC, we went a bit crazy. Between us we ordered 6 Zinger burgers, 5 large chips and 2 large popcorn chicken. It was AMAZING. The staff all loved us too and it was some Chinese kids birthday so we sung Happy Birthday in English - best birthday ever. Feeling completely stuffed we decided to explore the city a bit more. The shopping mall KFC was attached to was our first stop only because floor 4 was the electrical floor. Straight away we spotted the massage chairs! They were INCREDIBLE! Worth over £3500, we sat on them for half an hour! Genuinely felt like there were small Chinese people hiding in the chair actually massaging us. When we were lying there getting massaged with full stomachs thinking about our hotel, we were suddenly very relieved that there were no tickets available - Huaihua was proving to be a very resourceful location!
Eventually the shopping staff realized that we were just sleeping on their massage chairs and had no intention of buying them (although parents if you are reading this, we really think that these chairs would benefit our education by keeping us relaxed between lectures…the company's called irest in case you're interested) so we were kindly asked to leave. Wandering around outside we crossed the square outside our hotel which had transformed post sunset with hundreds of locals all salsa dancing with an amazing loud sound and lighting system. Between songs everyone retreated to the edges of the square to prepare for the next dance. This is a strong tradition in China and if you head out before 7am or after 7pm on most days in most cities you will find hundreds of people exercising through group dance or taichi - it's a pretty amazing sight. Anyway, as the next song came on George and Josh, being the attention seekers that they are, ran into the middle to perform some of their own salsa dancing. To say the locals loved it would be an understatement. The finale involved George being picked up by Josh and span in a circle (any uni people reading this will know exactly what moves Josh used) which was received by a standing ovation. Feeling like celebrities and being stared out by half the population of Huaihua, we continued exploring and stumbled across a small street market near our hotel which we wandered down. About half way down we spot a hairdressers. Intrigued at how much a hair cut actually costs in Huaihua we walk in and enquire. They were £1! It would have been wrong to turn down such an offer and so, much to Josh's dismay, the three of us agreed to go ahead with it.
It was actually totally worth it! Firstly you get to lie down in a massage bed and have your hair washed, conditioned and massaged, then they spend literally 30 minutes trying really hard to cut the hair well! George and Sam went first - Sam's hair was not particularly different post-haircut but George's was…interesting. They had shaved a number 1 (ie pretty much completely shaved) the sides of his head but left the top and a random triangle at the back completely untouched! Josh didn't want to go for anything crazy so asked just for a trim on the sides. Much to Sam and George's amusement, the hairdresser did not understand "that is short enough please now make this bit shorter" as Josh tried to explain that the length he had cut around his ears was what he wanted but he needed to cut further up to so it didn't look ridiculous. Every time Josh said this, the hairdresser just cut more and more off around the ears. George and Sam were in hysterics; Josh was not impressed and ended up raising his voice to the hairdresser and considered cutting it himself. Eventually he just gave up as the hairdresser got some clippers out and just started shaving the sides of head. It will grow back. 45 minutes later, the ordeal was done and the finished product actually didn't look too bad. Despite the fact that we all now look identical and very try hard gap yah, we were quite pleased with the £1 makeovers. The hairdressers also confirmed our suspicions as they explained we were the 10th white people they had seen in the city - a pretty cool claim to make. After a quick photo shoot (something we have become used to now) and receiving free Chinese DVDs from the owner, we returned to the hotel - almost typed hostel then, as if we would stay in a hostel! George got a bit carried away with his new look and decided to shave a slit in his eyebrow…after a few hours spent repacking our bags and using the internet, we went to bed in preparation for our early rise the next day.
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