Of course getting there was half the adventure. We began by getting the subway for about one and a half hours to the westernmost station. From there we needed to take bus 892 for approximately 2 hours to Zhaitang station, where we would be met by our guest house and driven the remainder of the way to the village. Sounds straightforward, and would be if we spoke Chinese, but unfortunately my lessons stopped several months ago!
After getting of at the subway station, it took us about half an hour to find the bus station. Each time we tried to ask somebody (in limited Chinese), we'd either be waved away or told how infrequent, long and uncomfortable the buses were, in order for us to take their taxi (at 20 times the price!). The bus trip itself was fine but took over 3 hours due to the heavy city traffic. I studied each bus station we stopped at, trying to find the name of it, but that was hopeless because there was no English or Pinyin writing, only characters. Thyson finally asked some girls sitting opposite us. They kept saying no, no, until finally they said yes, this one! So we jumped off the bus thinking the rest would be easy, but no, there was no one from the guest house to meet us (and it was raining!). We waited about 15 minutes, then rang the guest house. There was a man standing next to us who was trying to get us to take his car but we kept telling him we had already made arrangements. Without understanding what the guest house was trying to tell us over the phone, the man listened, then tried to tell us - still in Chinese! There was no understanding between us whatsoever! Finally, I called a Chinese colleague from school and asked her to talk to this man and then translate for us. In the end we worked out that the guest house was not coming to get us (traffic?) so we went with the man who claimed the guest house owner was his boss. Funny how he had trouble finding the actual guest house!
As it was a long weekend, and a very popular destination from Beijing (and because we're foreigners) we paid the equivalent of about $80 a night to stay at the guest house. The room consisted of two of the hardest beds I have ever slept on (may as well have been sleeping on wood) and they yuckiest pillows on Earth! The water got turned off periodically throughout the day with no indication of when it would come back on, we had to manually turn on a tap to fill the cistern to flush the toilet (when there was water!). After we took a shower, the bathroom floor filled with a large puddle of water so we had to wade through the bathroom after that. And the pipes stunk the whole room out! Oh, and there was very little bedding supplied (we were told we didn't need to bring any) and no heating so we slept in all our layers of clothes to keep warm enough!
But all that aside, we had a great weekend with beautiful scenery and great company!
