I went to china for a tour holiday and travel within Guizhou and Hunan, mainly visiting the scenic hills and waterfalls of Guizhou and going to Zhangjiajie in Hunan.
Here are the highlights of day 7: Hunan province attractions: ThienMengShan (part of JiangJiaJie), travel to Shenzhen.
That day for a free and easy day, so the local tour guides have some chance to make some money by charging us RMB 400 (SG$80) per person to go to ThienMengShan. For your information, if you go to JiangJiaJie and you do not visit ThienMengShan, it is like missing the Forbidden City when you go to Beijing. This itinerary is supposed to be in the main tour package but the local tour operator obviously has made some clever arrangement. A big disappointed with the Singapore tour operator side for missing out on this detail.
We left the hotel and passed thru. Instead of travelling to the same gate again, that day we were going to another direction.
Another big disappointment for me in the morning. Remember above I mentioned that we paid extra? After rushing, we found out that we have to stop and visit a knife shop. What a #@#$@ important about German technology brought by a Taiwanese, and making an investment in JiangJiaJie. I paid for extra and they are wasting the golden-hour sunshine sitting and listen to a sales presentation about ... gasp... knife. Kitchen knife.
I protested violently. The local guide told my mum to tell me that they are not going to get any money if not all the people from the bus went in. Well tough luck. I was not going to pity them and let them earn that money after I spent extra. I can be understanding and patient if it was an arranged itinerary, but not this time.
I refused to go inside, and I stayed out and took some street shots.
After that stupid knife shopping stop, we rushed to the actual destination.
First we need to take a cable car. This is the miniature they have inside the cable car building. The black hole in the mountain is called the ThienMengDong.
Here is a shot of the peak (backlit) from the cablecar.
Can you see the hole now? And that thing that looks like some castle wall, is not. It is a road, an extremely winding road to go up tho the hole.
Here is what I mean.
I have no idea if it is a freak of nature or it has been arranged. That particular peak we passed is the only one that was covered with red coloured leaves vegetation in autumn. The rest is simply dull green or yellow, unlike the cliffs at HwangShan.
We have to stop half way, and take a bus. A special bus with dare-devil driver, whose skill is so special they have a special license. You don't want a suicidal driver driving you on this road.
After the 99-turns (not recommended by people suffering from motion-sickness), we finally reached the "foot" of ThienMengDong. We then have to climb 999 steps to reach the hole on the wall of the mountain.
Well, if you want to see how wide is the wall of the mountain, nothing beats a shot from below. It is probably just about 100 meters wide.
I huffed and puffed with a DSLR camera and a videocam climbing the 999 stairs. And found out that some local drama serial was shot up there. The girl in pink jacket is the lead actress. I have no idea how famous she is.
And you can spend RMB10 for these two nice young ladies to model for you. Not much, but there are so many people going up there taking photo they are making quite a bit of money within 1 day I guess, by local Chinese earning standard, just by looking pretty and climb up/down the 999 steps once a day (A good exercise to keep you slim).
Going down was more scary, because it was very steep.
Finally when we almost reached the bottom, where vertigo was over, I met these two cute children having their snack on the staircase.
Isn't she cute. Not camera shy at all.
From there we then make our way to Shenzhen, stopping at ... to have dinner.
It was at some fancy restaurant built to look like a mini castle, complete with fake city wall and castle garden. In the main hall, you can eat and see some dance entertainment. Guess where we ate? Not there. Fortunately, I managed to sneak into the main hall and took some pictures. Here they are:
I like this one best. Isn't she very sweet?
Same girl different costume.
Different girl, more mature looking or may be it is just her facial expression.
That is all for day 8. We stayed overnight at Shenzhen. We arrived really late and it was raining so no chance for night shopping.
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