Honglou Hotel Chengde

... only upon arriving, was a waterfall from a small creek passing into the river we had been following. The amazing part of the waterfall was the way it came out of the cliff-side far above and fell over a series of ledges before settling.<br><br>I took the stone-steps to swaying metal-steps to rickety-half-missing wood-steps, path to the top alone. Halfway up, I stopped and a small pagoda and took pictures of the wonderful views of the rural valley in ...

The day of the 4th and 5th we took a long distance bus to the nearby prefecture-level city of Chengde. Chengde is well knows as the Summer Resort during the dynasties where the emperors would travel to escape the heat. Much of the mountain city is taken up by 'Bishushanzhuang', aka the Summer Resort. And, of course, this was our highest order to see.<br><br> The summer resort itself is basically a ...

... of the 'rural China' towns as we passed through. Unfortunately, they were with my cell phone camera since my camera didn't have new batteries yet and so they turned out quite poorly.<br>The county level town of Xiabancheng (aka Chengde County), is built much like Jinghai. By that I mean, it's a small town with relatively few people yet it is very compacted and so the town center is built up ...

... a Chicken. Celui qui a le plus de guts passe, et l'autre arrete. Pour intimider l'autre et pouvoir passer tout est bon, le klaxon est evidemment l'arme de choix. Quand on est pieton il faut montrer qu'on est pret a se faire rentrer dedans pour passer et l'auto n'aura d'autre choix que d'arreter.<br><br>On a d'ailleurs vu de nombreux accidents depuis notre arrivee, dont un autobus qui a percute la falaise sur le bord de la route. On suppose qu'il ...

So i just got back from the best weekend of my stay in China and my maybe my life. Well this weekend I decided to take a trip by myself to Chengde, China (dont really need the China part but still.) NO! not Chengdu which is the city most people have heard of but Chengde, a smallish city 4 hours north of Beijing. Well my trip started very early on Saturday morning, Like 4 am early! yeah I had to get up that early so that I could be all ready to go and at the train station at 6am to get ...

... headed back to Beijing for a few hours before we headed overnight to Louyang. The main highlight of the second Beijing visit was our dear friends - bear and gorilla. They made a last minute appearance at Tienanmen Square...it was dusk just to avoid the soldiers who bore down on the chaps fairly quickly once they caught wind of what was happening. Pics up in a day or so. All our love and warm regards K&amp;M, M&amp;K - &amp; the boys.

... one of us. I had a woman in her 60's I guess who seemed to find me very amusing for some strange reason. This was the start of a 4.5 hours hike up the wall to get to a hostel in Simatai where we would spend the night and then take the optional trek up to the highest part of the wall at Simatai. Unlike Caroline and Michael who cheated and took the cable cars upto a certain point we had no such luxury as all the cable cars are closed for the winter. There ...

... be included, but when it came to it, only two meals were included and the trip costed 170Y, and with bad weather on top I really felt like sneaking away and back into bed, but for some reason I stayed. We got on the bus after quite a bit of waiting, and after about 1½hour it started to rain, right about this time it also dawned on me that I hadn't brough my rain coat. Around 6.30pm'ish we arrived at YunMengShan's peasant hotel where we were to stay. Each room had 3 ...

... Good bless'. He has a lot of a Chinese twang to his accent. Peter took one of the monks flutes type instruments which was made of bamboo and played some amazing music. Before long all the monks had gathered round to listen as well as most of the other visiting guests. It was an amazing moment. Before we left though it became quite surreal when one of the monks, who had an arrangement of metal bowls in a wooden frame that he would strike like a ...

... on the left side of the road. Score one for us. China has a way of biting back hard, though. If (this is a big IF) there were rules on driving in Beijing though, it might have been a bit better. Let me explain. We are driving along, in a 3 lane highway, and everything seems great...they drive a bit fast, but you can used to it pretty well. Suddenly, a car decides that there is enough room BETWEEN the two cars in their respective lanes to pass you. No problem! No road ...