Labour Hotel Chengde

After the pair of days spent sightseeing in the city, I had expected a bit of a relief day to come before the end of the vacation and the return to Tianjin. As usual, my expectations were poorly founded, and early on the morning of the 6th, before I knew what hit me, I was on a bike with my gal and a friend of hers from school heading towards a mountain village.<br><br>Biking in itself was an adventure for me, I didn't even like biking when I was a kid ...

... park with a big wall around it and a bunch of pagodas in the hills and lakes with islands and bridges passing out to them. Let's just say it's worth the 90rmb per person entrance fee we payed, and we spent most the day walking around only to see a small portion of the resort.<br><br> Leaving on quest for sustenance, we, post-success, traveled to one of Chengde's 7 outlying temples. These temples ...

The Great Wall of China: a symbol of both China's power and its vulnerability, dating back as early as 221 BC, and winding along steep, wooded mountain ridges for more than five and a half thousand miles. Although it wasn't entirely satisfactory as a defense line, breached by the mighty Chinggis Khan, it served as an extremely effective communication network, with towers able to send smoke signals along its length, and was also ...

Well, I'll keep the personal bits of this leg of my trip to a minimum. Let me just say that this was the first time I met with my gals parents and family (basically all of whom were home for the holiday), with which we stayed for 7 days all while taking in the sites and new experiences of the surrounding lands.<br><br> The rest of the drive from Jixian was very fun and I took a lot of ...

... 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 ...

... Oh, and the music was much louder than it sounds in that video!!!!<br><br>China is not a quiet place and neither are the buses. But I guess that makes sense when there are so many people in one place. Aside from the constant honking of the bus driver telling other cars and people to get out of the way, there were also people screaming on their phones and shouting across the bus. You can imagine it made it pretty hard to sleep ...

... was spectacular. <br><br>It is possible to walk from Putuozongcheng Temple to some of the other temples. It is 1 km to Xumi Puzhou temple, another massive temple or around 7km to Puning temple. Just be wary of the passing car and bicycle. Or you could just catch a bus to the junction of Puning lu and Huangcheng Beilu and catch bus no 6 to the north of Puning Lu.<br><br>Puning temple of the home of the massive statue ot Guanyin, the Goddess of ...

... The temple reminded me a lot of its neighbor because they both are more like walking through a garden than walking through a temple. I was really pretty and once again i saw the elephants that guard the house like the lions do most everywhere else. After this because my foot had started to really hurt i decided to head back into town. On the way back into town I stopped at the paper cutting studio in order to pick out a framed picture to take home. Well I found the design that i ...

The first thing on our iteneary this day was "Sledge Hammer Rock" a natural rock formation that looks really man made. We took a cable car to a plateau from where you could walk to the rock. I had a really nice talk with my class mate Heidi in the cable car. From this rock we were taken to a glass factory where we could see ...

... low, and now they are equal. Chengde must be used to large groups of Western tourists, but not lone tourists who strike out on their own. At the restaurant the first night, a waitress rushed off to find her boss who then recruited an English speaking diner to make sure we were happy and satisfied. That night we came across some dancers and joined in. When I thanked them and said we had great fun, they said "your Chinese is so good! Don't you think ...