First evening in Tunxi (11.9.2009)

It is always pleasant to affirm that in the hostels of today there is always some kind of an Internet connection available, and usually it is also free in the form of wireless LAN. It is a funny notion that in these rudimentary sceneries of a town there are bits floating around beyond the human vision. It is China allright.

After catching a bus from the Hangzhou West Bus Station this noon, we headed off for Tunxi district, 230 kilometers of agonizing torture in a bus with some Chinese EXTREMELY noisy teenagers. Luckily I grabbed my earphones for listening to some of my best of the best music from my Nokia. I thought at some point that it's odd listening to Westbam's Wizards of the Sonic and watching the meandering mountain-scenery of the more innerland China. Relatively amazing and ample countryside portraits remained in my mind - some incomprehensible simple Chinese villages or houses with their farmers, who were either ploughing or scorching their plantations. This must be the real China everybody has been talking about.

We arrived to Tunxi, which was - against our expectations - not just a settlement inhabited by cavemen but a real city with lots of traffic. The highlight of Tunxi must be the ancient street, where our hostel actually is located. All kinds of nice looking tourist-objects and whatnots are available on the street market. I bought a small backpack for tomorrow's trip to Mt. Huang Shan. The bus leaves tomorrow at 06.15 from the hostel. We are going to leave our bigger backpacks to the hostel as we are definitely not going to carry them to the 7th heaven. Instead, we bought lots of food and such, because we heard that the food prices go rocket-high the more
altitude one gains. One of the main sights of Mt. Huang Shan is to see the sunrise at just before 5 A.M. when the morning mist recedes a little and one might see the first sunbeams coming through the clouds below. The hostel at the summit is mighty-well priced as it is also the weekend: 210 kuai / person / night.