We just loved our three nights in Shaxi, to get there meant spending 2.5 hours on a public bus then another hour in a minivan that only makes the journey once it’s full, but the place had this untouched peaceful vibe and the scenery was beautiful. It was so nice to be in the countryside where everyone is in bed by 10pm and silence is the ruler of the night. We met Caroline, a botanical illustrator from England on the bus, she had worked in Shaxi for 6 months and was quite excited to be going back, so we helped her with her many pieces of luggage and she gave us the benefit of her experience. We all ended up staying at Horse Pen 46 which was a charming guesthouse with three dogs, two white cats and lots of visitors, the people running it were great, Shirley actually got me out of bed so she could give me some medication for my sinus problem, I was keen to try a traditional Chinese remedy but she reassured me the tablets from the pharmacy work a lot better and it did work a treat. Better still I now have the packet so I can buy more. Besides all this, the real reason we were staying there is because Vince and Jenny had told us there was foam mattresses, and there was, it was bliss. One of those strange things about China is that all the mattresses are really hard, I thought they might have been saving money by only buying the bases but the bed in Harbin was quite new, had a base and mattress, looked normal but nearly every morning I would wake up and think my arm had been amputated as there was no feeling left. Back to Caroline, she introduced us to our lunch lady which I snuck a photo of – I know it doesn’t look like much but all we had to do was look in the glass cabinet and point to a couple of vegetables and she would fry them up in really tasty sauces then serve it with rice and a cup of tea. Simple, tasty and healthy, my perception of a great restaurant these days and I haven’t even mentioned how cheap. The river out the back of the guest house was a bit disappointing as it had become a dumping ground for rubbish and there wasn’t much water in it. The villages dotted around the landscape and the healthy crops of rice, wheat and canola made up for the eye sore. Friday morning was market day so every man and his dog, pig, chook and donkey comes to Shaxi. We wandered around and no one took any notice of us – it was actually relaxing. In fact I was so overawed by their acceptance I couldn’t bring myself to take pictures of them or of the various items for sale and services being offered, though we did stop when we saw someone having a tooth extraction in amongst it all. Thursday night we had the ‘family dinner’ at the guest house, no we didn’t eat enough for an entire family (though sometimes we have accidently order that much), we sat around and shared the food with everyone, we were the only native English speakers there, some people can eat and talk so fast. Saturday we decided to join the others from the guest house for a hike up the mountains behind Shaxi, eight of us and 3 dogs left at 10.30 in the morning and hiked to a couple of temples and a dam before returning home by 6pm. Fabulous day, so quiet and the scenery overlooking Shaxi and the surrounding villages was magnificent. On our last day we hired some mountain bikes and cruised around to visit some neighbouring villages. Caught the minibus to Jianchuan with no problems but the last public bus to Lijiang was already booked out, luckily I had overheard the guy in front of us asking some questions about Lijiang, so I guessed he was faced with the same problem, so I asked if he wanted to go to Lijiang and we think he said he did so we didn’t know what else to do and we had no common language so we just followed him. We walked for about 15 minutes with him checking with various people along the way until eventually we got to the correct minivan corner and he negotiated for all of us. So it ended up costing us 25 Yuan instead of 19 Yuan. Nick and I had already agreed that if we couldn’t get on the public bus we would have paid 200 Yuan to taxi it back, so we were very pleased and we got to Lijiang faster as well. We had to hang around Lijiang for a couple of hours so I took the opportunity to buy yet some more ginger candy – yum. Then out to the train station were a double decker train was waiting for us along with teems of people in the waiting room, so even though we had missed out on the soft sleeper the hard sleeper was pretty much the same, the train was brand new, only 4 people in the cabin and as nearly all the beds in China are hard this was no different. The next morning we just had to waste a way a day in Kunming, our flight to Guilin is not until 6pm. So after storing our bags at the backpackers we wandered into town and found the international cinema. Worked out which was the English speaking movie and ended up seeing an American film about the world being invaded – you will never guess who saved the world – an American, anyway it served its purpose, I didn’t mind the movie and Nick actually enjoyed it.
