Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

Ya know what I hate?
Ya know what I hate?
What do you hate Rodney?
I really hate wasted days and unexpected extra long bus rides!

But before I go into what Rodney really hates;
I should tell you about what I really love and that is today’s scenery!

Even though it was a twelve hour, three bus ride journey that ended with crappy beer and salty BBQ, the scenery between Xingyi and Kaili would have to be some of the most spectacular I have ever come across in all of my travels. Sadly as my camera lens/shutter 'thing’ is stuck and won’t open I have been without a camera so you will have to check out some of the pictures I posted in my blog between Anshun and Xingyi.

Ya know what I hate?
Ya know what I hate?
What do you hate Rodney?
I really hate wasted days and unexpected extra-EXTRA-long bus rides!

Yesterday (Friday, 20th) I headed to the Xingyi bus station to grab a ticket to freaky Weining town to check out Caohai Lake but due to the huge amounts of rain we’ve been having and talk of ‘maybe’ some of the buses being stopped due the danger of mud slides etc it seemed half the town had arrived prior to me and all the tickets for both buses had been sold out.

I then had to spend most of my day indoors due to more rain.
There are only two buses from Xingyi to freaky Weining Town;
8:30 & 10:30am and the travel time, supposedly ten hours.
As to the travel time I can’t comment.

I’m not sure how much has been shown on overseas television but in the south west of China there’s some really bad stuff going on due to the weather. Several towns have been covered by huge mudslides, lots of deaths and several trains have been derailed. The main focus here has been on the Gansu Mudslide and the train derailment in Sichuan.

Thankfully no one was hurt and all managed to escape the angry waters below.

Yesterday morning I decided to be a sneaky bugger and head to the bus station extra early but a fat lot that gained me as both buses had been either cancelled or put on hold due to the weather. So after going through what looked like a Chinese Restaurant Menu I found that the next bus I could take anywhere out of the city was back to Anshun city so I decided to take heed of the danger signs and put Plan A back into action;

Being…to head back to Kaili city and slowly make my way south to Yangshuo.

Also after looking at the map on the wall and asking a few questions I found out that I was only several hours away from both Baise City and Tianyang Town in Guangxi Province where I spent my first year and a half here in China. I would have purchased a ticket to Biase city but thankfully I had spoken to Drug Policeman Brad yesterday and found out that he was in a month’s ‘high grade’ training in Nanning city.

So Plan A was the most viable way to go.

My return journey to Anshun was a little less than five hours as I bus hopped during a toilet stop. Parked next to our bus was a bus heading to Guiyang city which was to be my second stop for the day so after surprising my current bus people by leaving and haggling on price I grabbed a seat and off we went. When we arrived in Guiyang city we arrived in the New City and at the unbelievably huge bus station.

If the buses were any bigger and came with wings it could be mistaken for an airport.

After walking around like a chicken without a head for an hour I found out that no matter how big the bus station was it strangely came with no buses to Kaili city which is very strange when Kaili is one of Guizhou Provinces main attractions. So I lined up at the huge public bus depot out the back and caught Bus No: 219 to the train station and then walked back down to the Yiyu Bus Station and grabbed a ticket for the 6pm bus and we should have arrived around half past eight.

Due to frustrating road works we arrived nearly three hours late.

If sitting on three different buses for over twelve hours isn’t enough to make you a little testy then try not eating all day and after spotting a road side BBQ Stall and choosing a heap of meat and vegetable sticks, asking for no salt or chili and have it not only arrive with extra salt (to compensate for not having chili…it’s a Chinese thing…they just can’t understand why you actually want to taste your meat and vegetable sticks!) but, it also came with a bottle of warm 2.5% beer.

Of course I asked for cold beer.

I ended up washing the salt off with my beer flavoured water, which became the highlight of everyone’s night and gave the rest to the guys at the table behind me who were busy surrounding themselves with a million empty bottles of the horrid stuff.

I had forgotten that Kaili not only came with beautiful Miao Girls but really crappy beer.
It’s not like I want to get drunk, I just want a beer that tastes like beer.
If I wanted water I’d ask for a bottle of water.

Matang Gejia Minority Peoples Village

Sadly while my phone was in getting fixed I took a trip to Matang Village.

I was going to wait for my phone/camera but after I have already wasted several days in Xingyi and if it does take several days to fix my camera then I will be more than displeased with myself. So I am not going to write much about it and will use the text from the LP instead. I want to return to Guizhou Province to visit Weining and Caohai Lake along with several other villages I have been told about that are in the Kaili and Anshun area so I’ll head back to Matang Village then.

The other main one being a Miao ‘Long Horn’ Peoples village near Longa.
A man has only a certain amount of holidays so I can’t fit everything in…but I do try!

Matang: this village, thirty kilometers from Kaili is home to the Gejia, a group that has been identified by the government as belonging to the Miao Minority. The Gejia, who have different customs, dress and language, aren’t particularly happy about this classification; nor for that matter are the Miao.

The Gejia are renowned batik artisans and their traditional dress often features batik and embroidery. Their hats (which look a bit like heavily starched napkins) are also made out of batik. The village is incredibly friendly but be prepared for the army of women selling handicrafts who will pounce on you as soon as you arrive.

Beers N Noodles toya…..shane
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The soundtrack to this entry was by KISS
The album was ‘Hot in the Shade’
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